Disclaimer: AA owns the characters and the setting. No profit made, no copyright infringement intended.

Author's Notes: New author, old fandom.

Story Notes: Set after the series, so no spoilers. No Ray bashing, though a Ray K/Fraser story. Explicit violence and later probably explicit m/m sex.

This story is a sequel to: Long Journey Home 2/?

Ray was all hot and cold running snot and shaking so hard he could hardly blow his own nose. He kept his eye squeezed shut and hunched against the cold tiles of the bathroom wall; breath in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Maybe he shouldn't have skipped breakfast and his stomach rolled, flooding his mouth with more bile, at the thought of food.

Okay, okay; he gagged over the toilet again. Just breathe.

Finally, Ray slumped to the floor, too tired, too defeated to move. He was here, Fraser was here and that was good? Should be good. Was supposed to be good. But it wasn't.

Ray knew dead. He knew all kinds of dead; old dead and new, all the ugly ways that dead happened. He was a cop, a fucking detective, he knew from dead. And he knew not dead too. Fraser wasn't dead but--he wasn't here either. It was like that trance, that coffin time, like seeing him all still and not home and sitting in the funeral home and wondering if Fraser would ever come back. It was like that except it wasn't a con, wasn't a case, wasn't some new bizarre way for Fraser to get his man. Even in the two seconds Ray looked at Fraser spread out on the hospital bed, he knew there was nobody home.

"Fuck," Ray thumped his head back onto the wall, then again, harder. The pain didn't make his chest ache any less, didn't make the squeeze on his heart go away. So he hit his head again, harder 'cause a concussion was a hell of a lot less pain than what he had going on inside.

Ray was still sitting there in the unchanging fluorescent lights, smelling the urinal deodorant, and counting the tiles in the floor when the door whooshed open and the heavy sound of boots dragged his eyes off the ground. Brown Mountie boots stopped in front of his feet and Ray's eyes burned and his breath caught. Brown boots, scuffed and worn at the left toe and not Fraser's.

Brown daily dress, gun, strange seeing that--even though Ray knew the Mounties carried guns-- 'cause Fraser hadn't for all those years in Chicago. Familiar face. Frobisher.

Just like that, Ray was up an at 'em, ready to kick heads. He bounced into Frobisher's face, yelling before he even knew what was coming out of his mouth. "Where the fuck where you?"

where the fuck was I was what Ray meant.

"Mr. Kowalski--"

He tried to shove Frobisher, who moved about as much as a mountain would under Ray's hands. Wool and polyester, brass and leather and fuck, fuck, fuck it all. "What the hell happened? Where was his fucking back-up? His partner?"

"Ray!"

"Aren't you looking after him? Ain't nobody? Who let him get hurt 'cause I'm gonna kick 'em in the head!"

Ray was Fraser's partner, last thing Fraser had said to him at the airport. Partners. Buddies. And now Fraser was fucking meat on the slab and that wasn't buddies. It was no good, no good at all because Ray was his partner and he hadn't been there--wherever--when the shit went down. "What the doc say? Why the hell is he lyin' there by himself--" 'cause he wasn't there. 'Cause Ray hadn't backed him up.

"Ray!" Frobisher shook him and the old man was still a strong bastard for being behind a desk. "Enough, Mr. Kowalski!"

Ray glared ferociously at him; fighting back the stupid waterworks. Frobisher's hands were like handcuffs and Ray tried to relax, figuring the man had a right to worry with Ray bouncing around like a speedfreak. "Okay, okay--I'm good."

"Very good, Mr. Kowalski." Frobisher released him cautiously and Ray didn't do any jumping around. He rubbed his wrists and stared at the urinals and waited for Frobisher to tell him what was going on.

Not so dark now. Not dark at all--just an endless white, icy expanse, like the deep territories. Like home and the cold didn't bother Fraser, it was comforting. It was heat he was afraid of. Heat and--a splash of red in the white caught his eye--and a sketchwork of brown and black and gray, rising out of the white. Red, and Fraser's heart ached. He wanted to stop looking but he wasn't seeing with his eyes. Wasn't hearing the sounds--those sounds--with his ears. A red splash--no a wide swath of red, melting the snow, steaming in the frozen air.

It wasn't the screaming. It was after the screaming, when there was no strength for screams. When the cold kept him awake; when he couldn't escape, when everything was red.

There was no such thing as a nice hospital but Canadian ones came close. They even had a little room with couches and curtains to make phone calls in, instead of a pay phone in the ER waiting room. But no curtains, no free coffee was going to make Ray happy with the shit going down.

He stared at the phone, knee jumping. He didn't want to do this, no way, no how but it was Fraser lying there and there was no one else and so he picked up the damn phone and dialed the old 27 where Vecchio still worked.

"Vecchio." Snappy and sarcastic--and Vecchio didn't even know who was on the line yet.

"Yeah, it's Kowalski," Ray said. There was a long sigh on the other end and Ray knew what the Style Pig was thinking. The Stella. Always, Stella, like Ray didn't have a life--okay, so he didn't--but he was over Stella. For sure.

"Ray--"

"I'm in Canada." He could hear Vecchio sit up and take notice. They didn't like each other but they'd hashed it out. No tug of war, not over Fraser, not over Stella. Everything else, cases and cops and cars were fair game but not the big things; the things that really mattered. "Fraser's hurt."

"Shit--how bad?"

Now it was Ray's turn to and speak the Bad News. "Bad. Coma. Really bad."

Long silence then a rough growl, Vecchio was ready to kick some heads himself. Almost made Ray smile but his face wasn't working that way today. "What the fuck happened?"

"Poachers and--" Ray bit down on his thumb, trading pain for anger so he could tell Vecchio what Frobisher had told him. "some kinda lame ass three day stake-out and when Fraser's partner got back, no poachers, no arrests--just Fraser half dead and strung--strung--up--they don't fucking know what happened!"

Except that Fraser had been shot and he woulda bled out except for the hypothermia, which had cost him a couple of fingers to frostbite, and he'd been beaten and tied up in a fucking bear skin and left for dead.

"Okay," Vecchio shut up and Ray bared his teeth at the phone, not wanting any more questions, not wanting to say anything more; as if every time anyone mentioned Fraser's hurts, they made it worse somehow. Then-- "Okay, I'll be up there--where the hell is he? Is he--is he gonna last?"

"Dunno." Ray said softly. "They dunno."

End Long Journey Home 3/? by XTricks: x_tricks2000@yahoo.com

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