a/n: Most of these were written off prompts at the lj community comment_fic; when that's so I'll include the prompt.
Prompt: River, "I measure every Grief I meet" (Emily Dickinson)
Timeline: Pre-relationship
A Scale of Small to Endless
Some griefs she can wrap her mind around, because they are small in the scale of things; Jayne's bitter point of sadness over a gun, irreparably damaged this last job, Kaylee's sharp sting where Simon's latest careless words have cut her, Wash's slow tide of anxiety for Zoe receding.
Others carry grief more sustained, deeper and lasting, but well worn, buried enough so River can look at it without fear of falling in; Zoe's old war wounds, healed over and covered in bandages made of loyalty and love, proof that grief doesn't have to destroy; Book's peaceful green field, where he tends his flock, the new growth nourished by the bodies he's buried below, and Inara, wearing her melancholy like a layer of fabric, twisted and draped expertly to veil her, to make her all the more alluring.
Simon's griefs are not to be looked at; they are unfathomable, too close to her own to withstand, and her own are everything in nothing, like the black, infinite and waiting to swallow her into insignificance – so she refrains from measuring her own grief, and Simon's as well.
Mal puzzles her, because, like her, he seems made up of grief; pain and loss in the shape of a man. But he doesn't let it consume him, instead making it into whatever he needs, and she longs to follow him about, asking how, how do you do this? – but she doesn't, knowing there's no answer to give; she simply observes him instead, and tethers herself to him, solid reassurance in the infinite grief.