Disclaimer: I claim no blasohemous ownership
Timeline: Post series, pre-film
Notes: I was feeling nostalgic about this show and decided to dabble
Capture
The dance of a man who pretends it's more than sex goes something like this: "Where are you from? You know … before?" His eyes are liquid and gentle, ready to drown her unsavory bits without so much as a ripple. Before, he says. It rhymes with whore.
She talks about Shinon and drowning in light. She gets ready to break his heart.
Hers she carries in a fold of her gown, flattened out into a photograph. If it wasn't some man asking, she might have answered, here with a capture of a battered ship half-crashed into a dusty desert, sun setting behind her. "I'm from here."
Instead she counts the minutes past sunrise, unable to sleep. A soft enough bed, a dim enough room, a planet too steady to lull her to dreaming. So she startles him awake with gentle fingers and lets his sleepy eyes dream her happy and in love. But he hears someone else in her sighs and love slides from his eyes like scales. She's been slipping a while now.
For breakfast she serves up porridge warm with honey and pitted fruits and mortgaged bits of soul. She eats like a bird and watches him fly away home. Home. It lies creased in her pocket, just a fold of fabric and a short span of stars away.
Her gown, beautiful, slithers over the surface of amputated wings.
#
"Where you from anyway?" Mal had asked once with an unbalanced grin like he was talking small for her comfort, like any time they spent not fighting didn't choke on questions and kisses.
"Shinon," she says, drowning in light, breaking her heart. The ship catches the hem of her gown, tugging at the folds where it's buried in the borders of a photograph, fluttering it like the remnants of a wing. Wings that break like wishbones, bones that break like promises.
Here, it might have answered for her, if he were anyone but him. I'm from here.
Instead she recites the coordinates in metronome tones and measures her days in careful footsteps, jealous of the minutes given over to dreaming. She startles herself awake with grasping fingers, sighing out breaths he won't breathe in. She'll be free in just a while now.
Soon his last words to her are smiled tightly, his last gesture dies half way. Away from home their hearts are harder. It's on her wings that he flies away.
#
"Where are you from?" She asks the mirror, lips curled around her mysteries. Beside her bed there is a photograph, a sunset in a capture that casts rays onto the mirror. In silhouette, a man disturbs the shot, blunders right into the frame. "There," she says to no one else. "I'm from there."