Fandoms: due South
Characters: Ray Kowalski
Rating: G
Length: 500 words
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters, I don't own them, I derive no profit from their use.
Warnings: Depressing angst with no happy ending.
Summary: Ray is in solitary.
Fraser once told me that all cultures think solitary confinement is a punishment. He also said that some prisoners go out of their way to get themselves put in solitary. I already knew that: they hate being with other prisoners more than they hate being with themselves. But he put it different: it’s their way of escaping their situation and finding peace. For people like Fraser, maybe, not that there’s many like him. Although I think if Fraser were in prison, he’d be organizing discussion groups and taking correspondence courses and making pals with the guards.
Me, I broke some guy’s nose so they’d put me in here alone.
Out on the ice fields, it’s so big and empty and un-human, sometimes you get into this zone where you float out of your head and don’t have to think your stupid human thoughts any more, you can just be, part of the snow and the sky. I think about that a lot, in here.
The thing about being Fraser’s partner is, you forget what it’s like to be alone. You start believing—maybe not always in your head, but in your gut—that it doesn’t matter if you’re chained to a pipe on a sinking ship with the water coming up to your chest, or tied up by a psychopath, or on trial for something you didn’t do. All you’ve got to do is hang on and keep from going under, because Fraser’s out there somewhere and he’s going to get you out.
Which is a terrible, terrible thing to get used to.
I don’t hate anyone here. I could keep my head down and get through the routine. Maybe even make someone’s day brighter for a couple of minutes, the way he’d do. Wouldn’t be hard. The thing I can’t do is stop thinking. And it’s not like I forget, but habit’s damn hard to break and there I was in the lunch line and I caught myself thinking, When Fraser gets me out of here…
Which is why I had to swing around and plant my fist in the face of the guy behind me.
He’s out there. He’s just not coming.
Out on the ice, it feels like there’s no such thing as change. Bare white world ringed in by impossibly high mountains, capped with ice-blue sky. Always been there, always will be. Which isn’t really true. Once you’ve been there for a while you start noticing all these tiny, critical differences from day to day, mile to mile. Still, looking out over that endless stretch of white, I feel like there’s no time or space or direction. Just this one point that goes on for ever in every way.
Thing about Fraser is, you can count on him. He’ll do the right thing, doesn’t matter if it’s easy or impossible. It wouldn’t make a difference if I was in the county lockup or the pit of Hell, he’d get me out.
If I was innocent.
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chasethestars
Comments
Short doesn't come naturally to me, nor does leaving most of the story untold. Fanfic has been a great opportunity for me to practice this kind of writing, which I've never been able to do in other contexts. (And still haven't figured out how to export the fanfic lessons to other contexts, for the most part. Partly because I'm not sure how to replace the "cheat" factor of writing very short fiction within a larger context the reader can be presumed to know; partly because much of the answer is "make up the larger context in great detail and then don't tell the reader most of it," and I haven't mastered that skill yet. :) )
My own original comments later when I've regained after-angst equilibrium.
I was expecting anything other than that. Because of course Fraser isn't going to let Ray go, if he's done... something. I thought Ray had been wrongly accused of murdering Fraser, but not this.
And gorgeously written too. The parallel between solitudes in cells, in the great vast wilderness. A very poetic voice, and... ouch. It hurt.
I wanted to set it up so the last line was a surprise but didn't come completely out of nowhere... :)
(This premise was on my list of ideas to think about doing something with someday; but it's hard to think about what to do with it in a longer fic because, well, either Fraser's unyielding or he's not, and in either case, where does one go from there? But in this format, the fact that there's nowhere to go becomes an asset...)
There's a lot you can do with Ray in prison as well, I'm thinking Fraser would be unyielding if Ray had done something terrible... like kill Vecchio.
Nah, that's too angsty even for me!
Re unyielding Fraser: he's generally pretty much set on "you should take the punishment that's coming to you for what you did," though he's been known to make an exception for laws he believes are unjust in the first place (that's a point on which I believe canon can't quite make up its mind about his character, actually, which is a shame). But one can imagine, if Ray had, say, killed someone by accident or in a lesser-of-two-evils situation, that Fraser would not try to get him off the hook but still be a supportive friend in all other ways. On the other hand, if Ray had done something actually immoral (by Fraser's reckoning)...well, that's an interesting question, now isn't it?
To be honest, I can't imagine Ray doing something completely immoral... but then, everyone has a breaking point. Would be interesting to know what Ray's was.
But this is better for being so open ended. I'm still gobsmacked by the ending. I love Ray just having to punch someone because he realises Fraser isn't coming.
Yeah, again, the short-form "cheat" works in my favor -- easier to postulate Ray crossing the line and doing the unthinkable than to actually think through how exactly it happened. :) And probably more satisfying, or at least a different sort of satisfying than the long-form might be.
(Though it's not helpful for encouraging you to write it anyway, I now feel compelled to point to luzula's semi-recent take on Victoria in prison, because I liked it.)