AN: sorry for the wait...Here we are. UST floats my boat so hard, you've no idea
She feels sticky, gross, and weighted down. Coated in honey, like a fly trap, and they'll swarm like bees, all flocking to nip at her, eating her away.
Her eyelids are sheathed in some sort of shiny gunmetal grey and she feels like a revolver, poised and hard and sharp but all this war paint feels sticky. Her lips are red, like blood but more along the lines of berry and it's gumming up her mouth with its sticky juice. She tries to talk, she tries, but she knows that this mouth isn't meant for talking, its meant for whispering sighs and silence. And her hair. Her hair is lifted up and away from her face, piled in sloppy, loose curls up on her head (its very counterproductive, lifting her hair away from her face and then making it fragile and falling into her eyes. It makes no sense whatsoever. She can barely move. Which is, after all, the point of this barbaric mating ritual. How does Inara do it?). She's so bare, small breasts pushed up and out of the strapless yellow gown, walking in tiny, hobbling steps.
"You know, this type of gown was invented by the ancient Chinese of Earth-that-was so that it was harder for women to run away when men wanted to have intercourse with them, whether it was consensual or not? It's literally called a bondage dress. Don't you have issues with that?"
Inara grimaces and smiles at the ground, those secret smiles that River knows men find so alluring (Captain Reynolds certainly does). Her own dress is a smooth emerald cocoon, wrapping her torso in a corset of fabric and bandaging her body down to her toes with a huge draping sash draping over her shoulder, a dangerously seductive mantis. River, even if she lives a hundred years, will never be that glamorous.
River's dress is bright yellow and strapless, rouched between her breasts and tight enough to her feet that she can barely move with a mermaid-like train of ruffles in yellow silk and white tulle. She knows she is very pretty, but this is not her. It's a mask. One she guiltily enjoys wearing, but it's uncomfortable. Binding.
Just like they intended.
Squished lungs, bound feet, ruined spirit.
She tiptoes her way down the walkway and smacks straight into Zoe, who has been parading down the walkway, and River can see why.
"A Queen. Rules over everything, that's what you are."
Zoe grins at her and curtsies (River congratulates herself for passing off her moment of innormality as normal), lifting up the silk of her halter gown, the deep brown colour matching her skin(Wash got his slinky dress).
"I must say, if anyone's looking like royalty, it's you, miss River Tam. You've done quite a bit of growing up in the past few hours. Inara get her claws into you?"
River turns to glare at Inara, who smiles smugly (she's always smiling).
"She's a blackmailer. Don't trust her."
There's a shriek from behind them and they all grin at the sight of Kaylee flying down the steps from the engine room in her pink candy dress.
"River Tam! Look at you, looking so swa shei! Ni zhen hao kan, wo de mei mei! Golly, I'd never have believed- why just look at you! Inara, did you do this?"
Inara and River exchange a glance and she rolls her eyes.
"Yes. Don't trust her. She makes you wear makeup."
Kaylee giggles and takes the younger girl's hand.
"It's okay mei mei. Next time, Inara, if you get the urge to make over anyone, I will bravely sacrifice myself in her place."
Kaylee is noble, is strong.
"Thank you. That's very brave. A princess shouldn't have to sacrifice her life."
Zoe steps forward and hooks her arm through Inara's arm and they are suddenly all bound together, the women of the clan, the women of Serenity.
"I wonder. If I'm the Queen of this here establishment and little Kaylee's the princess, what does that make you and River?"
Inara pretends to think as they all slowly meander to the kitchen to meet up with the men.
"Well, that's obvious. I'm the ambassador."
They all laugh, genuine, thinks River, and she gets the joke. She feels good tonight. Almost whole, she manages, before Zoe asks, "And River?"
Inara smiles at the younger girl, so innocent, looking so far beyond sinful in her yellow dress and River gapes at this glimpse of her new self through Inara's eyes. It's odd, but she can see it all the same.
"Why, she's the enchantress. The prophetess."
River pouts while Kaylee mutters something about "Shiny, an enchantress! How's that for glamour, huh Zoe?"
"What, mei mei? Why so sad?"
River raises an eyebrow at Inara and adjusts the top of her dress haughtily as she steps through the containment area and into the hall ajoining the kitchen.
"The prophetess always gets stoned in Greek myths."
Zoe steps forward to open the door for them as Kaylee gasps in horror and Inara chuckles.
"Well then we sure are glad that this ain't earth-era Greece, aren't we girls?"
And then they step through.
and there is silence.
If River was objective about this, she would say that this was a classic mating ritual, the fluffing up of feathers for their mates, the rush of hormones as the urge to reproduce took over when they appraised their matches in all their glory.
But suddenly she can't do this anymore (despite Inara's cajoling and pleading), seeing as everyone pairs off, seeing the all consuming, dizzying rush of almost painful love that Wash has in his eyes when he takes in Zoe, the longing of a starving man for bread that makes Mal drop his cup when he sees his emerald waltz into his kitchen and she can't see the tenderness in simon's eyes as he visibly looks past the cheap make of Kaylee's dress and into her shy smile, her pink candy heart. Even Shepard Book is smiling (to want is to sin, and to sin is to die, and he wants to live, but that is a want, so does that make it a sin? But he does not want these women, only their company, their flock) as Zoe goes to bump her hip into his.
it's a full circle.
They don't need her. the one without a match, the lone merc in the corner peeling his apple doesn't want a match. He doesn't need her, and she won't embarrass herself in her yellow dress, the girl parading in her mother's clothes, shoes too big to fit, her mask slipping off her face.
It'll never fit.
She tries to sneak away, tries to hide, to keep it from surfacing, to run before the mask falls off completely, but she trips on her train with her big heels and ends up falling face first into the floor.
She freezes for a moment as the triangles of the floor (9,287,772.4 holes in all, educated estimation) dent her skin and reality shifts.
She can see the sky in its blueness. Strawberries and cream.
Her face presses into the cracks, seeping, dripping down into the cargo bay below, melting off her bones like the fat off of a turkey, roasted alive in this oven of love that she is excluded from until it passes off into space, leaving a trail of mess and ruined skin.
She always leaves trails of destruction.
It would all be better for them if she could just lie here and drip, just melt away into space, infinite, unfeeling. All one big blank. One vast nothing, that's all she was. A mask for their use, made into a tool, special in that she could help them, two by two she would be used. Two cuts into her brain, two severed parents, two lost lives, two by two. She saw it. more death. Shepard, his herd is lost. The happy dinosaur, leaving behind his family to mourn, to gather food for itself. She didn't want to see, she didn't want to be alone.
Maybe if she just dripped, it wouldn't happen.
She would just melt.
She reaches out her arms and grips the metal, pressing harder, smiling as her skin liquefies and is burned off her, her skeleton smiling as it's outside falls away. Nothing left but insides, the good stuff. The stuff that no one wants. Her skin making soft plopping sounds as it hits the ground, wetly splashing as it curls in soft chunks away from her body and plummets to the ground, exploding like the inside of a melon.
Drip.
"River?"
"Is she okay?"
"What's she doing?"
"River, sweetie, what're you doing?"
"RIVER!"
"What's wrong with her?"
Inara bends over and picks her up off the floor and she shakes her head, comes back to reality and sees what they see: a stark, white armed girl pressing her body into the cracks, leaving deep diamond shaped imprints in the skin, eyes splayed wide and unseeing.
And she remembers life a little as she sees all of them, standing there staring at her, the men so clean and shiny in their cowboy suits, all dressed up for a night on the town. Pretty little happy packages. Packages of things she loves.
The good stuff.
The innards.
The least she can do is be happy for them.
So she smiles and straightens the ringlets around her face and adjusts her train and the top of the strapless dress that defies gravity.
"I fell. Sorry I kept you waiting."
Now that the fear is gone, Simon's eyes widen as he realizes that yes, this is his mei mei, somehow, this creature with red lips and sultry eyes and good god, he can't think about all the men in the bars they will most likely be going to looking at his little sister's cleavage. This is not acceptable. He never wanted to think about her cleavage, much less see it. Ever ever. And the men! The other men! His mei mei!
"Mei, what on earth are you wearing? You look like a biao zi!"
To her great surprise, just as she opens her mouth to tell him that she does not and it isn't his business, Inara goes and links her arm through hers.
"Well she would, wouldn't she? It is, after all, my dress. C'mon birthday boy. We're all waiting on you."
At this, River starts and realizes that Jayne is no where to be seen. That means he hasn't seen her yet.
that means she can show him.
That means she hasn't blown her chance.
She isn't sure why she wants to impress him. He's rather despicable, actually. Her subconscious probably sees it as a right of passage; as a sexually active alpha-male type, his attraction to her will assert her womanhood. Or something.
There is a lot of grumbling and banging, and River blocks out the sound of "gorram fancy dress shit" and "whadda we have ter get all fancied up for, anyhow?" and breathes in slowly, coldly, letting her mind change into no River, but yet another River. An Inara-River.
"I still don't git why dressing up all fancy to go to a bar changes much of nuthin, 'Nara, 'cept for your chances of gettin' more clients to service. All I want is-…."
He breaks off and when she opens her eyes, he is staring, and she feels naked, more than naked, she feels ashamed and blessed at the same time and her inner Inara flees and she wants to squirm and cover herself up and run away but she can't because of the gorram Chinese and evil Inara. She feels slightly dizzy because his stare is eating her up and everyone is watching and she sees Kaylee straining to hold Simon back by his shirttails.
He swallows thickly and adjusts his tie, coughing once before tearing his eyes away and grunting uncomfortably to Wash and Zoe, both of whose eyebrows have hit their hairline in the past few moments.
She has passed.
Mal steps forward.
"You seem to be taking a mighty large interest in River's dress." He notes in that low voice, the one that says, I haven't had dinner yet and I'm feeling peckish and your brains look right appetizin'...
He grimaces and nods at River, who nods solemnly back. This is odd, because she was certain Mal's interest lay in Inara, unless he has developed a paternal streak suddenly…of course he has. Of course. She shakes her head to clear it, to jolt the glitter our of her ears and eyes.
"Well, it's a fine party frock, ain't it?" Grunts Jayne, eyes flicking.
Mal steps forward again until his chin gets near Jayne's shoulder.
"That it is."
River watches with wide eyes, curious at this development, confused, and she decides that men are very irrational creatures, not to mention it isn't a frock, it's a gown.
They should know the difference.
Mal abruptly steps back and River gets flashes of 'air lift' and 'blown to hell' and 'its kinda hard not to stare, she's fallin' outta the damn thing' and 'whys he getting' all protective-like?' and she knows that she has succeeded, just a little bit, so she smiles sunnily and offers Shepard Book her arm and they go off to the 'fancy party' to get drunk and pick up loose women.
River just wants out of the gorram dress.
Its done its job.
AN: Please do review. I am utterly pathetic in my yearning. If you review, I will use the word yearning in a viable sentance concerning River and Jayne in the next chapter...