Title: Someone Else
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing: Rayne, Jayne/OC
Rating: PG
Word Count: 500
Summary: Prompt 207 from the LJ community allunwritten.
"You looked at me, but you saw someone else."
"Angel In Love With Her Own Wings," by The Secret Machines
You looked at me, but you saw someone else.
I knew it the first time we met. The first time your Ma introduced us on the porch of your childhood home, the place you'd avoided for the better part of twenty years. It was only your second time back since you'd left all those years ago, but here was where you were going to stay. Here, with your broken body, and your broken heart.
You looked at me, and something sparked in your dull blue eyes. They lit up, and I could see the brightness flood through their endless depths, throughout your entire being. Something awoke inside you that had disappeared after the accident.
The accident that took more than your left leg and mobility, it took your life and the things you loved most. You never told me, and I never asked, but I knew. I knew you lost more than a few guns and some cargo. More than a captain and a crew. You'd lost everything.
It was a miracle you never took a gun to your own head. A miracle I prayed for every morning and night. Even as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, through our courtship and wedding, through the years we spent together with work and children, it was something I always feared for.
Because when you looked at me, you saw her. And I feared the day you'd look at me, and realize I could never be who you saw.
I loved you, even as the shade of the man you had been before. You had been a big man, intimidating and threatening when you wanted to be. When we met, that had been stripped from you. You were wheelchair bound, hunched over and small. You could no longer be the menacing mercenary you were so used to being.
But when you saw me, and you saw her, you were given back a part of you that had been lost. And so I let you believe it. I loved you, it's true, but you never truly loved me. For you only saw her.
When I danced, you saw her tiny, lithe body twirling gracefully. When I cooked, you twitched your nose in nervous anticipation, never knowing that I had been a cook by trade. When I brought your children into the world, you worried for their mental well-being. And when we made love, I hid my tears when you'd sigh "River" at the time of your completion.
It was always the same. No matter how often you looked at me, you always saw someone else.
But today, something is different. I feel it in my soul. Today, you will no longer have to look at me in order to see her. She will be there, waiting for you, and you won't have to lie to yourself anymore.
I hope that in that moment, just this once, you'll look at me, and see me. Not the girl you think I am.