Cold Indigo - challenge #124 (PG)

[redwinter101]

dsr, thank you. I love that description of Mick and Beth - unique in their love and their trials. Indeed they are.

Luxe, indeed, Master.

lorig, Lucy, francis, thank you all. :curtesy:

GA, I'd never thought about it like that, but you're right. I don't think that'll ever dispel Mick's regrets that things could or should have been different, but it's a very hopeful way of looking at things. I like it.

alle, that's lovely, honey. Thank you. I think in my head this was probably more melancholy than a lot of you found it - and I love that you've all made me feel a little more hopeful.

Red

[seamus3333]

By the time we met Mick in Moonlight, he was melancholy. No longer in a rage over being turned, certainly not paralyzed with depression, he was pensive, removed. Melancholy is an amorphous and very seductive condition, at least to women. Men, like Josef , have a tendency to brush melancholy away, "So?
You're a vampire, suck it up and enjoy it." But women see a melancholic person as introspective, intelligent and, dare I say, sensitive? No wonder we all went "THUD".

In "Cold Indigo", you describe and portray Mick perfectly but, then, you always do. I'm so glad you brought him back.

[fairytoes]

Thank you Red!

[redwinter101]

seamus, that combination of macho and sensitive is a killer. Every. Damn. Time. (But I can't take credit for bringing him back - he's never gone away. )

fairytoes, thanks for stopping by, honey.

Red

[jen]

Sure.

From time to time I think all of us see something in a fic that even the author did not intend. This may be one of those cases here.

To me, this fic had that beautiful circular symmetry that I have noticed before, like one of yours (at the moment, the name escapes me) where Mick and Beth, and Josef and Simone, had to be separated (or they would be killed by the Legion). Simone accepted it, moved on and Josef worked to negotiate a deal for Mick and Beth--that ultimately cost him his life, but secured the safety of the L.A. Tribe from the Legion en perpetuity. It began with Mick and Beth in a relaxed, romantic moment and ended the same way.

In this story, while Mick was asleep in his freezer and dreaming, there was this lovely paragraph that (I thought, foreshadowed that Mick was in the process of working out the logical answer to their separate togetherness.


Quote:
He didn't need to hear the chambers of her heart contract; he knew it quickened for him.
He didn't need to see the tiny muscles in her eyes tighten as her pupils dilated; he knew her desire flared for him.
He didn't need to gauge the changes in her body temperature; he knew she burned for him.


As much as he longs for humanity, does he not long for love at least that much? And has he not found it here, in his Beth?

Also, although it is not alluded to in this story, it remains the one of the huge unspoken truths of Moonlight, that when a linespan extends for centuries, if one is careful, technology will perhaps unlock the secrets of what they are, as well. Since a Cure was devised centuries before by combining botanicals, and this is the root of most of the drugs currently in use, could not a Cure be in their future, as well. I'm really astounded that this aspect has not been explored more in fanfic. I think it would be fascinating.

So, to answer your question more directly, although Mick has this fantasy of walking hand in hand with Beth into the sunset, he has already been thinking of their love not depending on the responses based in her humanity. Because of the time involved, the chances of Mick seeing a Cure, or at least some form of treatment to mitigate the troublesome 'symptoms' are much greater for him. He can think in terms of the possibility much more easily than Josef (perhaps). Would Beth be willing to take the chance? I think she would.

To me, Mick's mind was moving toward turning her in the future.

Or that is what I saw.

Jenna

[redwinter101]

jen, thanks so much for your lovely and thoughtful post. As I said by PM, there is a lot of this that wasn't intended on my part (as far as Mick's thoughts and intentions) but I regularly find things in others' stories that they didn't intend either, so... I'll wait to see if anyone else has a view.

Red

[Shadow]

Red, this is fascinating . . . this may be written as prose, but it feels far more like poetry. I've read it several times and each time had something of a different idea about just what was happening here. This dream of Mick's is so powerful, and he's so very desperate to stay in it . . . in spite of the fact that Beth is now a real part of his life, and he wakes up to find her nearby. But then . . . why wouldn't his yearning for mortality be stronger than ever, now that he knows that it's something he really could share with Beth? They have a life together, against all odds, but it feels like in some ways it's a very painful life for Mick, as he keeps coming up against his limits, and hers. It struck me that, in the dream --

He could let go, lose himself in the moment, forget.
No fear, no pain.
Safe.

It sure feels as if Mick's real world is still full of fear, pain, and danger. Maybe that's due to his knowledge that, as vampires experience time, he's going to lose Beth very soon.

And the descriptions here are just haunting. Especially Mick's perceptions of the freezer as he wakes.

The sluggish swirl of blood in his veins; the crackle of frost on lashes as his eyes flickered open; the buzz and hum inside his cold cocoon. Glass, steel, fluorescence, the hard edges and sharp lines of his seclusion. The start of another day.

A very unsettling and depressing way to start the day, too. There's something quite hopeless about this description. Yet Mick does find joy, and perhaps some hope as well, in what he and Beth have managed to create for themselves. No one ever really quite achieves their picture postcard dream, after all. But still . . . the title of the story is an extremely good fit.

[redwinter101]

Thanks, Shadow - what a super comment. I really do see Mick as constantly struggling - acceptance of what he has doesn't come easy, I think, and is always tinged with what might have been. The complexities of that situation are what give him pause now, as he can no longer separate the joy he finds with Beth, from the painful path that brought them together.

Red

[Moonlightsonata]

A lovely story Red. I agree with so many of the comments already expressed so much better than I can express them. And yes the ending was somewhat sad in that Mick's chance to walk in the sun with Beth was brief and ended too soon so he could save her. While he will never have all he dreams of, he does have her unconditional love. Love is the greatest gift of all.

[Moonlightsonata]

I hope this isn't too far off topic. When I was writing my comments to this story, for some reason the following song lyric came to mind -"what greater gift can anyone give?" I was thinking about Beth and Mick but I Goggled the line and nothing much came up. Still I knew this was part of a song - a song I hadn't heard in a long time - but one that had been important to me. I also couldn't remember the artist. Anyway I tried Ask.com and I did get an answer - the full lyric was from a Gene Pitney song (the song is almost 50 years old and Gene died a few years ago - I believe of natural causes while on tour - he was only in his 60s). The song is called "Tower Tall" and the complete lyric is "You gave me love what greater gift could anyone give." I imagine most of you never heard of Gene Pitney although he did have a career overseas even after his United States fame had ended. I probably have more albums of his than anyone else - having belonged to a record club as a teenager. While I never was able to see him at his height of fame here, I did have the opportunity to see him twice in later years. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a few years before he died and I am happy about that and that I did get a chance to finally see someone I idolized as a teen. For whatever reason "Tower Tall" isn't on either of the two DVDs of his I have but I did have it on vinyl.

Interesting how a really good story can bring back long ago memories.

[redwinter101]

Thanks, Moonlightsonata - I'm glad you enjoyed the story, and that it brought back some happy memories.

While he will never have all he dreams of, he does have her unconditional love. Love is the greatest gift of all.

Absolutely.

Red

[PNWgal]

Oh Red...this one just made me sigh with delight, but made me a little bit sad as well.

The fun thing about these challenges is not only reading the different ideas that folks come up with, it's seeing the different writing styles. The cadence of yours pulls the reader along, gently lulling, pulling them down into this world where Mick has everything he could have wanted - except one thing. That moment with Beth in the sun.

I love the way this one starts - it wraps the reader in a blanket of their own, a safe place where everything is safe and perfect:

Within, colour was true, an unfiltered spectrum, soft edges tinged with indigo and violet.

Points of light picked out a soft-focus blur of honey and sepia. No black, no white, no cold, no dark.

He felt her move against him, heat flowing through. The swish of her hair across his chest; the gentle rumble of her moan; her body welcoming his, connecting.

Yet Mick has to wake up, and what follows is his slow descent back to his heaven and his hell. Beth is there, and he struggles to find his place, their place in the universe:

What value her humanity? What price his immortality? Where was their place in the world? Even in his momentary melancholy he smiled at the strange and wonderful notion that they might have one. It was a challenge, every day, to make it work, somehow. Each to be what the other needed. Amid the daily wonders of their life together, some days, his yearning for simplicity was overwhelming.

Difficult, dangerous and complicated, indeed.

In a way, I wonder at Mick here. He has something every human longs to find, someone who loves and accepts him for who and what he is, yet he still longs for one thing:

He closed his eyes and he could see; his longed-for picture postcard dream.

He and Beth together, walking hand and hand under the glare of the setting sun.

And this leaves me so unbelievably sad, but it's a realistic view. No one's relationship is perfect, and truly this one, this love between vampire and human, is, as you said "imperfectly perfect".

[redwinter101]

In a way, I wonder at Mick here. He has something every human longs to find, someone who loves and accepts him for who and what he is, yet he still longs for one thing:

He closed his eyes and he could see; his longed-for picture postcard dream.

He and Beth together, walking hand and hand under the glare of the setting sun.

And this leaves me so unbelievably sad, but it's a realistic view. No one's relationship is perfect, and truly this one, this love between vampire and human, is, as you said "imperfectly perfect".

Thanks SO much, honey, for such a super comment. This is precisely how I see Mick's conundrum - he does know how lucky he is to have a chance at happiness with Beth but he can't quite let go of his lingering sadness that his past prevents them having a rose-tinted future - there are obstacles and difficulties where he wishes for plain sailing.

For me it's part of Mick's charm that he has that melancholy streak and I don't think it will ever truly go away - he's lived too long and hurt too much for that. But at least there is hope. Always.

Red

[baywinger]

Aw man, how's come everybody did better than I could on commenting?

The only original thought I had was how this reflects how I felt about the last few episodes, watching them give us everything we wanted, and in the process making it obvious that we'd never get the important part.

Otherwise, there really are a lot of layers to this short piece, and I read it about 6-7 times before coming to any particular conclusion about it. That's a good thing, in my mind!

Baywinger

[redwinter101]

Oh, I LOVE that, baywinger - and so true about the final four.

Red