Sirius

by khaleesian

 

NC-17

 

 

Being a cop, I answer the phone about a hundred times a day. It rings once, I scoop it up and tuck it under my chin in a way that makes my neck stiff by about four o’clock. I don’t think about it. If I thought about it, I’d do it differently maybe, save my cricked neck. Hell, if I thought about it too much, maybe I’d do it all differently, save my heart instead of my neck. But you can’t think, isn’t part of the job, you can only one-two, who are you?

 

So when the last call came in early on the second Friday of November, I was completely unprepared.  The way the week had been going, it could have been a lady calling about a missing cat or someone calling in a triple homicide. I was ready for either of those or anything in between. Or at least, I thought I was ready. I was wrong.

 

The voice on the other end was faint, but as direct as if he’d reached out and flicked my ear with his fingernail.

 

“Kowalski.”

 

“Ray?”

“Fraser?”

 

I want to point out now that we had the crappiest connection on the face of the planet.  Fraser didn’t sound like he was calling from the frozen North which would have at least been the same continent. He sounded like he was calling from Antarctica and we had a couple of tin cans stretched between a million miles of underwater cable. My natural impulse was to shout at the top of my lungs.

 

“FRASER!”

 

“RAY!”

 

Yeah, amazing, we know each other’s names. My mind started racing: it wasn’t my birthday, wasn’t Frannie’s birthday. I went through the short list, Welsh, no, Huey, no, Dewey, no. Omygod, was it Fraser’s birthday? Was he calling to get a jump on me feeling bad for forgetting? What to do next?

 

“How the hell are you, buddy? How’s Dief?”

 

Fraser’s reply garbled through the line. This buzzing sound would cut in whenever he got to something that might actually have been important. “….the problem….ize that…busy, but….too much of …mposition. ….don’t have much time.”

 

“Fraser, I can barely hear you,” I had a sinking sensation that he could hear me perfectly well. Fraser was doing his usual polite schtick, but I was only getting the hem without the haw. My Fraser radar also told me that this wasn’t a birthday call. I couldn’t hear actual words but there was an edge in Fraser’s voice that cut through the miles like a Bowie knife. “Is something wrong? You in trouble?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Now I know, rationally and reasonably, that that’s not all he said. He went on to explain though I could only hear about a third of it. But just that one moment, when he dropped all the Fraser-talk and just let me have it straight out, let me know that it was true, it was bad, everything was not going to be all right, because Fraser had just done the unthinkable and called for help.  

 

Had called me for help.

 

Shit.

 

“Where are you? Do you need me to do something down here or just come?”

 

I winced inwardly because even with a great connection, that last sentence didn’t make much sense. Fraser didn’t seem to notice, he was talking quickly as if someone might yank the phone away from him. “….yutok. You can…nection…delay. Thank…means a…just please come.”

 

“Fraser, I’m leaving right now. Just hold on. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

 

“…you, Ray….see you again.”

 

“Likewise, Frase. I’m calling the airline right now.”

 

I hung up. My stomach was still doing a little cha-cha from that small, “just please come.” I pressed both heels of my hands into my eye sockets. God. Fraser. In trouble. What in the world could that mean? I debated whether or not the message could be coded. What if Fraser had been kidnapped? By terrorists? With nuclear weapons? I stopped the panicky little Ferris wheel of thoughts by pinching myself. If Fraser’d been kidnapped they’d have wanted…things. Ransom. Not a Chicago cop without two sticks to rub together.

 

While I was thinking all this, I was mechanically flipping through the Yellow Pages. Lieutenant Chesley, who had replaced Welsh when he retired, had ritual shitfits about calls to information. Air Conditioning, Airlines, Air Canada? I started punching in the numbers wondering how many connections it would take to get me to…

 

Wait a second. I had let Fraser hang up without getting the full name of his station. Our letters back and forth went to some mail drop that was miles away from where he actually was. I had no clue where he was calling from thus no way to call him back. I wanted to bang my head on the desk. Two minutes into my mission and I’d already screwed it up. I put my head down on the desk. Gently, since I was going to need it.

 

I had this sudden moment of memory of our trip. Our last trip, to find Franklin’s hand. Our only real trip. Memories of the trip often came to me crystal clear at odd times, like now. I had been farting around one morning waiting for Fraser to do something to a dog harness. I had stepped onto a patch of snow that wasn’t in the slightest bit different from any other damn patch of snow that surrounded us for a bajillion miles. Only it was different, it was different, this snow was on top of ice. Which was on top of a frozen lake, which had just that morning decided that it was springtime. When the ground had started to tilt and sway under me, I hadn’t thought at all, just hollered for Fraser. Who had just been there, fast as thought.  I had flung myself at him like I was already drowning.

 

My seatmate looked like a businessman and a nervous flyer on top of it. After sharing one tense, tight smile as the flight attendants passed drinks over our heads, he shut up tight and I shut up even tighter. I leaned over the window to look out at the spreading Canadian wilds, feathered by clouds.

 

I cursed a little to myself; bit my thumbnail all the way down to the quick. The idea of Fraser in trouble that I could somehow help him with seemed so odd, so…alien. We’d kept each other at a polite distance for so long that I was kind of shocked that I could jump back into my Fraser-mode so quickly. One phone call and it was like he’d never left. Like I’d never left.

 

It all came down to that one morning on the quest. I was lying in the tent trying to stretch out that blissful moment when I first begin to realize I’m awake. On the search for the hand, that had always been a special time, because it was the one part of the day that I was always almost warm enough. I was blinking up at the top of the tent when I heard this sigh beside me and I realized that Dief hadn’t climbed up into the warm spot yet. Fraser was still in the tent. I tilted my head to him just in time to catch a little shoulder wriggle that let me know that he was practicing a little wallowing action.

 

Now that may not seem earth-shattering, but you’ve got to realize that Fraser never seemed to notice that there was any no-mans-land between the border of awake and asleep. My only memories of him ‘til then were either snoring lightly or brandishing a teapot. I think that he was typically up and out of the tent before he was truly awake himself, but with Fraser, it’s hard to tell.

 

“Congratulations, Fraser,” I said to the tent ceiling and it sounded really loud. Dief raised his head to look at me before whuffling back down into sleep.

 

“Mmmmmh, for what, Ray?” Fraser half-turned to me.

 

“Your first successful wallow. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

 

“I’m just thinking about whether or not we should continue on through McDiarmid Pass or dogleg up through the Dunedin wilderness.”

 

“You’re wallowing.”

 

“Planning our day.”

 

“Wallowing.”

 

Fraser didn’t say anything but the corners of his lips twitched while he inhaled our combined scent and made a sound like ‘hmmmph’. “Besides, it’s snowing,”

 

Fraser’s eyelashes looked incredibly soft.

 

I accepted this for about a minute and then something occurred to me.  The air in the tent still had that warm thickness that stayed until someone unzipped the flap. I strained my ears for a second, “Hey, how do you know that it’s snowing? Don’t tell me you can hear it, you bat-eared freak.”

 

 

To the average person, Inuvik seems like a godforsaken place in a remote wasteland. To people like Fraser, it’s the transport hub for a spider’s web of even more remote wasteland. Inuvik is the ‘town’ in the expression ‘going to town’. I was trying to remember everything from the last flight through here down to Chicago. I hadn’t called ahead. There didn’t seem to be much point.

 

I zipped over to the one information desk which was not exactly overrun. The girl seemed so glad to see me; you’d have thought I was carrying her lottery check.

 

“How can I help you, sir?” She chirped in a voice that signaled ‘airhead’ in the States. Probably signaled, ‘dangerously competent’ up here.

 

“I need to get to Tuktoyaktuk. Like yesterday. It’s an emergency.”

 

She screwed up her face in a way that polite people do when they’re trying to think of a way to tell you disappointing news. Suddenly, her face kind of went blank and she started pushing her seat back veeerrry slowly. I realized that I was shaking my head at her and scowling so hard it made my forehead hurt. Now, not only could she not help me, she thought I was violently insane. Greatness.

 

“You know, there aren’t currently any flights scheduled for the rest of this week,” That part came out really fast. “But there is a pilot who might be going that way and who might be willing to take you. His name is Rob Michnevich. He’s out in hangar two.”

 

I whirled away, forgetting to thank her. It was that kind of day. What am I going to do? Turn around and shout, “I’m not crazy and I’m not usually rude. I just want to know that Fraser’s okay”?  Real sane.

 

I had to walk the length of hangar two twice before I located Michnevich. He was bent under the ass end of his little plane. He looked pretty much like your average bush-pilot poster boy. Unshaven, in other words. Bushy hair, enormous boots, vague smell of pot lingering in the folds of his parka. We looked each other up and down for a minute.

 

“I need to get to Tuk, like now, I’m in kind of a hurry and I heard you could help me out.”

 

“All the way out there, huh?”  he twined his hand through his beard. “You a hunter?”

 

“No, I’m…” I’m at a loss is what I am. Tired, coffee on two sets of planes didn’t do shit for me.  “I just need to get to Tuk, ASAP.”

 

“If you aren’t hunting, why you going up there?”

 

“I’m trying to find a Mountie. It’s important,” I was really suffering from worry and lack of sleep. I should have just said, yeah, hunting, and been done with it.

 

“You gonna kill him?” Rob asked this evenly, like he was just curious.

 

“No, I just…” I desperately needed coffee. “I just need to find him and all the questions are kind of slowing me down.”

 

“You don’t find Mounties, man. Mounties find you.” Rob rocked back on his heels as he gave me this bit of Northwest wisdom.

 

I gave him the old ‘ready for a kick in the head?’ look. “Look, Rob, you flying or aren’t you? Important, in a hurry, what about that is, y’know, hard to understand?” I started reaching for my wallet.

 

“Can’t take you…looking like that, man,” Rob drawled.

 

The fuck? “You know, I’ve been up here before,” I said, pushing the words out through gritted teeth. “I don’t remember that formal dress was required.”

 

“It’s not that, man.” Rob started cleaning his fingernails with a Swiss Army knife that he might’ve pulled out of his beard. “That parka might have been good enough in the States, guy, but it’ll do exactly no good up here. You’ll need sealskin for Tuk right about now.”

 

We stared each other down for what felt like a long time. Then Rob grinned and said, “C’mon, my girlfriend has one that’ll probably fit you.”

 

I arrived in Tuktoyaktuk, feeling every minute of the three hours spent in the tiny tuna can that Rob called a plane. Rob popped out, fresh as a daisy. Stretching out all the way very slowly, sort of like the Tin Man after a hard rain, I trudged over to the four by four that Rob was gleefully loading with bags of stuff I didn’t even want to think about.

 

Say what you will about Rob, he got you there, all the way there and the foot-deep ruts never stopped his cheerful chatter. He was cool with me ignoring him and little wifts and wafts of his monologue penetrated my crowded brain occasionally.

 

The RCMP outpost beyond Tuktoyaktuk was what Fraser would have called ‘modest’.  In other words, it was a shack.  A nice, prefab shack, but a shack nevertheless. Just the door and the roof were visible, snow had drifted up to the eaves. We had arrived in what normal people would have called the early evening which in the Arctic November was full-on pitch black dark. The windows of the station glowed with an eerie light behind the drifts and the black slash of a door made it look like a big wide face.  

 

The other Mountie on duty wasn’t exactly what I expected. She had white-blond hair, big round brown eyes that blinked slowly and made her look like one of my mom’s Hummel figurines.  She was pretty, except for the fact that her face never really moved. It looked like her head was almost completely round. She could’ve been anything from 16 to 56, she was smooth and glossy and almost completely expressionless.

 

“Detective Kowalski?” I was surprised by that for a second, but then thought, hey, who the hell else is going to be walking in looking like the heavy out of some ‘80s B-movie?

 

“That’s me. I’m looking for Corporal Fraser? He was expecting me?”

 

She nodded. I could read from the little triangle of wood on her desk that her name was Constable Sirka Karmi. I was definitely going to mispronounce that, so hopefully she had no objections to being called Constable. She stood up and hefted on her coat and led the way out the door. I peppered her back with questions while she fired up another four wheel drive.  “Is Constable Fraser okay? Where is he? Is it far away? What’s the problem?”

 

“I’m taking you to him.” For some reason, Constable Karmi thought that this answer trumped everything I’d laid on the table. I was so tired, tired of being on edge. It was like the worry was a file that was slowly rubbing through whatever was holding me together. And now I was trapped in a car with the Least Talkative Woman in North America.

 

We drove through the settlement at a pace that would have made me physically itch yesterday. Now I was growing numb to it all. Or maybe I was just growing numb…it was freezing in the car.

 

“Mind if I turn this on?” I asked Constable Snow Queen, fumbling at the heater. She made some slight go-ahead gesture as I punched the buttons to get a wash of hot flow over my feet. Of course, it made every bit of ice and snow on my boots melt and my feet had that weird dampish feeling. After a few minutes, I switched everything off. The silence in the car was like being underwater.

 

Then she made me jump by asking out of the blue, “Are you and Corporal Fraser close friends?”

 

“Yeah, we’re b…” I broke off because, ‘best friends’ sounded so junior high, like we had a club and a secret handshake. Plus if we’re ‘best friends’ how come I’m down there and he’s up here?  “Yeah,” I repeated.

 

She paused for so long I began to think that she was some new-fangled robo-Mountie and she had to recharge her batteries before speaking.  Then she said very quietly as we were pulling up. “Thank you for coming.”

 

Terror shot through me again. We had arrived in front of another anonymous low building surrounded by snow drifts. My eyes ran over the part of the sign that I could see, Dr Joan... Holy shit, no wonder the constable was being so goddamned coy. If Fraser was really sick or hurt why hadn’t they taken him to a hospital? Like in a place with trees?

 

I bolted through the door, but the smells and sounds brought me up short for a second. I thought Jesus, they gotta get better disinfectant up here.  The smell almost made me toss my cookies right there in the foyer.

 

Some assistant lady behind a desk stood up during my moment of confusion. “Can I help you?”

 

“Cons-Corporal Fraser?” Even as I asked, I was striding around, looking for a likely-looking door.

 

I pushed through the hallway into the next room not really listening to the receptionist.  And Fraser looked up at me from where he was crouched on the floor.

 

Once on our trip, we passed by a glacier. Walking in the shadow of it, the air was so cold that it seemed like it sucked the breath straight out of my lungs. We left the team behind and Fraser guided us up a safe path to the edge.   I remembered looking into that infinity of ice, so thick that it was clouded blue inside, dark and unforgiving and ancient.

 

At this moment, Fraser’s eyes were that glacier giving me my reflection back.

 

“Ray,” was all he said and his voice sounded rusty like he hadn’t used it for a while. He was still crouched down, he didn’t move at all. But it was like I could see his heart beating. He was still as stone, but it was as if his heart were on the outside, pounding away with wet lub-dubs. He hadn’t gotten up because he was cradling Dief’s head on his thigh.

 

Diefenbaker.  Holy fucking Christ.                     

 

After I got the feeling back in my limbs, I went over and knelt down beside the both of them.

 

Dief’s eyes were open. He turned his head to look at me, but didn’t raise it. My heart was now banging on the back of my throat and I swallowed while Dief’s tail thumped twice.

 

“Hey buddy,” I smoothed Dief’s muzzle and ear down. His eyelashes brushed against my hand and he gave a long muffled ‘whuff’. I touched my tongue to my lips and it almost stuck, my mouth seemed to be gummed shut.

 

Dief had…thickened, that’s the best word for it. He’d gotten heavier; where his doggy waist used to nip in, he’d grown broad and solid. His fur had gotten coarser. It was hard to tell through the blond fur, but I thought that some of his pelt had turned white. His fur looked…tired. He was breathing shallowly and for a second he pulled back his head in a wide canine yawn. He’d lost a couple of teeth, not the important ones, but a couple of the little ones up front were gone.

 

“Fraser,” I said softly, not really wanting to. “What is this?”

 

Fraser looked down at both of our hands. I had dug my fingers into Dief’s ruff like I’d done a thousand times before. He stroked Dief’s face and muzzle where I’d just smoothed his fur. “It’s renal failure, Ray.”

 

Dief sighed.

 

“That doesn’t…” My voice sounded tinny. “That doesn’t sound good.”

 

“No,” Fraser nodded, very blank and solemn. “No, it’s not.”

 

“Is he in pain?” OK, I admit it, my voice snapped in half during that sentence, but Fraser understood me perfectly.

 

Fraser raised one shoulder. “He says he can handle it.” Fraser looked past my face to the long, narrow window set in the door jamb. “He’s really been most insufferably macho.”

 

I bit down hard on my teeth and folded my tongue under to keep from completely losing it. I mean…this was something that you knew was coming, you knew was always hovering on the horizon sometime, because, I mean, no one lives forever. No matter how much Dief acted like a superhero, he wasn’t immortal.

 

But, you know…he should’ve been.

 

“He…wanted you to be here,” Fraser was still talking, I could hear him faintly. “He can’t really show it, but he’s really very pleased.”

 

Dief flicked his eyes at me. It looked like there was some kind of mist clouding them, but he was still there and it was almost like I could feel him telling me to cowboy the fuck up. I nodded at him, biting my lip. I squeezed one of his paws and darted a peek at Fraser. It seemed strange to be talking about Dief as if he was already gone. But then I remembered that he was deaf and felt marginally better.

 

“Corporal?” A kind-looking woman with chestnutty-type hair peeped around the door. “How are things?”

 

Fraser glanced up at her blankly, then he focused all his attention on me again. Which felt kinda odd. It was kind of rude, which wasn’t really Fraser. But I figured that this would be about the time that even Fraser might consider cutting himself some slack.

 

“Just a few more minutes,” Fraser sounded perfect as always now, his voice didn’t waver, but I could feel his fingers’ palsied twitches through Dief’s fur.

 

I thought about Dief in the park….Dief had loved the park, particularly the hot dog vendors. I stroked the long line of his spine, smoothing down his fur over and over. He panted softly. I remembered the warmth of him, pressed into my leg under the desk at the station. How his breath steamed when he was examining my hands for doughnut or pizza trace.

 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Fraser didn’t sound so perfect anymore. His voice had tightened down almost to a whisper. “I didn’t expect you before the end of the week.”

 

“Yeah, I got…” I lost my train of thought for a few seconds. “…lucky. You know.”

 

Fraser nodded, even though I knew I wasn’t making much sense. I felt like I had in the jeep over with the Constable. Like I’d been frozen and now I was hot and melting.

 

I shrugged off my parka and settled down a little further.

 

And a few minutes later, the kind-faced lady came in with a long needle and Dief died very quietly while Fraser and I stroked him with trembling hands.

 

When we stepped outside again, the cold and dark hit us like a wave. It was cloudy. No stars. Fraser slapped his gloves together once or twice and for a second, it looked like he wasn’t quite sure where he was.

 

And I couldn’t say anything. The back of my throat felt like someone had tied a knot in it. All the clichés crammed up in my mouth. He was a good ol’ dog, yes. Had a good long life. He’s in a better place. He’s happier now, no longer in pain.

 

All of those things were probably true. But it wasn’t like any of that was helping me n’ Frase.

 

It was all just a little too…neat.

 

I know that sounds weird.

 

But when a human you love dies on you, you’ve got all the things you’ve gotta do, arrangements and whatnot. It gets messy and horrible, but just the process is distracting. And you’ve got everyone on your side, pulling for you suddenly. You got a Get out of Jail free card for a while.

 

But I had this hazy vision…the nice doc had been really freaking discreet about it, but I knew she was going to be sticking Dief in what was essentially a meat locker until the ground had unfrozen enough to bury him and then it wasn’t like we could have a darn memorial service without raising a few eyebrows. Even in the Northwest Territories, Dief was still a half-wolf and no part human.

 

I stood there like an idiot, until it occurred to me that I had no idea how long it had been since Fraser’d eaten or slept. The doc had told me quietly that Dief had gone downhill pretty quickly, but that could easily mean that Fraser’d been keeping a vigil for a week or so, all by his lonesome.

 

I stepped off the stoop and brushed his shoulder with mine. “Hey, I’m freezing.”

 

Fraser seemed to snap back into place quickly. “My rig is just over there.”

 

Take care of the living. Guests trump grief. He asked, “Are you hungry?”

 

Fraser sounded a little hesitant there and I thought instantly of the bright diner-y place that me n’ Constable Karmi had passed on the way in. It might still be open. But it would be some place where everyone would know Fraser and all the sympathetic looks would each be a separate little reminder that Dief was gone.

 

“Nah, not really.” I shrugged. “You maybe got some soup back at yours, that’ll do for me.”

 

Fraser nodded and gestured for me to follow him. He was still as upright as a flagpole, but he was moving a little slower than I remembered.

 

We drove in complete silence back through the black sky and white snow to Fraser’s place. I felt like the shittiest friend ever, because I still couldn’t make myself say those needful things. But Fraser wasn’t saying a word either. I guess we were both kind of in shock.

 

Fraser parked his jeep in the shed and he bundled me up the few steps into his cabin before my nose could start to ache from sucking in the cold.  When he turned on the lights, I winced a little even though most of them were behind friendly-looking reddish shades. I’d never been there before, but it seemed familiar somehow.

 

“Make yourself at home, Ray,” Fraser hung up our coats and gestured around sort of vaguely. “Mi casa es su casa.”

 

I stopped unlacing my boots for a second and felt myself almost grin. That wasn’t a Fraser thing to say…it was more something like I’d say. Maybe something I had said to him once, a lifetime ago. In that very subtle Fraserish way, he was making a joke. Suddenly, I swallowed and coughed a little because I couldn’t get the spit past the lump in my throat.

 

Fraser was already banging around in his galley kitchen, pulling out cans and pots, examining a couple of potatoes. I peeled off my damp socks. “Should I light this fire?”

 

“Please do,” Fraser paused for a second. “I’m sorry. I should have done that first.”

 

“You don’t gotta do everything,” I located the last item I needed: matches. “I remember how to do this from the first thousand times you showed me.”

 

I was expecting him to come back with “well, really Ray, it was only 184 times” but he just looked at me and smiled. His eyes crinkled up and he nodded and turned back to his pots and pans on the double-quick.

 

Tomato soup from a can and grilled cheese toast may never have tasted so good. I didn’t even know I was hungry until he set it down in front of me and then I kind of gobbled it.

 

Fraser was still eating when I finished stuffing my face. I cast about for some conversation that wouldn’t require any Dief anecdotes. It was tough.

 

“So that woman, the constable, she your partner?”

 

Fraser tilted his chin. “Well. In a manner of speaking. I’m her superior officer. But the station is as you see it, so naturally we are each other’s relief and, so yes…partners.”

 

“She’s not much of a talker, is she?”

 

“She’s of Finnish extraction.” Fraser said, like that explained it all.

 

“Huh,” I leaned back in my chair. “Why’d she leave? Finland, I mean. Too much sun and excitement?”

 

Fraser chewed slowly. “Something like that. She said once that Finland had gotten too crowded for her liking.”

 

I ran my hand through my hair, giving it a post-hat fluff. “Guess you guys must get on like a house on fire.”

 

“She’s an excellent officer.” Fraser sounded like he was admitting something. “But…how did you say…not much of a talker.”

 

Here we were…talking about a woman who didn’t talk. It must have made Fraser think about women who were a little more forthcoming because he asked, “How’s Francesca?”

 

“Oh, good, good,” I nodded. “Don’t see here much anymore. Little ones underfoot and all.”

 

“How are…” he trailed off, so I filled him in with everyone’s life story. I just kept talking until I noticed that he was having to fight to keep from slouching. It was really late now. I yawned and he made up a cot. We had a companionable bicker about who would actually sleep there which I won easily by being only half-strength obnoxious.

 

Exhaustion took me down about two minutes after I got horizontal. I could only hope that Frase was in the same boat.

 

The light didn’t wake me the next morning…it was still pitch black when I blinked and noticed Fraser creeping across to the door, closing it verrrry gently.  I felt a little muzzy and achy. The cot was perfectly comfortable, but I’d slept without moving at all and that always made me feel as if my blood had congealed.

 

I got up slowly and stretched. I could feel the cold pressing into the windows, so after I peed and dressed, I stoked the fire up again. By that time, Fraser was back, making instant coffee and tea and something that looked like oatmeal. I remembered it from the quest. The almost-but-not-quite oatmeal. We ate in silence. Silence was kind of getting to be our thing.

 

I wondered about Fraser getting up and going outside first thing. He’d come back in with a totally unnecessary load of wood and as I thought about it, he’d probably just been running on auto-pilot. I’d had a dog myself back in the Dark Ages, and I remember how much my boy had dominated the mornings. Dogs (and wolves) had a way of working themselves tight into the morning routine. Dogs’ll insist, get up, go outside, feed me now….shit, after the divorce that’d been all the motivation I had for a while.

 

“Ray, would you mind terribly if…” Fraser sounded a little vacant and far away. I steeled myself for whatever he was going to ask me. “…if I went in to work?”

 

“Huh?” I captured control of my mouth again. “Nah, I mean…sure, I mean…Frase, you go to work. I’ll hold down the fort here.”

 

Of course, the man wanted to go to work. Work is awesome for distraction. Very few people know that better than me.

 

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Fraser looked like some grade-schooler had drawn him in crayon. Scribble of black hair, blue eyes, skin kind of whitey-gray.

 

“Why would I mind?” I tried to smile at him in a way that said, I’m not a tourist, you don’t need to show me the sights.

 

“There’s plenty of food.” He looked at me, all sincere and dubious. “And there’s a snowmobile in the shed.”

 

“You go. Do. Get your man.” I gestured off into the wild black yonder. The sky was actually starting to lighten. Fraser still looked dubious and so I tried to look reassuring. You can’t exactly take compassionate leave for your deaf half-wolf. Or at least, I don’t think you can.

 

Of course, after he was gone, I totally regretted it because the cabin was gorgeous and all and as the sky got brighter it got even more remote and snowy and peaceful, but damn, if you were all alone out here, it was pretty darn easy to convince yourself that you were the last person on earth. Not a great feeling, at the best of times.

 

I spent a grand total of five minutes ‘touring’ the cabin. This was the least functional of spaces that I’d ever seen Fraser in and I snooped around a little, trying to get a bead on his life here. Books and sheet music. I had to shake my head to clear it.

 

I puttered around the cabin for a while, going through my duffle bag, making a big pile of future laundry that Fraser and I could distract ourselves with. I made my cot and clutter marginally neater. I found some extra finished wood out in the shed and sketched out a small plan to make shelves with it in Fraser’s bedroom, because his current book collection was getting kind of out of hand. Out in the shed, I also found dog harness tack which got me thinking.

 

Back in the house, I ate some stew out of a can. Then I looked around until I found all the Dief-stuff. I was actually kind of surprised by the sheer volume of it. I mean, I always thought of Fraser and Dief, kind of like I thought of Fraser and me, y’know, partners and all. But at the same time…I imagined Fraser sitting here of an evening, grooming Dief carefully, running this slicker brush through Dief’s thick winter pelt. Or brushing Dief’s teeth. Really…intimate, somehow. That must have been awkward.

 

Then, I thought about how Dief would leap in unself-consciously when the human element needed a hand. Plenty of times that Dief being who he was was the only thing that kept everything from going completely fubar. Like any good partnership, they played to each other’s strengths. Dief had superior speed, endurance, scent and a higher vertical jump. Fraser had opposable thumbs and purchasing power. Dief probably just took the tooth-brushing thing in stride. Tit for tat.

 

I got an empty cardboard box (probably used for hauling in groceries) out of the shed and contemplated gathering all of Dief’s stuff so Fraser wouldn’t have to. Save him the heartache. I was halfway through doing this, before I had a sudden sinking thought that maybe this wasn’t the best idea, that maybe Fraser would need to do this at his own pace. For his own sense of…I dunno, closure?

 

I put half the stuff back before I realized that the sky was dark again and the windows weren’t rattling with a burst of wind…Fraser had just let himself in the front door. He caught me frozen over the box, slicker brush in one guilty hand.

 

Fraser raised his eyebrows and touched his tongue to his lower lip and said, “Ah.”

 

I stood up straight, dropped the brush and shoved the box under the table. What was the worst was that he was seeing me do this; he was seeing exactly what I was doing, what I was trying to do.

 

“Fraser,” I said and I sounded kind of grim. “Is there a place around here where I can buy you a drink?”

 

He blinked at me. Actually, he shut his eyes for a second and then opened them.

 

“There are two,” he said quietly.

 

We got ourselves safely settled in something like an over-heated double-wide that was crowded with all kinds of people who looked decidedly eccentric, to put it in Fraser-speak. If it was a strange thing for Fraser to be in there with a newcomer (and considering a few of the double-takes, I’m guessing that it was) no one was stupid enough to say so.

 

“I’ll have a brew, whatever you’ve got,” I muttered when the bartender sidled over. She raised her eyebrows at Fraser. First Nations. Another not-very-talkative woman. Town was full of ‘em.

 

“Whisky. Neat.” And Fraser set his Stetson on the bar.

 

OK, since it was now obviously That Kind of An Evening, I spoke quickly, “Cancel that beer, I’ll just have what he’s having.”

 

The bartender acknowledged me with a flick of her long black braid. She turned back with two yellow-gold glasses and I took a sip before I even thought about it. It burned a bit. Felt kind of good. Fraser took a good-sized swallow and winced.

 

“To Dief,” I grabbed the bull by the horns and my glass by the bottom inch and tilted it toward Fraser.

 

“To Dief,” he agreed, but his whole brow sort of crinkled up.

 

Now I could do it somehow. Now I could say the clichés. “He had a good long life.”

 

“Yes.” Fraser looked into his glass. “He was almost fourteen.”

 

“He was a good…” I stopped. Dog? Wolf? Deaf half-wolf? “…friend.”

 

“That he was, Ray.” And Fraser half-smiled at that, so I could breathe again. “That he was.”

 

We both had a mouthful in silence.

 

“Friends like that…” Fraser touched his tongue to the inside of his lower lip. “…aren’t an everyday occurrence.”

 

But that hadn’t been the first thing he’d been going to say. Maybe not even the second.

 

“Had a good long life,” I repeated. “Traveled. Saw the world.”

 

Fraser nodded, “At least most of the Territories.”

 

“Saw the best part of the world,” I continued doggedly. “Kicked ass and took names whenever the opportunity arose.”

 

“Yes he did,” Fraser took another slug, sort of experimentally.

 

I brandished my glass a little, since I was on kind of a roll. “Friend, companion, faithful dispenser of Just..”

 

“Keen-eyed pack leader,” Fraser volunteered. “Excellent tracker.”

 

“He was a real bro,” I concurred, still brandishing. “He was a wolf’s wolf.”

 

“Father, many times over,” Fraser contributed, starting to brandish a little himself.

 

“Really?” That brought me up short a little, I don’t quite know why.

 

“Oh yes,” Fraser said. “Both here and in Chicago, Dief was something of a…” Fraser frowned up at the ceiling. “Well, I guess you wouldn’t really say a womanizer.”

 

I couldn’t help myself, I started to grin. “I knew he had a way with the ladies.”

 

“A lupine Lothario?” Fraser tried, then grimaced.

 

I cracked up completely. “A what?”

 

“My grandmother would have called him a Jack-the-lad,” Fraser finished, kind of primly.

 

“Well, so he didn’t mate for life, so what?” I continued brandishing. “He’s left a legacy.”

 

For some reason, that wasn’t as happy a thought as it could’ve been. Fraser was looking down at his drink…looking…there was a word….wistful, maybe. Full of wist.

 

“To Dief,” I croaked, and tipped my glass back quick.

 

“To Diefenbaker,” Fraser said quietly and drank his off just as fast.

 

One drink down. Back in Chicago, we probably would’ve left it at that.

 

I knocked two beats on the bar top nervously and just like that, we had another couple of tumblers in front of us. Say what you will about the Territories, the customer service there is outta sight.

 

“Fourteen, huh?” I looked down into my new glass. “That’s pretty good, right?”

 

“Yes, fourteen for a wolf hybrid is quite good,” Fraser said quietly. “Most don’t make it past ten or twelve.”

 

“I always thought…” That you two would stay the same forever “…that he’d have a good long run.”

 

“And he did,” Fraser looked up at the low ceiling. It was kind of strange. Even when Frase used to tell me the most useless facts ever, he never spoke like this…like directionless somehow. “I like to think it was because we had a mission…maybe our shared sense of duty…”

 

I concentrated really, really hard on my glass as he went on because Fraser’s voice was getting tighter and this was all just getting too much for me. I was going to start bawling soon and we were in what passed for a public place.

 

“…but of course, that’s ridiculous,” Fraser finished up and took a sip.

 

Whuh? Uhm…I didn’t know quite what to say to that.

 

“You don’t…uh…think that Dief shared your mission? And sense of duty and all?”

 

Fraser shrugged a very un-Fraser-like shrug. “I don’t think wolves or half-wolves go in for abstractions like that, Ray. I think they’re very much motivated by the moment.”

 

I spent a minute chewing on that. “Yeah, but…what’s wrong with that?”

 

“There’s nothing wrong with it, Ray,” Fraser was regarding his glass really closely too.

 

I darted a quick sidelong glance at Fraser. He caught me looking at him and he took a deep breath in through his nose.

 

“Does it bother you?” Fraser asked, so gently that his mouth barely moved. “I don’t want to…”

 

I cut that off at the knees. “You say what you want, Frase. I’m here to hear, got me?”

 

The corners of his lips turned up, but his lips were still pursed. After a long moment, while we both just glummed down at the bar, he started talking again.

 

“Animals are like humans, they usually begin to…disengage…toward the end. But Dief never did…even up to a week ago, he was still accompanying me on patrol.”

 

“Yeah?” I hunched further into my seat. I felt so guilty, but I didn’t quite know why.

 

“He started limping, the next morning he couldn’t get up and then…” Fraser seemed kind of hypnotized by the swirling gold of his whiskey. “It was all very…sudden.”

 

“Yeah, well…there’s duty, there’s mission, but I mean...” My mouth seemed to take on a mind of its own. “Then there’s you. He wanted to be with you, he didn’t want to…” leave you alone. I didn’t say.

 

Fraser grimaced. He actually had to grab his own face to sort of…wipe the grimace away.

 

“Corporal?” A huge man, swathed in enough plaid flannel to make a good-sized tent, loomed over us. I shied back a little and then tried to cover it by just adjusting myself in my chair.

 

“Tom,” Fraser ducked his head in a nod. “Hope you’re well.” Fraser made an introduction-type gesture between us. “Ray, this is Tom Farquharson, Tom, this is Ray Kowalski, a friend from my Chicago days.”

 

Tom Farquharson’s voice sounded like it should have come out of a man about a third the size. But then, he was so huge, just about any voice would have sounded small. What is it that draws all the man mountains up north? My theory is that maybe they like everything to be…roomy.

 

Tom nodded at me and twisted his hat. “Corporal, I heard about Diefenbaker.”

 

Fraser nodded back and set his face in the right angles. “Yes, it’s…” We all paused for a second, everyone looking in a different direction, casting about for just the right thing to say.

 

Tom hit on something and came out in a rush, “If there’s anything that I can do, just uhm. You will just? Uhm. Let me know?”

 

“I certainly will, Tom.” Fraser said kindly. “Thank you for thinking of me.”

 

We all nodded at each other gravely, like we were about to go into business together. After a moment, Tom moved off, a massive and uncertain giant, and Fraser and I sank back into our own little puddle of glum. I glanced around quickly to see if my being here was keeping other folks from offering their condolences.

 

“God save me,” Fraser sighed and when I glanced at him he was looking up at the low ceiling like he was actually praying. “Dear God please save me from the awkward pauses and the sudden silences and the well-meaning faces and the…”

 

“Frase,” I knocked my elbow against the curve of his back. “They’re just trying to show that they care.” Even at the time, it felt bizarre to be explaining this to Fraser. Fraser was usually the one cast in the role of the explainer of home truths.

 

“I know,” And then he said something weird, like someone else was talking out of his mouth. “I just wish that they wouldn’t.”

 

The smoky caramel of the whiskey turned kind of vinegary and metallic in my mouth. “You know, we should eat something.” I suggested firmly, while thinking and either stop drinking or really start.

 

We ate something. I couldn’t begin to remember what. It was food, but it tasted like sawdust. I chewed everything until it turned to mush to make sure I could get it down.

 

“Did Dief ever…” I stopped and then thought hell with it, I wanna know. “Did Dief ever miss Chicago?”

 

And that was a good question there, because Fraser smiled something like the most genuine smile I’d seen since I got here.

 

Fraser started, “Yes, well…like me, I think Dief definitely missed elements of Chicago.”

 

“Elements, huh?” I sipped some water. “What elements?”

 

Fraser took a bite and chewed it. I couldn’t always tell what Fraser was thinking, but it was real easy to tell that he was thinking. Unlike most people, Fraser never bothered to cover up when he paused for a think.

 

“Food elements,” Fraser waved a small forkful of whatever he was eating. “As you may well remember.”

 

“Hard to forget,” I agreed and waited for more.

 

“He missed you,” Fraser said and that felt really good and hurt like a sonofabitch at the same time. “We often talked about you.”

 

The light seemed to get unbearably bright and sparkly as I tried not to lose it for what felt like the millionth time. When I had taken enough short, deep breaths to keep from crying, I noticed Fraser was still talking. 

 

“I was…always kind of…envious of how quickly Dief got into stride in the city,” Fraser said softly, not looking at me. “I mean, in many respects he was still a wild animal. But wolves are very social, you know. And Dief was usually really…good at Chicago.”

 

I cleared my throat, “But so were you.”

 

Fraser frowned quickly, “No, I wasn’t, Ray. I was relatively good at translating my skills from one milieu to another, but I was horrible at Chicago. I never even got close to feeling like I belonged.”

 

That was a little bit of a sucker punch, because firstly, Fraser rarely spoke that frankly and shit, I’d kinda flattered myself that Fraser and I had become something of a Chicago legend and what’s more at home than a legend?

 

I took a tiny sip of the dregs of my drink. Inuit lady had kindly just left the bottle. Maybe she’d heard about Dief. 

 

“But Dief…it seemed almost effortless,” Fraser continued to muse. “You understand that to Dief, life up here is just as complicated as life down in the city. The scents, the sounds…it’s just as fraught and complex to him out on the ice up here as down there…but me, I’d get…over-stimulated.”

 

I chewed on the inside of my mouth until it started to hurt. I knew that over-stimulated feeling all right; it didn’t just belong to the expat Canadians.

 

“Dief made our early days there much more bearable than they would have been otherwise.” Fraser said. “Along with Ray. Vecchio. He was a good example of adaptability for me. Plus when I would be feeling my most alienated at the end of a long day, Diefenbaker would be there to remind me that the rest of my life wasn’t a dream. He’d been there too.”

 

I was there, I thought kind of wildly. I remember.

 

“Plus Diefenbaker was rarely…deceived in people’s characters, as I have been.” Fraser said.

 

I started thinking kind of glumly about the lovely Luanne Russell until something dark and grim in Fraser’s expression struck me. He was clearly thinking about something completely different. I waited, but he didn’t explain.  

 

Fraser sat back and drained another glass. I stared at it, his empty glass. I’d been refilling it mechanically; if Fraser got hammered it was going to be my fault. He wasn’t getting sloppy at all. But then, Fraser didn’t do anything by halves and so when it came time for ‘grief-stricken alcoholic meltdown’, naturally he was going to ace it.

 

I nudged the bottle and its two remaining inches of liquid subtly down the bar. I’d stopped myself about three refills prior. Someone needed to stay sharp.

 

“In some ways, being down there really drew us closer together,” Fraser went on.

 

I made a pile of two fists and rested my chin on them, listening.

 

Fraser continued, “In Chicago, we were both kind of…pent up at first. Still…how would you say it…negotiating the space. I remember how I thought at the time that naturally, it was going to be easier for me. An urban environment is, after all, a human space. Created by humans to suit themselves.”

 

It was weird, but I had never thought about it that way. I mean, of course, when Fraser said it you think, sure, yeah, I guess it happened that way. Made me wonder about us city people though because, I mean, parts of Chicago or hell any good-sized place don’t seem like particularly human spaces.

 

But what do I know?

 

“…Conventional wisdom would lead us to expect that things grow easier when we’re looking back on them, that regrets soften with the years…” Fraser was going on and it was weird, this was the longest conversation we’d ever had where he didn’t actually look at me. I mean we talked plenty in the car about loads of hard stuff, but that was the nice thing about talking in the car, you were naturally shoulder to shoulder there, facing the planet. Usually when Fraser talked face-to-face he was all about the eye contact, but not right now.

 

“It was only later that I realized how wrong I was. Human space or no, Dief had everything figured out within days. And, then Dief was extraordinarily tactful.”

 

“Tactful about what?” I asked, tactlessly.

 

Fraser gave me a look as if I must surely know the answer to such a simple question. “What a complete joke I was. I mean…a Mountie in Chicago. My presence made about as much sense as the apple in a surrealist painting. Everyone was confounded by me, the man in the red suit. At least Dief was spared the daily, or hourly requirement to explain himself….or…”

 

Without realizing it I was shaking my head at him. I guess I hadn’t let myself think about this for a long time. I could see why maybe Fraser never gave anyone any particular windows on his perspective. ‘Cause if you squinted, it was pretty freakin’ bleak.

 

“Dief wasn’t being tactful, Frase, I mean, c’mon.” I set my feet, dug myself in a little. “I mean, cripes, Dief was about as tactful as I am. So y’know, you weren’t a joke. No one who mattered thought you were a fucking joke.”

 

Fraser was opening his mouth again, but I bulldozed on. “So don’t give me this crap, this is like more self-pity than I ever heard from you in my life. Dief’d totally lose it to hear you talking like this. You had to do some explaining, so what? At least you got to explain out loud who you are, what you were doing, why. Me, y’know most people just look at me and think they’ve already got it sussed out, Frase. That’s people. That’s what they do.”

 

I’d shocked him out of it, thankfully. I could see it in his eyes, a little shame. A little glimmer of hope. A little something that was really wanting to be convinced.

 

I just needed a way to seal the deal, make him believe me.

 

“Besides, you weren’t just the guy in red.” I spoke without thinking. “You were also the dude with the wolf.”

 

Fraser, being Fraser, did not give me an ounce of static when I put out my hand for the jeep’s keys. I wanted to drive suddenly. It was going to take all of my concentration and I really wanted that. Embarrassingly, I ground the gears when I shifted into reverse, but then it was relatively smooth sailing. It was pretty easy to navigate around here…wasn’t like there were a lotta roads to choose from.

 

I thought for a while that Fraser was falling asleep. I was getting pretty tired myself, even knowing it was still early. The cold just sucked at you here, sucked away at your bones, taking all the juice out.

 

Not Dief though. Cold and snowy was his warm and sunny. Dief into the snow was like humans into the coke. I remembered this one Thursday years ago when I’d taken Fraser home, driving like at a turtle’s pace and cursing because of all of the snow. With Fraser-luck, I’d found a space at the curb at the Consulate and Fraser’d invited me up to wait out the worst of it. When he’d opened the door, Dief had skidded out into the snow like he’d been on a Jet-Ski.  Just watching him had made me feel ten years younger.

 

I muttered under my breath, “He was a good ol’ guy.”

 

“Lazy.” Fraser muttered back.

 

“Huh?” It didn’t sound like Fraser was accusing me, but you never know.

 

“Dief,” Fraser spread his gloved hand out and seemed to spill words into it. “He was often incredibly lazy. Greedy. Self-indulgent. Over-indulgent, prone to every kind of whimsy and caprice. Unreliable. Insubordinate. Stubborn.”

 

I snorted a little at that last bit, ‘cause I mean Fraser couldn’t really go casting any stones on the stubborn front. He looked over at me and I bobbed my head. Humoring him in a way that would probably get him really hot under his collar.

 

“Why are you looking at me like that, Ray?” Fraser’s voice cut through the shush-shush of the tires churning up the snow. It felt like scissors snicking closed right next to my ear.

 

I rubbed the back of my head, “Well, Fraser, we got this thing and I dunno, maybe it’s just a cultural thing. An American thing, maybe but it’s called not speaking ill of the dead.”

 

Fraser sat up a little straighter which I wouldn’t have thought was possible. “So I am supposed to turn him into a shadow of what he was, to conform to some conventional pablum and spare everyone else’s fear of their own mortality? I think it’s the height of disrespect to forget him, all of him. If I elide his flaws, I make him half of what he was.”

 

This was too much, all those ten dollar words enunciated so carefully meant he was furious, I could practically hear his teeth clicking shut.

 

“Frase, I don’t mean to be…” I said really quickly. “But you sound. Angry. You sound really angry.”

 

“Do I?” Fraser looked over at me, a long look before he turned back to the road. Three miles passed before he spoke again. “Maybe I am. I guess I am.”

 

I tightened my hands on the steering wheel. Curiouser and curiouser. I tried to remember if Fraser had ever copped to being even slightly pissed off.

 

“I’m angry at myself mostly,” Fraser muttered into the collar of his jacket. He slouched suddenly; suddenly he was a lot less mad and a lot more human.

 

“Why’s that?”

 

Fraser sighed and leaned hard on the door, examining the blackness outside like he had a freaking microscope. “Because he saved my life the first time I met him. And I didn’t remember that every day. I took him for granted in every way you could imagine.”

 

“Fraser,” I said and I thought I sounded very reasonable. “How many lives have you saved and they don’t even know your name?”

 

He turned slightly and then turned back, resting his chin on his shoulder. “It’s my job, Ray.”

 

“Yeah, but…” I tried to explain, even though I felt kind of thick. “You’d do it anyway.”

 

 “Point.” Fraser acknowledged.

 

When we got back to the cabin, Fraser paused for a second after pushing himself down out of the jeep. He took a deep breath, rocking on his heels to look up at the stars. I took a searing lungful of the pure stuff too. I was gonna need it.

 

We stopped on the tiny porch for a second while Fraser fumbled with the door which wasn’t locked but had a kind of elaborate latch…maybe to keep bears from getting in. I looked down at the ceramic disk of a food dish or maybe a water dish, frozen in its usual corner.

 

It kept hitting me. Hitting me in all sorts of strange ways, from strange angles. I squeezed my eyes shut and it felt like my lashes were freezing together.

 

Fraser had been so strange, prickly, frank and foreign this whole time and it wasn’t just because years had gone by, it wasn’t just because he was back on his home turf…it was because he was missing a piece, a vital part. 

 

I woke up even earlier the next morning. I had to shuffle over to squint at the clock on the oven because I didn’t trust what my watch was telling me. It didn’t feel like 7 in the A.M.

 

It was so quiet here. My ears almost rang from the silence.

 

My usual morning muzziness was fuzzed by a thin layer of headache and nausea. I’d wrapped up with a singular beer over dinner last night and that plus the whiskey had given me a little hungover funk. I wondered how Frase was holding up and then it occurred to me that I didn’t have to wonder. If I went to the edge of the kitchen and looked sideways I’d be able to get a bead on him.

 

He was awake, naturally.

 

The tiny bathroom was at the end of the tiny hallway and Frase was in there with the door half open. He raised his head from the sink and we were looking at each other through the mirror. He pushed himself off the porcelain of the sink. His hair was blacker, his face was wet and he slowly eased the towel off his shoulder, not taking his eyes off me.

 

It was weird, until that moment, I hadn’t really looked at Fraser. It was like I was trying to look at a solar eclipse or at a perp I didn’t want to tip off, I was looking at him in edges. Maybe not wanting to see what four years had done to him. Maybe not wanting to see what I looked like out of his eyes. I dunno. But I was looking now.

 

Like Dief had, he’d thickened a little. He seemed even more solid than he had before, more meaty. I bet you needed to be, up here in the cold. I bet it just happened.

 

His shoulders spread in wide slabs, milk pale. With his hair slicked straight back he looked younger and kind of dangerous. And I’d seen Fraser kind of half-clothed before, but each time it was kind of a shock. Like Fraser was never really naked like other people and he was usually layered up like an onion. In kind of a lot of ways, really.

 

Halfway down his back there was a starfish of darkened skin and looking at it confused me. I scrolled back through my memories, both real and read. Oh yeah, old bullet wound courtesy of TOR. The other Ray.

 

I was so still kind of half-asleep that it took me a bit to notice that he was still watching me taking him in. He rubbed his face with a towel absently. His dark trousers were half-unbuttoned and his long johns peeped above the waistband, very smooth.

 

“Good morning,” He set the words down kind of carefully.

 

“Morning to you,” I suddenly realized that we’d been staring at each other for what was now a sorta-weird length of time so I made a quick ‘can I get by’ gesture. “You mind if I..?”

 

“Not at all,” He stood back and then turned on his heel to vanish into the bedroom. I peed and splashed water on my face, thinking to myself: morning, take two.

 

When I got myself cleaned up and dressed, I came out to find Fraser standing at his front window looking out. The sky wasn’t even thinking about lightening, but the darkness did seem kind of…softer. Fraser was staring out at the vast darkness like it was a television. I had this semi-hysterical urge to say ‘what’s the matter, buddy? You look like your dog just died.’

 

I didn’t, obviously. Jesus.

 

Fraser turned and dived hard into heavy-duty distraction mode. All of a sudden, I had instant coffee and scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon. Again, I wolfed it down, not realizing that I was hungry until I smelled the plate.

 

Fraser was regarding me, eyebrows raised, when I shoved the last forkful into my mouth. I chewed and swallowed very deliberately and laid my psychic-friends-network schtick on him.

 

“You wanna go to work again,”

 

“Yes, I…” Fraser looked over at the faint steam curling up out of the tea-pot. “Yes.”

 

“Can I ride along then, or is it a hassle?” I looked around the cabin trying to find a way to communicate just what I needed.

 

But Fraser got me instantly, as was to be expected. “No, I’m sure we can…it’s not a problem, Ray.”

 

We drove in silence out to what I was now thinking of as the Mountie shack. Constable Karmi looked up at us when we breeched the door. She blinked slowly, almost cow-like and then nodded at me in what was obviously a concession to my American sensibilities. I was almost tempted to thrust my hand in her face and say ‘Hey, howwarya? Cold enough for ya? How ‘bout them Oilers, huh?’

 

So of course, I didn’t. Lately, I’ve been a freaking model of self-restraint. I slouched into a seat at the edge of what was obviously Fraser’s desk and nodded back at her. I could do silent. For a while.

 

Constable Karmi handed both of us copies of something that looked like some kind of duty roster, which made me think that she knew I was coming or was a really good guesser. Then I realized that she’d just handed me her copy, which was still a really cool thing to do. I paged through it, two pages of the most detailed weather forecast I’d ever seen and one page was just a list of names, dates and outrageous place names…I stared at it for a while before I figured out that it was a list of hunters. All these people that Fraser had to keep track of, listed in black and white.

 

What surprised me most about Fraser’s day was just how much of it there was. I mean, paperwork. A ringing phone. File cabinets, a small breakroom stocked with tea packets and Nescafe. All the walls were lined with maps, one topographical and one that was mostly water and rivers, one of the Territories and one of the whole Canadian shebang.

 

Fraser had mail to open and frown at. Constable Karmi made us all tea, unasked, while listening closely to a shortwave radio. Then the phone started ringing and the tiny office actually started to hustle and bustle. Constable Karmi vanished for a while. I presume Fraser knew where she was.

 

“Ray,” Fraser rang off the phone and started gathering his outerwear. “I’ve got to go out to the park for a couple of hours.”

 

I had this weird moment where I transposed the park (our particular part of the park) up here, until I realized he was talking about Tuktut Nogait National Park which was considerably more park than we’d ever had in Chicago.

 

Fraser had just kind of left it there, so I read all the implications and made it easy for him. “That’s cool, I’ll just get underfoot here. Maybe have a wander around town.”

 

Fraser nodded and he and the constable shared another significant glance. Then after a few false starts, he left.

 

I spent a few minutes reading the whole daily report thingie and then a little while examining the maps. Then Constable Snow Queen came back and I decided to throw myself into her service.

 

“So, hey, uh…Constable?”

 

She looked up at me, still peaceful and bovine. Man, she was either thinking deep thoughts or not thinking at all.

 

“Anything I can help you with around here?”

 

She looked at me and her face didn’t move but something in the way the light reflected off her eyes made me think that she was considering, so I just waited her out.

 

Constable Karmi stood up and walked over to a cardboard box that I hadn’t noticed before. When she opened it, it was full of paper…form paper, all kinds of odd little pieces of paper checkered with boxes to fill in and bilingual bureaucratic zaniness galore. She started pulling out little stacks and nodded over at a partitioned shelf and me, Mr. Quick on the Uptake, got the picture pronto.

 

I re-stocked the shelves totally painstakingly. I mean, it had to be up to Fraser-standards and what the hell else was I going to do? I dusted the shelves with the side of my sleeve. I straightened the edges of the stacks until they could cut glass. I took all the old forms out and put them carefully back in the box to toss later.

 

But it only took about an hour all told. But Constable Karmi gave me a totally approving look when I was done, so hey. Go me.

 

Having passed the first Finnish test, I decided to get…hmmm, there was a word…expanding…expansive. “So, anything else need doing?”

 

It was hard not to get un-nerved a little by those big dark eyes. Woman looked like some Japanimation artist had drawn her. I was kinda getting the sense that she wasn’t exactly going to start volunteering information, so I decided to do a little more volunteering of my own.

 

“So, y’know, I’m a cop…too. But you knew that.” I started. “You guys got any paperwork to fill out, I can totally help you with that.”

 

She blinked. Of course, thinking about it, the odds of Benton Fraser getting behind on his paperwork weren’t exactly something I’d bet on.

 

“OK, scratch that…” I sighed and stretched a little. It was nice and warm in the shack. “You got any phone calls that I could make for you?” Points for subtlety going to Ray Kowalski right there.

 

She looked at her phone like it was some totally alien technology. And that kinda spoke volumes, even if she didn’t. I stifled another sigh. Sirka Karmi remained unflappable. The woman was totally incapable of being flapped.

 

“OK, I get it, I got no useful skills.” I blew out all my breath as I half-waited for her to disagree with me.

So anyway, we were sitting there and hey, after a while it was actually kinda nice, not one of those awkward silences. Totally non-judgemental silence, like you’d practically never get in Chi-town. Constable Karmi just seemed to be having a think and it wasn’t anything to do with me. Then she stood up purposefully and sort of  beckoned at me with her shoulder so I followed her out to the breakroom which had a door which I’d thought had been a closet, but turned out to be the back door to a little garage-y type thing.

An elderly snowmobile sat squashed in the middle, looking like government property and nothing that was ever cared for by an actual owner. Looked like it had been gleaming and new sometime circa 1987. It was a solid, good-sized thing with a winch on the front and I could just tell that it would be completely form-follows-function inside. You flipped the engine cover up sideways to get to it. And I found myself wanting to get to it.

It was chilly in here; with the hush of a building insulated by snow. I wanted to waste a couple of hours tinkering with this thing and I shot a glance over at Constable Karmi, realizing that she was some kind of silent genius.

She let me explore the cabinets on either side, unearthing a worn tool box and a couple of cases of high-viscosity oil. When I turned around, she was pulling the tarp off another, smaller snowmobile. One and one spare. I could easily mess with these for the rest of the week.

“So I’ll just tune these up a little,” I scratched the back of my head. “Never a dull moment around here, huh?”

 

I wasn’t expecting her to answer me, so when she did I was kind of startled.

 

“We need to be ready,” She looked up speculatively as if at a darkening, lowering sky. “Before the Long Dark.”

 

OK, after a second, I realized what she was talking about, sure they were gonna have nothing but darkness all day in about a month’s time. But something in her tone of voice was just so freaking ominous…she might as well have finished off with dun dun DUN and had done with it.

 

I adjusted my hood a little and got down to it.

 

“Thank you for all your help today, Ray,” Fraser said when we were back in the car. Huh, that kind of blew my mind a little. He and Karmi must be getting just about telepathic, because she’d said, like, a sentence to him when he’d gotten back and it didn’t sound like it was about me. She’d just tucked a phone message on his desk and they shared some meaningful glance. Hers read sympathetic; Fraser just looked resigned.

 

“Hey, it was my pleasure,” I could feel the slight coating of grease still etched deep into my knuckles under the gloves, even though I’d spent about half an hour scrubbing. “You know I love to mess with stuff like that.”

 

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and ducked his head a little to get a better bead on the horizon. It looked like he was smiling and trying not to smile and kind of like his cheekbones were crowding his eye sockets a little. “Yes, I remember.”

 

And just like that, the conversation meant more than we were saying. Just like a whole bundle of significance got dumped on the car like snow.

 

I swallowed a little. I picked one glove off and started scraping at the dark crescents of my fingernails. “Not everyone likes to, but I really enjoy doing that stuff.”

 

“Still,” Fraser said and it was still in that oddly-significant tone. “It’s very kind of you.”

 

And I couldn’t help bristling a little because no, kind, kind, it was not it was Kowalski. It was me. It was my thing.

 

I opened my mouth to say something snarky that would make Fraser’s lip twist a little, make him raise his eyebrows, make him say something in his freeze-dried tone that would make it okay for me to get hot and yell a little. But then I didn’t.

 

Model of fucking self-restraint.

 

But it was good because Fraser was looking at me now, little glances, nibbling on his lip kind of nervous-like. Like he was about to ask me to do something and he wasn’t sure how I was gonna take it.

 

He didn’t realize it, but at the moment, I’d have almost been grateful if he’d asked me to jump off a building, swim through a sinking boat, climb over a mountain. Shit, I’d done that shit before and I’m sure it got easier with practice. But the way things were going, this wasn’t gonna be anything so simple and straightforward.

 

I laid it on the line, “You got something else you gotta do today?”

 

“Yes, Ray, I….” he mashed his lip into his teeth in a way that turned it really red, I bet the skin was close to breaking. He blinked rapidly several times. I noticed that I was clenching the glove I’d removed into a misshapen ball.  

 

He cut his eyes over at me and he almost mouthed the words. “You’re going to think I’m being very…foolish.”

 

“No,” I swallowed and got a little more saliva in my mouth. “No, Frase, whatever it is, no.”

 

He sighed deeply and smiled, the most painful looking smile I’d ever seen. I have smiled like that before, I remembered how it felt like your face was cracking in half.

 

When we pulled up twenty minutes later and I heard all the barking and howling and I realized exactly what we were doing. It hit me low in the stomach, a gut-punch. And Fraser…

 

Fraser looked kind of white, like he’d been stabbed.

 

There was a cabin, older and larger than Fraser’s. The treeline next to it was dotted with large rectangular hut-type thingies and these were the ones echoing with yips and howls, like a barky little village. This place seemed to have more dogs than Tuktoyaktuk had humans.

 

A couple had come to the front door and they both stepped down into the yard as the dogs’ reaction grew even more hysterical. The woman came over, red-haired and rawboned; she looked tougher than the whole NHL starting line-up combined. The guy…I guessed he was her partner or husband…walked down the tamped-down snow path to one of the huts and started jangling the locks on the chain link.

 

“Ah, Corporal,” The woman didn’t smile, but her eyes were very kind. “Would you and your friend like a cup of tea?”

 

I liked this whole need-to-know basis that everyone seemed to be operating on. The patience of them, you know, like they had all the time in the world, so they didn’t need to be aggressively curious. It was cool.

 

Of course, it made me wanna establish my friend credentials right then and there. “Ray Kowalski, ma’am,” I stuck my re-gloved hand out. “Pleased to meet you.”

 

She nodded again and her face just glowed with friendliness, but she still didn’t smile. Something in her eyes sparked with recognition. Being a cop, that’s one of the first things you learn to recognize: recognition. It made me nervous for a second, but then I realized that up here, me and Welsh and Frannie and all were just another Inuit story. Which was kind of cool.

 

She and Fraser had been talking while I’d been figuring all this out. “…really appreciate it, Evelyn.”

 

“I wish we could have…” She was gripping his arm as we turned to walk…not to the house, apparently Frase had refused the cup of tea...and she looked really kind and yet somehow, sort of determined. “Corporal, you know you can…”

 

And I suddenly thought, the phone message. And I suddenly thought, why?

 

I mean, it was patently obvious that every step we were taking to the back here where they had, like, some kind of doggy United Nations, was almost causing Fraser physical pain. And I was suddenly like fuck you, lady, why’re we doing this to Fraser today of all days? I mean, it had been barely 48 hours since Dief…

 

Downhill quickly. That’s what the vet had said.

 

I imagined Fraser dropping his dogs off on the way into town, trying to speak calmly through the truck’s window, while Dief panted next to him in the passenger footwell. Maybe his dogs had been here for days. Maybe the nice couple, whoever they were, had to go visit some relatives, run the Iditarod, whatever. This wasn’t my town, my place, certainly wasn’t my place to say.

 

So I swallowed all my annoyance and bumped Fraser’s shoulder so he wouldn’t feel like he was being kindly and politely frog-marched to his doom. The dogs were all going nuts, but one set of dogs was just going batshit insane, so I guessed those were ours. It almost seemed like I recognized a few of them. Some of them sure enough looked like Dief.

 

I pulled off my gloves and pressed my hand into the chain link, which I was expecting to be like liquid-nitrogen-type cold, but the manic heat of all those doggy bodies and tongues had kept it kind of okay, and all the dogs were just falling all over each other to get a taste of my scent. I spread my hands wide so they could all have some.

 

Then the husband, who I had just nodded at, managed to work the lock free and they all bolted out of the kennel and swirled about like furry little hurricanes in the snow. They all stopped and had a pee and snuffled around a little, bumping my knees with their muzzles. Then they looked up at Fraser and Evelyn expectantly.

 

One of them looked older and cleverer than the rest. She (somehow I could tell she was a she) kept her mouth closed while all the rest of them were panting and subtly moved to the front of the pack. She and Fraser seemed to share a moment before she dropped down to her haunches. She was classic husky, but her eyes were brown which somehow made her more likeable than the blue-eyed ones….those pale eyes in wolf-like faces had always kind of freaked me out.

 

“Thanks again, Evelyn, Jacques,” Fraser shook hands with both of them solemnly and I followed suit. “Have a good trip.”

 

So I was right. This picking-dogs-up thing was out of necessity. No leashes, no commands, the dogs just followed us all back to the car as soon as Fraser whistled.

 

I wanted to say something, to kind of acknowledge how hard this was for Frase. I could see that this was the family right here, lovers, children, grandchildren. This was a whole truckload more of grief and loss.

 

Fraser just tapped the truck’s open door, “Mount up.”

 

And they did.

 

When we got to the cabin, the dogs just exploded out of the back of Fraser’s rig like we’d just popped the top on a can of confetti. The clever-looking black one was the last one out. She stood on the flipped-down truck’s door and scented the air, looking dubious. A sudden chill wind ruffled her ruff. She turned to Fraser, yipped and leaped and then was sniffing around like the rest.

 

All the dogs were relatively quiet while they nosed around, marked territory again. They moved along the trees sniffing and snuffling. I could hear their yelps, yips and half-growls, I couldn’t see them, because darkness had fallen with a thud.

 

Fraser had tromped over up onto the porch and was standing there…for a second it kind of looked like he was waiting for me to hurry up with the keys and I was kind of thumbing my sealskin, which didn’t actually have pockets and then I realized that hey, no keys, because hey, no lock. Fraser wasn’t waiting for me. He was just standing there. He almost looked like he was back on guard duty at the consulate. It was kind of eerie.

 

I went up and stood beside him, like another guard, like a bookend. Grrrrrr, ain’t no one getting in here. I looked out and it was…black. Black and silent. My eyes were getting used to it, and I knew there was a lot more out there, but right now it was still a cloudy, featureless expanse.

 

After a while the black, leader-type dog came up and whined at Fraser. She sat and thumped her tail a little, moving her weight back and forth between her front paws nervously. She made a low sound in her throat; it was hardly a bark. It was more like uhhhhffff. Like a sound that I imagined a bear might make. A low and urgent grunt. What’s the deal, Fraser?

 

Fraser turned a little and opened the door to the cabin, but he didn’t go in. The black dog zipped inside, swift as a seal. I could hear her claws clicking on the wooden floor, muffled on the rag rug. The other dogs were starting to gather, but none of them seemed tempted to go in.

 

After a period long enough for my fingers to start to ache, the black dog came back outside and looked up at Fraser again and made that very un-dog-like noise again. But it sounded softer this time, almost hesitant. Fraser didn’t say anything…I mean, she was a dog. But suddenly, surprisingly, he sat down hard on the porch and she leaned in and licked his face.

 

I kind of winced in sympathy. But the black dog seemed satisfied after two long licks. Fraser stuck his hands out and all the dogs crowded up and nosed at his hands, some of the bolder ones came in for a quick, surreptitious lick.

 

I was getting a little weirded out. “Hey guys…don’t these guys have to get into their kennel, Frase?”

 

Fraser looked up at me, like he’d forgotten I was there. He scrambled up to his feet carefully, not stepping on anyone’s paws. “It’s early yet. I’ll just feed them.”

 

“Yeah, I’ll just….” I was talking to Fraser’s back. “…get started in here why don’t I? Fire, dinner and all.”

 

I had finished making the fire and had cracked into yet another meaty can of stew when the other shoe finally dropped for the pack outside. The first howl nearly made me fling my wooden spoon out the window. I’d been banging around, trying to make a little clatter against the silence, but the howling just blotted everything else out. It was like the atmosphere just got sucked out of the planet and that howl poured into the void. And then there were three, four, seven of them all caterwauling in unison.

 

I shrugged back into my sealskin and went back out onto the porch. Fraser was walking back from the shed, carrying a lantern. I couldn’t really see his face. I called out, “Frase?”

 

I kind of doubted he could hear me over the freaking canine Vienna boys choir, but he did look up.

 

His face was that very particular shade of neutral when he got back up into the light. It did not seem to bode well.

 

“They’re taking it hard, huh?” I said nervously.

 

He hung the lantern to a hook beside the door and we stood like we had before. Guarding nothing from nothing. We stood there and listened to the pack baying, watching the low clouds grow and shrink across the sky.

 

“Are they gonna stop soon?” I tried not to stutter out that last bit, but it was pretty darn cold.

 

Fraser tilted his chin, which was his way of shrugging. “When they feel like it, Ray.”

 

His voice sounded…okay, and when I kinda glanced at him sidelong, he seemed okay. The howling was actually making him almost peaceful. I took a deep breath, letting it sting my nose and throat.

 

After a second, Fraser said almost under his breath. “I wish I could do it too. It’s…” He paused and swallowed. “It’s exactly what I’m feeling.”

 

And that made complete sense to me at the time. Maybe that’s why they were all doing it…the sound would just tear at you if you didn’t join in; it would rip at you with its savage, perfect grief.

 

I threw back my head and yodeled arooooooooooo! Instantly, I felt better. Well, kinda ridiculous, but also better.

 

Fraser started beside me, but after a second he caught the spirit and we both let the howls sink deep in our throats. We howled until I was about to choke from the cold, until the rest of the pack was trailing off with little yips and bays.

 

And then we went inside and Fraser stoked up the fire, while I heated up the stew.

 

I pulled a bottle out of the farthest cabinet in the kitchen, kind of surprised. Whiskey, sealed and dusty. This obviously-expensive bottle didn’t strike me as something that Fraser would ever have bought for himself and then it struck me Vecchio. This was just the type of gift that a man could safely give another man. Birthday, maybe…some other anniversary of note. I spared a moment to wonder how all the booze found its way up here. Maybe Rob Michnevich brought it in the plane.

 

I was debating whether I should put it back, or crack it open, because it was really hard to gauge whether it was helping or hurting Frase. But it would help me and I was helping Frase so there was like some transitioning property there. So I cracked it open, thinking thank you Vecchio and by the time dinner was ready I was warm and loose. And Fraser came over and poured himself a glass of water and drank it off completely, then poured himself a splash of the good stuff without any fanfare, so all was good so far.

 

We sat down and Fraser commented on the meal for a good minute and a half, which I thought was quite a feat considering that it was me and a can opener and a couple of pots. Fraser made being appreciative an art form.

 

Then it was my turn, so I talked a bit about the cases I’d been working down in Chicago, got into more detail about a couple of brief undercover stints I’d done after being Vecchio for so long. Fraser listened really avidly and asked all kinds of good questions, naturally. When we trailed off into silence, both our bowls were scraped clean.

 

“Fraser,” I was probably going to regret this. “What’s that black dog’s name?”

 

Fraser seemed to sharpen up instantly. He poured himself another splash of whiskey. “Ah, Savka. I named her after a character in a short story by Chekhov. The Grasshopper.”

 

I leaned forward. “That’s what the name means?”

 

“No, ah,” Fraser rubbed his eyebrow. “That’s the name of the short story. She and Vanya are pure Siberian huskies.”

 

“So….they get the Russian names,” I leaned back again.

 

Fraser nodded.

 

“She and Dief,” I asked delicately. “Were they…?”

 

Fraser was already shaking his head. “No, Ray, their age difference is…was rather considerable. They were the alphas, really, but not mates.”

 

“I thought the alphas had to be together in the pack,” I was honestly kind of confused.

 

“Well, typically…” Fraser kind of trailed off. “…in the usual way of things you wouldn’t have such a venerable pack leader.”

 

I liked that word, but it didn’t seem very Dief-like. Fraser was going on. “They were like….colleagues, maybe.”

 

“Like you and Constable Karmi,” I surmised blindly.

 

Fraser rocked his head back a little. “Perhaps.” But he seemed unsatisfied. All this talk about who was or who wasn’t screwing who in Fraser’s sled team had gotten us both dangerously thoughtful.

 

“You know Ray,” Fraser tilted his glass up and examined it. “I rather thought that imbibing was supposed to make you feel better.”

 

I stifled a wry grin, because leave it to Frase to think like that, “Nah, Fraser it's supposed to make you not feel anything.”

 

“Ah,” Fraser nodded.

 

Having cleared that up, it was kind of hard to re-start the conversation. Usually, Fraser and I had so much to talk about and so much to think about that conversation just flowed, and silence never felt wasted.

 

Fraser looked down at the table and said, “I almost shot him once.”

 

I opened my mouth to say something boneheaded like exsqueeze me? You won’t believe this but it sounded like you just said…

 

“It was on a case. It was a misunderstanding. ” Fraser tossed me a glance. “We were unable to communicate.”

 

“Shot Diefenbaker?” My mind was blown. “Wow, that’s…wow.”

 

“I didn’t, in the last instance,” Fraser paused “…obviously.”

 

“Uhm, why?” I figured out that that was the question I wanted to ask first.

 

“I thought he’d…gone wild.” Fraser cleared his throat. “He’d bitten me. But he was just trying to…protect his mate.”

 

I was trying to picture it. “With a revolver?”

 

“With a rifle,” Fraser muttered and now I could totally picture it. Outside the city obviously. Fraser in plainclothes, gun on his shoulder. Dief running. Dief was fast, you’d have to lead a shot at him by miles.

 

“Wow,” I repeated. “Bet you felt stupid, later.”

 

“Well, luckily not…terminally stupid,” Fraser’s head seemed to be slowly sliding down toward the table. “Believe me, it’s an excessively difficult thing for which to apologize.”

 

I was still trying to picture the scenario that was ‘Fraser almost shooting Dief’. Then I blinked and thought about that scar on Fraser’s back.

 

What goes around, does come around. It struck me as there was a lot of partner-shooting going around in those days.

 

“Yeah, I could see that’d be a toughie,” I said carefully. “Bet you had some trust issues, after that.”

 

Fraser gave that little shrug and tried to smile. “Dief was never one to hold a grudge. I always took him as my role model in that regard.”

 

“Well…that’s good,” I got up to clear the plates. From the safety of the kitchen, I looked down at Fraser who was still at the table, bent over and studying his glass.

 

“You know, we’d both been shot about the same number of times,” Fraser mused. “Dief never got stabbed though. Too quick.”

 

My mind was whirling.  I mean, jeez, I punched Fraser but at least I never shot him.

 

We both picked at the canned peaches that I’d improvised as desert.

 

I wished I could turn some music on. Nothing loud. Nothing crazy. Something soothing, because the silence was getting to be a little too much. There wasn’t even any wind anymore.

 

“I gotta say, Frase,” My voice sounded like a car alarm and I pulled it back down to almost a whisper. “You’re being really good about this.”

 

“This?” Fraser looked blank.

 

“You know…” I didn’t really wanna say it. “This. Losing Dief.”

 

“Hmmmmmm,” Fraser looked around the cabin as if he expected Dief to come trotting out of the bedroom. “Why do you say that?”

 

“Well, mostly…” I dug my fingers hard into my scalp. “Going by my own example, I’d probably have dug myself into bed, stayed there for a good long weekend, probably drunk. Then I’d go to work and pick fights with everyone. Go to the gym and bust myself clean open on a bag or two. Go back to bed, watch a lot of daytime TV. You know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The usual spiel.”

 

Fraser nodded at me like he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, but I should be humored nonetheless. “Well, I’m glad you approve.”

 

“I don’t mean to approve or disapprove, Fraser,” I almost wanted to grab his arm, I almost did. “I just think, you’re doing really good.”

 

“That’s interesting,” Fraser kept nodding. “I am trying to be…pragmatic. You know, here…death is very real. We have opportunities to prepare for it almost daily. And obviously, I knew it was coming. Eventually.”

 

Fraser sounded like a complete robot. I tensed, thought about arm-grabbing.

 

“Or thinking about it philosophically,” Mr. Roboto continued. “Diefenbaker didn’t exist in 1990 and it didn’t bother me then. Why it should particularly bother me now…”

 

“OK, Fraser, that’s just stupid,” I felt like I should slap him maybe, he was doing a Fraser-version of hysterics. “Of course, it should bother you.”

 

“It does bother me, Ray,” Fraser said, and his voice slashed across me like a dull, flat knife. “I have lost one of my oldest and dearest companions and I am now almost completely alone in a very lonely place.”

 

We stared at each other across the table and it slammed into me again…all of it. Not the short, sharp shock, but the slow building ache of it. Long evenings, dangerous patrols, one-sided conversations that he’d have to call prayers now, the ground frozen until spring, spring when all the grief would bloom again as he had to bury a frozen Diefenbaker. It was almost too much for me and he wasn’t even mine.

 

"I keep expecting to see him," And Fraser actually looked around the room. All the words came together for me slowly as if Fraser was talking another language that I'd barely learned. "But he's obviously made his peace. I don't expect I will. See him again. Until..." He looked back at me and trailed off. Then Fraser’s voice came to me, sounding like he was far away.

 

“You know, there are some things that just don’t ever get easier,” Fraser said slowly. “No matter how much practice you have.”

 

I was a coward. I was a huge wuss. For almost a minute, I couldn’t even look at Fraser because it was like someone stuck a steaming brand on my heart. I could feel my eyes stinging, my whole face twisting and I twisted my body with it, because I really, really didn’t want Fraser to see me crying. I blinked furiously and thought about Dief’s last, half-lidded glance at me: butch the fuck up.

 

I sobbed a little, tried to make it sound like a cough. I clenched both my fists, trying not to let Dief’s spirit down. I sniffed it back up and brushed at my face quickly.

 

When I darted a look over again, Fraser’s face was wet.

 

He was weeping, virtually silently and almost without changing expression. That made it even more weirdly horrible, like a statue had suddenly decided to shed tears.

 

It felt like the earth had started to spin just a little too fast and my stomach was on the leading edge. I actually had to unhook my fingernails from the wood of the table, because Fraser in tears was like a 9.5 on my own personal Richter scale. Anything could happen now.

 

I swallowed and my Adam’s apple just seemed to wanna bob up and down for a while. I couldn’t even cough now. I really wanted to jump up and run out to the shed, snatch the keys off the ring and throw myself onto the snowmobile. It was like a little red light started flashing in my brain: run, run, run. But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t run and I couldn’t help him, I could just sit there like a lump, and wow, helpless AND pathetic, what a winning combo.

 

And it struck me that Fraser wasn’t crying for Dief, I wasn’t crying for Dief, we were crying for ourselves, alone, abandoned, forsaken. Left behind. Then I started to get angry. I don’t quite know at who. But I was fucking furious; I mean he had so little and now he had less.

 

I had to do something. I had to do something. It felt like I had nothing to give, nothing he would want. But maybe if he was letting himself feel this, feel like this, he would let himself feel…everything.

 

Slowly and then quickly, because it screeched…I pushed my chair back. I took two steps and I was behind Fraser’s chair. He was perfectly still, except for the tiniest tremors in his shoulders. I put my hand on his shoulders and squeezed. But that wasn’t enough.

 

I pressed my face into his hair, wrapped my arms and hands around him more firmly. He took a deep breath. His hands caught at my wrists, he tightened my grip around himself. We felt more solid together; he felt anchored onto me. I clutched at him, trying to get closer, trying to make it mean everything while still meaning nothing.

 

But then his whole body hitched in a sob, he shuddered with it. And I shuddered too and thought: fuck it. What was I so fucking scared of?

 

We were all alone out here. We have to get ready for the Long Dark.

 

I pulled away for a second, but I didn’t pull back. I pushed at the table, turning Fraser who was blinking and still weeping at me, bewildered. I pressed my lips to his cheek and blotted his tears with my mouth. His mouth dropped open a little and I used that to my advantage. His mouth was soft, wet and salty. I tried to be very gentle as I caressed his face, his hair and squeezed his shoulders. I was practically sitting on his lap by now and his big, blue, wet eyes looked shocked. I pulled back from the kiss and pressed our foreheads together, stroking his hair back off his temple.

 

This was my one thing. Now I was just waiting for it to do its ‘lead to another’ bit. Fraser obliged, his breath, his lips were warm on the inside of my wrist. He tilted his face up and I kissed the tear tracks off his face. He looked full of wonder. Wonderful.

 

I cupped the back of his neck tenderly, kissing the corners of his eyes, the corners of his lips. He drew his hands across my back, tracing my shoulder blades with his thumbs. When I shivered, he pressed his lips to the underside of my jaw.

 

“Ray?” His voice was very, very small and uncertain.

 

“Shhhhhhh,” I gave myself up completely, yes, I’m sitting in your lap! Yes, that was my tongue! Yes, we’re sucking face!

 

But Fraser (I could feel this, I couldn’t really see it) was being typical Fraser. There could be no side order of enjoyment without ample helpings of second-guessing. He was holding himself, not letting me hold him.

 

“He was my role model too, you know,” I whispered, pressing my lips to Fraser’s eyelid.

 

Fraser blinked, “Diefenbaker.” He sounded remarkably un-confused. His eyelashes tickled me.

 

“Yep,” He shuddered again when I breathed into his ear. “I always admired Dief…the way he…” I thumbed the buttons down the front of Fraser’s henley open. “…just went for it.”

 

And Fraser looked up at me and then he relaxed all over, he let his eyes float shut and his mouth got even softer while he tightened his arms around me. He let me hold him for a while.

 

And suddenly, it wasn’t about comfort anymore, it wasn’t just buddies.  I couldn’t quite tell when it changed. His hand was braced around my arm and it was tightening like a blood pressure cuff. His teeth scritched my collarbone and suddenly it was something hot, dark and savage.

 

He stood up and I nearly landed on my ass. It was only a quick side-step that kept me upright. Fraser caught me too, I was doubly saved. His arms around me were hard and solid, but I twisted free with enough leverage to jerk his shirts in a wad over his head. Mine were on the floor in a second too and I nearly slipped on them as he herded me toward the dark bedroom. I gave my boots short shrift and Fraser caught his hand in my waistband. Shirts, undershirts, trousers, trampled underfoot! By the time, I’d liberated his long johns, we were at the edge of his narrow bed.

 

I felt his throat work under my lips as he swallowed. I pulled back, breathing hard, hoping he wasn’t freaking out. The last thing in the world I wanted to do…ever…was hurt Benton Fraser. But when I got a good look at him, I had to flip the script. He was eyeing me, touching his tongue to each of his front teeth in turn and almost clenching and unclenching his hands. Desire made me weak at the knees and I kind of slithered down onto the bed.

 

“Ray,” he said, very softly. I heard the question are you okay?

 

I sat up straight and pressed my cheek to his hipbone. I breathed steaming breath on him, where he was just as hot. My eyelashes brushed his tenderest skin.

 

He was on me like an avalanche.

 

When he grabbed my wrist and jerked it to the side, pinning me to the bed, I admit, I went a little wild myself. I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore. I snagged my teeth in his neck and he gasped into my ear. He gripped my hips hard and we were pressing into each other, shuddering and heaving. Gasping. Coming.

 

Alive.

 

When I woke up, he was already awake. Watching me. I blinked and swallowed and wiped the sleep out of my eyes. Fraser hadn’t moved, he was watching me like I was the cure for cancer under a microscope. Our elbows were still pressed together. My chin was resting on his shoulder.

 

I wanted to tell him something like, I love you and I’ll never leave you again and I’ll stay up here and make it work and I will try my damndest not to pre-decease you…but you know, after all that, I kinda thought that I should start small.

 

“Frase, is this really…” I got kind of tongue-tied because I’d just called him by his last name and it kinda seemed like we should be past that now. “…are you really?” And I couldn’t finish.

 

There was a long pause. Without thinking about it, I traced my fingers over his knuckles.

 

Fraser sighed deeply and said his usual completely unexpected thing. “You know, I suspect my keeping a wolf as my nearest companion for so many years has done me something of a disservice.”

 

I must’ve looked completely befuddled because he said, very gently, “You can’t lie to wolves. Even by omission. They smell the truth on you. You never have to say a word.”

 

Oh. Oh. Wow. I was at a loss as to how to respond until I just leaned in and sniffed at him. The warm curve of his neck smelled amazing. The curl of hair behind his ear was even better. He let me bury my face in his hair until he was clutching at me, pulling me down, pulling me in. But this morning it was my turn. I was alpha.

 

I pressed him down underneath me, kissed him, carded my hands in his hair and scented him everywhere.

 

After my lust haze had subsided a little, I noticed that the curtains were starting to glow. It was really late if we could see that much light. I stirred a little which caused Fraser to tighten his arms around me, an unexpected fringe benefit.

 

“You should go to work,” I said firmly. Why I said it, I don’t really know. I was a model of self-restraint that weekend.

 

Fraser wrinkled his brow at me, “I have…rather a lot of leave accumulated.”

 

I snorted. I just bet he had. “Still. It would look funny.”

 

“It would look funny?” Fraser looked absolutely bewildered. “How would it?”

 

I changed tack completely, because really, how would it? They all still called him Corporal; people up here did not really seem to be all up in Fraser’s business.

 

“Just go and check in a little, then,” I compromised. “We could really use some groceries.”

 

Fraser blinked and it was all all right again. “They do usually have stock runs on Mondays.”

 

Monday. Man, it had only been four days. This was easily the worst, best and strangest weekend of my life.

 

Fraser stood up and pushed back the curtains and he looked angelic, transcendent for a second in a beam of light, messy hair and everything. I blinked at him, fishing around for my glasses, not wanting to miss a second. Then it hit me: sunlight.

 

When I pushed myself upright enough to look out the window, I almost gasped aloud. It had snowed. The entire world was sparkling and glowing, fresh and crisp and blue and white.

 

“I never…” I blinked. We’d had mornings like this out looking for Franklin’s hand. Silent, empty and so beautiful that it almost hurt. Then I looked back at Fraser and if anything, it almost hurt worse, happiness so fierce and filling that it was almost choking me.

 

Before I completely embarrassed myself, Fraser came up behind me, hooked his chin over my shoulder and wrapped his arms around me. We stood like that for a long while, looking out at a world which was pure and perfect for a little while.

 

We went in and of course, Fraser had to read Constable Karmi’s report, open the mail, putter around with the radio a little. Constable Karmi was her usual gabby self. She also let me put their three pieces of outgoing correspondence through the franking machine, so there was my productive day, right there.

 

I sat down and sketched out my formal letter to Lieutenant Chesley which took me a while.  I figured I could find out all the cc’s I was gonna send to later.

 

While Fraser was talking on the phone about someone who was apparently un-ironically called Big Hat Harry, Constable Karmi did something a little odd.

 

She started by handing me a piece of paper. I took a look at it and it registered ‘form’, so I went over and filed it neatly with all the rest of the forms that they were planning to never use. Silently, she came and stood beside me, quirking her Hummel doll head. She yanked the paper back off the shelf and handed it to me more firmly and then retreated to her desk.

 

I glanced down at it. It was some kind of self-assessment with a long list of questions and ticky boxes. I put it in my pocket to ask Fraser about later.

 

We went and filled the truck with groceries, because…being in a celebratory mood, I wanted steak. And what’s steak without a forty kilo sack of potatoes? And what’re potatoes without a kilo of cheddar cheese? …and so on. You get the picture.

 

So by the time we got back, it was full dark again so we let the dogs out to swoop around while we shift the truck into the pantry. Fraser cooked this time and I would have stuffed myself, except it felt like I might get lucky later. I hummed a little and beat time on the placemat with my fork.

 

Except Fraser wasn’t exactly looking at me in a ‘Ray is getting lucky’ kind of way. Fraser was looking kind of sad, inward and thoughtful again. “Ray?”

 

“What’re you thinking, Frase?” I asked before he could get a brood on.

 

“Entertaining a few regrets.” His eyes crinkled up again. “I should have called you sooner.”

 

“I should have come sooner,” I said quickly. It wasn’t anything but truth.

 

“How long,” And he looked up from where he was stirring, steady as a metronome. His voice was even but kind of tight. “How long can you stay?”

 

My mouth fell open. What? How? How did I forget to actually say something? How in hell? 

 

“Uhm, Frase,” I blinked. “I’m not leaving.” 

 

Fraser stopped stirring and I could see him take a deep breath.

 

“I hope that’s okay,” My mouth kind of caught on that last bit, because what if it wasn’t?

 

And Fraser was shaking his head, Fraser was looking up and blinking. I wanted to stand up and go to him, but he seemed in the clutches of something big and private. Then I did stand up sharpish, because Fraser was doubled over, one hand was clutching the edge of the table.

 

“Frase,” I yelped, but then he spoke over me. He looked up at me and said, “Yes, Ray, yes. It’s quite okay.”

 

My breath sounded loud. Fraser’s breath sounded kind of loud too. For a moment, that was all the noise there was, then he went back behind the counter, grabbed a bowl and thumped it on the table. I went and sat down and got my breath back.

 

“So, until I get my music up here, what are we gonna do for music? And no sheet music. That doesn’t count.”

 Fraser paused for a second then turned his chin up and sang, “We were homeward bound one night on the deep.  Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep, I dreamed a dream and I thought it true, about Franklin and his gallant crew…”

 

Fraser’s voice filled the silence perfectly. I sat back and let myself be entertained. When he stopped singing, I found a way to entertain him. Then we warmed the food back up and ate it.

 

When we were done, Fraser called the team back into the shed while I tried to explain the completely fortuitous set of circumstances that got me back into his life. Every cloud having a silver lining and all…except suddenly this night? We had no clouds, silver-lined or otherwise and the sky was just….freckled with twinkling stars. They were everywhere. We stood on the porch and gawked.

 

Fraser’s voice cut through the silence as I was trying to take it all in.

 

“Ray, if the connection was as bad as you have described, how did you know to come here?”

 

“Oh, y’know…” All that stuff had happened so long ago…like four whole days ago. It was impossible to remember that far back, another world, another lifetime. I wanted to say something that was clever and romantic and poetic and beautiful…I mean, y’know Fraser deserved that much. And he doesn’t get a lock on all the good lines. I could do it too.

 

“I just followed the North Star and found you,” It took me a second to find and point toward the biggest glimmering, glowing star in all that multitude. “Brightest star in the sky, right?”

 

In the blue light of the stars, I could barely see the edges of Fraser’s smile. But I knew it was there because I could hear it in his voice. “Actually, Ray, I’m afraid you’re mistaken. That would be serious.”

 

“Well, yeah, I know that. I came up on the double-quick because I knew that you were serious…”

 

“No, the brightest star in the sky. Sirius. The second brightest is Canopus and then Arcturus, Alpha Centauri, Vega, Rigel…”

 

I had to speak up or he was going to lull me and I didn’t feel like being lulled. “OK, so Polaris is what, the tenth brightest?”

 

“Forty-eighth, actually.” Fraser admitted, like I was going to be disappointed or something.

 

“Holy shit, my whole worldview is like blown.” I knocked him with my elbow and he actually chuckled. My worldview was finally starting to get as bright as these stars.

 

“Sorry, Ray. Sirius is still brightest.” He paused for a moment with his head tilted up. We watched the lightshow for a while. 

 

“I don’t get it, what makes it the brightest?” I let my head shift a little until I was rubbing my eyebrow the wrong way on Frase’s parka. “It’s like working overtime.”

 

He cleared his throat, “Sirius is brightest because it’s a binary star system. It’s actually two stars really close together.”

 

“That makes sense I guess,” Fraser’s hair was brushing mine and it was getting all electric. Or maybe it was just me.

 

He bumped my shoulder more firmly; I could feel his heat, even through the sealskin. “Too bad we can’t really see it from here.”

 

“What? What am I looking at then?” I asked all mock-outraged, because I knew it would make him smile again.

 

“Well, they don’t all have names…” Fraser started to point and I wrapped my arm around his waist to stop him, because maybe they didn’t all have names, but he probably knew most of the ones that did. I was forestalling. I can forestall like crazy.

 

 I breathed out my warm breath into the night and got a satisfyingly large cloud of white.

“Where do you have to be to see it? Sirius?”

 

Fraser shrugged in a way that put my forehead into the curve of his neck. My hair must’ve tickled him something fierce but he didn’t seem to mind. “You know, it’s also called the Dog Star.”

 

I snuggled him shamelessly. Yeah, I’m a snuggler, sue me. “Yeah, so where?”

 

“Further that way.” Fraser cupped my ear with one hand and pointed with the other. I tilted my face up to look at him. It looked like he was surveying something that was deeply familiar, but he was still seeing it for the first time. “Approximately 400 kilometers. Give or take a few.”

 

“And which direction is thataway?” I pointed, miming confusion.

 

He grinned at me. And he was kind of a snuggler too. “Don’t be silly, Ray.”

  

 

 

The end


in memoriam