Title: Ray's Memory, Part 1/2
Author: belmanoir
Pairing: Fraser/Vecchio
Rating: PG
Word count: 2,471
Summary: Ray has lost his memory, and Fraser can't handle it.
Notes: My first Fraser POV fic! Inspired by the following conversation with snoopypez:

me: i would like to see the injury that would make ray forget fraser
snoopypez: oooo, there's another idea for you! WRITE IT. ;D we'd get to see how Fraser would take it!!
me: dude, fraser would lose all sense of identity
me: like, let's face it, he has NOTHING but ray
me: ray is the only person in chicago who would really notice if he disappeared off the face of the earth
me: DAMMIT NOW I WANT TO WRITE THIS
me: WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME??
snoopypez: ::beams:: because I win!

She does indeed. Beta'd by snoopypez and brynnmck, who are each insightful and encouraging in just the right proportions. Thanks guys!
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me and I am not making any money off this.


[written on the blank pages of Robert Fraser's last diary.]

I have never kept a journal before. I hope this isn't the start of a habit; however, at this moment I need something to relieve my mind. I've always half-believed--self-indulgently, I suppose--that my father kept his journals with the thought that I would one day read them. Now I wonder if he simply had no one to talk to. For that is the situation in which I suddenly find myself.

Normally, I indulge my compulsion towards sociability with my friend Ray. "My friend Ray"; it is curious how even when writing for no one but oneself (the only person I can ever imagine seeing these pages--and I hope he doesn't--is Ray himself, as it seems more and more unlikely I shall ever have children), the act of writing forces one to write as to an audience. As if Ray's name needed qualifying.

I'm not, of course, as forthcoming with Ray as I plan to be in these pages. I've tried to be, once or twice. On occasion I've wanted desperately to be. I've never managed it. But even speaking to him about trivial matters, sharing my day-to-day life with him, eases my need to be seen, to be known. I suppose I could talk to Father Behan again; but I find myself reluctant to do so, as I've no doubt he knows all about the sordid and shameful outcome of my last confession. Besides, Ray would hardly thank me for discussing him with his own priest.

So. My friend--my best friend--Ray has met with an accident. That makes it sound far more tragic than it really is. It's what you say when someone dies. Ray is not dead; he's alive and well and I should be grateful--but my foolish, stubborn mind insists on behaving as if it were tragedy of the highest order.

Ray does not remember me.

We were chasing a witness, and--but how it happened hardly seems relevant, except that it was another case that I suspect Ray would have been just as happy not to investigate. Suffice it to say that he was following me up a fire escape and tripped and fell, hitting his head on the metal edge of a step. He seems well in everything but this: that he doesn't remember who he is. He doesn't remember me.

The same thing happened to me once, of course. It seems impossible that I should forget Ray. It seems incredible that his eyes, the long line of his throat, or his hand on my shoulder should ever fail to spark in me that jolt of recognition that goes deeper than skin, deeper than bone--deeper even, I think, than mind. But I did forget him, and some morbid part of me is afraid that this is my punishment.

Of course, I recovered (with Ray's help) quickly enough and with no lasting ill effects. But Ray has already been gone longer than I was; the doctors say the longer it takes, the less chance there is that he will recover his full memory.

That first moment, when he looked at me without knowing me, was dreadful. I think I concealed from him how dreadful, thank God. But when I had introduced myself, stammered an explanation--that he was a law enforcement officer and that we were partners and friends, and that he had met with an accident on a case--he said simply, "Okay. What do I call you?"

Benny, I nearly told him. Thank God I thought better of it in time--I don't think I could have borne to hear the name with no affection behind it. "You call me by my surname," I said instead.

"Okay, Fraser," he said. I must have failed entirely to control my expression, because he stopped and said, "Is something wrong?"

I didn't know what to say. You pronounced my name correctly and it's worse than if you'd shot me again was clearly out of the question. I had never corrected him, at first out of politeness and later out of other feelings, and I hadn't realized until that moment how very dear that voiced palatal fricative had grown to me. "Not at all," I said, and launched into an explanation of his life and personality that was more complimentary than the one he had given me of mine, but was, I am ashamed to say, significantly less revealing. The simple truth is that I was afraid. I was afraid that if I were more honest--that if I really allowed myself to describe Ray as I see him--this Ray, who is not blinded by familiarity, would see what I have managed to conceal from my friend.

Finally the hospital agreed to release him, and I led him to his car.

"I drive this piece of shit?" he said.

"You love it," I told him.

He raised eloquent eyebrows.

"Do you remember how to drive?" I asked, hoping he would say yes. I am not a skilled driver at the best of times, and this was emphatically not the best of times.

"I think so," he said uncertainly. It developed that he was right. Indeed, he drove exactly as he usually does--and exactly as fast.

In that instant, with Ray careening around a corner and my hat on the dashboard, it seemed briefly as if everything were well. "Ray, the speed limit here is thirty-five miles per hour," I couldn't resist saying.

"Oh, sorry," he said, and slowed down. I think I came close to tears then--and again the next moment when I had to give him directions to the precinct. As with me, his workplace failed to provoke any memory whatsoever. I couldn't rid myself of the impression that Lieutenant Welsh suspected us of malingering, despite my explanation and the production of a note from the emergency room doctor who had attended Ray. However, he eventually gave us the day off, and I took Ray on the same frustrating and fruitless sort of tour he had given me: my apartment, his favorite restaurants, his mechanic's shop, &c. I even attempted to call his ex-wife, but the number he had for her in his black book had been disconnected.

At last the inevitable had to be faced. I took him home and explained what had happened to his mother. In a way it was a relief to have them recognize me--I had almost begun to fear that it was I who had lost my mind, and that Ray was truly not my best friend of several years.

But after the initial balm, the visit was troubling. Ray did not respond to their fuss and shouting with his normal insouciant retorts. Instead, as I was leaving, he cast me a look filled with such naked pleading it tore at my heart--both because I hated to see Ray unhappy, and because if he were himself he would never have let me see his distress so plainly. Without his usual defense of sarcasm, he seemed curiously vulnerable. I wanted to stay. For a mad moment I even wanted to shield him from his family, take him back to my apartment with me...but they are his family. He loves them, he values them above all else. They have known him from the moment he was born, and if they--and that house--can't restore his memory, nothing will.

As I was leaving, I quite thoughtlessly put my hand on his arm. He stiffened instinctively. His apology was immediate and sincere; I hope my reassurances were equally so. I shouldn't have taken it personally--no one knows that better than I.

At least I managed not to pull back as if I had been burnt. But I felt as if I'd been burnt. The casual physical affection that Ray and I share--I cannot do without it. I shall go mad.

Enough self-pity; I'll be of no use to anyone, least of all Ray, if I don't sleep.

###

I'm afraid that I am falling apart.

I ought to have called in sick today and spent the day with Ray--a morning phone-call to his mother from Mr. Mustafi's phone assured me that he had not regained his memory overnight--but my shift ends early in the afternoon anyway, and Mrs. Vecchio had planned a long morning of feeding Ray his favorite foods in the hopes of jogging his memory, so it seemed I was not needed.

My entire morning was spent in an agony of agitated concern, but it was in the last minutes of my shift that the truth of my position struck me. I realized--that is, I already knew, but it somehow became real to me that Ray was not coming to pick me up. Because he didn't remember that he always came to pick me up; because even if someone told him, he wouldn't know how to find the consulate; because he does not know me.

When my shift was over I began to walk aimlessly through Chicago until I ended, finally, here: on a park bench, surrounded by what the city calls nature.

I feel as if I do not exist. For years now, there has been no one alive who really knows me, except Ray. Perhaps there never was. And now that he doesn't know me, I wonder if I am really alive, if I'm really here. If I were to vanish at this moment, who would care? Many would notice: my landlord, my neighbors, my colleagues, perhaps even Ray's fellow officers at the precinct. But no one would look for me. No one would have anything to say about me that couldn't have been deduced from my photograph by a total stranger.

Without Ray, I'm not merely incomplete; I am no one.

###

Of course that moment, when I was at my lowest and most maudlin, was the moment my father chose to appear.

"Moping around on a park bench while your friend is in need," he said with a snort. "I expected better of you, son."

"Ray is with his family," I said.

He snorted again. "When you had amnesia, I don't remember him abandoning you! And you were quite a jackass to him, too, without your grandmother's training."

As always when I'm with my father, I reverted instantly to an angry fifteen-year-old. I ignored his slurs on my personality, which were all too accurate, and demanded, "Who would he have left me with, Dad? You? You're dead, remember?"

"Not the point," he said. "He brought you back. Stands to reason you ought to do the same for him."

"I don't know how!" I burst out in a paroxysm of frustrated misery.

"How did he do it?" my father asked.

I told Ray I didn't remember: one of the many lies I tell him that he thinks me incapable of. I remember perfectly. "He told me why we were friends," I said. I found I couldn't say more than that to my father, even though of course he already knew. The words are too intimate, too close to my heart.

My father raised his brows expectantly.

"There is no reason to suppose that would work on Ray!" I said, knowing as I said it that it was fear and not logic that held me back. "I--Ray is--extremely important to me."

He didn't say anything, merely looked at me with the expression of mingled sarcasm and disappointment that has never failed to fill me with shame and resentment.

I tried to think about Ray, instead. Why had his declaration restored me to myself? Because it had finally reminded me of--what? Was reminding what I had needed? I didn't think so. Everything he did remind me of--my dreary apartment, my half-wild pet (as I saw him), my work at the Consulate, my relentless and unappealing politeness--Victoria, for Heaven's sake--had convinced me more and more that I didn't want to be myself. It was only when Ray--who, for all his openness and volatility, seldom really reveals himself--showed me what we shared, what he felt, and that he wholeheartedly wanted me back, that I allowed myself to remember.

"Dad, that's it--" I started to say, but he was gone.

I don't need to jog Ray's memory at all. I need to show him that he has something to come back to. I don't know if what I have to offer is what he wants--what he sees missing when he looks at his life with a stranger's eyes--but I would be an even poorer friend than I have been if I didn't make the attempt.

I dread it. I have no reason to suppose that a rejection from a Ray who does not know me will be any easier than the rejection from my friend that has terrified me all these years. But I look forward to it, too, with an eagerness that surprises me. And if it helps restore him, I will be amply repaid for ending my long cowardice.

I'm going to tell him. I'm going to tell him that however he chooses to interpret it, and whether or not he admits to remembering it later, the truth--my deepest truth--is that I love him.

All the things my father never told me, never knew how to tell me, are in these journals. When I'm gone, I want my thoughts to rest in Ray's memory.

[The rest of the book is blank.]

Part Two