Title: Bypassing Reasons
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: River Tam
Word Count: 600
Rating: G-ish. +K because this is River's mind.
Summary: Cause, Effect; Words, Ideas, Images; Feelings, Thoughts, Sensations, Loss. It doesn't make sense & she doesn't know how to fix it. She can't do anything anymore.
Author's Notes: I bought the only season of Firefly & while I think I get the rest, I understand River. God, isn't that just scary.
ooOooOoo
Clunk
Clunk
Her feet are too heavy. She knows what Simon, Inara, Mal, Kaylee, & Book said, but today she wants to be light, not safe. So, she smiles as she bends down to unlace the cumbersome black boots and steps out. Already she feels like she should fly up, like a butterfly, a bird, a cloud. Grinning she takes off each sock & buries it in the boot it belongs too. She watches her toes dance free and laughs quietly.
Standing up she pushes her boots to the side, Simon's too busy with the inventory of the sick bay to watch as she sneaks away, just to play for today. Creep, creep, creep up the steps, feeling the grate's metal lines under her feet, making her pay attention to the real world, which in a way is a comfort.
She knows that long ago, before she left everything, before the two with hands of blue, before Simon took her to the stars... Before, the metal would have annoyed her, made her think of ways to cover it all & make it smooth, but today she doesn't want smooth. She needs the tangible, the rough, the pain to make things real. Otherwise she'll get lost in the memories that aren't hers, the thoughts of a googolplex of people who want to be known, the dreams of that place.
She knows that the bridge is off limits & that her last episode scared the others enough that they won't make an exception for a while. So, she can't go to the big windowed rooms, even though some days looking into the blackness of space is all that she wants to do. Too bad Simon's a bit of a chicken about that. She'd love to go on a space walk about now. It was great fun when they had to hide on the outside of the ship that one time, so close to the emptiness, yet anchored by Simon & the magnets on the suit.
The cargo hold is the best place other than the bridges of the three ships. It's big, it has room, and no one is there unless they have to be. The rest of the time people go to their quarters & cells to think, to dream, to wonder about the next port, the next job, the next peck of trouble. She doesn't have to wonder she knows about it all.
The stars don't tell her, the people tell her everything, their secrets speak to fill the silences, telling her just what to expect from the people around her, old & new. She likes the old faces the best, they tell stories, they let her be what she is (sometimes) and they want her to be better. They understand that Simon isn't as awful as he acts & that he's given it all for her when no one else questioned the Alliance.
And she hates them for it, for not understanding her sooner, for not trusting the only person who ever made her feel normal. Now, she knows what she's become, what she did to Simon, what this is costing the whole 'Verce. Simon should be in a Core hospital, developing new cures, saving lives, making people whole, and not giving everything, even his own sanity, to make her whole again. Not that he can, she knows that she'll never be like she was.
So she'll dance, let herself get lost in a memory of recitals & concerts & applause for her and her gifts that were not quite stolen, but defiantly muted by her inability to control anything she feels, sees, understands, wants, needs, does.
Fin...