Archive of Our Own

When the ornate scroll appeared on Kravitz's desk, the Reapers knew what to do in a heartbeat. Kravitz waved his hand and his dark satin purple-lined ravenfeather cloak sprouted from his shoulders as Lup and Barry jumped up from their desks and pulled on their own, far less nice, cloaks. For a moment, they struck a pose, and a breeze that shouldn't have existed in the Astral Plane caused their cloaks to billow out around them, Kravitz’s sterile white office LED tubes demonstrating a previously unknown flair for the dramatic in backlighting them heroically.

And then Kravitz hopped onto the fireman's pole in the corner of the office and slid downwards. He was a millennia-old Senior Reaper, with tens of thousands of arrests under his belt, so he managed to suppress the urge to go “whee!” Lup and Barry did not, but they'd had less practice on the fireman's pole than he had.

One after another they stumbled off the bottom of the pole at the foot of the Raven Queen's throne and bowed.

After the Reapers had struck a blow for worker's rights during the Battle of Labour Day, they'd argued that it was demeaning to be forced to work in what was effectively the Raven Queen’s throne room broom closet, at her beck and call like court jesters. She'd said that's exactly what they were, actually, and they'd said oh okay thank you your corvidness.

But this time, the Raven Queen didn't demand japes and jests. She looked deeply troubled. Barry, who'd initially misread the vibe big time, tried to hide his juggling balls behind his back.

“My Reapers,” she began. “I have a very important task for you. This will test your skills to the utmost; it will push you to your very limits; Kravitz, it is possibly the most challenging job I've ever assigned to you in your centuries of service.”

“Damn,” Kravitz said, as Barry surreptitiously shoved his juggling balls behind a potted plant. “Last week we fought that guy who summoned an undead t-rex and you told us it would be easy so you weren't going to give us hazard pay.”

“So you can understand the gravity of the situation,” their boss intoned.

“Barry nearly died.”

“I did,” Barry agreed. “Not because of the t-rex, I just didn't have time for breakfast and my blood sugar got low.”

“This task will strain the thresholds of your blood sugar,” the Raven Queen said. “It will force you to dig deep into your reserves of sodas and candies.”

“Can we have a candy allowance, then?” Lup suggested.

“Excellent idea, Lup,” the Raven Queen said, and Lup beamed. “How much could a candy cost these days, 10 gold?” 

“Twenty,” Lup lied. “That’s inflation for you.” The Raven Queen nodded sagely. She snapped her fingers, and all three Reapers felt their pockets get a little heavier.

“Anyway, shut up, court jesters, I'm ready to tell you about the task now.” She leaned in, suddenly serious. “In a totally convoluted turn of events… just an utterly unbelievable series of coincidences… a truly insane and unique occurrence… Pan ran over the god of Santas by accident and inherited his domain and I agreed to take it off him and it suuuuucks. It's so lame, guys, I hate it.”

The Reapers looked at each other. “Unique?” Lup said, finally.

“Probably nobody else has ever been in this scenario ever,” the Raven Queen nodded.

The Reapers blinked at each other. “It's like she doesn't listen to a word we say,” Lup said.

“Anyway, I've thought of a way out of this,” the Raven Queen said. “I’ve attacked it from all angles and come up with the only rational plan. It's foolproof - you'll all go back in time and confiscate Pan’s car keys to stop him from running over the god of Santas, so he'll never inherit the domain and I'll never agree to take it off him.”

“Won't that cause a paradox?” Barry said. “If Pan never runs Santa over, you never inherit it and ask us to go back in time and prevent it, so then Pan does run Santa over, so then you do ask us to go back in time and prevent it -”

“I've thought about this. If you think you're going to cause a paradox,” their boss said sagely, “just don't.”

The Reapers waited, but nothing else seemed to be forthcoming.

“Right,” said Kravitz. “But -”

She waved a hand. “Okay, fine, make sure you also tell past-me to have this conversation. She can pretend that she inherited the Santadom, have this conversation, and make you steal the keys either way - paradox avoided.”

“Won't you also be hammered?” Lup said.

Kravitz tried to hush her. “What she means, my Queen, is, uh -”

“No, I absolutely will be, great point,” the Raven Queen said. “Actually, you know what, I only just sobered up this morning, so when you steal Pan’s keys, just also put a note in my pocket explaining the situation, and I'll find it and know to have this conversation with you. But yes, this is the only way. Like I said, I checked this from every angle, it's watertight.”

“It seems… like it’s maybe not totally watertight,” Kravitz said. “Maybe splashproof.”

“It’s a sponge,” Lup contradicted him immediately. “For one thing, we can’t travel in time.”

The Raven Queen said, “that’s what you think, nerds.”

She pulled the tarp back to reveal a frankly unimpressive grey-green 2005 Honda Accord. All three Reapers looked at it, at each other, and then at her.

“Well, I wasn’t going to loan you my Delorean,” she said, a little piqued. “This one is more your style.” She popped the door - not even a gullwing, all three Reapers were disappointed to note - and said, “here. You input the destination time into the time circuits, and then, when you hit 69 miles per hour…”

“Okay,” Barry said. “So, we input the destination time as last week.”

“6 am on Sunday morning,” the Raven Queen said, watching him punch the numbers in. “That’s when we got thrown out of the club so they could ‘close for the night,’ which is a lame excuse in my opinion.”

“And then we just step on the gas?” Lup said. “Dope. Dibs on driving.”

“Shotgun,” Barry said immediately.

“Hold on,” Kravitz said, looking at the two-door car in front of him. “I’m the senior Reaper here. There’s no way I’m climbing into the backseat of this tiny car.”

“He called shotgun, Krav,” Lup said.

“That’s infantile,” Kravitz said. “I’m your boss, and I have longer legs. It'd be like climbing into a clown car. I should get to sit up front.”

“He called shotgun, Kravitz,” the Raven Queen said. “Get in the backseat.”

Kravitz obediently origami’d himself into the back of the tiny car.

“Now, remember the plan,” the Raven Queen said after her three jesters had folded themselves into the clown car. “Steal the keys, don't let Pan drive, tell past-me to have this conversation. Okay?”

Lup nodded, adjusting the rearview mirror to try and get a glimpse of anything behind her that wasn't Kravitz’s scowling face. “We got it, bird mom. Trust us.” 

“Love you Kravitz, safe trip,” the Raven Queen said.

“Say it back, Krav,” Lup insisted, when Kravitz looked a little embarrassed.

“Love you too mom,” Kravitz said.

And Lup floored it.

The readout on the dash blinked upwards as they left the Queen behind. 55 - 60. 65 - 66 - 67 - 68…

“Nice,” all three Reapers said simultaneously, and the car disappeared in a brilliant flash and a clap of thunder.

Pan stumbled out into the car park, blinking blearily in the morning sunlight. Istus and the Raven Queen were close behind, both looking equally plastered.

“When she said club,” Lup said, from their vantage point hiding behind a dumpster, “I really imagined a nightclub. Not, like, a social club at some local bingo hall.”

“It's hard to unsee your boss getting hammered at a social event where everyone else had one glass of cheap prosecco each,” Barry agreed. “At least it made the keys super easy to steal.”

“No, dude, I'm totally good to drive,” Pan was saying, fishing in his pocket. “Just gotta find the ding dang keys, hold on dude.” He somehow managed to root too deeply in his pocket, lose his balance, and fall head over heels in a cartoonish cartwheel.

“Let's get a taxi,” Istus said.

“I've got a better idea,” RQ slurred. “I'll call Kravitz, he can come pick us up.”

“Does he drive?” Istus asked.

The Raven Queen paused for a long moment. “Probably.”

“Of course I drive,” Kravitz muttered to himself.

Pan started, “I could call Merle -”

“NO!” Both his companions immediately cut in. “His driving sober is worse than yours drunk,” RQ added. 

“And he's never sober,” Istus said.

“I drove her to that party last month,” Kravitz grumbled to himself. “And she left cans all over the backseat.”

The Raven Queen pulled her stone out of her pocket and found the note from the future version of herself. Barry had stuffed it in there while she’d been lapping at the vodka ice statue that, to be clear, she herself had ordered to what was definitely not a vodka-ice-statue-vibe kind of party. She peered at it, obviously realised she was too drunk to read it, and shoved it back in her pocket to dial on her stone. She took a couple of tries, but every time she held it up to her ear she only paused a moment before shaking her head and going, “nope, that's not it.”

“This is hard to watch,” Barry said. “I thought they were fun drunks.”

“She never includes this part in the stories she tells us about her wild nights out,” Lup agreed.

“It's a company car, she had to sign the paperwork -” Kravitz began.

“Shut up, Kravitz!” Both of the other Reapers snapped, and then both flinched, shared a look, and peeked over the dumpster. Their boss and her friends were still arguing about phone numbers, having not heard them at all.

“Fuck it,” the Queen slurred. “I'll call Lup.” And, in a single attempt, she dialled Lup’s number from memory.

Kravitz just gaped.

It wasn't long before Lup appeared in her and Barry’s car and herded the three deities into the backseat. Almost instantly, Pan was sick, and present-Lup and Barry winced, hoping that past-them had cleaned it up before it became future-them’s problem, and before present-them became future-them.

The car pulled out of the parking lot, pausing once as Lup slammed on the breaks to avoid crashing into a sleigh that had pulled out in front of her without looking, and disappeared down the road as all nine reindeer flipped her off.

“That must have been the god of Santas!” Barry exclaimed. “And he’s still alive! Although he drives like an asshole. Even we’re better at navigating the sleigh than that.”

“Well,” the Lup that had come back in time said, “that was hugely successful.” She sounded like she was pondering something.

“Why didn’t she have me on speed dial,” Kravitz asked no-one in particular. “We talk literally every day. I call her before bed every night and we talk for an hour.”

“Does she always introduce herself fully?” Barry asked. “Like, good evening, Astral Plane, Raven Queen speaking? Because that’s a sure sign that she’s not got your number saved in her phone.”

“Barry, she introduces herself like that to everyone,” Kravitz said. “You know how formal old people are on the phone.”

“She texts like a gen z kid. She has whole conversations with Angus on the phone that I don’t understand a word of,” Barry said. “So I don’t think it’s that.”

“Listen,” Lup said. “Stop talking about whatever this is. I’ve got a plan. We use the time machine, go back in time, and stop Merle from killing Santa.”

Barry shook his head. “Lup, you know we can’t do that. You heard the Raven Queen - paradoxes are dangerous! You know, grandfather paradoxes and stuff -”

“Our ancestors don’t live in this dimension,” Lup said. “And Kravitz’s grandma was run over by a mammoth back in the ice age. Risk of fucking our own grandparents, zero.”

Barry pondered that, turning it over and over in his mind, as he realised this was truly his only concern. “Alright, yeah, good point. I’m down, let’s go.”

“My grandma was not run down by a mammoth,” Kravitz protested. “That was my grandpa, and you know that's a sensitive subject for me. My grandma got eaten by a sabertooth tiger. She used to farm them for their milk.”

“Huh,” Barry said. “Was that normal back in caveman times?”

“How do you think cats got domesticated?” Kravitz said. “Anyway, when she died Grandma Adventurezone was 80 years old and sharp as a tack. She did water aerobics twice a week!” 

“At Ye Olde Younge Wenches’ Polytheistic Association,” Barry interjected

“The song about that one isn’t as snappy as the YMCA,” Lup added. “Hard to get the arm movements right, too.”

“Anyway, listen, preventing Merle killing Santa means all that stuff we did over the last few years gets undone - which, while I understand we all hated every moment of it,” he added hastily before either of his colleagues could interrupt again, “feels like it might affect the timestreams and stuff. Which is maybe more important than us being kind of inconvenienced.”

“Well, okay, hmm,” Lup said. “Here’s the new plan. I’m pretty sure Merle said the last guy fell off the sleigh or something and turned into dust. So we make sure the guy falls out of sight of the boys, catch him, bonk him on the head, empty a vacuum cleaner on the floor, and leave the Santa hat behind - hey presto, they think he’s dead, there’s dust everywhere, paradox avoided. We do what we do best and kidnap a guy, drag him kicking and screaming to the future, and then he can step in and take the job from us in the present. And this time,” she added, “we keep him far, far from Merle. Bastard just can’t help himself.”

Lup couldn't help but feel like the car should do something cool when it travelled through time - hell, they'd all seen Back to the Future, and the Delorean made all kinds of sparks and white mist and a flaming trail of tyre tracks. The Honda just made a sound like the engine was about to blow up and an acrid black smoke billowed from under the hood, and then they were somewhere - somewhen - different. She felt, frankly, a little short-changed. It didn't even have cool machinery poking out of the back, although it did have one smashed window taped up with black tape.

“Kravitz,” she said. “Do you actually know what this car is a reference to?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “When I was just a little boy -”

“Five thousand BC,” Barry supplied as he climbed out of the car.

“ - my grandma took me to see a troupe of travelling minstrels. Back before she got eaten by the sabertooth, obviously. They played Ye Olde Hot Springs Time Machine in my home town,” Kravitz reminisced, his eyes misty with recollection.

“No, Krav, it's Back to the Future,” Lup said. “Famously, Hot Tub Time Machine features a hot tub as the time machine. There's sort of a clever hint hidden in the name there, see if you can spot it -”

“Ohh,” Kravitz said. “Well, I was confused, because back in the original telling, in Back To Ye Olde Future, it wasn’t a car. It was a horse called Delorean, and you had to feed him 88 carrots.”

“Did it, y’know,” Lup said, “make any sense? Back in those days, going back in time thirty years - I mean, not much had changed, right?”

“Yeah, the joke about his clothes not fitting in in the fifties obviously would've been hard to translate,” Barry agreed. “I can't imagine their clothes changed that much in thirty years back in caveman times. Or did they all comment on his orange puffer loincloth?”

“I actually brought the DVD with me on the Starblaster,” Lup said. “I’m never without it. It's one of the greatest movies of all time, right behind Teen Wolf. I can’t get enough of Michael J Fox.”

“Never?” Kravitz said. “Like, you have it right now?” Lup pulled the DVD case from her inside pocket and flashed it at him. “That makes a lot of sense. I always wondered what that bulky shape under your jacket at all times was.”

“We should watch it now,” Lup said. “There’s a DVD player built into the back of the driver’s seat of the Honda -”

Barry blinked at her. “Lup, we’re kind of in the middle of something.” He indicated the mattress they’d laid out behind the snowdrift and the full vacuum cleaner they’d prepared, ready to empty out after Merle arrived in - he checked his watch - less than five minutes.

“It’s a time machine, Barry,” Lup said, witheringly. “We can go back in time, watch the movie, and be right back here. C’mon, Krav’s only ever seen the version where Doc gets gunned down by Libyan terrorists for stealing their carrots to feed to his horse.”

“They were Mesopotamian bandits in the version I saw,” Kravitz supplied. “They were Libyans in your version? It’s always so weird to me that you guys got all the same media we did but through the filter of it making absolutely no sense.”

Lup and Barry exchanged a look and simultaneously decided not to touch that. “Okay, sure,” Barry said. “Let’s watch it.”

They all watched as the Delorean’s wheels retracted and it took to the sky in a blaze of fantasy 80s CGI glory - and the credits rolled.

Lup turned to Kravitz. “What did you think?”

“Still not as iconic as the original’s where we’re going, we don’t need horseshoes,” he sniffed. “But it was fine.”

“Fine?” Lup demanded. “It’s one of the world’s only perfect movies!”

“And the sequel is even better,” Barry supplied. “The second one is my favourite.”

“Bear, I love you, but you’re the only person in the world who thinks that.”

“There’s a sequel?” Kravitz demanded. “I guess I died before the minstrels came back to town to perform the second half.”

“Oh Kravitz, there’s two sequels,” Lup said, clambering back into the driver’s seat. “I’m taking us back in time to watch the second, c’mon.”

The Honda appeared with a crash of thunder and a flash of blinding light, and skidded across the arctic ice, finally screeching to a halt directly next to the other, identical Honda, complete with identical occupants.

The six Reapers stared at each other. In one car, Back to the Future blared. In the second, its sequel played.

“Okay,” said Lup, “maybe I should’ve chosen a different place to go back in time to. Do you think this counts as a paradox?”

“Probably not if we all agree to ignore each other and continue on as if this hadn’t happened,” Barry said. “And, importantly, we mustn't pollute the timestream any further -”

Just then, with another thunderclap and blaze of light, another Honda appeared, tyres struggling for purchase on the snow of the north pole, and finally slowed to a stop on the other side of the first Honda. Nine Reapers stared at each other.

“Thank god there’s only three movies,” Barry volunteered, at last.

With the important business of a movie marathon complete, the Reapers set back to work on Operation Kidnap-A-Santa. Of course, this was not the first time they had kidnapped Santa, but they were determined this time would be different.

“So,” Lup said. “He falls off his sleigh when Merle shows up -” she pointed at Barry, who mimed falling backwards - “and lands on this crash mat, behind the snowdrift from where Merle will stand.” Barry dropped onto the mat. “Krav, you’ll be ready with the dust, and I’ve got the stick to bonk him on the head with. Barry, once I knock him out, we’ll pull him into this tent disguised as a snowdrift, and watch what happens when the boys come to check on him. Hopefully, Merle picks up the hat and transforms into Santa and history goes on.” The three of them nodded at each other. “And, whatever happens -”

“We keep Merle away from him,” they all chorused.

“We don’t even tell Merle there’s a new Santa,” Barry said. “I’ve stocked the sleigh with pepper spray.”

“I’ve got the airtag to put in the pocket of Merle’s favourite hawaiian shirt so Santa can track his location in real time,” Kravitz said.

“I texted his picture to the reindeer with instructions to eviscerate on sight,” Lup said. The other two looked at her, and she said, “call me a radical, but you'll wish we'd done it if Merle gets his hands on the new guy.”

“Do we have time for one more dress rehearsal?” Kravitz suggested, but Barry shook his head. 

“I hear Santa now - places!”

The three of them scurried to the snowdrift and hunkered down as Santa set to work on the lock.

The door was enormous. The Reapers didn't really remember why - the boys had a lot of stories about their BoB adventuring, and they all started to blur together a few years on. Especially because the boys tended to tell the stories in three contradictory ways, generally dissolving into an argument before the end about who exactly it was that had fallen over in front of the big bad evil guy, such that the story never actually got resolved. Regardless, the door was huge, and Santa seemed to think that to unlock it he'd have to clamber up to the top.

The Reapers adjusted the crash mat this way and that, Barry and Kravitz at the ends, Lup silently giving directions, trying to perfectly align Santa with the mat. Just as they'd get it under him, he'd turn, fiddle with something else, and they'd have to totter back in the opposite direction again, Lup waving in a near-unintelligible combination of sign language and hissed commands, getting progressively more frustrated that her idiot co-workers weren't understanding.

Slowly, the Reapers became aware of something else - an unmistakable bickering about character voices. It could only be the Tres Horny Boys.

The whole pantomime played out more or less as it had been described to them, although with less heroics. At one point, Magnus slipped on the ice, knocked into Taako, who fell and poked Merle in the eye with his umbra staff. All three of them ended up in a heap, and immediately set about arguing about whose fault it was.

“When I asked about that black eye,” Barry said, quietly, “I’m sure they all agreed it was a strong as fuck ice mummy.”

Santa, on the other hand, seemed not to have noticed the ruckus below. Once the trio had picked themselves up from the floor, Merle took the lead - always a bad sign.

“Hey!” He yelled up at Santa. “What’s going on up there?”

And, as if it was in slow motion, Santa startled. He slipped once, and failed to find his footing. His other foot slipped, and scrabbled for purchase. Before long, both feet were pinwheeling on the icy surface, and he was falling.

“Get ready!” Lup hissed. “We won’t have long - Barry, move the mat to the right - no, no, my right!”

But it was too late. Santa missed the mat, and landed squarely on Barry.

For a moment, Lup and Kravitz were frozen, staring at the huddled mass of two bodies trying to occupy the same space. Then, Merle’s voice - “oooh. He’s probably okay, right?” - came from behind the snowdrift, and the two remaining Reapers exchanged a look.

“We need to get them both in the tent!” Lup hissed.

“No time!” Kravitz replied. “Get Barry - we can't let them see us!”

Lup looked torn, but finally grabbed Barry by one of his legs, and Kravitz grabbed onto the other, and between them they pulled him back into the magically disguised tent. Kravitz zipped it up behind them, leaving a tiny gap at the top to peek through. “Oh, gods, they’ve spotted him,” he muttered. “Merle’s checking his pulse - no, wait, he’s trying to loot the body. Lup, he’s resisting, he’s still alive!”

Lup had her head in her hands. “We had one job,” she muttered.

Barry was coming to. “Did we get him?” He slurred.

“Guess,” Lup said flatly.

The boys and Santa had gone into the dungeon, and the Reapers had watched with fingers crossed that Santa would drop dead of a heart attack, or something, but shortly he came out with them, seemingly victorious.

“Ho ho ho!” He said, clapping Taako on the back. “Thank you for your assistance, merry travellers! I have fulfilled my mission to deliver a present to the ogre who lives in this keep with your valiant aid - I wish only that I could find that man who caught me and saved my life.”

“There was nobody else there,” Magnus tried, with the air of someone who’d said that a number of times. “You just landed in the snow, it broke your fall -”

“Nonsense!” Santa said. “I saw him - the most wonderful man, so selfless to catch a santa in need - and so humble, not even to wait for the credit!”

Their voices faded as they wandered off into the snow.

“The one time,” Lup said, “that we really needed Merle to come through for us.”

“If this was any other year,” Barry agreed, “he’d have tripped and stabbed the guy in the femoral with a cocktail stick.”

“They walked, heavily armed, into a dungeon full of monsters,” Kravitz added, “and he’s not got a scratch on him except from the ones where he landed on Barry! I’ve seen Merle kill Santas at cocktail parties. Remember when that alternative universe Santa appeared at that soft play park?” He shuddered at the memory.

“We need to come up with a new plan,” Lup said. “Have him over for dinner at Chesney’s and poison his margherita, or something. We need to kill him off so Merle inherits, and get the timeline back on track!”

“Unless,” said Barry.

“Unless?” Kravitz echoed.

“Unless.” Lup’s voice was decidedly flat and reluctant, but the rules of the social convention they’d created themselves had trapped her.

“It strikes me,” Barry continued, “that there’s a Santa now. One who isn’t likely to get so hammered on pornstar martinis that he can’t drive the sleigh.”

“One who eats mince pies, not edibles,” Kravitz agreed.

“One who -”

“Alright, alright,” Lup snapped. “I get it. But we need to fix the timeline.” She paused. “Right?”

“Well, look,” Kravitz said. “I think we should at least consider what the new timeline looks like. After all, what's the moral of the story of Back to the Future if not meddling with time is totally chill and only has positive impacts?”

Barry scrawled some equations in his notebook. “The new timeline might be able to sustain itself, despite the paradox,” he agreed. “There’s small paradoxes and big paradoxes, you know? Probably.” He scratched his head. “We should check. It’ll be obvious quick if it can’t, there’ll be time demons everywhere. And if everything’s okay, we can, y’know. Check it out. Maybe Santa’s done a good job.”

The Honda flashed, backfired, and belched black smoke as it popped back into existence in the present. The smell of the smoke seemed to get worse every time they travelled through time, and the Reapers were starting to get concerned that some crucial piece of engine was dissolving.

What they didn’t smell, though, was the unmistakable sulphuric whiff of a paradox-loving time demon. The world was, it seemed, as they had left it.

The car pulled up to the Bluejeans-Taaco residence, and Lup and Barry hopped out. Kravitz clambered out like the world’s lankiest clown from his clown car after them, but they were already at the door.

“No time demons,” Barry said. “Everything seems to be roughly the same.” He checked the newspaper, the front page of which read “NECROMANCY NAMED SEXIEST, SLUTTIEST MAGICAL DISCIPLINE OF THE YEAR FOR THE FIFTH YEAR RUNNING. “Well, mostly. Actually, things are looking up.”

Kravitz frowned wide.

Lup was poking around. “Love to hear that, but the biggest danger should be to our personal lives,” she said. “We’re the ones most directly affected. The three of us and Merle have all had the last five years of our lives changed pretty radically. But the house seems fine, pretty much as we left it. I mean, alternative-reality-us have even got better Candlenights decorations than we do.” She wasn’t wrong - the house was bedecked, tastefully, with wreaths of real holly and mistletoe, not tinsel, like they’d had in the original timeline. The colour scheme was a consistent red and gold, rather than the eclectic mix of whatever decorations they’d picked up over a century of multiverse travelling. When Lup stepped through into the living room, she found that they’d taken out the ceiling, extending the room into both storeys of the house, seemingly exclusively so that they could fit their double-sized Candlenights tree. “Holy shit,” she said.

“Wow,” Barry agreed, peeking over her shoulder into the room. “I guess, without the pressure and the responsibilities of being Santa, maybe we fell in love with Candlenights…?”

“I always kind of liked Candlenights,” Lup said. “But did we remove the ceiling to fit this tree in? What about the room above - hey, wait, that's my circus skills room! What, am I meant to practice juggling in the yard like some kind of fucking peasant?”

Barry hummed unsympathetically, like maybe he was considering the virtues of not having the sounds of someone unicycling on the floor above while he was trying to watch a movie.

“Guys,” Kravitz said. “I think I found out what Santa has been doing the last five years.” He was staring at one of the photos on the mantle. Lup and Barry joined him. “Isn’t that him?”

“Um,” Lup said.

“Uh,” Barry concurred eloquently.

They both instantly recognised the photo. It was a shot from their honeymoon; a couple of years ago they’d realised they’d never really had one after their marriage on the Starblaster, so they’d taken a six-month holiday to travel the world. Various members of the Starblaster crew had joined them at a couple of locations, but only for a day or two at a time. It had been mostly a romantic couple’s getaway, and they’d enjoyed the solitude, seeing nobody but each other for days at a time. This particular photo had been taken at one of the most intimate restaurants they’d been to - an atmospheric, candlelit fantasy Italian restaurant, where they’d shared a bowl of pasta with a double portion of garlic bread.

Unmistakeably, the photo contained a triple order of garlic bread. Santa was sat at the table between them.

“Nope,” Lup said. “This is a step too far for me.”

“He’s got a hand on your thigh, Barry,” Kravitz observed.

“Yes, thank you, Kravitz, that’s just what I needed pointing out right now,” Barry said, sounding close to hyperventilating.

“I didn’t know you swung that way,” Barry’s boss continued, matter-of-factly.

“Neither did I!”

“I did,” Lup mumbled.

“You’re on the beach with him, in this one,” Kravitz said. “I didn’t even know they made red and white velvet speedos. And here - isn’t that where you renewed your vows? Yeah, it is, look, that’s Lucretia officiating.”

“Oh my god,” Lup said. “Oh my god.” Barry leant against a wall for support and slowly slid down it into a slump on the floor.

Kravitz finally tore his gaze away from the photos and managed to tamp down his shit-eating grin. “Lup, what is it with you and chubby guys who are obsessed with their jobs and only wear one outfit?” 

“We don’t have the time for that, trust me,” Barry said wearily from the floor. 

“Okay, look,” Kravitz tried again, “I know you’re feeling… well, I don’t think there’s a name for this emotion, I’ll admit. Buuuut, have you considered, you two look very happy in all these pictures?”

“Kravitz,” Lup said.

“He’s literally Santa,” he continued. “Probably a very generous lover -”

“Kravitz, if you don’t stop I can’t be held liable for my actions,” Lup continued.

Just as Kravitz opened his mouth to say something that would almost certainly push Lup into a murderous fugue, the trio froze at the unmistakable sound of a key in the door.

“Lup, Barry!” An unmistakable voice came from the doorway. “You're back from the conference early! And you brought Kravitz, how nice. Krav, are you staying for dinner? I'm making your grandma’s famous risotto recipe, but we have to use chicken rather than tiger, if that's okay? I've checked with all the butcher's around here and none of them stock sabertooth meat, if you can believe that -”

“Oh, how could I pass up?” Kravitz said, instantly, a huge shit-eating grin on his face. Lup and Barry glared at him.

“Hey, uh, Santa, I - we all hit our heads on the way here,” she said. “Could you, uh, remind us how we met?”

“You all hit your heads?” Santa asked, a picture of concern. “What happened?”

“Ice,” Lup said. “On the sidewalk. We all slipped.”

“One after another,” Barry agreed.

“Not again,” Santa said. “Honeys, we should get you to the doctor -”

“No need, we got Merle to check us out,” Lup lied. “But he said you should answer all our questions to jog our memories of these events we were definitely there for in the first place.”

“Okay,” Santa said, looking concerned. He put his shopping bags down on the kitchen table and said, “we met through Taako and the boys. They helped me deliver a present one year, and invited me back to Chesney’s afterwards -  I spotted Barry across the bar and, well, something about him just felt so familiar and safe. The rest is history. And you call me Nick now, not Santa. Saint Nick, if you’re feeling formal.”

The Reapers looked at each other. Logically, drawing the line in the sand here seemed ridiculous after all that had just happened, but for some reason that seemed like a step beyond the pale.

“And we’re,” Lup started, tailed off, and tried again, “you know. We’re cool with this? Adding a third to our fifty-year-old soulmate relationship?”

“Well at first it was only sexual,” Santa winked. “But we hit it off so fast, especially after Taako broke his leg that time and the doctors wanted to put him down like a horse. I think that was really the moment we realised there was something there -”

“While my brother was being fucking euthanised?” Lup demanded.

“- while I was providing comfort and advocating on his behalf with the doctors,” Santa gently amended. “Anyway, since he got better, well, I won’t pretend we’ve been without our ups and downs. I’m something of a workaholic, so I was spending sixteen hours a day at the North Pole, y’know, running present delivery drills with the reindeer, overseeing the elves, arranging public floggings when they fell behind in their production schedules -”

“Were we meant to have been doing those things?” Kravitz whispered.

“- but after I gave up my job, well, things have been much smoother. I never would’ve suspected, but I guess I was always destined to be a househusband! Ho ho - sorry, old habits die hard.”

“Wait wait wait,” Barry said. “You gave up being Santa?”

“You don’t remember?” Santa said. “You held an intervention for me. All my friends came. Taako was still on crutches, and he kept getting really paranoid that the doctors were after him - this was after the big scandal broke that they were employing horse racing vets at the hospital.” He paused, misty-eyed, like this was a fond memory. “Anyway, you told me that it was time to retire and enjoy life - after all, I’d been doing the job sixteen hundred years!”

Lup looked like she’d figured something out. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me,” she said. “It’s inevitable, I can sense it. We agreed to take the job off you, right?”

“You?” Santa looked confused. “No, no, Merle stepped in. He said he was looking for a purpose in life, after Chesney’s burnt down and the insurance investigators found his fantasy youtube vlog he’d recorded of him starting the fire. Plus, the court agreed it’d count towards his community service.”

The three Reapers looked at each other. The situation was graver than they’d realised.

“And Candlenights is still a beloved children’s festival?” Lup enquired as casually as she could. “We didn’t all have to agree that it was past saving and stop celebrating?”

Santa waved a hand. “We knew there’d be some… some teething issues.” He said. “But we all also agreed that the best thing for me was to go cold turkey - ho ho ho - and not get involved, or I’d get sucked back in. I actually haven’t spoken to Merle in a couple of years now, but I’m sure he’s really made the job his own.”

“I think,” Kravitz said slowly, “that that’s what we’re worried about.”

They stepped out of the portal into the icy wastes of the North Pole. “I’m just saying,” Kravitz said, “that maybe we should consider keeping this new timeline! I personally really like it -” He stopped dead at the sight before them.

When they’d last visited the North Pole, there was a single large factory, surrounded by a small town made up largely of alpine cabins. Now, there was a whole city. The factory was still at the centre of town, but it was at least twice the size, with an array of glass pneumatic tubes erupting from windows and walls and spinning off into subsidiary buildings, carrying presents in various states of construction and wrapped-ness. Outside the factory, three crisscrossing runways had been laid out, and as they watched, a reindeer-led sleigh took off from one.

The town had been transformed. Gone were the wooden buildings, and in their place stood towers of steel and glass. Elves in red and green business suits hurried around them, talking on cell phones about buying and selling various toy stocks or carrying sheaves of paper. The three Reapers had intended to portal onto the outskirts of town, but they now found themselves in a bustling town square. A flying car whizzed past.

“Merle did all this?” Barry asked, turning on the spot. “Merle Highchurch?”

“This is literally the ‘society if’ meme,” Kravitz said. “And it’s a society led by Merle?”

The crowds around them parted, and the Reapers realised that there was some kind of procession heading towards them, so they hurried to the side of the road to watch before they got run down like Kravitz’s grandma. Elves in carnival outfits danced past, whirling streamers and tossing handfuls of glitter.

“There’s just no way Merle had any part of this,” Lup said.

At that exact moment, a car turned the corner. Mounted on its roof was a photograph, fifteen feet square, of a smiling, grey bearded man in a Santa hat. It was Merle.

“Oh my god,” Barry said, stunned. “Merle is some kind of benevolent Santa dictator.”

The next car turned the corner. “TAKEN TOO SOON” proclaimed its matching sized banner.

“Oh my god,” Barry said, in the exact same tone. “Merle’s fucking dead.” He thought about that for a second. “That makes way more sense.”

“But, if Merle is dead, who’s Santa?” Lup pondered.

The next vehicle in the parade was a huge float, with a handful of live actors performing a play. One of them, wearing a fake grey beard and a Santa hat, overdramatically pantomimed falling off of a miniature sleigh onto a crash mat. The others clustered around, and one grasped his hand.

“Santa!” He proclaimed, really hamming it up for the audience. “Santa, speak to me!”

“Although my time with you has been much too short,” the actor who was clearly meant to be Merle said, “due to the tragic drink sleighing accident that has befallen me… I know that you, my beloved elves… you can continue the crucial work we have started here together. Promise me just one thing… establish a glorious worker’s cooperative and continue our work!”

“He would not fucking say that,” Lup said, instantly. “Merle wouldn’t know a worker’s cooperative if one bit him on the ass.”

“Shhh!” Another elf in the audience immediately hushed her. Lup noticed her eyes were wet with tears.

“Did the elves overthrow him and then make up this - this propaganda?” Barry hissed.

“If they could overthrow Santas, we'd be gone by now,” Lup said. “I think it's more likely that he really did fall off the sleigh, and they just ran with it.”

The other two considered this, and finally shrugged their shoulders and nodded. “Yeah, makes sense.”

“The reasons not to keep this timeline do feel like they're stacking up,” Barry said. “We're married to Santa, Merle is dead - guys, I think maybe we made things worse.”

“I still think we can salvage things,” Kravitz said. “I think you two should at least give the guy a chance -”

“And Merle's kids never saw the guy anyway,” Lup concurred, and then saw their expressions. “Look, I don't like it either, but it's true!”

“I actually happen to know he was training Mookie as a bartender at Chesney’s,” Barry said. “He said it was father-son bonding. I said it was a violation of his liquor licence and labour laws.”

“I'll put in the paperwork for his kids to have a monthly seance,” Kravitz allowed begrudgingly. “It's not really within the rules but -”

“Santa seems nice, I suppose. And  we can always file for divorce if it doesn’t work out,” Lup said.

“Imagine how much time you three will have to work on the relationship without having to worry about our yearly holiday related hijinks,” Kravitz added, in the tones of someone who was imagining a future in which his marriage was unchanged and who suddenly had an open schedule every Candlenights Eve. 

“So… we are going to keep this timeline?” Barry said.

The other two opened their mouths to agree, when -

“Ho ho, oh no,” a familiar voice came from behind them. “Merle really let things go.” They turned to see Santa approaching. He held up his hands like he was preemptively warding off an attack. “I know what you’re going to say, honeys,” he said. “I said I wouldn’t get involved. But all the questions made me curious, and I figured, hey, why not check it out?” He looked around, frowning. “And it turns out that Merle has… modernised.” He said it like a dirty word.

“It’s kind of impressive,” Barry suggested.

Santa huffed. “Well, we only have 2000 years of tradition,” he said. “But yes, I suppose, through a certain lens. I’m just not sure it has quite the same charm.”

“Merle’s actually dead,” Kravitz supplied. “It seems like he died about five minutes after arriving and the elves just kind of ran with it.”

“Elf self-management?” Santa went wide-eyed. “Goodness me, that’s - that’s -”

“An admirable experiment in workers’ rights?” Barry suggested.

“A commendable example of workplace democracy?” Lup tried.

“Untraditional,” Santa settled on, not looking like he was in a commending or admiring mood.

“Well, look, Santa,” Lup said, grimaced, and made the leap. “Nick. Let’s head home, have some eggnog, and you can remind us more about the last few years while we eat Kravitz’s grandma’s curried tiger -”

“Sabertooth risotto,” Kravitz said, wounded.

“I just want to have a look around first,” Santa said, a dangerous glint in his eye.

He strode away, leaving the Reapers wincing at each other in his wake. “I’m starting to understand why we had to hold an intervention,” Lup said.

“I think,” Kravitz said, “that we’d better go after him. If we want to preserve this timeline we probably don’t really want him to start any shit -” Immediately, the sounds of shit being started echoed from around the corner. “I thought Merle being dead would make this timeline easier to manage,” Kravitz grumbled, and set off in a run towards the sound.

Santa had an elf they recognised by the scruff of the neck, his little legs kicking freely in the air as Santa hoisted him up. “Jerry, you little punk,” their husband was saying, “you were a no-good little shit when you worked for me, and now you think you can run the place?”

“I am running the place, Nick!” Jerry said. “Me and Kevin have modernised - we run it better than you ever did! And we’re optimising more every day. Just wait til you see what AI can do for our strategic and logistical operations -”

The Reapers frowned as they realised that, like so many conflicts, this wasn’t a black and white issue. Sure, one side was a centuries-old dictator, but someone who was that into AI was nearly as bad.

“AI?” Santa roared. “Back in my day, we just chucked a present down every chimney! The kids were grateful if they got a satsuma and a candy cane! That’s it, I’m taking back over. Lup, I’m sorry, babe, I know I promised, but this state of affairs just can’t continue. I see now I was too lenient with you -” he said to the squirming elf in his grip - “so first thing tomorrow, it’s the bulldozers to this stupid city. You can put those beautiful log cabins back in.”

Jerry spat. “We’ll never bow to you again, dictator! Sic semper tyrannis!” And he finally managed to wriggle out of his jacket and scamper away, leaving Santa clutching the collar of an empty coat. “To arms! To arms!” The elf squeaked, and an air raid siren began to sound.

Santa tossed the coat aside and drew from his pocket a folded up red burlap sack with a white fur lining. “I just knew I’d need this,” he muttered. Despite the fact the sack was clearly empty, he reached in and pulled out a shotgun. It had a bow tied around the barrel, and he cocked it with the sound of a sleigh bell ringing.

Elves began to flood the street, all armed with makeshift weapons of their own. Santa fired indiscriminately into the crowd, but there were too many; like a scene from a zombie movie, the horde closed in, and eventually, despite obvious peak martial prowess and training, Santa was brought down by the sheer weight of numbers.

“This is salvageable,” Barry said. “He was dead in our timeline - this is just the world righting itself! I think that -”

He was cut off by a deep roar, and the tide of elves - kicking and stomping and stabbing downwards with their weapons at Santa’s prone form - was thrown backwards. “Enough!” Santa roared - and began to grow. In seconds, he was twelve feet tall, and still going. “Now you’ll don your gay apparel,” he thundered. “Now the whole world will don its gay apparel!”

The elves scattered. Class consciousness and community organising were all very well and good for community gardens, but combatting an eighteen foot death Santa was not what Fantasy Karl Marx had had in mind.

“I’ll deck all Faerun in boughs of holly!” He bellowed.

“Okay,” Barry said, as the sky clouded over, and candy-cane-striped bolts of lightning began to strike elves as they ran. “That is not the man we fell in love with.”

“Distinctly conquer-the-world vibes,” Lup agreed. “This is worse, right?”

“This is worse,” Kravitz agreed sadly.

Barry silently clicked the car keys, and the Honda’s alarm chirped.

The Honda screeched to a halt once more, and the Reapers sadly climbed out. Lup and Barry couldn’t even find it within them to laugh at Kravitz’s lanky body clambering out of the backseat.

“So,” Kravitz said, once he was free from car jail, “how are we going to do it? We need to set it up so Merle kills him so that he inherits the hat.”

“It can’t be that hard,” Lup said. “Merle has killed I don’t remember how many Santas without us even trying, we just need to get the two of them in the same room together and he’ll poison his milk and cookies or mix bleach and ammonia by accident or something.”

“I’m not willing to take that chance,” Kravitz said. “That’s what we thought earlier, when they went into that dungeon together. We need to be certain.”

“Okay,” Barry said, thoughtfully. “I may have an idea - and statistically, this has worked 100% of the times that we’ve done it so far.”

Chesney’s bar. 2am. The music was still pumping, the disco ball still flashing. This was a Merle party, and until the weak wintry sun rose, most partygoers wouldn’t be going home.

Santa, though, was not most partygoers; this was a man whose idea of fun was practicing throwing presents down chimneys from a hundred yards. He wasn’t used to the kind of heavy drinking that went on at Chesney’s.

So when he stumbled out onto the beach, the Reapers were waiting for him. A matter of moments later, and he was crumbling to dust, leaving nothing but the red hat behind. Barry scooped it up.

A minute later, Merle stumbled into the kitchen to fetch more beers, and it all went dark. When he awoke the next morning, he found a lump on the back of his head, a Santa hat in his hand, and a letter in his pocket that said, to Merle, oops, you killed Santa, love from Merle.

“Aw, beans,” he muttered, not questioning it for a moment.

Outside the window, Lup, Barry, and Kravitz pumped their fists, gave each other high fives, and clasped each other into hugs, patting each other on the back. “I told you the note would work,” Barry said.

“Good work, Reapers,” Kravitz said. “Now let’s get home. We’ve got an elven workers’ cooperative to set up.”

“You don’t suppose there’ll be any butterfly effects from all of this, do you?” Barry said, as the Honda crackled into existence for what was, hopefully, the last time. “This was meant to be a quick and easy trip and it’s turned into kind of a whole deal.”

“If there are,” Kravitz said, “they’ll only be good ones. In Back to the Future, his mum got hot and his brother got a job. We’ll probably be super good at the crossword and Barry won’t need glasses or something.”

The other two Reapers nodded at this sage insight as they clambered out of the car, arriving at a North Pole that was mercifully rustic, complete with log cabins and all. “It all looks right,” Barry said. “Let’s go and see if the worst elf in the North Pole wants to run the place, I guess.”

They found Jerry where they knew he’d be - the illicit casino he ran out of his basement. Cigar smoke curled in the air as Jerry called “no more bets!” He used that little broom that croupiers always have in movies to scoop up the candy canes from the green velvet table as the roulette ball span.

“Hey, Jerry,” Lup said. “How’d you feel about a promotion?”

He glanced up at her. “Last month you told me that if it weren’t for the ancient santa code that specifically forbids it you’d feed me feet first to a polar bear.”

Barry looked at her sharply. “That must be the butterfly effect,” Lup protested weakly. “That doesn’t sound like something I’d say to my good friend Jerry.”

“Does the ancient santa code really forbid that?” Kravitz pondered. “I think the real butterfly effect is that one of us read that thing.”

“Well, look, regardless of who said what,” Lup said, “and whether or not they were right. We were discussing and Kravitz here mentioned what a great job you’ve been doing lately - especially since we had that talk where I threatened you. It was, uh, it was clearly just the boost you needed - would you stop doing that for a moment?”

Jerry was spinning the roulette wheel again and not-so-subtly having conversations with his patrons. “Yeah, I was listening, I was listening. You’re gonna promote me. Well, right now, I’m a Junior Assistant to the Grade Four Sub-Toymaker, so a promotion means I become a Senior Assistant, which is a salary increase of I think half a candy cane a week -”

“We were thinking of promoting you a little more than that.” Kravitz said, and explained.

“You want me to be Santa? And we’ll run ourselves?” Jerry demanded. “But - but we like having a Santa!”

“But workers’ self-governance -”

“We’d have to call a committee,” one of the other elves at the table said. “And, obviously, the suggestion would have to go at the back of the queue. Right now, we’re debating whether Have yourself a merry little Candlenights is heightist.” He saw their blank expressions. “Little is pejorative against elves. We’re entitled to a merry big Candlenights if we want.”

Lup stared at him. “And you don’t see how our thing might be more important than that?”

There was some murmuring at the table. “Well, we could put it up for discussion,” the elf relented. “I’ll post a fantasy Twitter poll -”

The Reapers turned to each other. “What the fuck happened?” Lup demanded. “Last time we saw these guys, they bullied us into letting them unionise, and now -”

“Butterfly effect,” Barry said, miserably. “Whatever we did in the past, it’s made them - it’s made them - it’s -”

“Neoliberals,” Kravitz spat like it was a dirty word, and the other two scowled.

The elves were debating whether they should use Fantasy Twitter or Fantasy Bluesky. It appeared that both factions were preparing to walk out should the alternative social media site win. Jerry appeared to be taking bets on whether it would come to an out-and-out fistfight.

“So, rather than take this huge win, they’re going to fight each other and get nowhere?” Lup said, and sighed. “Yeah, I guess that sounds right.” She paused, and reluctantly added, “we could always use the car to go back and fix the elves -”

“NO!” Kravitz and Barry yelled simultaneously. “I’m never getting back in that car again,” Barry added. “Every time we do, things get worse.”

Lup hung her head. “I guess we’re doing things manually, then,” she moped.

Early Christmas Day, three exhausted, bedraggled Reapers, their uniforms covered in soot and full of holes from vicious reindeer bites, dragged themselves back into Lup and Barry’s house. Barry tumbled onto the floor immediately, totally spent; Kravitz made it approximately three more paces before slumping into a chair. Lup, though, was propelled by a second wind, an urgent need to ensure there wasn't a fat old man waiting in her marital home. After all, her fat old man husband had come with her on the sleigh.

She made it into the living room, which was, once again, a single storey. “Thank god my circus room is okay,” she muttered, but she stumbled the final few steps onwards to the mantelpiece.

She scanned the photos there. No Santa in sight. But, in the same photo of the intimate, candlelit fantasy Italian restaurant that Santa had previously appeared in, there was still a triple order of garlic bread between her and Barry on the table. In the place Santa had occupied was sat an older black woman that she didn't recognise. “Who is that?” She demanded. “God, please tell me that's just a cool, totally platonic friend in this timeline.”

Kravitz and Barry practically crawled into the room behind her. “Who is who?”

Lup wordlessly showed them the photo. Kravitz's eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. It flapped once, twice, three times, as he struggled for words. Finally, he managed just one word - “grandma!?”

The blood drained from Barry’s cheeks. “We're married to your grandma?”

At that moment, they heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Lup? Barry? Are you back from work already?” A reedy older voice came from above. “I've got some sabertooth risotto in a Tupperware for you in the fridge -”

The Reapers exchanged looks.

“I'll get the Honda,” Barry said.

“We could try the risotto,” Lup tried, but her colleagues dragged her out of the door.