What a nice Christmas story, and I especially like the lovely end!

Awww! I love it! Excellent job!

Beautiful...sob...sob...

It truly brought tears to my eyes. Thanks so much for honoring Kate's memory. Thought of Kate always makes me sad for Neal. He never really got to experience and heal that wound with life giving him no time to rest. I mostly hear negative things about Kate from others, but never from Neal...he knew her true self and he loved her!

Great story.

El is amazing the way she got Neal to talk about himself when he has so many walls up to protect his true feelings she gets him to do as she says because she has the mommy vibe going

I am so glad that I checked the WC Archive when I did! I'm so flattered that you dedicated this to me – I had forgotten about that prompt! And the story itself was so perfect! So well-written, with just the right amount of everything. I always wished they had talked more about Kate on the show, because it's so obvious that they were truly in love, regardless of what happened afterwards, and it seemed wrong to me that Neal never had one of these realization moments where he is reminded that she's really gone for good. Also, that closing paragraph was great, especially the last sentence! It really puts me in the Christmas spirit, especially since it's been raining off and on today and all the snow is getting slushy. :)

Anyway, thank you for writing this! Have a merry Christmas!

I'm in tears from the beauty of this. So emotional that I needed the tissues :)

Merry Christmas to you too!

prompts? um... "pancakes!"
lol xD

That was great and so loving and El's words were from the heart. Neal is no longer alone...he has a loving big brother and sister to watch over him.