"Into the staid and uber-Dickensian, vaguely Victorian Christmas scene she comes, her red hair more appetizing than any of these overdone main dishes. In her eyes I see a sparkle that plainly makes me forget the fire-hazard Tree and absurd Carousel. I have let her get away from me repeatedly. I'll not make such an insipid error in judgement again."

"As this night speaks of the Promise Of Salvation, so is to me the promise that her quick peck on the cheek makes. But like that salvation, it is a promise that I must be worthy of, and can easily lose amid the dread sameness and occasional madness of those times when The Promise is not so apparent. Hell, then, has been my life without her."

"As she sits and talks with me, this commercialist concept of what a Christmas should be begins to fade. The sound of her voice makes the mundane seem the cosmic. For the downy creature that was supposed to have been my wife, I sadly feel nothing. Her cherubic children are replaced by my overanxious nephew and the formerly overanxious son of my walking heart. There is another woman, an ageless one, downy like the other. Since she is ageless, I make of her a statue. Let her chat up Perseus. My woman is as imperfect as her boy, and for that do I love them both very, very well."

"None of the others seem to know how to act around me, so I do not abide their presence. Oddly, I see Will chatting amiably in the next house with a sandy-brown haired man whose name I should but do not know. The Trois are there. Lxwana seems contented, which confirms for me the sheer surreality of this scene. My confessor has a look of safety on her face, the safety she confided she lost when Ian died. Is it the man I see who has provided such? I want to thank him-- but I have the oddest feeling that he took something wholly precious from me. Or more precisely, that he took something back."

"Now, the one I love best must go, and I feel as though cold metal is clamping down upon my heart and my soul. But these bonds shall not keep me from her. I shall return, have no question of that."

"Beverly, you can count on me."
 
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Christmas, 2372, Borg Space

His regeneration cycle all done, Locutus Of Borg rose to begin his duties on a day that was just like any other. A fleeting thought echoed across his brain as he emerged. The thought was of course, irrelevant to The Borg.

"If Only In My Dreams."