Title: Pride and Precipice
Characters: Mal/Inara
Rating: G for angst
Summary: A third party looks on as Mal and Inara do their utmost to keep their feelings under wraps…
Disclaimer: Of course they don't belong to me… But I love the challenge they offer up to the observer
Pride and Precipice
I watched from afar… two people… worlds apart… on a collision course. Each fiercely independent… Each unrelenting in their pride. They cannot give in… because underneath the layers of anguish they know that if they do, there is no turning back the tide. The tide of emotions, of long suppressed desire. Neither want to be the first… they fear too much. They care too much and they tell themselves little lies that they do no belong in the other's world. But what they don't realize is that they don't belong anywhere anymore except that given the chance, they could belong to each other. That notion pulls them apart within… it creates uncertainty… and uncertainty means danger… means vulnerability.
They cannot be vulnerable, at least not with each other. He has seen death too much. She has seen too much of death in him. With words they keep each other at bay… he, fearful of what his existence might do to her and she, fearful of losing control and not wanting to set aside all that she held dear. His life challenged her most treasured beliefs
I watched them from afar… Two people caught in one of life's unexpected surprises… In another time and place, perhaps their paths might never have crossed. Perhaps under different circumstances… With her back turned, he gazes at her wondering what could be. She, sipping her xiang pian cha, wonders why her inner person quakes when he is nearby. Control becomes a meaningless word when faced with his person. His person looks on, ashamed that he cannot be the man he believes she wants him to be. She, sipping more xiang pian, covets to find a way into his inner man. She is frustrated that she cannot go beyond the barbed fence and the thorny hedge erected to keep away strangers and friends alike.
Yet they cannot deny the force which brings them together. A whirlwind of feelings held back only by force of habit and will. Each would like to believe that the other doesn't care but somewhere in the recesses of the mind, there are murmurs that they are deceiving themselves. They are their own worst enemies… the universe does not have to conspire against them… they have already made their choices…
There are times when they long to touch the other but fear holds them back…
There are times when they want to give in to the barrage of voices that tell them to surrender but life gets in the way…
There are times when they want to say the words but the words elude them…