Act 4

I have loved working with you.

Chicago, Illinois

Ray Vecchio looked bleakly into his own reflection. There was simply never a day in his memory that he had wanted to end faster, and it was only nine o'clock in the morning. He was clean-shaven for the first time in over a month. He was dressed in his best black Armani suit, a little personal tribute. Benny would've gotten the joke.

His hands shook as he tied his black silk tie. He hadn't yet had a drink, not throughout this whole nightmare, but if he was going to get through this day....

No. Benny would hate that. It wouldn't be fitting, not today.

He checked his watch. The limo should be picking up Barbara Kowalski and his wife Stella any minute now. The Vecchios had agreed to come separately; Stell wanted to be close to Barbara. This was just going to wreck the poor woman, especially so soon after her husband's passing.

Ray sat down at the edge of the bed.

This just wasn't happening.

He'd tried to tell them. Tried to explain. Benny wasn't dead. He couldn't be. He was The Mountie, for Christ's sake. He ate mountains like that for breakfast. Lock him in a safe, he came up with tuning forks. The guy was in some freaking cave eating caribou steaks right now and they would all see....

Ray made himself stop.

After the ceremony, simulcast in Canada and the US, he wandered around the cemetery. People were packing up and heading to the service. Frannie was hosting. Food cures all ills, right, Francesca? He found a tree to lean on and watched them go.

Soon everyone was gone. The place was deserted and he could finally go over and sit down and look at the headstone. He knew people would be waiting to see him; Stella would be waiting. He couldn't go there just now. Could stand there and be told over and over how sorry everybody was, how there would never be another cop like Benny. And how brave Stanley was.

He curled his lip. Damn. He'd just started to be able to stand the guy.

His cell phone rang. He looked at the number. It was unlisted.

Fucking reporters.

Suddenly full of rage, he flipped open the phone.

"Do you have any idea how massively wrong it is for you to be calling me, today of all days? Huh? Do you get how wrong this is? I'm at the freaking funeral of my best fucking friend and you just have to get a story? Do you even know? No. No, obviously, you don't. Well let me tell you something pal...."

Ray trailed off as he realized that there was a steady chant under his furious words.

"Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. RAY!"

For a brief second there was absolute silence. Then Ray Vecchio closed his eyes.

"Benny?" He whispered softly, not entirely sure if he was dreaming.

"Ray, you have to listen to me."

"Oh my god! I knew it!" Ray began to jump up and down, yelling into his cell phone. "I knew you couldn't be dead!"

"Ray. Ray, you have to listen, please...."

"Welsh is going to be so pissed...."

"If I can't get back...."

"And Frannie's just gonna flip...."

"Ray, if I can't see you for a while...."

"And Stell...boy. I gotta tell you, Benny, Stanley's in for it now. Yes, he is...."

"Ray...Ray...if we can't get back...if we...I just need you to know...."

Ray stopped. Now the words were filtering in, slowly, like arsenic into the water system. He knew those words, knew how they tasted spoken in that familiar choked tone. Ray Vecchio, of all the people in the world, knew the fucking import of those particular words.

Slowly, hating every word. "Know what, Benny?"

"I have loved working with you, Ray."

There was silence for a moment. Once upon a time...he still remembered the bile in his throat, the sickness that had come up from deep in his gut as he said those fucking words to Benny. They had been the only good-bye he'd been allowed that day, forced by duty to abandon the best friend he'd ever known, with only a phone call...

"Ray. Do you understand?"

Ray couldn't say anything for a moment.

"Ray?"

"Yeah," Ray inhaled deeply. "Yeah, Benny."

He held the breath for a moment. Then he blew it out. "I get it."

"Good."

Ray stood there like stone. If he moved, he would crack.

"Yo. Vecchio."

He couldn't stand it. "Put Benny back on, Stanley."

"In a minute, Vecchio, in a minute. Just need to be clear. We ain't got a lot of time and there's stuff, you know?"

How could he ever have thought he could like this guy? Schmuck.

"Yeah, fine. Go on."

"First of all, only a few people can know, got it? You and Stell. Maggie McKenzie. My mom and Welsh. That's all."

"That's it?"

"For now. Take care of my mom and Stella, 'K? Ben and me, we don't know how deep and crazy this whole thing is going to get. It's safer. You know this, you've done this, you know how it goes."

"I really hate you." Ray closed his eyes and nodded. "OK. OK. No problem. I'll take care of it."

The phone was taken away abruptly, and Fraser came back on the line.

"Ray."

"I hate this, Benny."

"Understood, Ray. But it is neccesary. For now, at least."

Ray rubbed his forehead. "All right. All right. S'your call, Benny. I'll do...whatever."

"Thank you. We have a few more things we need you to do for us. Is that all right?"

Ray felt something precious hovering on the edge of flight.

"Benny?" he blurted out, suddenly afraid.

"Yes, Ray?"

"I loved it, too."

Another silent moment. Ray really, really couldn't stand this.

"I know, Ray. I know."

--------------------------------------------------------------

The metal rings stacked weightlessly in the air, one on top of the other. Fraser, Ray and Illya appeared in a sparkle of light. The rings retracted with a low hum. They were standing in a small square room. It appeared to have all the hallmarks of a holding bay or a cargo hold in a small aircraft. There were two chairs at opposite sides that looked as if they'd been built into the walls. There was a square door on either end of the room, and Illya and Ray headed toward one of them, moving in tandem.

Fraser stood still, looking around uneasily. This was so far from his experience he literally didn't know what he felt anymore. Ray and Illya stood in an adjacent space conversing in low tones. About what, Fraser couldn't venture a guess. They seemed to have these sotto voce exchanges fairly frequently.

And although Fraser had no knowledge of where they were now, or what they were about to do, one thing was excruciatingly obvious, even to the casual observer. Fraser knew, with terrifying certainty, that he was losing Ray.

Fraser could feel it, cold through the marrow of his bones. Ray had survived and was growing miraculously stronger and more physically fit by the day. But he was subtly different, changed in ways that Fraser felt he couldn't completely grasp. Some were obvious, like his startlingly new ability to speak Russian. Some were more ephemeral.

Ray was more...self-confident, somehow. Even the confidence Ray had acquired through learning to live and work with Fraser in the Yukon hadn't affected him so deeply. Ray was...evolving...shedding his deepest neurosis and finally embracing his own unique strengths.

Fraser loved to see Ray blossom, but he could see no place in this new awakening for himself. Ray spent most of his time talking to Illya or communing with the strange new life form he carried inside his body. He was often preoccupied and vague. They hadn't had physical relations since this whole nightmare began. Granted, Ray was still recovering from a tremendous physical and psychological trauma, but the lack of sexual intimacy merely added to Fraser's growing feeling of despair.

What if Ray didn't need him anymore? What if Ray didn't want him anymore?

Fraser remembered the day that Ray had revealed that he wanted to stay in the North, wanted to stay with Fraser. They hadn't become lovers yet; that would develop later. But their adventure to find the Hand of Franklin was at its end. Although Franklin had eluded them, they had ended up foiling an illegal ice-safari, discovering a cache of high-grade plutonium hidden by a disturbed scientist livid over the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and surviving the hardest test of their friendship to date -- three months snowbound together in Fraser's cabin.

Fraser had been certain that Ray would go back to Chicago once he could. When he could stand the feeling of impending doom no more, he offered to take Ray to Inuvik to make arrangements to go back home.

Ray had looked at him, abject misery in his eyes and said, "What if I don't want to go home?"

Fraser had been speechless with shock.

"Back there...uh...I'm just a guy, y'know? A guy with...um...fucked-up hair and...uh...a failed marriage." Ray's eyes had been shadowed and he had hunched over, his arms wrapped around his stomach. "With you...I'm...uh.... I'm a cop. You know...uh...a real cop. Fraser, when I'm with you, I matter.... I matter with you."

Ray had looked up at him, as though expecting revulsion and rejection. "I, uh.... I like who I am... I mean, when I'm with you. I don't...uh.... I don't know how to go back. I don't... I don't...know...how...to be that other guy anymore."

Fraser had felt the most overwhelming sense of love, emotion so huge he'd almost passed out. He'd grabbed the chance fate was handing him, the opportunity to have both the North and Ray, the two things he thought would never mesh. He had secretly been dreading the moment when Ray left, had spent nights watching his partner over the glow of firelight on snow and praying for their adventure to last forever.

And for a while there, he had begun to believe it actually would.

Now it looked like a lithe Russian with an alien serpent in his skull had found a different way for Ray to matter. A dangerous ex-spy was offering his partner a new vocation, one that could give Ray alternate avenues toward being an effective agent against crime. Illya Kuryakin was laying out before the other man an almost immortal life, one that didn't seem to include perpetually following a danger-prone Mountie who was getting older by the second.

Fraser thought disgustedly about the fact that he'd even gotten winded the last time he'd carried a caribou home.

"Hey, Frase?" Ray's nasal voice cut through Fraser's brown study, pulling him back to the present. Ray's blue eyes were worried. He stood in the doorway, arms folded and head cocked. Aside from being far too thin, Ray didn't appear at all the same pain-racked man he'd been a mere few weeks before. "You doin' OK?"

"Yes, Ray," Fraser said. "I feel perfectly healthy."

Ray's eyes narrowed. He seemed to be about to say something, then stopped. He looked down, then looked back at Fraser.

"Illya's firing up the Stargate." The ex-spy had explained the phenomenon of these huge Gates that led to distant worlds, but this would be the first time the partners would see one. "Come see it, Frase. It's a trip."

Fraser obediently followed Ray to the next room. A small panel of strange buttons and lights was installed in the wall and a huge view screen revealed a craggy gray rock face just outside. An immense and ornately carved metal ring hung on the side of the mountain. It was comprised of two rings juxtaposed one within the other and there were strange symbols etched along both rings. Several of the icons along its circumference were lit with reddish lights and the inner ring was rotating. As Fraser watched, fascinated despite himself, Illya hit a final symbol on his control panel. The inner ring spun to a last symbol and Fraser could see the rock face shiver.

Fraser caught his breath as white fog boiled into the center of the ring and shot out toward them. The horizontal pillar lasted just a few seconds, and then it retreated back and became a shimmering sea of blue that danced through the air, contained within the breadth of the solid metal circle. It was inhumanly beautiful.

"You are gonna love this, Frase," Ray murmured. Illya was stretching a shunt from the side of the vessel they were currently on toward the rock-face. The shunt, when extended, would encompass the teeming and roiling surface of the Stargate, allowing for Gate travel without leaving the vessel. Fraser dimly heard a click as the mechanism locked into place, but his entire being was focused on Ray.

Ray was...exultant. His eyes were dancing, his whole body was reverberating, and his smile had grown to encompass his whole face. He looked like Christmas — better even, since Ray generally had a cynical and dour take on the holidays. Fraser began to feel progressively more and number, knowing he could never compete with the sheer excitement of this moment. There was one more metallic noise as the ship's inner door, which seemed to function much as an airlock for this particular maneuver, slid open for passenger access to the shunt.

"C'mon," Ray gestured with his head and took off in the direction of the shunt. Fraser followed, but after a few steps he slowed down. Standing in the shunt's entrance, he watched Illya and Ray laugh at something together. He thought of his dream, the one he'd had the first night, exhausted and heart-sore. The light of the Stargate reflected blue on Ray's face as he smiled at Illya the same way he'd smiled in Fraser's dream.

Maybe it was time to admit what the dream was obviously telling him. Illya had saved Ray. He had saved Ray when Fraser could not. Maybe it was time to let go. Fraser saw Illya and Ray face the Stargate and step forward. He closed his eyes, unable to watch Ray disappear for good.

The blue light winked off behind his eyelids. Fraser took a deep breath, bracing against the growing pain of loneliness. He could do this. He could let Ray go for the greater good of humanity. For Ray's greater good. Ray was happy, that was the important thing. He, Benton Fraser, was strong enough. He could do this. It was for the best.

"Umm. Frase?"

Fraser's eyes flew open. Ray stood in front of him, a distressed look on his face. Illya was gone.

"Ray? What are you...?"

"Well, you didn't seem to be...moving...at all...and I...uh...I got kinda...you OK?"

"I'm fine, Ray." Fraser tried to project reassurance, though the emotion was non-existent for him at the moment.

"You don't look fine." Ray's eyes narrowed and he cocked his head again. "You look freaked out."

"Well I can assure you Ray, I am perfectly fine." Fraser said shortly. "You have duties to attend to, I believe. I'll be fine waiting here." There was no reaction. Fraser tried again. "I assure you, Ray. I simply had a momentary.... I simply needed some air. You go on. Illya is probably waiting for you."

"This ain't buddies." Ray said flatly. "This ain't.... There's something wrong, Benton, and you aren't letting me in on it. I'm your partner. I get to know these things."

"Are you?" Fraser blurted out, then mentally kicked himself. He hadn't meant to do that.

Ray's eyes widened. "Of course I am! What kind of a question is that?"

Fraser realized that Ray didn't understand. He probably wasn't even aware that he'd reached a new part of his life. It would probably take a few months for the old feelings to fade entirely. Ray was worried out of habit, but once that habit wore off....

"Stop it." Ray snapped. Fraser jumped and shot a startled look at Ray. Ray was emanating irritation and disgust. "Stop it right now, Benton Fraser." He shook his finger at Fraser. "I know that look. That is your martyr look. That's the 'close your eyes and think of Canada' look. You done with me? The snake turn you off? You want out? You let me know straight out. Don't do this, this, this..." his arms flailed, "Stoic fucking Mountie thing."

With a cold rush, Fraser was suddenly livid. With a very, very few exceptions, he could not recall being quite so angry. His vision grayed at the edges as his blood pressure increased. There was a roaring in his ears and he could barely feel his extremities. In fact, he could barely feel anything.

"I am trying to bow out with some modicum of grace, Ray," he spat out. "Some miniscule shred of dignity. I am simply acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, you have a new life and it doesn't include a hanger-on. Possibly I have been grossly misled, but I was of the opinion that you were wholly committed to this venture, to the point of asking Ray Vecchio to suppress the fact that we did not, in fact perish, but are healthy and preparing to embark on an interstellar war. And while I cannot entirely begrudge you that right..."

He stopped, mouth open, overcome by terror and grief. He had finally reached a point where he couldn't say the next sentence, because that next sentence would be the end. He looked away so he wouldn't have to say it.

Ray eyes were wide and intense. After a moment he finished the sentence for Fraser, his voice calm, "You can't or won't follow me."

Fraser looked up. "I don't know if I can or not, Ray. This whole thing is so far beyond my ken." He closed his eyes. "I'm lost, Ray. I am so fucking lost."

It was the first time Fraser had ever used that word outside of the bedroom.

Ray asked a soft question. "Was that hard to say?"

Fraser rubbed his face. "Harder than I could have imagined." His mouth twisted and he looked at Ray, all the helplessness and anger and pain and loss pouring out of him like willpower in front of temptation.

Ray closed the distance between them and stood right in front of Fraser. He took Fraser's face in his hands and kissed him softly. Fraser kept his eyes closed but leaned into the kiss, touching Ray's tongue gently with his own, tasting failure.

Ray eased out of the kiss. "Look at me." Fraser opened his eyes. Dark blue met dark blue.

"If you really can't do this — if you can't even begin to do this — then we don't. End of fucking discussion." Ray looked grave and troubled, but his grip was sure and he kissed Fraser once more, hard.

Fraser looked stunned, then troubled. He opened his mouth and Ray kissed him again, then continued.

"I would have to spend some time with Illya, help him find a suitable host for Shir. Or, I could simply come back after you...you know. " Ray looked uncomfortable. "I mean, with my lady in here, I'm gonna be around for a while. And this Underground Railroad thing they got is pretty well organized. Illya can keep working it for a while until I get back. Even if that takes twenty or so years."

Ray put his hand lightly over Fraser's mouth, forestalling Fraser's next words.

"But, and here's the crazy thing, Ben...I have Shir's memories going back...fuck. Forever? And, honestly? There never was and there never will be anyone who could be more perfect than you at this stuff. Not me, not Solo, not even Illya Kuryakin himself. This gig has got you stamped all over it. I know it seems completely freaky, but it's so amazingly you." He grinned suddenly; just lit up, radiating joy. Fraser's body reacted, desire stirring in his belly.

God almighty, he loved this man.

Ray continued, "I told Illya that he got the wrong partner for this caper. Shir's memories of this war they're in? I wish I could put you in my head to see all this crap. You'd be all over this, man. You'd Mountie across the galaxy and save entire worlds. You'd just be so... I don't know, man. So un-fucking-believably good at this. I mean on an epic fucking scale."

"Ray..." Fraser said into Ray's hand, and Ray cut him off once more.

"I know. I know. You like your life. You like the cabin and the woods and the dogs and the caribou and the Inuit and all that crap. And I like you." Ray stood back and paced a little, gesturing as he talked. "The thing is, Ben, you liked your life before you came to Chicago. You were happy. And then circumstances brought you to a life you'd never, ever, in a million years, have chosen. Except you had to. And it sucked, a lot of it. Lots of those days and most of those nights sucked, I get that. I totally do."

"But, " he whirled around and pointed his index finger and his pinky at Fraser, underlining his vehemence, "you met Vecchio. And you tracked down and got the guy who killed your father. And you met me. And it all led you back home in the end. Trailing a Chicago flatfoot like a stray fucking cat that wouldn't leave, but still..." he folded his arms.

"You ended up going home with a best friend who loved you and a lover who would follow you to the ends of the earth." He finished quietly. "I call that some bizarre and perverse form of karma."

Fraser sat down, sliding against the wall as he pondered this interpretation of his recent past. It was true. He'd been lonelier in Chicago than he could have ever imagined. And he had endured pain and humiliation. But he wouldn't ever trade those experiences for the hollow spaces he hadn't even realized he had until he'd met the two Rays.

Ray let him turn that over for a moment, then knelt down next to him. His eyes were serious and he spoke in the slow way he had when something was deeply important.

"I will always follow you, Benton Fraser. Always. You give me air when I'm drowning and carry me over mountains. You make me a better person than I think I am." A wry smile. "Than I know I am."

"I'm the one who always says 'Why us?' You're the one who believes. You believe that we make a difference. And because we can make a difference, we have to. It's our duty and our reason for any kind of honor in this crazy world."

"If you need to not do this, I will go. I will follow you. But I'm asking, Ben. I'm asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to follow me, for once. Just for a little while. Just until you see what this is. Just until you know what's on the other side of that Stargate. That's all. And if it's too much and too big and too crazy, we'll go home. We'll fight the bad guys and raise our dogs and endanger our lives in the usual bizarre ways."

"But I think we could be here for a reason, crazy as that sounds. I think we could do some good, for all those people out there, on different worlds. All those people who could use a little Mountie goodness in their lives."

Ray stood and took a step back. "Can you do this, Fraser? This once, right now, can you trust my instinct -- trust me? You know you can lead me to hell and back, but the question I'm asking is, can you follow me?"

The two men looked at each other in silence. The question hung in the air between them, daring Fraser. He was free. He could turn around, right now, and walk out and Ray would come. Fraser stood slowly, gathering himself. Ray watched, face neutral. Their eyes met once more and Fraser took a deep breath. His fear, the constant cramp in his belly, was draining out. He realized he hadn't stopped believing that Ray was lost to him since the gunshots in the airplane. But of course, Ray, being Ray, simply refused to be lost.

And suddenly, Fraser wanted to see the other side of that blue shimmering wall, he wanted it so badly that he balled his hand into a fist with the sudden tension. He wanted to meet other races and learn new languages. He wanted to know and learn and show the entire gosh-darned universe what the word Mountie stood for.

Fraser looked directly at Ray, knowing his partner could see the excitement rising. Without speaking, they began to grin fiercely at each other. Fraser grabbed the front of Ray's shirt and pulled him over.

"Let's go, then." Fraser said and he kissed Ray again, just because he could. And when they were both happy and breathless and ready, Fraser said low in Ray's ear, "Show me another world, Ray."

Ray shivered and Ray's hands fisted in Fraser's henley and Fraser was filled with love because Ray was looking at him, really looking at him. And Ray looked joyous again.

Like Christmas.

Moments later, standing in front of the watery face of the Stargate, Ray gripped Fraser's henley again and kissed Fraser once more, hard and fast, laughing at the gleam in Fraser's eye.

Voice loaded with sexual innuendo, Ray murmured, "Hey, Mountie. Let's go on a fucking adventure."

And Fraser grinned back at him as the Gate shook itself into being...

and shimmering blue light reflected on them for a moment....

and they stepped on a three count...

and then they were gone.

-end-

Author's Note: Watch for the sequel, First Contact, coming soon to the "Stargate" section of ff.net!