Betrayed and Betrayer     Betrayer and Betrayed Opening notes
(writers never shut up, it's an occupational hazard...) 

This was supposed to be a two-part story. And maybe someday I'll make it
to the second part. But that would involve way a lot more angst than I am
currently prepared to deal with. So, since this has been written for
*months* and I haven't managed to make myself do the second part... 

Red Shoe Diaries (for the unenlightened) is a Showtime erotica series
where Jake (David Duchovney) places an ad in the newspaper asking for
diaries from women. He reads them, and each episode is a separate diary.
This story was supposed to be X-rated, darn it, or at least R, in keeping
with the level of erotica seen in the series. I don't think it's any more
than PG-13, though. Maybe if I make it to the second part... 

For Chris and Dianne, who dragged me into this show to begin with...
hanging out with you guys is dangerous to my free time, darn it!
Especially Chris, who gave me the idea to do RDS... 

Praise, flames, comments, cute Mounties and/or cute Chicago cops to
lizbet@primenet.com -----------  Betrayer and Betrayed by Elizabeth Ann
Lewis 

* WOMEN 

Do you keep a diary? Have you ever been betrayed? Have you betrayed
another? 

Man, 35, wounded and alone, recovering from loss of once in a lifetime
love, searching for reasons why. 

Willing to pay top $ $ $ For your experiences 

Please send diaries to: 

RED SHOES 

All stories remain confidential
------------------------------------------------------ Dear Red Shoes: 

No, I don't keep a diary. For one thing, from childhood I never wanted to
look back. And after adulthood was reached, it was even worse. I didn't
want to remember, didn't want to remember anything, but I didn't need a
diary to remind me. Some things get burned into your soul, and
recollection remains unmercifully clear. 

It goes without saying that I'm not going to indicate who I am on this
letter. I don't care how confidential you keep things. When you're wanted
in two states for robbery... sorry, three, forgot about Texas. How could
you forget Texas? My life's been shitty lately, forgive me. But I need the
money, and I need to tell this story. 

Where was I? Oh, yes, betrayal. The answer, Red Shoes, is yes. I have been
betrayed. I've betrayed another. Revenge is supposed to be sweet. Why are
my tears so bitter then? 

I suppose I should start at the beginning. My father abandoned my family
when I was six. Just poof, up and left. Reality was too much for him to
deal with, apparently. So it was me and my mother and my sister. My mother
was wonderful. Really, she was. She was the epitome of the loving,
hard-working single mother. She taught English lit at a high school in
Juneau, directed the church choir, sewed, and in her spare time coached
the girls' Little League. Annie was my little sister. Annie was my
mother's carbon copy. Everything she touched turned to gold. I was my
father's daughter. Everything I touched... died. 

Anyway, at sixteen I was the stereotypical rebel child. There's a line
from Shakespeare, about since there is no way for Richard to be believed
as a good, honorable, decent person, he is determined to prove a villain.
That's one way of making what I was sound a little more dignified. Truth
was, I was just plain old rebelling. Ran away from home, school, life, you
name it. If I couldn't be perfect, I'd be perfectly bad. 

Before this gets any more boring, I'll scoot ahead two years. Eighteen
years old, broke, too damn proud to go home, and I hook up with Ed. Ed was
a real prize. A shrink would have a field day with me, with why I stayed
with him. It's fairly simple: when you have no respect for yourself, you
don't go looking for people to respect you. Anyway. A couple months later,
Ed and his best friend Jolly decide to rob a bank. They elected me to be
the getaway car driver. I didn't refuse. Ed beat and raped me on a
monotonously regular schedule, and it kind of destroyed my initiative, if
you know what I mean. 

The robbery was a disaster. Ed died in the attempt. I didn't cry. Jolly
got away. So did I -- and I knew where Ed hid the money. That was the best
part. 

You still with me, Red Shoes? I suppose you're wondering where the
betrayal comes in. Ed didn't betray me. He never lied to me. He was
exactly what he was, and nothing he did surprised me. But... 

I crossed the border into Canada in a small plane. Hated the things, but I
had to get *out* of there. Get free. The plane crashed, but the pilot
bailed out, leaving me alone. There was enough of a snow cover, enough
trees breaking the fall, that the crash didn't kill me. It would have been
kinder if it had. I was doomed to a death of hypothermia or starvation. 

At this point, I didn't give a damn. Eighteen years old, and my life was
over. I'd screwed things up so thoroughly that I didn't know how to find
my way back. It seemed a judgment on me, that I should end up here, in the
middle of nowhere. No one to hear me scream. No one to know when I died.
No one to care. 

I found out later that the place where I went to ground was called
Fortitude Pass. Bitter irony. I didn't have any strength. I curled into a
little ball and waited to die. 

And then he found me. God, he was like something out of a fairy tale. The
prince waking Sleeping Beauty from her frozen slumber. How he found me, to
this day, I haven't the faintest idea. But somehow, he did find me, at the
point of death. And in finding me, lost any chance of living himself. 

Everything I touched... died. 

He tried. He wasn't a coward like me. He wasn't willing to give up. He
somehow came up with a crude shelter, held me against his body, kept me
warm, kept me alive. He was talking, endlessly, about what I never knew.
The thread of his voice was all that held me above the pit of hell. 

Then his voice stopped. I was afraid that he had... stopped too. But he
took my hand, my poor cold fingers, and warmed them with his breath, his
tongue. He kept them tucked in his mouth, keeping them warm, keeping them
safe. I can't even begin to tell you what this did to me. It was very
simply the most tender thing anyone had done for me. And it, very simply,
destroyed me. 

I don't remember beginning to speak. But somewhere, out of the depths of
my being, rose words. He had talked himself hoarse for me. I returned the
favor, whispering the words of a poem my mother had used to soothe me as a
child, whispering it over and over. "...High there, how he rung upon the
rein of a wimpling wing/In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,/As a
skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding/the big
wind. My heart in hiding..." 

We were dead, I knew it. But he hadn't given up yet. So neither could I. 

The storm's end came as a complete shock to both of us. The sudden cession
of noise, the sudden appearance of the sun... it was like being reborn.
Laughing like children, we scrambled away from the shelter we had found
into the sunlight. We were weak with hunger and thirst, but at least we
were alive. We had passed under Death's hand -- and lived. I felt
invincible. 

Most of our energy was focused on retracing his steps, back to the place
where he had lost his supplies. No Boy Scout had ever taken the motto "Be
prepared" as far as this one had. There was enough food in his pack to
feed three people three days. We devoured it in one sitting. He built a
fire to melt snow for drinking water, and it was the most magical thing
I'd ever seen. Until I looked at him, and really saw him for the first
time. 

Would you believe that at that point I was beginning to wonder if I really
was alive? No earth-bound creature ever looked like that. He was
completely angelic. Michelangelo could have used him as a model for the
Sistine ceiling. Eyes bluer than the winter sky above, hair dark, and a
face to make a woman weep with envy -- or desire. But more than that,
there was a purity in him, in his eyes. Not innocence so much as simple
goodness. There wasn't a war going on in his soul the way there was in
mine. As young as he was, he radiated peace, tranquility, determination...
he was everything that I had never been, but wanted to be. 

I don't know when I fell in love with him, Red Shoes. But that was the
moment that I knew I was in love with him. 

The fire was burning merrily and he pulled out a crude tent from his pack.
Watching him set it up, I sat back on my heels and said, "You know, I
don't even know your name." 

He was silent for a few moments, finished the shelter. A gust of wind made
the fire dampen, then flare, sparks dancing. Then he turned to me, holding
out his hand as though we had just met on the street. "I'm Benton Fraser,"
he said soberly. 

I reached out to clasp his fingers. Cold in the frigid air, they were
still warmer than we had been on that desolate mountain side. "Victoria
Metcalf." 

He wasn't finished. "I'm RCMP." I blinked, confused by the letters, the
non sequitur. The synapses in my brain didn't fire. What had happened
three days ago was already ancient history. Then he elaborated, "Royal
Canadian Mounted Police." He paused, swallowed. "You were involved in the
bank robbery." 

I froze. I simply froze. For a long moment I felt colder than I had when
he found me in that crack in the rock. My hand went limp and fell from
his. So much for my renaissance, my new beginning. The outside world
didn't care that I had had an epiphany. I would pay for my sins,
regardless. 

A part of me wonders why I didn't just lie. I'd lied my way out of a lot
of situations. No, sir, that wasn't me on the store video camera sticking
the cassettes in my backpack. Nope, I would never turn in somebody else's
paper with my name on it. Surely you believe me when I say I missed curfew
because my (girl) friend's car got a flat. 

Before I could form a reasonable lie, he pulled a picture from the pocket
of his heavy coat. It was one Annie had taken shortly before I had run
away. Sepia-colored and indistinct with my hair flying in the way, it was
still indisputably me. 

All the lies caught in my throat. I bent my head and examined my fingers
in my lap. "So now what?" 

He fumbled, tucking the picture back into his pocket, turning to poke at
the fire needlessly, restless motions that kept his eyes from mine. 

"I don't want to go back," I whispered. "Please." 

"I don't have that choice." He had the voice of an anguished angel. "You
committed a crime. It is my duty to bring you to justice." 

"You have a choice." He flinched at the lash in my voice. "You can choose
to let me go. I didn't hurt anyone. All I did was drive the damn car." 

"Where's the money?" 

"I don't have it." I took comfort from the fact that it was a false truth,
rather than a lie. The money was stashed back in Alaska. "Please..." 

He shook his head, hard, more as though trying to force himself to an
unwanted duty then denying my plea. "I can't. I can't." 

It took us four days to reach civilization. One night, we camped on a
mountainside and watched the Northern Lights dance, achingly beautiful and
out of reach. We barely spoke, barely touched. Every night he would set up
the tent and sleep outside of it. And every night I'd wish he was in it
with me. 

On the fourth day we reached the vicinity of the outpost. It was barely
more than a cluster of buildings surrounding a small church. In the
distance, we could see the town grow larger and larger. I thought it was a
monster, set to devour me. Out here, away from the world, I wasn't alone.
I had Ben, I was free. Once I was surrounded by people, they would take me
from him and I would be cast adrift. 

I stopped. Ben moved a few more steps, then turned when he realized that I
wasn't keeping pace with him. "Come on. We can reach the town before
nightfall." His voice was tired, deader than it had been at Fortitude
Pass. I took what bitter comfort I could in the fact that he was in as
much pain as I was. 

"I don't want to reach the town before nightfall." He reached out to take
my arm, to pull me forward, and I wrenched myself backwards. "I'll go with
you there, tomorrow. But give me one more night of freedom. That's all I'm
asking." Pleading, now. "One more night under the stars where I can be
free." 

He hesitated so long that I thought he was going to refuse me. But with a
barely perceptible nod he began to make camp. We sat watching the fire for
hours that night, so completely aware of each other it was as though only
one drew breath. Tomorrow I was going to lose everything. Tonight... 

Ben tossed another stick on the fire. "Go to sleep. You can have the
tent." 

"No." My voice was very loud in the still night. 

Ben didn't move. He kept staring at the fire. But I could sense a fine
tension in him, as though he were struggling with himself. 

"I want you to come inside that tent with me." 

Silence. Then, "That's not a good idea, Victoria." 

"I don't care. I don't care. Damn you, I'm losing everything. Give me
something to hold onto." 

I think I really did have some half-formed notion of trying to control him
with my body. Sex, for me, had never been about pleasure. It had been a
way of controlling the boys I knew, a way for Ed to control me.
Theoretically, male minds went to jelly when a woman used sex on them. It
had worked for Eve Kendell. Why not me? 

I should have known better. Because he was Ben, that's why. I leaned over
him, aggressively covering his mouth with mine, attacking him with my
hands, my tongue. He just sat there for several moments, letting me do it.
It was humiliating for both me and him, and still I couldn't stop myself. 

Then he took my hands in his grasp, tore his mouth away from mine. "No,
Victoria. Not like this." 

Before I could ask how, he was showing me. His hands gently brushed my
tangled mass of hair out of my face. He tracked his lips lightly across my
cheek, down the line of my jaw, less a brush of lips than an absorption of
my scent, a total and complete focus on my essence. His eyes were closed
in the flickering firelight and almost unwillingly, I fell under his
spell. There was... reverence in the way he touched me, just his hands in
my hair and his mouth tracing my face. Patient, calm, unhurried, as though
this night of my freedom was a million years long, as though we had all
the time in the world rather than just this space of dark. 

I had to have him closer. I had to feel his body on mine. Fiercely, I
wrapped my arms around his neck pulled him to me. His arms crossed behind
my back, holding me to him as though we were one flesh. Something that had
been held tightly within me broke at that moment. My heart maybe, I think.
I could feel it bleeding out, but instead of pain, there was this sense of
release. This sense that what was flowing out of me was going to him, and
that nothing mattered but that I become a part of him. 

He undressed me in the tent, away from the bitterly cold wind. I kept my
eyes barely open, and the light from fire gleamed through the canvas walls
of the tent and limed him in beauty. Every touch was a caress. The winter
weather made undressing a torturously slow process, slow enough that it
woke ever sleeping nerve I ever possessed into shuddering life. His hands
on the skin of my neck, my breast, my thighs... it was almost unbearable.
But I was sure I would die if me moved away. 

I couldn't move, could only watch as he shed his clothes. With the heavy
flannel and standard-issue holster went the Mountie who was bringing me
in. Naked in the dim light, he was mine, and mine alone. 

I pulled him down to lay on me, surrounding my body with warmth. He
threaded his hands through my snarled hair again, gently, reverently. My
entire body was liquid, molding to him. He brushed his lips across one
cheekbone, and then the other. Then he lowered his mouth to take mine in a
kiss. 

In that one kiss there was more passion and more joy than I had ever
known. It made a mockery of the manipulation I had tried to practice on
him. The tears I had been fighting broke free to slide down into my hair.
When he moved to slide his mouth down my neck I arched under him, offering
myself to him completely. 

His hand shifted to cup my breast, then slid up to brush the nipple with
his palm, delicate, light touches that nearly drove me mad. I wanted more.
I wanted him to lose his control as much as he was making me lose mine.
But I didn't know how. I could only surrender to him as he touched me. 

Slowly, his hands moved over my body. No one I had ever slept with had
taken so much care with me. I realized that this was what was meant by
making love, by intimacy. I felt feather-light, floating on the wind, as
his hands brushed my skin and made be feel wanted, cherished... and
hungry. As he slid inside me and became one with me, in a union that was
so complete that I forgot everything but him, the scent of his hair, the
hoarse tenderness of his voice as it broke and I felt his warmth filling
me, a response that sent me over the edge. Northern lights burst behind my
eyes. 

Nothing else mattered. 

I woke the next morning at dawn. Ben had held me tightly all night, an
embrace that was shelter, strength and affirmation all at once. I stirred,
turning over, watching his face in the dim light that seeped into the tent
from outside. 

He woke too soon. He didn't move, didn't sit up, just opened his eyes and
looked straight into mine. And there was pain in them, so much that I
flinched. 

And gloated, I confess. 

In silence we rose, dressed. He'd snared a small animal for food the night
before, and I fried the last of it for our breakfast. He took down the
tent, packed it away. Every few moments he touched me, my arm, my hand, a
gentle brush of my hair. There was a powerful connection between us, an
undeniable link. 

I smiled a little and spoke into the quiet. "I have a strange feeling that
there is a string tied here, just below my heart, that is connected to a
similar region in your body. And I have this fear that if too much
distance is between us, the string will break, and I should take to
bleeding internally." 

He didn't smile, not really, but something shifted in his eyes. "Jane
Eyre," he said, recognizing the passage though I had no doubt mangled my
quote of it. 

I shrugged, packed the last of the breakfast dishes. "My mom teaches
English. She read to me a lot growing up. Some of it stuck." I closed the
pack, stood up and turned into his arms. They closed around me strongly,
so strongly that I thought my ribs would crack. There was desperation in
that embrace, and it frightened me. 

To stave off the fear, I pulled back, laughing a little. "So, where are we
going?" 

He didn't move, didn't speak for so long that I thought that maybe he
hadn't heard me. Then he turned, and nodded in the direction of the church
spire in the distance. 

I thought he was joking. I seriously, blindly, thought that he was joking.
A short huff of a laugh broke from me. "Ben? Ben, you're kidding, right?
Tell me you're kidding." 

He closed his eyes and turned away from me. Grabbing his arm, I tried to
turn him back, tried to make him face me. "Why? Why? Why, damn you? How
can you do this to me?" 

"It's what I am." His voice was almost soundless. He cleared his throat
and tried again. "I uphold the law. I bring in criminals. You broke it." 

I stumbled back several steps. There was grief in his face, misery, but I
couldn't register it. All I knew was that he'd screwed me last night and
was screwing me this morning. 

"Damn you to hell, Benton Fraser. You'll be sorry. I'll make you pay." 
  

THE END. 

  

END PART ONE -------------------- And yes, it is terrifying to have
Victoria insist on you writing her in first person, thank you *very*
kindly! 

So what's the verdict? Should I keep going? Part two is going to be
Victoria's Secret from her point of view... do you all want me to torture
myself that way?