Title: River
Pairing: Jonas/Fiona
Summery: "You're breaking rules?" she demands, folding her arms. "Yes," Jonas says. She's always liked that part of him, he never tells lies. "Alright then," she agrees. She realises they're walking up the path to the river. "Why are you taking me to the river." "Because the river is beautiful," he says. "It's dangerous, but beautiful."
AN: Fiona and Jonas are a cute couple, admit it. I mean the fact she was in her stirrings is just too cute. This happens just after he learns about release and just before he learns about Gabriel's release.
***
"Fiona?"
"Jonas, what are you doing here?" she smiles. She doesn't know.
"We need to take a walk," he says, slightly forcefully.
"Oh, but I have to go to a Releasing Ceremony," she protests. And Jonas winces. "What's the matter?" she asks.
"Please, come," he says, near begging.
"Well, alright," Fiona, frowns. "Let me just take my pill -"
"No," Jonas interrupts her.
"What's the matter with you Jonas," she laughs. "First you tell me to come with you, and I'll be missing a Ceremony and now you tell me not to take -"
"Please Fiona," he stops her, taking her hand. "This world would be a better place without Ceremonies and Pills." Fiona gets defensive.
"What do you mean?" she scowls but doesn't protest when he takes her hand and starts leading her.
"Please," he says. "Trust me." Her eyes narrowed in confusion.
"Trust?" she asked. "What does that mean?"
He sighs and nearly cries. He takes her hand and leads her onwards. "I'm going to show you something that you've never seen before" he says. "I'm going to teach you something you never knew. I'm going to break dozens of rules, so you must keep this a secret."
"You're breaking rules?" she demands, folding her arms.
"Yes," Jonas says. She's always liked that part of him, he never tells lies.
"Alright then," she agrees. She realises they're walking up the path to the river. "Why are you taking me to the river?"
"Because the river is beautiful," he says. "It's dangerous, but beautiful. You can put your legs in it and it'll soothe them if they ache but be careful or you'll be swept away and drown."
Fiona stares at him. Curiously, he realises. She always cocks her head to one side and looks deep in your eyes when she's curious.
"And people don't come to the river very much, right?" he says. "It's taboo."
"Oh," she says.
"Sit down," he advises, slinging his feet over into the water. She pauses before she does too. "I'm going to give you a memory."
"What?" she asks. He puts his hand on her face and she jerks.
"It's okay," he soothes. "Just close your eyes. This won't hurt a bit," he chuckles bitterly. "But I have to touch your back, alright? Just lie on your back, and I'll put my hands up your shirt. That's the only way to transmit memories."
She searches for away for that to be against the rules. He isn't exactly seeing her nudity, is he?
"Yes, it's a loophole," he says. "And I know I shouldn't be touching you, but I'm a Reciever. It's in my rules that I can do just about anything." She lies on the ground, her feet still in the water and flips onto her front, resting her head on her hands and she feels his warm hands slip under her shirt onto her back. She shivers. But why? She isn't cold at all.
"I'm going to give you the memory of trust," he says.
Suddenly she finds herself in a dark, dark room. She's trying hard not to breathe loudly because she's afraid someone might hear her. She is afraid. No, she is terrified. For her life. Then she feels a hand on her shoulder. She jumps. "Ssssh," a voice says comfortingly. For some reason she knows who it is. And she smiles into the darkness because he knows he won't hurt her.
Fiona awoke.
"That was trust," he says. She nods quietly.
"I liked it," she said. "It's a feeling, right?"
"Yes," he says.
"Okay," she says. "C-can," she stutters, unsure how to phrase it, "Can you give me another one?"
"Another memory?" he smiled. "Would you like another feeling?"
"Y-yes," she says, and she's soon in the memory.
An old woman who reminds Fiona of a lady she knew when she cared for the Old sets a platter with some round dough . . . Cookies her consciousness told her . . . With little round brown balls . . . Chocolate chips . . . onto a stove.
Her first impulse is to yell no, the old lady . . .Grandmother, she thinks . . . Could get burnt! It was not an elder's job to do cooking or any other labour. "What is the matter, nina?" She pronounces words differently. Spanish accent, her consciousness tells her.
"Nothing Nana," she says. Nina and Nana, she thinks to herself.
"Now, pretty soon you'll have some chip cookies," the lady says.
"Chocolate chip cookies Nana!" Fiona says, enunciating the word loud and slow. Her voice sounds like a Six's.
"Choke-lot," the woman tries. Fiona laughs and so does the old woman, laugh-wrinkles creasing at the corners of her eyes. Nana wraps Fiona in her arms and lifts her up off the ground, Fiona feels her laughing and laughs too, she feels so happy and her heart feels warm in her chest like it was wrapped in a thick, soft blanket.
She comes back even though she really doesn't want to go.
"That was love."
"Love?"
"Well a kind of love," he sighs.
"Love? But I though that was just a word," she says.
"It is a word," he agrees. "But more important is the feeling." She nods her head.
"Another one," she demands. "Oh! I apologize for being ru-"
"No," he says abruptly. "Don't you ever apologize to me again." She doesn't ask why. "I'll show you another love."
A girl about Fiona's age smiles at Fiona. "Yo, you dropped this," she says laughing, and holds up an apple. But the apple is different, she realizes, the apple is red. Not grey. "Maybe next time you should close your lunch bag." Fiona takes the apple, mud streaks across it.
"Thanks Sandy," she says. "Here, wanna eat?" They laugh and Sandra hugs Fiona. She feels the warm feeling again.
"That's a second kind of love," Jonas says. "It's friendship. Like you and I and Asher." Fiona smiles, nodding and understanding.
"But there's another love," he says finally, his hand creeping further up her back.
A boy, she realises he's . . . kissing . . . her. He shouldn't! Kissing is not polite or accepted but goodness it felt nice. She felt different feelings. Tingling all over her body where he was touching, heat in her cheeks. She feels an unmistakable want, a longing, a desire, a passion. Just like in her stirrings. He's got his hands under shirt and on her back and she sneaks her hands up his shirt and feels his naked skin.
She shouldn't be doing this, she realizes, it's rude and indecent and she'd probably be released if the Committee of Elders ever found out!
Jonas brings her out of the dream. She jumps, knocking his hands out of the way in her haste as she gets to her feet unsteadily. She stumbles but Jonas is up and catches her before she falls in the river.
"Easy now," he says.
"That's love?" she asks squeakily.
"All of it is love," he said. "The Grandmother, Sandra and the boy. In the memory you loved them. It's all different kinds of love but all the same."
"Why can't we love?" she asks.
"We can," he says. "The pill stops it. The pill stops the stirrings and therefore all confusing emotions, including love."
"Love," she repeats softly. "So I love you and Asher and I love my mother and father. Are there anymore loves?" she asks.
"I suppose so," he says, thoughtfully. "But to show you it would break so many rules of indecency."
"I want to know all loves," she decides. So she lays on her belly and closes her eyes and waits expectantly as he slips his hand under her shirt.
It's pitch black, just like in the room where she learned trust. She feels a hand stroking her chin and a bare chest against her bare chest. She realizes the boy and her are both naked. She feels a tongue licking her breast and arches to it and moans. Something hard presses against her thigh.
Then suddenly its not against her thigh anymore and poking itself at her vagina. She leads it in, eager. The man who holds her in his arms began thrusting himself into her. She moans and groans and they kiss passionately until finally she has something so powerful and overwhelming called an orgasm.
Jonas brings her out of the memory. She was all sweaty and her underwear was wet with fluids and she was breathing hard. So was Jonas.
"That's another love," he says. "There's family love, friend love, young love and passionate love."
She flips over so that she's facing him and directly under him. She was aware she shouldn't be touching him, that it wasn't polite but he had told her never to apologize so she wouldn't.
"Oh," she breathes. He loves the feel of her breath tickling his lips and licks them. "I-I think I liked passionate love," she says. "It was like the want in the Stirring fulfilled."
"That's exactly what it is," he says, stroking her cheek with two fingers.
"Jonas," she says unsurely. "In my dream, everything looked different."
"That's because it was colour," he says. "Your hair is red. It's the colour of an apple."
"Red?" she asks. "Oh." She sits up. "But what about passionate love? I look much different know then I did in passionate love and young love."
"That's because you haven't grown up," Jonas explains. "Passionate love is usually preformed with older people. That's how babies are born. But only birthmothers can experience that since everyone's blocked out with the pills," he adds bitterly.
"Someday I want to love you," she says seriously.
"You can't just decide who you love," he says, rolling his eyes. "It has to be the right person."
"No, I mean passionate love you," she says. "I think I maybe even young love you now."
"You can't," he says. "You're under the pills."
"But I haven't taken them this morning," she says, reminding him. "And I swear, I won't anymore."
He looks at her intently. "Do you really love me?"
She nods slightly.
"We can't let anyone know," he says. "I'm the Receiver so nothing will happen to me but it may to you since Caretakers of the Old aren't exactly in short supply."
She nods again. "I don't want this life," she says. "I want to see colours," she adds suddenly.
"You will," he promises. "I'll teach you. It'll start slowly than you'll be able to get over all the grey and see colours. Trust me, they're beautiful. It's all beautiful."
"Like the river?"
"Like the river."