AN: So, obviously this was inspired by the Christmas episode, but I decided to hold off the angst til after Christmas. Basically, I'm filling in what I wanted to see.

Still don't own anything.

Christmas Past

She's seven when she learns the trick to a really good lie.

(Mona calls this the emergence of a monster and it stings, a little bit, because she's never considered herself a monster. She's been bored, and deceitful, manipulative and clever and cunning and wounded and predatorial, but she's sure that these don't add up to the label of a monster.)

She doesn't get the significance of two dresses, doesn't understand why her mother refuses to play it off as a funny little mistake, but she wants to be good. She wants to be her mother's favourite and so she nods, keeps her eyes trained on one manicured finger and repeats endlessly, there was one yellow dress.

One, one, one. One box, one dress.

By the next morning there is no evidence that there was ever a dress, hidden, or two dresses, and she's already begun to overwrite the memories. One small part of her brain, when she thinks about it, remembers two boxes, two identical dresses – the other, bigger part, overrules it with one.

One girl. One dress. One box.

The lies are insidious, creeping into her bones and winding through her veins. At dinner that night she lies, straight-faced, to her father. Her mother hides her approval behind a glass of wine, and Jason suspects nothing.

So now she knows how to lie, and she practices the way others practice swimming or French lessons or piano. She begins with a falsehood, repeats it so often that she begins to believe it. It's better to start small, so she begins by altering the colour of the shirt she wore or the name of the doll sitting on her dressing table. Every time she lies, there's the mental image: her mother, sat before her, one index finger raised, voice a tainted shade of maternal.

(It seems lying runs in the family)

It's all perfect again. Christmas dinner is a lavish thing, as always, with more food than four people can eat in one sitting, and as they unwrap presents, she's sure she can see a brief note of tension in her mother's shoulders, a quick spasm under the eye. It's gone before she blinks again though, and she hugs her parents in delight over her dress.

More gifts are brought out, not just from the tree but from little hiding places designed to stop accidental findings like the one with the piano. Her mother hands her each gift with a strange expression, a sad sort of smile which soon morphs into one of faint mistrust and wariness, because right now she still has the power to ruin things.

She stays quiet though, because right now she's being rewarded for something that she always thought was wrong.

This too is insidious.

Instead of honesty, she decides on lies as being more interesting – more fun for her to tell, and a kind of test to see if others will call her out, or if they're smart enough to see that she's lying.

The appeal quickly wears off: people don't question her, and if they do they back down quickly.

She becomes bored, so she spins more lies. It's become a habit now, one which is comfortable and easy and she has a good memory for continuity, a careful diligence about teaching herself her newest lies. Only the habit spins out of control, so she hides a journal inside a jacket pocket and keeps records.

Her gifts are put away carelessly, tarnished by being rewards instead of tokens of love. Usually there's a thrill, a delight when it comes to 'unpacking' new gifts and finding homes for them, but tonight that delight is gone. She's just a little bewildered at her mother teaching her to lie, and there's a sparkle of anger running through her mind that this wrong thing is rewarded.

(Time to test the ability, because maybe it was a one-off. She buries one of her new earrings in the corner, throws a scarf over it and relishes in the spite she feels. Later, she successfully explains that she was trying them on when it slipped from her ear, bounced somewhere she couldn't reach)

She has this new ability, this wretched gift her mother has given her, and the abundance of her presents overall tells her that lying is okay.

This is her second image when it comes to lying: the strain clear to her in her mother's face, the piles of gifts that buy her silence and make the guilt dissolve like sugar in hot water, and every time she tamps down the memory, brings back the memory of a single raised finger and piercing eyes.

In church that night, she feels ever-so-slightly wrong, as if her deceit is written on her face, but one look down brings her mother's hand into view, the one with the polish and the rings and she wonders why her mother folds four fingers in.

(Later she realizes: it's like when she raised her finger to her lips and mouthed shhh to her reflection, as if to remind herself to stay quiet)

It doesn't matter though. She's helping her mother, who promised that this one lie would keep their family together. Does that mean that the good outweighs the bad?

This thought cheers her and she leaves the church feeling good. She doesn't tease Jason back when he bugs her, and sees the surprise on her parents' faces when she doesn't argue. The rest of the night is peaceful, one of laughter and cheer and sneaking candy when no-one is looking.

(Already she's begun to learn that she has to destroy evidence, and so she bundles the wrappers into a tissue before she dumps them in the bin, cleans her teeth and blames Jason when her parents notice the lack of chocolates in the tray.)

No-one is blamed for it, because it is the sort of thing Jason would do, and so her parents smile as they send her to bed, her half-hearted complaints that Jason gets to stay up longer fading behind her as she climbs the stairs.

When she goes back to school, the teacher will ask the class if they learned anything. The woman is big on learning things, life lessons and morals and wrapping things into pretty packaging. Somehow, everything can be made into a learning experience with her.

Alison decides she won't reveal that she learned how to lie.