Title: Stream of Consciousness
Synopsis: Jumbled River-thoughts
Pairings: Suggestion of Jayne/River
Author's note: My first crack at Firefly fanfic. R+R, please! Constructive criticism always welcomed.
"Stream of Consciousness"
Hurting, stabbing, biting, pain. I throw my head back and scream at the horror of it, and I scream and scream until my throat is raw and all I can do is whisper. In front of me I see a demon; blue hands reaching down to steady my head, another pair scrambling to pull a syringe from a med kit.
I narrow my eyes and whisper, whisper. I know enough to stop fighting when they pull out the syringe; a last ditch attempt to pacify and prevent the inevitable. It doesn't work and I feel a prick through my flesh, feel fluid leaking into my veins and I feel it coursing through my body. The images become still in front of me, the blue hands withdraw. They turn into my brother and I wonder if the blue hands were ever there at all. Instead, I see Jayne, standing too close and scowling, smelling of fear and arousal and something else that's difficult to place. I tilt my head to better look at him and I smile, because I know who he is. I know his secrets and his lies, and I'm not horrified by either. He jumps back, wiping damp palms down dirty trousers and muttering something to Simon, who has been too busy tidying up his supplies to notice. I smile again, and Simon gently pushes the hair back from my forehead.
"Be calm, mei-mei."
And I am quiet, on the outside.
Inside I still feel, and hear like a person. I hear words and I hear thoughts and I don't know where one ends and the other begins. What is said and what is meant is so different and I don't know what to believe, or what to say to make them understand. What comes out are half-formed thoughts and words, jumbled together to make an incoherent whole.
Except with Jayne. He's uncomplicated, easy to be near. Now that he knows that I know what he did, back on Ariel, there is no confusion with what he says and what he means. They are the same and I like that, it's easy for me to be a real person who feels and eats and plays when I'm with him.
He doesn't like my nearness. It upsets him, and even I cannot read why. It's something that he won't allow his subconscious to believe, so he buries it more deeply than I thought was possible. So I watch him, and run, and dance and sing. I talk to him, and that scares him even more. I hang upside down from the rafters, to study him from another perspective, to pin him down.
I find that I like being a girl with him, but now I want to be like a real woman.
And I think that he can read that, too.