Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall      Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall

 by Lilith

  

 Author's website: http://themelodrama.net/thecheese

 Disclaimer: If they belonged to me, well, Vecchio wouldn't have been
brushed aside like that, and . . . ah, but these are pipe dreams. They
don't. Belong to me, that is.

 Author's Notes: 

 Story Notes: This story was written amidst an attempt to come to terms
with the two-Ray situation. It served as a sort of act of catharsis, and
as such is rather sentimental. The title is taken from the bittersweet
little A. E. Housman poem included at the beginning of the piece.

 

  

 Stars, I have seen them fall,
 But when they drop and die
 No star is lost at all
 From all the star-sown sky.
 The toil of all that be
 Helps not the primal fault
 It rains into the sea
 And still the sea is salt. 

 -A. E. Housman, 1936  

 Paper crinkled softly between Benton Fraser's gloved fingertips. He
stamped a booted foot against the snowy ground to keep his circulation
going, and gazed up at the northern sky, his breath misting in the icy
nighttime air. 

 Far above him stretched a breathtaking panorama of twinkling lights,
extending on seemingly until forever. They were so very clear in the
uncontaminated atmosphere that it almost seemed possible to cut oneself on
a ray of starlight, filtered down to an edge between the boughs of the
nearby trees. Fraser closed his eyes for a moment and just breathed,
savoring the long-missed feeling of Home. 

 In the heart of the city, you could never see the stars. The empty sky,
hazy and soiled by countless pollutants, had always weighed heavily on
Fraser's spirits. Though he tried to make the best of the situation, it
often felt as though he was being strangled, slowly. He would gaze upwards
and feel the consummate exile, stranded in a vast wasteland of pervasive .
. . wrongness. Yes, every bit that melodramatic. 

 Or at least, he had been. For nearly the entirety of his first year in
Chicago. 

 Not long after he and Ray Vecchio ("the real Ray Vecchio," a familiar
voice intoned in the back of his mind) had returned from their rather
eventful "vacation" up North, he had had another bout of melancholy. It
had, in fact, been the night that Inspector Thatcher had "fired" him, and
he was feeling more than discouraged. Pinned down yet again by the
complicated problems of the urban world to which he did not belong, he had
pined for the clear, starry skies and unmarred natural beauty that he had
recently tasted once more, if fleetingly. 

 He might have something more to offer these people, but what had they to
offer him in return? Such self-centered thoughts only bothered him
further, as they proved that he still wasn't feeling quite like himself. 

 Unable to sleep under the roof of his dilapidated apartment complex, he'd
wandered the streets of Chicago for awhile, only to come home to home to
find his partner waiting for him by his apartment door. Apparently Ray had
been driving on an errand for his sister when he'd seen Fraser's
despondent form passing on a nearby sidewalk, and had decided to see if he
couldn't cheer him up. Fraser had tried to bluster his way past Ray's
concern, thinking that the man had already dealt with more than his share
of Mountie mood swings. However, one look into the other's eyes had told
him that for once, the Italian was not to be budged by love nor money. So
he had thanked Ray kindly, and asked what his friend had in mind. 

 Apparently Fraser had mentioned something about his discomfort with the
urban sky earlier that day; he didn't remember doing so precisely, but Ray
seemed to know. Fraser was surprised enough that his friend would have
remembered a comment like that; it was remarkably considerate of him. Not
that Ray wasn't considerate: he simply didn't always pay such close
attention to any one thing. 

 So as it turned out, Ray had the tallest building in the world on his
mind that night. Fraser's eyebrows had shot up as the Riv pulled up to the
curb beside the Sears Tower, which was clearly closed: it was quite late
by that time, nearly midnight in fact. However, a few words with the
security guard and his friend was leading him, actually taking him by the
hand and leading him down some stairs and through an empty waiting area to
the elevator. Apparently one of Ray's "inside contacts" had actually
panned out for once. Granted, this wasn 't some crucial turning point in a
case, nor would it save Diefenbaker from an undeserved death, but it was
still a minor miracle. 

 Refusing to answer any of Fraser's somewhat consternated inquiries, Ray
had pressed some buttons and then they were rising up, up, up. One hundred
and ten stories up. Fraser, used to heights from his time spent in the
mountains, adjusted to the rising altitude relatively well, and though Ray
obviously suffered some discomfort, he overcame it without a word. His
eyes were fixed straight in front of him; his face a mask of a
determination unlike any emotion Fraser had seen sitting on those features
previously. 

 At last, with a little ding, the elevator doors had slid open. Ray strode
out, and Fraser followed him onto the darkened viewing deck. They reached
the railing and looked out over the city. Fraser stared. 

 Though it wasn't by any stretch as clear a night as one might have
expected in the Territories, the visibility had been particularly good for
Chicago. Far below where they stood, two tiny men alone in a dark glass
room, the city stretched out. No longer the ugly, dirty, noisy mess that
Fraser regarded it as in his less enthusiastic moments, Chicago had been
transformed into a dazzling blanket of many individual lights, studding
each building and street like tiny diamonds. Fraser stood transfixed as he
watched the colorful sparkle of lights on the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel
turning in the distance--and the little glimmering headlights moving to
and fro along Lakeshore drive--utterly breathless with awe. He had never
suspected the city of concealing such a beautiful secret. 

 He had of course realized that there were lights; he'd seen pieces of the
skyline from his window, or when he was out on a nighttime jaunt with Ray.
What he'd never known was that once one pulled back a little, it became
obvious that the stars weren't so much absent from Chicago . . . as they
were too close to home for the eye to encompass. 

 After a few long, still moments of just standing by Fraser's side, his
arms braced against the railing, Ray had turned his gaze from the stunning
vista of Chicago at night to throw his Mountie friend a suddenly anxious
look. "Well . . . d'you like it, Benny?" His voice had been pitched low,
tentative. 

 Fraser had given a rapt nod, and all at once had turned and enveloped his
friend in a bone-crushing hug. He had missed the stars, so Ray had given
them back to him in a whole new way. He couldn't find the words to express
his appreciation for such a gift, so unexpected and sweet that it stole
his breath away. Fortunately, no words were needed; Ray had returned the
gesture in affectionate kind, after just a split-second of tension. 

 After they broke apart, the two men had stayed there for a long time in
companionable silence, feeling as though they stood, all alone together,
at the very top of the world. 

 --with a start, Fraser came back to himself. He wasn't standing atop a
sky scraper anymore: instead, he was in the middle of a large clearing in
a much larger Canadian forest, gazing up at a universe that now seemed to
eclipse entirely any feeble imitation by the modern world. It had been a
long couple of years since he and his former partner had shared that space
in the sky. However, the magic of the memory was still with him. Noticing
that one of his cheeks was a little damp, he removed a glove, touching his
finger first to his face and then to his tongue in his methodical way.
He'd thought it would be a stray snowflake, but wasn't terribly surprised
to find that it tasted of salt. 

 Fraser smiled to himself. He'd almost expected that when he at last
returned, the stars and forests of the north would appear as different
from before as he himself now did inside . . . but, everything looked just
the way it always had. He reflected that the situation in Chicago was
probably quite similar: the absence of Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP,
would hardly have made much of a difference to that far-away galaxy of
twinkling, artificial lights and multitudinous humanity. Nor for that
matter would the retirement and likely departure of former Detective
First-Class Raymond Vecchio, who had once graced its streets with a loyal,
deeply principled core masked by his loud, blustery Italian bravado.
Small, incidental elements such as individual people could come and go,
changing as drastically as they would: the overall landscape would always
remain essentially the same, whether urban or wilderness. 

 But those incidental people could make a difference to each other, and
shake the inner landscapes that they carried around within themselves.
Whole constellations could be altered by a single person, and possibly for
worse--but almost definitely for better--Fraser's own entire night sky
looked as different now from the way it once had, as the one above him
looked the same as ever. 

 Paper crinkled softly between his bare fingertips, growing cold now
without protection. Just then, the door of the cabin some feet behind him
creaked open, spilling warm golden light out onto the snow. The voice of a
very different Ray called out from the comfortable depths of the house,
inviting him back to the hearth and home of their companionship. Calling
back an affirmative response, Fraser shook the last cobwebs of memory from
his mind. He smoothed the paper of the wedding invitation, slightly
crumpled in his loose grip, folded it carefully, and tucked it into his
breast pocket. As he turned, he caught sight of a falling star far off
beyond the lazy rise of smoke from the cabin's chimney. He made a wish,
then headed inside, pulling the door shut behind himself.  

End Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall by Lilith: fairiesbite@yahoo.com

Author and story notes above.