We all just keep moving on, Simon thought, whether we like it or not.
He pressed his hand against the window of the cockpit, imagining that he could feel vacuum pulling at him through the chilled glass. Above and around him, the stars whirled and turned into rippling blurs of light. The ship was finding its way through space, navigating the constellations in complex arcs, yet its artificial gravity made it seem as if Simon were the one still point in all the wheeling sky. He knew that he should be used to the sight – he had been aboard Serenity for nearly a year now, had turned his eyes to this moving skyscape countless times – but he still found it disquieting. It seemed, in a sense, emblematic of all that his life had become: he remained stuck to one perspective while the world changed all around him, leaving him with no landmark, no guiding star.
Simon turned away from the window to look at his sister, who sat at the ship's control panel, urging it through the sky. Her face was luminous, frankly enraptured; she loved space, loved moving in and through it, with a childlike purity. And so he tolerated it, because he had to be with her; he was brother and father to her, and would be for as long as she needed either one. In the wreck of his life, River had become his reason, his compass. Wherever she pointed, he had to go.
Mei-mei, he thought, what will I do when you don't need me any more?
"Form other primary relationships," River replied aloud, blunt and unflappable. "Though chances of success are minimal. Your social skills are problematic."
She didn't look at him as she spoke; she looked through him, past him, into the glittering void. Simon turned back to the mutable stars.
"Why don't you like Kaylee? She likes you," River said.
Simon detected an unusual sharpness in her tone – something very young, very much like real and personal anger. It relieved him to see that River was developing a sense of self, and that she no longer allowed herself to float, directionless, on the sea of thought. She was growing more sane and solid every day. Still, he was not quite ready for the inevitable conflicts that would occur as River came back into her own skin.
"I do like Kaylee," he said. "I like her very much. We're just… angry at each other."
When he turned back to River, her face was impassive and tense. He saw no compassion in her eyes. As usual, River seemed to care very little for his reasons, in spite of knowing him perhaps more completely than he knew himself. He wondered how he could look to the eye of a psychic: flimsy, translucent, a pitiful creature constructed of etiquette and science. He bowed his head.
"I'm sorry, River," Simon said. "I know that she's your friend."
He had been a fool, he thought privately, for taking Kaylee into his bunk – as if sex could solve all of their problems, as if his physical reticence had been the only obstacle they had to face. They had slept together for nearly two weeks, starting after the battle for Miranda, and on a purely physical level, it had been good: friendly, enthusiastic, not overly refined. When it was over, however, they were cast back into their separate skins, and back into the problems they had always known. Kaylee was volatile, prone to get carried away on gusts of emotion; Simon was private, hesitant and closed. She always seemed to need more than he could give. Finally, Simon had said something pointed and bitter, something he could not retract, and he had stalked out of her bunk. As the door had sealed behind him, he had been certain that he would never come back.
River narrowed her eyes, considering.
"I don't think you can do better," she said, finally.
Simon sighed, and pressed his head to the window.
"You're probably right," he said.
His mind wandered back to that final moment, the split second in which he had known he was leaving her. I need space, he had said – as if he didn't have more than enough of it, as if space were not all that he had.