Hi all. Well, I'm totally new to fan-fic! I wrote this very short 'mood' piece straight after the hug scene in 6x06 ("Fire and Brimstone"), and have been trying to pluck up the courage to post it ever since… It's not really fan-fic, strictly speaking – I wasn't inventive enough to come up with a scenario of my own! Instead, it's just a description of the scene. I'm a bit worried this isn't allowed - I sent a query to the website people, but they haven't responded... But I will remove it if it breaks any rules. (Also, do I have to make a disclaimer that I don't own The Mentalist or mentions of The Tyger by Blake here? Just in case: I don't own The Mentalist or characters or any Blake poetry…) Anyway, I was blown away by the beauty of the setting in the scene, so I tried to play around with abstract impressions created by the visuals, and concentrated on vocabulary that reflects the series' themes of light, dark, symbolic colour (in which I also attempt to allude to the explosion) and a relationship that is built around what is not said. I suppose I'm more interested in what a certain environment can reflect or evoke, so there's no structure or narrative as such, just glimpses. I welcome critiques, but I'm quite scared about posting something for all to see (being quite private), so please be gentle with me! (Still trying to develop a thicker skin; still failing...) Ok, here goes... ;)
Silence is Golden
A golden sunlit silence infuses the car with gentle warmth and the muted, weighted chill of something unspoken. They could have been travelling anywhere, anyplace, like so often before, but this time there is nothing except the quiet and the light. He knows that she is regarding him, trying, perhaps, to read him, but he does not respond. He does not look and soon she turns away. Outside, the breeze lifts; the sky blushes, reddens, flares into a rich red-blond blaze.
The car stops and he walks swiftly away. It is a call, a siren song, and she has followed. He knew she would. He recalls another time like this, another sunset, another siren. Staring out at the sea, red sails in the sunset, the promise of freedom out on the open water. Back then they too had stood in stillness, each constrained and trapped, standing together but apart on a pale cold beach. And now there is a different woman standing beside him in the wind, looking out over the bluffs, waiting for the silence to be broken.
She does not reply. She is held back by something else deep and unvoiced. But he can see it in the large, clear eyes turned upward to his; eyes that are kindling with tears and glowing soft green in the mellow radiance.
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of her eyes?
But there is no fire in the translucent gaze that so delicately holds fast to his. Green pools of gentle liquid light to put out the cold metallic flame of his resolve. She is suffused in gilded light, a dark-haired angel, a glimpse of clarity in the crimson darkness that will soon blacken to ash.
The yellow fire has settled quietly over them as they break apart, and the waves wash distantly on the shore. The open space before them, between them, those distant deeps and skies, is too vast, too truthful, to fill with any more words.
But there is still a lie that must be told. He knows she will believe; she is a woman of faith. Caught in the wind, it rides free on the air, born of a need to be released from the hushed happiness of her eyes and the steady brightness of her being. And after that there is nothing left to say. He walks swiftly away, and, this time, he looks.
The car rumbles to life on the windswept cliff. It breaks the sunlit silence that has once again descended and, as the wind picks up and the flaxen fire smoulders into dusk, it shatters the golden spell.