Title: Harps and Lutes
Author: knightshade
Rating: PG-13 for some swearing in Chinese
Warnings: Potentially tear-inducing
Pairing: Zoe/Wash
Summary: Wash didn't understand where he was or why he was there, but at least one thing made sense. Zoe was always there with him. Wash, post Serenity.
Disclaimer: Joss is the evil genius, I'm just trying to make sense of his madness.
Author's Notes: I wrote this after seeing Serenity the first time. It was one of my attempts to process what happened so I didn't post it at the time. I ran across it on my hard drive last week and figured that since it made me cry, it was probably worth posting.
Harps and Lutes
Everything was the same but so hopelessly different. Someone threw open the window shades on a planet too close to its sun and everything was bright to the point of being washed out. Serenity had always been a ship steeped in shadows but now she was somehow impossibly light.
Wash was trying to find the one joke that would make it all okay. The joke that would bring a smile to his face. But nothing worked. Nothing make it okay. It was hard to find the hilarity in 'oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die,' these days.
He didn't even really understand where he was. Or why he was here. One minute he'd just brought Serenity down. It had been ugly – she'd taken a lot of damage – but by God, he'd put her down. And the next thing...well, the next thing should have been harps and lutes, but there weren't any. He'd just been jumping from place to place and time to time since then. It didn't make sense to him. The white light would grow until everything blanked out entirely and then he'd be somewhere else. The only thing constant, the only thing that made any sense to him was that everywhere he went, Zoe was there. In their quarters, on the bridge, on the cargo bay, she was always there. And she was always alone too which was strange. He hadn't seen any of the rest of the crew. Just Zoe.
Like right now. She was at the table, her long fingers wrapped around a forgotten mug, her eyes glazed over and distant. The chair across the table from her was pulled back. Jayne had probably had his boots up on the table again and not bothered to push the chair in when he last left. Wash slid into the seat and leaned forward.
"Hi, baby," he said softly. She didn't move. She never did. He stared into her eyes with as much fervor as he could manage. Maybe if he looked hard enough, she would see. "I'm sitting right here. All you have to do is look."
She was looking, but she just didn't see him. Or hear him. And it was killing him.
Or it would be if it weren't for the already being dead part.
"Zoe, baby, please. I love you and I'm right here." The same thing happened every time – he tried desperately to get her attention, she went about her business like he wasn't there. In a way it reminded him of when they first started dating.
"Come on, Zoe. Please?" He knew it was useless, but he had to keep trying.
She set down her cup and stared into for a while. Not reacting to him, just moving on some whim of her own.
"Zoe, damn it, why can't you see me?" he pleaded. It was so gorram frustrating! She was right there! He got out of the chair and started pacing.
He'd tried to touch things before. It wasn't like the ghost stories or vids. He didn't pass through things. It was more like he didn't weigh enough to have any effect. He could sit in a chair but if he tried to move it, it felt like it was nailed to the floor. He'd tried to touch Zoe too, but she couldn't feel him either.
Nothing he did had any effect on anything.
"Zoe! I'm right here! Please, baby! Please!" He clenched his jaw and felt his throat closing up. It was all too much. He couldn't think of a worse punishment, a worse torture. Well, he could, but he wouldn't dwell on that. "Damn it, Zoe!" he yelled. Still nothing. He launched himself at the table and tried to knock the mug from her hand but nothing budged.
"Tah mah de, hwoon dahn!" he yelled dissolving in frustration as everything went white again and Wash knew he'd just jumped out of that place and time.
When the light faded out again, he found himself on the bridge, which wasn't unusual. He glanced around, looking for her and froze. He'd never seen anyone besides Zoe, but there was River sitting in the pilot's chair. It took a minute to sink in. River was flying his ship.
There was no God.
He peered over her shoulder to get a glimpse at the controls and she tensed up like someone had brushed the back of her neck.
"River?" he asked, stunned. "Can you see me?"
She slowly turned around and nodded, fear and awe in her eyes. Of course. She had seen or heard or felt the colonists on Miranda too.
"Thank God! Look, River, you have to get Zoe. You have to tell her I'm here."
She stared at him sadly. "It doesn't work that way."
"What do you mean?"
"You have to go," she said simply.
"I'd be happy to. Just point me to the nearest transport to the planet Styx and I'll be on my way."
She sighed dramatically and turned her attention back to the controls.
Right. Great idea, there Wash, he thought. Piss off the one person who can see you.
"Look, River, I'm sorry. I'm just a little frustrated right now." He came around to lean against the console and softened his tone to try again. "Why do I have to leave?"
"You don't belong here."
Well he certainly wouldn't mind a little harp and lute music right about now. "Then why am I here?"
She shrugged.
"What am I?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes as if to say, 'You know what you are.' He stared at her until she tilted her head. "Lost energy. Consciousness. Forced out by startling circumstances. Left in the 'verse. You don't belong here."
"But you could see the colonists on Miranda too, right?"
"The drugs made them too somnolent to leave and the Reavers were too angry to go."
"And me?"
She sighed and went back to the console. Wash spotted the slope indicator on the panel. He glanced out the view port to see that they were leaving a planet. "Hey, back off a little on your climb rate. It's hell on the thrusters."
"The climb rate is well within operational parameters."
"Well, yeah, but you got worn out coils in the back. You need to be gentle," he said patting the console.
She stared at him doubtfully.
"Hey, I did used to be a pretty good pilot, you know."
She smiled and backed off the throttle. "The best."
Wash found himself smiling a little too. It was nice to be able to talk to someone for a change instead of yelling himself silly.
He looked out into the black. "So where is it exactly I'm supposed to go?"
"Don't know."
"That's not exactly comforting. Not to mention making it a little bit difficult to find directions."
"You don't belong here."
"You've mentioned that."
Wash looked down at his hands, worried that the bridge might disappear on him before he found out anything useful. And he was pretty well convinced that River might know something useful. He decided to get to the crux of the situation while he still could. "What if I don't want to leave?" he asked softly.
She didn't say anything so he went on. "What if I just want to stay here with Zoe, watching her, keeping an eye out for her? What if I can't leave her?"
"You've already left," River said softly.
It hit him like a punch to the stomach, like one of Niska's men had just rammed a fist into his soft tissue. He had left her. And it was never supposed to be that way. She was the fighter. She went out on the jobs. She was the one who took the risks.
She was supposed to die first.
It had always been an unspoken truth between them. He would be presiding over her funeral, not the other way around. He'd always prepared himself for that, and here things were, the tables all turned.
"River, you've got to come with me to find Zoe. I've got to talk to her."
"That's not how it goes," she said sadly.
"Why not?! I can tell you what to tell her." His frustration was growing again.
"She can't hear you. Not even through me."
"We have to try! I'll tell you something that only she and I...oh." Wash dropped his head into his hands, remembering. River was a mind reader.
"Some things do more harm than good," she said.
And he knew it probably would. Zoe would be shooting angry if she thought River was reading her mind and peering in on the things that only the two of them were supposed to know. Instead of being a comfort, it would just hurt her more. Zoe was open to some level of spirituality – more than Mal anyway – but Wash didn't really think she'd believe her dead husband was hanging around the ship yelling at her. Not literally, anyway.
Wash was filled with a despair more real than anything around him. "I just want to tell my wife that I love her."
River's eyes filled with tears. "She knows."
"I didn't even get to say goodbye."
"Then say it now."
"What good would that do if she can't even hear me?" He asked, struggling against the crack in his voice
"You didn't hear her when she said goodbye to you," River said from under lowered lashes.
"What do you mean?" he asked defensively.
"You weren't at the funeral. She said goodbye and laid you to rest and you weren't there."
He wished he could argue that point, but River was right. For whatever reason, he hadn't been. He had no idea how or why he'd been turning up where and when he had, but he hadn't been a spectator at his own funeral.
River looked down at her boots. "We don't say goodbye for others. We do it for ourselves."
Wash's eyes filled with tears. He couldn't do it. He couldn't say goodbye to Zoe. She was his rock, his world, his everything. If he said goodbye to her then he'd truly have nothing left. He wanted to sink into nothing, just disappear and for all he knew, he would soon.
Serenity broke atmo, distracting both of them, and River pulled back on the stick. Wash couldn't help cringing. "Not like that. You want to–" but he was cut off as Serenity bucked and hitched, throwing his featherweight essence against the pilot's console. "Ow," he said. But it was really only surprise. There wasn't any pain, just the memory of what the pain would have felt like.
"Sorry," she said looking guilty.
"You're doing alright, but you're forcing it too much. You want to feel her out. Pay attention to how she's moving through the stick, treat her like an extension of your own body." Wash tried to think of how to explain it and then smiled when he remembered River's ruse to save them from Jubal Early. "You want to fly like you are Serenity."
Maybe it did make sense that River was the one flying her. She would understand this better than anyone else.
"I will." She looked up at him and smiled sadly. "Goodbye, Wash."
She knew he was going to leave again before he did. Apparently there were some things that death didn't change. He always seemed to be the last to know.
"Goodbye, River. Good luck."
The bridge faded out but as he was leaving he thought he heard her say, 'Too much in love to go." Then, before he could catch his breath, he realized he was in their quarters.
Zoe was in the closet rooting around. He sat down on the bed and watched her while she pulled out his clothes and piled them on the bed. Then she went about folding each item with crisp precision, and setting them in carefully ordered stacks. He didn't realize he had so much stuff. Well, he did, but not really. If he'd known he was going to die he would have picked up or arranged or something.
Instead of trying to get her attention, Wash just watched her moving slowly about their space. He didn't want to say goodbye. He wasn't ready for that. But he had a sneaky suspicion that maybe River was right. Maybe it was something he had to do. He certainly didn't feel like he belonged here.
"I'm sorry," he said as she folded a pair of pants.
She set them down and went back to the closet for more clothes.
Wash just forced himself to keep going. It wasn't like he didn't have practice talking to people who weren't listening. "Look, sweetie. I'm going to tell you some things. Just to get them off my chest. The good thing is that since can't you hear me, you won't kill me. Which, actually, I guess is a moot point now anyway, huh?"
She dropped another pile on the bed and set to work on it.
"You remember that time when we got locked out of our cabin in the rain on the honeymoon? I actually had the key. I just wanted an excuse to make love to you in the rain. And the sweater that your mother sent me for my birthday that I said I must have lost? I kind of flushed it out the airlock. And that time we were fighting over you and Mal? I knew you were right and I was being petty and jealous. I just couldn't bring myself to admit it."
Wash stared down at his hands.
"But I think those are the only times I've ever really been dishonest with you. Even when I wasn't at my best, I was always trying to be the best I could for you. I wanted to be worthy of you – to be the kind of man you deserved."
Zoe paused at the shelf above their bunk and reached for a loose leather strap. She brushed her hair back with her hands, tied the leather into a loose knot behind her head, and then went back to folding. Wash watched her in awe. No one moved like Zoe. He could tell she was careworn and grieving by the slow heaviness in her movements, and yet she just kept going, and going with a grace that few possessed. He'd been so lucky to find her. So lucky that she had loved him back.
"Baby, I want you to be happy. I want you to move on and find someone and make gorgeous babies together." He paused. "Okay, you're right, not really that last part. That just makes me crazy jealous. But I do want more than anything for you to be happy. I always wanted to be the one to make you smile, and now that I can't do that anymore, I don't want you to lose it. I'm sorry I won't be with you. I'm sorry we won't get to grow old together. I was really looking forward to finding out where our life together was going to go."
Wash raked a hand through his hair and knew that when he looked back up again, everything was going to be blurry. Zoe had stopped moving. She was holding up one of his shirts. It was one of his favorites – yellow pineapples on a blue background. She folded her arms under it, pressing the bottom half of it against her stomach and letting the top half drape over her forearms. She was looking down at it quietly. There was just enough room between her and the bunk for him to be able to stand up in front of her.
"Zoe, I wouldn't be half the person I was without you. You gave me strength, you gave me love, and in return you had mine. I hope I made you laugh a little. I love you more than anything. And right now I'm really scared about what's going to happen if I say goodbye to you." He stared into her downcast eyes, and put his hands on each of her arms. "But I think I have to.
"Someday if River tells you she saw me. She's not crazy." He paused, blinking tears out of his eyes. "Or at least not about that, anyway."
He wasn't sure how much longer she was going to stand here like that, so he didn't know how much time he had to do this. He tried one last time to will her into seeing him, but her brown eyes were downcast and there was none of that spark, that brilliant smile she saved just for him. River was right, he'd already left her – he just needed to actually go.
Wash slowly leaned forward and gently kissed Zoe's unyielding lips.
"Goodbye, Zoe. I love you with everything I am."
The room around him filled with light again. This time as it started to dissolve away again, somewhere in the distance, Wash could swear he heard harps.
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-knightshade
March 24, 2007