Rated G.
Through a Shattered Mirror, Darkness and Light Meet
by: M-A
*Ray*
It's been a year since Benny's back. The old Benny, not the Benny who ended up having a breakdown.
Thatcher's back, too. That haunted look in her eyes has been gone since we left to Europe.
They're both okay, both moving on. So why do I feel so empty inside?
I have nightmares of Benny's times away. Of looking for him and not finding him and having him there but not being able to touch him.
It wasn't that long ago that I thought nothing could touch Benny, that he could bounce back from anything. But he can't. He admits he still has nightmares about his imprisonment. I pick him up some mornings and he looks so tired and so strained it just about breaks my heart. But he just smiles and shrugs and says that he's learned to live with it. How can someone learn to live with the kind of hell those bastards put Benny through?!
I can't live with it. It tears me up inside. I can still feel Benny in my arms, emaciated and trembling with fear and cold and exhaustion...
Thatcher's touched my life, too. I can't imagine ever loving anyone as much as she loved that brother of her's, of having a bond that deep and that permanent. Not even with Benny. Things have changed inside between all of us. I know Thatcher better now than I know myself. That knowledge has cost me so much.
*Ben*
Ray is so quiet. Not to be unkind, but he's never been the sort to just sit and think. Now, there are times I have to shake him out of his reveries. Ray and Doctor Holder have talked a lot about what happened to me and how Ray's search for me affected him, but he hasn't had that moment of catharsis Meg and I were both fortunate to find. It is as though his world has shattered and he has yet to make sense of how the pieces fit back together.
I have come to terms with the fact that I will never be whole again. That They will always hold a part of me, the part of me that faces Them in vivid nightmares. I accept these dreams and the memories as my part of my existence and of who Benton Fraser is now. I accept my role of victim. It has always been a label I refused to attribute to myself. Now, I see it fits. I have been a victim many times in my life. I face up to this now and realise that in this fact there is no shame.
*Meg*
Thomas was the one with a green thumb. I grow these orchids on my balcony for him, for his memory, for all that he would have been and all that we were. I grow them for Ben who lives with shattering memories and for Ray who seems to have lost his way. These men, strangers to those who knew them before, are more familiar to me now than Thomas ever was.
Ray is stronger than he cares to admit. Ben is weaker than he would allow himself to realise. And I feel more deeply now than I have ever dared to feel. We are strangers to ourselves but not to each other.
This is who we are. Ray, the tower of strength who showed Ben and myself the way back. Ben, the victim all his life who finally had to face a truth he did not want to see and was broken by it. And, I, Meg, the independent one who needs someone to hold more than she could ever admit.
People rarely see themselves as they are. Every day, I see more and more awareness in Ben's eyes of who he is. I've admitted to myself that I need more than solitude. But, Ray... Ray will not admit to himself that he is strong and *good*, that he has shown two broken friends the way back from despair and desolation. He is so immersed in self-deprecation that he cannot see that he was Ben's and my salvation.
It is Ben's and my turn to show Ray the truths about him, to be strong as he crumbles, and to help him piece his world back together. To help him accept that being altruistic is a virtue, not a fault, and that he is a better person than Ben and I could ever aspire to be.
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