Disclaimer: River Tam belongs to the great god Joss, and soulgazes belong to the almighty Jim Butcher. There's nothing about the Dresden Files in here, and you don't need to read them to understand this fic - but really, read them anyway, 'cos they're awesome.
The eyes are the windows to the soul . . . Lock eyes with a wizard and the essence of who and what you are is laid bare. It is perceived in different ways by every individual. Ramirez had once told me that he heard it as a kind of musical theme that accompanied the person he was gazing upon. Others looked on a soul in a series of frozen images. My interpretation was, perhaps inevitably, one of the most random and confusing I'd ever heard about. I see the other person in symbol and metaphor, sometimes in panorama and surround sound, sometimes in misty translucence and haunting whispers . . .
- The Dresden Files: White Night (So you actually know what the deal is with this 'soulgaze' thing.)
River's Soul
When I opened my eyes I was standing in the middle of a broad street, all alone. There was an eerie, almost tangible quality to the place, which could not be seen or felt or smelt, but was evident in the vast expanses of white concrete, the flickering shadows which I could never see when I looked right at them. I could feel the stillness, the silence pressing in on me, to the point where all my instincts screamed at me to stay perfectly still and try not to breathe too loudly. I did not belong in this place.
Something shook the air, whether it was sound or movement I couldn't tell, but turning, I found a girl, kneeling in the middle of the street, tears trickling down her face. Her pain ran deep, right to the core of her being, made all the more profound by the fact that I still heard nothing. Empathy shocked me to the core. Who was she? What was she doing here? Why? And then she raised her eyes to mine, mouth slightly open as if to impart some great secret, and I realised two things simultaneously.
One: the broken-hearted girl in the street was River, and two: we were surrounded by desiccated corpses.
I gasped, horrified, but the air choked it into silence nonetheless. River's lips moved, and I heard nothing, but I felt her words inside me. They didn't fall – none of them. They just . . . lay down. There's fifty million people here and they all just let themselves die.
The world around me abruptly dissolved, like it did when I was a child and I would spin myself in circles until I was dizzy. But I didn't get dizzy, and my eyes stayed locked on hers, deep brown orbs more real than anything else in this nightmare existence.
When reality resolved itself around me again, she was sitting in a . . . chair, of sorts, vaguely reminiscent of the kind dentists seat you in to work on your teeth. But unlike at the dentist's, she was strapped down, needles piercing her skin, electrodes clinging to her limbs and face. A man holding a clipboard gave an order, his voice muffled by the distance between his face and his hands, oh God, his terrible hands, and the pain flared up. River opened her mouth and screamed.
My awareness spun out around me, leaving my body behind, only dimly conscious of the girl being tortured right in front of me. We were in the uppermost room of a high tower, a tower built of stainless steel and smelling of disinfectant, not one corner shielded from the white light. Surrounding the tower were vast armies, all in collusion with each other, all in search of the treasure that lay within, the Alliance's pet project. That which was rapidly becoming its most dangerous weapon.
Amongst the clash of thousands, hungry old men covered in blood, tyrants fighting for the power to cut up a child, I heard a lone voice of compassion, a downtrodden angel seeking the girl who was slowly fading away into nothing. Simon, River sighed, her thought reverberating throughout the land, as everything turned to dust and she crouched, naked, in the middle of a room surrounded by strangers. Her prince folded her into his arms, and her heart began to beat once more.