System overload. Kate’s processing power extinguished itself within one second of hearing that familiar, booming voice fill the square. Like staring at a box of puzzle pieces, she understood the picture in front of her in fragmented snippets. She knew that line. It was Dickens. No one knew A Christmas Carol better than she; it only took three words for her to identify his speech. And when Kate followed the conversation up and up and up the wall of the building she stood in front of, she was greeted by the unfathomable puzzle piece.

Clark Woodward. Leaning out of Scrooge’s window. Wearing the Ebenezer Scrooge costume. Screaming Scrooge’s Christmas morning lines.

Rats. Somehow the cut of the Victorian era costumes made him even more attractive. Great. Just great.

“What’s the day today?”

Nope. Susan couldn’t be right. This had to be a dream. Nothing else could explain it. Screw Sherlock Holmes logic. Not only was Clark wearing the Scrooge costume, but he somehow got at least one person in town to trust him enough to play along with…whatever this charade was?

No. Wrong again. If this was her dream, Clark would get the lines absolutely right instead of paraphrasing them. This was definitely happening, but why?

“Uh… Christmas Day, sir? What’re you, crazy?”

Ah, Susan caught the paraphrasing bug, too. As the Assistant of Operations, Kate always stayed on book and gave the performers line notes at the end of each night, ensuring vigilance and protection for the Dickens text. This morning, protecting a long-dead author seemed everyone’s last priority.

Kate knew everything there was to know about this scene. Pick any random scene in A Christmas Carol, she could have recited the dialogue, at least, entirely by heart while visualizing its exact place in their version of Victorian London. Here, after waking up very much alive, Scrooge renews his lease on life and decides to live every day as if it’s Christmas, beginning by employing an errand boy to fetch him the biggest turkey in London.

What a crock.

Caught between her desire to continually roll her eyes every time they spoke and her rapture at watching the most wooden, stoic man in the world wildly shout about turkeys with a face-splitting grin on his face, Kate leaned against the nearest lamp post for support.

His smile, rare and pure, weakened her knees. Her last thoughts before falling asleep last night were, I’m so glad I got Clark Woodward out of my system, but the longer he smiled and the longer she stared at it like a snake charmer’s victim, the more untrue that statement became. He hurt her. He hated her. But he was not out of her system.