Superpower Challenge: Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by Salieri

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Author: Salieri (troyswann)
Title: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Challenge: Superpowers
Characters: The Frasers
Warnings/Spoilers: Well, we know what happened to Fraser's mom, right?
Length: 730
Notes: I was watching "Hawks and Handsaws" last night, and this suggested itself for this challenge. Oblique, though it may be.




A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Time slowed. Bob could feel it growing sluggish, his blood a slurry that surged only with greater and greater effort through his veins. The spaces between seconds and heartbeats grew silt-clogged. Time trickled through narrowing, muddy channels until it dwindled to an almost imperceptible seeping. An in-drawn breath pooled in his lungs.

The stars stopped moving.

For ten years he had set his watch by constellations, traveling with Orion in the winter, Hercules in the summer. The pendulum suspended from the North Star had swung him with a regular rhythm from one end of his territory to the other, from freeze to thaw to freeze, through dayless night and nightless day. And at the end of each arc, in the pause where energy was gathered to be expended in the long sweeping motion to the other end of the year, there was Caroline.

He would find her in the sunny patch behind the cabin, kneeling between rows of turned earth (at both ends of the year, she knelt there in the tiny garden patch, and it was this that convinced him that time, like the planet, was round). She would raise her head to look toward him, where he hesitated in the lattice of shadows at the edge of their clearing, and for a moment her brow would crease with concentration as though she were trying to pick out some subtle change in the landscape, something she had felt only subliminally and couldn't yet see. In later years, young Benton would rise from his crouch beside her, his own small trowel dangling from his hand, and he would watch Bob with wide, wary eyes. They were enchantments meeting each other at the seam between worlds.

But there was nothing ethereal about Caroline. When they caressed Bob's face as if confirming his identity by touch, Caroline's hands were strong and callused and real. In the pause between seasons, Bob would hold her tightly, relearn the angular shape of her so that he could trace it in his mind as he rode the momentum of duty away and back again. Benton shook his hand with formal gravity before his fingers slipped nimbly from Bob's grip like a fish too slippery to catch. Each return found him taller and less like a baby and more like a boy. In the early days, there was enough time to coax the boy to him, but as Benton grew older, he grew more into himself, became sturdy enough to hold his ground against centripetal forces.

But Caroline was always the same, the way the seasons were always the same in their progression toward familiar newness. Her voice flowed along well-worn channels as she told him to shave the ridiculous beard he grew to keep his face warm, and that he left there only because of the way her fingers moved with the precision of ritual as she took the straight razor to his skin. It was the same unfaltering, gentle dexterity she used to stroke his body awake and then to sleep.

At the beginning and end, there was Caroline.

When he returned that October, struggling mid-season backward against the momentum of his life, Orion was still asleep, and Hercules was looking the other way. When he found that it was true, that she was gone, time slowed to a trickle and stopped.

Stillness. Energy expended. Breath pooled in his lungs.

And so, it was with great effort that he lowered his eyelids and opened them again to blink Benton into focus. Inertia was a resistance he had to lean into with all of his weight. But even this was too slight, and the interlocking wheels remained unmoved. Waiting, Benton stood beside him, eyes as ever wide and wary. He put down the bowl he was holding in both hands—porridge, Bob noticed, lumpy and half-cooked. He put down the bowl next to an identical one that was sitting in front of Bob on the table, and with a tilt of his head, he reached out to touch Bob's face. His fingers fluttered uncertainly across the stubble of beard on Bob's chin and then lifted away.

The stars began to swing across the sky. Orion climbed higher. The breath pooled cold and still in Bob's lungs rushed out in a sob.

The water was still flowing the next morning as he shaved.


^^^

The full text of A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.

Comments

[love-jackianto.livejournal.com]

Very nice. I really liked the lines; 'The stars began to swing across the sky. Orion climbed higher.' and 'In the early days, there was enough time to coax the boy to him, but as Benton grew older, he grew more into himself, became sturdy enough to hold his ground against centripetal forces.'

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And thanks for commenting.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

That was exquisite.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I love Bob and his world. :)

[andeincascade.livejournal.com]

Sal, this is simply stunning. You've taken my breath away.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you, Ande. *hug*

[luzula]

Oh, that is so beautiful--that first paragraph made me shiver. I love Fraser family history, and this take on Bob's and Caroline's relationship was really interesting.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

I, too, am fascinated by the Fraser-world history, and specifically in the difference between how Benton sees it and how Bob sees it. That world refracted through those two points of view--and the disconnect between them sometimes--is endlessly interesting to me. I was watching "The Wild Bunch" last night and thinking how much the misinterpretations between Dief and Fraser remind me of the slippage between Benton and Bob.... ramble mumble mumble ramble...

Thank you!

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

This was absolutely gorgeous, Sal. I caught my breath when I read this line:

And at the end of each arc, in the pause where energy was gathered to be expended in the long sweeping motion to the other end of the year, there was Caroline.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you, ma'am! (*whisper* I liked that line, too--but now I want the story where we find out what Caroline does in the meantime...)

[brigantine.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, there's this wrenching feeling of everything dragged and torn out of its proper motion, like clockworks jamming shut and then being forced into motion again. Oww. But beautiful visuals! :)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

"everything dragged and torn out of its proper motion, like clockworks jamming shut and then being forced into motion again"

Ah yes! Thank you! This is just what I was going for, and I'm glad it comes across! :)

[china_shop]

My throat aches. This is beautiful!

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Aw, I am both happy and sorry about the achy throat! *hug* Thank you, darrrlin'!

[brynnmck.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is so beautiful. I love how you depict Caroline--Bob and Caroline, really--and the shift of Bob's focus from her to Benton, from certainty into uncertainty. And that shift is Bob's legacy to Benton, too, I think, or maybe just the human condition (*pause for interpretive dance*). But I love the idea of Bob becoming Benton's certainty when Bob is so uncertain, himself, and the way that's simultaneously really beautiful and also destined to be overturned.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

I sort of think of Benton and Bob as the Tragedy of the Near Miss. I don't think that Benton sees the Bob clearly, and nor does Bob see him clearly and the stories they tell about each other are so interesting because of how they are both true and untrue, slightly out of phase, syncopated, or something. It's a love that travels just slightly out of line. That's why I love so much to think about those moments when they connect. Even here, though, I think of Benton's story about the beard, and how one day Bob just sort of woke up and the beard was gone because the wind had changed, and I wanted to show the other side of that, the way that Benton's presence was itself the catalyst that he can't see because Bob's reality is slightly askew from his son's. God, I love the complexity of their relationship, and the role that stories play in it. We must talk more about uncertainty, because I think that maybe I'm not quite catching entirely what you mean here by that word, and I want to. :)

[brynnmck.livejournal.com]

I don't think that Benton sees the Bob clearly, and nor does Bob see him clearly and the stories they tell about each other are so interesting because of how they are both true and untrue, slightly out of phase, syncopated, or something.

Ah, yes! A bit like what Fraser says to Bob in VS, about Caroline: "You never saw her." But he knew her.

Re: the uncertainty... maybe I'm projecting, but I mean that Bob has a constant in Caroline, something to ground him and make the world make sense, and then that constant is taken away and he's floundering. He finds another constant in Ben, in a way, but it's not the same; for one thing, that shift seems to me to be about Bob becoming Ben's constant, which is not quite the same as Bob having someone who's his constant. Even though Bob's focus sharpens on Ben, I don't think he ever understands Ben the way he understood--not to mention depended on--Caroline. So it's a place of uncertainty in that sense. But even without that, I think the sheer fact that Caroline represented something so unassailable and universal to him and then was proved to be transient after all is something he wouldn't ever really get over.

And then there's the mirror of that in Ben, that Bob was this... not reliable, but certainly monolithic, presence in Ben's life. A constant and a certainty in his own way, in the way that parents often are. And then Fraser loses him and everything he represents, and has to find his center again. And he does, eventually, but again, I don't think that time of floundering is something he'd ever entirely get over.

And, as you say, the very misalignment of their relationship is its own source of uncertainty. Clearly, neither of them knows what the hell he's doing when it comes to the other, so while there's focus, there's not really solace. They're both trying to hold on to a moving target.

Um. Did that make any sense whatsoever? :)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

I think Jenlev said it best in her comment down below there:

He [Bob] does sometimes feel to me as if he's a series of notes that have paused for silence. Or maybe all the characters are different notes trying to find out what relationships they should be in with each other.

Oh man, it kind of makes me sad! In a beautiful way!

I see what you're saying, now, about the uncertainty. I think, actually, you were right about the human condition *interpretive dance* in so far as there is always this sense that we in general are looking at others through a series of narrative tropes that may or may not fit or do what we need them to do. That notion of "focus" but not "solace" is really cool and makes me really sad. It is a tragedy in its way, isn't it?

and then I was watching "The Man Who Knew Too Little" and Ray's diatribe kind of sums up the sort of surreal nature of Ben and Bob's relationship when Ray says: "When did your dad tell you this stuff? 'Will ya look at the size of that moose, and by the way a man with no future will always run to his past.' I mean, did he just work it into casual conversation or did he come bursting into your room to tell you this stuff?"

I could write a whole book about what that kind of moment does in the series. :)

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Breath-taking. Beautiful. Moving.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

*beams* *blushes* *runs away*

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

Lovely and gorgeous. I love how you have strung these words together to create something a bit like music.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you, ma'am! I like the reference you make to music, because there's something about Bob's world that seems to tend toward the lyrical. Or something. :)

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

Thank you! He does sometimes feel to me as if he's a series of notes that have paused for silence. Or maybe all the characters are different notes trying to find out what relationships they should be in with each other.

[tanisafan.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely, absolutely gorgeous.

I especially love this small recurring moment in time that is just Bob and Caroline's:
(at both ends of the year, she knelt there in the tiny garden patch, and it was this that convinced him that time, like the planet, was round).

Excellent, beautiful and heartbreaking. ♥

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I really like the idea of Caroline's independence and the notion that Bob is the bookend of her year, too, that she doesn't just wait for him to reappear. The garden she keeps sort of speaks to that, for me, anyway. So when they meet there, it really is two worlds overlapping and equals coming together, I hope :)

[ignazwisdom.livejournal.com]

I'm with umbo--exquisite work.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you, ma'am! Gosh, I love Bob liek woah.

[nos4a2no9.livejournal.com]

Oh Sal. This is absolutely beautiful. The use of language is so precise and surprising, and each new turn of phrase feels like you're revealing some new and shocking truth even as you refer to fixed constants in our collective memory: myth and mourning, metaphysical poetry, Persephone inscribed in the arrival of spring, Donne written into the chill of winter, Caroline waiting like Penelope and Bob returning to her like Odysseys (And his purposelessness when she's not there - I've told you how much I dig your brain, right?) I kept spinning back through time and space and text as I read this, and the tendrils of connection you tie between this vast world of human culture and history and our little show about Canadian Mounties in Chicago...well, it all makes me very, very grateful that you're writing in fandom.

I loved the invocation of Donne, since these lines from "Valediction" really speak to what you and brynnmck discussed above:

Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.

I love that application of simultaneous endings and begins to the father/son dynamic of due South. You and Brynn are so right: Bob and Benton's relationship really is the one of the near-miss. The "firmness" of Bob's presence and the weight of his history and the ideology and tradition he symbolizes anchors Fraser, but it doesn't allow Fraser any real sense of self. He recognizes that there's a gulf between him and his father but is unable to identify where it begins and where it ends. I love that you saw that moment from "Hawk and a Handsaw" in terms of Fraser's lack of understanding of his father's motives: Fraser attributes that pull out of mourning to "one day the wind changed," where here you make it clear that Bob brought himself back for his son. Disconnection, misinterpretation and misdirection. The dance of human experience!

Anyway, I wish I had something more concrete to say about the lyrical quality of your writing or how fascinated and deeply textured your view of these characters and their world is. I could do the *dance of intellectual adoration* but I really responded to the emotional resonance in this, too, even moreso than the bright and shiny ideas, and that's harder to put into words. Thank you for the fabulous read, though, and for articulating all of this stuff that I feel like I can only circle around.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Ah, Nos, you give the best feedback because your way of reading invariably makes me seem smarter than I am!

(I do love that Donne poem, btw, because Donne is so passionate and dispassionate at the same time, so ironic and so straightforward--which is maybe why I think of Donne when I'm writing Bob and Benton, since they also seem to me to be both perfectly open and wryly--wily--closed.)

The "firmness" of Bob's presence and the weight of his history and the ideology and tradition he symbolizes anchors Fraser, but it doesn't allow Fraser any real sense of self. He recognizes that there's a gulf between him and his father but is unable to identify where it begins and where it ends.

This is a really nice way of putting it, especially what you say about the "gulf" that has such indefinable limits. I like that a lot. And it's one of the many many things I like about the show, in that the show, while playing on the super-perfection of Fraser's character, still does an excellent job of pointing to his mis-interpretations when it comes to Bob (and to Victoria, too, incidentally). It's so interesting how someone so very observant can be trapped by mirrors, but that's just the thing, isn't it? Fraser can be so clear in his view of the external world, but his personal, inner, world is so muddy and full of confused wrong-turnings. That's why he needs the Rays, I guess.

But then again, I wonder how much of this "misinterpretation" is something I actually read into the show, because I like Bob and I want him to be more complex, more helplessly loving, than Benton will give him credit for.

Hmmm. thinky.

Thanks so much for this. I really appreciate it. Now I feel like I should go back and read the story again and say, "Oh yeah, what Nos said? I totally meant to do that!" ;)

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

Absolutely gorgeous, Sal. So poetic and visually rich.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Mlyn! (and sorry to take so long to reply. I thought I had through my yahoo acct., but apparently not! *fails*)

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

In later years, young Benton would rise from his crouch beside her, his own small trowel dangling from his hand, and he would watch Bob with wide, wary eyes. They were enchantments meeting each other at the seam between worlds.

Oh, how completely lovely. Such a gorgeous image. I'm a big fan of Bob/Caroline and their whole semi-told backstory. Thank you for adding to it.

I'd quote all the other lines I like, but then I'd be basically c/p'ing the whole thing. :)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

I'm with you in the love of Bob and Caroline and their (un)told story. Caroline fascinates me, really, when I try to imagine what her life must have been like.

and your icon is beautiful!

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

So far I've written two Bob/Caroline fics just so she'll tell me her story.

I got the icon over at view_paradise. She's got lots of pretties.

[skieswideopen]

This is wonderful and touching and beautifully told, and I absolutely love it.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Most excellent. I'm very glad. I have such a soft spot for Bob. Thank you for reading and for commenting. :)