Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters and I am not making money from this. Just having a bit of fun and then putting them back where I found them.

Author's Notes: Written for the Mute Fraser Challenge at ds_flashfiction (LiveJournal).

Story Notes: Spoiler: Hawk and a Handsaw

Buck didn't so much knock on the door to the cabin as he leaned into it to get it open, a large box cradled in his arms. He scurried inside, put the box down, and repeated the operation to get the door shut again.

"Holy moley, Bob, it's darker than the devil's heart in here! Turn up the lantern, will you?"

"Go to hell," I responded by way of greeting, not moving an inch from my rough bench at the table.

"I was in town today...so I thought I'd swing by...and bring you a couple things," Buck puffed as he struggled out of his gloves, two hats, two scarves, his parka and snowshoes.

I don't know why this angered me so, but it did. "I don't need your charity, Buck. If that's what you came for, you can just turn yourself around and go."

"Oh, don't worry. I told Miss Granger to put it on your tab at the general store. She said she'd come after you if you didn't settle up within the week." A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.

Buck put the box down on the table between us and turned up the lantern. "There's some bread here, flour, sugar, tea, cinnamon, lard, jam, potatoes, carrots, oats, rice, salt pork, and...proof that spring is coming...ta-da!" He pulled up a bunch of bananas and looked hopefully over for my reaction, but his smile dissolved the moment he saw me.

"Bob, you look like hell!" There was a note of shock in his voice. He came closer and looked me up and down. "Your cheeks are all sunken in, your clothes are hanging off you, and you could pull me out of Six Mile Canyon with that beard. And while we're at it, you smell like a caribou carcass!"

It was the normal, familiar way we had always talked, but now it grated, rubbed off my last patch of paralysis, the last bit of the bubble between me and the world I couldn't face. "How dare you come here and mock me! Just shut up and get out!" I roared, leaping to my feet. I actually took a swing at him--I took a swing at Buck, my best friend and partner, the brother I'd never had.

I was so weak that he easily sidestepped the punch. His other hand came around on my back and shoved me down roughly to the floor. His voice, when it came close to my ear, hissed in commingled fear and anger. "I know you're miserable. I know you'd rather be dead. But what's done is done. You can't bring her back."

"I know," I panted, "I know. Let me up."

Buck didn't move.

"Please."

"Oh, all right."

He let me up, and I brushed myself off.

"Sit down," he growled, "I'm not done with you yet. You know, if it were just you, you could rot like this for months until you eventually pulled yourself out of it, and I'd let you. You're a grown man. But you have Benton to think about too, you know." His eyes flicked over to the other end of the cabin, where the door to Benton's tiny bedroom was closed.

"He's asleep."

"I certainly hope so." Buck pushed the box out of the way so we could see eye to eye, and we sat down across from each other at the table. "How is he?"

I scratched my head and looked away, trying to come up with something, anything. "Well, he seems all right, I guess. He goes to school, plays outside, does his chores..."

"'All right'? Has he said one word to you since you slapped him in front of all those people?"

"It was a reflex action," I said testily.

"You decide to lie to your son--" Buck stopped, glanced at Benton's door once again, and lowered his voice, which was bordering on a shout, "--about how Caroline died, and then you slap him when he asks you why 'our friend Mr. Muldoon' wasn't there at the funeral?"

My gut twisted at that, but I wasn't about to admit it, not even to Buck, so I slid back to the previous question. "He has been kind of quiet since then," I allowed.

"I'm worried about the boy. It's not just you he's not talking to."

"What? What do you mean?" I looked up from the wood grain of the table, hoping for a bit of reassurance, but Buck's eyes were dull and flat with concern.

"I happened to see Mrs. Turner while I was in town. He's not talking at school either. If she calls on him, he just looks down at the floor and shakes his head. He spends a lot of time staring out the window at nothing. He won't talk to the other kids. And she caught him sneaking back to the coatroom to steal bits of others kids' lunches. After that, she started bringing him a lunch every day."

"Oh, God," I moaned, my head sinking into my hands. "He must hate me."

Buck whacked the table in exasperation. "Don't be ridiculous, Bob. He *needs* you. He needs you to give him some structure and some guidance. Even if he gets up at the right time every day and does all his chores without you reminding him, he's just a scared, lonely little boy who needs his father."

I held my hands to my face, pressed hard, to keep myself from tearing up, or, God forbid, actually crying, and took a few deep breaths to regain my composure.

Buck regarded me thoughtfully. "Have you been writing in your journal?"

"Not really," I sighed. "Just a few lines now and again."

"You're a pressure cooker. It'd do you some good to get that stuff out of your system. You could go hike a little ways, away from the river, and just shout it out. You're out here in the middle of nowhere. No one'd hear you."

I snorted. "Now who's being ridiculous? Is that what you think of me? That your old partner Bob Fraser has finally gone round the bend? Of course, given that Muldoon made a complete fool of me," I admitted morosely, "you might not be far off."

"Listen," and Buck's voice was gentle, "I didn't come here to beat you up, or to judge you. I came because Benton's a good kid, because he's all you have left of Caroline, and because he can't get through this without you."

I nodded wearily. All these emotions were so damn exhausting.

Buck nodded too, apparently satisfied. "All right, I've said my piece, and now I'll go." He stood up from the table and began the process of getting dressed to go back out into the night.

He was just turning to leave when I spoke up. "Thank you...for the supplies."

"Don't mention it." I couldn't see much of his face anymore, but his eyes were twinkling. "Oh, and tucked in the box there, Mrs. Turner gave me something Benton drew the other day in school. I thought you might like to see it." He paused a moment, apparently deciding whether or not to go on, and then added quickly, "He adores you, you know." And then Buck wrenched the door open and was swallowed by the wind and snow.

I slid a piece of rough oversized drawing paper, folded in half, out from between the rice and the side of the box and spread it before me on the table.

It was a Mountie on a flat-backed horse, resplendent in his dress uniform and Stetson. Benton had even remembered the Sam Browne. The Mountie's legs were as long as the horse's, and his midsection looked like a Sumo wrestler's, but the Mountie had a big smile on his face. He and his horse were set close to the left side of the page, as if they were about to race off the paper in search of desperate criminals, and the horse's tail fanned out behind him in a big squiggly W. They looked...excited. Happy.

And then my eyes were drawn to the giant rough red letters at the bottom of the page: DAD. I looked at the picture again. DAD. And again. DAD.

The picture became a reddish blur as tears shot to my eyes and refused to stay put. I quickly put the picture on the bench beside me so I wouldn't ruin it.

Oh, God, here come the waterworks, I thought, and then there was no more thought, just a raging torrent of hurt and grief and rage and searing sorrow that consumed me, swept though me like a forest fire. I cried in raw, heaving gasps of torment, barely able to get enough air to breathe, helpless within the grip of the blackness, the poison, the hatred, the misery, the yearning all demanding their due at once. As I was wracked with sobs, I pulled on my hair, yanked at my beard, banged my forehead on the table, and finally ended up in the fetal position on the floor, crying for who knows how long. I fell asleep there on the braided rug in front of the woodstove, not merely exhausted, but utterly spent.

***

The cold woke me. I had forgotten to stoke the woodstove before I fell asleep, and now each breath left a trail of white in the frigid air.

I jumped up, rubbing my fingers and toes to make sure there was no frostbite, and immediately threw in half a dozen logs. Then I lit the lantern and checked the old pendulum clock on the shelf. Benton wouldn't be waking up for a good hour and a half.

I still felt ravaged, scarred, like a house that had been ransacked and set on fire, but I also felt lighter, freer. I felt...more alive somehow.

I was also ravenous. I grabbed the bread and jam from the box Buck had brought, cut three lopsided slices from the loaf, and slathered them with a thick coating of jam before cramming them into my mouth. Some of the jam and bread crumbs got smeared into my beard in my haste, so I went and got my shaving kit and cut those parts off, and then I just kept cutting and shaving until all of a sudden, there was a pink-jowled, surprised-looking man staring back at me from the mirror.

"Well, what do you know about that," I said to my reflection. And I even smiled a little.

Benton needed structure, Buck had said. Well, all right, I could do that. I gave myself a sponge bath with a washcloth and put on the one last set of clean clothes I could find, and then I decided to make Benton breakfast. Some tea and a nice hot bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon and sugar, maybe. And I'd slice up one of those bananas for him and put it in the oatmeal. Benton loved bananas, on the rare occasions when he got to eat them.

I had just put Benton's breakfast on the table for him, the steam rising lazily from the tea and oatmeal, and gone back to the pot to get some oatmeal for myself when I saw which spoon I was using. It was a large metal serving spoon I had brought back from Whitehorse for Caroline, the handle stamped boldly with "Kiss The Cook." And indeed, Caroline had dutifully "made me" kiss her every time she used it. Beautiful, dear Caroline, her laugh like a chime, my lips on her cheek or neck or her exquisite mouth...

I felt the tears streaming hotly down my cheeks once more before I even knew I was crying, and then I heard the soft slithering sound of Ben's slipper feet coming into the room. I desperately wanted to dry my tears before I turned to face him, but I just couldn't stop. My shoulders shook as I fought to cry silently.

The feet came closer, and I heard a surprised intake of breath as he saw the table. There was a pause as he took it all in, and then he came up right behind me.

"Dad?" His six year-old voice sounded so small and scared and sad. "Dad, did you not like my picture?"

I spun around, wiping my eyes. The picture! I had forgotten to put it away, and now it was on the bench right next to Benton's place. I went over to it, and he followed, looking up at me in abject misery, his bottom lip quivering. "Oh, Benton, no, your picture is very good! It was so good that Mrs. Turner had Buck bring it over to show me last night. I love that you put me in my dress uniform with the Sam Browne, and that you gave the horse such a nice eyebrow. This is a keeper!"

He lit up at the compliment, which made me feel that much worse for having been so oblivious to him over the past few weeks.

I grabbed my handkerchief out of my pocket and wiped my face. "I was just...because I...because I miss your mother. Very much."

"I miss her very much too," Benton said solemnly, and then his face crumpled, and he wrapped his arms around my waist and cried into my hip for a good five minutes while I held him with one arm and smoothed his hair with the other.

Once the sniffling died down, I gave him the clean side of my handkerchief. "Are you hungry?"

He thought about this for a moment, then said, "I'm starved," and dried his tears.