Caroline and the Alaskan Frozen Tundra by Ann Fox and Sarah Stella

Caroline and the Alaskan Frozen Tundra
A Caroline in the City/Northern Exposure Crossover
by Ann Fox and Sarah Stella
1998

Winner of 1998 CitC fanfic mailing list contest: "Best Crossover fanfic"

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DISCLAIMER: CITC does not belong to either of us and we are not making any money off of this work of amateur fanfic. (Who wants to write for money? :) It is the property of Barron/Pennette and NBC. No infringement is intended. Northern Exposure belongs to Brand/Falsey and CBS. Once again, no money involved; no infringement intended. Characters not appearing on either show are products of the authors' imaginations. (Gwen and Alex Spadaro may be used with expressed, written permission from the authors)

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Cast of Northern Exposure:

Dr. Joel Fleischman (from NYC, whiny Jewish doctor)

Maggie O'Connell (strong-minded pilot originally from Michigan)

Ed Chigliak (aspiring filmmaker and Shaman, Native Alaskan)

Chris Stevens (intelligent, well-read DJ for KBHR radio, highly creative and artistic, rides a Harley)

Shelly Tambo (former beauty queen brought to Alaska by Maurice just out of high school, somewhat airheaded but extremely kindhearted, works as waitress at the Brick, love interest of Holling)

Holling Vincoeur (owner of the Brick, 70-some years old, impotence does not run in his family!, likes birdwatching, somewhat macho--especially considering his age)

Maurice Minnifield (wealthy former astronaut who pretty much owns and operates all of Cicely, known to be mean and greedy, does most things for his own personal gain)

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Part One

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She'd been in bed, sleep on the brink of laying its claim on her, when she'd first heard the noise. It had manifested itself as a gentle rustling, scratching sound, and seemed to emanate from inside the bathroom.

Opening her eyes ever so slowly, slightly angered at having been awakened when she'd been so close to sleep, Caroline Duffy reached over and switched on the lamp on her night stand. She squinted and blinked rapidly, trying to force her eyes to adjust to the glare of the light as quickly as possible so she could investigate the noise and get back to sleep.

After a long and hearty yawn, she rotated her head upon her neck, waited for the satisfying crack as the joint loosened, then slid her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. She ran her fingers through her short red hair, and with every ounce of effort she could muster, finally stood and made her way towards the bathroom.

She crept across the room silently, her mind telling her simultaneously that it was nothing more than a mouse, yet it could be nothing other than a maniacal, bloodthirsty, psychotic ax murderer. Well, maybe it was a maniacal, bloodthirsty mouse. There is never any real way of telling.

Just outside the door, she paused and peeked into the bathroom, hoping that whatever was in there would not sense her presence. She knew that all ax murderers had to have heightened senses; that's why they are always able to evade the police in the movies. So it was more than likely that this particular psycho would be no different--that either he would hear her coming or even perhaps smell her!

Shut up, Caroline! Just shut up! she told herself. Sometimes having an active imagination was not a good thing. Especially in the middle of the night in a city like New York where almost anything can and does happen. Maybe I should find myself a weapon, just to be safe, she decided, scanning the room for a suitable tool of destruction. (Well, a tool of self-defense at the very least.)

Just as she was about to moan in disappointment, she spied a bottle of hair spray on her night stand. Not exactly the ideal weapon, but it would have to do. She tiptoed over and snatched it up, holding the bottle with her finger on the trigger as if it were a potent, incapacitating can of heavy-duty mace. As long as I am going to conjure up images of ax murderers, might as well give myself the right weapon to fight them off with, she reasoned. Her racing mind was doing nothing for her nerves, as it took everything within her to keep herself steady as she approached the door again.

For a few moments, she listened carefully. She half-expected to discover the noise had been nothing but her imagination, but as she concentrated, she was able to make out a hint of the same rustling that she'd heard only minutes before.

Gathering all of the courage that she believed she had, she whipped her body through the door and flipped on the light switch. Armed with the hair spray, she grunted with the effort and nearly fell over backwards in surprise when she saw what was in front of her.

A woman. An absurdly tiny woman. She was beautiful, Caroline supposed. (What she could make out of her delicate, elfin-looking features was pretty, at least). A small, whispish curl of sea-green hair tumbled down her back to end nearly at her waist; all-in-all, the woman couldn't have been more than five or six inches tall. Caroline's already overworked mind shot right into hyper-drive in an overwhelming rush.

"What on earth?" she asked in a hoarse, half-whisper.

The woman turned to her, perched precariously on the bar of Dove facial wash every bit as pink as her tiny body. Her eyes were a fascinating shade of beaten gold that seemed to shift and shiver with passing patterns of light and thought that raced around the impossible...creature. Seemingly recognizing Caroline, the woman raised a tiny hand and saluted, actually saluted the still-amazed cartoonist. As the woman did so, Caroline thought she caught the faintest shimmer of something silvery jumping from the woman's hand and taking flight in the air. It floated toward her with the lazy gracefulness of a flock of homing pigeons.

The next thing Caroline knew, she was waking up, flat on her back on the bathroom floor with a doozy of a headache. A faint, mechanical whirring reached her pain-sensitized ears and Caroline jerked herself forcefully to her feet, absolutely convinced that the tiny woman from the night before was still in her apartment, currently taking liberties with her blender. But the sight that met her scratchy eyes when she lurched unsteadily down the stairs was Annie, who was standing at the counter, dropping a couple eggs into a vile-looking, brownish concoction.

"Annie?" Caroline asked, squinting at her friend, her voice rough from her cold night on the bathroom tiles.

"Hiya, Caroline," Annie greeted her with a tiny salute that brought the confusing events of the night before back to Caroline with a staggering force. "You're never gonna believe this, but I had a little too much to drink last night and my cousins are coming to visit tomorrow (and you know how I am the day after going through a hangover) all the way from...saaay," Annie cut herself off in mid-sentence, "you look like you could use this more than I could." Deftly, Annie pulled a tall beer mug out of a cabinet to her right and skillfully poured the contents of the blender into the glass. Wordlessly, she handed it to Caroline who gave it a dubious look before sucking it down in two large gulps.

Surprisingly enough, the mixture didn't taste nearly as bad as it looked. Thank heavens for small favors, Caroline told herself wearily. By the time Annie had mixed another batch of her hangover remedy, Caroline's head was significantly clearer. "Thanks, Annie," she said gratefully. In the fresh late-summer sunshine, her experience was beginning to seem more and more like a bad dream, a figment of her overworked imagination. "Now, what's all this about your cousins?"

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A Week or so Earlier...

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It had always vaguely amazed Gwen that she and Alex were friends at all since they came from completely different worlds. Yet, once the two girls had made it past some of their superficial differences, they found that they shared a profound and deeply-felt connection that neither cared to nor wanted to fully explain. Gwen had always harbored a sneaking suspicion that it was because they'd been born on the same day, only eight minutes apart, but she'd never dared to tell Alex. Alex would have immediately accused Gwen of finally crossing over to "her side", into the realm of the strange and unusual. Of course, Gwen would proclaim it as "More of that X-Files junk," and that would have been the end of that.

Physically, the girls couldn't have been more different, even though they were closely related by blood. Alex Spadaro was a petite girl with sea-green eyes that sparkled with good humor and wit. Her slightly wavy brown hair fell to her waist and beyond. She rarely put it up though--it was her crowning glory. Gwen had always thought that Alex could have easily passed for some sort of woodland sprite if it weren't for her typical t-shirt and jeans ensemble. The only concession Alex made to her cousin's fancy was the fact that she preferred to (and often did) go barefoot for days at a stretch.

Gwen was yang to Alex's yin. Her slightly chestnutty bone-straight hair barely reached past her shoulder blades and she preferred to keep it up, braiding it on either side and pinning it closely to her head. She walked with a mannish stride that her mother found unattractive, but Gwen had always preferred speed to delicacy. A sprite Gwen most certainly was not. She was built solidly with squarish shoulders and narrow hips. Her ears were pierced multiple times and it was, as she so often pointed out, a minor life goal of hers to one day set off an airport metal detector.

I certainly won't get my chance today, Gwen mused absently as she sat on the platform with her mother, waiting for her train to arrive. But still, a cross-country trip with her favorite cousin to meet another favorite cousin in New York City no less was exciting enough to forgo a silly life goal anyhow. Her excited ears picked up the faint scream of a whistle in the distance. Gwen rose, hefting up her suitcase and pulling out the handle so she could roll it along the ground. The rest of her luggage had been checked long ago, earmarked for the baggage car.

"That must be my train," she told her mother who was already starting to get misty around the eyes. Gwen smiled with her patented mixture of sarcasm and warmth. "It's only a few weeks before I'd have to leave for college anyway, Mom. Annie'll take good care of me an' Alex, and if she doesn't...well, we'll take care of each other."

Mrs. Spadaro sniffed loudly. "I know. It's just that it seems like such a short time ago that you two were only babies and now you're both heading out for college...in New York City, no less. New York is such a long way from Seattle you know."

"I know, Mom. I promise to write and call and everything. Alex will too. And you have to remember that British Columbia is even further away from New York than Seattle is."

Gwen's mom sniffed again. "I know. Marie is going to miss Alex just as much as I'm going to miss you."

The train squealed to a steamy stop in front of the two women, who were almost of a height now. Gwen and her mother embraced for one last time before Gwen mounted the steps and disappeared into the train. Karen Spadaro's anxious eyes found her daughter's face once more before the train rolled slowly out of the station, moving ever further east.

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It took Gwen a full fifteen minutes of unsteady bobbling down the train aisles before she located her cousin in one of the last cars. It was actually the last sleeper before the observation car. Which definitely figures, Gwen thought, rolling her eyes a little. Alex had always been more into nature than she was anyhow.

Alex sensed the air in the sleeper change just as soon as her cousin walked through the door. Without bothering to look for Gwen's familiar reddish hair, Alex jumped to her feet and shouted, "Gwen!" while waving her hands wildly in the air.

Gwen looked in the direction of the racket and raised her eyebrows at her vivacious cousin with a smile. An answering grin curled across her cousin's face and Gwen increased her pace, she was nearly running down the aisle now. Alex came out to meet her and the girls shared a fierce hug. Gwen jammed her suitcase into the overhead compartment.

"I hope our rug and towels and stuff got there okay," she mused worriedly to her cousin. "It would suck to start out our lives at NYU without a decent..." Gwen cut her gripe off short when she noted the figure slouched uncomfortably in the seat adjoining Alex's and across from her own.

Alex noted the start of surprise and countered it with a calming hand. Even though her cousin had grown up in a big city, Alex had always noted a strange shyness on Gwen's part when it came to members of the opposite sex, especially attractive members of the opposite sex, a category to which their seatmate decidedly belonged.

He wasn't handsome in the traditional way, Gwen decided, stepping back an imperceptible half-pace. He was certainly tall, a fact which she confirmed when he unbent himself from his seat, stood, and extended a hand to her. He had long, black hair which he had bound into a single braid that ran to the middle of his back, and the most beautiful, translucent blue eyes Gwen had ever seen. His figure seemed impossibly delicate...for a man. And if Gwen secretly saw her favorite cousin as a spirit of the woods then this young man must have been a spirit of the air.

"This is my cousin and best friend, Gwyneth Spadaro," Alex told the young man politely. He couldn't have been any more than a couple years older than them both but he possessed a kind of innate tranquillity that made him seem almost ageless. Alex, seemingly unaware of the effect the man was having on Gwen, turned to her cousin. "Gwen, this is Ed Chigliak, aspiring film maker, shaman-in-training, and happy resident of Cicely, Alaska. He's been telling me all about it, ever since I got on the train at least. And this is the wild part--he's headed for New York, just like we are. He wants to meet Richard and Caroline. Isn't that crazy?!"

"Crazy," Gwen murmured, seating herself gingerly across from Ed, who had folded himself back into his chair, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

Alex plopped herself into place. She could be comfortable practically anywhere. "So, Ed," she picked up a thread of conversation they'd obviously been pursuing prior to Gwen's arrival, "you never did tell me why exactly you want to see Annie's friends."

Ed twisted his hands nervously in his lap. "They Called me. I need to bring them back to Cicely with me so I can help them fight their demons."

In one fluid movement, Alex and Gwen met each others' eyes with their eyebrows cocked in a mutual expression of disbelief and grudging interest. Their united message was perfectly clear.

More of that 'X-Files' junk...coool.

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Continued in Part Two

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Please visit my Caroline in the City webpage: Sincere Amore