River of Dreams
A/N: I like to think River's thoughts are pretty coherent, and it's the translation into words that are understandable that's the problem. So if you think she sounds too sane, or not sane enough, or weird, deal with it. Tell me in your review, but don't expect changes. I wrote this one solely for me. if you ask though, maybe I'll write her differently in another story.
Disclaimer: All characters and ships and previous events are Joss Whedon's. I think. I'm not sure who they legally belong to, but it's not me. This one night is mine.
She wakes in the dark, a scream in her throat.
No, no, no!
She sits up, hugs her knees to her chest, trembling. She refuses to let the scream out, to let the fear out. She still has the nightmares, now, three months later. They all think she should be getting better, but she can't, just can't.
Invisibility just makes a burden denser. Visibility feeds it, though, grows it. No matter how much thinner it gets, it gets wider, bigger, so much more.
She feels their dreams, too, their Miranda nightmares.
Think black, empty, sane.
She can't help but feel. No one knew, but the secret they thought was driving her insanity was helping her. She bound her readings to that, and the kind of deep pain it brings. Yes, she could feel the good of those who were close around her, but now, now everyone knew. Now everyone had the Reaver pain, the death pain. There was so much less HURT to feel when only she knew. She felt nightmares from everywhere. She tried her old solace of months past, the mind she had hid in when everywhere was dark.
Smile, please, be shiny! My sun, my glow, the life and joy! Apollo and Aphrodite-girl, be kind to me!
There is no safety here. Even her Smile has the darkness, the warped cruelty of Miranda in her dreams. So, River tries again to think of the black, the empty black, reaching out the window to it with her soul.
No! Blood sharp hair teeth rape knife gun murder! No!
So much for the Black. She felt the Reavers' thoughts, worse than any Miranda dream. She barely held the scream, but she did. They all thought she was getting better. She couldn't let them down… She tries again. This time, she went to the mind she had gone to for beauty, memories of beauty, no matter how many ugly secrets it hid.
Folds of velvet, of sheer veils, of silk, peace (lying), a sudden sword a blade so sharp, a killer blade a killer man made, fear for me, for Love, smoke sparks fire, fear, dark. No more dreams. Can't hide here.
River's mind floats through her thoughts and the halls of Serenity like a leaf …like a leaf on a river. That would be funny, but she knows there are no coincidences. She will understand the why of the metaphor soon, so there is no reason to bother about it. Where to? The lost-loving one? No, there was not even HOPE for a good dream there. The big stupid? She should know he is not that stupid, she does know, but everyone else labels him this way, and in her struggle for sanity, she must conform. Still, she enters…
Big gun is no use against nothingness, against things that don't fear or feel the pain. So much fear, so little room for fear, room only for strength, for sense, for staying alive, but the fear is creeping slithering sneaking, filling the space filling the air suffocating him AWAKE. No hiding here.
River leaves, shaken by the fear she has felt from him so many times yet still does not expect. She keeps floating, on a river of thoughts and dreams. She wants to stay away from the lost-loving one and the Soldier, but she can't. She knows there will be sadness, but she can't resist. She floats, softly, gently, into the loving one's dream, this time not just watching but feeling, sharing.
So much blood so much sadness no no no it can't be true it can't, I am not alone no, not alone with this secret, this child in me, no-
But River leaves before she wakes. A child? How could she have missed this, in all her floating through dreams and reading daytime thoughts? Zoë had more strength than she had ever thought, if she could hide a secret from River's mind. And a bump from River's eyes. River continues her drifting journey, wondering when this river will flow into a lake and she will be free and alone again. She drifts thinking her own thoughts into those of the Soldier, his sleep-thoughts.
Screaming starving warped bodies and faces, death everywhere: blood gore limbs and bodies, twisted faces stopped in time, screaming screaming forced to die. War and fighting, peace beyond belief. Unimaginable cruelty that is imagined. Reavers Miranda Serenity Valley spirits faces haunting, haunting.
Though this is the worst yet, the nightmares and unrealized fears he used to have combined with Miranda and real Reavers, River takes her time in leaving. She is intrigued by the fact that the Soldier sees these awful things but has no reaction. She does not feel his fear or sadness, only her own. She keeps on floating, back to the passenger rooms, wondering how much of his life has been sucked away from the Soldier. She reaches her Ge-ge, and cannot resist leaping into his dreams, hoping for the silly secrets of love she used to find there, knowing deep inside there is only an extension of the darkness now.
Worry about them, my mei-mei and my light, they are fighting, no, must help them, can't. Why am I so weak? Why am I so useless? Frustration- no time, fight. Fight? No! Yes, fight! Stay alive! Stay alive for love and light! For mei- mei! Fear, fear, blood and death and uselessness, more fear, waiting for mei-mei, the worst, oh the worst instead of truth I know this isn't how it happens no-.
River leaves. Even in her strength, her curiosity, her interest in the feelings she knew her brother had but never really listened to, she could not stand to watch herself die in his mind. As she floats back to herself, she ponders. Useless? Her ge-ge? Never! But he felt that way, that day, so he relived it in his mind, his perfectionist mind, trying to fix it only to make it worse. River had no doubt that every night he tried something new, and every night she died, because she had woken up before to him, standing at her door, seemingly in awe of the fact that she was alive. Those were the nights he drugged her, and she slept. When he had nothing new to try, or she refused (like tonight) she had her nightmares, but she had not floated like this since before Miranda. She had expected some version of what she saw, expected fear and pain and sadness, so she had resisted her curiosity. But tonight she had felt she was ready, had felt…click. The metaphor had fallen into place. She had found the right river to float on from dream to thought to dream and back to herself again, that night. And knowing that, she felt satisfied.
River floated and drifted to her room, and her leaf-self landed. River flowed into her bed, her head landing with her usual perfect grace on her pillow. Her leaf of a mind had found its place on the edge of the lake called sleep, stirred only by the breeze of thoughts and dreams she could barely feel.