Anywhere But Here challenge
Oct. 7th, 2004 06:17 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
what-we-seek.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ds_flashfictionFirst post. This is so intimidating. I haven't written any kind of fanfiction for about five years, so I'm way rusty. This is not the story I was trying to write, but I guess you know how that goes. 2252 words of non-slashy, G-rated Fraser desperation.
* * *
Route 66
(Just outside Chicago, Illinois)
The black GTO sped along the highway at the exact posted speed limit, and as Fraser sat in the driver's seat and tried to unclench his fingers from around the steering wheel, he thought he might be dying. His heart felt like it was straining, an awkward heaviness in his chest. He was unused to this lightheadedness, this panic.
A shrill ringing startled him so badly the wheel jerked sharply in his hands. Straightening up, blinking fast, he stared with some determination at the road in front of him as his right hand fumbled in the seat next to him until it hit the cold plastic of the cell phone.
He hit the ‘talk’ button and waited, certain of who was on the other end. An infuriated someone, it turned out.
“Who the fuck is this? And where the fuck is my car? You stole a cop’s car, asshole, when I get my hands on you I’m--”
“Ray.”
For a moment there was dead silence. Then, unsure and tinny, Ray Kowalski’s voice came again. “Fraser? What--” He cut himself off. “You stole my car.” He sounded lost.
“Yes, Ray.”
“Well.“ The pause this time was longer. “That’s seriously uncool, Fraser.” Ray didn’t seem angry now, just perplexed. “And, you might not, uh, have noticed or anything, but in America, stealing someone’s, um, mode of transport is extremely, uh… impolite.” Another pause. “You also stole my cell phone.”
“Unintentionally, yes. I didn’t know it was in here.“ Fraser couldn’t think of anything else to say aside from “I‘m sorry, Ray,” which seemed inadequate. What came out of his mouth, inexplicably, without his conscious choice in the matter, was something Ray had once said to him: “Partners means sharing, Ray.”
The noise from the other end of the line was halfway been choking and laughter. “Yeah, I, uh-- I been told. But traditionally speaking, sharing means asking, Fraser.” A strange tinge of calm bemusement was creeping into Ray’s voice, like maybe he thought this conversation wasn’t really happening. “And also? Also? Asking means I give you keys. You do remember keys, don’t you Fraser?” There was a metallic jangling as Ray presumably shook his set of car keys near the mouthpiece of whatever phone he was using.
“I was reasonably certain you would’ve said yes.”
“Oh, oh, you were reasonably certain? Oh, well that’s all right then.”
The sarcasm made him hesitate. “You wouldn’t have said yes?”
“Of course I would’ve said yes, that’s not the point. Hey, wait. Where are you?”
Fraser stared resolutely forward as the highway seemed to disappear endlessly beneath the tires. The phone felt cold and unfamiliar in his hand, and it suddenly occurred to him how far away Ray was, how much farther away he was becoming with every passing second.
“Ray,” he said, and the syllable felt like it scraped his throat raw. His voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears. He took a breath and it caught in his chest.
“Hey, Fraser, it’s okay, it’s all right.” Ray spoke quickly, insistently, but all it did was make the weird ache in Fraser’s chest tighten. “Of course you can borrow my car. Of course you can. Just tell me what‘s going on.”
He couldn’t speak. Ray barely waited for him anyway, blurting, “Unless you tell me, I can’t help you. And don’t deny something’s major queer here, Mr. Can’t-steal-Milk-Duds-unassisted-but-can-hotwire-cars-just-fine. Yeah, don’t think I didn’t hear about that Milk Duds thing. Where are you? Spill.”
No. Ray had to stay away. Within the flash of panic he found his words. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. I might--” He rushed on, over the sound of Ray’s protests. “Ray, listen. I made a mistake, a long time ago, before I met you. Everyone I cared about got hurt somehow; I failed everyone. And I might be making the same mistake again. You can help me by letting me do this on my own.”
There was a beat of total silence, in which he couldn‘t even hear the other man breathe, and for a fleeting second of irrational hope, Fraser thought maybe Ray had understood. A very fleeting second.
“What? What is this shit, Fraser? You wanna explain to me how the hell ‘partners’ means alone? What the fuck are you--”
Fraser hung up.
The highway unwound in front of him. He couldn’t see the stars. Clouds, he thought. Overcast spring skies. A coming storm, maybe. Fraser’s eyes looked at the world moving around him, the dry black pavement and the dark shapeless shadows of trees off to the side, but inside his mind he saw snow. Northern lights. A curtain of dark curls falling softly against her face. He saw her eyes, her smile as she reached out a hand and beckoned to him from a train…
When the phone kept ringing, he couldn’t figure out how to turn it off; he rolled down the passenger side window and with a suddenly steady hand launched it into the darkness.
St. Louis University Hospital
(St. Louis, Missouri)
It took Fraser exactly five hours and forty-two minutes, from the time he got the call at the consulate to the time he arrived-- looking simultaneously stunned and resigned-- at the main entrance of the hospital.
Five hours and fifty-seven minutes until he stood outside the door of her room, the nurse’s words still ringing in his ears. I’m so sorry, she had said, taking in his expression and responding to it with sincere sympathy. She lost consciousness about an hour ago. We don’t expect her to wake again… You can sit with her, if you’d like, until…
Half of him still believed it was a trap. That she was waiting for him around some corner, a knife or gun in her cool, strong grasp. It didn’t matter that it was a public place, well-lighted, staffed with trauma physicians and security guards. He believed Victoria to be capable of vengeance anywhere, in any state, and as much as he still felt that part of him belonged to her, he couldn’t trust anything about the situation for a moment. And yet, here he was. It seemed the only real lesson he’d learned was not to endanger the people he cared about as well. He thought of Ray and Francesca and Dief, far away from her presence, and it made him feel less apprehensive.
The reality of what he had been told was too heavy to believe. The half of Fraser’s mind that was certain it was a lie, certain and afraid, warred with the other half, which was terrified that it was the truth.
Four hundred and sixty-seven kilometers of adrenaline had pulled him here, and now he couldn’t move another step.
He wished suddenly, fervently, for his father’s presence. He wanted Robert Fraser’s ghost at his back, telling him to get on with things, son, what are you waiting for? Or, knowing his father, maybe something more along the lines of why should you even care, after what she did to you?
Fraser closed his eyes to turn the doorknob, and he didn’t open them until he’d shut the door behind him and turned to face the bed. When he thought he was ready, he took a breath and looked up, and despite everything, he was shocked to see it was really Victoria in front of him.
Her skin looked thin and pale, her hair and eyebrows were lost to chemotherapy, and there were deep shadows under the curves of her eyelids, but she was still captivating. Hooked up to machines as she was, it was still easy to imagine her awake and vibrant. Someone who had once been assured of her own beauty. Someone people would have watched walk down the street, wondering if they’d seen her somewhere before-- maybe in a movie, maybe on a stage somewhere, under bright lights.
She was unconscious, fragile, dying, and yet she seemed powerful to him still. He could hear her breathing over the nearly silent hum of the machines, and he caught himself breathing in time with her, inhaling and exhaling as she did. Staring at her face, Fraser willed himself to breathe normally, evenly, in his own rhythm, but couldn’t repress the memory of her lying across his chest, her ear and cheek pressed against his ribcage. She’d been listening to his heartbeat, she’d said, and she hadn’t smiled, just closed her eyes like she was trying to memorize it. He’d run his fingers through her thick, soft curls and known that no one had ever been so close to him before. He hadn’t wanted anyone to be.
Fraser dragged a plastic chair over to the side of the bed and sat down.
He was afraid to touch her.
Tentatively, unsure if he should, he reached out and placed his fingertips along the inside of her wrist. Her skin was soft and warm to the touch, and that surprised him somehow, like he’d expected her to be carved of some smooth, unyielding stone. He moved his hand down to clasp Victoria’s, feeling her pulse beat faintly under his thumb. Fraser couldn’t move his gaze from her face.
He still felt numb, blank, like he was only in the dream of a hospital rather than a hospital itself. As he looked at her, he wondered whether she’d been here in St. Louis this entire time. He had always imagined her someplace warm and far away. Not anywhere specific, like Mexico or South America, just some vague idea of a place impossibly far, on the other side of the world and unreachable. That she might have been so close to him all this time… He thought of every time he’d watched the news and heard a story involving St. Louis, how he’d been as indifferent as if it were just any other city than Chicago, and not some mythical, unreal place where part of him would one day die.
They had never understood, any of them. Not Ray Vecchio, not his father, no one. Fraser had always known that a lot of his love for Victoria had been gratitude, but to him it made no difference. His gratefulness was unbounded, a deep, electric current that ran through every part of his body, like blood. Fraser would sometimes listen to Ray Kowalski talk about the end of his marriage as if it were a failure, and feel an unsettling envy and resentment; as if ten years of wedded bliss with the love of your life could somehow be invalidated simply because it ended, when to Fraser the idea of ten years, five years, one year, seemed a distant, miraculous dream.
He ran his thumb back and forth across Victoria’s wrist, traced the ice-blue veins there with a careful fingernail. He wanted to take care of her, but there was nothing he could do. He moved his other hand up to her cheek, rested it there, just looking at his own hand against her skin and feeling like he didn’t understand what he was seeing. Like a familiar picture becoming unrecognizable when held too close to your face.
Fraser wondered if she’d looked up his number herself. He could imagine her doing that, so clearly, could imagine Victoria opening a phone book calmly, trailing her index finger down a yellow page until it paused over his own address. He could see her scrawl the numbers in black ink into the little box on the form, where she’d written his own name under ‘Next of kin’. Casually, probably. Maybe on a whim.
Even as she made the decision to have Fraser summoned in her final hours, the darkness inside that had grown malignant was poisoning her against herself, as it must have been for months. He wondered if she’d been able to feel it, growing inside her, some dark creature waiting to tear her apart from the inside out. And though he knew that anyone else in that position would be frightened of both pain and death, try as he might, Fraser could no longer imagine Victoria afraid.
The nurse had shown him the form at the desk. He’d insisted on seeing it, and there it was: his name in her handwriting. And he still hadn’t believed.
She must have been certain he would come. In his imagination, at least, she was certain, but then he’d always had trouble picturing Victoria as anything less than utterly confident. She always seemed to know exactly how he’d react even when he didn’t know himself.
Watching her die, feeling her heartbeat slow, he knew it wouldn’t be the end. He wondered briefly if Victoria would haunt him in the traditional sense, like his father had done, a ghost he could see and hear, or whether she would just be a presence in the back of his mind for the rest of his life. As if her voice weren’t at home there already.
Ten years in the future, twenty years, fifty-- As he looked at her closed eyes and pressed the gentlest of kisses against her cheekbone, Fraser knew that no matter how far away this day would become that he could never believe she was really gone.
He felt the truth of it, of his inability to extract himself from her memory, so viscerally that it seemed a tangible thing. Etched into him deeply like a physical scar; like a bullet in his back, burning next to his spine.
* * *
Route 66
(Just outside Chicago, Illinois)
The black GTO sped along the highway at the exact posted speed limit, and as Fraser sat in the driver's seat and tried to unclench his fingers from around the steering wheel, he thought he might be dying. His heart felt like it was straining, an awkward heaviness in his chest. He was unused to this lightheadedness, this panic.
A shrill ringing startled him so badly the wheel jerked sharply in his hands. Straightening up, blinking fast, he stared with some determination at the road in front of him as his right hand fumbled in the seat next to him until it hit the cold plastic of the cell phone.
He hit the ‘talk’ button and waited, certain of who was on the other end. An infuriated someone, it turned out.
“Who the fuck is this? And where the fuck is my car? You stole a cop’s car, asshole, when I get my hands on you I’m--”
“Ray.”
For a moment there was dead silence. Then, unsure and tinny, Ray Kowalski’s voice came again. “Fraser? What--” He cut himself off. “You stole my car.” He sounded lost.
“Yes, Ray.”
“Well.“ The pause this time was longer. “That’s seriously uncool, Fraser.” Ray didn’t seem angry now, just perplexed. “And, you might not, uh, have noticed or anything, but in America, stealing someone’s, um, mode of transport is extremely, uh… impolite.” Another pause. “You also stole my cell phone.”
“Unintentionally, yes. I didn’t know it was in here.“ Fraser couldn’t think of anything else to say aside from “I‘m sorry, Ray,” which seemed inadequate. What came out of his mouth, inexplicably, without his conscious choice in the matter, was something Ray had once said to him: “Partners means sharing, Ray.”
The noise from the other end of the line was halfway been choking and laughter. “Yeah, I, uh-- I been told. But traditionally speaking, sharing means asking, Fraser.” A strange tinge of calm bemusement was creeping into Ray’s voice, like maybe he thought this conversation wasn’t really happening. “And also? Also? Asking means I give you keys. You do remember keys, don’t you Fraser?” There was a metallic jangling as Ray presumably shook his set of car keys near the mouthpiece of whatever phone he was using.
“I was reasonably certain you would’ve said yes.”
“Oh, oh, you were reasonably certain? Oh, well that’s all right then.”
The sarcasm made him hesitate. “You wouldn’t have said yes?”
“Of course I would’ve said yes, that’s not the point. Hey, wait. Where are you?”
Fraser stared resolutely forward as the highway seemed to disappear endlessly beneath the tires. The phone felt cold and unfamiliar in his hand, and it suddenly occurred to him how far away Ray was, how much farther away he was becoming with every passing second.
“Ray,” he said, and the syllable felt like it scraped his throat raw. His voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears. He took a breath and it caught in his chest.
“Hey, Fraser, it’s okay, it’s all right.” Ray spoke quickly, insistently, but all it did was make the weird ache in Fraser’s chest tighten. “Of course you can borrow my car. Of course you can. Just tell me what‘s going on.”
He couldn’t speak. Ray barely waited for him anyway, blurting, “Unless you tell me, I can’t help you. And don’t deny something’s major queer here, Mr. Can’t-steal-Milk-Duds-unassisted-but-can-hotwire-cars-just-fine. Yeah, don’t think I didn’t hear about that Milk Duds thing. Where are you? Spill.”
No. Ray had to stay away. Within the flash of panic he found his words. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. I might--” He rushed on, over the sound of Ray’s protests. “Ray, listen. I made a mistake, a long time ago, before I met you. Everyone I cared about got hurt somehow; I failed everyone. And I might be making the same mistake again. You can help me by letting me do this on my own.”
There was a beat of total silence, in which he couldn‘t even hear the other man breathe, and for a fleeting second of irrational hope, Fraser thought maybe Ray had understood. A very fleeting second.
“What? What is this shit, Fraser? You wanna explain to me how the hell ‘partners’ means alone? What the fuck are you--”
Fraser hung up.
The highway unwound in front of him. He couldn’t see the stars. Clouds, he thought. Overcast spring skies. A coming storm, maybe. Fraser’s eyes looked at the world moving around him, the dry black pavement and the dark shapeless shadows of trees off to the side, but inside his mind he saw snow. Northern lights. A curtain of dark curls falling softly against her face. He saw her eyes, her smile as she reached out a hand and beckoned to him from a train…
When the phone kept ringing, he couldn’t figure out how to turn it off; he rolled down the passenger side window and with a suddenly steady hand launched it into the darkness.
* * * * *
St. Louis University Hospital
(St. Louis, Missouri)
It took Fraser exactly five hours and forty-two minutes, from the time he got the call at the consulate to the time he arrived-- looking simultaneously stunned and resigned-- at the main entrance of the hospital.
Five hours and fifty-seven minutes until he stood outside the door of her room, the nurse’s words still ringing in his ears. I’m so sorry, she had said, taking in his expression and responding to it with sincere sympathy. She lost consciousness about an hour ago. We don’t expect her to wake again… You can sit with her, if you’d like, until…
Half of him still believed it was a trap. That she was waiting for him around some corner, a knife or gun in her cool, strong grasp. It didn’t matter that it was a public place, well-lighted, staffed with trauma physicians and security guards. He believed Victoria to be capable of vengeance anywhere, in any state, and as much as he still felt that part of him belonged to her, he couldn’t trust anything about the situation for a moment. And yet, here he was. It seemed the only real lesson he’d learned was not to endanger the people he cared about as well. He thought of Ray and Francesca and Dief, far away from her presence, and it made him feel less apprehensive.
The reality of what he had been told was too heavy to believe. The half of Fraser’s mind that was certain it was a lie, certain and afraid, warred with the other half, which was terrified that it was the truth.
Four hundred and sixty-seven kilometers of adrenaline had pulled him here, and now he couldn’t move another step.
He wished suddenly, fervently, for his father’s presence. He wanted Robert Fraser’s ghost at his back, telling him to get on with things, son, what are you waiting for? Or, knowing his father, maybe something more along the lines of why should you even care, after what she did to you?
Fraser closed his eyes to turn the doorknob, and he didn’t open them until he’d shut the door behind him and turned to face the bed. When he thought he was ready, he took a breath and looked up, and despite everything, he was shocked to see it was really Victoria in front of him.
Her skin looked thin and pale, her hair and eyebrows were lost to chemotherapy, and there were deep shadows under the curves of her eyelids, but she was still captivating. Hooked up to machines as she was, it was still easy to imagine her awake and vibrant. Someone who had once been assured of her own beauty. Someone people would have watched walk down the street, wondering if they’d seen her somewhere before-- maybe in a movie, maybe on a stage somewhere, under bright lights.
She was unconscious, fragile, dying, and yet she seemed powerful to him still. He could hear her breathing over the nearly silent hum of the machines, and he caught himself breathing in time with her, inhaling and exhaling as she did. Staring at her face, Fraser willed himself to breathe normally, evenly, in his own rhythm, but couldn’t repress the memory of her lying across his chest, her ear and cheek pressed against his ribcage. She’d been listening to his heartbeat, she’d said, and she hadn’t smiled, just closed her eyes like she was trying to memorize it. He’d run his fingers through her thick, soft curls and known that no one had ever been so close to him before. He hadn’t wanted anyone to be.
Fraser dragged a plastic chair over to the side of the bed and sat down.
He was afraid to touch her.
Tentatively, unsure if he should, he reached out and placed his fingertips along the inside of her wrist. Her skin was soft and warm to the touch, and that surprised him somehow, like he’d expected her to be carved of some smooth, unyielding stone. He moved his hand down to clasp Victoria’s, feeling her pulse beat faintly under his thumb. Fraser couldn’t move his gaze from her face.
He still felt numb, blank, like he was only in the dream of a hospital rather than a hospital itself. As he looked at her, he wondered whether she’d been here in St. Louis this entire time. He had always imagined her someplace warm and far away. Not anywhere specific, like Mexico or South America, just some vague idea of a place impossibly far, on the other side of the world and unreachable. That she might have been so close to him all this time… He thought of every time he’d watched the news and heard a story involving St. Louis, how he’d been as indifferent as if it were just any other city than Chicago, and not some mythical, unreal place where part of him would one day die.
They had never understood, any of them. Not Ray Vecchio, not his father, no one. Fraser had always known that a lot of his love for Victoria had been gratitude, but to him it made no difference. His gratefulness was unbounded, a deep, electric current that ran through every part of his body, like blood. Fraser would sometimes listen to Ray Kowalski talk about the end of his marriage as if it were a failure, and feel an unsettling envy and resentment; as if ten years of wedded bliss with the love of your life could somehow be invalidated simply because it ended, when to Fraser the idea of ten years, five years, one year, seemed a distant, miraculous dream.
He ran his thumb back and forth across Victoria’s wrist, traced the ice-blue veins there with a careful fingernail. He wanted to take care of her, but there was nothing he could do. He moved his other hand up to her cheek, rested it there, just looking at his own hand against her skin and feeling like he didn’t understand what he was seeing. Like a familiar picture becoming unrecognizable when held too close to your face.
Fraser wondered if she’d looked up his number herself. He could imagine her doing that, so clearly, could imagine Victoria opening a phone book calmly, trailing her index finger down a yellow page until it paused over his own address. He could see her scrawl the numbers in black ink into the little box on the form, where she’d written his own name under ‘Next of kin’. Casually, probably. Maybe on a whim.
Even as she made the decision to have Fraser summoned in her final hours, the darkness inside that had grown malignant was poisoning her against herself, as it must have been for months. He wondered if she’d been able to feel it, growing inside her, some dark creature waiting to tear her apart from the inside out. And though he knew that anyone else in that position would be frightened of both pain and death, try as he might, Fraser could no longer imagine Victoria afraid.
The nurse had shown him the form at the desk. He’d insisted on seeing it, and there it was: his name in her handwriting. And he still hadn’t believed.
She must have been certain he would come. In his imagination, at least, she was certain, but then he’d always had trouble picturing Victoria as anything less than utterly confident. She always seemed to know exactly how he’d react even when he didn’t know himself.
Watching her die, feeling her heartbeat slow, he knew it wouldn’t be the end. He wondered briefly if Victoria would haunt him in the traditional sense, like his father had done, a ghost he could see and hear, or whether she would just be a presence in the back of his mind for the rest of his life. As if her voice weren’t at home there already.
Ten years in the future, twenty years, fifty-- As he looked at her closed eyes and pressed the gentlest of kisses against her cheekbone, Fraser knew that no matter how far away this day would become that he could never believe she was really gone.
He felt the truth of it, of his inability to extract himself from her memory, so viscerally that it seemed a tangible thing. Etched into him deeply like a physical scar; like a bullet in his back, burning next to his spine.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-10-07 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-07 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 10:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-07 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-07 08:18 pm (UTC)And the ending is just...searing. Perfect. Painful.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-07 08:43 pm (UTC)So much with the ouchie. And so beautifully done.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 10:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-07 09:16 pm (UTC)Oh, ouch! This was wonderful look at Victoria's influence over Fraser, and I love how deliberate and powerful she is, even unconscious...
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-07 10:28 pm (UTC)He wondered briefly if Victoria would haunt him in the traditional sense, like his father had done, a ghost he could see and hear
*shivers*
Wow. :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 03:26 am (UTC)Wow! This is just brilliant.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 06:47 am (UTC)When the phone kept ringing, he couldn’t figure out how to turn it off; he rolled down the passenger side window and with a suddenly steady hand launched it into the darkness.
And I said "No!" out loud. and then the dispair and ... ouch. Beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 07:10 am (UTC)They had never understood, any of them. Not Ray Vecchio, not his father, no one. Fraser had always known that a lot of his love for Victoria had been gratitude, but to him it made no difference. His gratefulness was unbounded, a deep, electric current that ran through every part of his body, like blood. Fraser would sometimes listen to Ray Kowalski talk about the end of his marriage as if it were a failure, and feel an unsettling envy and resentment; as if ten years of wedded bliss with the love of your life could somehow be invalidated simply because it ended, when to Fraser the idea of ten years, five years, one year, seemed a distant, miraculous dream. .
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 08:38 am (UTC)It's fascinating how powerful she is, how she can manipulate him even to the last. I'm sure her actions were deliberate re: putting him down as next of kin, being able to get her claws in him one more time.
But here's a question: Do you think she was hoping to see him while she was still coherent...maybe to repent before she died?
In this universe, it seems we will never know.
Beautiful work! Welcome to the insanity! :o)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:10 am (UTC)And thanks. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 09:41 am (UTC)I didn't trust the funny at the beginning (though I did spare just enough attention from my fascinated apprehension to appreciate how spot-on both your RayK voice and your Fraser voice were) - and I was right, damn it.
Welcome back to fanfic, and doubly welcome to dS. Certainly hope you write more - but if you never write another thing, you'll have made an indelible impression.
::crawls away, heartbroken::
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:26 am (UTC)Dynamite voice on both of them, IMO.
(The thing about writing or not writing more? Meant to be encouraging and not pressuring, not doomy. Reread it and worried.)
Thanks for the kind welcome. :)
You're more than welcome for, um, the welcome :-). I'm a newbie here myself - I've been reading dS for about three years, but only just started writing it about six weeks ago - and I've found the community incredibly friendly. Glad to have you!
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 12:54 pm (UTC)And welcome! I'm also pretty new, but like qe2 said, everybody's been very friendly. Hope you like it here! And hope you write more soon! :)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 06:11 pm (UTC)God. Godgodgod. I read this and I thought, "Victoria." Then I thought, "Fraser, DON'T GO!" And then he threw the phone out the window.
::heavy sigh::
What a terrific, almost creepy, story. Halloween (she mentioned casually) is a great time for ghost stories...
no subject
Date: 2004-10-09 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-10 03:46 pm (UTC)When the phone kept ringing, he couldn’t figure out how to turn it off; he rolled down the passenger side window and with a suddenly steady hand launched it into the darkness.
One of the things that always gets me the most when watching VS, is how far Victoria manages to get Fraser away from the Fraser we know. How she has him doing and saying things we would never think he'd do or say, because she just has him so turned inside out by her manipulations.
To see him however many years later, *still* reacting in such un-Fraserlike ways, even for something as seemingly insignifigant as tossing a cell phone out a window, really manages to get across how much control she *still* has over him.
Which - wow. Was a really long-winded way of telling you that I LOVED this, and you HAVE to write more. Really wonderful stuff!
no subject
Date: 2004-10-21 02:31 pm (UTC)sequel please
Date: 2005-01-22 01:53 am (UTC)