Author's website: http://themelodrama.net/thecheese

Disclaimer: If they belonged to me, well, Vecchio wouldn't have been brushed aside like that, and . . . ah, but these are pipe dreams. They don't. Belong to me, that is.

Author's Notes:

Story Notes: This story was written amidst an attempt to come to terms with the two-Ray situation. It served as a sort of act of catharsis, and as such is rather sentimental. The title is taken from the bittersweet little A. E. Housman poem included at the beginning of the piece.

Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault
It rains into the sea
And still the sea is salt.

-A. E. Housman, 1936

Paper crinkled softly between Benton Fraser's gloved fingertips. He stamped a booted foot against the snowy ground to keep his circulation going, and gazed up at the northern sky, his breath misting in the icy nighttime air.

Far above him stretched a breathtaking panorama of twinkling lights, extending on seemingly until forever. They were so very clear in the uncontaminated atmosphere that it almost seemed possible to cut oneself on a ray of starlight, filtered down to an edge between the boughs of the nearby trees. Fraser closed his eyes for a moment and just breathed, savoring the long-missed feeling of Home.

In the heart of the city, you could never see the stars. The empty sky, hazy and soiled by countless pollutants, had always weighed heavily on Fraser's spirits. Though he tried to make the best of the situation, it often felt as though he was being strangled, slowly. He would gaze upwards and feel the consummate exile, stranded in a vast wasteland of pervasive . . . wrongness. Yes, every bit that melodramatic.

Or at least, he had been. For nearly the entirety of his first year in Chicago.

Not long after he and Ray Vecchio ("the real Ray Vecchio," a familiar voice intoned in the back of his mind) had returned from their rather eventful "vacation" up North, he had had another bout of melancholy. It had, in fact, been the night that Inspector Thatcher had "fired" him, and he was feeling more than discouraged. Pinned down yet again by the complicated problems of the urban world to which he did not belong, he had pined for the clear, starry skies and unmarred natural beauty that he had recently tasted once more, if fleetingly.

He might have something more to offer these people, but what had they to offer him in return? Such self-centered thoughts only bothered him further, as they proved that he still wasn't feeling quite like himself.

Unable to sleep under the roof of his dilapidated apartment complex, he'd wandered the streets of Chicago for awhile, only to come home to home to find his partner waiting for him by his apartment door. Apparently Ray had been driving on an errand for his sister when he'd seen Fraser's despondent form passing on a nearby sidewalk, and had decided to see if he couldn't cheer him up. Fraser had tried to bluster his way past Ray's concern, thinking that the man had already dealt with more than his share of Mountie mood swings. However, one look into the other's eyes had told him that for once, the Italian was not to be budged by love nor money. So he had thanked Ray kindly, and asked what his friend had in mind.

Apparently Fraser had mentioned something about his discomfort with the urban sky earlier that day; he didn't remember doing so precisely, but Ray seemed to know. Fraser was surprised enough that his friend would have remembered a comment like that; it was remarkably considerate of him. Not that Ray wasn't considerate: he simply didn't always pay such close attention to any one thing.

So as it turned out, Ray had the tallest building in the world on his mind that night. Fraser's eyebrows had shot up as the Riv pulled up to the curb beside the Sears Tower, which was clearly closed: it was quite late by that time, nearly midnight in fact. However, a few words with the security guard and his friend was leading him, actually taking him by the hand and leading him down some stairs and through an empty waiting area to the elevator. Apparently one of Ray's "inside contacts" had actually panned out for once. Granted, this wasn 't some crucial turning point in a case, nor would it save Diefenbaker from an undeserved death, but it was still a minor miracle.

Refusing to answer any of Fraser's somewhat consternated inquiries, Ray had pressed some buttons and then they were rising up, up, up. One hundred and ten stories up. Fraser, used to heights from his time spent in the mountains, adjusted to the rising altitude relatively well, and though Ray obviously suffered some discomfort, he overcame it without a word. His eyes were fixed straight in front of him; his face a mask of a determination unlike any emotion Fraser had seen sitting on those features previously.

At last, with a little ding, the elevator doors had slid open. Ray strode out, and Fraser followed him onto the darkened viewing deck. They reached the railing and looked out over the city. Fraser stared.

Though it wasn't by any stretch as clear a night as one might have expected in the Territories, the visibility had been particularly good for Chicago. Far below where they stood, two tiny men alone in a dark glass room, the city stretched out. No longer the ugly, dirty, noisy mess that Fraser regarded it as in his less enthusiastic moments, Chicago had been transformed into a dazzling blanket of many individual lights, studding each building and street like tiny diamonds. Fraser stood transfixed as he watched the colorful sparkle of lights on the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel turning in the distance--and the little glimmering headlights moving to and fro along Lakeshore drive--utterly breathless with awe. He had never suspected the city of concealing such a beautiful secret.

He had of course realized that there were lights; he'd seen pieces of the skyline from his window, or when he was out on a nighttime jaunt with Ray. What he'd never known was that once one pulled back a little, it became obvious that the stars weren't so much absent from Chicago . . . as they were too close to home for the eye to encompass.

After a few long, still moments of just standing by Fraser's side, his arms braced against the railing, Ray had turned his gaze from the stunning vista of Chicago at night to throw his Mountie friend a suddenly anxious look. "Well . . . d'you like it, Benny?" His voice had been pitched low, tentative.

Fraser had given a rapt nod, and all at once had turned and enveloped his friend in a bone-crushing hug. He had missed the stars, so Ray had given them back to him in a whole new way. He couldn't find the words to express his appreciation for such a gift, so unexpected and sweet that it stole his breath away. Fortunately, no words were needed; Ray had returned the gesture in affectionate kind, after just a split-second of tension.

After they broke apart, the two men had stayed there for a long time in companionable silence, feeling as though they stood, all alone together, at the very top of the world.

--with a start, Fraser came back to himself. He wasn't standing atop a sky scraper anymore: instead, he was in the middle of a large clearing in a much larger Canadian forest, gazing up at a universe that now seemed to eclipse entirely any feeble imitation by the modern world. It had been a long couple of years since he and his former partner had shared that space in the sky. However, the magic of the memory was still with him. Noticing that one of his cheeks was a little damp, he removed a glove, touching his finger first to his face and then to his tongue in his methodical way. He'd thought it would be a stray snowflake, but wasn't terribly surprised to find that it tasted of salt.

Fraser smiled to himself. He'd almost expected that when he at last returned, the stars and forests of the north would appear as different from before as he himself now did inside . . . but, everything looked just the way it always had. He reflected that the situation in Chicago was probably quite similar: the absence of Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP, would hardly have made much of a difference to that far-away galaxy of twinkling, artificial lights and multitudinous humanity. Nor for that matter would the retirement and likely departure of former Detective First-Class Raymond Vecchio, who had once graced its streets with a loyal, deeply principled core masked by his loud, blustery Italian bravado. Small, incidental elements such as individual people could come and go, changing as drastically as they would: the overall landscape would always remain essentially the same, whether urban or wilderness.

But those incidental people could make a difference to each other, and shake the inner landscapes that they carried around within themselves. Whole constellations could be altered by a single person, and possibly for worse--but almost definitely for better--Fraser's own entire night sky looked as different now from the way it once had, as the one above him looked the same as ever.

Paper crinkled softly between his bare fingertips, growing cold now without protection. Just then, the door of the cabin some feet behind him creaked open, spilling warm golden light out onto the snow. The voice of a very different Ray called out from the comfortable depths of the house, inviting him back to the hearth and home of their companionship. Calling back an affirmative response, Fraser shook the last cobwebs of memory from his mind. He smoothed the paper of the wedding invitation, slightly crumpled in his loose grip, folded it carefully, and tucked it into his breast pocket. As he turned, he caught sight of a falling star far off beyond the lazy rise of smoke from the cabin's chimney. He made a wish, then headed inside, pulling the door shut behind himself.

End Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall by Lilith: fairiesbite@yahoo.com

Author and story notes above.