Author's Website: http://www.kitsworks.com/stories/index.htm

Disclaimer: Alliance owns them. I take them out for cookies, hot chocolate and other playful times, and bring them home afterward, but they're not my toys. (though I can dream.)

Author's Notes: This story bashed me in the head during Connexions and demanded to be written. Thanks to Beth H, Cin, Naina, Kat Allison, LaT, Sihaya, Rowan, Miriam, Aukestral, (and anyone else who strayed into Caucus II while we were watching lovely men in vids, movies and eps) for inspiration, beta and a hell of a good weekend.and this is dedicated to the Ones We Love.

Story Notes: All poetic quotations taken from "The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats," edited by Richard J. Finneran, revised second edition, 1989.

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of...
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O, never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play,
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave his heart and lost.

My conscience made me do it.

I'd been putting off that call for nearly two weeks, ever since I was tapped to go undercover. If it had been up to me, I would've just disappeared into the sunset, and without letting anyone but Ma and Frannie know what's going on. I mean, what the hell, it's not like Huey and Elaine, or even Tony and Maria, are going to miss me all that much.

But nothing's that easy.

Hey, I'd been busy. You try putting on some mook's life from scratch when a bad step means a bullet in the back of the head; can you also concentrate on tying up this loose end that's out there dancing with wolves in Northwest Bumfuck? I had enough to do. The Fibbies loaded my desk with files and surveillance videos, voice tapes from tapped phone calls, and said, "Learn it all, now."

Within a week, I could write a doctorate on Armando Langoustini. The guy liked his showgirls long-stemmed and dark-haired, his whiskey neat, and when he'd had too much booze for his tricky stomach, which was fairly often, he drank buttermilk by the gallon -- not my favorite, but I could live with it. I didn't hate the stuff. I didn't even hate the clothes. The guy had his suits tailored for him in Italy by a couturier who came to measure him personally every few months. It wasn't Armani, but it wasn't bad; at least it wasn't Hugo Boss or Brooks Brothers, like the Fibbies wear.

And then there was the walk, and the stance, and the dead-fish stare, and the handwriting. Fortunately, Armando initialed everything, had secretaries to do most of the work, and had handwriting a whole lot like Uncle Vinnie from Queens, so I learned a passable signature and figured I could fake it. Hell, I've had to forge things before, just not that often. It's not a good idea to do it, as a cop, but it's a good thing to know about so you can bust someone else's chops for it.

Getting the attitude right was tough. This wasn't just any hard guy. The Bookman didn't juggle numbers; he juggled lives for the Iguana Family. He kept book on who'd annoyed who and how he should be treated -- and, often as not, he administered treatment. I didn't just have to learn to be Armando, I had to absorb everything Armando knew about everyone and everything else. I had to trade my comfortable department-issue weapon for something sleeker and nastier and hit the target's head every time. No more generic stop-the-perp body shots; if the capo wanted someone capped, I had to do it right.

And I'd have to do it. No way out. I had to stay undercover long enough to learn the family secrets backward and forward.

I couldn't imagine what Benny would say, if he knew the Fibbies were training me to be a hit man.

This was the scary part: I knew that when I came back, if I did, I wasn't going to be the same old Ray Vecchio. If I could keep the old me alive inside, someplace, he'd be hiding unhappily in some little dark corner of my mind, trying to stay out of the way. Good suits and fine food, even the long-legged ladies wouldn't be compensation for what I'd be losing. They'd be part of the package, but I wouldn't be able to enjoy them the way I had in the past. I'd have to enjoy them the way Armando Langoustini did, without any respite. The old line about cops being soldiers in the war on crime wasn't a joke, but I'd been 'volunteered' to become a spy behind enemy lines, and we all know what happens to them when they screw up.

Ma wasn't happy about it at all. "You're going to be a spione, a spy. Mother of God. I don't like it, Raymond. When will I ever see you again?" She was starting to fuss, tangling her hands up in the dishtowel, wringing it between her fingers.

"I don't know, Ma. They won't let me write." I tried to catch her hands and hold them, just for a minute. She dropped the towel and gripped them, tight, and put one hand up on my shoulder to pull me close.

"You take care of yourself, wear a scarf around your neck when it gets cold. You get those head colds so easily..."

"I'll be living in Las Vegas, Ma. It's really warm there. I'll be okay. I promise." What else could I possibly say. I held on as long as I could before I let that hug go. She knew, even though I hadn't told her anything more than necessary.

Frannie looked at me with big scared eyes and didn't say anything at all. Not one word about where I was going or what I'd be doing. She just stared at me, and then looked down at the table and over at Tony and Maria and back at me and she was crying. My kid sister had tears running down her face. Her mascara was running and her nose was getting red, and she didn't even notice.

That, right there, shook me more than the long hours with files and videos or the moment when I realized just what I was being asked to do. Frannie knew that I wasn't coming back, not as anyone she'd ever known. And she knew I had to do it. I couldn't turn down this chance to mess with the Mob's collective head, not if I was going to live with myself afterward as an ItalianAmerican in Chicago.

Frannie walked over and put her arms around me and hugged me tight. I could feel her tears on my face when she kissed my cheek. She tried to smile for me, as I left. Her smile wobbled around the edges, but she tried so hard to make it work. Ma couldn't stand it and ran out, crying, with Tony and Maria after her. Frannie pulled herself up as straight as she could, and snapped me a mock salute as good as any I'd ever seen. My little sister, being brave. Damn. She was a hell of a lot braver than I was at that point. I saluted her back, picked up my old gym bag and left before I fell apart too.

But my conscience was still waiting for me back in the squad room, sitting in the one lit office behind the big desk.

"Vecchio. Did you call Constable Fraser yet?"

I shook my head.

"He's taking three weeks of vacation and you've had ten days. You're not going to let him walk in on this without any warning, are you? Who knows what Fraser might do if you don't tell him?"

Oh, yeah. I had no doubt at all that Fraser could sniff my desk, find my address and Fed-Ex himself to me in a crate, wolf included, if he thought I was in trouble. He'd kill himself for someone he cared about, just because he'd feel it was the right thing to do.

"Do it, Vecchio. Get on the horn. Here's the number; he's apparently been traveling a bit so I had Inspector Thatcher find out where he could be reached." Welsh's eyes had those knowing, sad wrinkles around them. He hadn't liked this from-the-top-of-the-food-chain assignment one bit, and he was worried. "Why didn't you call him earlier?"

I couldn't tell him everything. "I didn't know what to say or how to say it. I've been thinking about it, Lieutenant. It's not an easy call."

"You've got that right," he growled. "Now, are you going to go fucking make the call, or am I going to have to do it for you?"

Now, that was a threat. No way did I want him calling Fraser about this. It was hard enough already.

"No, sir." I turned around at the door. "Who's going to replace me here?"

"Better you don't know, but he's a real good cop. You won't have to worry about him spoiling your arrest record. He gets here tomorrow."

I nodded at him, and he pressed his lips together in something that was almost a smile. It looked familiar; I'd seen that on a lot of faces lately. It was too hard to watch it on Welsh too, so I went over to my desk and started putting things in the box I'd grabbed from the store room. If it had been up to me, I wouldn't have wanted Welsh anywhere in the building while I phoned Benny, but I didn't have the choice. I'd have to choose my words carefully. Damn it.

And it didn't matter. No matter what I said, Benny would misunderstand a lot of it until later, when he got here. He'd think he'd been set up and betrayed again, like with Victoria, hung out to dry. And he'd be hurting so bad. God. It felt like having to shoot him all over again.

I wasn't Victoria, and he knew it. I hadn't sought him out the way she had, to play with his head and ruin his life for revenge. I hadn't climbed into his bed to betray and seduce him, but to comfort him -- and to let him comfort me -- and it hadn't been that long ago. We had something that wasn't just friendship, more than a buddy fuck, but outside the categories. It was a sort of comrades-in-arms relationship for me, but I'm not sure how he understood it. It was hard to tell, since it was the one thing he never talked about. We'd been edging toward a conversation when he left, so I knew it was sure to come up when he returned, probably on stakeout just before the perp showed up and we started to chase him. Intimate discussion, tossed between us as we ran, would be par for the course.

This is how it is. It could have been more, I think, if things were different. Now, we weren't going to get that chance.

I wasn't looking forward to that conversation under any circumstances, because I knew where it would have to go, and I knew he'd hate how it turned out. He wouldn't say a thing, but it would show in every little twitch of his neck or rub at that ear or the eyebrow, the nervous moves I could track to figure out what he was thinking the way he tracked caribou through the snow. Only problem was, when he got there he could see a caribou. When I got there, I still saw a confused guy who hadn't had enough intimate relationships to be able to read the clues dispassionately -- or even accurately.

And now I had to mindfuck him with the world's worst form of Dear John. The only way it could be worse was if it he heard it from an answering machine. At least I could talk to him on the phone and hope he could hear between the lines.

Maybe it would help. Maybe he could pick up the nuances, even if I couldn't just say it straight out with Welsh only fifteen feet away.

I picked up the phone and called him. He didn't get it. He was surprised and glad to hear from me, and a little concerned that I'd phoned him at all, but that was it. I hoped he got the message that he didn't do anything wrong, neither of us did, it was just the way life was working and none of us could do a thing about it. I prayed that he realized some of what I couldn't say in those spaces between words and sentences.

And then I walked out of the Two-Seven squad room, and left my conscience standing in the door of his office watching me walk down the darkened hall. Where I was going, a conscience could only be a liability.

O you will take whatever's offered
And dream that all the world's a friend, Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young,
And I speak a barbarous tongue.

Dear Lord. I hadn't endured a day this difficult and confusing since my mother died.

I'd lost my Chicago home, and all the possessions I'd brought to the States except for the mementos locked in my father's insulated metal trunk, and even those were probably scorched from the heat. My father's journals had probably survived -- they'd survived him, so they probably had weathered this as well and my mother's letters, my grandfather's trench knife from the Great War and my grandmother's favorite photo of Uncle Tiberius -- but all else lay broken, charred, under ashes and snowflakes.

The world had turned on its end and shaken loose the one person I needed to talk to, and he'd slid over the edge into the darkness. And all his colleagues insisted that he was still here, in this other man I'd never met before.

I would have thought I'd gone insane except for two things: I had a crime to solve, before its perpetrator could kill me or anyone else, and I had a Chicago detective to work with. Early on, I couldn't say I was impressed with the man who called himself Ray Vecchio. He seemed to take it all too lightly. However, over the course of the day, I realized that he might well be one of the finest police officers I'd ever encountered.

But he wasn't Ray Vecchio, no matter what everyone said.

It wasn't just that he looked different, or wore clothes that Ray would have disdained. The first outstanding difference I found was that he'd accepted me and trusted me, immediately. He complained as much as Ray about my methods, but I'd come to expect that as normal from American police, whose criminology training apparently emphasizes other methods than sensory detection.

Ray Vecchio always wore an imported Italian aftershave, something with a hint of bergamot or musk. This man wore a lighter scent, more similar to Canoe than to English Leather, which was Lt. Welsh's preference. He wore motorcycle boots, not polished oxfords. His fingers, wrapped around the steering wheel, were longer, strongly boned, and he wore a silver bracelet and watch. Ray Vecchio always wore gold, when he wore jewelry at all.

This man was so sweet-tempered, despite everything. Had I put that pad of ink anywhere near my Ray's fingers, he would have complained incessantly about the risk to his clothing. The putty sandwich ploy would have had him spitting curses, as would having his nose measured. I didn't even want to think of how he'd react to his beloved car being destroyed by fire and water. But not this stranger. I had been so torn and tested by the day's events that I had wasted no courtesy on him -- I had been rude, critical, and aggressive. I had ignored and insulted him. And he had brushed aside my behavior as if nothing were amiss, and behaved toward me with caring, concern and kindness.

He doesn't know me, it's clear -- but he trusts me. This man has given me more trust in one day than I received from my Ray in the first several weeks I was here. He's treating me as an equal and as a partner, not as a nuisance or a difficulty.

I should not be calling Ray Vecchio mine. I know this. I find it hard to do otherwise, considering what we are to each other.

Much as I have always cared about my Ray, that attitude of his hurt me badly. We talked about it one night in the hospital after we'd both been shot. Then he apologized. He hadn't even noticed before.

What we are. No. What we were. It's past, now.

Couldn't he have just shot me again? It would be easier to take than this.

In the midst of my confusion, I found that this man notices everything. He's confident, capable. We work well together. We fell into the rhythm of good cop - bad cop with Zoltan Motherwell as if we'd used it for years, when it was actually our first joint interrogation. We seem to balance each other in our approaches to the work -- logic and intuition, deliberation and speed, procedure and creativity.

And, dear God. He stepped in front of me and let himself be shot, though earlier that day he'd told me that he stuck his neck out for nobody.

Do I have an identity, now, or only identifiers? Am I a traveler like Odysseus, whose exploits went ahead of him, so that he became Nemo -- no man -- to survive? It must be so, for this man risked his life for me without a thought. No, with one wise thought -- the bulletproof vest.

Ray Vecchio had also put himself in harm's way for my sake, in factories and warehouses and with dangerous men both in Canada and in Chicago. I knew what to expect from him: capability as an expression of caring, and complaint as a ruse to hide his feelings.

I'd had no expectation that this new man would put my welfare ahead of his so easily, so quickly. It stunned me, when I'd already endured more shocks than I wanted to think about. In the ambulance, on the way to the hospital for x-rays, all he would say in explanation was, "That's what partners do, Fraser," and smile at me. Fortunately, he had badly bruised ribs, nothing more.

I don't think I could bear it if he'd died today, too.

It's evening now. Lt. Welsh has resolved my questions with a few sentences, and left me with many more. He wants me to give this man a chance. Perhaps my working with him will keep my Ray alive longer, since it's apparently well known that Raymond Vecchio's partner is a Mountie -- and, if I refused, I doubt that Turnbull would be able to substitute for me adequately. Turnbull, while a fine man and a meticulous, devoted worker, does not adjust to changing circumstances well, and in my time in Chicago I have seen nothing else but change, even before today.

I can't treat this as another simple change, though. I don't know what springtime, if any, can follow this harsh winter. The bed where I made love with Victoria, and where Ray helped me banish her ghost in the most practical method possible, is charred wood and soft gray ash. Mr. Mustafi will not delay my morning walk to the Consulate by taking so long to gargle in the bathroom down the hall. Diefenbaker will not be able to run three blocks over and two blocks up to visit Maggie, his ladylove, and those of her pups who are still in the area.

I never expected to be a refugee at the consulate. I never expected that, in this exile from my homeland, I'd be forced into exile again from the community that comprised my neighbors and friends.

When I went back to the Consulate to change out of my wet uniform, Inspector Thatcher said she would send Turnbull with me tomorrow to bring back whatever could be salvaged of my possessions. If I have to live in my office for a while, it won't be any worse than camping at Great Bear Lake -- at least, the blackfly population will be smaller and the toilet facilities more comfortable. Turnbull loaned me his spare clothing for the moment, so I could get my uniform dried, and arranged to have a spare uniform in my size sent from Toronto. He also advanced me money from the Consulate's emergency fund so I can purchase basic living supplies. Underwear. A toothbrush, toothpaste. Soap. A towel. A razor and blades; my old straight razor, left in the medicine cabinet, is unlikely to hold an edge after being tempered twice in fire.

I have lived with physical and emotional pain in the course of my work. After this day's fires, though, what kind of edge will I be able to maintain, even when sharpened by a new partner?

The lieutenant said Ray's replacement is a good and honorable man. That he is, and I have no doubts. But he's not Ray Vecchio. He can't replace my Ray in my heart.

I have to keep telling myself. Raymond Vecchio is not mine, if he ever was. Not any more.

Years ago, I lived in the barrens alone for months when I was sent to find survivors of a disaster. I spent so long alone that when I came to a village it was difficult to talk. Words had left me, somewhere along the journey, and in their place I had only an empty space, as wide as the sky at dusk when the birds are silent for the night.

I have left the barrens, but they have not left me.

But, as I learned long ago, the only cure for a broken heart is time, helped by work. I still have my work, and I still have a partner to work with, even if he's not the man I want. Even if I still ache with wanting someone I may never see again.

There all the barrel-hoops are knit,
There all the serpent-tails are bit,
There all the gyres converge into one,
There all the planets drop into the Sun.

Damn it. I must have fucked it all up pretty badly.

After we left the hospital and the Consulate, Fraser insisted we go back to the station. He's been through so much today I figured I'd humor him, though my stomach was starting to growl pretty hard by then. A putty sandwich does not a lunch make, though it wouldn't have been too bad with some ketchup and a pickle or two. I've had way worse from the machines in the break room.

The wolf wasn't bad, either, once I got him to understand that I'm not on the menu. It's good to know he likes seafood, though Frannie's going to be really bummed when she realizes what happened. I'll take her over to the big pet store on Cartier this weekend and buy her some more fish; that's something a brother would do. She shouldn't have to lose everything.

When we got back, everyone was gone except the lieutenant. Fraser made a beeline for his office. I knew I wasn't wanted in there, just from the stiffness in his shoulders and the look in his eyes. I figured he'd hear the news from Welsh and head back to the Northern Places or something. Elaine had dropped the files I wanted on my desk, so I sat down to go through them while I waited for the axe to drop.

I'd given it my best and it sure looked like I'd failed. If I couldn't be Vecchio with the Mountie, how were we going to keep up this little charade? Sure, I'd stay in the Two-Seven and do my job, but sooner or later the cover'd be blown and the guy I was replacing would be face down in the Nevada sand with an extra hole in his head. I hated the way that felt when I thought about it. All I knew about the guy was what I'd learned from his record and his cases, and the little bits of things that Welsh and Huey and Elaine had told me about him.

And Francesca.

She'd come in, the day after I'd started in the new job, and said, "Hey, bro, let's go to lunch." I hadn't met her before. I looked up, and there was this knockout brunette, big brown eyes on me, and I shot a glance over to Huey, who nodded. So we went to lunch, and she filled me in on the family -- who's who, what's what, stupid little stuff that nobody else would know, and big things, like her being divorced, and who Ray's ex-wife was. She looked so sad, though, that I put my hand over hers at the table. She looked down at my hand on hers and said, "My brother wouldn't do that."

"I'm sorry," I said. I pulled my hand back.

"It's okay, Ray. Really." She shrugged. "He's stupid about a lot of things, but he's my brother. He's got all these attitudes, about how things should be -- the Gospel According To Raymond -- though he's dumped a lot of them since Fraser's been around. He's not that bad a guy, you know, even when he's being a meatball."

"This is good." I could see how much this meant to her.

"Yeah. Fraser's a good friend for him. He's..." She stared off into the corner of the room for a moment. "He's like the opposite of a wiseguy, you know? I mean, you can just trust him with everything, all the time, and he'll never let you down, ever."

Truer words were never spoken, little sister, even if I am sitting here waiting for a let down, or a miracle.

Everything I read about Benton Fraser was true, and an understatement. And that's so little, when I look at him and see the guy who's there behind the uniform. There's so much more to him than anyone can fit into a file folder, or a stack of commendations. He's got letters in his file from what looks like everyone in the city, all of them saying what a good job he did for them. Oh, there are a couple of reprimands, too, that he wrote up himself and stuck in, but I read them pretty closely and I know what he was up to. He must've had a hard-ass boss, somewhere along the line, and this was his way of registering a protest when the boss wouldn't listen to him. No big deal.

But that doesn't say it all. This guy is so smart. He knows things I don't, things I could learn. He's the best there is, and I want to work with him so much. We could be so good as a duet. I tried to tell him that, tried to come up with names of famous partners who did good, but all that I could think of was the Three Stooges, which didn't quite do it but I think he got the idea. I mean, Larry just was not committed to what was going on, and it showed. But the other two did just great. They rolled with the punches, so to speak, a lot like cops. Cops don't tend to start situations; we have to deal with what gets thrown at us, so we duck and dodge, toss in a little fancy footwork and a cream pie or two if we need a diversion. Anyway, the Stooges had great timing -- and so does Fraser. Man, he is right there on top of what's happening, like when the Vecchio house was burning and he got everyone out, or when he climbed all over the car while it was going 50 miles an hour to find the igniter for the fire. He puts it all together, with style. And he has that precise, polite Mountie thing down cold so that I could dance in with the old one-two, mess with old Zoltan's head and get what we needed. Block. Jab. Right cross. Threats and promises, and 'thank you kindly' at the end of it. He's got it all.

Those idiots up in the Northwest Places must have their heads up their asses, or else a zero crime rate, to send him down here. Except for that Metcalfe case, he's never failed, and I'd be willing to cut him slack on that one. I mean, if Stella had jerked me around like that, who knows what I'd've done? I sure would've gone away with her, no matter what. Sometimes you have to do things, whether they're legal or not, because they're right, but he did his damnedest to do both at once. How he managed it, I don't know, but he did. There's a lot of paper on this from Welsh and Vecchio, even from Huey and his old partner Gardino. I can see that it took a while for Fraser to get back on his feet after he was shot. No big surprise there. This gig is getting me a new life after the divorce, and it's been two years since Stella first filed the papers.

We're a lot alike, I think.

Fraser came out of Welsh's office looking tired and lost and confused -- like the face I saw in the mirror after Stella threw me out. I couldn't do anything to change any of that, and it hurt, seeing it on him. But I walked the postcard that had come to my desk over to him, some pretty picture of the Rockies, and he took one look at it and heated the back. Sure enough, there was a photo. Fraser and a big-nosed guy with Frannie's eyes and a smile. Three guesses, and the first two don't count. I watched Fraser looking at that card, and I could see the muscles relaxing in the back of his neck, and the hard lines around his mouth easing into sadness and maybe something more.

Wasn't hard to see how close they were, and how much it hurt him that I wasn't who he'd expected or who he wanted.

It made me wish I had a friend who felt that way about me. Since Stella and I broke up, and I'd changed districts and squad rooms, I didn't really have anyone to talk to, and I missed that something fierce.

I went back to my desk. The writing was on the wall in big, fat letters. I didn't need the glasses to read it. At least I'd had one day to work with someone totally amazing, even if his techniques came from the Boy Scout Manual. Who cares? They worked. I don't care how anyone does anything as long as the cases get closed.

When I looked back across the room, he was still standing there, gazing at that postcard, not moving. He tucked it away in his jacket, and I thought he'd be heading for the door, but he didn't go that way. Instead, he watched me standing there, holding a couple of files while I watched him.

Something to eat? He's asking me out?

One look at him, and I knew it wasn't a thank-you for taking the bullet. He had hope in his eyes, and a terrible space behind them that warned me to be careful. We had a chance, now, me and the Mountie, to be partners, friends, maybe more. Sculpture does not turn my crank, never has, but if more of it looked like him I'd live in the museums. I wanted to hug him again, pat him on the shoulder, just because he looked like he really needed the contact, but I figured he wouldn't think it was appropriate, so I didn't. But I smiled at him, and put away the files, feeling better about this gig than any time since I'd gotten there, even with bruised ribs and no car.

We could still play a duet. Larry was gone, but Moe and Curly could still come in with the old one-two and save the day.