vigorli

Title: Past, Present, Future
Author: Giselle
Pairing: V/O...obviously
Disclaimer: Forsooth! I know not what I speaketh!
Feedback: Please? I'll be your bestest friend.
Dedicated the to lovely Liriel and the beautiful Catlover2x

~~Past~~

“Come on Vig, you’ve got to see this moon, the lake…its too much.”

He is the moon.

The moon has always been more beautiful than the sun. The moon watches over you when you sleep, when you are at your most vulnerable, when your defenses are gone. The moon sings lullabies. The moon glows. It is mysterious and ancient. There are folktales and bedtime stories about the moon. The moon fascinates and mystifies. The moon illuminates the dark paths of the lost and forlorn.

He is the moon.

~~Present~~

They look so like him you would think they burst from his fingertips and not from the endless paperwork of adoption.

They are olive skinned, chocolate curled, brown-eyed songs.

One skips instead of walks. The other laughs instead of frowns.

They both hug with their hearts and love with spirit and joy.

They are his replicas.

Could we be any luckier?

~~Future~~

She is getting married, how I love to see him cry with happiness. He tells her she is beautiful and she tells him the same in return.

She does not lie.

We raised her well, he finished her, them, when I could no longer help. Like all things, he did it well and I watched with pride as they grew, all three of them, into what they were meant to be.

She is strong, fierce and brilliant. Beautiful as a poem. Wild as a forgotten land. She’s an artist, like me but also like him. He always thought I was the artist because I painted, I wrote, I photographed.

He is an artist because he loved.

She loves her soon-to-be husband and he loves her. My little moon approves of him and so I do as well. He will love her through her stubbornness and her peace. They will give my little moon grandchildren that will climb in his lap, tug on his hair and call him Papa Elf because she will once make the mistake of showing them a video where her Pop was a king and her Daddy an elf.

He will smile and call them little hobbits because it makes them giggle.

They will adore him in a way only children can.

And he will tell them stories of their Papa King because he remembers and they should too, even though I am no longer there.

Only flickering across their television screen.

~~Past~~

“Come on Vig…you’ve got to try this.”

I tell him no way will I jump off a perfectly well-constructed bridge.

There’s no way.

And I feel like an ogre because he frowns.

I don’t tell him I’m afraid to watch. I don’t tell him why. I don’t tell him I have dreams about him flying through a crimson sky. I don’t tell him I have nightmares about him where I watch him fall.

So I tell myself I won’t watch him but, I do because I promised him I would. He pouted and said, “Watch me Vig…watch me.”

So I watch.

And he jumps and he’s a dream and a nightmare all in one. He flies for the briefest of moments and I think I’m safe because despite appearing mortal he can obviously fly…it is my dream, I’m alright. Then, he falls and its my nightmare, only he shouts with joy and doesn’t crash into the rocks of the earth but bounces back to his sky.

And I realize the sky is blue, not crimson.

I’m safe for now.

~~Present~~

He is here with me, curled close to my side. A radiating heat that should burn but doesn’t.

A stolen weekend between filming and press tours.

Less than a weekend, forty hours between flights, but he is here.

“Tell me a story Vig,” he yawns on his way to dreams.

So I tell him the story of how I loved him before. Before I saw him. Before I knew him. Before I breathed him. I tell him that I will always win our game of who loves who more. I had over forty years to love him before he came to me in a blonde wig in a New Zealand sunset. He says that doesn’t make me win, only makes me old…and a pervert loving his fine young self. I tell him I’ve loved his soul which has never been young but has always been fine. He shrugs and smiles and says, if that’s what I need to tell myself to make me less of a perv then he’ll go with it.

He makes jokes when he’s too overwhelmed to say the real words. I know this because the next time he has forty hours between flights he brings me a picture of him as a child. He is running from the camera and its made his image leave streaks of otherworldly light. He points at the streaks and asks me if that was he soul trying to make a break for me…trying to get back to its home.

I tell him yes.

And that it found its way back.

He nods sagely and tucks the photo into the corner of a picture of him and me that has those same streaks swirling around us. He must have moved right as the camera flashed.

He always moved.

So there are those streaks of photographic light swirling around us and I’ve always loved that picture. It is brilliant shades of orange, white, blue.

So he tucks his childhood soul into the corner of the frame and runs his fingers over the picture beneath the glass. He declares our souls horny. I ask him why, impatient to hear the explanation that comes from his mouth.

Look, they can’t keep their hands off each other, they’re all swirled, mixed, combined.

I tell him maybe its his soul alone leaving the streaks, his impatient soul that can’t be still even for the span of a photograph, just like the rest of him.

No Vig, our souls are never alone anymore.

I’m glad he listens to my stories.

~~Future~~

“Viiiiig!”

I wonder what is wrong and panic for a bit as I run and find him in the bathroom.

“Its gray, Vig…GRAY.”

I laugh and he pouts. Trust my vain little moon to cry out in dismay over a single gray hair. I know there are more because I see them when I wake in the morning and the sun shines on them differently than the rich brown strands. The horrible bathroom light doesn’t reveal them all.

I don’t tell him there are more.

I value my life.

I tell him, no, no…you’re wrong, its not gray, its blonde. You’re turning blonde little moon. You’re reverting back to an elf. I begin to act panicked, telling him we must find Ian and get a potion to turn him mortal again. I pace and tear at my own gray hair until he rolls his eyes and slaps me on the stomach.

He scratches my beard and asks if it is still a five o’clock shadow when its more white than shadow?

~~Past~~

“Come on Vig…come out with us.”

I wouldn’t tell him no. I never told him no. I only pretended to act like I didn’t want to join them just to hear him ask again, to cajole and plead. He was so beautiful when he pleaded. Or begged.

He was beautiful always.

So I would go and watch him dance or play pool or drink too much. Give him three beers and he was a cuddly little bear, on your lap, curled into you.

I always made sure to buy him a beer.

Or three.

It was the eighteenth time we went to the pub. The eighteenth time he asked me so sweetly. The eighteenth time I bought him a beer. Or three. The eighteenth time when he stopped in the middle of the parking lot on the way to my car, turned to me and asked, as if the idea had just suddenly come to him…a message from the man in the moon, ‘Do you love me Vig?’

I said yes.

He stood illuminated not by the lights of the parking lot but by the moon.

On the eighteenth time he became my little moon.

On the eighteenth time I slid inside him I told him that’s what he was, my little moon.

On the eighteenth time he told me I was his crazy love, his moody poet, his slow and gentle breeze.

I’ve swirled about him ever since.

~~Present~~

He is covered in paint.

The brightest vermillion.

I wanted to paint him a deep, dark sapphire because it reminded me of the moon.

He wanted vermillion because when he said it with a French accent it sounded dashing and ridiculous all at once.

You can see who won.

It started with a threat, a line of paint on his right cheek. It escalated into us fucking in a sea of vermillion on an old drop cloth spread across my studio floor.

It looked gruesome. Shocking. Macabre.

It looked as if we were slaughtering each other and were covered in blood. His shouts and my screams punctuated the moment. Every time I slammed into him he’d cry out as if in pain but I knew what those cries were and I wasn’t afraid.

He is gasping for air as if he‘s breathing his last breath there on his back on the drop cloth in my studio.

I am struggling myself because air is scare as I lay my head against his stomach on the drop cloth in my studio.

I suppose we are a murder scene played out in vermillion.

Both of us dead.

Le petit mort.

The little death.

So tragic are the French.

I have died a thousand times inside him.

He is covered in paint.

~~Future~~

Now he’s getting married and my little moon is crying again. He tells his dad he’s just an old softy and his dad tells him he’s from the south, he’s suppose to be soft.

He is much more like me than him, she is much more like him than me.

We each got one.

What a gift.

He is soft-spoken and usually quiet. He leaves the talking to his sister and dad because they can out-talk the best of them. He also leaves some for his little niece that is so very much like her Papa Elf that its almost impossible to imagine its not possible for her to be from him, for her to be a tiny piece broken off from him.

They are such kindred spirits.

They get in trouble a lot.

They make their Papa King giggle even though I know they can’t hear it.

He is a dreamer, his head always in the clouds, his dad and his sister constantly telling him not go all Pop on them. He thinks over everything too much, for too long. He’s found a woman who will poke him in the side when his head drifts away, she will hurry him along when he’s silent too long. She will be his opposite. She will love him madly.

They will give Papa Elf two more little hobbits to give piggy-back rides to and feed cookies behind their parents’ backs.

Two more little imps to get him in trouble, get him scolded by his original set of little imps.

He will laugh when they scold him and stomp his foot and tell them they can’t tell him what to do, they’re not the boss of him.

He will grin quietly and say, ‘Oh, Dad.’

She will roll her eyes and tug on one of his gray curls and say, ‘Oh, Daddy…you’re such a dork.’

Weeks after the wedding when they are all looking over their wedding pictures, deciding which ones will grace the mantel and which ones will be banished to the photo album never to be seen again he will ask his dad, ‘Do you think Pop knows how happy I am?’

He will tell him of course but, he’s not entirely sure because he believes he lost his faith when I had to go and now he’s left with imperfect belief. He thinks without me he is less but, he’s wrong. Together we were just different, that’s all, nothing more or less…something entirely its own.

Alone he is still strong.

Alone he is still a believer.

Even though alone he misses me and I miss him.

Happily his faith will come back that very same day. As they are flipping through the pictures he suddenly stops on one and smiles and cries but, they are happy tears. He grabs his shirt sleeve and says, ‘Yes, your Pop knows…he was there.’

The photographer almost gasps when she sees the picture, she tells him over and over how sorry she is that it was ruined. She is so embarrassed.

He tells her its far from ruined, it’s the one he wants.

The one for the mantel.

She is puzzled and perplexed and wonders if he maybe isn’t a little bit senile, ‘But sir, someone must have moved, that one has streaks of light running through it.’

And my little moon replies, ‘I know, isn’t he beautiful?’

The End

***I hope it wasn’t too hard to follow using only pronouns for everyone and not giving the children names. I also don’t speak French so if ‘le petit mort’ is suppose to be spelled differently I’m sorry….my bad! ;o)***