Author's website: http://www.tomparisdorm.com/genie/place.html

Disclaimer: Characters and song ain't mine, ain't making any money so don't sue!!

Author's Notes: I was inspired to write this little piece by Marie-Andrée's "Fraser's Poem" and Sarah McLachlan's song. You ought to try reading the poem, which could be found at Fraser's Library, while listening to "Possession" at the same time. This piece is also available in the slash zine "The Full Mountie".
Anyway, once again, I want to thank my wonderful beta reader Sama for making this piece much better! Thanks Sama!

Story Notes:

Feb/ March 99

*Listen as the wind blows,*
From across the great divide.
*Voices trapped in yearning,*
Memories trapped in time.
*Would I spend forever here,*
And not be satisfied?
*-----Possession, Sarah McLachlan*

Nothing in my life seemed constant, stable. Places and faces changed so frequently, and everyone that came to mean something to me seemed to leave. First my mother, then my grandparents, who were the one that are responsible for the environmental changes when I was a child, then my dad, Victoria and Ray.

I can't help but wonder what it is in me that make all of these people leave. I know it's illogical to think this way since I really can't prevent some of them for going, even though my dad did decided to stay eventually. . .or is that just a piece of my imagination? Anyway, that's not important. The important thing is that everybody I cared about in my life left me eventually, except for Diefenbaker.

Why do they keep doing this to me? Why? I've given them all that I possibly could, isn't that enough for them? What more could they want from me?! I don't have the answer and I doubt that they do either. I'd lie in bed at night and the faces of those I knew would flash past my mind's eye and every single one of them had left me, one way or another. I'd give and give, but what did I get in return? Sadness. . .pain. . .betrayal. . .loneliness. . .

I feel that, somehow, loneliness has been embossed on my soul, and I carry it wherever I go. Oh, there might be people around me, but the loneliness is always there. Sometimes I just wish that I could find someone that I could really talk to. A friend, a companion, just so that I wouldn't be alone. . .

When I met Ray, I thought I had finally found something that would be constant in my life. Something besides Dief and the RCMP that I could count on while everything around me would be ever changing. But imagine my surprised when I got back from my vacation and found my apartment burned down, then to be greeted by a stranger who claimed to be Ray Vecchio.

Once again, everything had changed. It didn't matter that the Lieutenant explained Ray's reason for leaving. The point here is that I trusted him to be the constant in my life. I'd given everything that I could into our friendship, but he left anyway and everything in my life changed. . .

Sometimes I think that I'm right at the center point in a kaleidoscope, the point that's always there, unchanged, while the rest of the word revolves around me, changing like the patterns in the kaleidoscope.

I thought that Ray could never be like the Ray I knew; it turned out that I was wrong. Ray was nothing like Ray Vecchio. Even though they had some similarities, they were two completely different beings. Vecchio would've loved to have his face in the papers and take all the credit he deserved, but Kowalski's the direct opposite. He would brush it off as just doing his duty and that anyone would have done the same thing.

With my experience with people and Ray's comment about me being a freak, I thought that Ray would leave, like the others. I was wrong again. He had the chance when our partnership came to a point that we were both getting on each other's nerves, but he stayed. And at that moment, I didn't feel that alone anymore. . .

Ray Kowalski was the first person I yelled at in years. He seemed to have the ability to bring out this other part of me that I had hidden from everyone else, even Ray Vecchio. No matter how annoyed I got with Ray Vecchio, I couldn't remember ever actually yelling at him, but that's not the case with this Ray. He had something different about him. Beneath the tough cop facade he put up, there seemed to be this. . .this young, innocent child that I occasionally get a glimpse of.

When Ray Vecchio's assignment was over, I thought I was going to be alone again, with Dief my only companion. Ray had decided to go to Florida with Stella, and Ray, the other one, would surely remain in Chicago continuing his job as a police detective, this time under his own name Stanley Raymond Kowalski. Dad had left me, too, after the years he'd spend hanging around, giving me advice and just being a plain annoying ghost at times. Everybody was gone.

Or so I thought.

I was really surprised when I heard that Ray wanted to go on an adventure and find the reaching out hand, the Hand of Franklin. With me. Was I imagining it? Did I want a companion so badly that I had imagined it? Apparently, I did not.

How could I be so sure? That's because as I'm writing this, Ray's sleeping soundly beside the fire we set up hours before. He had the chance to leave, but he decided to stay. Twice. I'm starting to think now that maybe not everybody leaves. At least one of them decided to stay, to be with me, to be my constant. And for the first time in many, many years, I was at the receiving end instead of the giving. . .

The End
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End Kaleidoscope by Eugenie Chua: genieweb@hotmail.com

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