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Language:
English
Collections:
Ray Vecchio Day 2025, Due South Archive
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Published:
2025-09-23
Words:
300
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
21
Kudos:
16
Hits:
129

Bend It Like Benton

Summary:

On Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 11:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time nearly everyone in the world lost consciousness for two minutes and seventeen seconds during which time most saw a vision – a “flash forward” – of their lives six months into the future: April 29, 2010 at 10:00 PM PDT. Some people, however, merely lost consciousness without experiencing a vision…people who were then presumed to be fated to die by April 29, 2010.

Notes:

Along with being written for the annual Ray Vecchio Day, this was also written for the dSC6D snippets comm on Dreamwidth, Challenge 62. The prompts given were shape, twist, break, tear, "Can't bend this night to end the way we want". I used all the prompts 'cause that's how I roll.

Thank you kindly to the mods for continuing to make annual subcollections for Ray Vecchio Day.

Thank you kindly to verushka70 for cheerleading.

This is doppelganger!fic because Ray Kowalski in due South and Jeff Slingerland in FlashForward are both portrayed by Callum Keith Rennie.

Yes, the title of this fic is a play on the movie title "Bend It Like Beckham," but no, there isn't any soccer-playing in this fic.

No beta we die like about 20 million people during the first Global Blackout's "flash forward".

Work Text:

On Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 11:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time nearly everyone in the world lost consciousness for two minutes and seventeen seconds during which time most saw a vision – a “flash forward” – of their lives six months into the future: April 29, 2010 at 10:00 PM PDT. Some people, however, merely lost consciousness without experiencing a vision…people who were then presumed to be fated to be dead by April 29, 2010.

In Florida, on Eastern Daylight Time, it was 2:00 PM when the Global Blackout occurred and everyone in Ray and Stella Vecchio’s bowling alley collapsed, bowling balls thudding to the floor. At a corner table of the bowling alley’s lounge, which Ray often treated as his informal office, Ray slumped unconscious and for two minutes and seventeen seconds was unaware of the breakage of bowling alley property and the twisted shapes of the injured.

What Ray saw in his “flash forward” -- a vision of Thursday, April 29, 2010, 10:00 PM PDT – in Florida, Friday, April 30, 1:00 AM EDT – was Stella, a tear-drop running down her face as she said “This is crazy! He survives all the dangers of a police career, he survives all the dangers of being partners with Fraser, and then someone walks up to him somewhere in Canada, yells ‘Slingerland! No aneurysm!’ and shoots him?!”

Later, Ray and Stella Vecchio will compare their visions, confirming that they match. Later than that they will begin to hear of people who took actions that led to changes from what they had seen in their “flash forward,” and Ray will say to Stella “I gotta talk to Fraser about this. Gotta make sure he knows that they could bend this thing to make it work out the way they want.”