For the ds_flashfiction "Fuck or Die Challenge." Warning: Character death.APHELION
By Cherry Ice
Christmas, Ray thinks. It's like Christmas.
Stars overhead, strewn across the black, like floating candles dropped careless into a pond. (Stella wanted a house so she could have a decorative pond, lilies and koi, bought the turtle and he ended up Ray's.) Greenbluewhiteandyellow of the northern lights, draped around the mountains.
"The lights," he says. "Fraser, would you look at the lights?"
[Falling. Freefalling. Sky and snow flipping, inverting, northern lights spin round like ribbons, wrapping him tight.]
Red on white like the world's wrapped up in some giant candy cane, and –
[Familiar. This will be the third to scar. He hopes it scars.]
"Fraser," he says. Tries to haul himself up, moans as the world spins and the sky jerks him about. He's managed to turn his head to the left. Blood on the snow.
[Echoes loud on the open plain, hidden crevices, mountains.]
He can't feel his hands, but he can see his, see Fraser's and his, barely touching, arms spread wide like they're dancing and have just spun apart.
[CRACK.]
"The lights," he says. Whisperscreams. "Fraser, would you look at the..."
*
(We're losing him!)
losing.
lose.
[Ray.]
lost.
looseygooseydoosey.
maryhadalittlelambwhosefleecewaswhiteassnow—
[Ray. It's not your time.]
fraser.
light.
nothing.
*
The scent of oranges tells him something's wrong. Oranges mean Chicago, fruit from twenty-four hour markets getting overripe on his kitchen counter. There should be: wood smoke, wet dog (wolf), worn leather, fresh snow.
Orange smell is harsh and chemical, and there's the steady beep-beep-beep of a monitor. There's a moment where this is the dream – antiseptics and shuffling feet in the distance, he's really at home in bed; but then he feels fur beneath his fingers and the weight at his side isn't Fraser, it's Dief. Dief who whines and licks his face more gently than he ever has before.
"Off," he manages, throat raw. Breathing hurts. He tries to raise an arm to push Dief away, but someone winds their fingers between his hand on the arm he seems to have some mobility in. He thinks for a moment it's Fraser's fingers tight between his, but when he opens his eyes he sees Stella. Stella with circles beneath her eyes and lines in her suit.
"Hey," she says quietly, and the only thing her hands have in common with Fraser's is the familiarity they have with his.
"Hey," he rasps. Dief lays his head down beside his and doesn't move.
"Ray," she says, staring down at their clasped hands (she's wearing Vecchio's ring and he has a wooden charm tied to his bracelet). "What do you remember?"
[Muzzle flash in the night, wolves howling, shoulder separating. Fraser.]
Why is Stella here?
His brain is misfiring, connections sparking at the wrong time. He turns his head and, yeah, morphine drip.
"Fraser," he says.
"Bullet wound wasn't much," Stella tells him, eyes on their clutched hands.
"Stell..."
"It was a clean shot," she says, and won't meet his eyes. "But you collapsed a lung, cracked some ribs. Dislocated your shoulder. There's a concussion, but you've had worse boxing."
"Stella," he forces out though every breath hurts. "Fraser. Where is –"
"I'm sorry, Ray," she says. Looks up and meets his eyes, and he suddenly wishes she hadn't. "I'm so sorry."
*
Everything blurs. Vecchio makes the arrangements, and the next few days disappear in concerned faces that all fade into each other, the same words that everyone says until they dance through his mind every time he closes his eyes.
He doesn't sleep, and Dief doesn't leave his side. Maggie flies in, stands beside him all through the service and pulls him away as soon as it's over. Ray sits at the table in their cabin (his cabin now, Fraser left him everything) with its one wobbly leg that he'd been telling Fraser he'd fix for more than a year.
He makes himself a cup of tea and throws it across the room. It shatters to pieces on the wall beside the fireplace.
It belonged to Fraser's grandparents, and he cuts himself on the shards.
*
"Come to Florida," Vecchio says. Vecchio's got a beer in hand, Ray's staring down into three fingers of scotch.
He slams it back, raises his hand for another. "Now," he asks, alcohol burning his throat (he shouldn't be drinking, he's still on pain medication) "would you have made that offer if there was any chance I'd accept?"
Vecchio's fingers are white around the neck of his bottle. "Look," he says. "You may have a hard time with the concept, but you weren't the only one who lost him."
Bartender fills up the glass, Ray slams it back down. Dares Vecchio to say something about his drinking. "Nuh-uh," he says, holding his hand up again. "You don't get to play that card. You know exactly what the fuck the score was, Vecchio."
"Stella's worried about you," Vecchio says. Slaps Ray's hand down to the wood and waves the bartender away. Ray's got a slight fracture in his hand, not even enough to splint, but it still hurts.
"You know what I got to do," Ray tells Vecchio. The injuries and meds have him off, and he's already thinking on a slant. They haven't caught the guy yet.
"Yeah," Vecchio says. "Don't know if I could do it, if it were Stella," he says, finally.
Ray watches the ice melt in the bottom of his glass. "I put myself in front of the bullet," he tells Vecchio. "The first one. Turns out it was the best thing for myself I could have done, because he took the time to aim for the second shot."
They sit there for a while, in silence, while the jukebox plays Johnny Cash. (What have I become, my sweetest friend?)
"If you need a break, need to be somewhere you can't see him in the wind," Vecchio says. "The door's always open." Throws a crumpled handful of bills on the table. "Write, okay? Stella worries."
*
Ray starts seeing things half a day out of Yellowknife. Flashes, out the corner of his eye. Red, always red. He chalks it up to the fact that he's not exactly mentally stable at the moment – his lover in the ground three days, mildly concussed, on pain medication. He should be in the hospital under observation, not hitching up dogsleds. He can't get the dogs hitched with one arm so he took his arm out of the sling. He knows he's probably doing more damage to the rotator cuff, but he can't bring himself to care.
End of the first day – what he judges to be the end of the first day, it's nighttime up north and the sun won't come up for weeks – he's tearing at bannock with his teeth when he sees a silhouette on the hilltop in the moonlight. Looks down at Dief, and when he glances up, the man's gone.
He dreams about Fraser. They're sitting in their cabin, and the one wobbly leg on the table keeps thumping. Ray's about to go out back and take it apart when Fraser grabs his arm. Let it be, he says. Please, Ray, just let it be.
Second night, he wakes up and there's a Mountie sitting beside him. "Dief!" Ray hollers, because, what's the point in having a wolf if he won't even take a chunk out of some old guys' ass.
"You should listen to him," the Mountie says.
"Who? The wolf? Because," Ray says, "people think you're nuts if you talk to a wolf."
"They also think you're slightly unhinged if you talk to yourself," the guy says.
Ray frowns. "What's that supposed to mean? You some figment of my imagination, some embodiment of the honour I've lost track of?"
"Who, me?" The man frowns. "No, nothing like that."
"What, then? You got no dogs, no equipment, not even a proper coat. You're obviously not sent out to catch me."
"No, Buck Frobisher's on that. He's about a day behind you now, but he's got a better team, so he'll catch up."
Ray puts his head down on his pillow and closes his eyes. "Let me guess. Ghost of Christmas Past?"
"No, son," the man says, nothing but a voice in the dark. "Just an old man who's been down the same road you're on. Let me tell you something, Ray. You get stuck in limbo here, when you die, and my boy would sure miss you."
Ray's eyes fly open, but the ghost is gone and he's alone in the dark.
*
Sledding's always come easy to Ray, something instinctive about the team and the curves. White noise.
Five days, and there's nothing but the trail, the whish of the runners, the bark of the dogs, the distant call of coyotes, and the harsh notes of his own breath.
It helps cover the constant ringing echo of gunshots in his mind.
*
He thinks, sometimes, about Dief running into town after help, with him and Fraser at the bottom of that ravine, and he thinks: wolf tears in with blood all over his muzzle, it's lucky he didn't get shot.
He'd say: at least Dief's okay, but he makes little snuffling noises at night and curls up tight around Ray when he sleeps.
*
Sun's coming up on the horizon. It gets a little brighter each day.
*
Ray tore open the stitches on the gunshot wound on the second day, and the injury keeps bleeding. It had started to heal over, but the fight opened it up again. It's going to scar something fierce. He caught up with the poacher on the tenth day out.
He can feel the blood, running down his arm. His gloves came off at some point during the fight (could have shouted 'Stop! Hands in the air!' but he needed this, god, did he need this) and there's blood dripping from his hand, from his gun to the snow. Dief is crouched off to one side, back low and teeth bared.
The guys' got a split lip and torn clothing, frostbite on his left cheek, and he obviously recognizes Ray. He's not saying anything, just making small, panicked noises.
Barely more than a kid.
Fraser, Ray's thinking. Thinking about Fraser's stupid toque and the novel sitting half-finished by the bedside table, about his sense of duty and the kid's hockey team he coaches back in town, about Fraser's hands on his back and the way he could never dance but tried to anyway, for Ray's sake.
Thinking: FRASERFRASERFRASERyoufuckingLEFTme. You. Fucking. Left. Me.
"I'm so sorry, Ray," someone says, and it's Fraser, of course it's Fraser. Fraser's dead father's been following Ray for a week and a half, so the question is this: why wasn't he expected this?
"I'm so sorry," Fraser repeats.
Ray's looking at him, at the blood dripping to the snow, at the sun low on the horizon.
"Yeah," he says. "Me too, Fraser."
Kid's breathing hard, and the gun in Ray's hand is warm.
"Love you, Fraser," Ray says, and closes his eyes.
CRACK.
*
Buck Frobisher finds the tableau a few hours later; two figures dark and motionless against the snow, small fire dying, red defiling the snow. The stars are faint and only visible to the west.
Ray stirs only as he draws close, turning his head form the slowly rising sun. Dief's wrapped around his legs. He can see in Frobisher's eyes all the scenes he was afraid he'd find, all the reasons he came by himself.
"Everyone okay?" Frobisher calls, rifle cradled between his hands, kneeling down to check their captured murder, the knot on his head from the butt of Ray's gun.
Silence, nothing but the crunch of snow and crackle of the fire. There are no flashes of red on the horizon.
"Is –"
"Yeah," Ray says, bloody fingers all tangled up in his bracelet, staining red the charm Fraser whittled for him on their fifth anniversary. "We're still alive."
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