Insomnia - challenge #127 (PG)

[GuardianAngel]

My apologies that it's taken so long from me to read and comment, Red.


These last thoughts of Lilah's are painful and brave.

In memory, the sun always shines but never burns.

So well put and totally true. We often shape our memories into something we can live with.

That was the moment our lives began again. I never intended it that way and I still nurture my most secret guilt that it was the finite, tragic confirmation Mick wasn't coming back that allowed us to start over, to look forward, and to see each other as the man and woman we'd become.

Sad that the valiant effort Mick made to stay away wasn't actually enough - that it took him truly disappearing for Lilah and Ray to fully move on. Looks like Mick's Turning was not only a new beginning for him but for them as well.


Life can be cruel and has a wicked sense of humor. It's not fair but you have to learn to make the best of what you have or you'll sink into the pit of 'what could have been'. Lilah did well but my heart still bleeds for her.

[redwinter101]

Oh, honey, no need to apologise. I'm delighted you came to read.

"What might have been" is cruel, you're right and I agree, no matter how well Lilah made a life for herself, it never really goes away. Mick struggled with it so much more (and for so many more reasons) but we saw him, too, struggling to make a life for himself, to find a reason to keep going. He found ways and means, but man, what a hard road.

Thanks for the lovely comment.

Red

[PNWgal]

So I'm back for a reread of this, via Lilah's thread and that gorgeous cap you posted.

In a life well-lived, a person gains experiences, good and bad. There's joy and there's sorrow...and there's regret.

Mick is Lilah's regret.

The memory of his cool touch stirs, still with the power to bring flame to my cheeks after all these years. It isn't Ray's gentle care that floods my thoughts now.

"Mick."

Ray may have been the one Lilah loved first..and last. Mick is the one she loved best. I believe that down to my core.

They were a secret society with a membership of two; their own rules, their own rituals. And they let me join. I'd seen so many foolish girls try to pull their sweethearts closer, away from their buddies while I got to enjoy the secret thrill of being welcomed inside.

A lesson EVERY woman who loves a man should learn. Women love their friends freely - men, when they find friendship, love on a deeper, more visceral level, no more so than when they are in combat together. They become like brothers, because that experience is deeper than any blood.

Yet it's a woman that breaks them all into pieces.

I think that hurt Ray more than any of the damage of war; he'd lived through hell but losing Mick nearly ended him. Deflated, crumpled, desperate to understand, all the while closing his ears to the whispers he refused to hear.

"But you must know where he's gone," he'd ask most days, always hoping my silent, sad denial would change. But it never did. My sins were of omission, the truths I never told him and I'm content I did right. It took a long time for him to stop asking; I still don't know what he came to accept as the truth, but thankfully, it was a truth he could live with.

And this is what you do when you love someone. You protect them from harm and hurt, especially if you're the one that's the cause of it.

Or maybe I finally realised I didn't need to see a bloodstained bed to know our story was over. It had ended the day the telegram arrived announcing Ray was coming home. Mick knew it instantly and he was the one with the courage to act. For a long time I hated him for that strength, mistaking it for ease but now I know he was the bravest man I ever met. He gave us back our lives and asked for nothing in return. All those years, mostly happy, luckier than a lot of folks and probably more than I had any right to expect, and now, here, as the night draws to a close I can finally let the memories come and say my prayer of thanks to him.

And yep, I'm in tears again. Mick did what he had to do. Leaving the woman he loved behind, but leaving Ray? I think that had to have been worse. In leaving, he gave the people he loved the ultimate gift - the gift of living their lives.

God, it breaks my heart.

Finally I can release my burden and say the words denied me for so long.

And what a burden it had to have been to bear...and Lilah can go to her grave in peace. Mick gives her that.

Still moving. Still beautiful.

[redwinter101]

Oh! What an amazing comment.

Ray may have been the one Lilah loved first..and last. Mick is the one she loved best. I believe that down to my core.

That's such a brilliant, brilliant summation of their relationship. BRILLIANT.

God, it breaks my heart.

Me too, babe. Me too. This was Mick's chance - a REAL chance - to have a normal, happy, regular, wonderful life. And it broke, as did my heart.

Red

[Moonlighter]

Oh my Lord, Red. If I were to speak to you right now, I would find it difficult to speak around the lump in my throat. I'm sure there are fics here written from Lilah's POV, but I don't recall reading any, and if I did, none that I read have delved into her thoughts as deeply as this one.

I figured it was Lilah's story from the first mention of Ray, but her reflection of her life with Mick and Ray, then just with Mick, and ending physically with Ray but in her true heart of hearts, still unable to really let Mick go really crushed me. Mick loves so well and completely that he leaves an indelible mark on your heart. That's why your last line, Lilah's last thought, made me choke up:

It's time for me to go. To go to Ray.

Finally I can release my burden and say the words denied me for so long.

"Goodbye, Mick."

And her musings just before, this makes you wonder

This blessed, insomniac night is nearly over, but it isn't sleep that beckons. I know it's just my fading strength playing tricks but I swear he's here, a face in the shadows, drawing closer, his warm, wistful smile unchanged by time and age.

Is she imagining it?

This story makes you realize Mick is the kind of person that makes an everlasting impression on everyone he meets. Lilah moved on but she never forgot. Coraline met a man she decided to make for her own. In over three hundred years of living we know Coraline met a lot of men but Mick is the one she married and turned. Josef is over four hundred yet he chooses to be best friends with a child under a century. There is something very special about Mick St. John.

Uhhh, YEP!! So well said, Cassy, truly!

Red, no one has mentioned this, but you refer to her opting not to take a hit of morphine -- are we to assume Lilah is dying of some wretched form of cancer? I tend to believe so, and that's why she is so aware that her end is coming soon.

Red, I hope you never get sick of me saying this, but You. Are. Awesome.

[cassysj]

This is such a beautiful, tear-jerking story.