Title: Our Only Home Is Bone
Fandom: Due South
Rating: R? (some language, no sex, mature themes as listed in warnings)
Length: ~3500 words
Characters: Ray Kowalski, Stella (Kowalski) Vecchio, Ray Vecchio, Benton Fraser, Diefenbaker.  
Content notes: Warning for Major Character Death, Suicide, and general all-around depressingness
Author notes:  Thanks to farwing for beta. The fact that I am not sure I have satisfactorily fixed the problem she pointed out is, of course, no one's responsibility but my own. :)I am not entirely satisfied with this draft and will probably keep poking at the story in future, but I wrote it for this challenge and wanted to post it here. If anyone feels moved to offer constructive criticism, you are more than welcome to do so.
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters, I don't own them, I derive no profit from their use.
Summary: No one's where they want to be.



A crack like a gunshot. A man yells. A splash. Echoes off the mountains.
Cold, and black beyond cold, and silence beyond fear.

*     *     *

Ray Kowalski

Ray stares at Stella’s weary, tear-streaked face. He feels as crappy as she looks. They’ve been locked in her bedroom for what feels like hours, ever since she got home from work with Ray tagging helplessly along, both of them irritated from a long day of not being able to get away from each other. She blew off Vecchio’s attempt at a loving greeting and shut herself in the bedroom, where she and Ray immediately launched into yet another take of the same old song they’ve been singing for days now.

“You need to go, Ray.”

“I’d love to, believe me, but I don’t know how. Don’t know how I came, don’t know how to leave.”

“Yes, so you keep saying. Awfully convenient, isn’t it?”

“I’m not lying, for Christ’s sake. Why would I lie about this?”

“Maybe because you don’t really want to leave.”

If Ray were really here, in an able-to-physically-touch-things way, he’d be two seconds away from picking up one of Stella’s perfume bottles and pitching it through that ridiculously huge window looking out on a ridiculously large swimming pool. On the other hand, he can’t really blame Stella for suspecting his motives. He’d only just managed to get past stalking her when he was alive. Now he dies and—guess what?—his ghost shows up and staples itself to her side. If that’s not deep and abiding devotion, then what the hell is he doing here?

“Ray, please,” Stella says, her voice a combination of tragedy and trying-to-be-reasonable that grates on his nerves. “What do you need from me, so you can move on? Just tell me.”

He doesn’t know. They’ve been over all this ground, over and over and over. His detective skills, her lawyer logic, between them they’ve concocted a billion theories, in between the tears and the yelling and the apologizing and the sweet memories and the shadow-dancing and the irritating the fuck out of each other. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Bottom line is, Ray can’t seem to leave Stella, no matter how much of a pain in the ass that is for both of them.

“Stella, listen to me. I’ve loved you since I was twelve, and there’s a part of me will always love you. Maybe that’s this part that’s here, what do I know. But I know I don’t have no place in your life any more. And I’m okay with that, I really am. If someone had given me a form to fill out, where do you want to go when you die, haunt Stella in fucking Tampa, Florida would not have been on the list.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Oh, for—you don’t want me here, but you’re gonna get pissy ‘cause I tell you I don’t want to be here, either?”

“Oh, Ray.” She looks at him with those eyes he used to drown in, sorrow and irritation and fatigue and fondness all mashed up together in the weight of her sigh.

And she’s as beautiful as ever, but goddamnit, this isn’t the face he wants to be staring at. Not now, and please God, not for the rest of eternity. If he’s got unfinished business holding him to Earth, it’s not with Stella. If he’s chained by love and loyalty, it’s not to her. Not any more.

He closes his eyes and strains as hard as he can, trying to wish himself out of existence. Or better yet, back to the eye-searing snow and the ice-blue sky and Fraser.

Didn’t want to leave you alone. Didn’t mean to leave you at all. Hang on, buddy, I’ll get back to you somehow, I promise. . .

But he opens his eyes on Stella and Florida, like always.

“I’m sorry, Stell. I really am.”

“I know,” she sighs. “I’m sorry, too. And I’m getting really tired of being sorry.”

“Know how that feels.” Their eyes meet, and there’s a spark of humor and sympathy between them despite everything. They’ve known each other forever, after all; no one knows either of them half as well.

Stella rubs the back of her head, meaning she’s got a headache. Ray would probably have one, too, if he had a body.

“Wish I could rub your neck for you,” he offers.

Stella glares at him. “If I want someone to rub my neck, I have a husband. In case you’d forgotten.”

“How could I forget?” Ray snaps, raw nerves flaring. “I wasn’t even done being him, Vecchio decides he’s got to get even by picking up my leftovers.”

She gives him a shocked stare. Ray’s just as shocked at his own words. They’ve fought for years, but Ray’s never trash-talked Stella, not to her face and not behind her back. Never wanted to.

He’d apologize, but what good will it do?

“You know, Ray,” says Stella coldly. “I used to think your asshole behavior was all an act.”

He flashes her a humorless grin and spreads his arms wide. “Hey, you get what you pay for.”

She turns her back on him and strides out of the room.
Ray hears Vecchio’s worried voice asking something and Stella snapping back, “I’m going for a walk, I’ve got to get out of this house.”

She walks out the door and Ray trails behind her, because he doesn’t have a choice.

*     *     *



Ray Vecchio

Ray stares at the bottle of whiskey in front of him. Stella’s gone again, after locking herself in the bedroom all afternoon. He could hear her crying and talking to herself in there, but whenever he knocked, she yelled at him to leave her alone. When she finally came out, she wouldn’t even look at him, just left the house saying she was going for a long walk. She’s been doing a lot of that, lately.
He doesn’t know how their marriage went sour so fast. No, that’s a lie, he does know: he’s lousy with women. He can do the romantic stuff when his heart’s in it; he’s great at handling crises. But the stupid little stuff about who forgot to get gas for the car and why are we having dinner with the tiresome neighbors again—that brings out the worst in him, always did. It’s not the arguments, it’s the way the arguments take the stars right out of your eyes and remind you that you’re both human, and not the prettiest of humans, at that. Also, he’s no good at talking about feelings and problems.

When he married Stella, Ray had this idea that he was older and wiser now, he’d do better than he did with his first marriage. And maybe that would even have been true, if he’d married Stella before he went to Vegas. But a year and a half of being the Bookman 24-7 changed Ray in ways he doesn’t even know how to think about. They weren’t treating-your-wife-right kinds of ways, that’s for sure.

Of course, the main problem with Ray and Stella’s marriage is, it was a mirage to start with. You meet a woman, bam! fall head over heels in love, and for once in your life it’s actually mutual, so you both jump into the thing, no holds barred, no looking back. And then it turns out that in real life, the hard part about happily ever after is that after part. At least there’s a bright side: in the romance of Ray and Stella, nobody’s ended up getting shot yet.

Still, he does honestly love Stella and want to do right by her, somehow carve out some little piece of happiness that she deserves even if Ray doesn’t. He’s willing to work at the relationship. He’d to anything in his power to make her happy. But she’s seriously unhappy, and he can’t help because he doesn’t know what’s wrong. Stella won’t tell him what’s wrong. Stella doesn’t want his help. Maybe that’s because she’s written him off as a loser, not someone you can lean on. Or maybe the problem is she woke up one morning and realized she was married to the wrong Ray after all. Ray’s heard her a couple of times, behind that locked door, saying “Ray” in a voice that she never uses with him. And if what she wants is Kowalski back, well, what the hell can either of them do to fix that?

All he has to offer her is Florida and a bowling alley and a guy who’s tired of cops and robbers and the shitty ways people treat each other most of the time. When they moved here, he thought she wanted the sun and the peace and the new start, like he did. And maybe she did, but she didn’t have his reasons for running. She was a queen in Chicago; she owned the fucking place. Maybe wishes she was back there. Wrong place, wrong Ray, wrong, wrong wrong.

Ray opens the bottle and takes a swig, not bothering with a glass. This here is not about savoring the flavor of the expensive whiskey. This is about getting shitfaced, as hard and fast as possible. This is about being the stinking pig he always swore he’d never be. Because Ray’s already thrown away any chance he ever had to be better than his father. Vegas put that hope in the ground, yeah, wrecked him and hung him out to dry. Worst part is, he did it to himself, all of it.

For a little while, there, he thought he’d just shrug off the Bookman like a cheap suit. With Benton Fraser smiling welcome at him, then chasing bad guys with his brother cops and taking a fucking bullet in the service of the law, it was easy to believe that nothing had changed. That he hadn’t changed, except for coming back in triumph after a damn tough assignment, maybe people would finally treat him with some respect.

Lying in that hospital bed, it hurt to think of Benny running off to maintain the right in Canada without him, needing Ray to watch his back and having to make do with Kowalski. But Ray was secretly glad that he was down for the count, so that Benny couldn’t have asked him to come along. Because maybe Benny needed Ray and maybe he didn’t, but the truth is, Ray’s been to Benny’s Canada, with the snow and the emptiness and the deadly cold, and if there’s anywhere on earth he belongs, it’s not there. So, when Benny called to say that he and Kowalski were staying up there for a while, Ray felt jealousy, sure, and regret; but mostly he thought Great, let Kowalski have Canada, and I can have Chicago back. But the joke was on him, because it didn’t take long to figure out that he couldn’t have it back. He didn’t fit there any more.

He was a fool to think he could come back to Chicago and go back to being the old Ray Vecchio. But just as big a fool to think that moving to Florida would make him some new, better Ray Vecchio. Certainly, he was a fool to think that Stella could save him. All he’s doing is fucking up her life so she can be as miserable as he is. So, under the circumstances, why not get smashed?

He half expects his old man’s ghost to show up and give him hell for crawling into a bottle—or, hell, egg him on. But he hasn’t seen his father since before Vegas, and the old man never gave advice worth hearing, alive or dead. What he does see, though—not literally in front of him, but in his imagination—is Benny’s earnest face, looking at him with disappointment and pity. And it turns out maybe he’s got some spark of something left inside him after all, because the thought of putting that look on Benny’s face is more than he can stomach. He heaves the bottle at the wall. Watches it explode in a shower of glass shards and alcohol. Buries his face in his hands.

Thinks about Benny, up there in the frozen ass-end of Canada with Kowalski, slogging through snow for reasons that only make sense if you look at the world through Fraser-vision. He hopes they’re making out all right, the pair of them.

*    *    *

Benton Fraser

Nothing’s permanent, son.

Benton Fraser stares into the pit of black water that swallowed his heart.

A crack and Ray’s yell, echoing off the mountains. His mind plays the memory over and over; there’s nothing else to think about.

He had the sled over the crest of the hill in less than a minute, but all there was to see was the jagged hole where the rotten ice had collapsed; a black mouth in the endless white. Easy to see what had happened—he was off the sled and running, stripping off his parka, estimating the elapsed time, because the cold was dangerous but air was a bigger problem and the real limiting factor was drift speed. Don’t worry about that, don’t worry about the ice and the current and lung capacity and brain damage and hypothermia, just concentrate on what you’re doing, your hand finding Ray’s collar, pulling him back, pulling him back. There will be time enough, just get your hands on him. . .

He had rescued drowning people scores of times (locked in car trunks, in bank vaults, chained to pipes in sinking ships); he had saved Ray himself from drowning several times. Proper preparation, need a rope, something to lead us back to the hole, can’t afford to be swept under the ice, time time time can’t afford the time how many seconds? He glanced back at the sled with its supplies, turned back to the water—but Diefenbaker blocked his way to the hole, growling, showing teeth.

Benton shouted at Dief, but the wolf held his ground. Benton rushed at him, and Diefenbaker lunged to meet him, bowling him over into the snow. They rolled on the ground; no friendly tussle, this, but a life-and-death struggle, snarling, shoving, punching, biting. Benton got a grip on the wolf, ready to throw him aside, but Dief’s teeth locked onto Benton’s forearm, drawing blood. They struggled until the stopwatch in his head clicked past four minutes and he fell back in the snow, limp and panting.

Dief stood over him for a few more seconds, then tentatively licked his face.

“He could still be alive,” Benton whispered. “Mammalian dive reflex. Sometimes when a person plunges suddenly into freezing water, the metabolic processes slow, causing oxygen to be consumed more slowly, while blood is diverted to the heart, lungs, and brain. People have been revived after an hour under water with no lasting ill effects.”

Irrelevant information, with the body gone beyond recovery.

Nothing’s permanent. . .

Fire and tent behind him, Benton sits on a camp stool and stares at the hole in the ice. He has been here for three days. He’s not sure how long to wait; his father did not manifest until months after his death, after all. If there are rules to the afterlife, apart from “all the questions you ask are unique to you, and the answers are yours alone,” Benton’s father never explained them to him. It doesn’t really matter how long he has to wait. He’s good at waiting.

His supplies won’t last forever, of course (as Diefenbaker keeps reminding him), but if it were a question of waiting six months or a year for Ray to return to him, he could pack up, head back to civilization, or the edge of it, and find somewhere to hunker down. His father appeared to him in Chicago, a city Robert Fraser had never seen; there’s no reason to think that Ray would be tied to this spot.

No reason to think Ray will return at all, or that if he did, it would be to Fraser. But the heart has its reasons that reason knows not of; and surely, even a sliver of hope would be worth an indefinite wait.

What makes you think you deserve a reward? he imagines Ray’s voice saying. What makes you think I’ve got anything left to say to you?

His father was nearly broken by his mother’s murder; nearly, but not quite. Benton doesn’t delude himself that it was his own existence that tipped the scales for his father. It was the work: his duty to his fellow men, and to the land. Maintain the Right was what tethered Bob Fraser to the world until he sold his honor and a friend shot him dead. And afterwards.

Maintain the Right has always been Benton’s tether, too. But now that tether has snapped. There is nothing right about a collar not clasped in his fingers. There is nothing just about a life swallowed by cracking ice.

Nature knows nothing of right and wrong, virtue or justice. Nature knows only success or failure, life or death. What happens, happens. Benton has known this truth all his life.

To survive in this land, Quinn once told him, A man must know and respect the land as well as himself. He must love the land as he does his family.

He remembers Ray saying, I want to see everything. Show me why you love this place. But the memory is drowned by the voice in his head accusing: You brought me to this frozen hell-hole and left me here.

Maybe he secretly always thought that the land would love him back.

If his father were here, he’d probably say something like, Don’t go giving up, Son. I didn’t raise you to be a quitter.

You didn’t raise me at all, Benton is too weary to say. You left me. But I won’t leave Ray.

Too late, jeers Ray’s imagined voice. Already done.

Benton has survived loss before, and he is no stranger to loneliness. He has survived exile, too; he could endure it again. The world is full of places where he could do useful work. The world is, after all, full of injustice.

“You can lose your home, you can lose everyone you ever loved, and it can be devastating, but if you lose yourself, you have nothing,” he rasps.

It’s hubris to believe you’re not allowed to fail, a faint voice—his mother’s?—whispers in his imagination.

Who did you think you were, Ray taunts him. Superman?

Benton stares into the black water, the inside of his head suddenly as silent as the snow fields that surround him.

After a time, he rises and dishes out food for Diefenbaker and the sled dogs with his usual precision. Portions more generous than usual. While they eat, he unpacks the remaining gear from the sled. Strips it bare, then replaces the bags of meat, tallow and kibble that furnish the dogs’ diet. He secures them well, but makes sure to leave access to the openings of the sacks. Not an ideal arrangement, but the best he can do. He puts the dogs into harness, then calls Diefenbaker to him.

“I’m depending on you to get the dogs somewhere with people. You can survive on your own; they can’t. You have to lead them—keep them safe.” He forces the words out through suddenly chattering teeth.

Dief growls and puts his ears back, but Benton just looks him steadily in the eyes until Dief drops his muzzle in acquiescence. True to his nature, Diefenbaker won’t abandon his responsibilities while he lives.

Dief puts his nose in Benton’s mittened hands and snuffles wordless affection. Benton buries his face in Diefenbaker’s fur, breathing wordless thanks into his warm hide.

Rising, Benton takes off his mittens and parka, lays them on the snow. Under the parka, he’s still wearing the brown uniform tunic he put on days ago, when he and Ray broke camp for the last time. (C’mon, Fraser, you can’t tell me that thing is practical sub-zero arctic-trek gear. Even out here, as off-duty as it gets, you got some perverse need to be in uniform. . .Hah! Busted!)

With shaking hands, he methodically removes his lanyard, unbuttons his tunic, and slides it off. Boots (snow boots, not the cavalry ones that belong to the uniform), snow pants and trousers, shirt, undershirt, socks, thermal underwear. He folds the clothing into a careful bundle, places his stetson on top, and lashes the whole business firmly to the sled. Naked and shivering, he crouches down to ruffle Dief’s fur a final time.

“Go on,” he says, and after a long stare, Dief goes, barking at the dogs to follow him. Benton watches half-wolf, dogs, and sled diminish until they vanish over the crest of a hill.

Nothing’s permanent.

“This is,” says Benton, and walks into the water.