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It isn’t much to look at.
The slightly bent steel beam trunk, the twisted rebar branches, these salvaged bits of wreckage from the attack, welded into the approximate shape of an evergreen.
But he’d tried. Put in an effort.
Don West doesn’t give anything less than everything where his family is concerned. Where Judy is concerned.
Standing only about two feet tall, he positions the artificial tree on the coffee table like a centerpiece, and the six members (plus one chicken and one Robot) of his found family crowd around.
They’d all agreed ahead of time not to do gifts.
With only days having passed since the final battle with the robots, and everyone still adjusting to life on Alpha Centauri, none of them had wished for much anyway.
They’d already received the greatest gifts they could ask for: they are all alive, safe, and together. After a year of being separated, and spending nearly every moment of that time wondering if it could be their last, they’re happy just to have each other near again.
So, there are no presents exchanged. Not this year.
Instead, they spend the day gathered in the living room, around that little metal tree, crafting small decorations to hang from its rebar branches. And in the kitchen, cooking real food, not those god-awful MREs or eighty-six different variations of prepared corn. (“No offense, dad, but we’re really sick of corn.”)
They laugh, and tell stories, and eat delicious things, creating memories together like they’ve missed out on doing for a year. And for Grant, twenty years.
Some of the stories shared are new, some old, and some everyone is pretty sure the details are being fudged, Don.
He only grins at the accusations.
And when he turns his smile on Judy, she almost looks away because her breath stutters, and her heart does the fluttery thing again.
But... She doesn’t look away. The magnetic force of him keeps her locked on.
If she’s learned anything in the last six days, it’s that she’d only needed six seconds to confirm that her feelings for Don West were very much still there. Over the year, she’d wondered—dreamed—what it would be like to see him again, and, apparently, that old adage was correct.
Absence had indeed made her heart grow fonder.
With warmth spreading in her chest, she sends him a brilliant smile of her own.
After setting up a plate of cookies within reach, Penny settles onto the floor, tears a sheet of paper from her notebook, and cuts it down to make miniature pages. A book, small enough to fit in her palm and bound with scrap metal and wire. She etches the title onto its tiny cover. ‘Lost in Space (lite)’.
From his seat on the couch, Don peers around the tree as she chooses a branch to hang it from. “You’d better write more about me than Debbie this time,” he says.
Penny smirks and shoots back, “I don’t think I could fill a single one of these pages with things about you, even if I tried.” He chucks a pillow at her, and she bursts into a fit of giggles.
Will, who’s taken up residence on the floor beside Penny, points to the last detail of her ornament. A little origami bird that dangles from the spine like a bookmark.
“What’s that?”
“Oh...” Penny gently takes the paper bird in her hand. “It’s supposed to be a robin. I read they’re a symbol of new beginnings...” She pauses, eyes going distant. Then she lets out a self-conscious laugh. “O-or something like that!”
Will gives her a soft smile. “That’s really nice, Penny.”
“...Thanks.” She means it.
On a break from kitchen duty, John takes some heavy wire, forms it into a cylindrical cage of sorts, and solders it to a point at one end.
Maureen catches sight of it as she enters the room and leans down to plant a kiss on his cheek. “No missiles on the tree, John,” she says.
With mock indignation, John defends, “It is not a missile! And if you just hold your horses and give me a few minutes you’ll see!”
Maureen hums noncommittally and turns her attention to Will.
Spread across the table in front of him are eight single-bulb LED assemblies in various stages of completion.
“That seems impractical for hanging on a tree, Honey,” Maureen says, curious about her son’s plans. “Such close quarters, why not just a regular string of lights?”
But Will only smiles and, like his father, tells her to give him time. “All will be revealed.”
When asked, Don passes on making an ornament, stating that he made the tree and his work is done—before pouring himself a glass of whiskey and squeezing back onto the couch beside Judy.
“You’re in my personal space,” she protests, even as she inches closer to him.
John eyes their exchange with suspicion. He’s been noticing these things ever since they were reunited. The furtive glances. The tentative but lingering body contact. He forces his attention back to his work, putting away his protective-father instincts, reminding himself that even if Judy is his daughter, she and Don are adults, and what they do (or do not do, god, please) isn’t his business.
Taking some thin strips of metal, he layers them around the cylinder and solders them over the unshaped end, forming a messy stump. After trimming the loose tips of the sheets to blunted points, he curls a few of them back on themselves and checks his work. Laughing a bit at the absurdity of it, he presents it to the others.
“It’s an ear of corn.”
It is... Terrible.
(“What did we say about corn, dad!”)
But they can see it.
If they squint.
Grant shocks everyone with his talent for handcrafts, making a surprisingly accurate, ornament-sized Fortuna.
“You should give my dad some pointers,” Penny teases. “Ugh... And maybe Judy too?”
Judy has not inherited her biological father’s penchant for crafts, and within minutes of picking up the tin snips, she’s cut her finger on a piece of metal.
Don quickly hands Debbie off to Penny and helps Judy wrap a cloth around her injury.
“And the hospital allows you to use scalpels?!” He exclaims as he’s ushering her into the kitchen.
Penny takes a bite of her cookie and chews thoughtfully as she watches them go.
Based on Judy’s willingness to ask Don for help, and Don’s inability to tell Judy no, she’s suspected them of being into each other since the unnamed planet. She was never able to find any conclusive evidence, though. Even during their seven months of living together. And the year apart had certainly put a damper on her investigation. But, judging by the way Don is careful with where his hand is sitting on Judy’s waist and the way Judy leans into him, Penny decides she’s been right the whole time.
She looks down at Debbie in her lap. “Do they know they like each other?” she whispers.
The chicken pecks a crumb of cookie from her pant leg.
In the kitchen, Don makes a valiant effort at administering first aid.
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” Judy teases.
“I’m sure you’ll let me know if I fuck up to egregiously.” His voice is softer than usual, and for the first time in a while, Judy can’t find a smart remark.
So she lets him continue. Lets him gently take her hand and clean the blood away.
Grant glances over at the sound of Judy’s soft laughter, and immediately he feels like he’s invading his newly-discovered daughter’s privacy. Seeing something he shouldn’t. Because Don isn’t looking at Judy, too focused on examining her finger, but Judy is looking at Don like he’s the only person that exists. There’s a deep fondness in her expression that instantly transports Grant twenty-two years into the past.
To a little ice cream shop and a date with Maureen; when she’d worn that same look for him.
He rips his eyes away—only to have them lock with John’s.
A moment of anxious and resigned understanding passes between the fathers.
John reaches for the end table. “Whiskey?” he croaks, lifting the bottle in offering.
“Please.”
It only takes half of the first aid supplies being scattered across the counter before Don locates the correct antibacterial cream. (“You sure you don’t want to use your best bottle of whiskey instead?”) And he fumbles the first bandage, sticking it to itself. (“I don’t think that’s how those work, Don.”) But he manages in the end, and upon returning from the kitchen, he declares that ‘doctors truly are the worst patients.’
Judy rolls her eyes and tries to hide a smile as she sets back to work, careful to avoid any more sharp edges.
More than a few muttered curses, her sliced finger, and-having-Don-take-over-all-the-metal-cutting-for-her later, Judy has her ornament.
A repurposed petri dish clad with a crisscrossing pattern of wires and somewhat poorly formed wire wrap accents. Lining the bottom is a piece of sheet metal with a pointer riveted through the center, and etched into that sheet is a simple rendition of a compass legend—the eight-pointed star and directional letters.
“It’s supposed to represent our journeys and that we always find a way.”
“How did I end up with such creative kids?” Maureen says, glancing between her children. Never one for crafts herself, she had opted to just make a few basic geometric shapes as her contribution to the ornament pool.
Judy holds the compass and idly spins the needle. “I wish I could’ve made it actually function, though,” she laments, more to herself than anyone else.
“Make me a list, Princess.” Don’s arm presses into the outer side of her thigh as he uses the cushion as an anchor to leverage himself forward, reaching past her. Her breath catches in her throat; her eyes catch the healing cut on his cheekbone. “I’ll find a way to get you the parts you need.” He picks up his glass and leans back in his seat again; contact lost.
A swarm of butterflies takes flight in Judy’s chest as warmth creeps across her face. She grins at him. “Nothing illegal I trust, Mr. West?”
Don doesn’t get a chance to reply because Penny inexplicably throws a handful of shredded paper at him, starting a small war, waged with crafting supplies.
Over the affectionate bickering and intermittently flying objects, Will announces he’s completed his project.
“To answer your earlier question, mom,” he says. “I didn’t do a regular light-strip because I wanted one light to represent each of us.” He hands each of them a small electrical ornament with their names etched on the back, keeping two for himself. “Robot and I,” he clarifies.
Don raises his hand and doesn’t wait for permission before speaking. “Yeah, hey. Why does Robot get one, but Debbie doesn’t? She’s a very important part of this family, and I don’t think she’s getting the respect she deserves.”
“Oh my god,” Penny groans. “I’ll show you how to fold an origami chicken. Will that be good enough?”
“Hm.” Don swoops forward to peer under the coffee table. “What do you think, Debbie?” A soft cluck sounds from below, and Don squints. “Young lady, that language is unacceptable,” he admonishes, then sits up again. “She’s agreed.”
“Great! Back to our regularly scheduled programming!” Penny looks back to Will.
“Is Don being, well, Don, not regular?” Judy quips.
A round of laughter ripples through the group.
“Hey!” Don feigns offense, but he doesn’t really mind. Not when Judy’s cheeks are dimpling, and her eyes sparkle with that mischievous glint. And definitely not when she bumps her shoulder up to his and rests her head there for a split-second.
Penny mutters something that sounds an awful lot like “get a room” before turning to Will like a diligent student. “Please. Continue.”
Will, ever amused at his family’s antics, tamps down his laughter and sets himself to presentation mode.
“So. We each have our lights. Ourselves. Who we are as individuals.” He hangs one of his ornaments on the tree and motions for everyone to do the same. “Although who we are is important, and it’s important not to lose ourselves....” He hangs his second ornament close to the first. “It’s also important that we remember we aren’t alone.”
Maureen makes a soft, proud sound. “This is really sweet, Will.”
He smiles and reaches for the other object he’s been working on. “Thanks, mom, but I’m not done yet.”
At that, Penny pipes in, “You’re already mom’s favorite, Will, you don’t have to lay it on so thick.” There’s no malice to it, though. Her expression mirrors their mother’s. Soft. Proud. ...With a dash of sisterly teasing.
Will just laughs, and taking the other item, he attaches it to the top of the tree.
It’s a small, single-switch circuit board soldered into a sheet-metal housing shaped like a heart. (A horribly deformed heart, according to a giggling Judy, but the intention is there!)
“Each assembly can function on its own, yes. Each of us, capable of doing our own thing.” Scattered around the tree, eight little pricks of light shine back at them. Yellow. Solid. There, but separate.
“But with this”—Will presses the button in the center of the heart—“we are connected.”
The lights bloom with life, shifting into an array of colors that twinkle in sync, and Will continues, “Family is who you love, and who loves you, all connected by the heart. No matter the time or the distance. When we love, and are loved, that bond makes us shine a little brighter.”
Don feels Judy’s hand gently brush against his on the cushion between them, and he freezes as she links her pinky with his. He dares a glance at her, and she doesn’t look back, but the corner of her mouth turns up knowingly, and her pinky squeezes a bit tighter.
He looks down at their joined hands for a moment.
His is large and calloused, and he’s still learning how to hold things with love.
Her’s is small and delicate, and it hits him that this skilled healer’s hand currently has a finger bandaged by his inexperienced ones.
It’s a tangible display of his love for her, and her trust in him.
He takes a breath, and turning his palm up, he slips his hand under hers, weaving their fingers together.
She does look at him then. And everything else falls away as she becomes the brightest star in his sky.