Author's Website: http://members.tripod.com/HthW/dueme.html

Disclaimer: Fraser and Kowalski belong to Alliance/Atlantis. Other bit players are mine, for whatever small amount it's worth to you.

Author's Notes:

Story Notes: This is *part three* of the Happily Ever After sequence. Please, please be sure you've read "East O the Sun, West O the Moon" and especially "Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down" before you tackle this one. Otherwise, spoilers, things that don't make sense, just all manner of wrongness.

The Steadfast Tin Soldier
by Hth

I stop when I hear her voice, right outside the door of her room. I dunno why I'm stopping, except maybe that she can be so quiet, and I always like to let her keep talking without getting in the middle once she's on a roll.

Her voice is heavy from the medication, and it makes her sound older. Older, and drunk. "-- looking for my father?" she's saying, and I take it like a punch. I've been taking those nonstop for almost twenty-four hours now; I can hardly feel them anymore, except that I can.

Fraser. Where the fuck, where the fuck are you?

"He just went to get a cup of coffee, honey," a woman's voice says -- a nurse I don't know. Just starting her shift, probably. "He'll be right back."

"No. That's Stan. He takes care of me. Somebody should be looking for my father. Benton Fraser. RCMP. He's in the field."

I want to go. More than anything, I want to take one of the dogs and fucking go out there after him myself. I know I could find him. I know I'd just...go right to him. I always could, even though Fraser says it's the other dogs in the team who can track Dief's scent. Bullshit; it's me. It's me who can find Fraser, anytime, anywhere in the Yukon. I'm itching, tapping, rattling apart with the energy of wanting to get out of this hospital, wanting to quit waiting and start bringing him back here.

I want to go, but I can't. I can't because of Grace. Because I take care of her.

"Kowalski." I turn around, and there's Inspector Schiller, and some guy. Schiller wears the red uniform, even more religiously than Fraser does; she's old-school, like him, only she's got an excuse because she's old, his dad's generation. She's thin and mean-looking, a real battle-axe, but I know Donna Schiller, and that's not the whole story. She's tough but she's good, one of the good ones, and she's the kind of friend to me and Fraser that a commanding officer should be -- friend, but not friendly. Trustworthy, Frase would say.

Where are you, where are you, where are you?

"Kowalski," she says again, a little bit gentler. Enough gentler to get me worried. "This is Mark Sewell. He's a child psychologist."

"Oh, yeah. Right. You're the guy who's gonna rake her over the coals until she says I been beating her or something." Hey, if he wants to catch me off-balance, so sorry. We always knew this could happen; we planned for it, went over it a million times together. Fraser and me both, we've been in police work long enough to know that innocence is no excuse when the government gets involved. I can handle this. Even by myself, I can handle it.

Where are you where are you where are you?

"Mr. Kowalski, there's no reason to be nervous."

"I'm not nervous."

Mark Sewell doesn't seem to like that completely; his eyes narrow so fast that most people wouldn't even notice, but I do. He's a nice-looking young guy, but too slicked-down and buttoned-up by half. Gotta wonder what the hell he's doing in Tuktoyuktuk; he's got a Vancouver look to him. "We routinely investigate accidents of this nature, especially when there are custody issues with the child. It's mostly just procedure."

"There aren't any custody issues."

"Please, let's sit down." I look up at Schiller, and she doesn't seem any happier than I am, but what's she going to do? She fades discreetly away while I step away from the door and across the hall to a bench. I lean my arms on my thighs and stare down hard into my coffee cup. I already hate this guy, even more now that I've actually met him.

"There aren't custody issues," I tell him again. "Kid lives with her father; what's your issue with that?"

"Constable Fraser."

"Yeah, that's right."

"And where is he?"

Wish I knew. "He's working. He covers a lot of ground when he's working. He's gonna be here, as soon as he can." Assuming they can get through to him by radio, which assumes that he's not in the middle of some goddamn manhunt, because if he is, he wouldn't notice a nuclear blast, let alone a heads-up from Tuktoyuktuk. That's just how he is. You gotta love it, or you'd kill him.

"And how often is he gone?"

Too often. Too often, and every time I try to tell him that, I trip up on things like he's tired or he's hurt or he's so damn happy to be back home that I can't pick a fight with him or he's giving me that look and he's getting ready to kiss me. And I haven't told him that it's too much, that he has to cut back, because that's the one thing me and Fraser never did to each other. We never got between each other and the job. "Not during the winter," I hedge. "Just...depends on the weather."

Mark Sewell nods like that means something, when I specifically made it up not to mean anything, and I hate him even more. He writes something down. "You are Grace Metcalf's guardian in Constable Fraser's absence."

"I take care of her." I read to her and check her homework, even though she practically knows more than I do already, it feels like. I take her grocery shopping, even though she and I take turns cooking -- she makes a mean minestrone soup, that kid. I taught her how to hitch a sled, and it was just her and me there when Sorcha had her pups, and we stayed up all night just watching them and drinking hot chocolate and talking about dogs and my mom and Animal Planet, and I called her in sick to school the next day so she could get some sleep. Pretty fucking irresponsible, huh? Best night of my life, too.

"And what exactly is your relationship to Grace?"

I lean back against the wall. Doesn't matter how many times Fraser and I went over it, I don't feel ready for it now. I feel like grabbing Mark Sewell by the back of his thick hair and smashing his head against the white hospital wall for thinking what he's thinking, for thinking about me and Frase and Gracie at all. Why can't they all just leave us the hell alone? "I'm her father's partner."

"You're not with the RCMP, are you?"

"No, I'm an American. I came to the Yukon on the trail of Fraser's mom's killer, and for reasons that I don't think I have to fucking justify to you, I remained as a liaison to the Mounties. I been doing field work with Fraser for eight years."

If my little temper fit pisses him off, he's getting his legs under him now, and he doesn't show it on his face at all. "But not anymore."

No. Not anymore.

"Well, someone's got to stay with Grace, don't they?"

He nods, pretending to look pleased with my level-headed adult-type perspective, and writes more stuff down. "How long has Constable Fraser had sole custody of Grace?"

"Fifteen months." Finally, an easy question, one where I don't have to worry what he's going to make out of the answer. Fifteen months, boom. Open and shut.

"And before that, he had no contact with her at all?"

Okay, so you can make something out of *anything,* I guess. "Before that, he didn't even know she existed. Her psycho fugitive mother didn't bother to keep him posted."

"So his relationship with Grace's mother was--"

"There was no relationship."

"Well, his--"

"No, no well. No relationship. He barely knew her. She tried to set him up as the fall guy for her diamond heist, and it involved getting in his pants, okay? She got away. He never saw her again. A buddy in Florida found out about Grace after her mom died, and he called Fraser."

"Well--"

"Enough with the fucking well," I growl. "You came here to talk about Grace, you talk about Grace. I'll talk about her dad, I'll talk about me, I'll tell you whatever, but I didn't know her mom and it doesn't matter anyway, because she's dead. New question."

He looks at me, hard, and I realized that I protesteth too much, like Fraser would say. Great, now he's gonna be on Victoria like red on a Mountie. "You think Ms. Metcalf was an unstable parent."

I snort. "Yeah. I think so. Like I said, I never knew the lady, but she had this way of stealing things and shooting people. So I'm guessing. But -- wait, but hey, you're not gonna talk about her to Grace, are you?"

"My interview with Grace will be confidential, of course."

"Look, give the kid a break; she doesn't need that." Shit shit shit, what have I done, I've set him right on the scent of everything I shoulda been keeping him away from. I laid down the law early on, and me and Fraser both stuck to it like bubblegum to a shoe: just Gracie, nobody else -- Gracie can talk about her if she feels like it, but nobody the fuck else, not unless she brings it up. In my house, as much as I can make it that way, Victoria Metcalf never existed. It's what you call a safe zone, for all of us. Olly olly oxen free. And we may not be in my house, but she's my kid, and I don't want this officious asshole sweeping in here in the name of the Queen or whatever and asking her a bunch of questions about what was it like to live with Victoria. Jesus Hopping Christ, can't he see how not right that is? Doesn't he care? "The point is," I say, and Christ, I'm desperate now, "you wanna know how things are *now,* right? If we're taking care of her okay?"

"I want to know how Grace is, yes. But if her early experiences lead her to need extra assistance in order to undo some type of psychological trauma--"

"She's not traumatized. I mean, she's a good kid. She does good in school--"

"I'm sure she does, Mr. Kowalski."

"Hey, don't patronize me, okay? I know there's more important things than grades, but I'm trying to tell you, we don't need you here. She had an accident. She wasn't even at home, she was at a friend's house, so you know I had nothing to do with it. Fraser's her dad, he's her only relative, and you got no business stirring up the waters now that she's settled in here with him."

"Are you Constable Fraser's lover?"

In my head, I can hear Fraser's voice, saying, *Well, we won't have a choice, Stanley. We'll simply have to tell the truth and assume that any reasonable person will understand the situation the way we do.*

And the thing isn't that I'm scared, because I know our rights, and I know that without an actual person to sue us for custody, the chances that the government will want to take her just for the hell of it are virtually nil, especially here in Canada, where the laws are a little sweeter than back home to people like us. And it isn't that I'm ashamed, because I'm so far past caring what guys like Mark Sewell think about anything; once you live through your first couple of blizzards and a rock fall for good measure, just you and your partner and your sled in a hundred thousand square miles of nothing but white Northwest, it's just not important anymore, what anyone else thinks.

I look him in the eye, and I have every reason to tell the truth, up to and including it's what Frase would do if he were here, but I don't say anything. I just stare at him.

Because I won't -- I Will Not -- agree to imply that he has a right to it. He's nothing, he's nobody. He's got a job to do, and I guess I respect that, but I don't think his job involves crawling into bed with me and Fraser. That's mine. That's my adventure, and my shelter from the blizzard, and what makes my little world go 'round, and fuck him if he thinks I'm giving it to him to write down for his files. I just keep looking at him, until he starts to fidget and look away.

Damn right.

"Excuse me...Mr. Kowalski?" It's the nurse, coming out of her room, and I jump to my feet, not caring about the slosh of the coffee. "Do you have a moment? Grace is asking--"

"I got nothing but time," I tell her, flipping her and Sewell both a little wanna stop me? smile, and I leave him sitting there in the hallway, closing the door between us. Let him wait. Let him wait or go away, whichever, I don't care.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, and Grace closes her eyes and opens them again, just exactly like Fraser does when something hurts but he's telling himself it doesn't. Damn, what am I thinking? Eleven broken bones, and I'm practically jumping up and down on her hospital bed. I'm worse than the dogs sometimes. "Hi, Bright Eyes," I say. "How's, uh, how was the nap?"

"Hi, Stan," she says, and smiles at me. Creepily, it's not Fraser's smile; he never said if it was Victoria's or not, but if it is, if that's where she got that smile from, then...then no wonder he didn't know how to say no when he should have. "Am I -- they won't tell me -- I didn't hurt my spine, did I?"

"Oh -- oh, jeez, no, nothing like that. No, hey, you're going to be just fine, you savvy? We might be hiring someone to come stay with us for a little while, like a nurse, just to help teach you how to do stuff the right way so you don't get worse while you're getting better--"

"A physical therapist?"

Right. Keep forgetting. "Yeah, a physical therapist. But there's nothing wrong with your spine."

"I don't remember what happened," she mumbles, like she's ashamed of that.

"You fell down the stairs at the party."

"I think I was asleep...." Probably she was. She sleepwalks sometimes. I can't believe I didn't warn the mom, didn't tell anyone to watch out for her, I can't believe I flaked out and just didn't think about it, I don't know what I'm going to tell Frase when he gets here, I don't know how I'm going to be able to take the way he'll forgive me.

"Stan?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you talked to Ben yet?"

"He's...on his way." Somehow I believe it, even though I don't know if it's true, and Grace looks exactly the same way. Like she believes it, whether or not it's true. She sighs a little and closes her eyes, and suddenly I remember the thing that Mark Sewell made me forget for a little while by being such an unlikeable freak.

I remember the thing that I promised myself while she was in surgery, sewing up the things that her broken ribs stabbed through, and I remember what I've been working on ever since. The thing I have to tell Fraser when he gets here, and the thing he *won't* forgive me for.

Don't think about Fraser. Won't do any good until he gets here; think about Grace. I brush her curly hair back with my palm, wanting just to wipe my hand over her face and make that look go away, that bone-deep sadness that I've seen on his face maybe a dozen times in the last eight years, and on hers that many times or more in the last fifteen months. That expatriate look. I called it that once to Fraser's face and his jaw almost fell off; I had to sock him in the shoulder and say, I like Hemingway, I'm not just for *decoration,* you know. He kissed me hard and said, I've been aware for some years that you know everything worth knowing, Stanley.

Shit. That man can turn a phrase any which way, but he's Shakespeare with the compliments. I always feel like I should be writing them down -- not that I'm ever in danger of forgetting any of them.

Maybe I should start copying them down. I may need to dip into my back supply here before too long.

"Would you sing to me?"

My heart stops and then jumps up again with a bang. It's weird; it's a surprise. She's asked Fraser for that before, but never me, not any of the nights I've put her to bed. She's heard me sing, with the radio, or stupid old tv jingles to make her laugh, but she's never asked. "Okay," I say, thinking, What the hell am I going to sing? Somehow, I don't think ABBA quite cuts the mustard.

I give a little cough to clear my throat. Where are you, Frase? You on your way, or what?

I remember the first night we got settled into the house here, remember standing in the kitchen next to the champagne in the bucket of ice, and able to hear him saying goodnight to her on the other side of the wall. She asked him if he would sing, and of course he said he would, and it hit me for the first time, I caught the way the wind was blowing. I remember thinking, *He's not my Fraser anymore. He's ours, he's a third of the equation instead of half.* And it felt strange, but good, like it made Fraser smaller but better, like he belonged to me less but I loved him more, and for once in my life I didn't mind waiting, not at all. I remember his voice, through the wall. *'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed....*

Further back, I remember his voice in that moment, that one, incredible, smack to the head that had me seeing stars that never went away. I closed my eyes, and I listened to him -- *tracing one more line through a land so wide and savage, to make a Northwest Passage to the sea....* -- and I thought, Oh, God, I think I'm in love with Fraser, because this is the world like it was made to be, before this I only knew what to save the world *from,* but this is what you save the world for.

Sure can't sing like Fraser can, but hey, she knows that. She just wants to hear a familiar voice, I guess, and she's like her dad: she never wanted me to be anything but there. Only wanted me to be all the things I already was.

Still, all sentimentality on the back burner for a minute, I still don't know what to sing. For some reason, out of nowhere, I think about Stella, and her collection of classical CDs, cello music and classical guitar, and her two Nirvana albums stuck in there, the way she'd flush and get defensive when I teased her about her thing for Kurt Cobain, the way I knew that none of her friends knew she even owned them; I was the one who knew it wasn't Yo-Yo Ma she put on the stereo when she stayed up late to soak the stress away in a long bath.

I wonder if Stella's okay. I wonder if it would be okay to call her for no reason. I wonder if I'll ever see her again.

It's not a hymn, but it sort of sounds like one when I sing it -- slower and quieter than good old Kurt ever did. I'm singing it a little like Fraser might, if he were a Nirvana fan -- if he got it kind of mixed up in his head with the Northwest Passage song. "Come as you are...as you were...as I want you to be. As a friend, as a friend, as an old memory...."

Come on, Frase. Come here, my Fraser, come on.

And maybe Kurt somehow got his angel wings after he blew his head off, because when she's asleep again and I slip out the door to see if Mark Sewell still has his ass parked in the hallway, goddamned if they're not both there. Sewell and Fraser, standing down the hall talking quietly, Sewell with his pen going scritch scritch scritch over the page, Fraser with his Stetson tucked under his arm, an almost invisible frown creasing his forehead.

"Hey, Mark!" I call cheerfully. "Fuck off and let the man see his kid, why dontcha?"

They both raise their heads to look at me, and Sewell scowls, probably because of my majorly unpaternal profanity, and Fraser looks at me like I'm his absolute savior, like I'm the finest thing he's seen in weeks. Well, come to think of it, hopefully I am.

I push aside the thought of how I'm never going to be his savior again after this. Let me just have a minute, just a few more seconds here of happy family reunion, and then I'll tell him. Then I'll do it, swear to God.

He gives Sewell the ultra-polite boot, and then he comes straight to me, only a few of those longlegged strides down the short hallway, and he's hugging me, and Christ, he feels good, the texture of the serge under my arms, the shape of Fraser under the serge, the smell of him everywhere. "She's okay," I say into his ear. "She's gonna be just fine, Frase, it looks a lot worse than it is."

Fraser bear-hugs me even tighter, then goes where I point him, into Grace's room. Sewell looks smug, like he thinks I was trying to hide something from him and not doing a very good job of it. He doesn't get it; I don't care if he knows the score, but I want him to know that he got it by spying on us, not because I had anything I felt like telling him.

The important thing, though, is that he fucks off, and I can finally sit down for real, alone on that bench in the hall, and I fall asleep practically before my back hits the wall, and I wake up leaning on Fraser's shoulder -- the shirt, not the serge. I reach out instinctively and wrap my fingers around the leather strap of his suspenders, and he leans his cheek over into my hair. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Yeah. A girl in her class had a birthday party, a -- sleeping bag -- whaddaya call 'em -- slumber party." I don't tell Fraser how surprised I was that Grace got invited; maybe he knows how much time she doesn't spend playing with kids her own age, or maybe he doesn't, but it's just one more thing I was never really sure how to tell him. It would've been so much easier if he'd just been around to notice on his own.... "She walked in her sleep, and she fell -- down this big old twostory spiral staircase."

He takes a deep breath and lets it out calmly. "She must have been...so frightened."

"She don't remember it that well."

"That's what she told me, too, but...."

"But nothing. She lies worse than you do, and she likes it about as much. Trust me, she's not just protecting you." But he's got it in one, he knows that she would try to protect him. From feeling sorry for her, from worrying about her, from her being in his way. Does he know it because it's what he would do? They're so fucking alike. Make me wanna crack their heads together sometimes.

Besides, she was really asleep. I know, because the kid, that girl Olivia came to the hospital with her mom, and she was red-eyed from crying, and her mom poked her in the back and she said she was sorry, very sorry. At first I thought she was just being dragged there as a Canadian emergency courtesy drill, but the story came out piece by piece, and it turns out that most of the other girls were awake. They were watching Grace walk and talk in her sleep, and they thought it was funny, you know, like kids would, just normal kid stuff. They let her do it, and it was too late to stop her when she turned around by the stairs, and anyway, Olivia swore, crying again, they thought she could see the steps, because her eyes were open. They didn't think she would fall.

It was just a dumb accident. I know that; I must've fallen out of or off of or into everything in a seven-mile radius from my house when I was a kid. I felt bad for the girl who had a kid fall twenty feet and practically bleed to death internally at her tenth birthday party. And at the same time, I wanted to throw her down an elevator shaft, prissy little bitch who just laid there in her sleeping bag laughing at my daughter and letting her almost almost fucking die at the slumber party that was supposed to be so normal, such a great thing for Grace.

But Fraser would've been cool about it, very polite, and I did the honors. It's okay, I told her and her mom. Accidents happen -- you know kids. And then as they were leaving, after I told them they could see Grace in a couple of days, I had to ask, What was she saying?

Olivia looked down at the floor, probably feeling lower than dirt, and probably she should've, too. Just *mamma,* she told me. Just calling mamma. Her own mother looked like she was almost ready to throw herself down the elevator shaft in atonement. I just turned my back, trying not to think of Gracie calling out to her dead mother, and those stupid girls giggling about it. Trying not to think about what must be in Gracie's restless dreams -- Victoria alive, Victoria dead? Was she calling her back, or begging her to get away?

"It was just an accident. I shoulda told the lady that she does that sometimes." Protecting Fraser. Did she inherit that from him, or did she learn it from me?

I'm leaning up against him, but suddenly I feel as far from him as I've ever been, and I'm suddenly sick with understanding that the clock's run out, and I have to take care of this now and for always. I understand, too, what it means. I'm impulsive, sure, but I can puzzle my way through an implication or two when I have to, when I'm on my own.

I take care of her, I remind myself. I take care of her.

"You shoulda been here," I tell him, soft but not letting him take a walk on it.

He stiffens, just a tiny bit, the muscle in his shoulder starting to coil up. "I came as soon as I heard."

I sit up straight, sit up to look into his eyes. God, those eyes, my blue-eyed Ben Fraser. "You didn't come fast enough. She needed surgery, Frase. I couldn't sign the release, because I'm not her father. They had to get a bunch of different doctors to sign off on something that said she might die if they didn't get her on the table. Do you get that? Do you get that you left me here to watch them getting together to agree that she was dying?"

He looks pale, under the arctic tan. "What could I -- I did the best I could, Stanley. I dropped everything and--"

Harder. Meaner. "No, Frase. You didn't drop everything. You were in the fucking *field,* and I was taking care of your daughter."

"I don't know what you expect me to--"

"Fine, so I'll tell you. I expect you to get a transfer. I expect you to put the sled in a box, farm out the dogs so some younger Mountie can have wacky adventures in the ice fields, and come live with your family."

I can tell he's pissed off, even as hard as he's trying to stay blank. He stands up and takes a few caged steps. "I'm sorry, Stanley. I'm aware of the burden--"

I've never wanted to punch him so badly, not even the time when I did punch him. I settle for aiming a kick at his shins, and he jumps away from it reflexively. "You asshole, don't you ever call her a burden again. I am not asking this so that I won't have to help out as much, okay? I'm asking because she thinks you're fucking Superman, she thinks you're the Prime Minister of heaven and earth, and I'm sick of watching you walk away from her."

That's it. That's it, I've said it. Victoria walked away from her on the end of a rope. Stella and Ray, well, they didn't have much choice, but she liked it there on the beach, and now they're gone, too. And Fraser, he's gone so much it's like life gets put on hold when he is there, it's like vacation, and the only normal life she has is when she and I hang together and wait for him to get back in our lives.

I used to be able to follow him anywhere. Gracie never could. Either way, we're in the same boat now. We're both in love with Benton Fraser, RCMP, and we both wait around for him to be done with everything else before he comes home.

Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be.

"What sort of example would I set for my child, if I abandoned my duty?"

"What about Chicago, Frase? You were in one place there, and we did plenty of good deeds, don't you remember? You don't have to be scouring the ends of the earth to have a duty."

He shakes his head, fiercely. "No, I -- don't you remember? The times we talked about this around the fire...about how we belonged here, about how it was a calling, something we had to do to be whole?"

Yeah, I remember. I wonder if he's listening to himself; we we we. Yeah, it was our fucking calling. Ours. And I walked away from it. It's different when it's me, is that the way it is, Fraser? I can just close my eyes and forget about how it was when you and I went to the edge of the world and back twice a day, about how it made me feel alive like nothing else ever did, nothing else except you? Fuck you, my baby, my Fraser. Fuck you. It hurt like hell to close my eyes, but I did it. I do it every damn day, and so can you.

"We were younger then," I say tightly. "And you didn't have a daughter who needed you."

I can almost see the wheels turning, see him changing directions. He turns back to me, fixing me with those eyes, the earnestness practically pouring off of him. "You're right, Stanley. You're entirely right; we haven't provided for her adequately. We can speak to a lawyer and find out how we can prevent something like this from happening again. If we can't make you a legal guardian, at least power of attorney--"

He doesn't see it. He won't see it. I have to send up a flare, one that I didn't want to use but somehow knew all along that I'd end up having to. "Fraser. I've talked to my own lawyer."

His forehead creases, puzzled, and he rubs his eyebrow. I'm sorry for this, Frase. You know how bad I loved you, don't you? But you left me the only one who could take care of her, and I have to, I can't do the wrong thing here. "I got a lawyer. And I talked to Maggie Mackenzie. She said she'd--"

"No. No."

"Listen to me, Frase, you don't want to fight this one."

"No! She's my daughter."

"Listen to me! Listen, if Maggie sues you for custody, she will *win,* okay? The judges are gonna like her better because she's a woman, they're gonna like that she's a blood relative, and they're gonna love that she's accepted a job training Mounties in Ottawa. We're talking stable home environment, Fraser; on paper it's gonna look so much better than some -- stranger taking care of her while you're gone months at a time."

He looks almost panicked. I'm gonna throw myself down that elevator shaft when this is all over, I really fucking might. "You can't be asking me simply to accept this."

"I'm just giving you the straight dope, Fraser. If you fight, you'll be dragging Gracie through a bunch of family court bullshit for no reason. Fraser, for Christ's sake, is this what you want? You want her to grow up like you did, a million miles from nowhere with her nose in a book and no mother and a father who--"

"Don't. Don't say a word about my father."

If there's one thing I hate, it's Fraser giving me orders. I bounce up to my feet and hit him in the chest with the side of my hand. "Don't tell me what to do, just because you know I'm right! What the hell good does it do for you to spend half your life brooding about turning into him if you're not going to stop it when you have the chance?"

"Ray. Ray." He only calls me Ray anymore when he's totally cracked, when he can't tell up from down and north from south anymore. Looking back on it, I know I'll feel sorry for him. Looking back, I know I'll be sorry. But it's like my mom always said -- can you believe she was right? *You'll understand when you have kids of your own.* Understand the things you're capable of, understand how hurting someone can be the only right thing to do. I understand, even though I wish I didn't have to. "I can't give up. I can't fail. Don't you see that?"

"I see that you have failed." He takes a step back, like I just shot him. I'm sorry, Fraser. "I see that kids need *homes,* and you haven't given her one."

"I gave her you," he says softly. "Doesn't that mean anything? Isn't that reason to help me?"

"No. It's reason to help her. I love you, Fraser. I love you. But you're an adult, and she's only nine, and there's no one but me who can do this. I wish I could help you."

"But you won't."

I meet his eyes, the only honorable thing to do. "No, I won't. I'll testify against you, Frase. I'll tell them you're not fit."

"Why?" His voice breaks; I've never heard him like this, never.

"Because it's true," I whisper, and he turns away, head and shoulders low, broken.

When he walks without looking back at me and shuts me out of Grace's room, I collapse back onto the bench. My hands are shaking when I look at them, and I'm having to pound it into my thick head. Over over over. It's over. Fraser won't bend, he won't give in when someone asks him to change his course, not even if it's me. He won't take another job. He won't forgive me for making him face the fact that he had a year and a half, and he never twigged to how a guy gets to be a father, he failed the pop quiz because he never fucking studied for it.

The day he left the first time, the first day me and Grace spent alone together...I was scared out of my mind. I was never so scared of anything, in all my life, as I was of having total responsibility for this little, lonely kid I barely knew.

Fear, the way Fraser sees it, is always something to be overcome. I don't think I ever overcame my fear of taking care of Grace. I don't think parents are supposed to. I think you're scared for them forever. I don't know if Fraser -- much as I love him, Christ, much as I loved him -- can hack that.

I did the right thing. I did the right thing. And he'll never forgive me.

I talked to Maggie for hours last night. She's been wanting children anyway; she's been thinking about adoption. At her age, she says, you can't trust the things you really care about to a process as stupid and inane as dating, which made me laugh. Luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that I didn't have to do much dating in my life; the things I really cared about more or less sort of just happened to me, just out of the clear blue sky. Before long, Grace is going to be a teenager, and what the hell business do I have raising a teenage girl? She needs a mother. She needs someone like Maggie.

It all just seemed to slip into place. It felt right, it made sense. I kept tearing up while we talked about it, but I knew it was right. The one thing bugging me though -- I made a joke out of it, said something like, You're not gonna stick her in a tree and go out wrestling cougars or anything, are you? And that made her laugh, and she said, Oh, God, I loved my parents a lot, but don't you think you have to be -- you know, a little bit crazy to live like they did? Yeah, I said, maybe a little bit. Snow-crazy, or something.

I was snow-crazy once. God, I can't believe how easy it was for him to forget that. I was his partner, once. In everything.

When did I turn into the goddamn grownup, you know? And why did it have to happen without him?

I fall asleep again, and Constable Schiffer wakes me up, but I won't talk to her, my brain is still half asleep and I just push her hand off my shoulder and lay down on the bench and wish I could dream about building fires and the Northern Lights and Fraser's blue eyes an inch away from mine while he lays under me, his nose brushing my nose, smiling at me and smoothing the blanket across my back. I wish I could dream about being younger, and adventuring. I can almost hear her voice and Fraser's, talking all hushed and hurried, but it's nothing I can focus on.

It's almost like a dream when he helps me to my feet, and I wrap my arms around him and feel him sway me side to side. Something about him smells different, and it's the smell of tears on his face, and I lick the traces of them. Something's heavy against my legs, too, and it breathes like Diefenbaker. Could be Diefenbaker; he always had a way of horning into hospitals where he didn't belong. "Come on," Fraser whispers. "Let's go home."

"Have to wait...." I can't remember what for, though. For...for Fraser, except that he's here now, and.... Wake *up,* *Jesus,* Kowalski.

"Let's go home," he says again, and I give in. Doesn't Fraser always know what to do? Doesn't he always?

Why couldn't he always? Why did he have to go and be right for all those years, and then just up and quit?

He drives me home, and I'm waking up, but now that it's really happening, I don't want it to. I follow him inside, but I make him undress me, like I couldn't do it myself, because I just don't want him to make me talk or think; I *could,* I just don't want to.

I lie down and close my eyes and figure he's just going to leave me there, but he lies down with me, with one arm spread over my chest. He kisses me, and I'm plenty awake enough to know that this doesn't jibe with the Fraser who won't ever forgive me for taking his daughter away from him, but I figure maybe I shouldn't clue him in just yet. I figure I should just shut the fuck up and kiss him back.

When he lets my mouth go, like a year or so later, I gasp in and then breathe out, saying, "This isn't about wanting to hurt you, Fraser, I know it has to seem like it, but I swear it's not."

"I know." His fingers trace my cheek and along my jaw, and I can almost hear the crackling sound of his fingers on my stubble in the dead silence. "My father," he finally whispers, moving his lips against my eyelid, " was patrolling the same terrain when he was sixty-two that he'd patrolled his entire career. I'm forty-four, Stanley. And it gets harder every month. I'm so tired. I have to work harder...than I ever did when I had you there to help me. I really don't see how he managed it."

"Fraser," I mumble, "if anyone tells you you're quitting the field because you couldn't live up to Ye Olde Legend of Bob Fraser, you just send them to me and I'll kick them in the head for you, okay?"

"Even if I'm that person?" he asks, with a weird, lost laugh.

This is my last chance, and I know it. I make myself stay still, looking relaxed and unthreatening, but inside it's all systems go, and I know I have one shot at moving the immovable object, at making Benton Fraser bend. "I'll make you a deal, Frase," I offer, sounding mellow. "If I tell you how he did it, will that be enough for you? If you know why it worked for him and it's not gonna work for you, will you agree to come home instead of fucking proving something to yourself?"

He sounds small, so small you could lose him. "Yes," he says. "Yes, if you know, I need you to tell me."

"He just assumed you'd always be okay. He never thought you might not be. It kept him strong."

Fraser's quiet for a long time, and then he starts to quiver. It's laughter, but there's no sound, and he kisses my face three times. "In my father's day," he says, "the RCMP issued you a stick and a paper bag. If you lost the stick, they charged you for it."

"Yeah, and my old man had to walk uphill both ways to school. Fraser--" And I'm laughing now, too, laughing with him, "what the hell are you talking about?"

"It's just -- of course. Of course. I was his son. He thought he was invincible. He thought I was, too. He thought I didn't need him, or anyone else."

"Frase. He was wrong."

"Yes, of course he was. Of course, he was terribly, terribly wrong, and very foolish, and I love you, because I think you are invincible, because in all these years, it has never once occurred to me that you need me."

"I do."

"No, you don't. You -- you couldn't have said what you said to me if you weren't willing to lose me."

Willing might be a little strong, but he's got the gist of it, he's on the money. "Are you having a moment of clarity here, Fraser?"

"Yes, Stanley, I think I might be." He kisses me again, deep and deeper, and I want him so bad you'd think I'd never had him before -- I guess because I was counting on never having him again.

I twine my legs around him, and his hips shift so that his hard-on is bumping into my hip; I can feel the heat of it through the fabric of his longjohns. I run my hands down over his hair, and on down his back. "You really should...explain it to me. Later."

"Later," he repeats, huskily, and he holds my chin this time while he kisses me, and I don't think I'll ever get over the way I go crazy for Fraser's strength, no matter how many times I want to hit him and shake him and tell him to quit being so damn strong. "Stanley?" he murmurs, tonguing my ear while one hand works itself underneath me to get a grip on my ass. I make some kind of hunh? sound, and he says, "Is this what is sometimes referred to as 'make-up sex?'"

"Well -- yeah. Yeah, sure it is. Why do you ask, Frase?"

"I just don't recall ever having had make-up sex before."

I give that a little bit of thought -- I mean, just a little bit, but still, it's thought. "Probably because we usually fight in the middle of life-threatening situations. Then we gotta make up to keep from getting killed, and afterwards we've already -- you know, made up, and we're into the thankGod -we're-not-dead sex."

"We have had rather a lot of that over the years." He licks deep into my ear, which makes me shiver, and then he says, in Fraser's I-really-mean-this voice, the only one he can't put on and take off at the drop of a hat, "Thank God we're not dead." I don't know if he's thinking about Grace or about this, about us, but either way -- yeah. Yeah, I'm all over the sentiment.

And Fraser's all over me, and he's doing that purring, humming thing that means he's not only horny, but in a good mood, too -- playful. "I'm looking forward to make-up sex."

"Yeah?" is all the comeback I'm managing. The longjohns normally feel nice and smooth, but when I'm turned on like this and it's my dick humping against them, the cloth scratches, practically gouges -- but in a way that turns the dial even higher.

"You've taught me the virtues of being willing to try anything once," Fraser says, in that silky, sexy voice, that playing voice.

I can't help laughing, though. "Are you ever in good hands, my friend, because I am the king of make-up sex. I owe at least four years of my eleven-year marriage to make-up sex."

He rolls us both over -- strong, strong, so fucking sexy -- until I'm straddling him, burying my fingers in his hair, looking down at his blue eyes in the early morning light. "Teach me," he says, and for once, I don't have a problem with taking Fraser's orders.

It's weird to be doing it like this, with Fraser all stretched out and just looking at me like that, because usually with Frase there's two settings: there's work-mode, the one where things get done, and there's jump-mode, where he comes at me, all alpha-wolf and let-me-taste-you and he barely lets me catch my breath, which is okay, because breath is more fun to chase than it is to catch. But this is different. It's not that he's not into it, because he definitely is -- I can see it in his face, and that's not the only place I can see it, either. This must be make-up-sex Fraser. So pleased to meet you.

I start ripping the buttons on his underwear open as fast as I can, pop pop pop, until it's open and there's a wide strip of nothing but Fraser from throat to groin. I lean my weight back a little on his thighs, and I just take a good, long look, because damn. Damn. The man's forty-four years old and I swear he gets better-looking every year, filling out and getting thicker with something that's not bulky like muscle or squishy like fat. I let my hands run all over his chest and down his stomach, and I can see his dick jump when it sees me coming that way. There's just so much Fraser, everywhere you look. It's just...goddamn *delightful,* as Fraser might say himself. Only without the "goddamn," I guess.

My plan is to suck him off -- I know it's not creative, but who the hell cares? It makes him come like crazy, and I have this thing for Fraser's cock, I swear I'd have some part of my body up on it at all times if that weren't impossible, and kind of a weird idea if you start thinking about it really literally, which, like my partner Fraser is usually the first to tell people, I don't have what you call a literal mind. He says it's my poetic soul. Whatever, I just have a thing for Fraser's cock.

As I get down there, though, and I do a few slurps at it to let him know what he's in for, I start thinking bigger. I've got this shiny new Fraser, spread out for me, squirming every time I brush him with my fingers, little thrills going off like bottle rockets in his eyes, and I want to make him forget his name, I want to make him forget everything but what a fantastic idea it was to let me do whatever I wanted to him.

He whimpers as I finger his balls, because of that itself, or because he knows now what I'm doing, getting in behind them to bite the smooth skin there. "Ray," he groans, so I know his compass needle is spinning all to hell already, and my mouth is otherwise occupied, but somehow I halfbelieve he can hear me chanting in my head at him, thinking *I'm all over you, baby, I'm everywhere you are, I own you, I'm keeping you, I'm never letting you go.*

I slide my tongue back and forth through the crack of his ass, over his hole and right on past, just stroking for the sake of stroking. Fraser isn't like I am about taking it up the ass; he's never come just from that, and he'd never say something so ungentlemanly, but I know when he does it he does it mainly for me, and he pretty well counts on being paid back later on; that fair streak of Fraser's, that cuts both ways. But my tongue is another ballgame, a brand new bag, or maybe it's that Fraser's big hotspot is right there around the opening, instead of deep on in like mine. Either way, he pants like a dog when I lick him there, make my tongue as stiff as I can and flick it back and forth, fast and wet. He damn near barks.

I'm so into it, into the feel of his legs shifting restlessly around me and the quick rush of air I can feel over my head as Fraser's pumping his cock where I can't quite see it from my angle, that I might just keep going until my neck commits suicide (I'm going to pay for this with a neck so sore we're gonna need two physical therapists in the house), but suddenly he yells out, practically roars, which is another pretty rare thing, because usually when Fraser's naked his mouth is full of *something,* but right now I'm too far away and he's making these terrific noises that I can feel vibrating way down in his stomach, too out-of-it even to be words. I have to sit up, I have to see him like this.

The best, the best, Fraser is the best thing ever, gorgeous from the heart on out, every piece of sweaty skin, every mussed-up patch of hair, every muscle as it clenches and releases, every word of the poem his eyes are writing on my face. I brace myself up where I can see him, and I tell him that I love him as I fit my dick up against his, and I get a smile from him that's worth filing away in my memory with all the other nice things he's ever said to me. He's slippery down there, and I can feel his pre-come cooling slightly in the air as his cock pulses with blood and gets even hotter, and then he wraps his hand almost all the way around both of us and pulls, and I'm the one yelling, and he's the one teaching. Sure, he's not teaching me anything I didn't already know, but some lessons bear repeating.

I fall down after I come, and he grunts and then comes, too, getting it all over my chest. There's nothing to do but kiss him, soft and sleepy, lingering there for, the way I plan it, anyway, at least a minute for every day he's been gone between now and the last time I came in his hand. That's -- maybe, like sixteen or seven-- aw, screw it. That's a good, long kiss, and it's over when I say it's over.

"I am afraid," he admits as we're lying there in our bed.

"Good. You should be."

"I'm afraid of letting her down."

"Good. You might."

"I'm afraid she'll grow up...angry with me."

"'S been known to happen."

"I'm afraid that if I do stay, I won't know what to say to her. That I won't be a good father even if I am here. I see the two of you together, and it's like nothing I've ever witnessed. I'm afraid I can't live up to you, and she'll never be close to me the way she is to you."

I never thought of that one, never in my wildest dreams. Trust Fraser to come up with a fear that crazy. Not live up to me? Not live up to me.... I dig my fingers into the muscles in his shoulder, creating the good pain of the best massages, just for a second. "You can't control people. They're gonna think what they're gonna think."

"I'm afraid to die like he did. With nothing but unfinished business and debts to be repaid. I'm afraid to burden her with all the things I inherited from him."

"Live by the sword, die by the sword, Frase."

"I'm afraid that I'll have nothing at all to pass on to her if I'm...."

"Normal?" I finish, feeling just a little smug, because it's like Fraser's just getting this for the first time, and I've known this about him forever. This is Fraser 101, here, and the short bus just pulled in.

"How could I have become this way?" he demands, plaintively, and I have to laugh.

"Fraser, you're her dad. That's how you became this way. You're worried about her. That makes you ready for this. It makes you *sane,* you goofball." I know, I know. What were the chances?

He mulls that over a little while, his fingertips circling my nipple gently. "Are you--?"

"All the time." And I don't know how to say it without sounding like a goober, but it's like being complete for the first time, having Grace to go out of my head worrying about, and Fraser to be rock-solid sure of, never a doubt, my steadfast, my partner, Benton Fraser, RCMP. It's like having your cake and eating it, and then getting to be the Holy Roman Emperor of Cake, too.

Maybe I sleep and maybe I don't, but the clock says it's been over an hour before he says anything again. "Ottawa or Chicago?"

"Hnrh?"

"You were right -- about the, ah, the woman problem."

"'N here I thought my woman problems were over," I yawn into his shoulder.

"I could find a position in Ottawa. Grace liked Maggie, didn't she?"

"Yeah, I think so." Actually, back when they met, Grace was still pretty scared of everyone, but it'll do as a jumping-off point, I think. "Where does Chicago come from?"

"I believe the original name meant 'Place of Wild Onions' in--"

I needle him sharply in the ribs with two fingers. "Freak. Quit playing with me; I'm too tired to keep up with you." I'm always too something to keep up with him, but Fraser's too nice to mention that.

He takes the serious track then, saying, "Chicago is from...from my gratitude. I know, it wasn't a burden, but -- you changed your life for my daughter's sake, much more than I ever did. Much more than I had a right to ask you to do."

I almost blow it off, do the gallant thing and go, happy to do it, Fraser, buddy, but somehow I end up saying, "Did you miss me? You never even fucking said you missed me."

"I missed you," he whispers. "Every day and every night. Those six years...Stanley...."

"Yeah. I know." I do know. I was there; I felt the way he felt then, and I feel the way he feels now that it's over for good. "You gotta give this nuclear family thing a fair shake, though, Frase. I'm telling you. It's pretty damn good."

"It will be. I know. But you -- if you want to go back...."

"Think they'd take you on at the Consulate again?"

"I'm not concerned about it. The worst that could happen is...you'd be having the adventures for a bit, and I'd be--"

"Waiting around for me," I say, half snarky and half thinking it sounds kinda good.

"Well...I might -- occasionally -- advise."

"Advise."

"Advise. If that would suit--"

I lean up and I kiss him. "Suits, suits. You know I'm in love with your goddamn fucking advice, don't you?"

"I was told it was my 'pretty blue eyes.'"

It's the whole package, but you gotta save something for Valentine's Day, right? "Did this have something to do with Maggie, and I'm just missing it?"

He lowers his eyes in that way he does when he's trying to be humble and submissive and shit. "Actually...Francesca--"

I roll my eyes, but to be totally honest, it doesn't sound like a half-bad idea. I think if you combine Franny and Fraser, you get just about one semi-sane woman, which is what we're trying to churn out here, after all. But I just say, "Yeah, Franny will flip for the free babysitting service."

"Oh, I'm sure Francesca would be happy to pay the going rate for babysitting--"

I'm not listening to him anymore. I'm thinking about Chicago, and my badge and my gun, and a big apartment with other kids for Grace to play with, and teaching her how to ride the metro and how Chinese food is really supposed to taste, and lying in bed with Fraser and hearing sirens and motorcycle engines out the window. Maybe we'll send Mark Sewell a postcard.

Out our window, I can see the tundra. Six years. God, they were good. The two of us, invincible, flying across the toughest place on earth, getting better and stronger every time.

Hell, we came north with just two of us, and we did everything right. We can go south with three, and we can make it work. That's the kind of thing you just believe, even though you can't know that it's true.

The End