"I can't take it anymore," Ray said abruptly, staring out into nothing.

"Can't 'take' what?" Fraser asked.

"This, here, now, snow, everything." Ray looked at him suddenly and seemed startled. "You. Can't take you. Can't take being dependent on you for my life. I can't do this anymore."

Ray had complained many times before; it was a nervous gesture of his that meant nothing. The snow, the food, the conversation, the lack of sexual hijinks.... The last admission would have startled Fraser far more if he hadn't recognized it as part of a far earlier complaining spiel Ray had once made about prison life. Ray complained the same as he breathed. If he stopped, Fraser would be worried.

"You're just tired, frustrated," Fraser answered. He felt tired himself.

Ray stood and started to pace in increasingly larger circles. "Yeah and yeah, but I mean all that too. I have to get away. From here, from you."

This sounded different, and it felt much like the time Ray had punched him. First shock, then pain. "From me." Where did this come from?

"I'm a city boy. I want noise. I want people. Somebody not you and me. *Anybody* not you and me! I want to be warm, I want takeout, I want sanity! I don't want to be strapped to a dogsled mushing my way through the middle of nowhere!"

Ray simply needed to be calmed, shown reason. "I'm the one doing all the mushing, Ray. You're simply sitting there."

"You think I like just sitting there? I just don't know what the hell I'm doing."

It didn't seem to be working. Hurt, Fraser responded, "Do you think that would make much of a difference?"

Ray froze. "Are you calling me lazy, incompetent, or both?"

Fraser said nothing, simply staring, stone-faced. He couldn't get any words past the lump in his throat, the growing anger in his soul. How could Ray jab at him so casually?

Ray took his answer from that and bared his teeth in an expression that wouldn't look amiss on a growling dog. "Why are we here, Fraser?" he asked, sounding deadly calm. "Why were we dragging me through the middle of nowhere when my judgment's shot?"

Fraser couldn't believe Ray could blame him for that. "Muldoon forced us to deplane over an ice field."

"Yeah, though he couldn't have done that if we hadn't hitched a ride on the wing to begin with. I mean the hand of Franklin thing, and you know it. What kind of guy drags a sick, out-of-his-mind friend through the wastes of fucking nowhere? It's selfish, Fraser. It's fucking taking advantage. But you just have to have things yer way, right?"

"Only the 'kind of guy' whose friend asked for it. In fact, you suggested our trip yourself. I fail to see how it's selfish of me to humor your whims; it seems quite the opposite. And you're hardly ill now."

"I just came off a fit of hypothermia; what the hell did I know? I could barely fasten my own snowboots on! You're gonna hold me to my word when I didn't even know what I was saying? And am I well? God, I don't feel like I'm in my right mind."

"Are you ever? How would you know what it feels like?" The words flew out before Fraser could even consider them. He could almost feel a line being crossed. He tried to backtrack to something a little less incendiary. "You simply need to try harder." Unfortunately, those words sounding accusing even in his own ears.

"Try harder. Nobody could try any harder than I tried! I'm just not picking it up. I'm too old to learn how to do all this stuff."

"And that's my fault?"

"Not that I'm too old, no, but that you expect me to do it anyway-- yeah. And why am I always the person who needs to try, who needs to change, all the time? Why can't someone try to change to suit me for once? God, you and Stella...."

"Are you really comparing me to your ex-wife?"

"Yeah... yeah. Damn, why didn't I see it before?"

"Because it's not there?"

"No, you and Stella. Both of you always so right, so damned perfect. I'm always the one who's being unreasonable, who has to change, who's not trying hard enough--"

"I never ask you to change."

"Oh, hell no. You don't ask; you never ask. You assume; you always assume. You just do what ya were gonna do anyway and expect me to be busting my hump somewhere behind you to back ya up. So I'm trying and changing behind you but it means nothing to ya because you were expecting me to do it anyway. Because I'm always wrong, and yer always right. Well, I have to tell you, it's impossible that I'm wrong all the time. Nobody is wrong all the time."

//How could he possibly blame me for things I've never said or done? What his inexplicable thought processes made of my actions had nothing to do with me. Yet it all has to be my fault? How convenient for him.//

Maybe someone should remind Ray of his own damned responsibilities. "Perhaps the fact that it happens all the time should tell you something, and it is not my fault that you're neither strong enough nor skilled enough to keep up with me."

Ray swallowed and closed his eyes. His voice sounded dead. "I fucking hate Canada, and I hate you." A line had been crossed.

Shock hit like a blast of freezing water. "You can't possibly mean that."

"Yes, I can! Who are you to tell me what I mean? I wanna go home, dammit!"

"You want to give up our quest?"

"How can I give up something we didn't start? We're wandering aimlessly out here! I. Want. To. Go. Home."

"You want to go home." It refused to sink in.

"Yeah! What part of 'I wanna go home' aren't you getting?"

"Then go home you shall. I'm sorry I tried to inflict the beauty of my own home on a soul so utterly unequipped to appreciate it."

"Fine! Do you *know* the way home?"

"I assure you that you need not fear. I'll get you as far away from me as I can as soon as possible."

******************************************************

The sled ride that followed was torture for Fraser, as his mind obsessively replayed every word, every insult, over and over. It left him lost and in disarray, his emotions running wild. He couldn't understand how Ray could be so vicious, so deliberately obtuse. So hurtful.

Ray wanted to go home? That would be more than fine. In fact, Fraser would be willing to throw him onto the airplane if necessary.

The weather seemed to mirror his inner tumult. Snow now swirled so thickly around them that he could barely see. How could it have happened so quickly? They needed to find shelter immediately.

The sled started to tilt to the side with no warning as the dogs he could barely see started to yelp. But instead of hitting the snow, they kept tilting and tilting.... Fraser tried to correct, but he couldn't right or stop the sled. They kept falling, tumbling. Fraser heard Ray shout his name by the first time his head struck something. Another impact followed. Then another.

Then darkness.

******************************************************

Ray's gloved hand on Fraser's face woke him. Smiling, Fraser opened his eyes... to see Ray dangling partly over him. Only the straps held his partner partly in place on the sled. The sled that pressed down on Fraser's midsection so forcefully that he couldn't feel his legs. He didn't have the best vantage point, but he could see that most of the dogs hung or slumped, dead, in their traces.

"Diefenbaker?" he shouted, forgetting himself that the half-wolf was deaf. The sound made his thick, groggy head ring.

Ice and rock surrounded them on all sides and seemed to tower above, letting only a tiny slice of snowy sky show. Crevasse. They'd fallen down another crevasse. At least this one had a bottom. Unfortunately, they sat at that bottom far from the surface, and the sled that pinned Fraser was wedged into the rock and ice. Their supplies had flown far and wide in the fall, most of them out of Fraser's reach. He could see pieces of their radio lying in seven different places.

If he could rouse Ray, Ray could unstrap himself and move the sled. Then they could gather their remaining resources and work on finding a way out. Together, they could accomplish anything.

"Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray!" Fraser shook Ray's arm, slowly becoming upset as Ray refused to rouse.

The shaking made Ray's head move to the side, revealing swelling and a few long, deep gashes that left vibrant splashes of red on too pale skin and bluish lips. The fall had ripped his hat off, leaving his longish hair uncovered and matted into the blood on his face. His hanging arm didn't hang quite right either, suggesting a bad break.

Fraser fought down panic and horror, taking refuge in rationality. He had things he needed to do, so he should tackle them in small, easy steps.

Fraser needed to check Ray's skull and pupils, but he couldn't do it pinned the way he was. Fraser fought to find the leverage to get himself free, but the sled only jiggled, lodging its jagged ends deeper into the walls. Ten minutes of effort left him winded and dizzy and no closer to free, though he could now touch Ray's left cheek. So close yet so far.

He needed to see if Ray's pupils were even. A single dilated pupil could suggest a life-threatening subdural hematoma, bleeding within the skull that would put dangerous pressure on the brain. Not that he could do anything for Ray in that event, since only drilling into the skull and evacuating the hematoma would prevent any further compression.

Without immediate medical attention, Ray could face serious brain damage. Ray could die.

And Fraser could do nothing.

And this was his fault. His negligence, his selfishness....

Fraser calmed himself. He didn't, couldn't, know that Ray had been so severely injured. Ray would wake and be fine. Together they would be able to move the sled and escape. Fraser's inability to feel his legs was no doubt a temporary thing; he'd faced similar before and come out fine. For God's sake, he'd also been blind and nearly unhinged from a head injury at the time, yet still survived and brought a criminal to justice with Ray Vecchio's assistance.

Fraser used Ray's gun--which he kept since Ray had no permits to carry firearms in Canada--to shoot a red flag out of the crevasse. Luck had been with them last time, allowing them to be found and saved. It would be with them again.

Endless hours later, Fraser's optimism had deserted him. Dief still hadn't made a sound, and he knew what that meant. He wouldn't let himself think about Diefenbaker, wouldn't let himself think about the way he'd just repaid his loyal companion for saving his life all those years ago. Ray still wouldn't wake no matter how loudly or badly Fraser sang. Fraser's voice had given out long ago. All his struggles had failed to loosen the sled or give him any room to slide out from under it. As night fell the cold increased, making him shudder convulsively. It was hard to stay awake, but his own head injury made him afraid to sleep. Besides, Ray could wake at any time, and Fraser wanted to be there for him when it happened.

Fraser tried to hold onto the positives, few as they were. He'd found an intact flashlight amidst the broken debris that had fallen from the sled in its tumble. He rationed its use carefully, mindful of limited battery power. Ray still lived.

He just wouldn't wake or move.

Sometimes, in past moments of extreme frustration, Fraser had wished that Ray would be quiet and *still*, even if only for a few minutes. Their time in Canada had taught him the error of his ways. A quiet and still Ray was an endangered Ray.

Fraser had never seen Ray so still and quiet as he was now.

If Ray had taken a serious head injury on the way down, the damage would be permanent by now.

Fraser didn't know when he'd started to shake Ray's arm again or when he'd started yelling at Ray to wake up *now*. "You don't quit, Ray. You told me you never quit. How the hell can you quit now? On me, on us, on yourself? So wake up.

"You can't... you can't go now, like this. The last words we say to one another can't be words of hatred, do you hear me? They can't be! I won't let them be!

"I love you, Ray, do you hear me? I love you. I loved you from the moment I first saw you; I just didn't realize it until you stepped in front of Greta Garbo's bullet to save me. You smiled and hugged me. No one had ever welcomed me like that before, so warmly. So effusively.

"I should have said something in all this time, but I could never find the right moment, the right words. I was scared I would ruin the best friendship I ever had. I couldn't speak.

"I know you love me too; you have to. Why else would you have agreed to stay in Canada with me? You do, don't you? I mean, you have to. There's no other way--

"I'm sorry, Ray. I'm so terribly sorry. I've been selfish and stupid. I stopped listening to you. I stopped appreciating what you were doing for me. You do so much that I started to take you for granted. I *know* you use anger to cover over your hurt. I *know* you said those things the way you did because it was the only way to make me listen. I love you, Ray.

"You have to wake up, Ray. We have to get out of here. I'll take you home and take care of you. We'll be happy together. I'll make you happy. So wake up. Please wake up, Ray. Wake up.

"Wake the fuck up.

"Ray, you can't leave me too. You can't. You can't die before I let you know I love you. If you die, I could never live with myself. Not if I killed everyone I loved. Please, Ray. Ray?" Fraser's head pounded so hard it should have burst, and he could barely see through his stinging eyes. He tasted salt and his own blood.

Despite the rough shaking, despite the shouting, despite the promises, despite the tears, Ray's eyes remained closed, his face still, in the small circle of flashlight.

Fraser buried his face into Ray's arm and sobbed.

******************************************************

"C'mon, Fraser! We got bad guys to catch, a city to save. No time to loaf! The Queen doesn't have any respect for slothful Mounties. Y'know, Mounties who're like those slow, furry crits that hang from trees by their toes. Now there's an image for ya."

Fraser awoke on his cot at home, in the consulate. Home? How could he think of the Chicago consulate as his home? And yet he did and felt glad to be there. Dief gave Fraser what would be the lupine equivalent of a raised eyebrow from his spot on the floor, while Ray lounged in the doorway. "Ray?" Fraser asked.

"The one and... well, okay." Ray grinned, all sunshine, and straightened a little from his boneless slouch.

Safe. They were safe. Ray was safe and well. It had all been just a dream. Fraser grinned back.

Fraser wanted to grab him and hug him until he begged for mercy. Kiss him, love him... but it would only confuse Ray and seem out of character. Fraser could just hear him responding with "Some dream you had, huh?" before disengaging as quickly as possible. Or he would think something was wrong.

But maybe Fraser's dream had been a message from his subconscious to do something, to take a chance. Fraser still felt ill from the thought of Ray not just dying but dying hating him and never knowing how much he loved him.

But his throat closed up and the words fled him. Nor could he imagine flinging himself at Ray and hoping his partner would understand. Instead of calling to get him committed. In any case, Fraser wasn't the flinging type.

But he would think of something. He didn't believe in throwing second chances away.

Ray crouched beside the bed and scratched Dief's ears. "Who are you, and what've you done with my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed partner?"

"I was having a horrible dream, Ray."

Ray looked down and nodded. "Me too. I was dreaming that we were dying in Canada after you dropped us into a ditch." As Fraser stared in horror, Ray looked up and his bloody, swollen face painfully stretched into a smile. "But everything's much better now."

Fraser fought to return to consciousness--knowing, feeling, somehow that something even more terrible had happened in the real world--but it was like swimming through shadows as thick as molasses. He didn't know how long he struggled until he could open his eyes, but it seemed like forever.

He was back in the crevasse. No, he'd never left. The same ice walls, the same sliver of unfriendly sky. The same broken sled, broken dogs, broken Ray.

No, not the same, broken Ray. The soft, fluffy flakes that twirled slowly down from the sky in gentle spirals clung to Ray's skin when they reached it, refusing to melt. Under that thin frosting of snow his face looked set, heavy, as if turned to stone, where in life it had always seemed lighter than bone and flesh.

In life.

Ray was gone, no longer in that body, dead. Fraser didn't need to feel Ray's wrist to know that he would find no pulse, but he did it anyway.

Gone.

Gone beyond the possibility of forgiveness, confessions, admissions, affection. Ray had died hating him. Ray had died never knowing how he truly felt.

Dead.

And it was his fault.

He'd killed everything he loved. Now he was alone. Even his dead father was long gone.

There was only one thing left for Fraser to do.

******************************************************

Ren obsessively dusted the doorframe and struggled to hear. He shouldn't be doing this. The inspector would tell him what the telephone call concerned in due time and wouldn't approve of him trying to listen through the closed door of her office. Yet the sound of the call he'd transferred to her gave him a feeling in his gut he couldn't ignore.

Something terrible had happened. And somehow he knew that it concerned Constable Fraser.

"Turnbull! I know you're out there. Please... come in," she called suddenly.

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

She looked almost haggard, her face set into a still mask. Only the shaking shine in her eyes moved, and that would be visible only to someone looking for it.

Something terrible indeed.

Ren took a deep breath. "Yes, sir?"

"You have worked with Constable Fraser for some time, and I believe he considered you to be a friend." While Inspector Thatcher's last words brought a warm glow to Ren's heart, that heart was still lodged in his throat. He knew what was coming now. "There has been an accident...."

Over the dry, clinical words that followed, only the dignity due the uniform he wore, the inspector's own bravery, and the demands of protocol in the very official setting of the inspector's office kept him from breaking down as he had the last time he'd thought Fraser had died. He would never see this man he'd respected and loved ever again.

Fraser had even been denied the honor of dying in the pursuit of justice. That he'd died of an accident hardly made his demise shameful, but it did make it seem terribly wrong, an even greater mistake.

As the inspector's strangled-sounding voice bled to a halt, another thought struck Ren. "Sir?"

"Yes, Constable."

"Did they say if Detective Vec-- if Ray had been with him at the time?" He didn't ask his true question. He knew he didn't need to.

"Yes. They were found together. Both deceased."

Of course. Of course they were. That day when Constable Fraser had set him as Ray's guard and protector at the consulate had shown Ren how deeply Fraser respected him in turn, that the constable would put the welfare and safety of his most prized possession, Ray, in Ren's hands.

Ren's mother hadn't lived long after hearing of her husband's death in the line of the duty. He couldn't help feeling that this might have been a similar case.

"Dismissed, Constable."

Inspector Thatcher wanted to grieve in private. He understood; so did he.

As Ren reached the door, he heard, "Constable?"

"Yes, sir."

"The consulate is unofficially closed for the rest of the day."

"Understood, sir."

He held himself together until he left her sight, closing the door behind him. Until he realized that every millimeter of this place held lingering remnants of them, making him see memories of Constable Fraser, Ray, and Diefenbaker everywhere he looked. Until the crushing weight of loss settled on his soul.

Ren doubted the inspector could hear his helpless sobbing. She had her own grief to contend with.

******************************************************

"...I'll contact his parents. They're in Arizona right now, but I'll find them. Thank you." Harding set the phone down and stared at it, trying to shake the feeling of unreality. At the same time, he didn't want to lose that feeling.

Then all this would be real.

Thank God they'd updated Ray's paperwork over a month ago. Harding didn't even want to think of how Mrs. Vecchio would have reacted to getting a call that the authorities had found her son's body. It might've killed her. Finding out that the constable and her fake son were dead would be hard enough.

He didn't want to think of Francesca's reaction.

Harding had been half-expecting a call like this for Fraser ever since the Mountie had begun working with his department. Someday, he'd thought, Fraser would get himself and his partner killed; it was inevitable with how reckless and driven he was, with the loyalty he incited from the people around him, the kind that would follow him off a cliff. Adding Kowalski's similar inability to back down from a fight for the right cause had only increased the odds. Yet it had never happened. The nuts had begun to seem charmed, invulnerable.

They all should have known better.

Sometime before dying the Mountie had actually written down and pinned their information to their coats for the rescuers to use in contacting next of kin, with a special notation on Ray's paper that said he should be sent back to Chicago. Harding tried not to wonder what it had been like to be trapped like that, unable to save himself, beyond rescue, and knowing death would be coming slowly.

Worse than that, Harding couldn't shake the feeling, despite the bare minimum of facts he'd been given, that Ray had died first. He didn't want to imagine how that would have affected the constable in his final hours.

Maybe Fraser had welcomed death after that.

There was no way their deaths could have seemed right. But *this*... it shouldn't have been like this, through some stupid accident. Not like this.

He didn't play favorites, but he'd liked them. Fraser and Ray were good cops, some of the best.

Had been. *Had been*.

He would make an announcement to the room soon, and when he did he would be the gruff pillar of strength his people expected and needed.

But he needed a few minutes alone first.

**********************THE END**********************

NOTE: Originally the "weave a circle round him three times" line made me think of Borderlands, but I decided this song was *too* dark for what I was going for, especially since "Faded Flowers" kept making see the snow burying them forever....

"Faded Flowers" by Shriekback
This is the sound of poisons, the sickness no one knows
No one is crying for us this time
Our shapes are blurring under miracles of snow
Weave a circle round him three times
You have to plan your moves at these times
Our hearts are breaking, one more song to go

These eyes are blind; this is a pure thing
These hands I kiss, tragic as anything
These eyes are blind; this is a pure thing
All splash and hiss, beyond my measuring

Only the anacrusis, the main event remains
Shameful and naked, out there, in the
Great cold outdoors we have to learn these things again
Bathed in this incandescent glow
The leap to something-- I don't know
There is no doubt upon us when
The greasy men come back again

These eyes are blind; this is a pure thing
These hands I kiss, tragic as anything
These eyes are blind; this is a pure thing
All splash and hiss, beyond my measuring
These fading flowers, precious as memory
A veil of cloud, correct as energy
We had some good machines but they don't work no more
I loved you once, don't love you anymore

These eyes are blind; this is a pure thing
These hands I kiss, tragic as anything
These eyes are blind; this is a pure thing
All splash and hiss, beyond my measuring
These fading flowers, precious as memory
A veil of cloud, correct as energy
We had some good machines but they don't work no more
I loved you once, don't love you anymore

****

More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room at
http://members.tripod.com/~drovar/viridian/
Fandoms represented: due South, Hard Core Logo, X-Files, Once a Thief, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Angel, Two Guys and a Girl (was Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place), X-Men, Doctor Who