Disclaimer: I don't own Firefly or Serenity. Alas, for not being Joss Whedon.
A/N: This was written in response to the prompt:
Firefly, River, She's freaked out by the hall of mirrors, house of horrors, etc.
Fragmented
The fragments of the world, distorted and fractured, come back together in perfect harmony. Not perfect. But almost. Almost harmony. Almost true.
Re-distorted and un-distorted at the same time. Each fragment is placed back where it should go. The world almost fits together except for the seems between the mirrors.
Like a cobweb of lines showing the crazy where to be.
"River?"
"Where is that darned girl?"
"They got a freak show here, maybe we could sell her, and, OW!"
"Shut up."
The voices echo funny off the glass mazes and hurt the image.
"Shhhh!" She shushes the voices and the echos.
The echos listens. The voices don't.
"River? Is that you?"
Her world was carefully dissected by doctors and shattered by surgeries and stitched back together in weird places by drugs.
She's frozen in the center of the hall of mirrors. She isn't sure how she got here and ...
"River? River, come on..."
... she has to concentrate on not letting her brother pull her off balance.
If she moves the cobwebs will win and the fragments will fall apart.
"No! Simon, no! I'll shatter! I'll break into a thousand pieces and! And!"
"Shh, bao bei, I got you. You won't shatter. Close your eyes."
"But what if the cobwebs win?"
"Just close your eyes and I'll get you out of here."
The world goes away and she listens for the cobwebs and the shattering and the ending.
All she hears is the thump-thump of Simon's heart. It's a war drum to scare off the spiders.
When she opens her eyes again, there's the world in fragments around her and "The spiders won."
She's tired.
She rests her head on Simon's chest again and lets the war drums follow her into sleep.