A/N This drabble came from a prompt from Beawolf's Pen. It can either be treated as a stand-alone story or as a companion piece to "True Beauty", the latest chapter (chapter 17) from "Sealed with a Kiss", my collection of Rayne one-shots. True Beauty should be read first. Hope you enjoy :)
me without you
River was lost.
Unable to focus, unable to centre. Endlessly spinning like a broken compass.
When she wasn't numb, she was crying.
She could feel Simon's pain, his anger at his helplessness. Every so often she would try to rouse, to coalesce. To pull her fractured psyche together enough to function in the world once more. But it was futile.
Like catching lucidity in a sieve.
She had been getting better. After Miranda, it had been a little better.
Something had changed in the ether. She had found something to grasp; a magnetic field to orient her.
For the first time in years she pointed true.
And then he died.
And took everything with him.
His earthy existence; his tactile presence.
His sharp words, gnarled scowls, and sneaking admiration.
Buoying, itching, pushing her to be better, be faster, react quicker. First because she couldn't trust, couldn't trust him not to turn on her and Simon; later because he was such an irritant, she couldn't rid herself of his influence. Stuck in her psyche like a burr under a saddle.
The ape-gone-wrong. The thorn in her side. The mucky, snarling, lewd mutt without airs or graces.
Who moved like a wolfhound in battle; who concealed as much as he showed; who sucked everything he could from life like marrow from a bone.
Serenity's crew had always thought of Jayne as slow to understand; River was supposed to be a genius. But the time she'd most needed to solve the algorithm, she'd calculated the output too late.
The irony melted on her tongue like a bitter meringue.
Her compass had lost its magnet. She had lost her true north.
She hadn't known it was Jayne until it was too late.