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Disclaimer: They're not mine. I know.
I'm a poor student, so don't sue.
Thank you kindly.
I promise they will be returned unharmed before you know they're gone.

Author's Notes: Thanks to RSY for encouragement!

Story Notes: Slight spoilers for Victoria's Secret

Nobody knew. Nobody would understand. Ray. Diefenbaker. Certainly not his father.

There was no pattern, no logic. But there had never been any logic to it.

Fraser moved instinctively across his sparse apartment. Drawn towards an emptiness. Outside, the moon was rising. Outside, stars dimmed by garish neon, the city continued to live through the darkness. Within, a suffocating silence.

A window, propped open. Breath no easier. Fraser stared at the street, but did not see. Saw only a reflection of remorse, of could-have-been. Closed eyes brought clarity to the conflicted image. Love and hate, so tenderly balanced that one word would shatter the scales.

"Sorry" The only thing left to say. The syllables rolled out of his mouth too easily, unsatisfying. Out amongst the stars, it would be right. In this world, trials refused to yield to their power. Souls were intact, but hearts, mind, bodies had grown.....

Jaded.
Bruised by time.

No longer an innocent "Yes" or forced, desolate "No".

Only a weary "Sorry"

Sigh. A slow exhalation of breath, the air that left a tired body: a controlled scream. Fraser was aware of an ache in his shoulders, slowly tensed his spine, rolled his neck back. His muscular frame caged his spirit. He longed for release. Unseen, his breath travelled out through the night, towards infinity.

Heading into the kitchen, Fraser passed his hand across his eyes, willing the fragments of memory to cease their haunting.

Reaching above his head, he found them, as always, as on so many random when the loneliness closed in....

As the candles burned down, Fraser hugged his chest and bent forward, not trusting himself to speak. Breathed in, and out, comforted by the rhythm. The echoes had not subsided.

"She had no choice"

"Figure you owe me"

"How could you do that to me, huh?"

But now that last voice belonged to him.

"How could you do that to me, Victoria?"

And deep inside, a voice that blamed himself.

As the candles burned out, a thousand tiny stars dying for need of care, he wept openly.

"How?"

A dark angel that mirrored his questions. Out among the stars.

"Why?"
Exhausted, Fraser slept, and dreamt of Victoria.

"Why?"
Her poem had become a song.
Their song.
A duet
Of regret

The last candle flickered, and its smoke soared over the city.

Nobody knew.

THE END