Closure - PG13 - Josef

[Lilly]

Author's note: In the interest of full disclosure, I have a bit of a background story to tell with this one. I originally outlined this story last summer, but RL stepped in and it got put on the back burner. Then, in late October, I was fortunate enough to acquire a “Sleeping Beauty” script just in time to bring it to the Moonlight Gala in Chicago and have Jason sign it. I never had the chance to read through it until late November. At that time, I discovered a very small scene at the end, involving Josef and John Whitley, that never made it to the final edit.

Since the premise of my story involves a meeting between Josef and Whitley after the events of Sleeping Beauty, I thought it was only fair to let you know that Trevor and Ron had tried to address this same topic. The scene was very brief (less than a page) but very powerful and it would have been amazing to see what Jason would have done with it. I asked Trevor about it and he wasn’t sure if the scene was ever filmed, because the writer’s strike began right in the middle of filming that episode.

I have a very different take on that meeting, but in all fairness I wanted to let you know that something had been written by the masters.

-------

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Moonlight. They speak to me and inspire me, and sometimes they follow me home. No copyright infringement is ever intended.

Rating: PG-13

First published: 5/5/2009



Closure



No lights or siren heralded the arrival of a dead man. Beyond the quiet residential neighborhood, the vital signs of the city beat strong, even at almost two in the morning. The steady pulse of the subway coursed beneath the calloused surface just blocks away; but here on this sheltered one-way street, the throbbing nightlife was held at bay. The ambulance slowed to a stop, dark and silent, its billowing exhaust an ineffective smokescreen against prying eyes. The average New Yorker might have suspected a life had passed without fanfare, and in a way they would have been right – the man just hadn’t stopped breathing yet.

The door of the ambulance swung open and the driver hopped down from the vehicle, tugging at the zipper of his jacket. The temperature must have dropped another ten degrees, he thought, as he shook off the bite of December air. He rubbed a hand across his mouth, warming his fingers, and cast a quick glance up at the doorway of his destination. The flight of stairs presented an inconvenient obstacle, more in terms of attracting attention than the physical effort involved. No matter how you looked at it, deliveries were unorthodox in this line of work.

His sigh was visible in the night chill as he walked to the back of the transport and opened one of the doors. He hung his hand from the top of the frame, and leaned in waiting for a report. His partner inside looked up just long enough to nod. The elderly patient secured to the stretcher beside him had survived the trip. The paramedic adjusted an IV drip and re-checked the flow of oxygen that fed the man’s ruined lungs, but there was little he could do to forestall the inevitable.

The driver turned from the ambulance, intending to approach the townhouse, but balked when he saw the front door now opened and a dark figure framed in the entrance. The man in the doorway stood expressionless, the sleeves of his dark blue shirt rolled up and his hands stilled in the pockets of his dark trousers. A wash of light from the stoop fixture cut across his chest as he stepped forward out of the shadows. Josef Kostan had waited long enough.

Beyond the row houses, the gritty drone of passing traffic played in the background, broken only by the occasional high note of an impatient horn. Only he could hear the counterpoint of the driving beat from the Underground club several blocks away, but the combination was compelling. He had almost forgotten the rhythm of this city. It was never truly quiet here. The pulse of New York was more insistent than LA, the energy more concentrated. New York was more alive than most humans he knew.

He had come back for a reason. He left Los Angeles with a clear purpose, and in four hundred years, he had rarely second guessed himself, but the view was decidedly different on this side of the continent. Josef’s eyes narrowed as he looked down at the ambulance. Half a century or half a lifetime – it was a matter of perspective. Depending on whether you were at the top or the bottom of that staircase. Either way, it was time. Straightening his back, he pulled his hands free and briskly descended the steps to the sidewalk. Cutting between the cars parked end to end along the curb, he acknowledged the driver and then shifted his gaze to the losing battle being fought within.

“He doesn’t have long,” the paramedic confirmed. “I can’t tell you what’s still keeping him going. Every medical text I know says he should have been dead weeks ago.”

Josef had never read the textbooks, but he had lived long enough to learn a thing or two about human physiology. Blood was an intriguing cocktail, and hatred added its own kind of poison to the mix. Even the most virulent cancer had a worthy opponent in that bitter chemotherapy. The power of the human mind was sometimes frightening, even to him.

“So, how do you want us to do this?” the driver asked, tilting his head back toward the flight of stairs. The attendant inside moved to prepare the gurney to be rolled from the ambulance, but Josef raised a hand, signaling him to stop.

“I’ll take him.”

“Sir?”

Without further comment, Josef ducked his head and stepped up into the ambulance. Bending over the stretcher, he frowned as he pulled back the blanket, releasing a swirl of scents – patchouli and cognac, covering a base note of old leather, antiseptic, and stale blood. It was a willful attempt to mask the smell of dying, and perhaps to spite the grim reaper in the process. The effort may have offered some small comfort to the terminal soul, but in the end it would be no more effective than a crucifix against his worst nightmare.

Josef’s hands moved quickly to unfasten the restraints that kept the passenger from his fate. He turned his face toward his shoulder, just enough to speak to the attendant behind him. “Bring what you need.” He slid his arms under the withered frame and lifted the patient from the stretcher. Gathering the old man to his chest, he stepped down onto the street. The sting of the cold roused the old man, and battle-weary eyes opened, straining to focus on the face above him.

“You...” The hoarse whisper was all the elderly man could muster. His face registered shock, but a wasted body betrayed him. The cancer had taken everything but his will. There was no fight left in him – not that it would have made a difference in the best of circumstances. The last offensive was lost. He hadn’t heard from his hired mercenary in over thirty-six hours. There could be only one conclusion. Martan had failed again, and now John Whitley lay in the arms of his bitter enemy, humiliated and at the mercy of a monster.

“We have unfinished business.” Josef’s voice was low, betraying no hint of his intentions. “And I always pay my debts.”

As he turned toward the brick townhouse, the man once known as Charles Fitzgerald fixed his eyes on the white archway that marked the entrance. This house that he had bought in another time with yet another name was supposed to have been a place for new beginnings, a hideaway near the thriving nightlife of a new community, pulsing with jazz clubs and blood dens, and far removed from his uptown apartment. On another night in the distant past, grinning like a new bridegroom, he had carried Sarah over that threshold to her new home – and her eternal tomb. Eleven steps to the point of no return.

The ambulance door closed behind him, ending his reverie, and he moved forward, the waning life in his arms little more than a trifle. As he ascended the stairs, the paramedic followed with the IV bag and oxygen unit, scrambling behind like a small dog on a short leash trying to keep up.

Josef stopped just inside the front door, waiting for it to be closed, and then tipped his head toward the adjacent hallway where a specialized wheelchair sat ready. The attendant walked ahead, taking care that the intravenous line and oxygen tube hung free as Josef lowered Whitley into the seat. When the old man’s head found its rest against the high back of the chair, he tried to spit in the face of his demon captor, but was unable to muster anything more than a feeble cough. Josef showed no expression as he stepped back to wait for the attendant to hang the IV bag from the attached pole and arrange the oxygen feed from the carrier on the back of the wheelchair. After securing the clear mask over the patient’s nose and mouth, the paramedic took the blanket he had flung over his shoulder, refolded it and arranged it across Whitley’s lap.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” he turned and asked Josef.

“I’ll call you when I’m done.”

The paramedic nodded and disappeared around the corner. Josef waited in silence until the front door had clicked shut. He paused to run his fingers over the petals of one of the dozen frosted red tulips adorning a side table before turning his attention back to his guest. He stepped closer, considering the man for a moment. Was this all that was left of John Whitley? The man he had known had been an imposing figure, for a human; a real estate mogul always in command of himself and those around him. This trembling shell was almost unrecognizable – except for the piercing blue-gray eyes that rivaled a vampire’s in their intensity.

“It’s been a long time, John.” Josef’s voice was soft, almost welcoming, as a hint of a smile played across his features.

“Fitzgerald,” the old man hissed through the mask, as if the name itself were the most unspeakable profanity. “Are you going to kill me, too? Put me out of my misery?” The effort required to raise his voice even slightly left the old man gasping, struggling as much for dignity as for breath. “Wait ten minutes,” he coughed out, “and I’ll save you the trouble.” He sucked in air and then pulled the mask from his face to make certain he was clearly heard. “The only thing that’s kept me alive this long was my determination to see you dead first.”

“I can’t help you there, old man.” Josef’s eyes twinkled briefly, reveling in an old joke. He had called Whitley “old man” over fifty years earlier, when the businessman was only forty-one and he himself was three centuries the man’s senior. The irony had been particularly appealing back then. Now the joke was as pale as the broken life before him. It wasn’t only the cancer that had consumed John Whitley. It was loathing and bitterness and regret. Josef recognized the emptiness in those eyes. He’d seen it too many times – the look of a man who had lived too long but still couldn’t quite let go.

“Help me? You monster! You destroyed my family – you killed my daughter…” Whitley broke off, choking on the blood that bubbled up from his lungs. Josef ran his tongue along the inside of his lower lip as the old man fumbled with a handkerchief that was tucked into the sleeve of his robe. Fighting to regain his composure, Whitley forced his lips together, a last line of defense against the retching that wracked his body, and he glared at the murderer who held him captive. Yes, he was ready to die, but he was damned if he was going to do it on anyone else’s terms but his own.

“It’s not that simple,” Josef replied, unmoved by the smell of fresh blood. “And if she had never met me, you would have lost her anyway. You would have suffocated her yourself.” He tipped his head, regarding the dying man. “And maybe you already know that.”

“You bastard! You haven’t changed,” Whitley spat out. Charles Fitzgerald had once impressed him as a boy wearing a man’s suit. Charming, but entirely too full of himself. The arrogance was still there, to be sure, but now there was something more. As much as Whitley was loath to admit it, the man before him had aged, and in ways that defied description. Or, maybe, that weariness had always been there, hidden behind the boyish smile and the soft-spoken manners that had charmed his daughter and fooled his wife. The old man couldn’t say for certain. Maybe it was the kind of thing that was only visible through the hardened lens of advanced age.

“Do men like us ever change, John?”

“I’m not like you. You – you blood-thirsty demon.”

Josef allowed a hint of a grin, acknowledging some truth in the statement, but said nothing.

“I’m not afraid of you,” the old man rasped. “There’s nothing left for you to take from me.”

Whitley continued, “When my Sarah disappeared, you were out of the country – supposedly – on business. When you returned, you never called to ask about her. She meant nothing to you.” Whitley paused to bring the oxygen mask up to his face. He closed his eyes and gulped at the enriched air before continuing. “Adelaide found Sarah’s diary, but she hid it from me – and from the authorities – and bore that burden until her final days. She refused to speak of you – not out of curiosity, nor anger. Only once that first year, when I questioned your conspicuous absence, did she acknowledge you at all.” His eyes re-opened, focused in his condemnation. “She said she thought you must be dealing with the loss – in your own way.”

“Adelaide was a perceptive woman.”

Whitley let his eyes drift closed again, his labored breathing the only sound between the two men.

Finally, Josef broke the silence. “You’re a lucky man. In spite of being an ass, you somehow managed to hang on to her. Seventy years is impressive, even by my standards.”

“Seventy-two,” the old man responded, his voice distant as his thumb traced over the gold band he still wore. “All those years – all those years and she never talked to me. She never told me.”

“She knew you. Too well. She knew what you’d do – and what it might cost.”

Whitley’s eyes blinked open, washed with the memory of the woman who had shared his life for almost three quarters of a century. Her quiet strength had steadied him those many years. “I visited her grave every Sunday,” he said, “until I couldn’t make the trip anymore.”

“I know.” Josef allowed. He recalled the scene, viewed through the darkly tinted glass of an anonymous limousine, and the image of an unsteady figure bowed beneath the pale cherry blossoms shading her resting place. Supported on either side by a nurse and a chauffeur, Whitley had run his shaking fingers over the inscription on the mausoleum, “Adelaide 1914-2005 Loving Wife and Mother.”

“The white roses? Mother’s Day – you were there?”

Josef nodded. “I owed her that.”

“She lived with your secret for fifty years.”

“And died with it.” Josef acknowledged, fixing his eyes on Whitley. “But it wasn’t me she was protecting – it was you.”

“Damn you!” The old man hissed. He struggled to raise his head, but collapsed exhausted against the back of the chair. “I’d rip out your cold, dead heart if I could.”

“Too late.”

Josef’s heart had been battered over the centuries – run through more times than he could count – but it had never suffered a wound that enough time or blood couldn’t heal. Not until fifty-two years ago. On that cool spring night, the heart that had shown signs of life for the first time in centuries had been ripped from him and left in limbo on the other side of the doors behind him.

“I can’t give you your revenge,” Josef continued, “but there’s one thing I can give you.”

“You have nothing I want – or need – vampire.”

“You see, that’s where you’re wrong, John.” With a flick of his wrist, Josef unlatched the door handle behind him. “I can give you this.”

There was no way to prepare the man and it would have been a waste of what little time was left to try. He grabbed hold of the wheelchair, backed though the wide doorway and swung Whitley around to face the large bed in the center of the room. The room was dimly lit by scattered lamps and the cool blue light of irrelevant monitors. They cast an ethereal glow on the young woman in the bed, making it appear as if she herself were possessed of an inner light. Most of John Whitley’s body had failed him, but his eyes and his mind were still sharp enough to know that, in spite of everything, neither was playing tricks on him now. For one brief moment, however, he questioned whether he had slipped away without knowing and, against all odds, found himself in heaven face to face with his angel child. Perfect and unchanged.

The old man’s hand shook as his tired fingers came to life clutching at the neck of his robe. “Sarah?” he choked out. “Dear God – my Sarah.” Whitley’s mouth hung open, his jaw quivering. “How…?” He looked from his daughter to the vampire, his eyes glistening. “You did this to her. She – she hasn’t changed. Is she…is she…?” He broke off, his shoulders heaving in silent sobs.

“She’s been like this since the night I tried to turn her.” Josef’s voice was low, but his words hung heavy in the air. “We had eternity.” He swallowed hard and looked off at the display to his right. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“My beautiful, sweet little girl.”

Josef’s brow furrowed as he turned back to the old man. “You never gave her enough credit, John. She was so much more than that. She could have been anything...” His voice dropped to a whisper, as if uttering a prayer, “… everything.”

“She was willful and idealistic.” Whitley spoke with surprising candor.

A genuine smile forced itself across the vampire’s face. “Yes – she was.”

Josef ran two fingers along the soft fall of auburn waves arranged across the tan and ivory satin of the pillow. The smile faded as his eyes narrowed, trying to bring a distant image into focus. “She took me by surprise. She was so alive, you know? Her laughter – could fill a room. There was something she told me right after we first met – before she knew what I was. A friend had joked that she had a laugh that could wake the dead.” Josef paused, his face lit softly with the memory. “She had no idea.”

As Whitley struggled to lift his arm, straining to reach for his daughter, Josef rounded the back of the chair and moved the old man closer, pushing him up along the edge of the bed.

“You took her from me.”

“It was her decision – but it was my responsibility. And for fifty-two years, I’ve done everything I could to bring her back.”

“When I read her diary, I thought you killed her.”

The vampire closed his eyes, turning away. “I almost did.”

“She’s been here – all this time?”

Whitley had looked for Sarah himself at her suitor’s Fifth Avenue apartment. The police had come around, as well, making inquiries about her disappearance; but Charles Fitzgerald, they were told, was out of the country and had been for a week prior to her going missing. Josef had planned carefully, covered every possible trail, in preparation for her turning. There was just one eventuality he had never foreseen.

“Believe me,” he conceded, “knowing that wouldn’t have made it any easier.”

“Why bring me here now? After you kept her from me all these years?”

Josef bristled. In an instant, he was in front of the wheelchair. “You pissed me off. I came to New York for one reason. To end you.” He scowled, turning his back on the old man, and moved a few paces away. “You fire-bombed my office. Cost me millions – and froze a thousand times that in assets. You killed two of my – associates. And now I have to explain to the world how I‘m not dead.” He wheeled around to face his would-be killer. “You screw with me – it gets my attention.”

Josef exhaled, centering himself. As his eyes focused past the frail man before him, his dark expression faded and his tone softened. “I thought you’d laid her to rest a long time ago – that you’d come to terms with it. Her diary only told you part of the truth – you needed to know the rest. Not for my sake – for yours.”

Josef walked to the end of the bed, stopping by a small stepladder that had been left there. He picked up the hammer that was resting on top and turned it in his hands as he studied the covered window. The raw sheets of plywood remained the only evidence of the previous afternoon’s invasion. Shattered glass and splintered wood had been cleared and the intruder’s body disposed of. Josef wondered briefly what Whitley would have thought of the “monster,” down on his knees clearing the debris by hand because he refused to allow workmen to enter this room. He had boarded the window himself and then sat the night at Sarah’s bedside, turning the pages of her innermost thoughts. In her written words, he heard her voice again, clearly – for the first time in decades – whispering to him all the promises of what would never be.

On the final page, he ran his fingertips over the seal her kiss had left, and when he brought the book to his face, he closed his eyes and inhaled her fragrance, the perfume of her mortal lips left forever on that page.

It would be too easy to get lost in that memory. For years he had locked away the necklace he had given her, as if hiding that gold heart could somehow keep his own safe as well. But, it was always there, just below the surface – an ache that decades couldn’t erase. He had immersed himself in the constant stimuli of pleasure and business, the wheeling and dealing carefully orchestrated to drown out the memory of her laughter, the beat of her heart, the echo of overwhelming emptiness. And each time he came back, he tried to shut that door even tighter when he left.

Josef pushed himself from the chair and moved to a small beside dresser to retrieve a letter that had been forwarded to him long ago. He opened the yellowed page and read:

My Dearest Sarah,

I have to believe in my heart that this letter will find its way to you somehow. I couldn’t bear the thought of your not knowing.

I found your diary, sweetie, and, the good Lord help me, I read it. I know I shouldn’t have. I have always respected your privacy, but I was missing you dearly and so hoping that I might find something in your writing to give me peace.

I’m not sure I understand it entirely. Some of what you wrote is so difficult for me to believe. I suppose I should be shocked, but I trust you and I trust your heart. I do know that you love Charles and to be with him you must leave us behind. I don’t know what your life will be like, how hard it will be, but I do know that the love you have for one another will make anything bearable. Your secret will always be safe with me.

Be happy, my sweetheart. That’s all that any mother wants for her child.

With all my love,

Mommy


With careful precision, Josef refolded the letter and placed it inside the diary next to that last entry. The two, it seemed, belonged together now. Closing the book, he rubbed his hand over the embossed leather cover and then set it aside. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, looking at her, before he finally lowered himself to sit on the side of the bed, hesitant to disturb even the linens that covered her. The longer he was away, the harder it was to come back to this bed. It was not the bed he had stained with her blood – that one had been destroyed long ago. It was one in which he had taken refuge next to her silent figure more times than he dared remember. His fingers entwined with hers as they had so often before and he lifted the back of her hand to his cheek.

This place, this room, changed him. When he was with her, he was different. Her presence stripped him and transformed him, and even now there was no escaping it. Slowly, he drew his legs up onto the bed, rolling toward her, and bowed his forehead to her shoulder. She was not a living woman, not a vampire. She was – as she had been for half a century – just Sarah. She had shared three hundred and fifty days out of three hundred and fifty years – and still she held his heart.

Josef’s head twitched, shaking off the memory of the previous night, trying to refocus. “See that?” He pointed the handle of the hammer at the large boarded window across from the foot of the bed. “That’s where Martan busted in – the bastard.” He tossed the hammer aside and shoved his hand into his pocket. “Your guy thought he was freaking Rambo,” Josef quipped with half a smile, but as he pulled out two misshapen slugs, he turned deadly serious. “These were headed toward Sarah. I got in the way.”

“You mean – he could have killed her?” Whitley’s voice was so faint it would not have been heard by anyone but a vampire.

“I don’ know. I wasn’t going to take a chance.” Not now. Not after all this time.

“You hate what I am – what I did to her. I get that.” Josef swallowed. “Believe me, it’s nothing new. Blood thirsty? That goes with the territory. But, demon is a relative term. My code of honor is older than most countries. Revenge is always on the table. But, I don’t deal in forgiveness – not for myself or anyone else. You make a decision and you live with the consequences – or you die with ‘em.”

“Then…” the old man whispered, “…then, why did you bring me here?” Each word he traded for another breath, the discarded oxygen mask now more effort than it was worth.

Josef moved deliberately back around the wheelchair to stand near the head of the bed. He slid his fingers under Sarah’s and lifted her hand, caressing the fair skin with his thumb. He took Whitley’s trembling right hand from the arm of the chair drawing it up onto the edge of the bed, palm up, and gently laid Sarah’s hand on top of it. “For this,” Josef answered. The old man pressed his fingers around his daughter’s and closed his eyes, mustering his last bit of strength to lean forward and let his withered cheek rest on her soft skin.

Josef let his hand drop to Whitley’s shoulder, as though he were trying to absolve the man of his torment. “I don’t know if she’ll ever wake up –I can’t even tell you what would happen if she did. All I can do is give you my word – for as long as I walk this earth, I’ll take care of her – and love her.” He tightened his grip on the old man’s shoulder. “I made her a promise the night we were bound together. Nothing – will change that.”

He let the moments pass, unanswered. John Whitley’s body relaxed under his touch and Josef witnessed humanity run its course, as he had more times that he could count. Almost a century of hard fought struggle, both triumph and regret, boiled down to a few seconds of resolution – and he wondered fleetingly if he should pity or envy the man.

“I can’t give her back,” he said, releasing his grip on a man finally at peace, a father whose final breath kissed his daughter’s hand goodbye. “But, for her sake, I can give you the one thing that I can never have.

“You know, revenge is like blood – it gets a hold on you. It can feed a part of you that’s starving – give you just enough edge to keep going. And it can destroy you, if you let it.” He raised his eyes to Sarah. “But then, so can love. And every damned day you make a choice – what part of yourself are you going to feed and what part are you going to let go?

“When you get right down to it, it doesn’t matter. No matter how long you live, vampires don’t get closure.”

Three blocks away the last train of the night rumbled out of the station beneath the frozen street, and the city, for a moment, was silent.

[francis]

Oh, Lilly. That's so great. The rhythm of the city, and the faltering life of Whitley, and Josef's way of giving the old man closure, and not having any himself. So sad, so true.
I will probably have to read it again and comment properly when I'm not out of myself with medication.

[NocturneInCMoll]

WOW. That was absolutely beautiful, Lilly. My heart broke.

I so wish we'd gotten to see that scene. So many extra layers to Josef.

[eris]

That's about all I can think of right now.

(Though I will pick out one line)

She had shared three hundred and fifty days out of three hundred and fifty years – and still she held his heart.

Nice.

[redwinter101]

I adore this, Lilly - it has a quiet but stark beauty. Two old men, fighting their final battle over the woman who was most important to both of them. They both have such complex motivations, hidden behind the seeming simplicity of revenge - Josef for the attack on him; Whitley for the presumed-death of his daughter. But they had known, and liked, each other once and I get the sense that for Josef this is a long-sought catharsis.

Just as Whitley didn't want to go to his death without his revenge, Josef didn't want one more crime unjustly ascribed to him by a man he had respected and whom Sarah had loved.

For Whitley, there is more than revenge for the loss of his daughter - there is anger and regret for his presumed misjudgement of the man he had hoped might be his son-in-law some day. He had thought Josef had possibilities and that loss is part of what drove his vengeance too.

Josef Kostan had waited long enough.

Oh indeed he had. Without Whitley's act, he would have let the man die - but that gave him the opening he had long hoped for - to right a wrong and scrub one stain from his conscience.

Eleven steps to the point of no return.

That is so chilling and conjures an image of Josef's desperation at every thought (every day) of that final, hopeful journey with Sarah.

“Do men like us ever change, John?”

Oh I loved this. The most significant expression of intimacy that Josef can make - but to Whitley, a mortal insult.

She could have been anything...” His voice dropped to a whisper, as if uttering a prayer, “… everything.”

Sob.

“When you get right down to it, it doesn’t matter. No matter how long you live, vampires don’t get closure.”

Three blocks away the last train of the night rumbled out of the station beneath the frozen street, and the city, for a moment, was silent.

And that is just a beautiful, sad ending - a lovely mixture of hopeful and hopeless, with a sense of permanence that is just so Josef.

This really was a treat.

Red

[cassysj]

Lilly you killed me with the letter from her mother. Just killed me.

That was so deep, rich and Josef.

I agree with Eris

She had shared three hundred and fifty days out of three hundred and fifty years – and still she held his heart.

That was very powerful.

[allegrita]

Lilly-- oh, Lilly.

I can't respond with any kind of sense right now, but I just want to let you know how utterly moved I am by this story. I'll be back to comment more when I've had a chance to process it...and read it 3 or 4 more times.

[AggieVamp]

WOW...that was fabulous Lilly. And my heart hurts that we didn't get to see that scene...it would have been so good!

Karen

[Josefismysire]

Wow. I am simply speechless. This is awe-inspiring. Breathtakingly Beautiful.

I'd like to choose a favorite passage, but I'd have to choose it all. Every word is golden.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

[RangerCM]

Oh my goodness! That letter! It hadn't even occurred to me that her mother assumed she was "alive" and happy with Charles all this time. That is just so sad! Had to have just killed Josef all over again. OK, got to take a break and go sob for a while.

[coco]

Lilly that was just WOW. Beautifully done.

I would have just adored seeing that scene on screen.

She was – as she had been for half a century – just Sarah. She had shared three hundred and fifty days out of three hundred and fifty years – and still she held his heart.

So haunting.

Wonderful Lilly

[Lilly]

Wow -- thank you all! I've been struggling with writer's block for quite a while now, but I must say ... I feel better.


francis - thanks for your kind words. I'm glad that the sense of rhythm in life and death came through for you.


Julie - thank you. Josef has so many layers, but I believe that when he is in that room, the masks fall away and we see a part of him that is never shown anywhere else. In my mind, he was different with Sarah and she still has that effect on him.


Eris - sometimes words aren't necessary. Josef only had about a year with Sarah -- which is more happiness than many people find -- but compared to his long life, it seems like so little. I hoped to contrast that with the three-quarter-century marriage the Whitleys had. They obviously dealt with tragedy, but they always had one another.


Thank you so much, Red. I'm not sure Josef ever liked John Whitley, but I think he respected the man on some level. He probably saw something in Whitley that he could relate to.
As for the eleven steps, Josef had such high hopes the first time he carried someone up that approach. There is a bitter irony there, I hope, in him now carrying Whitley across that same threshhold knowing that he would die beyond that door.

“Do men like us ever change, John?”

Oh I loved this. The most significant expression of intimacy that Josef can make - but to Whitley, a mortal insult.

Exactly.


Carol - for some reason, I just knew Sarah’s mother. I wanted to show that she had made peace and achieved her own closure long ago – by giving her daughter her blessing.


Alle – thank you for reading – read it as much as you like. I look forward to hearing your insights.


Karen, JIMS, and Ranger – thank you all for your comments. Your very kind words mean so much to me. What a wonderful end to my writer’s block!

[Lilly]

Lilly that was just WOW. Beautifully done.

I would have just adored seeing that scene on screen.

Thank you so much, coco! Unlike Ron and Trevor's 30-second powerhouse, I'm afraid mine would have taken half an episode.

[wpgrace]

Hmmm... I know that when you spoke of the masters you meant Trevor and Ron... but for me, it's you. You set a scene and then bring it to life like no other. I can visualize every moment, a play by play, of this, as the rest of your pieces. Your dialogue is so spot- on it's like you stole it from real life, as if it's some real conversation you took part in... and the immediacy of your writing makes me feel like I'm taking part in it now.

And I understand in your nobility that you want us to know you're not the only one who thought of this tet a tet... but I didn't imagine it... and frankly Trevor and Ron could not have done it better. Except they'd've had the actual actors for theirs. That's the unfair part. I'd love to see Jason and Sir Ian do this. It would be a tear-jerker!!!

[Lilly]

Oh, grace ..... Now I'm a mess. I think my writer's block must be back, because I can't find the words to respond to your comment. Just -- thank you.