I could see heat lightning flash in white bursts across the night sky as I cranked up my A/C. A blast of cold air hit my damp, sticky skin, made me wonder if my sweaty hair would ice over the way it felt like it wanted to. I wondered if lightning would keep flashing out there or if it would finally rain, and if it did rain whether it would cool the city down a bit or just make it more sticky-humid. Not that it really mattered to me at the moment. I love a pounding, good rainstorm. Maybe it would wash things clean.

I wanted a cold shower, as cold as I could make it, but Fraser had come back with me, and it'd be rude to leave him out here alone. I could deal with my own sweat and stink in T-shirt, shorts, and air conditioning for a while longer. At least I finally got my holster, pants, boots, and socks peeled off. I'd been marinating all day. If Fraser minded the condition I was in, he was too polite to say.

Did I really want to be left alone to think right now? Didn't think so. Besides, Fraser was going to get to this sooner or later, and I'd be better off sooner. Save me the waiting and worrying.

No rain or shower in the world could wash this day away.

I didn't turn to look at Fraser, though I could see a blaze of red at the corner of my eye. "How can you not be hot as hell wearing that get-up? It gives me heatstroke just looking at ya."

His voice was even. You couldn't read a damned thing in it. "Your apartment is cool."

"Not now, not now. Today. Earlier."

"Mind over matter, Ray."

"Yeah, when you've lost yer mind, it just don't matter," I muttered against the window.

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing."

Unlike Mounties who could think themselves cool--probably by imagining a relaxing bout of frostbite in the tundra--most people have to just deal with the heat, and heat tends to strike people one of two ways. You can get tired and lazy, look for a basement or someplace air conditioned and just chill. Or you can go out and do the craziest shit possible. The 27th had been in the middle of a crazy wave for two weeks now. We had the stupid shit, like the bank robber we busted a day ago who wrote down his demands on the back of a deposit slip that had his own fucking name and address on the other side. He had that slip with him because he'd just deposited money in that same bank an hour ago. Some people shouldn't be let out of the house in the morning.

Then there was today.

What kind of guy would shoot his wife and son in front of his two remaining kids? What kind of guy would turn a gun on any child, let alone his own little girl? What kind of guy would see an armed cop tell him to put the gun down once, twice, three times or he'd shoot and just laugh as tears ran down his little girl's face and she kept flinching at the gun barrel digging into her neck? What kind of sick bastard?

"Someone who needed to be dealt with," Fraser said. Shit, hadn't meant to say any of that aloud. "Ray, I told them it was a justified shooting." Tone still even.

I wondered what he'd said to them after they'd separated us. I mean, Fraser was loyal as all get-out, but he'd turn me in if he thought I went bad. I couldn't blame him for that; he had a code, principles. More people should have a code they lived by.

Fraser continued, "You tried to negotiate; I tried to negotiate. We had every expectation that he would use the gun he pointed at his daughter and us to kill again. You gave him three warnings. You shot to incapacitate, not kill, leaving the perpetrator wounded enough to no longer be a threat but still alive. I mentioned all these things during the inquiry."

"That's... good. That's the way it went down."

I still didn't turn to see him, but I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. He was doing that eyebrow stroke thing. This couldn't be good.

"I do have a question, however."

"Shoot," I almost said. Instead I said, "What would that be?"

"I saw you shift your aim at the last second. You originally intended to kill him with a shot through the heart. You had your glasses on, so your aim would have been true."

I still had my glasses on. Forgot about them during the last few hours. I took them off. "I'm waiting for a question here."

"You know what I mean to ask."

"Not really. You asking why I tried to kill him or why I changed my mind?"

"Both."

I finally turned around to face him. Instead of looking completely condemning, he had understanding and criticism in his eyes all at once. Fraser's one of the few who can pull that off. But how could he understand when I didn't understand?

"I wasn't thinking. I was feeling. It was all instinct."

"You were tense but calm, as best befitted such a dangerous situation with young lives at stake. Then I saw a... a look twist across your face."

"A look?"

"Your eyes narrowed, and your lips pulled back from your teeth in a snarl before you nearly fired the gun. Then your hand shook a little and a new expression crossed your face before you pulled your gun to the side, avoiding a killing shot."

"I was aiming."

"I'd say your aim was exquisite both times."

Through all the hours of questioning and paperwork that followed it, I'd been trying to avoid thinking about why I'd done what I'd done. But the answer was already halfway here, and I knew it. I just didn't want to look at it.

"Fraser, who was he aiming the gun at just before I fired?"

"His daughter."

I made a buzzer sound and said, "Wrong answer."

"Ray?"

"He was aiming it at you. Not only was he aiming it at you, but he was getting ready to fire."

"I didn't see any of this."

"I could see it so clear; it was one of those moments when time just slows and you know everything, and yer trying to fix things before time speeds up again. I could almost see the seconds tick, tick, tick away in slow motion. I saw him start to turn the gun and smile. In another three seconds a bullet was gonna leave the barrel and kill you dead. I could hear the click."

"You saw and heard this."

"Yeah."

"This is not the first time someone has trained a gun on me."

"That's for sure."

He looked confused. I knew he wanted me to reassure him. Needed me to. All those times you wish you could shake that annoying Fraser confidence in the World As It Is, and when you do, you wish you hadn't.

"You're not a killer, Ray. You're not."

"Not usually, no."

"Not this time either."

"It was close though." God, was I defending myself or trying to dig my own grave?

"Why did this situation provoke this response this time?"

"When I play 'one of these things is not like the other' here, the only answer I get is that this time the guy was gonna shoot ya. Yeah, I know, I know, people are aiming guns on you all the time, but this time he was gonna shoot right there. I saw and heard it coming. Bang, you dead. And you didn't see it coming. You can catch knives just fine, but there's only one way to catch a bullet. So now I'm left with the thought that I can be the Zen guy while the perp has a gun on a five-year-old but lose it when he turns it on my partner." I had my answer. My answer was this: I'm not right in the head.

Maybe it was even human to set your partner's life as being worth more than a little girl's, but it wasn't right. Wrong to care, no. Probably not even wrong to shoot when I did, not here, but wrong to kill when there's another way. Especially to kill for Fraser, who'd probably be the last person on the planet who'd want someone to be killed for his sake.

You hear people saying they'd kill for someone, but they usually don't mean it literally, not really. Once upon a time I might've killed for Stella, but it never came up. But none of that described the mind-devouring feeling that made me train my gun on that bastard's heart. In that moment I only had one thought, one option.

"But you didn't shoot to kill."

Now he was defending me? That's rich. "I pulled it aside at the last second, like ya said. But at that moment, I was gonna kill him. No thought or reasoning involved, just this thick, dark red feeling. I wanted the motherfucker dead."

He took a deep breath and stroked his eyebrow again, looking down. I could actually see him sweating a little, just a bit at the hairline. Even he didn't have the brainpower to keep cool and deal with what I just told him at the same time.

But, like he'd said, it was cool in my apartment.

"Then I was the impetus."

"Come again?"

"The driving force, the motive, the catalyst."

Danger, Will Robinson. Bad place. "Seeing you in danger was."

Fraser took another deep breath but nodded this time. "I see." He... smiled?

"See what?"

"Sometimes I think of you getting injured."

"You and Lieutenant Welsh."

"Not like that. I mean that I think of you being injured in the line of duty."

"You think of that often?"

"Not constantly, no, but I do worry about something happening to you."

That sounded sweet and freaky all at once. "They have medication for that, y'know."

"That is not my point. My point... is that I think that I might react similarly in such a situation. That my first impulse, my first instinct, would be to deal with anyone who dared harm you as they had dealt with you."

Geez. He was trying to make me feel better, of course. "Yeah, right, Mr. Truth and Justice. Wouldn't happen."

"I'd like to think that I wouldn't carry it out, but I cannot be certain, never having been in that situation with you. I refrained with my father's killer, but that had been a near thing, more than once."

He sounded serious. I remembered when I came to after Greta Garbo had shot me to see that Fraser had thrown her to the ground and just about hog-tied her. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I hadn't known him that first day. That's not the way he usually operated.

Fraser continued, "You pulled free of that thick, dark red rage, fought off the urge to kill, and did what was right. You won't get my censure for that, not for such a show of strength and resolution." He was shining in that way he gets sometimes. Something I'd said made him happy. Damned if I knew what it was.

Whatever, what he said left me embarrassed and pleased all at once. Left me turned around, kind of. He had a talent for that. His opinion mattered a lot to me, more than almost anyone else's.

And he, the nearly incorruptible Mountie, would be tempted to kill for me, as I'd been for him.

What did that make us?

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

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