->Arrow

It didn't kill me. It frustrated me. At the end I kept thinking, okay, where's the rest? Because it didn't ring true for me for the characters.

Well, for me the characters didn't ring true as the characters we see in the series (especially Ray, who seemed homophobic and not demonstrative, and I don't see him that way) but I felt they definitely had integrity within the story she wrote. In other words, if you treat it as an AU departure, like slivers of the characters we know but extrapolated from critical personality points, I thought it incredibly well-written and cohesive. Believable within its own universe, in other words. And so reading it for itself (and reading them both like that) depressed me for days afterward.

The one thing I did find kind of believable and true to Fraser was his love of the freedom of solitude. Which also depresses me, so I try to ignore that part of his personality. ;)

The velveteen detective?

Hee. I so was thinking that. With Welsh as the Skin Horse.

I'm so glad you liked the image of Ray in the ballroom. I actually have a screen shot I took of some guy in a movie that was wearing the exact outfit I was picturing Ray (so hot!) in. But maybe some terrific artist could draw it for us better. ::ducking::