Insomnia - challenge #127 (PG)

[cassysj]

I thought it was Beth in the beginning too.

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.

[wpgrace]

I thought it was Beth in the beginning too.

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.

Ohhhh! So good!

[redwinter101]

Well then, that just would not do.

Indeed it would not.

There is something very special about Mick St. John.

Abso-frikkin-lutely. Perfectly put, Carol.

Red

[darkstarrising]

So very beautiful, so very poignant, red

The Lilah you give us in this lovely work is an introspective one, a woman at the end of her life, contemplating both what was and what could never be. Yet she faces death, head held high, eyes wide open. Of her actions, she regrets nothing, but knows she is accountable.

Only the desperate, the rapt and the foolish long for death and I'm none of those.

Indeed she's not, rather she's lived a rather unique life with the pain and devastation of war, especially on Ray, countered by being loved and accepted by two men, and loving them both in return.

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 position of both joy and pain, when the time came to choose between the two. When she learns of what was presumed to be Mick's bloody end, she knows that her life together with Ray would never allow one with Mick. By his departure, Mick gave them both a gift.

But my courage deserted me. 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.

Of all the lovely lines in this story, this is my favorite.

I never tried to find Mick. I folded him up and tucked him away in a secret corner deep inside. I knew he was there, safe and untouched in memory, so small, so hidden. My secret shame and my secret joy. It was the only thing to do.

What Lilah has done, so do we all.

[redwinter101]

Thanks, dsr. I love that you described it as poignant - that's very much how I feel about Lilah and her tangled past with Mick and Ray.

What Lilah has done, so do we all.

Indeed we do.

Red

[Lucy]

I love when Lilah arrives in the arena. Thanks for giving her a voice.

[redwinter101]

My pleasure, Lucy. Thanks for reading.

Red

[rijane]

My account isn't with God but with Ray and with Mick.

See, I always assume it's Beth - but a nice turn here

Child to man in the blink of memory's too-fast show, there they stand, Ray and Mick.

I love this phrase - beautiful rhythms and imagery.

just the bloody unfairness of war

Spectacular phrase here - the combination of the swear and the literal meaning is perfect!

Instead he found unanswered questions and painful adjustment to a life he'd never planned.

Ah, I love that you're taking on Ray's story - that he wasn't bound for an easily happy ending any more than Mick was.

He's come to hold my hand as my breath fades to silence. I close my eyes, a final smile, a brush of his lips against my cheek.

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."

What a bittersweet ending for Lila. She had two wonderful men in her life and it had to be a tragedy for them to lose Mick, despite the circumstance. I really hope Mick was there at the end for her, but he was there in her heart - and she in his, too, I suspect - and that's enough.


Wonderful, touching story as always, red. I hope that when I bid farewell to this world, my moments are as sweet as this (and, uh, if I can die with Mick's lips on me somewhere, that'd be good too )

Thanks for keeping the love alive here - and taking on another angle of the ML story - I can always count on you to find yet another morsel to feed the poor starved ML hunger within me.

[Luxe de Luxe]

this is just beautiful.... I love the fact that she mistakes his presence for her memory of him. What a brilliant touch and so delicately handled. You've always been a teller of truth, and of course Lilah would feel this way. When you write it, the melancholy just hurts so good.

[redwinter101]

I really hope Mick was there at the end for her, but he was there in her heart - and she in his, too, I suspect - and that's enough.

That's what I'd like to think, too.

(and, uh, if I can die with Mick's lips on me somewhere, that'd be good too )

You and me both, babe.

Thank you, as always, for the kind words.

Luxe, what can I say? Moonlight and melancholy just seem to go hand in hand.

Red

[MickBethKiss]

I'm crying... This is so sweet yet so very sad... But why for the first two paragraphs did I think, this is Coraline? Still, this is so very wonderfully written...

[redwinter101]

*hands MickBethKiss a hankie*

I'm intrigued that you thought it was Coraline - at that stage, it could have been anyone and I love that different readers assumed different things.

Thanks for stopping by.

Red

[Shadow]

I've always been fascinated by the character of Lilah, and now even more so. This story shows so much about her in such a short space. Not a surprise that her last thoughts would be of Mick, who had such a profound effect on her life -- and on that amazing friendship the three of them had before the war. I've always wondered what Mick's absence from her life felt like from her point of view, after Ray's homecoming, and this feels just exactly the way it would have been for her. They had always been three, and now that was gone, with no way to bring that back. I love the mention here of what it was like for Lilah when Mick was turned, when he so dramatically disappeared -- and how that was a new beginning for Ray and Lilah. So painful for them both, but it gave them a way to start over. I suppose Mick never had any idea how his being turned actually let them heal.

I was always saddened by the thought that Mick had retreated so far from the lives of Lilah and Ray that he never even knew that they had a son. So I especially love the possibility you leave open that Mick may actually have been there to hold Lilah's hand at the end. It's perfect that it's ambiguous, but it feels to me as if he was really there.

. . . a face in the shadows, drawing closer, his warm, wistful smile unchanged by time and age.

That's so beautiful.

Love Grace's comment about whether Mick would have had any idea that he was in the center of her thoughts at this time. I don't think he would expect it at all. And how interesting to see in the comments that so many assumed that this was Beth or someone else at the beginning. I'm not sure why, since you only gradually let us know that this was Lilah, but I somehow knew this was Lilah from the start.

[maggatha3]

I just visited once again, wanted to read this sensitive piece of Mick's life again... now I know what I was looking for. ''I folded him up and tucked him away in a secret corner deep inside...my secret shame, my secret joy'' I know no other phrase will better express Lilah's feeling and after-Mick life in my mind. This is a keeper for me..brings tears of relief in my eyes..sharing with her a very treasured heartache..

red

[redwinter101]

Shadow, oh my, I am blessed with such amazing readers, thank you. As alle said upthread, I think Mick relationship with Lilah was a seminal moment in his life - even before he found out it might have resulted in a son and a grandson - so I do think they were never far from each other's thoughts. And that's just a little bit more heartbreak - for Mick more so than Lilah, I think - I firmly believe she found a way to move on, but I don't think Mick ever really came to terms with the loss of such a great love. We all saw his pain (Alex was so beautiful in this episode) and his yearning for the connections with his lost youth - for simpler times when anything and everything seemed possible.

maggatha, that's so beautiful, thank you (and you picked out my favourite line).

Red