Chapter Text
Galas are basically the bane of Crystal's existence, and that isn't any less the case when they're magical visions conjured up by a cursed item that she was trying to read and not even activate.
This one – or this hallucination of one, or illusion, or whatever – isn't bad, as far as Crystal's seasoned assessment is concerned. Tasteful. Holiday-ish. Tinsel and garlands and whatever. A wide ballroom with a buffet table on one side, plenty of black-tie finery interspersed with maybe-ironic felt headbands with reindeer antlers. Nothing quite says "taste" during the nondenominational holiday season like a five thousand dollar floor-length evening gown accessorized with a strand of multi-colored battery-powered string lights.
Although there's a huge wooden cross leaned over against the far wall near the buffet table, so that's –
"What on earth?" The voice comes from behind her, accented and stuffy and decidedly out-of-place.
Crystal whips around. "Edwin! It sucked you in here, too?"
Edwin blinks at her, as if he hadn't noticed she was there, which is fucking rich. She's the one who – well, okay, neither of them are supposed to be here, because Crystal wasn't supposed to have activated the curse on the doorknocker, but he was sitting a few feet away providing color commentary so it's at least weirder that he's here, too.
"Crystal?" Edwin says, a little disbelievingly. His old-fashioned suit doesn't even fit it among the guests – for once, he looks underdressed, which is kind of hilarious. He's looking down his nose at her, too, though not in a pretentious or haughty way, just in a way where he's way taller than her.
Crystal looks down at herself. The floor is, first of all, much closer to her head than it should be. Second of all, she remembers this dress: a shiny magenta that she had begged her parents to let her wear to the big Christmas thing when she was, what, maybe seven?
Third of all, her boobs are gone.
"Oh, fuck," Crystal says, and now that she's listening to herself, she can hear how her voice is higher, with softer consonants and a bit of a mumble. "This isn't an illusion or hallucination – it's a memory."
"Ah," says Edwin, noncommittally. Or maybe he's just stalling for time as he tries to figure out how to react, because he won't stop staring at her.
She brings her hands to her cheeks and, gently, pokes. There's all that baby fat that she worked so hard to lose when she turned thirteen and appeared in the gossip rags for the first time.
"So," Edwin says, and then shakes his head a little bit, like he's restarting his brain. "So you have full memory of who you are and the circumstances under which you arrived here, then?"
"You mean do I remember grabbing that stupid doorknocker to figure out what kind of curse it was?" Crystal says. "Yeah, I sure do. You said it wasn't going to activate - "
"I said it wasn't likely to activate – " Edwin immediately interrupts.
"Did you, like, follow me in here or something?" Crystal demands. "Are you suddenly psychic and reading it too?"
"Of course not, don't be ridiculous." Edwin looks around. "You said – this is a memory? Your memory?"
Crystal sighs, crossing her arms. It probably looks adorable on her seven-year-old self. The undersides of her arms graze the big flashy bow tied around her waist, which at that age had felt like the most beautiful and sophisticated thing ever. "It's a stupid Christmas party," she mutters. "I was probably seven. This whole thing is a giant piece of performance art commenting on the consumptive nature of capitalism."
"Commenting on capitalism at Christmas? How groundbreaking," Edwin murmurs.
"Honestly, this was one of the good Christmases," Crystal says, shrugging. The motion makes her shoulder brush something fabric-y behind her ear, and she flinches away from it before realizing it's a fabric flower in her hair. She pulls it out with disgust and lets it fall onto the floor. "My parents started to go out of town for Christmas after this."
"Traveling for the holidays is hardly unheard of," Edwin says, looking around the gala like he's looking for clues – which he probably is. "Did you at least go anywhere memorable?"
"They went out of town," Crystal repeats. "I usually spent it with the nanny, or once I got old enough, by myself."
Now Edwin turns his sharp gaze on her, with no small amount of alarm. "You're sixteen," he says, as if it isn't obvious. "How many Christmases have you been 'old enough' to spend them by yourself?"
Crystal shrugs again. "A couple. Whatever, it doesn't matter. What are we even doing here? Are we stuck in my memory of a shitty Christmas until we figure out how to break the curse? Is this the curse? Canapes and charcuterie with provocatively religious names?"
"Perhaps," Edwin says slowly, still eyeing Crystal. "I cannot help but notice that we are here in a vision of a past Christmas, and I am a ghost, and the cursed item is a doorknocker…"
Crystal just looks at him until she realizes he's waiting for her to put two and two together, except he's talking about magic shit, not math. "So?"
"A Christmas Carol," Edwin says definitively. "It is a novella that was quite popular when I was alive, by Charles Dickens – "
"For fuck's sake, I know about A Christmas Carol!" Crystal snaps. The Muppet version probably counts, right? "So, what, you're saying we're here so I can learn to be a better person?"
"There is likely some lesson to be learned," Edwin says, which isn't a disagreement. "Although why I am here is less clear to me."
"Maybe you're the Ghost of Christmas Pissed," Crystal says. It would be a better effort if Edwin were angry, but she's eight years old again and stuck in a memory of a boring Christmas party so her wit isn't exactly at its best right now.
Edwin fully ignores her. "The question then becomes if we can figure out a way to end the curse and get out of this vision without having to go through all the various apparitions."
"Yeah, I don't need an entire novella to tell me I fucked some people over," Crystal agrees. "I already went through all that with the amnesia and the memory stuff. This is just rubbing salt on the wound."
"Your recent efforts to make amends aside," Edwin says, "the question remains – why this Christmas? Why would the curse bring you here? Was there something important that happened this night?"
Crystal hugs her arms tighter to herself. "I mean – no? I don't think so. It was just a stupid Christmas party with my parents."
Edwin blinks in the way he does when he's figured something out – a tell that Niko pointed out to Crystal in one of their post-Niko's-resurrection all-girls mostly-living slumber parties and which now Crystal can't unsee.
"Okay, what," Crystal demands flatly. "Just say it."
"Well – I'm not sure if – that is, the last time I went to any event such as this was well over a century ago, so – "
"Say it."
Edwin opens his mouth, then closes it again. Then, after an unnecessary breath, he says, "You said this is a Christmas party with your parents."
"A stupid Christmas party with them, yeah."
"So where are they?" He says it gently, like he thinks the answer might hurt her.
But the joke's on him. Crystal points over to the wooden cross next to the buffet table – right next to, if she recalls correctly, thin slices of Iberico ham labeled "Holy Infant (tasting notes: tender and mild)."
"They're doing 'art,'" she says. "They did this stupid nativity thing. I was too old and too much a girl and also too Black to play the baby Jesus, but they're gonna spend basically the whole night there. The crib is full of hundred-pound notes, because of course it is."
"Right," Edwin says, once again looking at Crystal with significance.
"Okay, what?"
"You said this was a Christmas you spent with your parents," Edwin says, and gestures in the direction of the cross. "Setting aside the theologically confused choice of props, you may be here with your parents, but your parents aren't here with you."
"Yeah, I know," Crystal says. "This is basically how Christmases go now, except most of the time they also aren't physically here."
Edwin rubs his temples. "All right, fine, but that brings us back to the question: why this Christmas?"
Crystal closes her eyes as she realizes she's going to have to actually be emotionally honest about this. "Ugh, fine. Probably because – because this was the year I realized that my parents don't like me."
"What?"
"It's Christmas," Crystal says, "and they're doing their art, and they're spending time together, and I'm just kind of – also here? And this was when I realized that – that when something like this keeps happening, it's probably not an accident. It's because this is how they want things to be."
Edwin blows out a breath, not quite controlled enough to be a sigh. "Goodness," he says to himself. "That is…"
"The way it is," Crystal says, trying not to bristle. "Look, I get that this is a surprise to you, but I've had some time to come to terms with it, you know? I'm not clueless. They were all about each other so I started acting out to get their attention, but it was the wrong kind of attention so I had to escalate, and escalate, and escalate, and then, like, nine years from now I'll be possessed by a demon and they won't notice because that's how shitty a person I was. It's whatever."
"It is not whatever!" Edwin says hotly, and reels himself back in. "Well, I suppose it makes sense. We all have our own issues. Charles's father was not a nice man, my parents were distant, and now we know yours were neglectful."
"What the fuck? I never said neglectful! I had just about anything I ever wanted!" Crystal grabs the shiny skirt of her dress and shakes it. "Do you know how much this dress costs? This whole fucking thing is about how capitalism is bad and I got my parents to shell out thousands of dollars for a stupid outfit – how is that neglectful?"
"Because they are over there," Edwin says simply, "and you are over here. This is your memory of the night, yes? They aren't even in it."
"You don't get it," Crystal says, feeling desperation rise up in her. "I'm going to be a nightmare of a kid. Do you know how old I was the first time I did coke? Twelve! They don't put that in sodas anymore!"
"Yes, I am aware, but - "
"What were they supposed to do with a kid like that? One who could literally get anything she wanted using her psychic powers? My hobbies included shoplifting and throwing rocks into traffic, so – "
"You are a child!" Edwin explodes. It takes Crystal by surprise, so much so that she almost flinches back – he's leaning forward, using his height to his advantage in a way that he hasn't done since…God, has it been since that first argument they had in Port Townsend? "You are seven years old in this memory and you cannot have done anything to deserve this! Perhaps your parents did not hit you the way Charles's father hit him, or send you off to boarding school so they would only see you twice a year the way my parents did to me, but I refuse to believe that this is an acceptable way for parents to treat their child." Edwin takes a ragged breath, which seems to deflate him a bit. His voice is quieter when he says, "It is not an acceptable way for them to treat you. You deserve better."
Crystal stares at him. Edwin is usually so – so – so fucking Edwin and now he's standing here, shouting at her that her parents should have loved her more? And not in an insulting way?
Because Edwin is really fucking smart, and he is not inclined to go easy on Crystal, so if he's saying all this stuff then –
Then he must actually believe it.
After a long moment, Crystal says, limply, "I love my parents, and I know – they show it weird, but they do love me."
Edwin sighs, an almost defeated sound. "I shan't disagree with you," he says, with all the care of a pulled punch. "But I also think you would be well within your rights to wish that they would act like it."
Crystal doesn't know what to say.
But she doesn't have to, because the gala dissolves around her.