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When they had decided to have their very own Legends “office Christmas party” opinions had been divided. Mick had, predictably, voted for Aruba. Sara had wanted a night out in futuristic London, which proved just as popular as Mick’s Aruba suggestion. Nate had wanted to study Christmas traditions through the ages – a suggestion that had been vetoed by everyone but Ray, as nobody else thought scholarly work would be a fun way to spend their day off.“I don’t think this is any of what we discussed,” Amaya remarked mildly as she stepped out of the Waverider to be greeted by an untouched snowy landscape, with mountains in the distance.While the others were working on repairing the Waverider, the three of them had been sent to survey their surroundings, which was really just code to get Nate and Mick out of the way. Ray had been just as giddy to explore the Ice Age but Jax needed his help.“Gideon said we’re in Central Europe during the Pleistocene Epoch,” Nate said, already shivering in his thick coat.Mick stomped ahead. “No shit. And I packed nothing but my speedos.”“You said you wanted to ride a mammoth,” Amaya said, “if you’d rather go back and sulk about Aruba…”Nate’s hand found Amaya’s as they followed Mick, who kept complaining about the snow and the cold but made no move to return to the Waverider. She decided that was close enough to him having fun – besides, she was looking forward to meeting a mammoth, too.
Their next attempt to have an office Christmas party, Amaya found herself running from pirates through the festively decorated corridors of the Waverider before she had even gotten to her second glass of eggnog.She smacked right into Nate, both of them giving a surprised oof.“No offense, but I have decided superhero Christmas parties are a terrible idea,” she informed him and then they were running again.Gideon was still playing “Last Christmas” on repeat. With the ship under fire, it sounded very ominous.They ended up squeezed into a tiny room, little more than a storage space, while a group of five heavily armed time pirates patrolled past them.“Okay, so maybe we need to work on our party planning,” Nate whispered, “but until we got attacked this Christmas party was going well.”Amaya gave him what started out as a withering look but softened when she caught sight of the fake snow sprinkling his hair. She didn’t even know what he had tumbled into, as far as she knew Sara had nixed the plan to make it snow on the Waverider that Ray, Professor Stein and Gideon had come up with. She ruffled his hair but the fake snow wouldn’t budge, so she just used the excuse to let her hand linger.The pirates had stopped nearby, loudly debating which way their quarry might have fled.For the moment, they were stuck.When Nate leaned in to kiss her, Amaya decided that maybe this Christmas party idea needed work but it wasn’t the worst.
“Third time’s the charm, right?” Sara said, sounding forcefully optimistic as if she thought she could make this party succeed by sheer force of will alone.Amaya wouldn’t put it past her but she remained doubtful that they should keep trying anyway. At this point, it felt like they were just jinxing themselves.The late 21st century Christmas festival looked harmless enough, some kind of a mix between a fun fair, a Christmas market and a parade.The entire team was there, leaving Gideon to watch the ship. Jax and the Professor were arguing whether the festive lighting had been installed sloppily enough to be a disaster waiting to happen or not, while Mick was sampling the mulled wine with Ray and complaining that it didn’t even have a kick.Amaya looked around, feeling a little lost in the crowd of happy people, by the smells and noises and how nobody here seemed to care that the world was a dangerous, earnest place.High above her, holographic reindeer were pulling Santa’s sled across the darkened sky.“Hey,” Nate said.She looked up, still wearing a slight frown. “Hey. Did you talk to Sara?”“She’s fine with me poking around to observe this time period’s customs but she said not to wander off too far.”That sounded fine with her, and certainly a better use of her time than joining the cotton candy eating contest she had passed by. “Let’s go.”They wandered over the market, Nate sharing amusing anecdotes of Christmases past while Amaya remained mostly silent. She reluctantly shared a few of her experiences when pressed but there wasn’t much to tell in her opinion, and she preferred to listen anyway.It was light talk, avoiding all the heavy topics of the future and the past that stood between them, and she treasured it exactly for this reason. It was nice to just be for a little while, no decisions or duties to different eras looming over them.They ate Christmas cookies and sipped mulled wine and bought a tiny holographic Santa. Nate got a pair of the reindeer antler earmuffs that were all the rage with fairgoers, Amaya declined when he tried to get her to wear a pair as well.At the very heart of the market, there was a giant tree surrounded by an array of intricate ice statues, depicting what a helpful stall owner explained were the revered past masters of the fair.They were more delicate than any such statues Amaya had ever seen, instead of being carved out of solid blocks of ice they were made of the thinnest layer of luminescent ice; it was as if someone had given human shape to soap bubbles and frozen them.In hindsight, she should have seen coming what happened next.While security was distracted with a group of lewd carolers, Nate insisted on getting a closer look at the statues and Amaya didn’t even try to stop him, too enchanted herself by their delicate frozen beauty.It happened in a moment. One of the drunken carolers breaking free of the group about to be arrested for their bawdy songs, running towards them and tumbling into Amaya. She, in turn, tumbled into Nate, who reached out to steady himself and instinctively grasped for the statue. It didn’t shatter under his fingers as she would have expected from the fragile look of it – what truly happened was far worse.The statue got unbalanced, slippery ice escaping from Nate’s cold, clumsy fingers, and fell right into the next statue… and the next… and the next…The shattering of ice was obscenely loud, somehow perfectly audible over the Christmas music.It took mere moments for all eyes to be on them, then for the angry voices to start.“Freeze! You are under arrest!” a stern voice bellowed.They froze; slow, terrible realization sinking in that security was yelling at them and not the long-gone caroler.“Did Sara say anything about not angering the locals?!”Nate gave her a wide-eyed, panicked look. “She… might have?”Half a dozen security Santas wielding stun rifles as long as her arm came barreling their way and Amaya’s hand tightened on Nate’s upper arm. She could have fought back but she didn’t want to fight against people just doing their best to keep the peace, didn’t want to disturb the celebrations more than they already had. There was really only one way to solve this.Nate seemed to have come to the same conclusion.“Run!” they yelled at the same time.“That’s it,” she wheezed as they raced to meet up with the rest of the team, and hightail it back to the Waverider, “no more Christmas parties!”