Title: Standing in the Snow
F/K friendship... maybe more (who knows?)
Rating: Probably PG-13. There's nothing explicit but the theme is death and grief so probably not suitable for younger people.
Disclaimer: Lots of other people that aren't me own Due South and the characters therein. I don't mean any harm by writing this and if the people that own Due South wish that I should take my fics down then I will do so. (please don't ask me to).
Summary: Ray is standing in the snow but the cold doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore.
WARNINGS - This is a DEATHFIC. There is NO happy ending.
For some very strange reason I can't write happy fics and I can't make happy endings. This story came to me on the spur of the moment and I just had to write it down.
This is also posted in Livejournal.
Standing in the snow
Ray didn't know how he came to be standing in the snow. He only knew that the cold had reached inside of him long before he left the confines of his room. He looked out at the vast fields of white, the fences and buildings which surrounded him were things he no longer saw. In his mind and in his heart, he would forever remain in the ice fields of the Arctic Circle. Forever would he travel these treacherous fields searching for the hand of Franklin, the reaching out hand, one he knew he would never reach.
---
Ten years had past since he and Fraser had begun their quest. Ten long and lonely years had dragged by since he had lost a part of his soul. Ray could remember the fear he had felt as he sat on that couch staring at that other cop, that undercover cop, who Fraser trusted implicitly and whose return Ray had known would change everything. Ray had been right, everything had changed, but not in the way he thought it would, and that was where it had all began.
As they had made their way across the ice fields, Fraser and he, he had felt that fear begin to grow. No longer had he been afraid of change, he had become afraid of being lost of becoming no-one. It had suddenly dawned on him that change was what he wanted. He had wanted to be more than just the person pretending to be the Mountie's partner. He had wanted, no he had needed, to know that there was a place for him in Fraser's life and that Ray Vecchio wouldn't be able to take that away from him. That is when he had come up with the idea for the quest.
---
Ray's knees gave way in the cold and his barely clad body crumpled to the ground. His boxers and vest quickly became soaked through by the cold, mushy, Chicago snow but Ray didn't notice. He clawed desperately at the snow, trying in vain to hold it close to him as tears streamed down his face and sobs shook his wiry frame. Over and over he cursed himself, blaming himself and his petty insecurities for his best friend's undeserved fate. His fist clenched and pounded at the snow he had, only moments ago, been attempting to hug.
A blanket was gently put over him and big, yet careful hands, grasped his arms steadily. Ray didn't try and fight; to fight needed strength of will that he could no longer muster. Instead he went completely still and limp. The gentle hands wrapped him in the blanket and broad arms lifted him off the ground with ease.
The next thing Ray knew he was, once more, back in his bed. The room door was never locked but he knew that there would be someone watching him now. They hadn't locked the doors since his second week in this place, over eight years ago. He was dry and his clothes had been changed but Ray didn't notice that – he hadn't noticed that he had gotten wet at all.
---
Their quest had begun so well; there had been so much hope, so much trust. The first night Ray had been cold, shivering in his sleeping bag, praying that the sun would soon come up and warm him again. The second night, Fraser had zipped their sleeping bags together and Ray had had the most peaceful night's sleep he had experienced since Stella left him. Two weeks into the quest Ray had almost died. Two weeks and two days into the quest Ray's soul had died and heart had broken beyond all hope of repair.
He had heard it said that what the ice takes, the ice keeps. He hadn't been willing, or able, to accept that. For a week he had travelled on the back of the sled, staring at the bundled form slumped before him. Diefenbaker had led the dogs; he had known what was going on and had solemnly, and without hesitation, stepped up to do his final duty for his human companions.
Upon arrival in the town, the dogs had begun to howl and bark, drawing a large crowd around them. As the people had neared Ray's world had gone dark. He could remember how the snow had felt as his face had rushed down to meet it and he could remember people lifting him and putting him in bed. He hadn't understood their language, nor had he wanted to. Ray had only needed to understand one thing – he was alone and it had all been his fault.
---
The lights outside his room had been switched off now. They used to switch off the light in his room too but ever since his second week they had stopped doing that. Ray lay down on the floor and curled up in a tight ball, hugging his knees to his chest. He couldn't bear to sleep on bed any more; he hadn't slept on a bed for ten years now. His room was on the bottom floor – this was because of what had happened to result in him being brought to this institution in the first place. Ray glided his fingers through the carpet fibres, twisting them until the carpet laced around his long, pointy digits. He clenched his fist to keep the carpet in his hand, as if holding on for his life.
---
Ray knew he had been questioned by the police, he just couldn't remember what the questions had been or how he had answered them. Ray knew there had been a funeral, he just couldn't remember what had been said and who had been there. Ray knew that people had thought he was just in shock and that, with time, he would pull out of it. They hadn't known what Ray had known.
Ray had seen a sight that would never leave his mind. Ray had known that every day that he lived would be a struggle and that nothing would ever make his world okay again. Ray had known that there was no going back he had known that no-one else could see this. A tragic accident they had called it, as if that made it all better, as if that absolved Ray's guilt. Ray had tried to nod and shake his head at the right moments. He had obviously done something right because they had allowed him back to work.
Things there hadn't turned out the way Ray had prayed that they would though. You see, there are only so many times that you can stand in front of an armed perp, your arms out and your weapon still sitting in its holster before you are pulled off field duty (unless you're an exceptionally polite Mountie, who believes that everyone is basically good). Ray managed to stay on field duty for a whole 6 months before the assigned him indefinitely to desk duty. In that time he had faced over 200 armed perps and yet none of them had managed to pull the trigger and shoot him.
They believed it was this move to desk duty that had made him finally snap. His landlady had walked into his flat one morning (three days after he was put on desk duty) to ask him if he had his rent money. She had discovered him his living room, his sofa crushing his body, an empty bottle of bourbon in his left hand, a bottle of pills by his head and a half eaten piece of pemmican in his right hand.
Ray had woken up at the hospital and pulled the wire out of his arm, before removing the tube that was down his neck. At the end of his bed he could see the shimmering image of a fully loaded sled, complete with a pack of dogs harnessed in front of it. He had leapt out of bed and jumped on the sled. Urging the dogs forward, he had set out fully intent upon finding Fraser and going on their quest to find the hand of Franklin. He couldn't understand why they weren't on it at that very moment in time.
They had found his body on the path below his second floor window. The next day he was moved to a secure facility with no doors and no windows. Here they kept him for a while, until it became clear that there was nothing they could do to bring back the detective that had once resided in the shell before them. Ray was moved to a psychiatric Institution for people who were deemed incurable.
---
In the middle of the night Ray awoke, sweat covering his body, the carpet fibres in his hand were no longer attached to the carpet. He leapt from the floor and ran to his door and flung it open. This seemed to calm him a little as he slid down the door resting his head against it. Softly he whispered "I'm sorry Fraser." Over and over again.
---
During his first week at the place where he was to spend the rest of his life, Ray had had the same nightmare over and over again. Each night in the middle of the night he would awaken screaming "FRASER!" at the top of his lungs. Stumbling around his darkened room he would keep calling out. "Fraser! Where are you? I can't see you." Eventually he would reach the door and attempt to open it, but it was locked. He would pound on the door screaming and crying "FRASER! I can't move it! It won't move!"
Someone suggested leaving Ray's light on so he could see as soon he woke up. This only worked in that he stopped trying to find Fraser and ran immediately to the door and began pulling on it and pounding it with his fists. So one night they posted a guard by his door instead and left it unlocked. This time, when he got to the door and found he could open it, he just slid to the floor and shook as sobs wracked his body. The guard couldn't bear to just watch this man cry so hard and attempted to comfort him but Ray had just shook backwards and forwards whispering apologies to Fraser before falling back into an uneasy sleep, with his back against the open door.
---
Nowadays there is no guard beside his door and no-one tries to comfort him in his grief because they have come to understand that nothing they say or do is registered through their patient's pain. They have made sure that there is nothing sharp on the threshold of his room and have put a little extra padding on his door and floor. Other than that all they can do is watch helplessly and hope that soon this broken man will find peace.