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fellowshippers2005-03-20 09:30 pm
pecos.livejournal.com) wrote in fellowshippers2005-03-20 09:30 pm
BDL 1: Lost Souls
To my great pleasure, it seems that more than a couple of people have been waiting for a sequel to be written to Prophecy: Destiny & Design. I’m pleased to give it to you, starting here:
TITLE: Beyond Design Limitations
CHAPTER: One – Lost Souls
AUTHOR: Pecos – PecosPhil@sprintmail.com
WEBSITE: http://www.chimerafic.com
BETA: Gloria Mundi - viva_gloria@livejournal.com
RATING: Varies by chapter. This one is PG13
DISCLAIMER: I don’t make the toys, I’m only
playing with them. No money made, nor
disrespect intended. This is FICTION
WHAT IS IT?: RPS / AU
Sequel to ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
WHO’S IN IT?: Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom,
Viggo Mortensen and other actors from
‘The Lord of the Rings,’ borrowed fictional
characters Mickey Kostmayer & Rollie Tyler
FEEDBACK: remember the golden rule, (please!)
ARCHIVE: I’d be honored, just tell me where
PAST CHAPTERS: ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
can be found on my website, Chimerafic.com
and other stories can be found on my LJ at:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pecos/
NOTE: Please forgive any intentional or
unintentional abuse of facts and history.
Beyond Design Limitations
Recap
Obviously the best way to be up to speed before starting this story is to read Prophecy: Destiny & Design. It’s a big, bloated monster of a thing – much better reading than the title would lead you to believe – and it’ll most likely suck your brains out and knock your tender heart around and leave you black and blue by the side of the road. Despite that, I humbly recommend that you give it a chance to have its way with you. You’ll feel dirty in the morning, but you’ll go to sleep happy tonight! However, if you really insist on jumping onto the train here at this crossing, I’ll make an attempt to catch you. This is some of what you might have missed:
The young man known as Orlando Bloom is an artificially created life form. This doesn’t mean he isn’t human. To be specific, he’s one of a group of clones which were made in an attempt to avert a viral disaster with the potential to wipe out the human race. The carrier of this plague was none other than Elijah Wood, who would unwittingly end the world as we know it. Who knew about this plot? Well, a bunch of people in the future, both good guys and bad, and their emissaries here in our own time, which included Viggo Mortensen and Hugo Weaving amongst their shadowy members.
Harry Bloom had been one of the researchers who created the clones, and his own son (Alpha) was a flawed version that had washed out of the program and grown up ignorant of his true potential, but certainly gifted with talent and looks. By some horrible circumstance the young man named Orlando died before finishing drama school, but his essence – his life experience and memories – was transferred into another of the clones, coded Gamma. Every one of the clones carries a different mutation granting them extraordinary powers, and Gamma had an incredible gift of internal healing abilities. He was able to save Orlando’s spirit by taking it into himself and continuing his life as best he could.
Gamma fled to New Zealand, taking Orlando’s job on the movie ‘The Lord of the Rings’, which he thought was a safe refuge for him although it was actually exactly what he’d been designed to do, and the place where his task would be completed when he was exposed to the pathogen which Elijah had unknowingly become infected with.
All of this was overseen by Viggo, who had started out as a pawn of his own superiors. But he came to doubt the purity of their motives when people started to die in pursuit of this ‘noble’ goal. Gamma found unexpected compassion in Viggo’s company, and unforgettable love in the arms of another one of the Rings actors, Sean Bean. Sean had his own unusual abilities and insight, and his generous heart was ultimately stolen by the damaged clone.
Gamma’s reason for existing accomplished, he was taken away by his creators to harvest the immunities he’d created which would stop the plague before it could reach critical mass in the population. Sean Bean went after him, as did Viggo, with the help of an ex-CIA operative and covert intelligence agent named Mickey Kostmayer, who had been friends with Viggo for years and who was itching for an excuse to interrupt his retirement. They managed to track Gamma to a remote laboratory in Sitka, Alaska, and they enacted a daring rescue. But the forces of good had been corrupted by the sheer value and potential of the clones to modern science, and Gamma had been horribly damaged. One of the blank clones, Theta, had even been killed in the pursuit of potential medical value of his unique attributes.
The rescue came too late, but before Gamma died (by his own hand) he was able to once again transfer his vital essence, and thus also that of the original Orlando Bloom (Alpha), into another blank clone being held at the facility, this one coded Lambda. The actors and Mickey escaped with this clone, and the laboratory was utterly destroyed. They made their way back to New Zealand, and despite Sean’s misgiving Lambda soon proved that he’d successfully adapted to ‘become’ Orlando Bloom, as everyone else knew the handsome young man. His personality was essentially intact.
Our plot was also thick with other entanglements: Elijah’s growing affection and, eventually, love for his Hobbit costar, Dominic Monaghan. The interactions of the cast and crew and creators of the movie as they learned parts of the plot and did what they could to help. The interference of people who'd stop at nothing, who saw Elijah as the ultimate fulfillment of an ancient Prophecy about saving the world. Even Mickey’s own, sometimes cloudy, motives as he blithely broke laws and threatened lives. But the primary story followed the core individuality of the person known as Orlando Bloom as he grew from tortured soul to full and real human being.
Now it is time to discover what happened to these people next...especially Orlando. And what about the other clones? There were clearly more than just a couple of them. Where did they go and what has become of these lost souls?
Chapter One: Lost Souls
Viggo
“Please, Please! If you have any kind of human compassion in you, kill me. Kill me – and do it quickly!”
Viggo was too stunned to even speak, let alone move.
Orlando must have misunderstood his reticence. His voice rose with even more panic. “I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll...I’ll do anything. Just name it! But don’t make me go back. Take what you want from me and let me die!”
He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak... he just stared at the terror-stricken young man, heart in his throat.
Tears were streaking down Orlando’s hollowed cheeks. “If you have any kind of human compassion in you....”
“Viggo?”
“No!” he finally gasped, watching in amazement as the world swirled out of focus like a watercolor in the rain, the dark pits of despair in Orli’s eyes fading last.
“Viggo?” the intruding voice inquired louder. “Sorry to wake you, man.”
The actor drew a deep breath, opening his own eyes even as Orlando’s faded away before him. “Hmmm, uh, I … I'm up," he managed, rubbing harshly at his scruffy beard.
“Sorry,” the young man apologized again. It was Jake Two Ponies, Viggo’s assistant on the ‘Hidalgo’ set. The young Lakota man was handsomely dressed in full traditional buckskins, filling in as an extra in the scenes they were currently filming. “I didn’t realize that you’d fallen asleep. Lunch is over, they called for you on set.”
“O han,” Viggo mumbled, reaching for Frank Hopkins’ hat and staggering to his feet. He’d conked out in the tack trailer, draped over saddle blankets and jumbled halters. Good thing that Frank already had an Aragornesque scuzziness. Viggo was never going to be able to play clean and neat and crisply uniformed again. He’d perfected a constant state of grime. “Io wa cin,” he told Jake.
“Your accent is getting better. I’ll see if they got any more sandwiches,” his assistant offered, turning away.
“You’re my hero,” Viggo muttered, knocking the horse dust off his pants and hoping that he hadn’t slept any creases into his face. He stretched extravagantly, shoulders popping, and winced as the bruise TJ had given him on his hip twinged. The Paint seemed to think it was funny to knock him into fence posts.
“If you have any kind of human compassion...,” whispered in Viggo’s ears, the dream lingering.
He ambled out into the noise and mess of a location movie set, nodding at crewmembers and automatically stepping over cables like the old hand he was. The temporary corral had been set off to one side, downwind. TJ and his doubles, along with a few of the wranglers mounts, were swishing their tails at flies and drowsing horse dreams, hips humped with cocked back hooves. The telltale remains of an empty box of cookies tattled that someone had been indulging the equine star in his favorite illicit snack of Samoas.
“Who’s been feeding my horse these damn cookies again?” Viggo grumbled in mock anger, picking the box up and depositing it on a pile of rubbish in the back of a pickup.
“Must be a Girl Scout,” one of the wranglers called, earning the amusement of the other cowboys.
“Girl Scouts in South Dakota,” Viggo mumbled, going to untie TJ’s halter rope. “You’re going to get fat on those things,” he warned the horse, getting the Paint’s bridle off the saddlehorn and rubbing his jaw before giving him the bit. “You’ve got a worse sweet tooth than Orli-bear.” Now where had that thought come from? He mentally slapped himself back to the present as TJ rubbed his head against Viggo’s chest, lipping the buttons on his shirt. “Yeah, I guess you do sorta remind me of him,” the actor snorted to himself.
Orlando
There was something to be said for waking up in the morning to find a lizard staring you in the eye. It was a pretty good metaphor, he decided, though he had no idea for what. The brightly colored little geckos, or chameleons, or whatevers, were regular hotel employees, running all over the resort, in and out of the rooms at their leisure, eating the tropical insects drawn by the lights. Cute little buggers too – and that's exactly what they were – bug hunters, not much bigger than an Elf's finger.
‘Oh, yeah, I'm an Elf,’ Orlando Lambda Bloom remembered abruptly, despite the amount of liquor he’d managed to consume the night before. Of course, he wasn't an Elf any more here on the island of Saint Vincent in the West Indies. He was a blacksmith, and a pirate-in-training. This was his fifth movie location as a working actor, and he thought he was getting the hang of this celebrity business. His presence was part of a serious boon for the local economy, and boons needed to celebrate every now and then.
He’d clearly hit his quota on celebrating sometime before in the wee hours of the morning.
Sitting up slowly, he winced as an empty bottle of bourbon rolled off the bed and hit the floor. Catching it wasn’t an option...Orlando could barely keep his eyelids peeled open. He groped the crumpled bedcovers, finding a packet of cigarettes (someone else’s), four lighters, two beer cans (one empty, one full), a cork and a shirt that was absolutely not his, thanks anyway. Lifting the damp sheets off his lap, the young man discovered that he still had his bright red boxers on, though backwards, unless a fly in the back was a new style option.
The lizard had beat a hasty retreat and was making his way up the wall with an exaggerated sideway swinging motion, tiny tail whipping back and forth. Orlando imagined it was making a lot of noise doing that, then chastised himself against the uncharacteristic urge to smack it with a shoe, and took a deep breath before stumbling out of bed and going in search of the shower. His body was rank, hair disgusting, and the boxers would be better off burned, even discounting that lovely lurid shade of red.
He had only twenty minutes before he would have to be at the pier for his turn on the Jadent for a ride out to the Lady Washington. Today would be more Pirate gang shots of Will Turner being manhandled by the unruly mob. He stepped under the tepid spray (it was far too late in the morning to hope for hot water) and started scrubbing.
Sean
Sean Bean came stomping back into the house cursing and shrugging out of his coat on the move, the incriminating can of cake frosting clutched in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He stubbed out the latter, and peeled the top off the icing. “Where’s the knife?” he asked himself, looking around fruitlessly for the one he’d had a half hour ago. He gave up and got a clean one from the drawer and returned his full attention to his project.
The alleged ‘cake’ perched on its festive plate like a deflated pink basketball. The bottom half had been frosted, admittedly badly, and the top perched mostly in the right spot, held there by a fork shoved down into the spongy mess. The bottom part had come out of the pan in several bits, and these had been spot-welded back together with what turned out to be most of the first can of frosting. He hadn’t budgeted his supplies well: thus the unplanned trip to Tesco's for another tub of cake frosting. Sean licked his lips and set about sculpting the remaining layer into something that might resemble a dessert item.
Having achieved a mostly cake-ish shape, the veteran actor paused as he started to smooth a loaded knife full of frosting across the top. Pursing his lips, he grabbed the big spoon from the bowl of crushed and gooey strawberries on the counter and scooped a hole in the center of the exposed layer, then dumped the remaining berries into the hole, packing them down. “That’ll be fun,” he decided, tamping the bit of excised cake back into place and hiding the whole messy affair under a big glob of pink icing. He finished his culinary masterpiece and looked up at the clock. “Bugger!”
Grabbing the plate and starting for the door, he remembered his coat and had to put the cake down again – then there was the present. Finally ready, he bustled out of the house, juggling keys and cake and wounded pride. None of his wives had ever had this much trouble. He eased the cake onto the floor on the passenger’s side of his car and got it started without any new emergencies. Sean even remembered to drive especially carefully as he navigated the roundabouts and stoplights of London. It didn’t take too long to reach his ex-wife’s house, but parking was, as usual, a bitch. The party was in full swing by the time he finally reached the porch, ringing the bell with his chin.
His ex’s sister opened the door, looking at him like she didn’t know who he was for a moment, and then she plastered a smile on and let him in, commenting that he’d missed the magician and the games, but that the bouncy castle was still worth the trip. Sean bit back his excuses and set the messy pink confection on a corner of a table piled high with gaudy wrapped presents. He spotted a clump of cigarette ash stuck to the drooping frosting on one side and quickly swiped it up with his finger, glancing up guiltily in time to see the ex approaching with a maddeningly familiar expression. He didn’t know what to do other than shove the incriminating evidence into his mouth, so he did.
“Are the girls having fun?” he questioned, trying to ignore the sickly sweet taste of the icing.
“Molly’s gone totally mad,” she told him, reaching out to straighten his collar. “So much sugar and excitement, and all her little friends egging her on. Lorna’s been a bit put out, but consoling herself with plans for her own birthday party. You’re late, Sean.”
“I know,” he said simply, shrugging. He looked past his former wife to the back garden, where the sounds of playing children lit the air with laughter.
“Why did you bring a cake?” she asked him.
He turned back to finally notice the centerpiece of the table – a three tiered masterpiece of marzipan fruits, colored icing in the shapes of flowers, and an actual picture of his little girl Molly on the top of the whole thing, probably done in something edible. “I told you I’d bring the cake,” he said angrily.
“And I knew you’d be late or forget it or muck it up some other way,” she lectured, sounding meaner than she’d intended. She tipped her head against his shoulder for a moment, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Sean. But Christie’s in Highgate does such a gorgeous cake, and it’s walnut and honey baklava flavor with butter crème. Isn’t the portrait adorable?”
“Very nice,” he admitted, glancing again at the nightmare in pink he’d spent the last three hours constructing. “I didn’t even know that baklava was a flavor.” He pushed gently past his ex, heading out to find the excited birthday girl and her sister – his beautiful daughters.
Johnny
“But why’s the rum gone?” he muttered to himself, watching his young costar wander a crooked path across the deck of the Lady Washington, their double for the captured British ship Interceptor. Orlando banged his hip smartly on a protruding wooden doohickey and Depp winced. “That’s gonna leave a mark, Mister Turner,” the actor sympathized, seeing Orli’s face crease with pain. Orlando rubbed the sore spot for a moment and staggered over to the railing to squint at the distant shore of a neighboring island.
“Methinks my little smithy friend is not a happy camper,” Johnny muttered, letting the trinkets in Sparrow's wig tickle his chin. Of course ‘little’ was a relative concept, as his younger costar was taller than he was, especially without Jack Sparrow’s elaborate knee boots, but Orli was a lightweight in most other ways. Johnny could out-debauch the kid without even breaking a sweat on his upper lip. But Bloom was clearly trying his best to learn.
Johnny checked his script one more time, but nothing had changed there since the last time he’d peeked. Gore let him get away with a lot of improvisation, as long as he could do the initial takes dead on with dialogue and blocking. After the first round of cover shots it was party time at the Depp School of Improv, and he’d single-handedly (and limp-wristedly) injected a frenetic, druggy, fey, sun-maddened and utterly gay take on his character – right under Disney’s corporate nose. It made the job so much fun that he didn’t even mind the primitive conditions they were working under here in this sauna.
He drew his attention back to the kid again to see that Orli had brought the bread from his sandwich and was dropping tiny little bits into the water below. Multitudes of rainbow colored fish were darting to the surface in the shadow of the ship, dappling the water with flashes of silver as they grabbed the crumbs.
“That boy needs a dog,” Johnny observed. “Maybe an old seadog.” He grinned to himself.
Dominic
“Bloody hell,” he sighed, looking at the bare shelves of his refrigerator once again. He slammed it shut, fluttering the collection of photos covering the door, held by magnets announcing pizza delivery and sewer services, touristy landscape scenes from both islands of New Zealand, something vaguely resembling a dog made by one of Sean Astin’s daughters and a toy Star Wars light saber with the word ‘wanker!’ written on it in Ewan McGregor’s own hand. The photos had a bit more of a theme: most of them were family and cast mates from the Lord of the Rings era. That had been almost two years ago now.
The pictures pinned in greatest place of honor were all of just one actor from that production: blue-eyed boy wonder Elijah Wood. Elijah laughing. Elijah in the snow in Te Anau, as shot by Viggo and since made famous for its stark beauty. Elijah asleep in full Hobbit gear, covered head to toe with garbage. Elijah eating corn on the cob with a Mohawked Elf. Elijah lying in what only Dom knew was his own bed, a deeply sated look on the eternally young face.
A bitter smile creased Dom’s cheeks as he let his thumb trace the bottom edge of that last snap. Elijah was away from Los Angeles, filming ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ and Dom missed him horribly. Dominic’s tummy growled angrily, and he slumped. He’d only relocated to the City of Angels a few months ago, and he was finding it to be a very unwelcoming place for a Brit without a car and almost no friends outside of the former Fellowship. He’d asked Sean Astin to drive him to the grocer’s only a week ago, and couldn’t bring himself to do it again. How had he known that the nearest store was miles away when his agent had found the apartment? Whatever happened to having corner markets in a city? Did all the Pakistanis here drive cabs?
But then again, he’d never been in another city quite like LA. How could there be so many people around him at all hours of the night, and almost none of them interested in meeting a charming, outgoing Mancunian like himself? Yeah, he could play the Hobbit card, but that didn’t work all the time either. There seemed to be a deep resentment in the film community about ‘Rings’, and he had no other cachet with these people. It wasn’t like anyone in LA knew what ‘Hetty Wainthrop’ was, or cared about his theatre experiences. He hadn’t been on ‘Friends’ or ‘CSI’ or even ‘Baywatch’, so he barely existed. The ‘Rings’ fans could be found pretty easily, especially in the clubs and at the parties, but there were risks there as well, and he wasn’t likely to call one of them up and beg a ride or ask to borrow tools to fix that toilet that kept running all the time despite everything the landlord could be bullied into doing.
Slouching across the kitchen, he picked up his phone, hoping to find that a message had been left while he’d been in the shower. He’d rung Elijah’s sister Hannah earlier, but she was probably at class and hadn’t gotten back to him. Guess it was down the block to the gas station again. You couldn’t really thrive on a diet of Cheetos, Slim Jims and American Beer, but you could survive.
Anymore, just surviving was proving to be struggle enough.
Sean
He’d played with the kids for nearly two hours: supervising turns in the bouncy castle, painting bright little faces, clearing up gift paper and making conversation with mothers. Most of the kids had been picked up by then and Sean found himself alone in his ex’s kitchen, searching for something adult to drink.
“Daddy?”
He turned quickly to see Molly paused at the doorway, her lovely little party dress in a shambles and her precious curls wild. Sean immediately dropped to one knee and held out his arms and she slipped into his embrace comfortably. “Happy birthday, baby,” he whispered, clutching her thin shoulders like she was made of glass.
“What’s that on the counter, Daddy?” she asked him softly, spotting the disastrous cake where his ex had relocated it, an intermediary stop on its way to the rubbish bin, no doubt.
“That...it’s nothing, Princess. Just, I baked a cake for your party. But your Mum had already sorted everything, and hers was a lot better, wasn’t it?”
“You baked it?” she asked, sparkling eyes going wide. His daughters were young, but they already knew that Daddy was close to hopeless with most kitchen duties. The only person he’d ever managed to impress with his culinary skills had been Orlando, and the Colt was hardly a good judge of taste. “It’s...pink.”
“Strawberry. You still like strawberry, don’t you?”
“I love strawberry, Daddy! And Mummy’s cake tasted nasty, except for the frosting. Can I have a piece?”
“Now?” he laughed. “You must be ready to burst! I won’t be responsible for getting you sick on your big day, Princess.”
“Please?” The charm was being poured on thick. She could have asked him to go lie down in the road, and he’d be just as unable to deny her.
“Well, just a small piece.” He made quick work of cutting a bit out of the slumping cake, pulling the support fork free and checking the frosting one last time for foreign objects. It looked better on the plate. Not like a piece of cake, but certainly...pink. Strawberry sauce dribbled out like blood from a wound, and Molly giggled when he scooped some up with his finger to show her that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Since they were going to flaunt the house rules anyway he lifted her up to sit on the counter and they talked for a few minutes while Molly ate the birthday cake her daddy had made just for her.
“Oh, I almost forgot something, Princess,” Sean said suddenly, remembering the lump in his pocket. “I have a present for you.” The cake plate was shoved aside and she quickly tore into the paper, bright eyes snapping in anticipation.
“It’s...it’s a mobile,” she said softly, looking at the phone with a trace of disappointment. “Mummy has a mobile too, Daddy.” She didn’t seem particularly thrilled with the color or design of the case either. “Auntie’s lights up when it rings.”
“This is a special mobile, Molly.” He opened it to show her how to turn it on. “You see this button here – the one with the gold sticker on it? Press that one, sweetie.”
She pushed the little button and held the phone expectantly while nothing happened. Her face creased in a frown, obviously less than impressed, and then a trilling ring echoed in the kitchen. Molly looked around, surprised, but it wasn’t her new phone ringing. Sean grinned and took his own phone out of his jacket pocket, answering it. “Hello birthday girl!” he said, and his voice came out of the mobile in her hand a second later.
“Daddy? It calls you?” she giggled, looking at him instead of talking into the phone.
“Yes, it does,” he explained. “No matter where I am in the entire world, that mobile will always be able to find me. You can call me any time of the day or night, from anywhere. And I’ll hear your voice. Even if I’m in Australia, or on the top of a mountain. You can call me if you need help with your homework, or if you’ve had a fight with your sister, or if Mummy is late picking you up at the Academy. I’ve got one for Lorna too.” It was a gift from Mickey Kostmayer, and used a unique power source and satellite location technology that would have raised some eyebrows over at MI5, if they ever got their hands on it.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and Sean scooped her up, kissing her soft, sweet, child-scented hair, and he loved her more than anything in the world. Even if she didn’t know it.
“Daddy...next year...can I have a pony?”
Orlando
He found a quiet spot in the shade of some artificial trees tipped against the roof of a scooter rental shop, and dragged his canvas sling chair over there for a moment or two of personal time. Shooting had been delayed for a while because some ‘yachtie’ had dropped anchor in range of their filming area, and the AD was currently having it out with the sloop’s owner. It would take a bit of time to come to some arrangement – monetary, of course – for getting the ship moved. The yachties were a very persistent and snooty problem around St. Vincent, but also one of the chief sources of income, so very few locals were willing to confront them.
Orlando settled back in his chair with a book in hand and let his eyes slide shut. The book was something by Noam Chomsky that Viggo had sent him, and he’d never even turned past the introduction. But he carried it nearly every day just because it reminded Orli that Viggo had been thinking about him. That mattered to him far more than he wanted to admit.
His mind drifted, and soon he was remembering a night of angry white whipping snow and freezing feet, stumbling through a forest in utter fear for his meager life, and the explosion that had ended part of it. Agitated chirping intruded amongst the normal sounds of a movie set and suddenly a weight dropped into his lap. Orlando struggled not to dump himself over and looked down to see imploring brown eyes tipped up to meet his, a grimace of uncertainty on the tiny face.
“Hello, Levi,” he said softly, adjusting to better hold the capuchin monkey without losing his book to the dirt. “What’s wrong? Does your mommy know you’re over here?”
The monkey chirped, head darting from side to side, and then scrambled up to his shoulder where she buried her tiny face in his hair. Quick little fingers grasped his earlobe and a small arm wrapped around his neck. Orlando hummed a comforting sound, and patted the monkey’s back. “Did those horrible pirates scare you again?”
“Levi?” the trainer called, frustration in her voice. “Levi, you better not be up in those trees!”
Orlando almost alerted to the trainer as to her where her charge was hiding, but he decided to give the frightened monkey a moment or two to collect herself, just like he’d been doing. “They're just playing,” he told the capuchin. “I wish I knew how to convince you of that.” Levi chirped affectionately and groomed a tendril of his hair.
“I could make a robot monkey for those scenes – you’d never be able to tell the difference,” someone said. Orlando peered up to see a tall, casually dressed guy smiling down at him. Very good looking, actually; he had a tool bag over one shoulder and a sparkle in his eyes. “Rollie Tyler,” the man introduced himself in an Aussie accent, extending a hand.
“Orlando,” he said, juggling monkey and book to reciprocate the gesture.
“Will Turner, our brave but clueless blacksmith,” Rollie stated. “Good on ya, mate. I’m looking for the AD, eh?”
“Out there,” Orlando offered, gesturing toward the calm waters of the bay, where a speedboat had tied up to the yacht. “He’ll be back soon. Had to bitchslap some rich bastards out of our shot.”
Rollie laughed familiarly. “Ahh, I see. Well, I can wait. Need a chance to adjust myself down to Caribbean time anyhow.” He looked around for a place to sit. “Would it bother you if I kept company here in the shade?”
“Not at all,” Orlando lied, giving up any hope of quiet time to himself. Levi’s clever fingers were working their way under his collar and he shrugged and forced himself not to giggle. He settled the monkey in his lap and rubbed her back in circles. She sighed and closed her bright little eyes, chattering softly.
Tyler dropped to the sandy dirt and heaved a big sigh. “Bloody heat, it’s like Alice in December,” Rollie said, assuming that Orlando would know what he was talking about. “I’m supposed to do some character realization and creepy dead pirate stuff. I’ve got a reputation for the creepy thing.” He turned enough to meet Orlando’s curious gaze. “My company’s called FX.”
“I’m sorry that I haven’t heard of you. But I’m sorta new to the business.”
“Everybody’s gotta start somewhere,” Tyler commented, rolling his head to catch Orlando’s eyes. “And you’re not that new. Three ‘Rings’ movies, ‘Black Hawk Down’, ‘Ned Kelly’, that indie thing in Britain...not that I’m a stalker or anything. I just like to know who’s in the movies I work for. Mostly I’m here because I did some of Johnny’s SFX on ‘Edward Scissorhands’, and he asked for me. To be honest, I’d do a Parent/Student Council filmstrip if Depp asked me to.”
He’d managed to lose Orlando with that last bit, but the actor got the gist. He started to comment when Levi’s trainer finally spotted the wayward monkey and descended on her charge. “Levi, you naughty girl! Just what is this attraction to Mister Turner? You don’t even have any scenes together!”
“I must smell like bananas,” Orlando speculated, handing the now-drowsy capuchin back to her ‘Mommy’.
“It’s bad enough that the parrots are madly in love with you,” she complained. “You’re in the wrong end of the business, Mister Bloom.”
“I’ll look into retiring from in front of the camera and see about wrangling the donkey,” he offered.
“There’s a lot less time spent in make-up,” she assured him, walking off with Levi. The little capuchin gave a final goodbye chirp and waved her tiny hand.
“Weird,” observed Tyler, now fully stretched out and giving every indication of preparing for a nap. “I really can do a great robot monkey, you know.”
“What, and cheat Levi out of her Union card? You’re a heartless man, Rollie.”
“Yep, that’s me all right,” Tyler laughed.
TITLE: Beyond Design Limitations
CHAPTER: One – Lost Souls
AUTHOR: Pecos – PecosPhil@sprintmail.com
WEBSITE: http://www.chimerafic.com
BETA: Gloria Mundi - viva_gloria@livejournal.com
RATING: Varies by chapter. This one is PG13
DISCLAIMER: I don’t make the toys, I’m only
playing with them. No money made, nor
disrespect intended. This is FICTION
WHAT IS IT?: RPS / AU
Sequel to ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
WHO’S IN IT?: Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom,
Viggo Mortensen and other actors from
‘The Lord of the Rings,’ borrowed fictional
characters Mickey Kostmayer & Rollie Tyler
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PAST CHAPTERS: ‘Prophecy: Destiny & Design’
can be found on my website, Chimerafic.com
and other stories can be found on my LJ at:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pecos/
NOTE: Please forgive any intentional or
unintentional abuse of facts and history.
Beyond Design Limitations
Recap
Obviously the best way to be up to speed before starting this story is to read Prophecy: Destiny & Design. It’s a big, bloated monster of a thing – much better reading than the title would lead you to believe – and it’ll most likely suck your brains out and knock your tender heart around and leave you black and blue by the side of the road. Despite that, I humbly recommend that you give it a chance to have its way with you. You’ll feel dirty in the morning, but you’ll go to sleep happy tonight! However, if you really insist on jumping onto the train here at this crossing, I’ll make an attempt to catch you. This is some of what you might have missed:
The young man known as Orlando Bloom is an artificially created life form. This doesn’t mean he isn’t human. To be specific, he’s one of a group of clones which were made in an attempt to avert a viral disaster with the potential to wipe out the human race. The carrier of this plague was none other than Elijah Wood, who would unwittingly end the world as we know it. Who knew about this plot? Well, a bunch of people in the future, both good guys and bad, and their emissaries here in our own time, which included Viggo Mortensen and Hugo Weaving amongst their shadowy members.
Harry Bloom had been one of the researchers who created the clones, and his own son (Alpha) was a flawed version that had washed out of the program and grown up ignorant of his true potential, but certainly gifted with talent and looks. By some horrible circumstance the young man named Orlando died before finishing drama school, but his essence – his life experience and memories – was transferred into another of the clones, coded Gamma. Every one of the clones carries a different mutation granting them extraordinary powers, and Gamma had an incredible gift of internal healing abilities. He was able to save Orlando’s spirit by taking it into himself and continuing his life as best he could.
Gamma fled to New Zealand, taking Orlando’s job on the movie ‘The Lord of the Rings’, which he thought was a safe refuge for him although it was actually exactly what he’d been designed to do, and the place where his task would be completed when he was exposed to the pathogen which Elijah had unknowingly become infected with.
All of this was overseen by Viggo, who had started out as a pawn of his own superiors. But he came to doubt the purity of their motives when people started to die in pursuit of this ‘noble’ goal. Gamma found unexpected compassion in Viggo’s company, and unforgettable love in the arms of another one of the Rings actors, Sean Bean. Sean had his own unusual abilities and insight, and his generous heart was ultimately stolen by the damaged clone.
Gamma’s reason for existing accomplished, he was taken away by his creators to harvest the immunities he’d created which would stop the plague before it could reach critical mass in the population. Sean Bean went after him, as did Viggo, with the help of an ex-CIA operative and covert intelligence agent named Mickey Kostmayer, who had been friends with Viggo for years and who was itching for an excuse to interrupt his retirement. They managed to track Gamma to a remote laboratory in Sitka, Alaska, and they enacted a daring rescue. But the forces of good had been corrupted by the sheer value and potential of the clones to modern science, and Gamma had been horribly damaged. One of the blank clones, Theta, had even been killed in the pursuit of potential medical value of his unique attributes.
The rescue came too late, but before Gamma died (by his own hand) he was able to once again transfer his vital essence, and thus also that of the original Orlando Bloom (Alpha), into another blank clone being held at the facility, this one coded Lambda. The actors and Mickey escaped with this clone, and the laboratory was utterly destroyed. They made their way back to New Zealand, and despite Sean’s misgiving Lambda soon proved that he’d successfully adapted to ‘become’ Orlando Bloom, as everyone else knew the handsome young man. His personality was essentially intact.
Our plot was also thick with other entanglements: Elijah’s growing affection and, eventually, love for his Hobbit costar, Dominic Monaghan. The interactions of the cast and crew and creators of the movie as they learned parts of the plot and did what they could to help. The interference of people who'd stop at nothing, who saw Elijah as the ultimate fulfillment of an ancient Prophecy about saving the world. Even Mickey’s own, sometimes cloudy, motives as he blithely broke laws and threatened lives. But the primary story followed the core individuality of the person known as Orlando Bloom as he grew from tortured soul to full and real human being.
Now it is time to discover what happened to these people next...especially Orlando. And what about the other clones? There were clearly more than just a couple of them. Where did they go and what has become of these lost souls?
Chapter One: Lost Souls
Viggo
“Please, Please! If you have any kind of human compassion in you, kill me. Kill me – and do it quickly!”
Viggo was too stunned to even speak, let alone move.
Orlando must have misunderstood his reticence. His voice rose with even more panic. “I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll...I’ll do anything. Just name it! But don’t make me go back. Take what you want from me and let me die!”
He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak... he just stared at the terror-stricken young man, heart in his throat.
Tears were streaking down Orlando’s hollowed cheeks. “If you have any kind of human compassion in you....”
“Viggo?”
“No!” he finally gasped, watching in amazement as the world swirled out of focus like a watercolor in the rain, the dark pits of despair in Orli’s eyes fading last.
“Viggo?” the intruding voice inquired louder. “Sorry to wake you, man.”
The actor drew a deep breath, opening his own eyes even as Orlando’s faded away before him. “Hmmm, uh, I … I'm up," he managed, rubbing harshly at his scruffy beard.
“Sorry,” the young man apologized again. It was Jake Two Ponies, Viggo’s assistant on the ‘Hidalgo’ set. The young Lakota man was handsomely dressed in full traditional buckskins, filling in as an extra in the scenes they were currently filming. “I didn’t realize that you’d fallen asleep. Lunch is over, they called for you on set.”
“O han,” Viggo mumbled, reaching for Frank Hopkins’ hat and staggering to his feet. He’d conked out in the tack trailer, draped over saddle blankets and jumbled halters. Good thing that Frank already had an Aragornesque scuzziness. Viggo was never going to be able to play clean and neat and crisply uniformed again. He’d perfected a constant state of grime. “Io wa cin,” he told Jake.
“Your accent is getting better. I’ll see if they got any more sandwiches,” his assistant offered, turning away.
“You’re my hero,” Viggo muttered, knocking the horse dust off his pants and hoping that he hadn’t slept any creases into his face. He stretched extravagantly, shoulders popping, and winced as the bruise TJ had given him on his hip twinged. The Paint seemed to think it was funny to knock him into fence posts.
“If you have any kind of human compassion...,” whispered in Viggo’s ears, the dream lingering.
He ambled out into the noise and mess of a location movie set, nodding at crewmembers and automatically stepping over cables like the old hand he was. The temporary corral had been set off to one side, downwind. TJ and his doubles, along with a few of the wranglers mounts, were swishing their tails at flies and drowsing horse dreams, hips humped with cocked back hooves. The telltale remains of an empty box of cookies tattled that someone had been indulging the equine star in his favorite illicit snack of Samoas.
“Who’s been feeding my horse these damn cookies again?” Viggo grumbled in mock anger, picking the box up and depositing it on a pile of rubbish in the back of a pickup.
“Must be a Girl Scout,” one of the wranglers called, earning the amusement of the other cowboys.
“Girl Scouts in South Dakota,” Viggo mumbled, going to untie TJ’s halter rope. “You’re going to get fat on those things,” he warned the horse, getting the Paint’s bridle off the saddlehorn and rubbing his jaw before giving him the bit. “You’ve got a worse sweet tooth than Orli-bear.” Now where had that thought come from? He mentally slapped himself back to the present as TJ rubbed his head against Viggo’s chest, lipping the buttons on his shirt. “Yeah, I guess you do sorta remind me of him,” the actor snorted to himself.
Orlando
There was something to be said for waking up in the morning to find a lizard staring you in the eye. It was a pretty good metaphor, he decided, though he had no idea for what. The brightly colored little geckos, or chameleons, or whatevers, were regular hotel employees, running all over the resort, in and out of the rooms at their leisure, eating the tropical insects drawn by the lights. Cute little buggers too – and that's exactly what they were – bug hunters, not much bigger than an Elf's finger.
‘Oh, yeah, I'm an Elf,’ Orlando Lambda Bloom remembered abruptly, despite the amount of liquor he’d managed to consume the night before. Of course, he wasn't an Elf any more here on the island of Saint Vincent in the West Indies. He was a blacksmith, and a pirate-in-training. This was his fifth movie location as a working actor, and he thought he was getting the hang of this celebrity business. His presence was part of a serious boon for the local economy, and boons needed to celebrate every now and then.
He’d clearly hit his quota on celebrating sometime before in the wee hours of the morning.
Sitting up slowly, he winced as an empty bottle of bourbon rolled off the bed and hit the floor. Catching it wasn’t an option...Orlando could barely keep his eyelids peeled open. He groped the crumpled bedcovers, finding a packet of cigarettes (someone else’s), four lighters, two beer cans (one empty, one full), a cork and a shirt that was absolutely not his, thanks anyway. Lifting the damp sheets off his lap, the young man discovered that he still had his bright red boxers on, though backwards, unless a fly in the back was a new style option.
The lizard had beat a hasty retreat and was making his way up the wall with an exaggerated sideway swinging motion, tiny tail whipping back and forth. Orlando imagined it was making a lot of noise doing that, then chastised himself against the uncharacteristic urge to smack it with a shoe, and took a deep breath before stumbling out of bed and going in search of the shower. His body was rank, hair disgusting, and the boxers would be better off burned, even discounting that lovely lurid shade of red.
He had only twenty minutes before he would have to be at the pier for his turn on the Jadent for a ride out to the Lady Washington. Today would be more Pirate gang shots of Will Turner being manhandled by the unruly mob. He stepped under the tepid spray (it was far too late in the morning to hope for hot water) and started scrubbing.
Sean
Sean Bean came stomping back into the house cursing and shrugging out of his coat on the move, the incriminating can of cake frosting clutched in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He stubbed out the latter, and peeled the top off the icing. “Where’s the knife?” he asked himself, looking around fruitlessly for the one he’d had a half hour ago. He gave up and got a clean one from the drawer and returned his full attention to his project.
The alleged ‘cake’ perched on its festive plate like a deflated pink basketball. The bottom half had been frosted, admittedly badly, and the top perched mostly in the right spot, held there by a fork shoved down into the spongy mess. The bottom part had come out of the pan in several bits, and these had been spot-welded back together with what turned out to be most of the first can of frosting. He hadn’t budgeted his supplies well: thus the unplanned trip to Tesco's for another tub of cake frosting. Sean licked his lips and set about sculpting the remaining layer into something that might resemble a dessert item.
Having achieved a mostly cake-ish shape, the veteran actor paused as he started to smooth a loaded knife full of frosting across the top. Pursing his lips, he grabbed the big spoon from the bowl of crushed and gooey strawberries on the counter and scooped a hole in the center of the exposed layer, then dumped the remaining berries into the hole, packing them down. “That’ll be fun,” he decided, tamping the bit of excised cake back into place and hiding the whole messy affair under a big glob of pink icing. He finished his culinary masterpiece and looked up at the clock. “Bugger!”
Grabbing the plate and starting for the door, he remembered his coat and had to put the cake down again – then there was the present. Finally ready, he bustled out of the house, juggling keys and cake and wounded pride. None of his wives had ever had this much trouble. He eased the cake onto the floor on the passenger’s side of his car and got it started without any new emergencies. Sean even remembered to drive especially carefully as he navigated the roundabouts and stoplights of London. It didn’t take too long to reach his ex-wife’s house, but parking was, as usual, a bitch. The party was in full swing by the time he finally reached the porch, ringing the bell with his chin.
His ex’s sister opened the door, looking at him like she didn’t know who he was for a moment, and then she plastered a smile on and let him in, commenting that he’d missed the magician and the games, but that the bouncy castle was still worth the trip. Sean bit back his excuses and set the messy pink confection on a corner of a table piled high with gaudy wrapped presents. He spotted a clump of cigarette ash stuck to the drooping frosting on one side and quickly swiped it up with his finger, glancing up guiltily in time to see the ex approaching with a maddeningly familiar expression. He didn’t know what to do other than shove the incriminating evidence into his mouth, so he did.
“Are the girls having fun?” he questioned, trying to ignore the sickly sweet taste of the icing.
“Molly’s gone totally mad,” she told him, reaching out to straighten his collar. “So much sugar and excitement, and all her little friends egging her on. Lorna’s been a bit put out, but consoling herself with plans for her own birthday party. You’re late, Sean.”
“I know,” he said simply, shrugging. He looked past his former wife to the back garden, where the sounds of playing children lit the air with laughter.
“Why did you bring a cake?” she asked him.
He turned back to finally notice the centerpiece of the table – a three tiered masterpiece of marzipan fruits, colored icing in the shapes of flowers, and an actual picture of his little girl Molly on the top of the whole thing, probably done in something edible. “I told you I’d bring the cake,” he said angrily.
“And I knew you’d be late or forget it or muck it up some other way,” she lectured, sounding meaner than she’d intended. She tipped her head against his shoulder for a moment, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Sean. But Christie’s in Highgate does such a gorgeous cake, and it’s walnut and honey baklava flavor with butter crème. Isn’t the portrait adorable?”
“Very nice,” he admitted, glancing again at the nightmare in pink he’d spent the last three hours constructing. “I didn’t even know that baklava was a flavor.” He pushed gently past his ex, heading out to find the excited birthday girl and her sister – his beautiful daughters.
Johnny
“But why’s the rum gone?” he muttered to himself, watching his young costar wander a crooked path across the deck of the Lady Washington, their double for the captured British ship Interceptor. Orlando banged his hip smartly on a protruding wooden doohickey and Depp winced. “That’s gonna leave a mark, Mister Turner,” the actor sympathized, seeing Orli’s face crease with pain. Orlando rubbed the sore spot for a moment and staggered over to the railing to squint at the distant shore of a neighboring island.
“Methinks my little smithy friend is not a happy camper,” Johnny muttered, letting the trinkets in Sparrow's wig tickle his chin. Of course ‘little’ was a relative concept, as his younger costar was taller than he was, especially without Jack Sparrow’s elaborate knee boots, but Orli was a lightweight in most other ways. Johnny could out-debauch the kid without even breaking a sweat on his upper lip. But Bloom was clearly trying his best to learn.
Johnny checked his script one more time, but nothing had changed there since the last time he’d peeked. Gore let him get away with a lot of improvisation, as long as he could do the initial takes dead on with dialogue and blocking. After the first round of cover shots it was party time at the Depp School of Improv, and he’d single-handedly (and limp-wristedly) injected a frenetic, druggy, fey, sun-maddened and utterly gay take on his character – right under Disney’s corporate nose. It made the job so much fun that he didn’t even mind the primitive conditions they were working under here in this sauna.
He drew his attention back to the kid again to see that Orli had brought the bread from his sandwich and was dropping tiny little bits into the water below. Multitudes of rainbow colored fish were darting to the surface in the shadow of the ship, dappling the water with flashes of silver as they grabbed the crumbs.
“That boy needs a dog,” Johnny observed. “Maybe an old seadog.” He grinned to himself.
Dominic
“Bloody hell,” he sighed, looking at the bare shelves of his refrigerator once again. He slammed it shut, fluttering the collection of photos covering the door, held by magnets announcing pizza delivery and sewer services, touristy landscape scenes from both islands of New Zealand, something vaguely resembling a dog made by one of Sean Astin’s daughters and a toy Star Wars light saber with the word ‘wanker!’ written on it in Ewan McGregor’s own hand. The photos had a bit more of a theme: most of them were family and cast mates from the Lord of the Rings era. That had been almost two years ago now.
The pictures pinned in greatest place of honor were all of just one actor from that production: blue-eyed boy wonder Elijah Wood. Elijah laughing. Elijah in the snow in Te Anau, as shot by Viggo and since made famous for its stark beauty. Elijah asleep in full Hobbit gear, covered head to toe with garbage. Elijah eating corn on the cob with a Mohawked Elf. Elijah lying in what only Dom knew was his own bed, a deeply sated look on the eternally young face.
A bitter smile creased Dom’s cheeks as he let his thumb trace the bottom edge of that last snap. Elijah was away from Los Angeles, filming ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ and Dom missed him horribly. Dominic’s tummy growled angrily, and he slumped. He’d only relocated to the City of Angels a few months ago, and he was finding it to be a very unwelcoming place for a Brit without a car and almost no friends outside of the former Fellowship. He’d asked Sean Astin to drive him to the grocer’s only a week ago, and couldn’t bring himself to do it again. How had he known that the nearest store was miles away when his agent had found the apartment? Whatever happened to having corner markets in a city? Did all the Pakistanis here drive cabs?
But then again, he’d never been in another city quite like LA. How could there be so many people around him at all hours of the night, and almost none of them interested in meeting a charming, outgoing Mancunian like himself? Yeah, he could play the Hobbit card, but that didn’t work all the time either. There seemed to be a deep resentment in the film community about ‘Rings’, and he had no other cachet with these people. It wasn’t like anyone in LA knew what ‘Hetty Wainthrop’ was, or cared about his theatre experiences. He hadn’t been on ‘Friends’ or ‘CSI’ or even ‘Baywatch’, so he barely existed. The ‘Rings’ fans could be found pretty easily, especially in the clubs and at the parties, but there were risks there as well, and he wasn’t likely to call one of them up and beg a ride or ask to borrow tools to fix that toilet that kept running all the time despite everything the landlord could be bullied into doing.
Slouching across the kitchen, he picked up his phone, hoping to find that a message had been left while he’d been in the shower. He’d rung Elijah’s sister Hannah earlier, but she was probably at class and hadn’t gotten back to him. Guess it was down the block to the gas station again. You couldn’t really thrive on a diet of Cheetos, Slim Jims and American Beer, but you could survive.
Anymore, just surviving was proving to be struggle enough.
Sean
He’d played with the kids for nearly two hours: supervising turns in the bouncy castle, painting bright little faces, clearing up gift paper and making conversation with mothers. Most of the kids had been picked up by then and Sean found himself alone in his ex’s kitchen, searching for something adult to drink.
“Daddy?”
He turned quickly to see Molly paused at the doorway, her lovely little party dress in a shambles and her precious curls wild. Sean immediately dropped to one knee and held out his arms and she slipped into his embrace comfortably. “Happy birthday, baby,” he whispered, clutching her thin shoulders like she was made of glass.
“What’s that on the counter, Daddy?” she asked him softly, spotting the disastrous cake where his ex had relocated it, an intermediary stop on its way to the rubbish bin, no doubt.
“That...it’s nothing, Princess. Just, I baked a cake for your party. But your Mum had already sorted everything, and hers was a lot better, wasn’t it?”
“You baked it?” she asked, sparkling eyes going wide. His daughters were young, but they already knew that Daddy was close to hopeless with most kitchen duties. The only person he’d ever managed to impress with his culinary skills had been Orlando, and the Colt was hardly a good judge of taste. “It’s...pink.”
“Strawberry. You still like strawberry, don’t you?”
“I love strawberry, Daddy! And Mummy’s cake tasted nasty, except for the frosting. Can I have a piece?”
“Now?” he laughed. “You must be ready to burst! I won’t be responsible for getting you sick on your big day, Princess.”
“Please?” The charm was being poured on thick. She could have asked him to go lie down in the road, and he’d be just as unable to deny her.
“Well, just a small piece.” He made quick work of cutting a bit out of the slumping cake, pulling the support fork free and checking the frosting one last time for foreign objects. It looked better on the plate. Not like a piece of cake, but certainly...pink. Strawberry sauce dribbled out like blood from a wound, and Molly giggled when he scooped some up with his finger to show her that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Since they were going to flaunt the house rules anyway he lifted her up to sit on the counter and they talked for a few minutes while Molly ate the birthday cake her daddy had made just for her.
“Oh, I almost forgot something, Princess,” Sean said suddenly, remembering the lump in his pocket. “I have a present for you.” The cake plate was shoved aside and she quickly tore into the paper, bright eyes snapping in anticipation.
“It’s...it’s a mobile,” she said softly, looking at the phone with a trace of disappointment. “Mummy has a mobile too, Daddy.” She didn’t seem particularly thrilled with the color or design of the case either. “Auntie’s lights up when it rings.”
“This is a special mobile, Molly.” He opened it to show her how to turn it on. “You see this button here – the one with the gold sticker on it? Press that one, sweetie.”
She pushed the little button and held the phone expectantly while nothing happened. Her face creased in a frown, obviously less than impressed, and then a trilling ring echoed in the kitchen. Molly looked around, surprised, but it wasn’t her new phone ringing. Sean grinned and took his own phone out of his jacket pocket, answering it. “Hello birthday girl!” he said, and his voice came out of the mobile in her hand a second later.
“Daddy? It calls you?” she giggled, looking at him instead of talking into the phone.
“Yes, it does,” he explained. “No matter where I am in the entire world, that mobile will always be able to find me. You can call me any time of the day or night, from anywhere. And I’ll hear your voice. Even if I’m in Australia, or on the top of a mountain. You can call me if you need help with your homework, or if you’ve had a fight with your sister, or if Mummy is late picking you up at the Academy. I’ve got one for Lorna too.” It was a gift from Mickey Kostmayer, and used a unique power source and satellite location technology that would have raised some eyebrows over at MI5, if they ever got their hands on it.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and Sean scooped her up, kissing her soft, sweet, child-scented hair, and he loved her more than anything in the world. Even if she didn’t know it.
“Daddy...next year...can I have a pony?”
Orlando
He found a quiet spot in the shade of some artificial trees tipped against the roof of a scooter rental shop, and dragged his canvas sling chair over there for a moment or two of personal time. Shooting had been delayed for a while because some ‘yachtie’ had dropped anchor in range of their filming area, and the AD was currently having it out with the sloop’s owner. It would take a bit of time to come to some arrangement – monetary, of course – for getting the ship moved. The yachties were a very persistent and snooty problem around St. Vincent, but also one of the chief sources of income, so very few locals were willing to confront them.
Orlando settled back in his chair with a book in hand and let his eyes slide shut. The book was something by Noam Chomsky that Viggo had sent him, and he’d never even turned past the introduction. But he carried it nearly every day just because it reminded Orli that Viggo had been thinking about him. That mattered to him far more than he wanted to admit.
His mind drifted, and soon he was remembering a night of angry white whipping snow and freezing feet, stumbling through a forest in utter fear for his meager life, and the explosion that had ended part of it. Agitated chirping intruded amongst the normal sounds of a movie set and suddenly a weight dropped into his lap. Orlando struggled not to dump himself over and looked down to see imploring brown eyes tipped up to meet his, a grimace of uncertainty on the tiny face.
“Hello, Levi,” he said softly, adjusting to better hold the capuchin monkey without losing his book to the dirt. “What’s wrong? Does your mommy know you’re over here?”
The monkey chirped, head darting from side to side, and then scrambled up to his shoulder where she buried her tiny face in his hair. Quick little fingers grasped his earlobe and a small arm wrapped around his neck. Orlando hummed a comforting sound, and patted the monkey’s back. “Did those horrible pirates scare you again?”
“Levi?” the trainer called, frustration in her voice. “Levi, you better not be up in those trees!”
Orlando almost alerted to the trainer as to her where her charge was hiding, but he decided to give the frightened monkey a moment or two to collect herself, just like he’d been doing. “They're just playing,” he told the capuchin. “I wish I knew how to convince you of that.” Levi chirped affectionately and groomed a tendril of his hair.
“I could make a robot monkey for those scenes – you’d never be able to tell the difference,” someone said. Orlando peered up to see a tall, casually dressed guy smiling down at him. Very good looking, actually; he had a tool bag over one shoulder and a sparkle in his eyes. “Rollie Tyler,” the man introduced himself in an Aussie accent, extending a hand.
“Orlando,” he said, juggling monkey and book to reciprocate the gesture.
“Will Turner, our brave but clueless blacksmith,” Rollie stated. “Good on ya, mate. I’m looking for the AD, eh?”
“Out there,” Orlando offered, gesturing toward the calm waters of the bay, where a speedboat had tied up to the yacht. “He’ll be back soon. Had to bitchslap some rich bastards out of our shot.”
Rollie laughed familiarly. “Ahh, I see. Well, I can wait. Need a chance to adjust myself down to Caribbean time anyhow.” He looked around for a place to sit. “Would it bother you if I kept company here in the shade?”
“Not at all,” Orlando lied, giving up any hope of quiet time to himself. Levi’s clever fingers were working their way under his collar and he shrugged and forced himself not to giggle. He settled the monkey in his lap and rubbed her back in circles. She sighed and closed her bright little eyes, chattering softly.
Tyler dropped to the sandy dirt and heaved a big sigh. “Bloody heat, it’s like Alice in December,” Rollie said, assuming that Orlando would know what he was talking about. “I’m supposed to do some character realization and creepy dead pirate stuff. I’ve got a reputation for the creepy thing.” He turned enough to meet Orlando’s curious gaze. “My company’s called FX.”
“I’m sorry that I haven’t heard of you. But I’m sorta new to the business.”
“Everybody’s gotta start somewhere,” Tyler commented, rolling his head to catch Orlando’s eyes. “And you’re not that new. Three ‘Rings’ movies, ‘Black Hawk Down’, ‘Ned Kelly’, that indie thing in Britain...not that I’m a stalker or anything. I just like to know who’s in the movies I work for. Mostly I’m here because I did some of Johnny’s SFX on ‘Edward Scissorhands’, and he asked for me. To be honest, I’d do a Parent/Student Council filmstrip if Depp asked me to.”
He’d managed to lose Orlando with that last bit, but the actor got the gist. He started to comment when Levi’s trainer finally spotted the wayward monkey and descended on her charge. “Levi, you naughty girl! Just what is this attraction to Mister Turner? You don’t even have any scenes together!”
“I must smell like bananas,” Orlando speculated, handing the now-drowsy capuchin back to her ‘Mommy’.
“It’s bad enough that the parrots are madly in love with you,” she complained. “You’re in the wrong end of the business, Mister Bloom.”
“I’ll look into retiring from in front of the camera and see about wrangling the donkey,” he offered.
“There’s a lot less time spent in make-up,” she assured him, walking off with Levi. The little capuchin gave a final goodbye chirp and waved her tiny hand.
“Weird,” observed Tyler, now fully stretched out and giving every indication of preparing for a nap. “I really can do a great robot monkey, you know.”
“What, and cheat Levi out of her Union card? You’re a heartless man, Rollie.”
“Yep, that’s me all right,” Tyler laughed.