Disclaimer: The rights to Firefly belong to Joss God Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and well, whomever might currently own them.

Fandom: Firefly.

Title: Ophelia's prison.

Characters: River Tam, Simon Tam, others.

Rating: PG-13.

Summary: You had, you had… You had so many, many things that have been slipping away between your fingers. -Sometimes, River remembers. Recalls what she once had, and will never return-

Author: Phoenix.. Translated from Spanish to English by Lyaksandra.

Spoilers: In general for the whole series, not so much the movie.

Warnings: There is a vaguely incestuous subtext at times, but I honestly do not believe it to be stronger than anything hinted that was hinted in the series.

A gift for Nott Mordred.

Ophelia's prison

O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Hamlet – William Shakespeare

You had a house, made with beams of real wood, not synthetic, and even a greenhouse garden with natural flowers, like those you cannot even get in space stations or planets far away from The Core. You remember how your small feet, covered in tiny lustrous shoes that glowed with the light traversing the windows, carved the trails between the flowers. You remember the velvety softness of their petals against your fingertips, the sharp and sudden pain from a thorn piercing your palm, your mother's horrified scream at the sight of the dripping blood –barely one drop, that hurt like a Red Sea.

You remember the warmth of the chimney's flames on your face, how when you closed your eyes the shifting in light and shadow that filtered through your eyelids allowed you to still see the subtle dance of the fire, which you then tried to imitate in your dance lessons to your teachers dismay.

You had your own room, decorated with maps of faraway constellations, dinosaur holograms and whatever your new obsession was at the time; dances, mathematics or space ship engineering. Your mother insisted in giving you dolls that never left their place in your shelves, you preferred to play with your brother's dinosaurs. Because they were more interesting, because they were his, maybe, and still had the warmth of his fingers, white and delicate but so much stronger than yours –surgeon fingers, with pride your father used to say; fingers that never let you go while walking through the streets in town.

You had your own bedroom, yes, but you used it so, so little that you remember your brother's even more, with its human body holograms and shelves full of reading discs. Tiptoeing you used go into his room, just one night, and then another too, once the lights went off and you knew your parents would not find out.

There are strange noises that don't let me sleep. My room is very cold, the new thermostat must be broken. I dreamt that the Independents won the war and stuck our heads on pikes.

After a while, he stopped asking and you stopped making excuses to get under the blankets beside him, resting your head against his chest, letting his heartbeat gently doze you to sleep like a lullaby.

You had a never-ending supply of teachers. First, you went to the best and most expensive school in The Core, where they still thought of your brother with love, him and his brilliant grades. But where Simon's intelligence inspired pride and admiration, your genius spread confusion and some jealousy on children and adults equally.

When it became apparent that no school could keep up with you, the private tutors came, and you used to spend them faster than your dancing shoes.

Mei mei, adults don't like it when you correct them all the time. It escaped your understanding. But Simon, if I didn't say anything, he would have reached a conclusion that was fallacy. Why are they bothered about me warning them before they make a mistake? He smiled, a little sad, maybe, and then ruffled your hair. Adults are strange mei mei. He was right, of course. Adults still seem strange to you.

You had a family. You remember the vacation at an artificial park, inspecting the flow of a stream, jumping on slippery rocks accompanied by your mother's shouting, begging you to be careful. You remember your father running to your rescue when you were stuck on the tallest branch of a tree. You remember family suppers, dances, watching sunsets in front of the fire.

There were your mother's soft hands running through your hair, your father's thunderous laughter echoing against the walls, but the times together with Simon are what you treasure like precious stones. You try to hang onto those memories teeth and nails when the screaming in your head begins, when the darkness threatens to swallow you whole.

You had a brilliant future ahead of you. That was what the Academy representatives said when they visited your house, and you believed them, of course. You were a genius, your future had to be exceptional, and now that your brother had left home to follow his own brilliant future, you wanted to reach out for yours.

Are you sure that you want to leave for such a faraway place mei mei?

A few years back that idea would have been immediately rejected, but a few years back you did not have to nestle on a cold and lonely bed, sinking your face in a pillow that had already lost all trace of Simon's scent months ago. You wanted to leave because there was nothing to hold you back, because a new road opened under your feet and you could not wait to travel it.

You had, you had… You had so many, many things that have been slipping away between your fingers, like sand sliding down the curve of an hourglass, impassive, unstoppable. Happiness, dreams, dance steps, memories, peace, a clarity of thought that now eludes you completely. Once upon a time your mind was an organized, brilliant whole; your mind was completely yours once, and you could trust it, your intellect, your reason… Now it is like a broken kaleidoscope, a constant cacophony, alien memories that keep you awake at night, horrified screams that only you can hear. Now your brilliant mind has become your worst nightmare, the prison that you cannot escape, tied by chains of fear and uncertainty.

You cannot trust what your eyes show you, because sometimes you see the things that are not there. Perhaps you see further? You ask yourself. Do you see what does not yet exist but one day could, or maybe it is all just a delusion. You hear screams of pain faraway and voices too close, voices inside the heads of those around you, uttering words that never will reach their lips.

When your eyes seem not your own, when your ears decide to deceive you, when you cannot trust either your legs or arms, you try to hold on to something, anything. Mathematical formulas work well, when it is not one of the bad days. Historical dates, child songs, sometimes you find yourself attempting to measure Serenity with the palms of your hands, repeating incessantly everything you know about her engines, her engineering and every other technical detail that can keep your mind away from that, the other thing. Whatever they put into your body when they took away everything that made you human, when they killed the girl that played war against Independents with her brother, tearing her apart with scalpels and electroshocks until only the shell was left… A shell they decided to fill with that; that which you prefer not to think about, that which you would never dare naming out loud.

In those occasions when none of the formulas or distraction tactics work, in those occasions when the horror catches up, you scream. Until your throat is torn apart, until you run out of breath, in order to stop shut up the demons trapped under your skin. You scream, sinking your nails into the palms of your hands until they bleed, because you know if you do not, there is no avoiding trying to tear your own eyes out to un-see what should have never been seen. You scream for all the things you once had, everything you have lost-

A house, a family, friends, endless afternoons in front of the chimney, unused dolls, a hug, a smile, your mother whispering "bao bei, wo hen ai ni" in your ear before you left for the academy. Your father's strong hands raising you into flight when you were little, toy dinosaurs, laughter, lessons, gifts, tears, your entire life-

"Mei mei, I'm here. Easy, everything will be fine. Calm down."

When the screams inside your head break up into deafening howls, you cannot hear Simon's voice, so it is impossible to know how long has he been whispering in your ear, cradling you in his arms, his strong fingers in a vice grip around your wrists. He has learned the lesson since the last time you scratched yourself until you bled.

Little by little, the cacophony inside your skull recedes until the world around you has shape again, painted with color, impregnated with smell, with reality. But you cannot let Simon carry you always, because in your most vulnerable state, your senses are as dangerous as the hell inside, so you fiercely shut your eyes closed and hide your face in his chest. You take a deep breath, trying to inhale his smell. Silk robe, detergent, low quality artificial soap, sweat, Simon. Encompassing his breathing to yours, taking care not to hyperventilate.

If only you could focus on slowing his heartbeat… He is still whispering in your ear comforting nothings that you ignore completely, focusing instead on the nuances of his voice, the soft breath that caresses your ear each time the words leave his mouth. You cling strongly onto the thick cloth of his blue robe, trying to get as close as possible to the warmth of his skin, to the beat of his heart that even today can still lull you to sleep.

"Doc."

You do not have to open your eyes to know that Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds is standing at the door. Simon stiffens and you cling to him even harder.

"I thought this was controlled. That she was improving."

Simon sighs, his breath is a caress on your skin.

"The medication… I haven't found the exact dose, but surely…"

"Gorrammit! If the moonbrain wakes me up again with her howlin', I'll be throwin' them both out the airlock."

Jayne Cobb's voice sounds a bit muffled, as if coming from the end of the corridor. You dare only opening your eyes for an instant, and catch Mal yelling over his shoulder.

"Bi zui! I do the talking here, guan ni ziji de shi!"

You close your eyes again, taking shelter in Simon's warmth, and if Jayne replies, he does it in a low enough volume so you cannot hear him, and right now that is all that matters.

"Listen, Doc. We need to be catching some shut-eye, or else things'll start gettin' a mite troublesome. You best be seeing to that." The Captain's voice is cold, severe like every time he has to say something he does not like. "The two of you stay on one condition, same as before. Keep her under control. Won't do to have her howlin' up a storm like this in the middle of an Alliance inspection. Besides, it'd be nice to catch an hour or eight of sleep sometimes, if that ain't asking too much. Dong ma?"

Simon replies something assenting, it does not matter what, then you hear the door sliding shut and the Captain's boots getting farther. Only then does Simon's posture become relaxed again, barely, while he runs his fingers through your hair, getting entangled in those knots he had already brushed that same day, so far away now.

"Don't mind Jayne." And then, under his breath –maybe so you do not hear him, maybe because he has never been able to curse out-loud- Simon mutters something that sounds suspiciously similar to ge zhen de hun dan, but you could be wrong.

In spite of his calming tone you can notice the tension under his fingertips, because Jayne's insensible words cut too close to Simon's deepest fears. That you are completely feng le and there is nothing he can do to revert it. His fears are in part yours too, but the terror that runs through your underground rivers that are so deep, so torrential and dark, make your own condemnation to insanity pale in comparison.

Beyond the walls of Serenity, beyond the known limits of the black, there are viscous shadows, almost solid, terrible nightmares made into the flesh of living horrors. Here there be monsters say the edges of the maps no one dared to complete… And some of those monsters, some of those shadows and nightmares inhabit inside your mind, and you do not know how long will you be able to hold them back.

It is hard to believe that the darkness could devour you when you are able to snuggle against Simon's warmth, and almost, almost remember when your arms and legs were stubby, when you used to make up nightmares to sneak into your brother's bed and let his heart lull you into the arms of Morpheus. When you had a home, a family, a brilliant future ahead of you, when you had all those things that will never return.

You have Simon though.

Simon, who dries your tears with the last good handkerchief he has, who whispers comforting lies in your ear, who lays you on your bed and fixes your entangled hair. Simon, who always preferred concrete facts, tangible, and now barely endures hanging from the thread of faith that allows him to believe someday you will be as you were, ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Simon, who abandoned everything he had to find you and upon doing it, found you broken and has been trying to fix you ever since.

Simon is your home now, the place where you feel safe if only for brief, briefest moments. Simon is your only family, your only –and sometimes tremulous- hope that you will see a new day, that maybe you will have a future. Chimeric dreams, fallacies, invalid reasoning. Simon is everything… Space, air, heat, your whole universe no longer made of stars, nebulae and supernovas, consolidated into a single person who holds you in his arms and never lets you fall.

Simon is everything now, and you would like to tell him. You would like to whisper wo ai ni wo de sheng huo in his ear. You would like to give him every smile, each rond de jambe and pirouette well executed by your graceful body, every equation and formula solved in a blink; every one of the million things you took for granted and now you would like to get back. Not for you, for him, because you know how much he wishes to recover the little girl he lost.

You would like to give him everything good you have –which is very, very little. Every sliver of light still lingering inside you, would be given away to him in exchange for the suffocating darkness if that would mean a smile on his lips, one less wrinkle on his brow. You would give absolutely everything to him, everything he could ask for and even what he would never reproach you for, because he has become everything that matters to you.

You remain silent though. You do not speak, even when your whole world has lost its axle, because there are words that brothers and sisters do not say to each other. You remain silent because many of the things you wish to give him are no longer yours; because some of the things you are willing to give him are the ones he wants the least.

You can see it. In the way he calls you mei mei just like he used to when you were little, in how he tries to protect you as if you were made of the most delicate glass. You can see it in the smiles he gives to Kaylee, which are not the same smiles he gives to you, and never will be.

"Are you feeling better now mei mei?"

You nod, more for his comfort than because it is true.

"Would you like me to give you something to help you sleep?"

You shake your head, because in a moment like this, you could not bear to see the needle, even when it is Simon holding it.

"Ok, no more sedatives," he whispers close to your ear, his words fading in a tired sigh. He lays you on the bed, still caressing your tangled hair.

You find it hard to let go of the grip you have on his shirt, even though you know it is impossible to hold him forever. When he rests your head on the pillow and brushes a stray curl from your forehead, his smile dispels the shadows around you.

"Try to sleep a little, mei mei."

No, it is not a smile like the one's Kaylee gets, but it is yours and that is something you will not let the Academy or anyone else take from you. When Simon starts standing to leave, you cling to his arm.

"Stay. Please."

He does not hesitate, of course, as he never did all those times when you were a little girl sneaking into his bead, paying no attention to how weak or strong your excuses used to be. He lies on top of the sheets but his arms surround you immediately. You rest your head on his chest, and there it is, the rhythm of his heartbeat, a lullaby, and once again scaring away the monsters that stalk your dreams and your waking hours.

You had a house that looked like the castle of a princess in a fairy tale. You had your own room to sleep in, a hundred tutors to watch over your learning, a family that you never thought could forsake one of their own. You had a brilliant mind, a great future…

Now you have monsters and nightmares, terrors and hallucinations, horrible prophecies waiting to happen. Now, your house is a transport class ship that holds itself on the air by some miracle, now your mind and your future have become so, so uncertain.

Simon falls asleep before you, but you never sleep if you can help it, and you observe him. Like this, his brow relaxes, and it reminds you of the kid he once was. Like this, you would never believe he has the slightest worry in the world.

You kiss his forehead, barely touching your lips over his warm skin, and again you lie on his chest. You close your eyes, and recall men in suits wearing gloves…

They have taken almost everything from you.

Two by two…

They will not take Simon.

Hands of blue…