AnCatKatie
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
I've started a new fic. It's following both Bono and Ali, and Larry and someone else, in 1976 maybe up till 1978. The prologue connects between it and a story I might write after that takes place in Joshua Tree era, 1986 (3 years after the epilogue of An Cat Dubh).
I'm excited! Whee!
***
The stars shimmered and wavered in an underwater clarity brilliant over the desert just beginning to be cooled of the sun’s embrace. The sky was still fiery, the stars icily rooted inside, beginning to blink into existence. A figure stood on the edge of the landscape, hands open, the wind open at his back and the air light like a doorway to some other time. It was warm; he was barefoot. He brushed his hair away from his face; the last light of the sun hit his eyes hard.
Another little figure ran, closer than the edge of the horizon. Ciarán was eight now. There was that inward tug coming from his direction, happiness and the faint worry always for his child. Another string of attachment stretching like the long cool shadows and reaching Ali, somewhere in the house. Paul Hewson let the night cool around him, sitting down lazily and looking up at the stars, words falling from and entering his mind, lyrics and little eddying images of the past.
He was aware that someone came and sat beside him. Companiably, like he and Ali had been for long while, but in this case the companionship of long years and various hardship. Through Larry, Paul was comfortable around Eve, and through him, she was comfortable around Paul. He didn’t look up as she approached, but let her presence trail over his peripheral vision like cooled starlight. She brought her arms up around her knees, her white-blonde hair slipping past her back to the ground.
“He’s adorable,” she commented.
“Lar?” Bono made a face. “I suppose, to women, but he can be a pain—“
“Ciarán,” Eve corrected his assumption.
Oh. Yes, he was, and Bono couldn’t keep the little fellow out of his sight.
“Looks nothing like Ali,” she frowned.
He laughed quietly. When he looked over to her, the desert plated his eyes thinly. “He’s not Ali’s.
It’s a long story,” he ended, and a brief silence stretched over the sky and the land, paused by the humming sort of energy that came before rainfall. They should all come inside soon, away from the storm’s wrath.
Sometimes, away from the bustle of the cities, in this intense sort of alone place, Bono forgot there had been any past in his life that had not been happy. The sun and the rain and the wind shivering over the desert had washed it slowly away like Ali’s love had years before.
He realized that silence was Eve waiting, not stopping him from speaking.
“Ciarán’s mother and I were almost married, before she died. Some sort of infection and fever, right after our son was born. I thought he had died as well before I saw him in Red Rocks in ’83. By then, Ali and I had gotten married and were inseparable, almost out of necessity; Cath’s death tore a huge hole in me. And we’ve been looking after the little fellow since then.” He smiled. “I keep finding excuses to come back.”
Besides that this country, as others did in different ways, had woven a strange spell into the fiber of his being. He hated the politics, the needless wars. He had been in El Salvador the year before and seen people split apart from relatives, from each other and their own bodies, seen countless deaths and bullets clear the air over his head, all in the name of America. But that made the quieter part of him ache even more for the peaceful side of America, the one that disappeared into myth except where the people vanished into land and sky and the barest, gritty roots and essence of beings.
Eve tilted her head. “I thought you’d always been with Ali.”
“Well, in a way, and in a way I’ll always be with Cath…” He smiled. “Love transforms, expands. It’s impossible to capture in lyric…sometimes I forget about it, and then I realize it’s been with me all along…”
“So much is different,” she said, fingering the ring on her thumb. “So much the same,” more softly.
He shivered. Something about the questions she asked stripped away his years, brought him hard into the past, and he was eighteen again, Larry’s mother had just died, and sent echoes of his own mother’s death that made he and Ali collide and fall apart…
I'm excited! Whee!
***
Prologue
1986
1986
The stars shimmered and wavered in an underwater clarity brilliant over the desert just beginning to be cooled of the sun’s embrace. The sky was still fiery, the stars icily rooted inside, beginning to blink into existence. A figure stood on the edge of the landscape, hands open, the wind open at his back and the air light like a doorway to some other time. It was warm; he was barefoot. He brushed his hair away from his face; the last light of the sun hit his eyes hard.
Another little figure ran, closer than the edge of the horizon. Ciarán was eight now. There was that inward tug coming from his direction, happiness and the faint worry always for his child. Another string of attachment stretching like the long cool shadows and reaching Ali, somewhere in the house. Paul Hewson let the night cool around him, sitting down lazily and looking up at the stars, words falling from and entering his mind, lyrics and little eddying images of the past.
He was aware that someone came and sat beside him. Companiably, like he and Ali had been for long while, but in this case the companionship of long years and various hardship. Through Larry, Paul was comfortable around Eve, and through him, she was comfortable around Paul. He didn’t look up as she approached, but let her presence trail over his peripheral vision like cooled starlight. She brought her arms up around her knees, her white-blonde hair slipping past her back to the ground.
“He’s adorable,” she commented.
“Lar?” Bono made a face. “I suppose, to women, but he can be a pain—“
“Ciarán,” Eve corrected his assumption.
Oh. Yes, he was, and Bono couldn’t keep the little fellow out of his sight.
“Looks nothing like Ali,” she frowned.
He laughed quietly. When he looked over to her, the desert plated his eyes thinly. “He’s not Ali’s.
It’s a long story,” he ended, and a brief silence stretched over the sky and the land, paused by the humming sort of energy that came before rainfall. They should all come inside soon, away from the storm’s wrath.
Sometimes, away from the bustle of the cities, in this intense sort of alone place, Bono forgot there had been any past in his life that had not been happy. The sun and the rain and the wind shivering over the desert had washed it slowly away like Ali’s love had years before.
He realized that silence was Eve waiting, not stopping him from speaking.
“Ciarán’s mother and I were almost married, before she died. Some sort of infection and fever, right after our son was born. I thought he had died as well before I saw him in Red Rocks in ’83. By then, Ali and I had gotten married and were inseparable, almost out of necessity; Cath’s death tore a huge hole in me. And we’ve been looking after the little fellow since then.” He smiled. “I keep finding excuses to come back.”
Besides that this country, as others did in different ways, had woven a strange spell into the fiber of his being. He hated the politics, the needless wars. He had been in El Salvador the year before and seen people split apart from relatives, from each other and their own bodies, seen countless deaths and bullets clear the air over his head, all in the name of America. But that made the quieter part of him ache even more for the peaceful side of America, the one that disappeared into myth except where the people vanished into land and sky and the barest, gritty roots and essence of beings.
Eve tilted her head. “I thought you’d always been with Ali.”
“Well, in a way, and in a way I’ll always be with Cath…” He smiled. “Love transforms, expands. It’s impossible to capture in lyric…sometimes I forget about it, and then I realize it’s been with me all along…”
“So much is different,” she said, fingering the ring on her thumb. “So much the same,” more softly.
He shivered. Something about the questions she asked stripped away his years, brought him hard into the past, and he was eighteen again, Larry’s mother had just died, and sent echoes of his own mother’s death that made he and Ali collide and fall apart…
I like it. (Why must you be such a good writer?!) JT era would be very nice 
. I was surprised you decided to stick with this storyline though...
