Burning Bright

Burning Bright
FEEDBACK DESIRED AND APPRECIATED (non-flaming yet critical reviews are ALWAYS welcome, no matter who you are…;) )
Second part of the Fahrenheit 451/LOTR crossover
Characters: F-451: Clarisse, Montag; LOTR: Erestor, Glorfindel…
Rating: PG-13, later chapter NC-17…
Betas: AMY –pounce- and KATH –glomp- THANKS!!!
Warnings: Violence against BOOKS, reference to suicide, graphic sex later.
Disclaimer: this is so not mine…Tolkien, Bradbury, and Queens of the Stone Age own everything.
Summary: Twisted plot bunny came to me as I was reading the Ray Bradbury story for the third time…
// Are quotes from Fahrenheit 451 and ROTK. //
The song he hears in his mind is from the featured song “Mosquito Song”.
Also, I just noticed, though I have read it few times now…:P, that the title of this fic is the same as Bradbury’s foreword to the book. So I give him some credit for the inspiration for the title, though it was unintentional…thanks.

AN:// Explanation of a couple events in the Bradbury book for purposes of understanding this part.

Mildred tried to kill herself, as in the quote about moonstones (ie sleeping pills). After her ‘death’ Montag really re-evaluates their relationship, or lack thereof and doesn’t really consider her his wife anymore…

Clarisse is (in the book) killed by speeding teens…I will deal with that in a later chapter…

Beatty, his fire-captain, knows that Montag is hoarding books, and has paid a ‘friendly visit’ on him. However, it is a set up. But you don’t know this till after the chapter I am including in this part.

The family are people from a ‘tv’ show that appears on three of the walls of their parlour, and Mildred can interact with them like she is on the show with them…

Montag and Mildred have a fight about the books he has been hoarding, and she tells him to turn them in to Beatty so that they can continue with their normal life. The point in this part is when Montag ‘says’ he is going to return the book he took from the dead woman’s house (which is the bible in the book, but Return of the King for my purposes…) Instead he is planning to visit a man, Faber, about having the book duplicated before he turns in the original…

We end this second part on Montag’s lawn before he sets off to Faber’s…


~~~~~~~~~~~

Now I know the sun is hot
Mosquitoes come and suck your blood
Leave you there all alone
Just skin and bone

When you walk among the trees
Listening to the leaves
The further I go the less I know, the less I know

Where will you run?
Where will you hide?
Lullaby's to paralyze
(Mosquito Song, Queens of the Stone Age)

~~~~~~~~~~~


//Two moonstones looked up at him in the light of his small hand-held fire; two pale moonstones buried in a creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them.//

Montag looked at his wife. His wife?

Mildred seemed like a stranger. He couldn’t understand her. She was speaking, but it was garbled.

“What did you say?” He questioned, hoping that if she repeated herself, he would understand.

Garble. Static. Mumble. Her mouth opened and shut like a fish gasping for air, but he could not understand her words.

For fuck’s sake, he couldn’t even remember where they had met. Who was this woman? She could not be his wife! She had died; all those tiny pills, swallowed down. He didn’t know this woman…

Mildred had turned from him in frustration and had returned to watching the walls. Unfamiliar people walked across their walls, speaking, shouting to the soundtrack of thunderous music. His head grew dizzy, and pressing his palms to his ears, he left the room. Mildred never turned or noticed.

Montag walked to his room and sat upon his bed, staring at her pristine side. Her cold bed.

Sighing, he stretched his body along the length of the bed, propping his hands behind his head. Closing his eyes, he snaked his hand under the pillow to feel the leather-bound volume there.

Soft. Hard. Old. Worn. Illegal.

Peeking through one eye, he checked to make sure she did not enter, and he brought the book out. Opening the book, he allowed the pages to fall open at their will. Resting his finger on the exposed page, he trailed his finger down till he reached a set of italics.

He mouthed the words as he read:

‘To the sea, to the sea! The white gulls are crying,
The wind is blowing, and the white foam is flying.’

He hadn’t shown her yet, his cache hidden away, behind the metal sheeting, behind the wall. Montag could already imagine her reaction. But it was time he did. He slid the book back under the pillow.

//He kept moving his hand and dropping books, small ones, fairly large ones, yellow, red, green ones. When he was done he looked down upon some twenty books lying at his wife’s feet.//

Stolen, every one of them. He had taken them from houses as they were burnt. Innocent victims rescued while the fires consumed their owners. He remembered watching the woman. More than that, he remembered his reflection in her eyes. His blackened uniform and emblem, his smoky face, all returned to him from her point-of-view. Fire reflected off him in her eyes.

Mildred fell apart. She tried to incinerate one, shrieking about the destruction of their home. Captain Beatty would return and burn it down. He would find them out, and he would come with his kerosene hose and a match.

The ‘family’ would burn; the damned family that lived on her walls, in her imagination. No, not imagination. That would be giving her the credit of having her own mind.

----------------------------------

//No front porches…that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think.//

Clarisse sat in her father’s study, her eyes glued to the rows and rows of volumes adorning the shelves. She was curled into a ball, her knees tucked up under her chin as she chewed a piece of chestnut hair.

Click. Creak.

The door opened, and shut softly.

“Clarisse?” A deep voice broke her thoughts.

“What would you do without your books? What would you do if you weren’t allowed to think?” She continued to contemplate the books lining walls.

Erestor blinked a couple times before he comprehended her words.

“Clarisse? What do you mean?” He had not been able to get her to get rid of the book.

He stood behind her, watching her as she uncurled her body from the couch and stood. His hands itched to hold her, comfort her.

She seemed possessed.

As she stood, he gasped at the sight of her. She seemed a ghost, a shell of her former self. Dressed in white, shimmering gossamer, a deathly contrast to her dark hair and eyes. Gone was the smiling Clarisse of five weeks before. He should have been prepared; he knew that she was slipping deeper and deeper into the dark world of what she read. Nay, she did not merely read it; she was consumed by it.

Literally.

He closed his eyes, shaking his head, willing that night away in his mind. He did not want to remember watching her appear out of the book. And then her confession; she wanted to give him one night of comfort.

Erestor dreaded knowing the meaning of her statement. He prayed the Valar would not grant her wish.

She had walked to the shelves and was pulling off an ancient volume of history. He could scarce make out the title from his angle, but he knew the book well. It was about Luthien and Beren.

“This, Ada.” She turned, holding book open and out to him, her fingers marking a passage on the page. “It is not the most significant; just a book of poetry dedicated to the star-crossed lovers. Yet, could you stand by and watch it die?”

“No.” His voice barely a whisper.

“Could you hold the torch as it is put to the flame?” The look of horror that crossed his face caused her to smile sadly at the book as she closed it. “Father, I must see him again. I want to bring him here; show him all this.” She arced her arm out, indicating the volumes behind her as she locked her eyes with his. “Let him drink his fill of our waters…”

Despite all his years, he could not fathom such a thing. His line of sight followed her delicate fingers. He was horrified by the implications of her words.

Truth be told, he had seen books eaten by fire, but not for the purpose of repression. Humans, desperate for warmth during the snows of winter; houses burning due to some accident. Yes, he’d seen books burn, but not for malice nor for purposeful ignorance.

His eyes burned as imaginary flames licked at the edges of his library. They widened as the fire grew into a humanoid figure, tall and lean. It reached out with burning fingers, pulling volumes from the shelves, shoving them down its fiery throat.

Clarisse watched her father’s appalled and frightened expression, her heart wrenching as she knew what he imagined.

“And in that world, you say, there are no libraries? There are no books? No original thought?”

She shook her head no sadly.

“And this man willingly ignited such fiery hells?”

She nodded yes sadly.

“He allowed that woman to burn, and you saw it?” His expression hardened.

“Adar,” she choked.

“Erestor,” a hand clasped down on his shoulder. Glorfindel caught Clarisse’s eyes. “Clarisse.”

Erestor turned to regard his friend, torn from his stupor. Glorfindel walked past them, carrying the cursed book in his hand. Both father and daughter’s eyes locked on the book, as he opened it and placed it on the desk in the center of the room. Clarisse rushed to her uncle’s side and peered at the finger-marked page.

//”But Clarisse’s favorite subject wasn’t herself. It was everyone else, and me. She was the first person in a good many years I’ve really liked. She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted.” He lifted the two books. “These men have been dead a long time, but I know their words point, one way or another, to Clarisse.”//

----------------------------

//“Millie? Does the White Clown love you?”

No answer.

“Millie, does—“ he licked his lips—“does your ‘family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?”//

The door shut behind him, closing with a click. Scrape of metal against metal, and the snapping of the lock as it fell into place. He leaned against it, his eyes closed and head bent, a torrent of thoughts streaming through his mind.

Her friends would come over this night, and they would watch the mindless drivel of the parlor walls. She would be nervous, wondering if her friends would smell the paper and ink sitting inches from them behind their walls. But she would not know where he was, what he was doing in the dark of the night.

Faber. That old professor from a year back. He would know what to do; he would be able to explain away the words in the book he clutched to his body.

//“Who is more important, me or that Bible?”//

A day, even hours earlier, he would have said her; but that was no longer the case. He had promised to turn the book in to Beatty. The captain of the Firemen probably knew that Montag had the book and, if he didn’t turn it in, would come to the house and sniff it out himself.

But Montag had no intention of just handing the book over. First he would have them duplicated, and Faber would know how to have that done. He pulled it out of his jacket and studied the cover again. Flipped through the pages.

Flip. Flip. Read. Flip. Flip.

They are not real; they have no meaning. He closed his eyes against the characters of the book.

An unknown song filled his head. Violin, piano. Minor key. Softly it drifted through his mind. So different it was from the harsh electronic sounds of the parlor walls, of her ‘family’. He had never heard anything of the like. It was real. Natural. What did that mean? Natural? Opening his eyes, he looked down at the book in frustration. Words, written, turned his world upside down.

Then he threw it. It landed open, pages fluttering in the wind, frantic wings of a buzzing mosquito.

What wind, he thought in question. It was a still day, sunny and bright with no breeze. But there was no sun now, and it looked as if in the matter of seconds the world had changed.

Bombers zipped through the sky, the war continuing above him despite his forced detachment. Their roaring engines mingled with the unexpected rolling thunder. Clouds moved across the heavens, gray and heavily laden with moisture, threatening to spill their innards on the hapless beings below.

He pulled his body from the door. No porch to protect him from the rain, but did he really want protection? The first drops hit his face. They dotted the flapping pages, soaking them.

He angled his face upward, feeling for the first time the rain. Feeling it, not escaping it with an umbrella separating him from the water an attempt to protect his body from its cold wetness. Once again he shut his eyes, opening his mouth to taste the liquid. Landing on his tongue, the drops slide down his throat, re-starting the beautiful music of earlier. Guitar mingled with the violin and piano.

A part from the book entered his mind.

//’Green are those fields in the songs of my people; but they were dark then, grey wastes in the blackness before us. And over the wide land, trampling unheeded the grass and the flowers, we hunted our foes through a day and a night…’//

Raising his hands, he watched his cupped palms fill with water, feeling it stream down the sleeves of his jacket. The foreign sensation caused him to shiver involuntarily.

We have no songs to remind us of what existed before our ‘blackness’, he thought bitterly before splashing himself with the collected water. His black hair curled into ringlets against his head; drops formed on his lashes, dripping into his eyes. He did not blink them away, wanting to experience the stinging. He remembered the book on the lawn and rubbed the water from his eyes so that he could see.

It was ruined. He bent to collect it, but recoiled as electricity coursed through his hand. Shocked, he blinked in confusion and reached out again. This time he did not pull away as the current pulsed into him. It was an odd feeling. But what had she said to him?

//”Have you ever smelled old leaves? Don’t they smell like cinnamon? Here. Smell.”//

Feel. Touch. Experience. Stop.

She had insinuated as much. Take a moment, stop and feel the world around him.

And now, in the rain, he felt. He felt the shivering cold of his shirt clinging to his wet torso. Rivulets of rain down the back of his neck, his face, his chest. The power of electricity. He looked up in question; he was not being struck by lightening. Looking back down at the book, he noticed the billowing cloud appearing for the rain-destroyed pages. The rain could not dispel it, disintegrate it, dissolved it…

Two hands of smoke formed, feminine and slender, delicate; they beckoned him, a ghostly finger running along his cheek. He felt its soft touch.

Follow me. Come with me. A voice in his head.

She awaits you. He could not resist. He held out his hand, and the smoke hand interlocked its fingers with his, pulling him forward.