due South snippet: "Comfort"

[luzula]

Title: Comfort
Characters: Stella Kowalski, Barbara Kowalski
Rating: G
Length: 300 words
Prompt: laundry
Summary: Stella gets a phone call after "Strange Bedfellows."
Notes: Just a quick little Sunday-night snippet. I couldn't recall any fic about Stella and Barbara, even though they're canonically close, so I had to write one...

Stella had just gotten home from work and sunk into the couch with a sigh when the phone rang. For a moment, she considered just letting it ring. It had been a long day, and that was on top of Orsini, Ray, the bomb...and she should get something to eat, and the laundry needed doing. God.

But she dragged herself up with a groan. "Stella here."

She could think of several people she emphatically did not want to talk with.

"Hi, dear."

Stella let out her breath in relief. "Barb, hi. I'm so glad you're not--well, it doesn't matter."

"Did you have a hard day?"

"Yeah. Well, work isn't so bad, I suppose, but..."

"Things not going well with that new man you're seeing?"

"Oh God. Yeah." Stella poured her heart out to Barbara the way she'd never been able to with her own mom. She remembered sitting in the Kowalski's kitchen in junior high, doing homework with Ray, with Barbara feeding them both pierogies. It had been a living, bustling home the way her own childhood mansion never had been.

"Oh honey, I'm so sorry," Barbara said when she'd finished.

"Thanks. Honestly, I should've seen it--I'm not usually such a bad judge of character."

"Maybe you're still on the rebound? It can't be easy."

Stella sighed. "Yeah, I think so. And Ray--I know he really annoys me sometimes, but I know he cares. It's just that--"

"You don't have to justify yourself to me," Barbara said gently. She had never taken Ray's side in the divorce, nor Stella's, either, and Stella was so grateful for that.

"Yeah, I know. Thanks. So, tell me what's going on with you?" Stella leaned back into the couch, listening to the comforting stream of Barbara's voice in her ear.

Comments

[seascribble]

I always love seeing stuff that is sympathetic to Stella. I don't think I've seen anything that goes into her relationship with Ray's mum as anything more than a plot device, and I'd like to read more of it.

[luzula]

Thanks for the comment! I'm usually not that good at writing Stella-POV (this is only my second fic from her POV), but yeah, I do like fic that's sympathetic to her, as well.

[desireearmfeldt]

There seem to be several folks currently producing sympathetic-Stella fic... (I'm quite fond of Stella, myself, though I've only dabbled with writing her POV thus far.)

[seascribble]

You wouldn't happen to have some links/recs, would you? I'm still very new to due South, and really only have been reading old stuff.

Hopefully this comment full of links won't be judged spam... :)

[desireearmfeldt]

Bearing in mind that I consider myself still new to the fandom myself, and mostly interact with it only via reading what gets posted to AO3 + ds-noticeboard... (It does mean that I've read mostly stuff written in the last few years, plus a smattering of classics, which I guess is the inverse of what you've read? :) )

* Sock_Marionette (who writes a variety of stuff, and whom I recommend more generally) has written some nice Ray-and-Stella fics (some happy and some angstful), including:

Codes
Take (Almost) All Of Me
Learning the Law

and a couple of Stella/Frannie fics (if that's your thing):

Speaking French Instead Of Italian
Like Lightning on a Summer Day

She and I also collaborated on a long F/K fic in which Stella plays a substantial and sympathetic role:

The Land of Lost Content

* Luzula did a lovely RayK/Stella happy marriage/PWP snippet:

Working Late

* I think this is an older fic more recently posted to AO3, not sure; but belmanoir did a sweet/quirky fic in which F, K & V have turned into kids and Stella has to look after them:

I'll Just Have to Do My Best

belmanoir also has several other fics involving Stella, which were part of a mass upload of hir works to AO3 recently.

* ButterflyGhost wrote a couple of fics focusing on the premise that Stella has a rather horrible mother:

Slumming it" (short)
Lavender Blue" (long casefic)

In the somewhat-older-stuff department, Hth (whom I recommended highly but should warn you that all of hir stuff I've read so far has eviscerated me) did a fic about Vecchio's friendship with Fraser and marriage to Stella and post-Vegas Stuff:

Sibylla ti theleis.

Hm, not as wide a variety of authors as I was thinking, but a goodly collection and by no means exhaustive. :) Enjoy!

Re: Hopefully this comment full of links won't be judged spam... :)

[luzula]

Okay, let me add a couple!

exeterlinden's Apartment Story is one of the best Stella POV:s I've read.

King's Daughter, Golden Girl by jamethiel is a great character study of Stella from last year's holiday exchange.

And then there are the classic Ray/Stella backstory fics Teeth of the Hydra and The Border Between Life and Death, though both are from Ray's POV and include a healthy dose of F/K.

Re: Hopefully this comment full of links won't be judged spam... :)

[desireearmfeldt]

Having just gone back and re-read Teeth of the Hydra, I think it's open to debate whether that's a sympathetic portrayal of Stella, though it's certainly an interesting one. (And I was fascinated to read the author's commentary, which I don't think I'd done before, and learn that earlier drafts had a much less sympathetic portrayal of her...)

Re: Hopefully this comment full of links won't be judged spam... :)

[luzula]

I haven't reread it for some time, actually? So you may be right--I don't have it clearly enough in my memory.

Re: Hopefully this comment full of links won't be judged spam... :)

[desireearmfeldt]

I think it's open for debate. :) It's a fairly complex Stella, and seen through a fairly distanced Ray-filter.

Re: Hopefully this comment full of links won't be judged spam... :)

[seascribble]

This list is great! I've read most of Belmanoir's stuff, I think, I did love the one about the de-aged Fraser and the Rays. <3 I'll definitely check all of these out! Thank you kindly. :)

[spuffyduds]

This just makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

[luzula]

I am glad to hear that! : )

[desireearmfeldt]

I've been wanting to see some fic that explores this relationship! All sorts of interesting possibilities there, and I'm fond of both characters despite their (in Barbara's case, exceedingly) limited canon screen time. I'd love to see you do more about them.

[luzula]

Barbara never does seem to be very fleshed out in fic, does she? I mean, mostly she gets to feed people and mother Ray. My theory is that she and Stella bonded because Barbara didn't have a daughter and wished she'd had one, and because Stella didn't have a very close relationship with her own mother. And it's pretty cool that they stayed friends after Ray and Stella's divorce. And yeah, I'd love to read more about them, though I don't have more in my head myself right now...

[desireearmfeldt]

Probably because there's really zero canon info to work with; Ma Vecchio is more popular but often not all that fleshed out either, for much the same reason (and she gets *mentioned* in canon a little more often than Barbara, though she appears on screen much less than I would have expected from the frequency with which she appears in fic :) ).

It's next door to writing an original character, so unless that character is the main focus of the story *and* it's a fairly in-depth story, she tends to remain sketchy. I think I've read some fics where Barbara got some details/personality, though her role in the story was still being-Ray's-mother.

(I have a little Barbara 5-things fic half-written & waiting for a fan-flashworks amnesty round, or a flash of inspiration, or both. It is very much being-Ray's-mother-ish, but she gets a little personality, I hope. :) )