AnCatKatie
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
This chapter was incredibly fun to write. I had 'Angels Too Tied To The Ground' in my mind for a while, and it worked well. I also just got my Replacements CD! 
Great music to write to. And I also got the Even Better Than The Real Thing CD.
Cath's going to sing a little bit later, too.
I wrote a big long chapter but decided separating it was best. More suspenseful lack of Paul Hewson. Where the hell can he be?
And someone should count how many times I say 'edgy' when Edge is in the story, or 'he sat on the edge' or 'the edge of Edge's...'; 'he edged around'...heehee.
***
It was still only late afternoon. The sun hadn’t yet sunk beneath the horizon, but reached in through the window of the car as they reached Glasnevin. Something about the passage of time, the burning sun, and the stillness down Cedarwood Road sent a sudden twinge of warning through Cath. Time moved slowly, frozen, as she looked out the window.
Her first thought was that it was Paul, and she clutched at the window, preparing to roll it down and shout hello to him, but her fingers froze and her heartbeat stilled. Icy panic dripped through her.
“Edge,” she said as calmly as she could.
“Yes, Cath?” He still looked where he was driving, until she motioned for him to slow down—but no, he should speed up. Her heart clenched with her fists: she wanted to go so fast they wouldn’t be seen…but that would catch his eye, too.
Then Edge looked over. A dark figure walked down the street. There weren’t many people out at this time of day, and certainly not pacing as if they were searching for someone.
“Isaac,” she said, throat constricting and squeezing the name out.
Then she slammed her foot down, forgetting she wasn’t in the driver’s seat, and made a frustrated noise when she realized they were not picking up speed.
“Fuck,” Edge was saying frozenly. “What should we do—“
“GO, EDGE!” she yelled, and pushed down on his leg to increase the speed. Somehow they made it to the house and bolted through the door without crashing into anything.
The click of the door closing made a final sound in the emptiness. They both looked inside, not out the window, as if willing the thought away would ward Isaac away.
“Paul’s still not back,” Cath stated into the emptiness, and sat down on the couch, looking lost, wrapping her arms around herself. Edge felt a sudden longing rise within him, but he would not replace those arms.
“What was that, earlier?” Edge asked. “What you felt at the beach?” Not, what did you feel for me. He obviously referred to the pain she had been in.
“I’m not sure. It stopped.”
“D’you think you might be going into labor, then?”
“God, I don’t know. The baby might have kicked really hard or something.” She rolled her eyes. “Does it look like I’m going into labor?”
“Well, you might be,” he said seriously. “We can’t be sure.”
"I can.
“Bono should be here,” Cath whispered.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She shook her head and eased back on the couch, lying down lengthwise. “You’re not the father of my child, Edge. Bono has no right to run off.” She laid her head down hard onto her arms crossed behind it, and sighed, turning over. The baby was restless, movements like little sparks jolting her awake.
They stayed there for a long while, not daring to move or speak for fear of being found by Isaac. The shadows lengthened, the day wore on, the silence spun between them in unspoken words and half-whispered thoughts.
“Do you mind if I go to the studio?” Edge asked. “Bon could be there. We didn’t think of checking.”
She nodded. “I’ll go with you.” There was too much fear, too much waiting here, alternately; with Paul gone, everything had suddenly become uncertain. And she could hear Isaac’s footsteps ghostly in her mind.
That man’s timing was eerie. Cath shivered, and grabbed her coat.
Cath had gained a sort of brittle hardness in her eyes that had shuttered them tight when he looked at her. Right now it had slipped away, and with it, she thought she slipped away as well, something unnamed, unknown, unanchored to the world. Some intrinsic deep part of her being was connected to Paul, and floating free and confused with his absence. She followed Edge, looked back for an instant, the light freezing across the room and into her veins and eyes, the dust motes stilling, the coffee perched at the end of the table forever about to spill over. Her breath caught in her throat; she had a sudden irrational thought that time would stop, and still he would not be back.
Or he would return to an empty house, still and timeless and forgotten without her, and assume the worst. She had a sudden image of Paul, standing in the middle of the doorway, the late afternoon sun changing to evening and he remaining motionless, hands open and then clenching like the expression on his face as he stared forward and didn’t know what to think. That image stayed with her, beneath the other thoughts in her mind, as an odd sort of underwater eddy rippled through her stomach, bringing her back to the present.
She brought a hand to her stomach as she stepped out the door, as if to tell the baby to stop: now was not the time. Edge saw her white fingers and caught them in his hands, rubbing warmth into them vigorously before sliding behind the wheel.
The drive was almost too easy, the car gliding along with no hint of anyone sinister on the street. Cath breathed out in relief when they entered the studio: it was warm and sort of muffled and hazy, the air with a calming heaviness to it. No-one had been here for days. It had a sort of safety to it. She spotted a telltale shape and walked over to it while Edge clambered upstairs calling Paul’s name. When he came back down Cath was sitting on the bench of the piano and poking various keys, smiling evilly.
“Blasphemy!” Edge cried in mock horror. “That song is not meant for piano!”
“I definitely did not learn to play one of these,” she laughed. He made a distraught face and pushed her hand away from the keyboard, covering it briefly before settling his own fingers lightly over the keys and poking at one himself—the wrong way; he gave a smile to her—thoughtfully. The clear sound rang out and traveled along his thoughts.
“I haven’t used this much,” Edge commented. “Just once, and that song seems different than the ones on ‘Boy’…Paul may not be ready for it yet…” His voice grew quieter and drifted away entirely, replaced by a look of concentration. Edge stared at his hands, then up.
It’s a song for another time, he might have said.
She was another time, a transient future.
He still had that strange winter feeling about her, the one that had not faded in all the times he had been with her to the hospital. He knew a little more than he was letting on.
Cath’s waiting expression—she was silent, letting the music continue—filled his eyes before he closed them and breathed in, letting everything fall away and then return, the basic sense of feeling returning to his fingers and his mind and flowing between the two. He struck another key, and another, in an odd rhythm asynchronous with the steady pattern of post-punk he swept out of his mind for this. And the notes, too, fell out of his mind, replaced with water: in sound, he walked along the ocean’s edge, the wind pushing behind his back, something hazy on the horizon, and looked up to see Cath standing staring out.
They weren’t lyrics, more like words whispered, thoughts, images half-forgotten.
“What is it that keeps me back from you
What is it when I just can't get through
What is it when we've nothing left to do
But savor the mess that we tried…”
He felt Cath’s hand on his back briefly, and that strength came to him. He sang other lyrics that he forgot afterward, and after the chorus died from his lips and he opened his eyes, the world pouring back into his senses.
Cath echoed the refrain of the chorus in an edgy, lilting voice, “Angels too tied to the ground…” then gave a little half-smile and swung her legs up onto the bench, her side pressing warmly against his as she moved her fingers over the keys quickly. The sound her fingers made on the piano was different than his; it changed, soft at first, then clear and intense, and lingered in the back of his mind. She had remembered what note came from what key already; he gave an appreciative nod.
“No, perhaps that one is for later,” she said at last thoughtfully, sitting back, the last note still hammering through Edge’s mind. What was it about this girl?
“Why do I have the feeling if I turn and look away for a moment, this band’s going to sound completely different?” she asked him.
“Life,” he said. She laughed, “That’s a pretty large statement.” He continued, nodding, “It changes us.
“And, of course, Bono will want it to stay the same,” she said amusedly.
“He’s getting more open to change. I hope, at least. But no,” he sighed, “he’d probably like us to stay punk.”
“Well, you’re not very punk to begin with.” She ruffled his hair, and despite himself, though he had been nearly there and back with this girl, he blushed slightly. “You, in a punk band? Not likely.”
She also had the feeling that the next one would be sadder than ‘Boy’, but did not say so. She frowned down at her stomach.
“Nothing’s happening yet?” Edge asked, concerned.
“No…” She sighed; he had reminded her. “Paul,” she stated, that statement containing everything else they had said about the boy—namely, he was still probably not back.
And with that, and the sudden space in between them, and the thud of her feet on the floor as she jumped a small jump down from the piano bench, the little searching part of Edge that had reached out to Cath retracted, the wistfulness squashed down. He shut the door closed to the studio a little too harshly, shutting a door as well on any extraneous feeling he should not be having.
Edge looked up into the cloud-whitened sky, decision keen within him for a moment. He would keep himself completely away from Cath, only there in that part of mind and body that did not love her and make mistakes. He could do this. He could.
Back in the house, Cath was restless. She went upstairs, to Edge’s confusion, and came back with something dark in her hand and a sheet of blank paper against what Edge suspected was something Bono had scribbled lyrics in. Edge got up to look more closely and ask what it was, but she shoved him back down again.
“Sit still!” She set another drawing underneath the blank paper down against the side of the chair she sat on: Edge caught a glimpse of Paul Hewson with a very Paul Hewson look about him, although he couldn’t be sure from this angle.
He sighed, fidgeted for a moment, then said “okay,” and fell into concentrated stillness. He had promised to himself and the world in general—God, perhaps—but his gaze still burned across hers.
Cath eventually stopped drawing. She had bent her head over the paper and set the charcoal aside, and Edge unfolded his stiff body, walking over—Cath had fallen asleep. He looked at the drawing, amused at his obvious posed stillness, and—something about his expression. Cath had left the background indistinct, and the area around the feet; his face was most distinct. Edge felt suddenly terrible that even his expression showed so much, and looked away—another paper tucked under it caught his attention; he lifted Cath’s head gently and slipped the other paper out. A figure stood at the edge of what could be a horizon, could be ocean or land or a dream landscape. She had started to put in details to the figure, but erased them—it looked faintly like her, but perhaps not. And that was the picture that stayed in Edge’s mind.
He picked her up, relieved he could store away any of the wrong thoughts away and keep them from the front of his mind, climbed the stairs and set her upon the bed. When the sun went down, he got his car again, made sure the door to the house was locked, and went out searching for Paul again. His search fruitless, he came to his own house and sat awake for long hours. His parents or his brother attempted to talk to him a couple times; he shook his head and said he was busy, although when they looked in, he was not writing notes or words of music anywhere, or even touching the guitar, but with his eyes closed, lost in thought.
Great music to write to. And I also got the Even Better Than The Real Thing CD.Cath's going to sing a little bit later, too.
I wrote a big long chapter but decided separating it was best. More suspenseful lack of Paul Hewson. Where the hell can he be?
And someone should count how many times I say 'edgy' when Edge is in the story, or 'he sat on the edge' or 'the edge of Edge's...'; 'he edged around'...heehee.
***
It was still only late afternoon. The sun hadn’t yet sunk beneath the horizon, but reached in through the window of the car as they reached Glasnevin. Something about the passage of time, the burning sun, and the stillness down Cedarwood Road sent a sudden twinge of warning through Cath. Time moved slowly, frozen, as she looked out the window.
Her first thought was that it was Paul, and she clutched at the window, preparing to roll it down and shout hello to him, but her fingers froze and her heartbeat stilled. Icy panic dripped through her.
“Edge,” she said as calmly as she could.
“Yes, Cath?” He still looked where he was driving, until she motioned for him to slow down—but no, he should speed up. Her heart clenched with her fists: she wanted to go so fast they wouldn’t be seen…but that would catch his eye, too.
Then Edge looked over. A dark figure walked down the street. There weren’t many people out at this time of day, and certainly not pacing as if they were searching for someone.
“Isaac,” she said, throat constricting and squeezing the name out.
Then she slammed her foot down, forgetting she wasn’t in the driver’s seat, and made a frustrated noise when she realized they were not picking up speed.
“Fuck,” Edge was saying frozenly. “What should we do—“
“GO, EDGE!” she yelled, and pushed down on his leg to increase the speed. Somehow they made it to the house and bolted through the door without crashing into anything.
The click of the door closing made a final sound in the emptiness. They both looked inside, not out the window, as if willing the thought away would ward Isaac away.
“Paul’s still not back,” Cath stated into the emptiness, and sat down on the couch, looking lost, wrapping her arms around herself. Edge felt a sudden longing rise within him, but he would not replace those arms.
“What was that, earlier?” Edge asked. “What you felt at the beach?” Not, what did you feel for me. He obviously referred to the pain she had been in.
“I’m not sure. It stopped.”
“D’you think you might be going into labor, then?”
“God, I don’t know. The baby might have kicked really hard or something.” She rolled her eyes. “Does it look like I’m going into labor?”
“Well, you might be,” he said seriously. “We can’t be sure.”
"I can.
“Bono should be here,” Cath whispered.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She shook her head and eased back on the couch, lying down lengthwise. “You’re not the father of my child, Edge. Bono has no right to run off.” She laid her head down hard onto her arms crossed behind it, and sighed, turning over. The baby was restless, movements like little sparks jolting her awake.
They stayed there for a long while, not daring to move or speak for fear of being found by Isaac. The shadows lengthened, the day wore on, the silence spun between them in unspoken words and half-whispered thoughts.
“Do you mind if I go to the studio?” Edge asked. “Bon could be there. We didn’t think of checking.”
She nodded. “I’ll go with you.” There was too much fear, too much waiting here, alternately; with Paul gone, everything had suddenly become uncertain. And she could hear Isaac’s footsteps ghostly in her mind.
That man’s timing was eerie. Cath shivered, and grabbed her coat.
Cath had gained a sort of brittle hardness in her eyes that had shuttered them tight when he looked at her. Right now it had slipped away, and with it, she thought she slipped away as well, something unnamed, unknown, unanchored to the world. Some intrinsic deep part of her being was connected to Paul, and floating free and confused with his absence. She followed Edge, looked back for an instant, the light freezing across the room and into her veins and eyes, the dust motes stilling, the coffee perched at the end of the table forever about to spill over. Her breath caught in her throat; she had a sudden irrational thought that time would stop, and still he would not be back.
Or he would return to an empty house, still and timeless and forgotten without her, and assume the worst. She had a sudden image of Paul, standing in the middle of the doorway, the late afternoon sun changing to evening and he remaining motionless, hands open and then clenching like the expression on his face as he stared forward and didn’t know what to think. That image stayed with her, beneath the other thoughts in her mind, as an odd sort of underwater eddy rippled through her stomach, bringing her back to the present.
She brought a hand to her stomach as she stepped out the door, as if to tell the baby to stop: now was not the time. Edge saw her white fingers and caught them in his hands, rubbing warmth into them vigorously before sliding behind the wheel.
The drive was almost too easy, the car gliding along with no hint of anyone sinister on the street. Cath breathed out in relief when they entered the studio: it was warm and sort of muffled and hazy, the air with a calming heaviness to it. No-one had been here for days. It had a sort of safety to it. She spotted a telltale shape and walked over to it while Edge clambered upstairs calling Paul’s name. When he came back down Cath was sitting on the bench of the piano and poking various keys, smiling evilly.
“Blasphemy!” Edge cried in mock horror. “That song is not meant for piano!”
“I definitely did not learn to play one of these,” she laughed. He made a distraught face and pushed her hand away from the keyboard, covering it briefly before settling his own fingers lightly over the keys and poking at one himself—the wrong way; he gave a smile to her—thoughtfully. The clear sound rang out and traveled along his thoughts.
“I haven’t used this much,” Edge commented. “Just once, and that song seems different than the ones on ‘Boy’…Paul may not be ready for it yet…” His voice grew quieter and drifted away entirely, replaced by a look of concentration. Edge stared at his hands, then up.
It’s a song for another time, he might have said.
She was another time, a transient future.
He still had that strange winter feeling about her, the one that had not faded in all the times he had been with her to the hospital. He knew a little more than he was letting on.
Cath’s waiting expression—she was silent, letting the music continue—filled his eyes before he closed them and breathed in, letting everything fall away and then return, the basic sense of feeling returning to his fingers and his mind and flowing between the two. He struck another key, and another, in an odd rhythm asynchronous with the steady pattern of post-punk he swept out of his mind for this. And the notes, too, fell out of his mind, replaced with water: in sound, he walked along the ocean’s edge, the wind pushing behind his back, something hazy on the horizon, and looked up to see Cath standing staring out.
They weren’t lyrics, more like words whispered, thoughts, images half-forgotten.
“What is it that keeps me back from you
What is it when I just can't get through
What is it when we've nothing left to do
But savor the mess that we tried…”
He felt Cath’s hand on his back briefly, and that strength came to him. He sang other lyrics that he forgot afterward, and after the chorus died from his lips and he opened his eyes, the world pouring back into his senses.
Cath echoed the refrain of the chorus in an edgy, lilting voice, “Angels too tied to the ground…” then gave a little half-smile and swung her legs up onto the bench, her side pressing warmly against his as she moved her fingers over the keys quickly. The sound her fingers made on the piano was different than his; it changed, soft at first, then clear and intense, and lingered in the back of his mind. She had remembered what note came from what key already; he gave an appreciative nod.
“No, perhaps that one is for later,” she said at last thoughtfully, sitting back, the last note still hammering through Edge’s mind. What was it about this girl?
“Why do I have the feeling if I turn and look away for a moment, this band’s going to sound completely different?” she asked him.
“Life,” he said. She laughed, “That’s a pretty large statement.” He continued, nodding, “It changes us.
“And, of course, Bono will want it to stay the same,” she said amusedly.
“He’s getting more open to change. I hope, at least. But no,” he sighed, “he’d probably like us to stay punk.”
“Well, you’re not very punk to begin with.” She ruffled his hair, and despite himself, though he had been nearly there and back with this girl, he blushed slightly. “You, in a punk band? Not likely.”
She also had the feeling that the next one would be sadder than ‘Boy’, but did not say so. She frowned down at her stomach.
“Nothing’s happening yet?” Edge asked, concerned.
“No…” She sighed; he had reminded her. “Paul,” she stated, that statement containing everything else they had said about the boy—namely, he was still probably not back.
And with that, and the sudden space in between them, and the thud of her feet on the floor as she jumped a small jump down from the piano bench, the little searching part of Edge that had reached out to Cath retracted, the wistfulness squashed down. He shut the door closed to the studio a little too harshly, shutting a door as well on any extraneous feeling he should not be having.
Edge looked up into the cloud-whitened sky, decision keen within him for a moment. He would keep himself completely away from Cath, only there in that part of mind and body that did not love her and make mistakes. He could do this. He could.
Back in the house, Cath was restless. She went upstairs, to Edge’s confusion, and came back with something dark in her hand and a sheet of blank paper against what Edge suspected was something Bono had scribbled lyrics in. Edge got up to look more closely and ask what it was, but she shoved him back down again.
“Sit still!” She set another drawing underneath the blank paper down against the side of the chair she sat on: Edge caught a glimpse of Paul Hewson with a very Paul Hewson look about him, although he couldn’t be sure from this angle.
He sighed, fidgeted for a moment, then said “okay,” and fell into concentrated stillness. He had promised to himself and the world in general—God, perhaps—but his gaze still burned across hers.
Cath eventually stopped drawing. She had bent her head over the paper and set the charcoal aside, and Edge unfolded his stiff body, walking over—Cath had fallen asleep. He looked at the drawing, amused at his obvious posed stillness, and—something about his expression. Cath had left the background indistinct, and the area around the feet; his face was most distinct. Edge felt suddenly terrible that even his expression showed so much, and looked away—another paper tucked under it caught his attention; he lifted Cath’s head gently and slipped the other paper out. A figure stood at the edge of what could be a horizon, could be ocean or land or a dream landscape. She had started to put in details to the figure, but erased them—it looked faintly like her, but perhaps not. And that was the picture that stayed in Edge’s mind.
He picked her up, relieved he could store away any of the wrong thoughts away and keep them from the front of his mind, climbed the stairs and set her upon the bed. When the sun went down, he got his car again, made sure the door to the house was locked, and went out searching for Paul again. His search fruitless, he came to his own house and sat awake for long hours. His parents or his brother attempted to talk to him a couple times; he shook his head and said he was busy, although when they looked in, he was not writing notes or words of music anywhere, or even touching the guitar, but with his eyes closed, lost in thought.
Um...it totally should have happened. 
I kid, I kid! I love Cath and Bono together! Speaking of Bono...WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?
You're just gonna have to wait
