-Firefly-
Hiding had become a habit for River since she'd come to Serenity. Or even before that, she sometimes remembered—she'd been hiding in some way or another since she'd heard Simon say her name and opened her eyes and stepped up behind him and found herself looking into his eyes, half-thinking it was all a trick except that she could feel him there in that living, dying tomb, and said his name aloud, turning his presence from fantasy into reality.
She'd never been able to hide from the people—if she could call them that—at The Academy, their eyes and fingers and secrets burrowing into her every crevice and moment. But everyone else, everyone since…their minds were too much for her, each one enough to comprise the whole of an individual's existence, and so many of them always trying to crowd in on her, pushing out whatever hints of individuality she still possessed.
So she hid.
It wasn't necessarily easy to flee the voices in a mid-book transport ship, but she had grown quite adept at it. Simon called it playing hide-and-seek, but he said that because he didn't realize—she couldn't tell him—that she didn't want anyone to find her. Oftentimes, she imagined herself lying against the curve of the ship and just disintegrating, melting away until she was one and the same with Serenity, a metal ship that couldn't be hurt, that could always fly free into the sky, that could keep safe the ones she loved enough to take inside her.
But that was a fanciful whimsy, nothing more, because she was a girl made out of flesh and blood that proved alarmingly susceptible to drugs and scalpels and manacles and locked doors. And anyway, sometimes she did want to be found, wanted someone to look for her, climb all the stairs and peer into all the hidden crannies and set his gentle hand on her shoulder and lead her back to a place where she could safely rest.
She wondered, sometimes, if Simon always wanted to find her, or if he, like her, sometimes wanted her to just disappear and leave him free and unfettered.
She hated that she wondered.
She hated that she already knew the answer.
She hated the answer.
She hated herself for not being strong enough to let go of him, for being too selfish to give him over to Kaylee, for needing him so entirely.
She hated that he didn't hate her. It would make things simpler, make it easier for her to let him go, for him to turn to Kaylee, for her to drift away and melt into nothingness—nothingness, not Serenity, because as much as she loved the sheltering ship, what would tie her to the Firefly without Simon there?
Serenity curled around her, wrapped her in a metallic embrace, caressed her with hanging wires, hid her behind smuggling panels, crooned to her with the beat of her engine. And River hunched in on herself, her eyes tightly closed, flying in her thoughts so that Serenity could keep flying through the Black. Simon was just beyond the wall next to her, holed up in his infirmary, pretending he wasn't hurt, pretending he was just fine, but one thing only kept rattling through his head.
Robot. Robot. Robot.
Each repetition bled like fire within his mind, leaking images of Kaylee curled up in a hammock listening to words spoken more eloquently than any Simon could himself conjure.
It perplexed River.
Simon always had the right words, always so confident and sure of what she needed him to say. He'd always been shy in front of people, always quiet and withdrawn, but confident too, content in his place as a surgeon and his gifted abilities, certain of his role in the 'verse. But now…now uncertainty and want too big for him to comprehend and a sense of displacement kept tangling all the words he wanted to say, trapping most of them behind his mask that he was fine and well and happy, turning the ones that did escape him into watered down versions of what was in his head because he didn't know how long they'd be here, didn't want to give false hope, didn't want to say what he really felt if he couldn't fully commit himself.
So maybe it did make perfect sense, because Simon always, only ever fully committed himself. There could never be any partway, never any maybes or might bes or could bes. There was only his entire being and soul and focus centered solely on…
On River.
There was no room for Kaylee now. No room, even, for Simon. Only room for River, and underneath that bleeding, leaking word rattling around in Simon's head and bruising his heart—curled up in his chest for safety just like she curled up within Serenity, his heart just as safe and protected from the world as she was protected from the thoughts of the others—underneath that word, there were still images of River and thoughts of brain patterns and ideas about new medicines he could try.
She wanted to weep for him. His-River still stirred occasionally, but she was an emaciated shell of who she had been and would never completely come back, not full and healthy and vibrant and colorful.
The old River was dead.
But…so was the old Simon. And all that was left was a man who wanted and desired and loved but would never admit it, never let on that he did, never let go of what-needed-to-be-done, never be able to actually voice all the thoughts and feelings and dreams that kept piling up inside him, a man enshrined on a once-empty shelf.
And it was all her fault.
River slipped aside the panel and rolled out of Serenity, stood there on a landing poised over a drop down metal stairs so unlike the marble staircases that had populated Osiris, a fall to the far-off deck all varying shades of gray so different from the vivid whites and yellows and greens of the place that had once been home. All around her, Serenity blinked and hummed and moved—she had thought it was a new home to replace the old, but now it bore more resemblance to a coffin, one that held the remains of both Simon and River Tam.
"What'cha doin' there?"
The captain was behind her, the heart of coal that still glowed intently for all that he tried to squish it. He was looking at her intently, and River suddenly could not bear to have him studying her so closely, did not want this man who had lost so much and still kept going to see her, who had lost all and could not keep going, not without help.
"I broke it," she admitted because she didn't want to be a coward, didn't want to hide what she had done, reflecting back on Mal the courage she saw in him, borrowing pieces of it to add to her growing collection of mismatched odds and ends. Maybe if she admitted that she had done it, they would be able to see that there was still so much there worth fixing, worth taking a look at, worth everything.
"What?" Mild alarm flared through Mal's thoughts, turning his mute voice ragged, and his gaze left her to look at the innards of the ship where she had lain.
"I broke it. I didn't mean to. I didn't know that would happen. But I reached in with codes and requests and I touched it with my nightmares and now it doesn't work the same anymore."
A string of curses to illustrate his unhappiness, his displeasure, and River shrank before his disapproval even while inwardly she was satisfied that finally, finally, she was being brought to task for all the harm she'd done.
"Simon! Come on, Doc, where are you?"
River felt her own measure of disapproval. She had thought Mal understood, thought that his own knowledge of all the things he had inadvertently broken would help him understand what she had ruined, but apparently she was wrong.
His thoughts were full of Serenity.
Maybe…maybe Serenity was his Simon.
"River?" And there Simon was, coming when called like an obedient puppy instead of the surgeon who had once commanded an army of nurses and orderlies. He was looking at her with his usual affection and concern, and River was ashamed and scared and felt so tiny before him, but his hands were outstretched to her, and so she moved to him and let him brush her hair back and rest a soft hand on her shoulder.
"I broke it," she told him quietly. "I'm sorry, Simon. It was there, and I thought it was mine, but maybe it wasn't, and now it's too late to put it back."
"Shh, mei-mei, it's okay." She knew Simon was aware of the crew gathering all around them, drawn to the commotion and the charisma of the captain, worried when they saw her, distressed when Mal ranted about her touching parts of his ship unsupervised and why hadn't Simon been watching her and where was he going to find replacement parts this deep in the Black and why wasn't Kaylee trying to fix it already. Simon was aware of it all, more so than she was, but he didn't look away from her, more proof if she had needed it.
"I broke it," River told him again, a bit frustrated. Why didn't Simon realize what she had done? She leaned into his forgiving embrace even as she waited for him to thrust her away in realization.
"It'll be all right," Simon assured her. "Whatever it is, I'm sure Kaylee will be able to fix it."
River cocked her head and studied him in puzzlement. How could he be so sure that Kaylee could fix what River had broken when Simon didn't even think Kaylee would ever speak to him again beyond murmured words that lashed out to inflict pain? Things often confused her since promises of dancing had turned into needles that deposited dead bodies in her mind, but this seemed more than confusing; it was an outright contradiction.
"You're supposed to be watching her!" the captain exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air, thick with the smoke of mute voices. "You're not supposed to be letting her wander around and pull parts off the ship!"
"I can't see anything wrong here," Kaylee said as she straightened up from her crouch.
River couldn't help but gape at her.
Robot. Robot. Robot.
The words were still beating an endless tattoo through her head—Simon's discomfort and hurt and regret, Kaylee's anger and sadness and uncertainty—and River wondered why they thought she was crazy if they could stand there and say they couldn't see that anything was wrong.
The captain was angry, terribly angry, and afraid; the Serenity that kept him going and fighting and living flickered unsteadily in his thoughts. He reached out and whirled River around by her shoulder, demanding an answer to what she had broken.
Simon flared hot, burned cold, knocking away the captain's hand, stepping in front of River, all doubts and regrets and fears obliterated before the need required by his total devotion—the repetition of that single word in his head finally, momentarily silenced. And River hid behind him, afraid of Mal's unrelenting determination crashing up against Simon's unwavering commitment, terrified that one would shatter before the other, or that both would keep beating up against each other until there was nothing left of one or the other of them.
"Whatever she did, I'm sure she didn't mean any harm by it," Simon defended her. "If it takes a new part, I still have a bit of money I can give you—but don't touch her!"
Mal's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I don't much care for your tone, boy, and she shouldn't be touchin' my ship!"
Others were speaking now, a whirling hodgepodge of questions and statements and jokes and accusations that flailed at her from all sides, too many for her to choose any one thing to reflect back. River cowered behind Simon and raised her hands to her ears, tossed about and scattered by the conflicting thoughts and words of Serenity's inhabitants.
"Maybe you're not recallin' the last time a seemingly insignificant part fried on us, but I'm not like to be forgettin' any time soon, so I'll only be askin' once more, Doc—what did she break?"
River let out a sob and shivered and shook and shuddered. "The doctor!" she yelled. "I broke your doctor!"
The silence that followed her outburst was outward only. Inwardly, the thoughts still flowed all around her, demanding an outlet. Only, River didn't care what the others thought. She sifted through the thoughts around her to find Simon's, dared to look up and saw him stricken, staring at her with an almost tragic look on his face. And his thoughts…she almost laughed, almost cried, almost screamed and fought, when she realized his thoughts were filled with regret—but not of her, no, only for what he must have said, must have done, must have thought, to give her the impression that she had hurt him.
"I broke you," she whispered as the others let their voices fall silent while their thoughts murmured and whispered in her ears. "I did. I didn't mean to, but it's true just the same. Intentions don't change the result, and now you're broken."
"No, mei-mei," he said, so softly, so gently, so tenderly that she thought she might shatter or maybe just melt beneath his touch as he reached out and took her hands, smoothed out their fists, slipped his fingers through hers. "I'm not broken. I'm safe, I'm whole, and we're here together."
"It's not the same," she explained patiently. Her brother was so smart, but sometimes he missed the entire point of things. "I called you and you came, and now everything is different. Your sister is gone and all that's left is a broken toy and now you're trapped in a home that's not home, in a place where nothing fits like it did before, and nothing works right. Purpose has changed, mission's different, but the tool is still the same, blunted and moved and left useless so many times."
"Shh, shh, shh." He tried to soothe her, but River was tired of always letting him take away her pain while he hid his own. It was nauseating, looking at him there and seeing him bleeding out, the pain of the wound masked by the adrenaline-like rush of helping her.
"It's all different!" she cried, batting away his hands, chafing against the touch and the feelings it evoked. "It's not clear anymore and there's no jolt to bring back the pulse and the monitor's lying because you're not dead, but you're not alive either. No saving lives, no parents, no future, nothing, and it's all my fault. She meddled and it wasn't hers to—"
"No." There was a thread of steel suddenly lacing Simon, bracing his voice and woven around his spine and sharpening his eyes, and River stared at him, at this new glimpse of what was inside him, felt the others staring just the same. "This is not your fault, River, okay? And I am happy; I'm not broken. As long as you're safe, I'm happy. I don't need to save other lives as long as I save you, all right? I'm not broken, and neither are you. Two halves of the same whole, remember?"
"Stop it!" River screamed, all the defenses that had been constructed so ruthlessly around her left powerless beneath this onslaught. "Stop saying it's okay! It's not okay! You can't fix it when you don't even see the problem!" Breathing hard, she peered through the glare cast by the shattering light of the crew around her and found her brother through the dilated haze. "You should hate me, Simon—hate me, please, at least a little. Cause and effect and—"
"Hush." There was something in him that made her fall silent, the stillness of his mind's usually echoing confines made her catch her breath, and his fingers on her chin tilting her head up made her meet his gaze. "Don't say that, River, and please, please don't ask that of me, because I can't give you that, not at all. Not ever."
"Well, ain't this touchin'," Jayne sneered, but there was not a ripple anywhere in those rows and rows of shelves to indicate that Simon heard the mercenary.
"Come here, River," Simon instructed gently, pulling her more surely into the shelter of his arms. "I want to show you something."
The others' thoughts and whispers and personalities fell away then, overshadowed by Simon's quiet, understated light and drowned out by his gentle, clear voice. Finally, surrendering to the sincerity radiating outward from him, River gave in, and was immediately inundated with his determination, his affection, his fierce desire to make everything right, his love surrounding and enfolding her in safety and protection, a refuge that protected her as always from secrets that were not her own and crimes that stained her mind but not her hands.
The captain opened his mouth to say something witty, to remind them all that this was still his boat, to make light of what Simon had just given her, but River stopped him with a flat stare as Simon guided her through the midst of the crew. "You look at the tool and see only that it's out of place," she said quietly. "You don't stop to look at its inherent value."
Kaylee didn't meet her gaze, Jayne just grunted, Wash smiled at her, Zoë was impenetrably disturbed, Inara looked on from the higher catwalk, Book nodded in approval at Simon, and Mal made a retort that slipped past River because Simon didn't seem to hear it.
The ship folded and bent around them as Simon led her up ladders and down corridors, Serenity revealing a passageway to only the two of them, one that others might have trod but without touching the same meaning that River now did. She kept her hand fastened around Simon's, unwilling to lose the contact should he loosen his grip on her. Their palms were fused, she pretended to herself, as inseparable as…no. No comparisons, because this was unique and singular, inextricably linked to her and her brother alone, a phenomenon exclusive to Simon-and-River.
"It was going to be a surprise," Simon explained, his voice fading in and out of her awareness, the feel of him a constant that never wholly left her. "Of course, it's never easy keeping something from you."
His smile, thrown at her over his shoulder, made rainbows glitter across the warmly lit corridors and sunshine beam over the common rooms and a few memories peek their way into prominence in several of the larger shards-of-her. Of their own accord, her bare feet skipped a few paces, and she swung her and Simon's hands between them, giggled when he held up his hand to let her twirl in a circle beside him, her skirt flaring out, her hair moving as if in a breeze, her heart feeling like something more than a simple organ—feeling almost like it could protect her-Simon as avidly as his heart protected her.
"Here." Simon stopped, stood there, watched her, the beginnings of a happy grin, rife with expectation and excitement, spreading across his face, making him look almost as young as he really was.
River looked all about and a hint of fear flowed through her veins, tiny droplets of anxiety that coated everything it touched with a slimy, glistening layer…because there was nothing there.
It was a tiny nook tucked out of the way, sheltered by the ascent of stairs overhead and the curve of the bulkhead alongside and graced with a backlight of stars from a wide, narrow porthole leading to the Black.
A rug on the deck. A bundle of string propped in a corner. Nothing else.
But Simon was so pleased, more alive now than he had been since shocking a heart back into beating while fending off the advances of ignorance, as alive as he'd been when telling her he'd been accepted into the best MedAcad on Osiris.
So maybe…maybe there was something here. Maybe she was the only one who couldn't see it. Maybe they had planted a time-sensitive failsafe in her, a tiny seed of darkness that would slowly creep through more and more of her mind, encroaching on all that was good and fair and right until she couldn't see anything but starless black and plain sterility, a virus that would infect and poison and destroy.
Would even he disappear from her sight eventually? What would Simon think when he realized she was blind to him?
A tiny whimpering sound emanated from her throat as she began to minutely rock back and forth. Her grip on Simon's hand turned almost painful. She felt the urge to shriek and cower away, curl up in a corner and squeeze her eyes shut and hide, pretend that she'd see everything she was supposed to when she opened her eyes.
"River?" Worry, now, replacing all the enthusiasm, all the earnestness, worry and concern that dimmed the sunlight and scattered the rainbows and crushed the recurring memories.
"Empty," she keened, clutching his hand with both of hers and bringing it up to clasp against her chest, her eyes sliding closed almost against her will. "All empty and bare and austere. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Blue-white-silver—swallowing up everything till there's nothing left but copies of their lairs, replicas of them. Everything else is gone, empty and blank."
"For now," Simon said calmly, stilling her. "I asked the captain and he said no one uses this little…room…so it's okay for us to decorate it."
Silence descended. River was afraid to open her eyes, afraid that maybe sound was being subverted as easily as sight. But if so…why could she still hear Simon's voice? Wouldn't his calming, familiar, beloved voice be the first they'd steal from her?
Gradually, holding her breath inside her in an age-old superstitious ward against fear becoming real, she opened her eyes and looked around again at the nook he'd led her to.
"See?" Simon tried to pull his hand free of hers, blinked when she only tightened her grip still further, then curled his hand back around hers and tugged her forward so he could kneel and pick up the bundle of string. "Shepherd Book gave me this. I thought we could take all the pictures you've drawn, string them up in a long line, and hang them up in front of the window. Wash says that the light when we go to burn glows right through here, which would cast a lot of interesting patterns of light over the back of the pictures. Remember the way they lit up the art in the Osiris Gallery from behind? We could try to do the same thing with your drawings."
Emptiness was transformed to beauty in only a few words, and River looked at Simon and marveled at the skill with which he communicated. Her own words always came out distorted or not at all, and yet he, with so small a collection of syllables and pauses, banished fear, proffered hope, illuminated potential. She wondered if she had looked as blank, as empty, as hollow when he'd followed her clues and saw her in all her agony and reached out to draw her out of the premature tomb—wondered if he saw as much potential and beauty and hope in her now.
"The pictures are missing," she observed.
His free hand brushed her hair back from her cheek. "They're in your room, River. I'm not dumb, you know, despite what you sometimes think—I know how much trouble I'd be in right now if I'd touched them without your permission."
A giggle escaped her and it was so miraculous a sound, an experience, a feeling—bubbling up out of her chest—that she couldn't help but throw herself forward and wrap her arms around Simon, her feet leaving the deck, her weight entirely dependent on her brother's grip. And as she had known would happen, he didn't fail her.
River kept a fierce grip on her coherence, sweeping up the shards, holding them close together, doing her best to bind them into one fractured whole, at least for these few moments. She basked in the flames of Simon's love, his affection, his gift to her, huddled so close to the heat that it threatened to set blazing trails through the safety net of her veins, let them sear the glass together, melt it all into a single piece. Maybe it wouldn't last, and maybe it would break and leave her with different shards to learn and understand again, but she wanted these moments, wanted these hours with Simon and beauty and a project that brought back hundreds of afternoons when they'd worked together, making forts on the grounds of their estate or decorating their rooms like battlefields in their mock-battles or recreating museums with implements and objects they could swipe from under the noses of their hired help.
Each step down the corridor was momentous, one she savored, each raised nick and smooth metal step felt all along the skin of her foot, each one memorized and purposely painted on the glass shards inside her, a more sure method of remembering than simply allowing it to reflect back whatever tiny piece of memory it chose to capture.
The smooth grain of the paper Simon had given her, the round roughness of the colored pencils Inara had handed her so casually long ago, the blank metal canvas that she had so recently thought was frightening emptiness—all of it engraved in her mind, seared into her traitorous memory, laid like towering landmarks among the wasted wilderness of her psyche.
For these few moments, reminded of who she was by Simon's voice calling her River and mei-mei, she was real and whole and useful, her pain and regret and guilt and fear all healed by the abstract feel of his gift of love inside her and the more concrete act of threading string through the top of her pictures, handing them in the correct order to Simon, laughing at his clumsy, earnest efforts to hang the growing tapestry of drawings across the porthole that would glow like the sun when the Firefly burst into its own useful, beautiful fire.
"You took little pieces and sewed them up into something beautiful," River murmured when Simon held up the long banner for her approval.
"You made it beautiful," Simon corrected her gently. "You're the one who can draw, mei-mei."
"So can you," she retorted, and laughed when his cheeks darkened with physical proof of his embarrassment.
"Only anatomical sketches," he brushed aside her compliment, skipping past the shelves with memories of the drawings he'd labored over, filled with too much detail and not enough color. "Those aren't the kind to hang up here. So I'll stick to providing the paper, and you supply the art, all right?"
"Hang it up now," she commanded, pointing an imperious finger, a gesture that had often delivered results, albeit results accompanied by a roll of his eyes. But Simon didn't roll his eyes this time, only looked up and pursed his lips as he assessed the problem.
"Hmm. This should be interesting."
"Kaylee will help." River cocked her head and looked to the girl, standing at the invisible threshold of their nook. Blurred, rushed images of laughter and running and the taste of apples faded before more vivid images of terror and wide eyes and the smell of blood and gunshots.
Instantly, the open earnestness that made Simon shine with intense light was dimmed, banked, hidden beneath uncertainty and lingering hurt, the stone hunched in on itself, trying to hide in its own shade from the stormy, clouded light provided by the sun.
"Cap'n said you had plans for this here place," Kaylee said softly, effort weighting down the usual lightness of her voice. "I thought I'd come see what—"
"It's a gallery," River announced proudly. "Just for Serenity—finest tourist attraction on the ship."
"I'm sure Jayne would argue that point in favor of his armament," Simon said dryly. "We were just discussing how to hang up these pictures over the window."
"Ohh, these are right pretty, River!" The sun poured its golden beams over her art, cascading liquid warmth, and River basked in it for a moment, content now that the terror was submerged behind the stone, the moon reflecting back the light of the sun. "I could rig up something to drape 'em across the porthole, if you want. In fact, might be able to put a coupl'a rows of string along it so you get more'n just the one row."
"That'd be great," Simon said quietly. "Thank you, Kaylee."
River blinked from the increased glare when a few clouds parted to allow more of the sun's brilliance to pour through like a waterfall of light, making the shards within her gleam with incandescent light, the nightmares chased away by the gold light from Kaylee and the lightning-edged gleam from Simon. Tiny pinpricks of light, stars invading the nothingness of nightmare's black, danced in front of her, clustered like halos around her gathered art.
"Is it finished?" she asked, a bit disappointed, when Kaylee left to bring back tools and she could find no more papers to hand her brother.
Carefully, Simon scrutinized the long wavering line of colored sketches before setting it down with the utmost of care and kneeling before her, mischief lurking indolently in his eyes. "I'm sure we could add more," he said, and he handed her a blank sketchbook and her coloring pencils.
Her smile was full of delight, heavy with valuable pieces of joy, and she felt, maybe for the first time, almost mended, stitched up and bandaged so that the open wounds were hidden away, presenting a façade of wellness that was more real than it had ever been before.
He smiled back at her, and she danced for a moment through the joyful carpets adorning the tidy rows of his thoughts. Then she bent over the sketchbook, picturing the line of drawings and choosing what belonged next on that tapestry. The page was blank, empty, hollow…full of potential and possibilities.
For a while, then, the shards-that-were-her were filled with multi-colored nesting dolls and moons hanging over rolling expanses of stone and sunlight tiptoeing through hidden caverns opened to the sky and an angel falling from a bridge to hover protectively over a broken doll and two hands joined together and a time-worn blanket nestled close to a mechanical heart for protection. Over her head swirled Hand me that, Simon and Let me get that for you and It's real nice, what you're doin' for her and She deserves to be happy and I can't always find the right words to say and That's all right, sometimes I end up a'sayin' the wrong thing too. River let the superfluous words flow past her head like fog that only vaguely pearled her skin, having already seen enough in their minds to know the hurts had been mended, all that had been broken healed by the touch of compassion witnessed, generosity offered, forgiveness bestowed.
She wished her own hurts were as easy to rectify, but the thought was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, lost to the importance of the drawings. After a time, she became aware of Simon sitting very near her, watching her draw, a small melancholy smile on his face. He said nothing, only watched her, words eluding him, dancing away out of his reach so that he grew tired of chasing them and simply rested quietly, letting his expressions and his touches and his actions speak for him.
Only later, after he'd led her to her room and tucked the blankets around her and pressed a kiss to her temple and fallen into his own dreams did she realize that words had eluded her too because if ever there had been a perfect time to tell him the three words she'd been trying to say for long, it had been then.
But then, it was hard, after hiding so long, to come out into the open, hard to remember that she didn't have to be afraid of letting Simon see the shards.
Hard…but not, she thought, impossible.
That night, there were no nightmares.
-Firefly-
A/N: Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed so far! Only one chapter left to go now, and it should be up Wednesday night. Thanks!