Title: Unstuck
Author: knightshade
Rating: PG
Word Count: 998
Summary: Simon tries to deal with a new manifestation of River's condition.
Author Notes: This was written for the Obsession challenge at the LiveJournal community fffriday.
Thank you so much to jebbypal and pheral for beta reading.
Disclaimer: Nope, you guessed it. They aren't mine. See Joss Whedon.
Unstuck
As Simon pushed open the doorway that lead down to his and River's quarters, he was immediately assailed by a waft of loud music. It flooded out into the corridor and echoed unpleasantly off the metal walls. He sighed and thought briefly about going back to the peace of the infirmary. The most recent changes he'd made to River's medication had produced some strange side effects and he was leery about dealing with them. But in the end his sense of responsibility won out and steeling himself, he climbed down the rung ladder to their quarters.
River was standing in front of the music console completely mesmerized, staring holes through it as the cacophony went on around her. The song ended and she immediately stabbed the button to make it play again.
Simon approached her carefully, afraid of what would happen if he startled her. She was staring so intently that Simon would almost believe that she could see the music coming through the speakers.
"River?" he asked, trying to speak as softly as possible and still be heard over the music.
"Have to make it stop," she said without looking up at him or giving any indication that she was surprised to hear his voice.
Simon sometimes wondered if River's condition wasn't equivalent to a faulty computer program locked in some infinite loop. At times like this she was so obsessed and fixated on one thing that she couldn't see the obvious.
"You just hit the stop button," he said reaching to turn off the music.
"NO!!" she shrieked and batted his hand away from the console.
Simon stared at her, wide-eyed. He hadn't been expecting that kind of reaction. He hated dealing with this frustrated, mercurial version of his sister. She was so unpredictable when she was like this.
River brought her hands up against her ears and started chanting, "No, no, no. I have to get it unstuck. Kaylee played the music and the soundwaves got stuck. Standing waves bounce back and forth but they don't move. Caught. I have to get them out!"
The song ended again and she banged her clenched fist against the player to restart it.
Simon put his hand on her shoulder. "It's just music, River. It's not trapped. It's okay." He hated that he was always at a loss for how to deal with outbursts like this. He had no idea what to say or do to calm her down. Simon had always been better with the precise, fine art of surgery or the logic of assessing injuries than dealing with troubled patients. He liked having rules that were followed in an orderly fashion. This -- this was messy and unfathomable.
River pulled away from him, calmer at least. "Caught," she said quietly.
"Maybe we should give the music crystal back to Kaylee now, okay?"
"Nooooo," she said mournfully. "It's stuck between the bones. The words in Wernicke, the music in the rostromedial prefrontal cortex. I have to play it out. I have to get them unstuck."
Simon stared at her -- she was talking about areas of the brain. Then it finally made sense. "The song's stuck in your head? Kaylee played it and the tune got stuck in your head?" That was at least something he could relate to.
She glared at him like he was a complete imbecile. "Yes. Stuck between the bones. Let in through vibrations of the tympanic membrane, passed on to the bones of the middle ear, through the cochlea, and then fed to the auditory nerve. They get trapped in the Wernicke and the prefrontal cortex," she explained in a frustrated mutter.
"The song's not really stuck, River. And I don't think playing it over and over again is going to help. It's just going to get it stuck in my head too. We'll do something else to get it out of your head. We'll play jacks like you do with Kaylee."
He reached for the console and stopped the playback. River watched him, confusion creasing her brow into a furrow.
"Stuck. I have to get it out," she said plaintively.
"River, this isn't going to help," he said, hitting the button to pop out the music crystal.
"No," she said, still sounding confused and a little scared. She fumbled to get the crystal as it was ejected from its slot.
"River, I'm going to give this back to Kaylee."
"No. I have to get it out." She grabbed his hand and tried to wrestle the crystal away from him.
"Stop it, River. I'm just . . ."
He tried to pull his hand away from her, but she had a lock on it.
"Have. To Play. It. OUT!" she yelled. The crystal flung out of Simon's hand and hit the wall, shattering to the floor in a cascade of sharp pieces.
Simon had no idea what she was going to do now. She stared at him a moment and then a slow, sly smile spread across her face. For a moment, Simon saw the real River -- his mischievous younger sister. He remembered that smile from when they were children – it was the one that always appeared just as she was about to call checkmate and beat him in chess yet again.
"Broken record," she said grinning, obviously pleased with her play on words. "Broken record, Simon." She began to giggle, and it quickly grew into a full laugh.
Simon stared at her, mystified. How could she change so rapidly from being barely coherent to explaining scientific principles to just being his sister? "Yes, you're very clever, River," he said as she turned around and began skipping through the room sing-songing "Broken record."
Simon watched her whirl around the room and wanted to cry. It scared him that he could see his sister so clearly sometimes. She was still in there somewhere -- trapped between the bones.
And it was up to him to find a way to get her unstuck.
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- knightshade
- December 22, 2004