Title: Centerpiece
Author: Jeanny
Rating: G
Feedback: Please. jeannygrrlhotmail.com
Spoilers: Through Safe
Distribution: I don't mind, just credit me and let me know where it's going.
Summary: River makes a wish.
Disclaimer: Firefly and all of its characters belong to Joss & Co. I'm borrowing one of them for fifteen minutes. Written for the 15minuteficlets challenge. The challenge word's at the bottom.
She remembers learning that long ago stars were considered magical things. She lives among them now, the stars; but if they've any kind of magic to give, if by being so near she's been sprinkled with their wonder she can't get a sense of it. She thinks she would; she senses everything else. When she wants to - and often when she doesn't - her mind takes in the entire ship. Every hum, every twitch, every dream, every cry. Herself at the center of it all, her mind with its mind, her heart its heart.
Is that magic? Some might call it so. She knows this, knows that some see her this way, like the people on that planet, the ones that had made Simon so fearful, so angry. The people were right; maybe she has been touched by the devil, maybe that was why she feels so...deficient. Lacking, in something or things she cannot put a name to.
Odd, when she can name all the stars.
The people were wrong; there's nothing magical about this. Always connected, always on, no way to stop, no way to make it stop. The ship, the ship, always in her, breathing, needing, sweating, bleeding. Loving. Hating. Feeling nothing at all.
She has been blown apart. Scattered among the stars, and she tries to pull herself back together but it's no use, no use. The missing pieces, the unnamed things. Lost somewhere. All she is now is this jumbled web of other people's feelings running through her and over her and in her.
She's a puzzle to Simon, but he believes she can put her back together. She's a puzzle to herself, but she knows there are too many missing pieces near the center. She remains forever crumbling in her core. She is the unstable center of the ship. She taints it. She brings death to them all.
She pictures stars in her mind's eye. Closes her eyes. Makes a wish.
She reaches out to the edge of the 'verse. No magic. No hope.
River starts to scream.
The challenge word was "incomplete"