Disclaimer: Standard Disclaimer. I´m confused. What were we talking about? Please send comments, questions, compliments, and otters to sdelcul@yahoo.com.

Author's Notes: I apologize for the list overload, but please bear with me (feel free to send angry emails and fling inanimate objects) until I catch up. Keep in mind that internet is a two hour bus ride away at the moment and I have to boil my water before it's safe to drink. Gotta love rural Ecuador!

Story Notes:

*Gone- glimmering through the dreams of things that were. * *Lord Byron, Childe Harold (cante II, 2)*

I'm not the same man I used to be. I'm older, harder, dirtier. The man that came back is still thinking like he's undercover. Still protecting himself. Still looking for danger around every corner.

Not exactly the most romantic thing to be involved with someone who sleeps with a gun under his pillow and one eye open. I don't regret doing it, but I wish there had been another way.

I used to dream about home. Family, friends, Benny. People who knew me and cared for me and loved me.

At first I had all that enthusiasm about doing the right thing, which I can't even blame on Benny; but as the months went by it got harder to do the job. I'd wake up every morning and instead of Benny I'd remember Frankie Zuko and how we used to be friends. I'd remember how easy it is to get caught up in power and money like he did or in alcohol like my father did.

I'd tell myself that I wasn't going to fall into that trap, not like they did. I had my eye on the prize, and the prize was a big, red-suited Mountie who believed in the right. He was my reminder.

But after eight or nine months I wasn't sure that there'd be a place for me in my old life. As worldwise as I'd thought myself, it was hard. I had to be tough, and it made me think that the job might never end. All the glib promises that had been made to convince me to take the job seemed so empty.

I had to push everything aside to keep going. Everything so that there was only Armande, otherwise I'd fall.

Now it's over, just like that. I'm not Ray Vecchio anymore, and I don't know if I'll ever be him again. I can't be the Bookman anymore, but what does that leave me with?

For most of my life I've always been someone; my father's whipping boy, my sisters' defender, my family's caretaker, a police officer.

And yet my father was dead. My family was fine without me, Frannie's even really happy with her job. The station was fine without me as well; even Fraser was okay without me. He and Kowalski are good friends. Nobody here needs me.

Stella's perfect. She doesn't know Armande, and she didn't know Ray Vecchio. She doesn't need anything from me. I can make a new start, a new Ray Vecchio. She wants a new start, too, away from Chicago. Stella and Florida sounds nice and warm and far away. Just what I need.

End Things that were by silvina: sdelcul@yahoo.com

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