So, for this year's Christmas ficathon I was assigned BlindPassenger and the prompts:

Three things I want:
- A presents exchange
- Family and/or Friends
- Smallville

Three things I don't want:
- Lex Luthor
- Angry/sad L&C
- Claude, Paul, and co.

I played around with a few ideas but nothing seemed to work and the deadline was approaching... so yesterday I just decided I'd start over with a completely new approach!
BlindPassenger - I know I haven't expanded very much on the prompts (or the story overall, really... lol) but I hope you'll like it nevertheless!
Thanks to ksarasara for the beta!! sloppy
Happy New Year, everyone! smile

**The Truth About Santa**

“There is no Santa!”

“Is too!”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

“There’s not, and I know there’s not because I’m older and smarter –”

“You’re not smarter!”

“– I’m smarter and I can read books and I read a book that said there’s no Santa.”

Jon, indignant, shot up from under his blanket and sat up on his bed, arms crossed. “No book says that!”

Lily mimicked him, straightening her back to show how older and taller she was. “Well it said that the North Pole is all frozen and it had pictures and there was no sign of Santa’s workshop.”

Jon found himself stumped for a moment, but then he barrelled on. “Maybe it’s under the ice!”

Lily scrunched her nose in disbelief. “It can’t be under the ice. Where would the reindeer go? Under the ice it’s the sea and there are only fish.”

“And seals,” Jon pointed out.

Lily gave it a moment of thought. “Yeah, and seals.”

“But then, if there’s no Santa, who brings the presents?”

She rubbed her chin in thought, her body rocking left and right over her folded legs.

“Maybe Superman,” she said eventually. “He’s strong, and he can fly. He can carry lots of presents.”

“But we never get presents from Superman. We only get presents from Santa. In the stockings.”

“Maybe…” Lily’s mind whirred, examining all the possibilities. “Maybe there used to be a Santa, but he retired like uncle Perry. And now Superman is giving out the presents instead.”

Tired of the conversation, Jon returned under his blanket, pulling it up all the way to his neck. “I just want my present in the stocking. If I don’t get a present in my stocking, it’s your fault.”

Lily scoffed at him and dove under her blanket too.

**

“Everything all right?” Lois asked her husband, who was listening in to the conversation in the next room with rapt attention.

“Yeah,” he said eventually. “They went back to bed.”

She sighed in relief. If her kids were such night owls at their age, she didn’t even want to imagine what they’d do once they hit their teens. Though, in all fairness, Christmas in Smallville was an exciting affair. “You’re going to put the presents in the stockings now?”

“In a bit,” Clark replied. “Wait until they fall asleep first.” He threw the blanket off him and climbed out of the bed. “But there’s something I need to fix.”

“What?” Lois asked, too tired to get up.

Clark walked over to the wardrobe and pulled out the small wrapped presents hidden on the top shelf, behind boxes of comics. “Just the tags.”

**

“See, it says ‘from Santa’!”

“It doesn’t say ‘from Santa’. You can’t read.”

“I can read ‘Santa’,” Jon insisted, his little finger on the tag. “Look! S-A-N-T-A.”

“No, there are more letters.” Lily grabbed the tag and read out loud, slowly and carefully. “‘From Santaman’.”

Jon frowned. “Who’s Santaman?”

Lily called upon her vivid imagination again. “Maybe he’s Superman’s friend.”

“Or Santa’s.”

“Yeah…”

Lily studied her package for a moment, then she tore it open to find the exact doll she had asked Santa for – a red-haired witch with all the relevant accessories.

“At least he got my letter,” she mumbled.

**

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Last edited by Anna B. the Greek; 01/05/23 09:29 AM.

What we've got here is failure to communicate...