Not All There, 2/?
Not all there
Disclaimer: I do not own either Tin Man or due South.
Other notes: The third of the three scenes I’ve got kicking around in my head. The second and third are related, while the first bears no relationship to the other two.
Ratings/warnings/spoilers: Spoilers for Tin Man, post CotW due South, rated about R-ish. RayK/Fraser
Summary: Sometimes slipping doesn't mean that you fall.
Strangely Here
Not All There: One|Two|
--
“What’s a Mountie?”
Fraser would answer most of the questions that Cain asked him, but a strange look passed into his eyes as he ate his muglug
“They’re a little like the old Tin Men of this world. They maintain the right.”
“I’ve spoken with Ze-Ray,” Cain began, and first cursed himself for almost slipping up, then for not managing to entirely hide the venom in his voice, and finally for the way that Fraser stopped eating to look straight at him.
“…He called you a Mountie.”
Fraser sighed, and it was so quiet and contained that Cain only knew it as a sigh by of the ripples that moved in the muglug.
“I was, once.”
“And now?” Cain prompted, watching the soup (Ambrose’s family recipe for muglug, and one of the cooks was still the same after more than sixteen years, of all things), because that seemed to be more indicative of what Fraser was feeling than anything else about him at that moment.
“Now I’m here.”
The muglug wobbled slightly in hands that were not quite steady enough.
“What will happen when you go back?”
“I don’t know.”
The soup wobbled some more before Fraser set it down gently on the bedside table.
“I’d like to see Ray now, please.”
And after that, Cain could not refuse.
--
Raw watched over Zero as he slept.
Or rather, pretended to sleep.
It was a good ten minutes before Zero finally gave up, snapped his eyes open, and then glared at the Viewer.
“Okay. Lion-person-thing. That’s creepy.”
Raw blinked, but said nothing.
This was not Zero.
Well, he knew that already. It was, frankly, obvious; even DG’s Toto had looked at him and said that this was not Zero, and he had only really seen him as a dog, save for a few moments in the camp.
Perhaps the animal in him gave other insights?
But just as Toto had said that Zero didn’t smell like death the way he should, Raw could tell that he didn’t feel of senseless death. Even from such a distance.
No, that didn’t mean that he didn’t have the ghosts of deaths about him. But the strange other Slipper also had ghosts about him. Quiet ones, ones that bespoke of loss more than they did pain.
This Zero-slipper was all aching pain.
“Yeah, seriously creeped out here.”
“Raw knows.”
That certainly hushed the man. He shut up, like Kalm did when a hand went to his shoulder in the midst of a nightmare. Shaking power and still body.
An endless moment, then Zero spoke again.
“You know, huh? You mind telling them?”
“Hrm…”
Zero stared into Raw’s eyes, all at once painfully open and entirely closed off. Raw merely looked at him.
Finally, Zero looked away, rolled over and, Raw assumed, closed his eyes against looking at the blank wall.
Raw waited another few minutes, then left.
--
It was almost absurd. Fraser was just not well enough for the doctor to let him leave, despite Fraser's own assurances to the contrary, and a comment or so to the tune that he’d tracked criminals through snow under far worse conditions (and when Zero had heard of this, from some guard who had been told to take a week off, he had spent two hours with his mattress propped against the wall, delivering punch after punch, entirely unaware of his surrounds).
Fraser was also too determined to let Cain wriggle out of his split-second decision. It wasn’t that he cried, or that he openly displayed emotion (Azkadelia was in the room now, and that may have had something to do with the way his entire face shut itself off). It was simply that when the witch-queen-turned-princess turned to leave, he shot Cain a look that managed to be filled with hurt for all of a split-second; really quite impressive for somebody whose face was still carefully blank.
So no, there was no way to gracefully bow out of this promise.
“His name is Ray.”
And that was the other thing. He wouldn’t budge on the naming issue. He spoke that Ray was no longer undercover, that he needed to be ‘Ray’ again, and that calling him ‘Zero’ just wasn’t helping.
Cain humoured him in pure desperation, not because he actually and honestly believed what Fraser said. Not entirely.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to; it was that what he said was absurd. And what the hell was a ‘submarine’, anyway? Sounded a bit like it might be a U-boot, only larger. And those were only legends; men living under the water in a hunk of metal and ruin? That was insane. Particularly the bit about the fires. Honestly, as if you could light a fire under water.
It certainly didn’t help that Ambrose was taking up most of DG’s time. She might have been helpful; another person who didn’t quite belong in the O.Z. (she could deny it all she liked, but they could all hear the wistfulness in her voice as she spoke of Kansas).
It was obvious the trip wasn’t going to happen today.
Raw was keeping an eye on Fraser. Truth told, Cain still didn’t quite trust the man. He was still Zero’s, and that was just plain strange (DG had merely shrugged when this concept was brought up. Cain suspected that things were really different in the Other Side). But they were whispering, and Fraser seemed truly delighted to learn new things, even if he had to do so entirely from the comfort (or discomfort from Fraser’s point of view, Cain supposed) of a bed.
But then Raw left, and Fraser looked at the door with his eyes closed. Which was insane, Cain knew, because with your eyes closed you couldn’t see, but he remembered something his least-favourite instructor had once said; when you don’t see, you look more.
Fraser’s eyebrows twitched upwards.
“Cain. You wanted to speak with me?”
No he didn’t.
“Yeah.”
And before he knew it himself, he was sitting in the chair that Raw had just vacated, and Fraser was smiling at him, his face crinkling at the corners of his eyes and mouth like Cain was his best friend in the world, but his eyes themselves were like a cold blue flame.
Cain tried not to shudder.
“You don’t trust me, and while I must admit that I haven’t done anything yet to earn your trust, I would like to know why you are so uncomfortable around me in the first instance.”
Cain blinked, and ran that through a mental translation (years of official dinners, long ago, had taught him to see through waffle to the double-talk beneath. But that had been a lifetime ago…), before speaking, carefully.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Fraser, it’s that…”
He trailed off, and repressed another shudder at Fraser’s eyes (a hidden fire, hidden depths; like blue sea filled with monsters and legends; like blue sky and Mobats headed straight towards him…), and gave up on his original plans for that sentence.
“It’s that… it’s that I don’t trust you.”
“Ah.”
The silence stretched out, and Cain considered his options.
“Ray said that you were trustworthy.”
Cain nodded. Familiar ground, they’d covered this one before.
“Ray also said that you wouldn’t trust easily.”
Fraser looked away.
“You think me a spy.”
Cain glared suddenly.
“I do not think you are a spy,” and the words were tightly controlled; he had no idea how he managed to not snarl them.
Fraser looked back at him, and smiled lightly. A quick flash of light, and dear Suns, if that was what Zero had been exposed to, then he could not possibly be evil, because it made Cain want to believe in himself, believe that he was good, and that everything would always be wonderful and that he had a heart and the power to make all the right changes, and-
The smile went away, but Fraser’s eyes were no longer flames, no longer danger; they were calm and soft and a light breeze on a long march through forests.
“I thank you for that trust, Cain.”
It was too unnerving to be there any longer.
--
“You feel he is no threat, Mr. Cain?”
Cain looked at a spot precisely one inch to the left and three inches above where the Queen’s eyes were.
“No ma’am. He is, however, very insistent upon rejoining Zero.”
“Ray.”
Cain blinked.
“Ray,” Amaho repeated, lounging against the wall. “It might help if you remembered that, Cain.”
Cain’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally. The Queen gave Amaho an indulgent smile.
“Raw informs me that the man we have in our dungeons is not a man capable of killing in cold blood.”
“Has he touched him?” Cain could not quite control his outburst of anger (he killed my wife!), but the Queen merely tilted her head to the right, and waited until Cain’s breathing was more under control.
“Not as yet. But he has touched Mr. Fraser. Raw assures me that just as Mr. Fraser is no threat, neither does he perceive our prisoner to be a threat. In fact, Raw says that Mr. Fraser trusts our prisoner completely. Any injuries that were known to have been sustained were… consensual.”
“They had to make it look good for everybody else,” Amaho translated, an easy smile on his face.
“In any case,” the Queen continued, as though she hadn’t heard her husband speak. “Mr. Fraser has my permission to meet with the prisoner known as ‘Zero’, as soon as he is well enough to do so. Is that clear, Mr. Cain?”
“Perfectly.”
--
TBC…
Disclaimer: I do not own either Tin Man or due South.
Other notes: The third of the three scenes I’ve got kicking around in my head. The second and third are related, while the first bears no relationship to the other two.
Ratings/warnings/spoilers: Spoilers for Tin Man, post CotW due South, rated about R-ish. RayK/Fraser
Summary: Sometimes slipping doesn't mean that you fall.
Strangely Here
Not All There: One|Two|
--
“What’s a Mountie?”
Fraser would answer most of the questions that Cain asked him, but a strange look passed into his eyes as he ate his muglug
“They’re a little like the old Tin Men of this world. They maintain the right.”
“I’ve spoken with Ze-Ray,” Cain began, and first cursed himself for almost slipping up, then for not managing to entirely hide the venom in his voice, and finally for the way that Fraser stopped eating to look straight at him.
“…He called you a Mountie.”
Fraser sighed, and it was so quiet and contained that Cain only knew it as a sigh by of the ripples that moved in the muglug.
“I was, once.”
“And now?” Cain prompted, watching the soup (Ambrose’s family recipe for muglug, and one of the cooks was still the same after more than sixteen years, of all things), because that seemed to be more indicative of what Fraser was feeling than anything else about him at that moment.
“Now I’m here.”
The muglug wobbled slightly in hands that were not quite steady enough.
“What will happen when you go back?”
“I don’t know.”
The soup wobbled some more before Fraser set it down gently on the bedside table.
“I’d like to see Ray now, please.”
And after that, Cain could not refuse.
--
Raw watched over Zero as he slept.
Or rather, pretended to sleep.
It was a good ten minutes before Zero finally gave up, snapped his eyes open, and then glared at the Viewer.
“Okay. Lion-person-thing. That’s creepy.”
Raw blinked, but said nothing.
This was not Zero.
Well, he knew that already. It was, frankly, obvious; even DG’s Toto had looked at him and said that this was not Zero, and he had only really seen him as a dog, save for a few moments in the camp.
Perhaps the animal in him gave other insights?
But just as Toto had said that Zero didn’t smell like death the way he should, Raw could tell that he didn’t feel of senseless death. Even from such a distance.
No, that didn’t mean that he didn’t have the ghosts of deaths about him. But the strange other Slipper also had ghosts about him. Quiet ones, ones that bespoke of loss more than they did pain.
This Zero-slipper was all aching pain.
“Yeah, seriously creeped out here.”
“Raw knows.”
That certainly hushed the man. He shut up, like Kalm did when a hand went to his shoulder in the midst of a nightmare. Shaking power and still body.
An endless moment, then Zero spoke again.
“You know, huh? You mind telling them?”
“Hrm…”
Zero stared into Raw’s eyes, all at once painfully open and entirely closed off. Raw merely looked at him.
Finally, Zero looked away, rolled over and, Raw assumed, closed his eyes against looking at the blank wall.
Raw waited another few minutes, then left.
--
It was almost absurd. Fraser was just not well enough for the doctor to let him leave, despite Fraser's own assurances to the contrary, and a comment or so to the tune that he’d tracked criminals through snow under far worse conditions (and when Zero had heard of this, from some guard who had been told to take a week off, he had spent two hours with his mattress propped against the wall, delivering punch after punch, entirely unaware of his surrounds).
Fraser was also too determined to let Cain wriggle out of his split-second decision. It wasn’t that he cried, or that he openly displayed emotion (Azkadelia was in the room now, and that may have had something to do with the way his entire face shut itself off). It was simply that when the witch-queen-turned-princess turned to leave, he shot Cain a look that managed to be filled with hurt for all of a split-second; really quite impressive for somebody whose face was still carefully blank.
So no, there was no way to gracefully bow out of this promise.
“His name is Ray.”
And that was the other thing. He wouldn’t budge on the naming issue. He spoke that Ray was no longer undercover, that he needed to be ‘Ray’ again, and that calling him ‘Zero’ just wasn’t helping.
Cain humoured him in pure desperation, not because he actually and honestly believed what Fraser said. Not entirely.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to; it was that what he said was absurd. And what the hell was a ‘submarine’, anyway? Sounded a bit like it might be a U-boot, only larger. And those were only legends; men living under the water in a hunk of metal and ruin? That was insane. Particularly the bit about the fires. Honestly, as if you could light a fire under water.
It certainly didn’t help that Ambrose was taking up most of DG’s time. She might have been helpful; another person who didn’t quite belong in the O.Z. (she could deny it all she liked, but they could all hear the wistfulness in her voice as she spoke of Kansas).
It was obvious the trip wasn’t going to happen today.
Raw was keeping an eye on Fraser. Truth told, Cain still didn’t quite trust the man. He was still Zero’s, and that was just plain strange (DG had merely shrugged when this concept was brought up. Cain suspected that things were really different in the Other Side). But they were whispering, and Fraser seemed truly delighted to learn new things, even if he had to do so entirely from the comfort (or discomfort from Fraser’s point of view, Cain supposed) of a bed.
But then Raw left, and Fraser looked at the door with his eyes closed. Which was insane, Cain knew, because with your eyes closed you couldn’t see, but he remembered something his least-favourite instructor had once said; when you don’t see, you look more.
Fraser’s eyebrows twitched upwards.
“Cain. You wanted to speak with me?”
No he didn’t.
“Yeah.”
And before he knew it himself, he was sitting in the chair that Raw had just vacated, and Fraser was smiling at him, his face crinkling at the corners of his eyes and mouth like Cain was his best friend in the world, but his eyes themselves were like a cold blue flame.
Cain tried not to shudder.
“You don’t trust me, and while I must admit that I haven’t done anything yet to earn your trust, I would like to know why you are so uncomfortable around me in the first instance.”
Cain blinked, and ran that through a mental translation (years of official dinners, long ago, had taught him to see through waffle to the double-talk beneath. But that had been a lifetime ago…), before speaking, carefully.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Fraser, it’s that…”
He trailed off, and repressed another shudder at Fraser’s eyes (a hidden fire, hidden depths; like blue sea filled with monsters and legends; like blue sky and Mobats headed straight towards him…), and gave up on his original plans for that sentence.
“It’s that… it’s that I don’t trust you.”
“Ah.”
The silence stretched out, and Cain considered his options.
“Ray said that you were trustworthy.”
Cain nodded. Familiar ground, they’d covered this one before.
“Ray also said that you wouldn’t trust easily.”
Fraser looked away.
“You think me a spy.”
Cain glared suddenly.
“I do not think you are a spy,” and the words were tightly controlled; he had no idea how he managed to not snarl them.
Fraser looked back at him, and smiled lightly. A quick flash of light, and dear Suns, if that was what Zero had been exposed to, then he could not possibly be evil, because it made Cain want to believe in himself, believe that he was good, and that everything would always be wonderful and that he had a heart and the power to make all the right changes, and-
The smile went away, but Fraser’s eyes were no longer flames, no longer danger; they were calm and soft and a light breeze on a long march through forests.
“I thank you for that trust, Cain.”
It was too unnerving to be there any longer.
--
“You feel he is no threat, Mr. Cain?”
Cain looked at a spot precisely one inch to the left and three inches above where the Queen’s eyes were.
“No ma’am. He is, however, very insistent upon rejoining Zero.”
“Ray.”
Cain blinked.
“Ray,” Amaho repeated, lounging against the wall. “It might help if you remembered that, Cain.”
Cain’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally. The Queen gave Amaho an indulgent smile.
“Raw informs me that the man we have in our dungeons is not a man capable of killing in cold blood.”
“Has he touched him?” Cain could not quite control his outburst of anger (he killed my wife!), but the Queen merely tilted her head to the right, and waited until Cain’s breathing was more under control.
“Not as yet. But he has touched Mr. Fraser. Raw assures me that just as Mr. Fraser is no threat, neither does he perceive our prisoner to be a threat. In fact, Raw says that Mr. Fraser trusts our prisoner completely. Any injuries that were known to have been sustained were… consensual.”
“They had to make it look good for everybody else,” Amaho translated, an easy smile on his face.
“In any case,” the Queen continued, as though she hadn’t heard her husband speak. “Mr. Fraser has my permission to meet with the prisoner known as ‘Zero’, as soon as he is well enough to do so. Is that clear, Mr. Cain?”
“Perfectly.”
--
TBC…