It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Christmas With The Lethbridge-Stewarts

Among Kate Stewart's many oddities was her genuine enjoyment of reading old UNIT reports. It was a quiet night in early December and Kate was in her office. There was little more than a skeleton staff and Kate was reading a rather enlightening report. It had been written by her father a few days later but the events had taken place late on Christmas Eve. The Doctor hadn't been around and there had been a foothold situation. A bad one. It had been resolved in the end (the report was sketchy on exactly how the resolution had come about). Both Yates and Benton had been nearly killed and it had lasted well into Christmas morning. Kate's father had not come away unscathed either. According to Harry Sullivan's report he had suffered several cracked and broken ribs, extensive bruising and two almost dislocated shoulders.

Thinking back Kate couldn't remember her father looking as awful as he must have felt. She never could. She did remember leaping into his arms almost as soon as he came through the door. She did remember dragging him by the arm to show off the presents she was halfway through opening. She did remember the massive argument between her parents witch she had pretended not to hear.

She remembered Sergeant Eastick, the nice Australian who occasionally visited, turning up at the door in uniform. She remembered his brown slouch hat. She gathered from the timing and both his report and Harry's that the visit was to let him know that Yates and Benton were going to be, after a couple of days in the infirmary and a week of R and R, absolutely fine.

Kate did remember her father becoming visibly relaxed after Richard's brief visit.

According to the reports Richard, being the least injured of the command quartet, was still on duty. Kate was still unsure about the exact dynamic between her father, Yates, Benton and Richard. Apart from Harry Sullivan, who was a Navy Lieutenant at the time, the four of them were the highest ranking members of UNIT, based out of HQ anyway. From what she gathered after speaking to the UNIT old guard the four of them had a somewhat less than conventional way of deciding which of them would be on duty for Christmas, Bank Holidays and Easters. She had never managed to coax the exact details of this process out of any of them. She imagined she never would. In fact, the only one who had ever managed to acquire the finer details was Jayne Eastick, Richard's favourite grandchild. Kate, who was well acquainted with Jayne, had never thought to ask.