A/N: This Christmas special is, as the observant reader will notice, a tie-in with last year's, "The Night Before". You might say it's the story about what happened in the meantime. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

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As Malcolm Reynolds punched the button to open the cargo bay door, he caught sight of the digits blinking on the panel next to his hand, showing the local time, and saw that it was almost nine in the morning. Never having been a big sleeper (and in particular not since the war), he'd been up for several hours already, but as the door opened and icy cold wind came blowing inside, he longed to be snuggled up back in his bunk. Preferably with a bottle.

Wrapping his scarf one more time around his neck, he squinted out at the landscape outside and frowned.

If you wanted a white Christmas, St. Albans certainly delivered. There was no shortage of snow on a planet where the winter lasted for ten months and 'summer' meant the temperatures occasionally spiked above 32 degrees.

Problem was, Mal didn't want a white Christmas.

In fact he didn't want Christmas at all.

Not counting Unification Day, it was his least favorite holiday, and if it had been solely up to him, he'd taken Serenity far into the Black and just stayed out there until the crazy had passed. That was precisely what they'd done the first time around; back when it had just been him and Zoë and Wash and Bester. But then Kaylee had arrived on the scene, and she always got homesick this time of year and so, to cheer her up – just because he loved her and cared about her so much – he'd allowed a small celebration, though limited to a tiny, crooked evergreen in the cargo bay, a dinner and perhaps a few presents.

He'd promised her a celebration this year as well, though she had been more reluctant than usual to ask for one, seeing as it would be their first Christmas after Miranda and the first Christmas without Wa