Disclaimer - I don't own it. I am not making anything off it. I do get a kick out of displacing my angst onto people in shiny red uniforms.

Chapter 1 - Relevant Sharpened Apparel

Lieutenant Harding Welsh relished having reached a point in his career where he could afford to spoil himself with really nice shirts. On the other hand, he didn't appreciate being in a position where the only logical course of action was to strip to his undershirt and use one of his really nice shirts to attend a heavily bleeding scalp wound. At least it wasn't his own scalp, but the truth was, he was getting too old for this.

It wasn't his style to go out on his detectives' busts, but Internal Affairs had been sniffing around Ray Vecchio for months. If it wasn't one thing it was another. Someone up there hated Vecchio. Well, he was good at antagonizing people. In fact, he was a pro. So when Vecchio said he knew of a major drug deal going down, and one of the players had already been complaining about police harassment, Welsh broke habit to be along for the ride.

The current setup wasn't a big operation. Vecchio's informer had told him that it would just be two men meeting to make the deal, high powered figures in the drug world who, according to Vecchio's informer, wanted their meeting to stay nice and private.

Welsh and Vecchio should have been able to make the arrests, never mind the spare Mountie who seemed to work for the Chicago PD in his free time as a hobby. Of course there was backup - four uniformed men waiting in two cars a block away, but of course, they were under strict radio silence so as to not alert the targets of the bust to the police presence too soon.

He was getting too old for this, because it was going down as a righteous bust, like Vecchio promised, until he, Harding Welsh, with thirty years experience on the force, moved wrong and made a noise because his hip had stiffened up while they were crouched behind packing crates in a warehouse waiting for the buyer to pass over the money to the seller. He'd drawn down all kinds of trouble. So much for radio silence. Now Vecchio, Welsh thanked god, was still out there. Vecchio had better be getting out to the uniforms and bringing help along.

When things went crazy, Vecchio had happened to keep his cover behind some crates across the other side of the warehouse entrance to Welsh and Fraser. Welsh and Vecchio had watched as Fraser got between Welsh and a seriously angry drug baron. With a beautifully agile twist of his torso, Fraser had avoided being shot down by the seller, but he had not avoided being introduced head first to the sharp corner of a packing crate by the buyer in the deal. Welsh was painfully aware that this was mostly due to Fraser being preoccupied by trying to see if the bullet from the dealer's gun, which had splintered the packing crate Welsh was hiding behind, had also splintered Welsh.

Welsh knew he really needed to get out from behind the desk more often. Of course, if the Mountie hadn't leaped forth heroically, Welsh thought he might have had a clear shot at the dealer. It would have been fifty fifty on who hit whom first, but the consideration did salvage his pride.

On the one hand, Welsh wished that Vecchio had broken cover to take some shots at the criminals who were causing all the trouble. On the other hand, with the Constable out cold on the floor with two guns trained on him, Welsh had no choice but to surrender, and if Vecchio had made his presence known during the split seconds between when Welsh had slipped up and when the Mountie had been taken down, they'd have all been caught, and there would have been no-one to seek help.

To hell with Internal Affairs, Welsh thought, Vecchio was a damn good cop, with damn good instincts.

Scalp wounds always looked bad. Welsh wasn't a nursemaid, but he thought he did a creditable job of binding up the cut over the Mountie's temple.

"Open your eyes, kid." Welsh mumbled. Just when did they start making cops so young? Welsh wondered, although he knew that Fraser's youthful face belied many years of experience. Welsh still felt ancient when he compared his cynical, no, realistic beliefs about the way the world worked to the bright eyed optimism that Fraser brought into the station.

Welsh looked around the warehouse office that the drug baron had unceremoniously locked the two of them in. There was probably an easy way out. Based on Ray Vecchio's reports, chances were that Fraser would spot the easy way out with alacrity. There was a solid door and he'd heard the drug dealer lock it from the outside. There were no windows. But there was bound to be some neat sleight of hand to get them free. Or, of course, they could hope Vecchio got back to them with backup before the drug baron decided it was clobbering time.

Fraser groaned and stirred. He tried to sit up, but his head wasn't co-operating. It didn't want to lurch upwards, and it let him know by spinning ferociously. His eyes started to open, squinting at the bare bulb light in the office.

"Ray?" he said.

"No, Constable, Vecchio's still out there." Welsh said dryly. He wasn't a nursemaid, and he also wasn't really much in the comforting line.

"Oh. Lieutenant Welsh." Fraser opened his eyes fully, bringing a hand up to shade them. "We've been captured?" he asked, looking around the office.

"That's about the gist of it." Welsh replied.

"My apologies, Lieutenant." Fraser said. "I must have made a miscalculation."

Welsh's lips twitched in a mirthless smile as he said, "I think I should be the one apologizing, Constable. I broke cover. But if you want to apologize, knock yourself out." He realized that this was an inapposite choice of words almost immediately, but to his surprise, Constable Fraser appeared to be mildly amused.

"Someone seems to have taken care of that already." Fraser said, pressing his hand to the impromptu bandage around his head. He attempted to sit upright again, assisted by Welsh's steadying hand at his back this time. "How long was I out for?" he asked.

"Couple of minutes." Welsh said. A couple of minutes where Welsh had initially not even been sure the young man was still alive, and then had to half drag him, half carry him from the cavernous warehouse into this room. The drug baron had given him the choice, move Fraser quickly or he'd finish the Mountie off where he lay. Of course, he'd promised he'd be back to kill them, anyway. But where there was life there was hope. He wasn't about to share just how relieved he felt that Fraser appeared to be cognitively normal and not about to drop dead on him, but he was very, very thankful.

Fraser looked around, moving his aching head as little as possible. Getting a good look at the room was a fine balance between efficiency and calling down those tremendous dizzying waves again. When he found himself in a locked room, he took it for granted that he'd be the one strategizing an exit. Ray Vecchio reacted poorly to being in confined spaces - perhaps a touch of claustrophobia - and while he was always helpful in implementing Fraser's escape plans, he rarely contributed greatly to formulating them. As much as Fraser respected Lieutenant Welsh, he didn't stop to consider that the man who hadn't been hit on the head recently might be the more logical choice for planning action.

Welsh watched Constable Fraser turn pale beneath the unfortunate cascade of dried blood down the side of his face. With an exasperated sigh, the Lieutenant almost gently pushed Fraser back down to lie on the folded jacket he'd slipped under his head. "Constable, with all due respect, maybe I should take care of this one." he said.

Fraser was glad to close his eyes against the glaring light. He could still think with his eyes closed. As soon as some of the throbbing subsided, he'd be right on the task of reasoning a way out of the situation. Without the light dazzling him, the nausea that accompanied the headache subsided, leaving him feeling shaky but grateful. Soon, the headache had settled into mere jolts of shooting pain in time with his heartbeat. He was finally able to push the part of his mind that was dealing with the pain down long enough to focus. Concentrate. And the first thought that made its way into this free bit of brain was "Well, at least we're not wearing straightjackets."

Lieutenant Welsh was standing on the desk in the small office examining the high, unfinished roof that belonged to the warehouse. Sadly, the walls of the office went all the way up to it. And without a ladder, there was no way to get to it. But he would leave no stone unturned. As such, he was inspecting every inch of the room. Some of the reports that Vecchio had filed beggared belief at the level of creativity used by the Detective and the Mountie to worm their way out of tight corners. If the Mountie weren't completely upright, Welsh would suspect Ray was making things up. As he considered this point, staring at the roof abstractedly, Welsh was startled to hear a low chuckle, more of a snort, emerge from the man on the floor.

"Something amusing you, Constable?" Welsh inquired in the disdainful tone of voice that turned weaker men to jelly. He didn't see what there was to laugh about in the situation.

"My apologies, Lieutenant." There the man went, apologizing again. "I was just thinking that it was a good thing that we aren't in straightjackets."

Welsh's eyebrows went up. His mouth twitched in amusement. "Ah, yes, Constable. Now that you mention it, I recall hearing about that. You wouldn't happen to have any relevant sharpened pieces of apparel on you today, would you?"

Fraser took a moment to pull himself up into a sitting position again, taking advantage of the solid desk the Lieutenant was standing on. He leaned his back against the side of the desk and closed his eyes again until the whirling disorientation caused by movement passed. He took the Lieutenant's question at face value.

"No, sir, not that I would consider applicable in this situation. I mean, if I had my hat..." He looked around, but he'd taken the hat off to keep his profile behind the packing crates as small as possible and it was probably still lying out there in the warehouse proper. "No, that would be a long shot anyway."

Welsh climbed down from the desk awkwardly. "We're not getting out through the door unless you happen to be carrying lock picks." he said. "Up is right out. No windows. Thoughts?"

He had planned to effect a brilliant escape without the help of the injured man, but with the knowledge that the drug baron could return any time, armed and ruthless, he couldn't afford to blunder on if there was a chance that he was overlooking something obvious. He'd made one costly mistake today already. He didn't have the time left to coddle a man who apparently neither needed nor wanted such soft treatment.

Fraser scratched his ear. "The room we're in, it was the door to the back and left of the warehouse?" he asked.

"That's right." Welsh said.

"Well, my observations on the depth of the space within the warehouse, when summed with the depth of this room would suggest to me that it's highly likely that the back wall of this room is an exterior wall."

Welsh nodded. He squatted down, knees creaking, to be on a level with the Mountie while they strategized. "I follow."

"And on the way in, I noticed that this is an old building. The outside appears to be made of corrugated steel."

"Steel." Welsh said. He had no idea what the Mountie was getting at, but those reports had been compelling reading. Maybe... "Are you suggesting we do something with magnets? Maybe make an electromagnet out of that hunk of -" he pointed a finger at an unwieldy looking computer that rested against one wall of the office.

Fraser looked puzzled. He shook his head slightly. "No, Lieutenant. but if the interior walls are flimsy too, there is a slim chance that we can break out by brute force. I suspect based on the temperature in this room, which is quite cold, unless I have a fever-" he looked at Welsh for confirmation of the temperature, and Welsh nodded for him to go on. Without his shirt and jacket, the Lieutenant had to agree it was very chilly.

"I would guess that the interior walls are some form of cheap sheetrock. That would be easy enough to break through. Then we would need to locate a stud to which the steel was nailed and again the application of force - well, it wouldn't be easy, but it's not impossible to part rusty nails from wood."

"Oh." Welsh was nonplussed. That was a simple, if slow, plan. Not at all the kind of leap of imagination he'd expected. He wasn't sure if that was the head injury, or if taking down the wall really was the only way out.

"The only thing, Lieutenant," Fraser said, more softly, "Is that I'm afraid I won't be much help."

"Yeah." thought Welsh. "You look like you couldn't stand up without throwing up on my shoes, I'd like to see you break a wall down."

Out loud, he managed sympathy and forbearance. "Don't you worry about that now Constable. They took my gun and radio, so I can't ask you to watch the door or call for help. Vecchio better be on that. So you just rest easy there, and why don't you go ahead and tell me one of those Eskimo or whatever stories, huh?"

It felt good to kick through the sheetrock. Welsh had enough frustration to make a sizable hole with a couple of kicks. He wasn't even really listening to the Constable's story, although words did pop out and catch his attention.

"Anyway. It turned out that his sister had been feeding the seal for months. That's why he thought it was stalking him."

"Okay." Welsh thought. "I gotta get him to repeat the rest of that when we're out of here." He ripped sheetrock away, widening the hole. At least a bit of luck was with him. There was a stud behind and slightly to one side of the section he'd broken loose. Welsh pulled more of that section of sheetrock free.

Welsh could see dark stains through the wood showing where the corrugated steel was nailed to the stud. The nails had rusted and the corrosion had darkened the wood around them, but that still didn't give him any good ideas of how to reach between the stud and the sheet of metal to pry the nails loose. He pulled his pocketknife out, glad he hadn't been properly searched by the panicked drug dealer, and started to dig at the wood close to the exterior metal. It was some moments before he noticed that the Mountie wasn't talking any more.

"Constable Fraser." Welsh turned briefly from his absorbing and probably futile task. "You need to remember your part of the job. I need you to keep talking." This elicited a "Yes, sir." but nothing more.

"Pain worse?" Welsh asked. Not that there was a damn thing he could do about it.

Fraser felt mentally drained. It felt like the small amount of looking around and strategizing and talking had been as taxing as sitting a long trigonometry exam. "It's fine." he said tersely. To Ray Vecchio he might have been more blunt, but whining in front of Welsh was not an option. It WAS fine, it was just a headache. Okay, a really bad headache. The sort one might, if one were the drinking type, experience after a three day bender. But still. Just a headache.

Welsh made a frustrated huffing sound. Small talk was very much not his thing. "So Constable, tell me about your first posting. I hear it was way out in the middle of nowhere."

"Come on." he thought. "Everyone knows it's impossible to get you to shut up about the great white North. Talk." As long as Fraser was talking, Welsh could focus on trying to rip out a wall from the inside without worrying too much about Fraser's health.

"It was remote." Fraser said. He didn't feel inspired to say more, but he knew that the Lieutenant was counting on him to keep talking, to prove that he hadn't succumbed to his head injury. Which was ridiculous, he thought. He was fine. It was just a headache. "Lieutenant, please." he said. He hated to show weakness, but the thought of chattering on was intolerable. "I'm sorry, I just don't feel much like talking."

Welsh huffed again. "All right. Here's what we'll do Constable. You just hang in there, and I'll check in every minute or so. All you have to do is make a noise when I ask if you're still with me. Got it?"

"Mmm." Fraser drifted into a lapse from thinking, letting his mind slip free of trying to form words and sentences. He listened to Welsh work, listened to the sounds on the roof of the empty warehouse. The cool air in the room felt refreshing against his face. He twitched alert when he heard a noise from the other side of the heavy door that kept them locked in the office. Footsteps. Coming closer.

"Lieutenant." Fraser said quietly.

Welsh paused. He listened and heard the footsteps too. Maybe they were out of time. He grabbed a chunk of sheetrock, the only thing weapon-like at hand, and moved toward the door.

Author's Note:

This was meant to be a nice little one-shot, an opportunity for Harding to get into the field and demonstrate some badassness without too much assistance from the boys. Which is why I knobbled the Mountie. Who still insisted on being bossy even with a really bad headache. And then the story turned into something longer. About three chapters more longer.

The story takes place just after Vault in season two, and will deviate from the canon universe in terms of events that happen, but I sincerely hope not in terms of people behaving like themselves, if I can help it!

Stick with me for further exploration into Fraser's working relationship with two superior officers. (And some fireworks in the final chapter!)