Author's website: http://www.thepurplebuffalo.net/~ophelia

Disclaimer: Just borrowing them for a bit.

Author's Notes: As always, much thanks Barb, Dine, Mary, and whoever else made beta-ish remarks in this fic's general direction in the three and a half years it's been sitting on my hard drive. Heh.

Story Notes: A certain creepiness factor ( or so I've been told), and sort of an alternate ending to COTW.

Ray lit the thick candle with a steady hand. It was set on the windowsill in a thick-bottomed, pottery mug. The flame touched the blackened wick; it flickered once in tandem with its reflection in the windowpane, sputtered, and went out.

"Yeah, stupid candle," he muttered, striking another match. This time, the flame caught, wavered briefly, and burned, joining the rest of the lit candles filling odd corners of the cabin with uncertain pools of hazy light.

There was another candle set on the other windowsill in a cracked saucer, four more standing upright in the middle of the rough-hewn table, two standing sentinel on either side of the bare hearth, and one more, unlit, in Ray's hands.

"This is your fault, Frase," Ray told the empty room. "Sure, lots of wood, but no, what's it called, timber. Tinder."

Silence.

"Yeah, I know, proper preparation prevents, what, screwing up. I guess. I should have maybe, y'know, learned how to do this fire-building thing myself."

He rolled the candle back and forth between his palms, wax slowly warming to his touch.

"Not much call for it in the wilds of downtown Chicago, y'know. Besides, the boy scout outdoors stuff, that's your job."

His reflection stared back at him solemnly from the darkened glass.

"This sucks," he told it savagely.

Fraser, infinitely capable Benton Fraser, had disappeared one dull November day three years ago. He'd set out past the treeline one afternoon, wolf at his heels, and never returned.

It had started simply enough.

Fraser had accumulated enough sick days to last him a lifetime, and Ray had two weeks coming to him, so when Fraser had insisted on a trip up north for a week, Ray had given in with easy grace. Better the cold north than a cold, Fraser-less bed, he figured.

Besides, he didn't need to be a detective to tell that Fraser belonged up there in the land of polar bears and igloos and ice. Can't forget all that ice. There was a yearning in his eyes and a longing in his voice when he talked about it. Like he missed it. Like he belonged there and not in Chicago, surrounded by concrete and fiberglass and too many people.

Fraser was obviously homesick, Ray told himself. And hey, he'd never been to Canada. Might as well go see a lot of snow. Besides, deep down there was this doubt. A niggling sort of doubt that the far-off snowy places that inspired Fraser the past few weeks to stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stare north as if he were listening to a conversation in another room would take him back and keep him this time. So Ray went, too. To see the sights. And make sure Fraser didn't lose himself in all that ice and alone-ness and forget to come home.

The first day had been great, all clear blue skies and snow so white it hurt to look at. Fraser had stood knee-deep in a snowdrift, taking in deep lungfuls of icy air, and smiled a blissful smile that made Ray's chest hurt and throat tighten. The second day was as bright as the first. The third day was overcast and gray, as was the next, and the one after, and by the end of the week, Ray and Fraser were both tense and irritable. Fraser blamed it on atmospheric conditions. Ray was sure it was cabin fever.

Fraser was kneeling at the hearth, coaxing the kindling into burning. Ray paced back and forth in front of the window, shooting dark looks at the overcast sky.

"You see all that white stuff? All that snow, and all those clouds? They're saying go home, Kowalski, you damn tourist."

"They're clouds, Ray. Water vapour. All they're saying is that it's probable we'll get snow before nightfall." Fraser didn't look up--if he was going to be snarky, the least he could damn well do was make eye contact.

"So says you," Ray snapped back.

"I assure you, Ray, it will snow."

"I could care less about the damn snow! Those clouds are telling me to get my scrawny ass back to Chicago."

Fraser stiffened. "If you want to go, that can be arranged."

"I--" Ray stopped. Going back now would be like giving in. It was just another week. He could do another week. And the thought of Chicago without Fraser was... dull. Stale. Not right.

Truth be told, the lowering cloudy sky made Ray edgy. It made his skin crawl. Not the sort of oh-look, here-comes-astorm edgy, but claustrophobic and jittery edgy, gotta keep moving edgy. He couldn't see why Fraser missed this place so much because all it made him want to do was hop the first plane back home. He didn't say it, though.

And Fraser--Ray had thought the vacation would do something about that staring off into space listening thing. It hadn't. If anything, it was worse than ever. And Ray admitted, yeah, that kinda scared him. Freaked him out. Just a little. Okay. Maybe a lot.

Which led to arguments. Pointless, drawn-out debates that were all the worse because the cabin was only one room, and there was nowhere Ray could go to cool off any afterwards. The fourth night, Fraser had even gone so far as to pull out his bedroll and sleep on the floor. Or try to. It had taken some fast talking, but Ray was good at that, and got him back into bed where he belonged.

So when Fraser had strapped on his snowshoes and announced tersely that he was going out, Ray hadn't asked, just assumed he needed some space too, and was looking for firewood or some other kind of winter-time mountie thing.

Ray had stood in the doorway that afternoon, shivering despite flannel shirt and wool socks, and watched Fraser's broad back vanish. He strode out confidently over the snowdrifts, the wolf's proud plume of a tail waving like a banner at his side.

"See ya later, Frase," Ray called out on a whim.

Fraser didn't turn, just raised one hand in a gesture that was half of a wave and part of a salute, and disappeared over the next drift of snow.

When he hadn't returned by twilight, Ray set out into the lowering dusk himself, halogen torch in mittened hand, telling himself that mounties didn't fall and break their legs and freeze to death in snowbanks like normal people. It just didn't happen.

By full dark, Ray's fingers and toes were tingling dangerously, his legs were numb and stiff beneath snowencrusted denim, and his cheeks and nose burned fiercely with the cold. And he hadn't found a trace of Fraser or Dief. Nothing but unmarked snow and ice and dark trees, as if he were the only person left in the world, as if everyone else had taken off and forgotten to tell him to pack, as if anything but dark trees and ice and unmarked snow was someone else's distant dream.

It had been a struggle to go forward, but it was easy to go back, as if the wind were behind him. Even though it wasn't. It swept sideways across his path, whipped drifts of hard, grainy snow around his ankles, and snatched the breath from his lungs and the warmth from his exposed face.

He'd fully expected to find Fraser waiting for him with a lecture on cold-weather safety, but when he finally stumbled back, the cabin was cold and dark. The fire had burned down to sullen embers and ash, and the lamp had gone out.

Ray waited out the longest, coldest night of his life, and in the morning had called (who else?) the RCMP to report one of their own missing.

They'd called for volunteers and mounted a search, but didn't find a thing. Not the search planes, not the volunteers walking the grid on foot, not Ray himself, who the paramedics had eventually had to restrain and sedate after he'd been awake for seventy-two hours straight and refused to give up looking.

But Constable Benton Fraser of the RCMP, and Diefenbaker, deaf wolf, had disappeared utterly and irrevocably, and not a trace of either of them was ever found. No bodies, no bones, not even Fraser's goddamn snowshoes. It was as if they'd never existed in the first place.

Eventually, even Ray had no choice but to admit defeat and return home to Chicago. It was that or go stark raving mad. And he fought the urge to go back, telling himself that it wasn't healthy, that it wasn't good to dwell, and ignored the constant empty ache, like he was missing a piece of himself.

In time, they gave up all hope and pronounced Fraser dead. And Ray grieved. And he mourned. And he was reckless and took unnecessary risks, and ended up behind a desk. But in time, he thought he'd come to terms with it. After all, people die. It happens. And it might feel like the end of the world, but in the end there's nothing left to do but to pick up the pieces, put them back together around the gaping holes left in your life, and get on with the business of living. So he did.

Even though a flash of red at the corner of his eye made his throat tighten. Even though he found himself reaching in the night for a warm, solid body beside him. Even though the time he'd spent with Fraser slowly became more and more unreal, like something he'd dreamed once, or a story he'd been told. It was just one of those things. Those longdistance sort of coping things. So he told himself.

And after a year and a day, and a year and a day, and another year and a day, he gave up fighting the pull and went back. It wasn't to search. He'd given up searching. He knew with a bone-deep, instinctive certainty that Fraser was gone. More than anything else, it was the need to prove that he'd ever existed in the first place.

Welsh had frowned, but signed the forms granting him leave without a word. Frannie had refused to meet his eye across the squad room after that, a hard tightness around her eyes and mouth that hadn't been there three years ago. His parents knew he was taking a vacation, but didn't know where he was going.

He didn't tell any of them that when he made the decision to go back, it felt like letting go of something he'd been clinging onto desperately, knuckle-whiteningly tight. It felt like falling.

The cabin was just as they'd left it. There was half a cord of firewood stacked against the north wall, one, count 'em, one pair of snowshoes beside the door, and god help him, one of Fraser's thick sweaters hung carefully over a ladder-backed chair, by the fireplace.

It had been wet, Ray remembered, with a clarity so sharp it hurt. Fraser had washed it.

Fraser had knelt in front of the fire with a tin washbasin full of soapy water, shirtsleeves symmetrically folded up past his elbows, keeping up a running conversation with Dief about seasonal pressure fronts and would they need more firewood before the end of the week, and if so, did he think it was going to snow again soon or not.

The wool was dry and cold and stiff to the touch. Ray stood in front of the cold hearth, sweater in hand. Then he laid it carefully back over the chair.

There was firewood. There was no kindling. And Ray only knew how to start a fire with half a box of matches and most of the classified section of the Chicago Tribune.

There were matches, though, and candles. So he lit those, and stood at the darkened window, watching the candlelight flicker and waver, reflected out across the dark trees and ice and unmarked snow.

Eventually, the snow stopped, and the wind that whipped the loose snow up against the house in drifts died down. The clouds cleared, and the night was even darker for it.

Ray shivered. The thick candles gave off light, but no heat. It was cold enough he could see his breath. He looked at the sweater. Reached out for the sweater. Changed his mind and pulled a thick wool blanket off the neatly-made bed. He sat down on the floor, throat tight but free of that awful, unreal, empty feeling for the first time in years, leaned back against the bed, and watched the candles burn down.

Eventually, he fell asleep.

The candles on the hearth were the first to sputter out.

Then the ones on the table went out, the flame drowning in a puddle of melted wax.

The candle sitting in a saucer on the windowsill burned down too, and guttered out with a quiet hiss.

The last candle died silently, as if someone had leaned over and simply blown it out.

When the sun came up, the snow around the cabin was smooth and unmarked. There were no tracks.

And the cabin was empty.

End Far From Home by Ophelia Coelridge: ophelia@thepurplebuffalo.net

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