ds_flashfiction | Twist Ending Challenge: One More Story

Title: One More Story
Fandom: Due South
Characters: Fraser/RayK
Rating: G
Word count: 670
Summary: Fraser tells Ray a story
Warnings: (choosing not to warn because of spoilers)
Angst-to-hope ratio: high

“Once there was an officer of the law,” Fraser began.

“A Mountie?”

“If you like.”

“It’s your damn story, Fraser, I’m just asking—”

“A Mountie, yes. If I may continue?”

“Be my guest.”

“Thank you kindly. As I was saying, this Mountie dedicated his life to the pursuit of justice and to helping his fellow human beings. Although he cared about humanity and generally liked people, he was, at bottom, a solitary man, difficult to get close to. Even his own family sometimes suspected that he cared more for duty and for the natural world than he ever could for another person. He spent much of his career in the Northwest Territories, patrolling isolated regions by himself. Now, one day—”

“Fraser—”

“Ray, you asked me to tell you this story—”

“No, I did not ask you to tell me a story. I asked if you—if you wanted—”

“I know. And I’m trying to tell you.”

“Fine. Okay. Okay. Go on.”

“One day, the Mountie was murdered by a criminal he was pursuing. He died.”

Fraser paused.

“And?” Ray asked.

“And what?”

“That’s what I want to know. And what? That’s the end of the story?”

“Well, generally, when someone dies. . .”

“But this is a story. It has a point, supposedly. We haven’t gotten to the point, yet.”

“Indeed. Well, in fact, it wasn’t the end of the story. The Mountie found himself in a snowy wood, facing two doors that were standing there alone with no walls surrounding them. He was told—”

“By who? An angel or something popped in to talk to him?”

“I. . .I don’t know. But he was told that the door to the left would take him to the afterlife, where his family and friends who had died before him were waiting for him. But if he had unfinished business in the land of the living, there was the door to the right.”

Fraser paused, as if expecting another interruption, but Ray just waited.

“The Mountie’s first thought was for the case he had been working on, but he found he wasn’t worried about it. He knew there was someone else to pick up where he left off, and that justice would eventually be done. He could let it go. But then he thought of a person he had left behind in the land of the living, someone he cared about, someone he wished he had spent more time with and made more of an effort to express his affection to. He couldn’t bear to leave that person alone, without his support and without the knowledge of his love. However flawed a man he was, however thoughtless and high-handed and neglectful he had been in life, at the moment of his death, he thought not of his duty towards the mass of humanity, but of his love for a single person.

“And so he walked through the door to the right. Understand, though, that this was not a choice between death and life. He returned to the land of the living, but he was still dead. A ghost, if you will. With one purpose: to stay at the side of the one he loved, to help and protect and support him, until he was no longer needed.”

This time, the pause stretched out longer, until Ray finally prompted again, “And?”

“And that’s the end of the story.”

“That’s the end? The Mountie comes back as a ghost out of love, the end?”

“Yes.”

“So. . .what? Is that a yes, a no, what? It sounds like a yes-but, is what it sounds like, but I don’t understand the but.”

Fraser said nothing.

“Look, I take a risk, here, I tell you how I feel about you, which was not easy to do, by the way, and I ask you if you feel the same, if you want to, you know, do anything about it, and you give me this whole roundabout metaphorical whatever, fine, but the least you could—”

“It’s not a metaphor,” said Fraser.