Disclaimer: I got rhythm, I got music, I do not got copyright on any of the professionally written characters involved in these ludicrous scenarios.

Chapter 13 - Angels with Bad Knees

Xu was the first to move after the car skidded and dumped over onto its side. She was in the middle of the back seat, Ray Vecchio squashed under her, and Fraser's weight held off her only by his seatbelt. She was the only one who hadn't had a moment of contact between her head and a solid window surface as the car took its tumble, and the other occupants of the SUV were mutually stunned. Xu reached up and pushed the door by Fraser open, then unsnapped her seatbelt and pushed herself out of the car, her booted foot pressing heavily on Ray Vecchio's thigh.

Ray Vecchio's moan was enough to clear Fraser's mind. He shook his head and took in the moans and movements of the two other men. They were alive and conscious, so he was free, in fact obligated, to pull himself out of the vehicle and pursue Xu. He emulated her plan, ensuring he had a firm grip on the door frame before releasing his seatbelt. Fraser managed to avoid kicking Ray by virtue of hauling himself out of the car with the full strength of his overtaxed upper body. He tumbled out and lay on the frozen ground a moment, catching his breath. The road was the only practical surface for Xu to run on. The shoulder was too icy for her to scramble up. Fraser rolled to his knees and pushed off to his feet, giving himself a burst of speed from his momentum. The road was slippery enough that Xu hadn't got far when Fraser launched a tackle at her, pressing her to the ground and grabbing her wrists.

Xu rolled over in Fraser's grip, panting harshly as the wind was knocked out of her. "Let me go!" she demanded. "Let me go." Xu repeated the plea, low this time, all her vulnerability and charm pushed into the three words. "You have to let me go. If they catch me- you don't understand."

Fraser set his jaw, implacable. "I can't do that." he said. "You will be arrested, but you will be under the protection of the rule of law."

Xu laughed bitterly. "As if the law can protect me from my enemies. Please. Please, Benton. Let me go."

Fraser relaxed his grip slightly, unsettled by her pleading tone and the tears that threatened at the corners of her eyes. He was also having trouble on sheer physical grounds, spasms of hot pain burning across his shoulders as he adjusted from sitting still too long in the car to the jarring accident and his athletic tackle.

Xu didn't move immediately to take advantage of Fraser's weakness. He still had too much of the upper hand, and he had experienced her bait and switch tactics before, when she had played meek only to try to stab him. Xu relaxed under Fraser's grip, giving him further reason to follow the imperative of muscles that demanded he stretch and change his hold.

Xu switched to pleading in Cantonese, throwing Fraser off even more from his delicate equilibrium. Xu used all of the tricks of an actress, calling up the young, scared girl that she had once been. "Oh, God, I had to escape, please understand, I never wanted to hurt you. I had no choice. They'll kill me, please let me go."

"I won't let anyone hurt you." Fraser promised. "But I can't let you go." He knew he couldn't trust her again, mustn't. But it was hard to deny his strongest instinct, to protect the weak. Logic and sentiment were pulling him at odds to himself. He closed his eyes, hoping to clear the vision of Xu as pathetic and helpless, as the wounded dove, and restore the clarity with which he knew she was all sharp danger and treachery, the hawk waiting to strike.

Fraser's moment of inner conflict gave Xu the edge she needed. She bucked her hips up suddenly, throwing Fraser off with a well-practiced move that used his weight against him. Before Fraser could react to her move, the trained killer had her arm around his throat, holding him from behind, her knee pressing into his back, pressing him down into the ground. Xu gripped the wrist of the arm that she had around Fraser's neck with her other hand, securing the lock before he had time to tuck his chin down and protect himself from her crushing grip against his larynx.

"You should have let me go when I pleaded." she said, reverting to English. "I'm sorry, Ben, but this is goodbye."

Fraser expected to die then. His mind flashed to a starkly colored illustration in a forensic text book showing the delicate, U shaped hyoid bone that sat at the top of the larynx snapped, a sign any medical examiner would read as evidence of death by strangulation. Xu was holding tightly enough that it wasn't easy for Fraser to breathe. He expected that his world would soon narrow down to a black tunnel, with the mysteries waiting for him when the last light blinked out. It took several rapid beats of his heart for him to realize that he was still alive.

Fraser stirred his brain from the shock of bracing for death and pushed his attention out to the woman who held his life in her hands. He held still, feeling an uncanny certainty that if he struggled at this exact moment, Xu would finish choking him. Something was keeping him alive. The way her breathing was uneven, the way the pulse in her wrist fluttered against the pulse in his neck, both racing. She was off-balance, too, and Fraser fought to comprehend why the woman with a long career of merciless murder behind her had stayed her hand in his case. He hung in limbo, forcing himself not to panic at the way his breathing was constrained.

Xu could have sworn that she was going to press her chokehold close until Fraser's breathing stopped, her muscular forearm against his throat making that a quicker task than it might sound. She'd done it often before. It was a quiet way of killing. She was every bit as startled as Fraser to realize that she hadn't, that she held him at her mercy and was, without conscious thought, showing him mercy. Conscious thought confused things, and her heart thumped in her chest as she struggled with what had never been a decision before, but always a certainty.

-=-=-

Vecchio and Kowalski untangled themselves from the wreck at the same time. Vecchio was closer to Fraser and Xu as he pulled himself out of the SUV, just in time to see the reversal of fortunes as Xu broke Fraser's hold and put him in her own. Vecchio dropped to one knee, holding the gun Ray Kowalski had given him in both hands. He couldn't see a clear shot.

Kowalski knelt beside Vecchio. He didn't want to try to shoot Xu with the machine pistol. He wasn't used to it and was afraid there was too much chance he wouldn't be able to control the trajectory of the bullets, even setting it to fire only two or three rounds at a time. Fortunately, Mikey was the kind of guy to carry more than one spare gun, (and Kowalski had some very specific thoughts about the probable insecurities of an alter-ego who would carry a gun as large and hard to conceal as the MP5) so Kowalski pulled a .22 out of his ankle holster. It was a pea-shooter to the Scardinas, but it was light, and Kowalski knew it well. He just wished he had his glasses. Xu's body was over Fraser's, and it would be dangerous to try to hit her without clear vision.

"Take the shot." Kowalski hissed at Vecchio.

Vecchio knelt, frozen, as he watched Xu hold Fraser in what could be a killing grip, until, after a pause that felt like it lasted for hours, Fraser finally brought his hands up in a scrabbling, panicky motion to try to pull Xu's arm away from his throat. Vecchio couldn't shoot. His hands were shaking. He knew what would happen. He'd aim for Xu and - Vecchio knew with gut certainty that his bullet would drill through Fraser instead. Because he had been aiming for Victoria. He couldn't do it again, and his mouth was too dry to reply to Kowalski and tell him he needed to take the shot. He'd never forgive himself if he couldn't shoot and save Benny, but he was gripped by terror.

"Take the goddamn shot." Kowalski said. Vecchio swallowed and tried to steady his hands. Seconds were rolling past, seconds that were crucial to getting the Mountie out alive.

Kowalski sighed. He didn't know why Vecchio wasn't shooting, but that left it up to him. He sighted as carefully as possible without his glasses, thankful that the distance was small, and fired. The bullet skimmed past Fraser's head and dug a shallow groove down Xu's side, from shoulder to hip. She fell away from Fraser, leaving him gasping for breath. As soon as he realized what happened, Fraser launched to his knees beside Xu, taking his sweater off.

-=-=-

"My god, she's bleeding. She's bleeding." Fraser said, his voice sounding raw. He pressed the blue sweater he'd been wearing against the wound, not noting or caring that Kowalski's shot was only a scratch, a shock to the system but not a fatal threat to Xu.

Fraser saw blood fall on the snow on the ground under her. He saw Irene Zuko tumble, a bullet ripping through her, Xu's dark hair transformed to Irene's. Irene who was innocent of anything but being born into the wrong family. He saw Victoria's face as she knew he was going to turn her in, Victoria's face, later, as he fell from the train, Ray's bullet in his back. He saw a mask of pain under dark hair. Another body lying in the snow, seen through a cabin window, the red seeping into the white, somewhere far distant and long ago, not even a memory, just a glimpse of something teasing on the edges of conscious knowledge, like the curled up scrap of a photograph with a face the he should know as well as his own.

He saw Xu at last for what she was, both vile and corrupt, and also broken by suffering, her own suffering not lessened by what it had hardened her into. What he had made Victoria into. What no one should have done to Irene, Irene who should have been untouched by it.

The cycle of violence and hurt. It wouldn't stop. There was blood on his hands and people suffered and then they went on to make the same hell for other people to suffer in. Fraser knew he wasn't quite in his right mind. The ache at his throat, the dizzy tiredness that he couldn't shake told him that there were reasons why he shouldn't trust what he saw or thought now. But he looked down and saw a face long lost and beloved, adored and barely remembered. The cycle began so long ago for him. The suffering, and the hell on earth that was made for him, that he made for Victoria, for Irene and Xu. For the woman. In the snow. Her hair - not black. No, that- he grasped at memory that fled from him, feeling half out of his wits from fatigue, pain and the strain of the last few days.

Not that feeling a shade off from reality was new, not with his father's persistent haunting. Speaking of whom - a hand ghosted over his shoulder.

"Son. Not now. You don't want to know. Not now. I hope you never have to. You didn't see anything. I was sure you didn't. You were such a strong, brave young man at the funeral. But you can't have seen -" The ghost broke off his own rambling with a curt order: "Now listen to your partner."

Then Ray Vecchio was shaking his shoulder, Kowalski leaning in close, both of them telling him he had to move, get into cover. Fraser shook his head clear of the vision that troubled him just in time to experience Vecchio and Kowalski dragging him bodily behind the wrecked SUV.

-=-=-

Fraser had time to notice and worry about the large bump developing on Ray Kowalski's forehead, and the corresponding bruise to Ray Vecchio's temple and cheek from the car crash, and Vecchio and Kowalski had time enough to worry about how slowly Fraser was moving, when the car carrying Paolo, Toe, and the two drivers pulled up beside the crashed SUV. What had seemed like an eternity of cascading horrors had only been brief minutes since the SUV overturned.

Kowalski thrust the .22 with which he'd shot Xu toward Fraser, who was leaning on the wheelbed of the SUV.

"No, thank you, I-" Fraser croaked.

"Don't bother." Vecchio said. "He won't, and he's in no shape to, anyway."

Kowalski raised an eyebrow, both at Fraser's refusal to be armed, and the rough tenderness in Vecchio's voice. An old argument there, he guessed.

"Okay then." Kowalski said, stuffing the .22 into the waistband of his jeans. Paolo wanted to play, Paolo got to go up against the beautiful, ostentatious, deadly weapon he had personally given Kowalski.

Paolo Scardina walked toward the three injured men, his own weapon held low. With Toe and Paolo's driver behind him, also holding their guns out of the line of sight from the road, the party looked no more suspicious than any good samaritans stopping to help stranded motorists. Kowalski noticed smugly that Marco's driver was not with them. Presumably Ray's belt across the head when he stole the SUV had been effective in keeping one of the bad guys out of the picture, which was something.

"Mikey." Paolo said. His tone conveyed disappointment.

"Ray, actually." Kowalski replied.

Paolo looked disconcerted.

"No, he's Ray." he said, pointing his gun at Vecchio, who was holding Kowalski's 9mm steadily.

"No, I'm Ray, too." Kowalski said, flashing a manic grin entirely unlike Mikey's dead-eyed smile.

Paolo shook his head impatiently.

"Mikey, Ray, what the fuck ever." Paolo said. "You betrayed me. I'm disappointed."

"And you're an asshole, and yet, strangely, that does not disappoint me." Kowalski smarted back.

"You two want to get a room?" Vecchio felt the need to add. It was sheer bravado, but the whole operation currently appeared to be running on bravado. Out of the necessity of proving his own testicular fortitude equal to that of the posturing Kowalski, what could he do but join in?

Paolo's attention turned to Vecchio.

"Shut up, Detective." he said. "You should just keep ya mouth shut. Your only role here is to help me keep the Constable in line. After all, there are three of us, and only two of you with guns. And knowing the Constable, I'm sure that I only need one of you to keep him co-operative. Isn't that right, Constable? Are you going to beg for your friend's life now?" Paolo's voice became low and menacing, directed only at Fraser. "I told you there would be consequences for disobedience."

Vecchio and Kowalski moved in closer to Fraser, both sensing that he desperately needed their support. Fraser found that while his mind had bounced back quite resiliently from Paolo's tortures, his body seemed to want to betray him, as he felt a trembling that made his hands shake, and his mouth dried up.

"How about I let you choose which cop I keep alive as incentive, and which I do right now?" Paolo said with a soft chuckle.

"How about you eat shit and die?" Kowalski spat back, waving the MP5 demonstratively. "There are three of you, sure, but I can take out at least two of you before you get a chance to shoot. And I guess Vecchio knows what to do with that." He waved at the 9mm in Vecchio's hands. "Odds seem pretty even, and Fraser ain't dancing to your tune."

So, it was a stand-off. Neither side appeared willing to budge. Fraser sought desperately for some way to swing the odds in their favor. He would not choose between Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski. He would die rather than let either of the fine Chicago policemen take a bullet.

"Give it up, Scardina." Vecchio said. "Sooner or later, even the hick highway patrol out here is going to notice that our vehicle is not the right way up. Just give up and drive away."

As if summoned, a large, battered jeep bearing a logo on the door that declared it to belong to the world of law enforcement passed in the opposite direction, the direction the convoy had been heading before Kowalski rescued Ray Vecchio and Fraser and turned the SUV back toward Indiana and ultimately Chicago. The jeep slowed and then made a U-turn, pulling in just past the overturned SUV.

The sight that emerged from the Jeep made more than one jaw drop in astonishment and disbelief.

First emerged an older, rugged looking man in a dusty-brown sheriff's uniform. He caused no excitement, but the figures that followed him did. Next jumped out a large, formidable grey and white canine with a snarl marring his muzzle. Then came a rumpled looking, world-weary man in shirtsleeves, then a grey haired Mountie resplendent in full-dress uniform who took the snarling wolf by the scruff of his neck.

"Put your weapons down and surrender." the sheriff said to the stunned Paolo and his entourage.

Paolo, Toe and Paolo's driver slowly complied, seeing clearly that there was no route of escape, and having no wish to go down in a glorious rain of gunfire when there were such things as high-priced lawyers walking the earth.

Fraser staggered forward as Diefenbaker broke free of the older Mountie's grip and barrelled toward him. Fraser dropped to his knees and embraced the wolf, looking up at Lieutenant Welsh of the Chicago PD, and Sergeant Buck Frobisher, RCMP, and usually stationed out the back of the frozen beyond.

Fraser found his tongue after a moment. "It's good to see you, Sir. You're a very welcome Deus Ex Machina." he said.

"Actually, we came in a car." Welsh said, not entirely sure what Fraser meant, but venturing a vague guess. Welsh stepped past Fraser and joined the local sheriff in cuffing their suspects and reading them their rights.

Author's Note: Seriously, here we are again. One chapter and an as-yet unwritten epilogue to go. I hate this part, it's hard to let go of the ones that were fun to write. Thanks for coming along for the ride. It'll be a week until I can post the final chapter, so hang in there! Theories about Fraser seeing his mother's death and repressing it all so thoroughly as to not ask basic questions like, "Hey, Dad, what did Mom die of, by the way?" owe much to various other writers' interpretations of Call of the Wild. Theories of violence begetting violence and suffering begetting suffering are courtesy of religious and philosophical texts handed down through the ages.

Oh, and for the record, Constable Fraser, I totally foreshadowed the cavalry, it's not my fault if you don't read fanfic you're starring in. Deus ex my ass. (Arguing with the characters in my own writing. I'm either on the way to becoming Italo Calvino or deeply in need of sleep. In light of game seven going into OT last night, I'll let you guess which.)