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Dean’s pretty sure this wasn’t his idea. Not that he wanted to be all caught up in the whole holiday thing back in town, but this was real winter…with snow and ice and his toes were freezing and his nose was running and damn but Sam’s freakoid legs were setting a pace that was gonna kill him.
“Dude, just stop.” Dean stopped walking…if what he was doing could be considered walking. It was more like slipping sideways and stumbling forward. “What’s the hurry?”
Sam turned to look at him, his face pink with cold and exertion, his breath steaming the air around him. “I heard something.”
“Yeah, like ice breaking. It’s freaking cold out here.”
Sam gave him a look that told him he was stupid. “Dean, its December, in Montana. Of course it’s cold. We still got a werewolf to find. Last night of the full moon.”
“Yeah, I know. Do you really think it’s this deep in the woods? I mean, Sam we can barely get through this snow.”
Sam looked disturbed at that thought and turned to look back the way they had come. “Do you think it would head in to town?”
Dean shrugged, his breath starting to come a little easier. “Would make hunting easier.”
Sam blinked, his eyes dropping to the snow at his feet. Dean could see it then, in his brother’s face…the reason they were out here in the snow instead of back in town where the entire population of 89 people were celebrating in one fashion or another. It was, after all, Christmas Eve.
“Come on, let’s circle back, see if we can pick up a trail a little closer to civilization.”
Sam shook his head, his big hands stuck into his pockets. “I heard something,” he insisted, not looking at Dean.
Holidays had never meant much to them before and Dean wasn’t sure why this one always affected Sam this way. It was worse now, but even as a kid it made him uneasy.
“There it is again.”
This time Dean did hear something, a muffled, bit off curse. He nodded to Sam and they separated, moving to flank whoever or whatever was out there. Dean stopped dead though as he rounded the giant evergreen and came face to face with….well, if he didn’t know better he’d say an elf…and not the Liv Tyler kind of elf either.
“What the—“
“Hell?” Sam finished for him as he too came to a stop.
The little man, person, elf thing couldn’t stand more than 3 foot tall, his thin body encased in red and green and white, long ears poking out of his dark hair. He was hopping on one foot in one place, beating down the snow in a small circle around him. It was easy to see that if he tried to move away from the shelter of the tree, he’d be swallowed up in the drifts that surrounded it.
“Hey…um….you…okay?” Dean asked hesitantly.
“Does it look like I’m okay?” His voice was high pitched and tinny, as he finally stopped hopping. “I broke a toe. The snow is deeper than it was supposed to be, and I’m already late for my pickup.”
Sam was chuckling. “What? Who are you?”
The little man—elf—whatever looked up at Sam like Sam had three heads. “I am Albert.” When that didn’t obviously change anything he shook his head. “You aren’t here to help me, are you? I figured that since I was late, the big guy sent some help.” He stomped his feet and laughed. “I knew I should have let Gregor take it this year.”
“You are a strange little man.” Dean said finally.
“I am not a man,” he protested. “I’m an elf. I am Albert, the elf. I’m in charge of package delivery in the western united states.”
“Package delivery?” Dean glanced at Sam who was mouthing words to him.
It was Dean’s turn to get a look like he was a mutant. “It’s Christmas Eve. I’m an elf. You do the math.”
Sam was laughing out loud now and he turned to walk away. “Leave it to us…we go out hunting werewolves and find an elf.” Sam said. “Dean…I…”
“Yeah…Yeah, Sammy…I know.” Dean was getting a feeling that things could get a lot crazier. “So, Albert? What are you doing all the way out here in the woods?”
He turned and bent over, retrieving a brightly wrapped present from under the tree. “Special delivery. Sometimes things need a personal touch.”
Dean nodded as if he understood, but his mind was still stuck all the way back at “Albert, the elf”. He looked to Sam, but Sam was going to be no help, he was pulling at his hair and laughing. “Who are you delivering that to, all the way out here?”
“What? You think only human children need presents? There’s a dryad that lives down by the river. This is for her daughter.”
Now Dean was certain he was loosing it. “Dryad? Santa gives gifts to dryad children?”
“Explains why we never got any.” Sam said, his eyes wild as they found Dean’s. “I mean…we kill dryads.”
The elf’s eyes narrowed. “No you don’t. He did, once.” He pointed at Dean. “Had no choice though. She was bad.”
Sam rolled his eyes and started to leave. “Whatever, I’m going back to the car.”
“Samuel Winchester, you stop right where you are.”
Sam did stop, turned and looked first at Dean, then at Albert. The look on his face was pissed and embarrassed and confused and Dean imagined his own must look the same. Albert was just plan annoyed. “You people…you think you know everything, don’t you?”
“Dean. We should go. There’s still a werewolf running around loose. We don’t get it now, we have to come back in a month.”
“So you’re going to ignore me?” Albert said. Sam’s eyes flashed his way then back to Dean.
“Sam, we should help…I mean…get him through the snow at least.”
Sam laughed again. “We’re being played Dean. He’s no elf. There is no such thing as elves. No Santa. Hell, when was the last time you ever got a Christmas present that didn’t come from me or Dad?”
Dean shook his head, but before he could answer, Albert did. “The year before you went to Stanford, Sam. You and your brother fell off a roof in Wisconsin.”
Sam squinted at him and Dean stared. “I don’t remember that.” Sam said.
“We should have been dead.” Dean said. His face felt warm despite the chill. “There was a man…a little man and I asked him to make sure you were okay. It was Christmas Eve. A few minutes later, you were holding my hand and telling me to hold on.”
Dean shivered. He’d always figured it was a hallucination brought on by the concussion. “That was my brother Gregor.”
“You do realize this is completely insane, right?” Sam asked as Dean moved to where he was standing.
Dean chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, I do. Look. Go back to the car. I’ll take care of this.”
“What are you gonna do, Dean? Carry him to the river?”
“Go on, Sam.”
Dean waited until Sam had turned his back to sigh and turn back to Albert. “I can, if you want.”
Albert looked perplexed. “I—no. No. I will not be carried around like some child. You take it. Promise me you’ll take it, drop it off and come straight back.”
Dean felt silly but he promised, reaching out for the package. “What does Santa give Dryad children anyway?”
“You probably don’t want to know.” Albert said, a twinkle in his eye.
Dean rolled his eyes and tromped through knee deep snow, following the little elf’s directions until he came to the cave where the dryad and her daughter lived. He only had to take three steps inside and leave the package.
He had killed a dryad once…as a teenager. She’d seduced him first. Dean shivered at the thought. She’d been killing fishermen by seducing them and then drowning them. With his luck this one was like a sister or something. He shook it off, did as he was told, dropped the package and beat it the hell out of there.
He half expected the little man to be gone when he got back, but Albert stood by the same tree, stomping his feet and waiting. “All good. Now what?”
“I go back.” The elf hitched a hand to the tree, like it was somehow responsible for him being here. “But first.” He bent over and dug with mittened hands in the snow around the tree for a minute, then came up with something. He brushed the snow off of it and handed it to Dean. “Would you give this to your brother for me? It was the other reason I came here this year.”
Dean looked down at the heavy object the elf put in his hands. It was a pocket knife…an old, slightly rusted pocket knife. He rolled it over in cold fingers to find S.W. carved into the wood of the handle. “Sam lost this…on a hunt.” Dean looked up and around, but the elf was gone and he was alone.
He looked down at the knife. He hadn’t even recognized the town. Of course, that was because their last time through here there hadn’t been much of a town…just a ranger’s station and a few cabins. Sam had gotten the knife for Christmas that year. Dean was half certain it was from their father, but the package hadn’t been marked. It had been Sam’s first knife…the first of many…but he lost it in a tussle with the beast they’d been hunting…and had been inconsolable for days after.
Dean tucked it into his coat pocket and headed back to the car. He drove them back to the tiny motel in silence and waited for Sam to go to sleep, all grump and grousing. Dean pretended to sleep and when he was sure Sam was out, he took the knife and his kit into the bathroom and spent the next hour cleaning the knife up. When the rust was gone and the blades were sharp again, Dean wrapped it up in the comic’s page from the local newspaper and put it on the night table by Sam’s bed, then put a folded piece of paper with a scribble “Merry Christmas, Sammy…don’t lose it this time” next to it.
Dean grinned as he crawled into bed. They’d never been big with the gift giving. Trinkets and stuff that didn’t cost much when they actually thought about it. The knife had been a big thing, cause Sam was 13, and his fascination with knives had been something Dean had pointed out to his dad a few days before Christmas. The next five years Sam got a knife for Christmas with the same admonishment, “Don’t lose this one.”
Dean rolled over and closed his eyes. For the first time in a long time, he was looking forward to watching his baby brother open his presents on Christmas morning.