dS snippet: 'Shelter from the Storm'
Fandom/Characters: Due South; Bob Fraser
Rating: G
Length: 300 words
Challenge: Written for ds_snippets challenge #3_2011, prompt "pandemonium".
Notes: Thanks to my beta, akamine_chan, for poking many needed holes in my first draft.
Summary: Every man builds his own hell.
Sergeant Fraser built his shelter with the fierce focus he’d always found in a crisis. The storm shrieked all around him. Blizzard. Pirrtuk. But this was the Borderlands, and the storm was a more than physical threat. Pandemonium. Ragnarok. Caroline had always said there were voices in the wind. He could almost hear them now, like the howls of a starving wolf pack out on the ice.
Bob built his cabin out of honor and routine, loyalty and guilt. The boy was living in his office, now. He’d given up any attempt at a life beyond his work. Benton’s sense of duty provided the strong fourth wall that made this shelter possible.
He ignored the wailing of the storm and nailed a final board into place. There. Bob stepped inside the cabin and slammed the door closed behind him. The interior reminded him vaguely of his last post. A fire crackled in the stove, but the room was still bitterly cold. So cold that it hurt to breathe.
He made his way to the desk, covered in stacks of papers. Bob Fraser was a man of action. He’d always despised paperwork, but this could stand between him and the chaos beyond the walls. He stripped off his mittens and picked up a pen. The metal was bitingly cold. He grimly closed his hand around it. Bob licked the pen; heated it with breath and body heat to start the frozen ink flowing. Form 1024-B. Form 715-C. His hand cramped, handwriting an illegible scrawl. Requisitions and reports, regulations and requirements. Bit by bit the storm receded, until it was just a distant, regretful sigh.
The sigh reminded him of Caroline’s soft goodbye when he left on patrol, but Sergeant Fraser didn’t let it, or the cold, distract him from his duty.
Rating: G
Length: 300 words
Challenge: Written for ds_snippets challenge #3_2011, prompt "pandemonium".
Notes: Thanks to my beta, akamine_chan, for poking many needed holes in my first draft.
Summary: Every man builds his own hell.
Sergeant Fraser built his shelter with the fierce focus he’d always found in a crisis. The storm shrieked all around him. Blizzard. Pirrtuk. But this was the Borderlands, and the storm was a more than physical threat. Pandemonium. Ragnarok. Caroline had always said there were voices in the wind. He could almost hear them now, like the howls of a starving wolf pack out on the ice.
Bob built his cabin out of honor and routine, loyalty and guilt. The boy was living in his office, now. He’d given up any attempt at a life beyond his work. Benton’s sense of duty provided the strong fourth wall that made this shelter possible.
He ignored the wailing of the storm and nailed a final board into place. There. Bob stepped inside the cabin and slammed the door closed behind him. The interior reminded him vaguely of his last post. A fire crackled in the stove, but the room was still bitterly cold. So cold that it hurt to breathe.
He made his way to the desk, covered in stacks of papers. Bob Fraser was a man of action. He’d always despised paperwork, but this could stand between him and the chaos beyond the walls. He stripped off his mittens and picked up a pen. The metal was bitingly cold. He grimly closed his hand around it. Bob licked the pen; heated it with breath and body heat to start the frozen ink flowing. Form 1024-B. Form 715-C. His hand cramped, handwriting an illegible scrawl. Requisitions and reports, regulations and requirements. Bit by bit the storm receded, until it was just a distant, regretful sigh.
The sigh reminded him of Caroline’s soft goodbye when he left on patrol, but Sergeant Fraser didn’t let it, or the cold, distract him from his duty.