Maggie hummed as she adjusted the one nice dress she'd brought south with her. It was black velvet with burgundy color satin trim. It was warm and comfortable, two things the lady mountie valued highly. She darkened what day makeup she wore and ran a brush through her naturally blonde hair. Getting ready for dinner out with Ray, from the beginning of her shower until she'd put her modest, black heels on, took forty minutes.
"Hey Aunt Maggie, where are you going tonight?" Ben asked, looking up from the television.
"I have a dinner date with Ray, so you and Fraser will have to make do for yourself tonight." She struggled into her navy pea coat. Ben roused himself just in time to help her straighten the collar.
"Help her with her coat, Ben." Fraser spoke from the kitchen as he fried hamburgers on the stove in a cast iron skillet. Ben rolled his eyes and pushed himself up off the couch just in time to help Maggie with the collar of the RCMP service coat.
"Don't act like that, helping others is a sign of a great man and a gentleman." Maggie smoothed the boy's dark hair gently, stifling the urge to kiss his cheek.
"Yes ma'am." He mumbled, looking at her.
"Don't give up." Maggie gave him a quick kiss anyway before leaving. After she left the boy settled down in front of the television again, not really paying attention to it or anything else. After a few minutes of nothingness, the boy got up and wandered into the kitchen, silently watching Fraser as he simultaneously fried hamburgers and caramelized onions in a different skillet.
"Do you need any help with, um, anything?" Ben asked quietly, looking up at Benton quizzically, unsure of exactly how to proceed. Most of the male adults Ben had been around were either teachers, social workers or his mother's associates. The later of which he had steered clear of instinctively.
"Would you set the table please." Fraser answered without looking up from either job. After plundering for a moment he came up with plates, flatware and cups. Slowly, he put them on the table, still silent. Between the two of them they gathered supper together and ate. From time to time one or the other of them would steal a glance at the other. Green eye to green eye they sat eating hamburgers with caramelized onions, lettuce, tomato, and ketchup.
"Is there anything you'd like to ask me, Ben?" Fraser finally spoke, resting his napkin on his knee. The boy popped a french fry into his mouth and gazed at the mountie as he chewed slowly.
"How come you don't have a girlfriend or a wife or something?" Ben asked finally. Of all the questions he could have asked, Fraser didn't know why he had to ask that one? It took him a moment to collect his thoughts.
"Much of my time has been spent with the RCMP, it's difficult to..." Fraser didn't get to finish his long winded explanation.
"He's bashful as hell, that's why he's forty-something and alone," Bob Fraser walked into the kitchen, wearing his fur suit, replete with seal skin cap. "Every time a girl comes within ten yards of him he turns tail and runs. In middle school Carolyn Walsh cornered him in the outhouse and he crawled through a hole in the backside and ran off into the woods. It took his grandmother three days to coax him back to school." The elder Fraser ran his hand over his furry cap as he moved about the small area.
"Dad, that is not what happened and you know it." Benton turned a dozen shades of red as he tried to refute his father's claim. "She had rancid bear fat in her hair." Ben listened with eyes wide, in total awe.
"I guess it is kinda hard to find a girl when you have arguments with your dog in public and the uniform looks like it came out of Santa Claus' closet." Ben observed offhandedly. Both men turned to look at him.
"You are not helping young man." Benton's eyes were as hard as peridot gem stones.
"OK, just an observation, don't get your boots in a knot." Neither mountie had experience being talked to by children with so much sass.
"Have you told the boy how you and Victoria met yet, Son?" Robert Fraser asked, turning the conversation to a different tack.
"Nope, not yet." Ben answered, a mischievous gleam in his eye. Fraser hung his head for a moment before looking up again.
"She drove the get away car for a bank robbery in Alaska, the money was never recovered. Victoria crossed the border in a light aircraft, but it was forced down by inclement weather, I was the one assigned to track her down. *I tracked her to a place called Fortitude Pass. The storm had been blowing for days, the whole world was white. By the time I found her I'd lost everything, my packs, m supplies-everything. She was huddled in the lee side of a mountain crag. She was almost frozen, very near death, so I staked a lean-to, draped my coat across it, drew her inside and I covered her body with mine and I just held her, while the storm closed in around us like a blanket, until all I could hear was the sound of her heartbeat, weakening. I forced her to speak to me. Just to talk to me, say anything to keep the cold from taking her. And it snowed for a day and a night and another day. I was delirious, I almost gave up. The only thing I had to hold onto was the sound of her voice, which never waivered. She recited a poem..." * The tale hadn't changed since he'd begun telling it. Ben watched the mountie's face take on a sad, faraway cast. It was as if he were talking to someone intangible to either Bob Fraser nor Ben. That tale haunted him somewhere deep inside, somewhere he kept hidden.
"So, you were the first one to arrest Mom." Ben interrupted, seeing the pain in his eyes. Fraser only nodded, part of him glad to stop telling the tale that left him feeling emotionally exposed. Quietly, he swept all the pieces of himself back into their compartment and changed the subject.
"I'll wash if you dry." Standing up, Fraser gathered his empty dinner plate and walked to the sink. Ben shrugged but followed suit.
"When did you know you loved my mother?" The boy asked as he grabbed a terrycloth towel from the cabinet above the stove. Without thinking the mountie answered.
"When I first heard her recite the poem." An old wound had been opened up and Ben saw it in the grown man's eyes when he turned to hand him the skillet. He had seen that same kind of jagged pain in his mother's dark brown eyes before, especially when she looked at him or she saw falling snow. Those were the times that Victoria would hug her son tightly and find something to keep busy for a few hours, until the hurt passed.
Later...
"Thanks for a lovely evening, Ray, I had a wonderful time." Maggie smiled, squeezing his hand as they stood outside Fraser's apartment door. Gently, he stroked her cheek before leaning in to give her a goodnight kiss. When they heard a scratching on the door they knew it was time to leave.
"Goodnight, Ray, I'll call you tomorrow." Maggie planted a quick kiss on his cheek and let herself inside the apartment. A single candle burned on the kitchen table; a nightlight for her to see by. At the table, with photo albums spread out, Fraser sat in the dark. One, yellow shaft of security light illuminated the albums.
"Hello, Benton, you're up late." Maggie quietly pulled out a seat across from him.
"Oh, you're back already?" The mountie sat up straight, massaging the bridge of his nose then wiping the grit from his eyes.
"Already? It's midnight." The lady mountie stood up again to pour herself a cup of hours old coffee.
"You still must be on Yukon time." Fraser gave her a tired smile. He still wore the blue jeans and button down he'd had on at the ballpark. Maggie pulled the photo album to where she could see some of the black and white snapshots.
"This is your family album, I've never seen it before." Several of the snapshots were of a young, gangly Benton as he progressed through school as well as a few, more candid shots. A shy smile and intense green eyes were the same as the ones she saw in the man seated across the table.
"Yes, I found it among his things in his cabin, before it burnt." He flipped the page, revealing a service photo of Robert Fraser.
"Why so nostalgic tonight, Benton?" Maggie asked, still looking at the photos in the book. Fraser, who sat with his chin in one hand, shrugged.
"Contemplating the past I suppose."
"Thinking about what it would have been like if she hadn't escaped all those years ago?" Maggie glanced up from a shot of the entire Fraser family, Benton a toddler on his mother's lap. He chuckled, a dry, crackling sort of sound.
"Yes," He leaned back in the stiff, wooden chair, both hands covering his face for a moment, as if trying to wipe the past away. He could still see her standing on the train steps, her hand outstretched, waiting for him to join her. It would have been a grand adventure.
"Benton, you've lived life well, so far." Maggie gave him an encouraging smile and quickly squeezed his free hand.
"Have I?" Gently, he pulled away, his eyes even more haunted than before. This wasn't the usually buoyant Benton Fraser that Maggie had come to know and care for as her brother. She searched for the words to make it better but found none. The pair sat for a long moment in silence before they heard the sound of someone's bare feet slapping on the cracked, linoleum floor.
"What's going on, why are you two up?" Ben leaned against the door frame, his hair dark turning up in duck-tails behind his ears.
"I'm sorry, did we wake you up?" The mood in the apartment changed around them. Ben saw the subtle shift in both adults, as if they'd been talking about something private.
"Is that you?" The boy pointed to a picture beneath Maggie's hand of a very proud Fraser after a hockey game.
"Yes, that was taken when I was only a year or two older than you are now." Fraser smiled, the memory of days long past coming back to him.
"Hockey's cool, I've watched but never played." A wistful air settled over Ben.
"Well, a learning session is in order, tomorrow after my shift at the consulate." The mountie promised before he thought, Saturday was the dinner party for the Ecuadorian delegation.
"Sounds great." Ben yawned, his green eyes drooping.
"Right now it's off to bed with you young man." Maggie pointed one, sharp, authoritative finger up at him. Ben just grinned a little bit and turned to go. Once he'd left the kitchen she turned to Fraser,
"Hockey, that's a good start." A knowing twinkle in her eye teased him until finally a smirk pulled at the right side of Fraser's lips. A laugh erupted from the usually quiet, lady mountie.
* Pieces taken from the monologues in episodes "You Must Remember This" and "Victoria's Secret 1&2"
Hope you enjoy this long chapter =)