White Collar Fic - Flame the Color of Air
Dec. 28th, 2012 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elrhiarhodanTitle: Flame the Color of Air
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elrhiarhodan
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~600
Beta Credit:coffeethyme4me
Summary: Neal burns and longs for answers.
A/N: Written as an extra day for my Fic-Can-Ukah 2012 meme, the prompt is “The Language of Fire – Peter/Neal” for my good friend,daria234.
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It floats across his skin, gently burning, written by the hand on his arm, tugging him this way, urging him to follow. Or it’s imprinted from a palm on his back, between his shoulder blades, deftly pushing him forward. Sometimes, when they are walking side by side, that hand is at the small of his back, coaxing him, caring for him, making sure he doesn’t fall, all the while inscribing its unfathonable message.
The fire is always there, prickly-hot but not painful. The true pain is reserved for his heart, when he strips himself bare and looks for the marks upon his body. If there’s anything there, it’s not visible to his eye.
Neal mourns this lost language, the tongues of flame that love and longing and desire write upon his flesh. He grieves for a dialect he’ll never be able to learn.
There are days that he longs to be transformed, maybe to grow wings and take flight. It’s cold up there, above the clouds. The frigid wind would burn him in a different way; maybe it would burn away his aching, treacherous heart. Or freeze it solid, so it wouldn’t keep longing for something – for someone – that he has no right to want.
His younger, more arrogant self would have once scoffed at this yearning. But that was before Kate. She taught him how to love, and gave him dreams of a life so different from the one that he ended up living. Neal’s struck in the heart at thoughts of Kate. She burned, too – terribly, literally. He could read her agony in the flames when he rushed to join her. More fire held him back; Peter’s arms, his hold, were chains of fire, burning across his body, reining him in.
Kate’s fire marks him, embers burning against his face, tiny blisters that heal too quickly. He should have been scarred, but by the time they let him out of prison, the burns are gone. Neal mourns their loss as much as he mourns for Kate, he can no longer decipher the code the flames written on his skin.
His older, wiser self mocks this false logic. That code cannot unlock the text that Peter writes upon his skin with every casual touch. There is no key, no Rosetta Stone to teach him the language of fire.
Sometimes, he seeks answers in music - the soaring harmonics of medieval polyphony - the grace of an ancient composer, newly sainted:
vidi quasi lucidissimum ignem
incomprehensibilem, inexstinguibilem,
totum viventem, totum vitam exsistentem,
in se autem flammam aerii coloris habentem
But the answer can’t be found in this dead tongue; Neal is no ecstatic to divine truth from an incomprehensible prayer.
Neal burns and longs for what he cannot have. Yet he can’t stop hoping to learn this bright, painful tongue. He thinks that if he can unriddle just one phrase, he can solve the entire mystery of this desire. He thinks – or maybe hopes and believes – that if the unknowable becomes knowable, it will lose its power over him and he will be free.
In the still and sleepless hours at the end of the night, before the dark gives way to the burgeoning day, Neal accepts that even if he unravels every word of fire, if comprehension is granted by the angels of grace, he’ll still be as bound, as captured as he is in his ignorance.
FIN
A shining fire,
unfathomable, inextinguishable,
fully alive and existing full of life
with a flame the color of air.
Anonymous 4 - The Origin of Fire
Vision 1 – The Fire of Creation
St. Hildegard Von Bingen
Trans. Mark Atherton
To listen: Vision 1 – The Fire of Creation
Author:
elrhiarhodanFandom: White Collar
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Neal Caffrey
Spoilers: None
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: None
Word Count: ~600
Beta Credit:
coffeethyme4me Summary: Neal burns and longs for answers.
A/N: Written as an extra day for my Fic-Can-Ukah 2012 meme, the prompt is “The Language of Fire – Peter/Neal” for my good friend,
daria234.It floats across his skin, gently burning, written by the hand on his arm, tugging him this way, urging him to follow. Or it’s imprinted from a palm on his back, between his shoulder blades, deftly pushing him forward. Sometimes, when they are walking side by side, that hand is at the small of his back, coaxing him, caring for him, making sure he doesn’t fall, all the while inscribing its unfathonable message.
The fire is always there, prickly-hot but not painful. The true pain is reserved for his heart, when he strips himself bare and looks for the marks upon his body. If there’s anything there, it’s not visible to his eye.
Neal mourns this lost language, the tongues of flame that love and longing and desire write upon his flesh. He grieves for a dialect he’ll never be able to learn.
There are days that he longs to be transformed, maybe to grow wings and take flight. It’s cold up there, above the clouds. The frigid wind would burn him in a different way; maybe it would burn away his aching, treacherous heart. Or freeze it solid, so it wouldn’t keep longing for something – for someone – that he has no right to want.
His younger, more arrogant self would have once scoffed at this yearning. But that was before Kate. She taught him how to love, and gave him dreams of a life so different from the one that he ended up living. Neal’s struck in the heart at thoughts of Kate. She burned, too – terribly, literally. He could read her agony in the flames when he rushed to join her. More fire held him back; Peter’s arms, his hold, were chains of fire, burning across his body, reining him in.
Kate’s fire marks him, embers burning against his face, tiny blisters that heal too quickly. He should have been scarred, but by the time they let him out of prison, the burns are gone. Neal mourns their loss as much as he mourns for Kate, he can no longer decipher the code the flames written on his skin.
His older, wiser self mocks this false logic. That code cannot unlock the text that Peter writes upon his skin with every casual touch. There is no key, no Rosetta Stone to teach him the language of fire.
Sometimes, he seeks answers in music - the soaring harmonics of medieval polyphony - the grace of an ancient composer, newly sainted:
vidi quasi lucidissimum ignem
incomprehensibilem, inexstinguibilem,
totum viventem, totum vitam exsistentem,
in se autem flammam aerii coloris habentem
But the answer can’t be found in this dead tongue; Neal is no ecstatic to divine truth from an incomprehensible prayer.
Neal burns and longs for what he cannot have. Yet he can’t stop hoping to learn this bright, painful tongue. He thinks that if he can unriddle just one phrase, he can solve the entire mystery of this desire. He thinks – or maybe hopes and believes – that if the unknowable becomes knowable, it will lose its power over him and he will be free.
In the still and sleepless hours at the end of the night, before the dark gives way to the burgeoning day, Neal accepts that even if he unravels every word of fire, if comprehension is granted by the angels of grace, he’ll still be as bound, as captured as he is in his ignorance.
A shining fire,
unfathomable, inextinguishable,
fully alive and existing full of life
with a flame the color of air.
Anonymous 4 - The Origin of Fire
Vision 1 – The Fire of Creation
St. Hildegard Von Bingen
Trans. Mark Atherton
To listen: Vision 1 – The Fire of Creation
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 05:20 pm (UTC)So heartbreaking *sigh*
Love the music. Lately I've been stuck on my Tallis Scholars CDs but it's time to dust off the Sequentia collection, they are my favorite interpreters of Hildegard's work :)
no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:03 am (UTC)We share a love for medieval music - I've got the same Tallis Scholars CDs, I bet. You should listen to Anonymous 4 as well as the Vox interpretations, too. Both are exquisite.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:10 am (UTC)It's a wonderful thing.
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Date: 2012-12-28 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 08:56 pm (UTC)I love that the imagery has such a mythic quality; it's so evocative and beautifully done. I love that Peter is such a puzzle to Neal, that love comes with pain for Neal and with a vulnerability that he's never quite comfortable with. (I love Hildegard von Bingen!!!) And this is my favorite line: "that if the unknowable becomes knowable, it will lose its power over him and he will be free."
Thank you so much for this amazing fic!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:14 am (UTC)I am just glad to give you something you liked.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-02 07:42 am (UTC)I absolutely loved it!
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Date: 2012-12-28 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-31 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-31 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-31 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 03:27 am (UTC)peter's trying to burn his own language into neal, yes? neal just doesn't know how to let go long enough to read it.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-28 05:19 pm (UTC)Neal will definitely learn to read the language of fire.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-28 05:19 pm (UTC)