Floating Hearts
Hearts hover around River. Little ones, big ones, in pink read and white, floating, floating, floating.
She touches one, and it bobs away from her. Love, love, love.
She's been feeling a lot of it lately.
Zoe's love for Wash is lost, lost, lost. Look up, down, side, side, it's not there. She can't find herself some days. She searches and searches but there's nothing inside of her. Other days she's normal, solid. She pretends, River knows that she pretends her hardest, but she's not the same, and her mind drifts between states.
Kaylee and Simon have a love that is there. It consumes them. It is their focus, their reason for being. Smiles, oh how River loves it when they smile, because she knows that they aren't thinking of anything but each other.
Inara and Mal have love for each other. River thinks it is the most interesting kind, because they don't connect it, ever. They hold their love private, to themselves, trying to hide it, not let others see it. But it's too big, and everyone knows. And still, they both pretend it's a secret. To make it easier. River doesn't think it makes it any easier.
More hearts appear, splitting from the old ones.
"That is not what a heart looks like," River says, with dismay, and presses a hand to her own, which pumps ferociously against her chest as if trying to escape. The air is thickening with them.
And all love feels different.
Zoe's love for Wash, before he went away, was solid. Wash was a part of her, an extension, River didn't even think that Zoe realized how he was there. Now he is gone. That part of her is gone, but ever present, ghostly, hovering.
Kaylee an Simon's love feels like shivers crawling up her arms and hands running through her hair. It's passionate, full, there.
Inara and Mal feel like an ache, right in the centre of her chest, as if there's something missing, as if they're looking for more.
She wants to tell someone, needs to tell someone. She feels so much love, and none of it is her own.
She would say something, but Jayne would call her crazy, and River doesn't like that. Not that she thinks that Jayne knows any more about love than she does. Jayne loves some things, the ship, his gun, Mal, but it's a different love, it's like the way River loves the night sky, the crew, and Simon.
"Stars must be lonely, all on their own," River says, and plucks a heart from her atmosphere.
River wonders what it is like to love for herself. She thinks that she will never find out, she's too insane, too psychic, no one is like her.
She breathes hearts instead of air, filtering into her nose, her mouth, filling her lungs to the brim. Up, up, they pile on up, to her ears, bubbling over into her brain...
"There's no formula for it, no logic, it's all different, it's all broken." Mal says its everything. Mal says its why. Logic dictated by illogic. River doesn't understand.
She takes the heart and rips it in half and lets it go fluttering to the ground. Then she takes another, and another, but for every rip two are made.
"There's too much," she cries. Hands are crawling on her skin, there's heat against her neck, there's lips on hers, and she wants to scream and cry and die and live.
"STOP IT!" She yells, but they don't ever stop, ever, and she feels everything.