gravity
nc-17 | crazy space incest | major character death
He turns to her after they step through the threshold. It takes him several seconds to realize the smear of red on her face is her lipstick, not blood.
-
She had one hand on either side of her head, pressing as hard as she could. So much of her body was empty space, empty space between subatomic particles, and if she applied enough pressure, she hoped to make her body very, very, very tiny. It would be so tiny that nobody would be able to find her. Even Simon would be stymied; she would dance through his fingers and slip into his pocket, laughing the whole time.
Simon reached for her, hands gravitating to safe places - shoulders, arms, head - but before he could make contact, she stopped suddenly, standing up straight and letting her arms fall to her sides.
He questioned her with his eyes, but all she gave him in return was, "Not this time."
Then it was Zoe and Mal and Jayne carrying Kaylee, her blood all over his shirt. River repeated her words, softly, to herself, as the captain assured everyone that Simon would make everything okay again. No one noticed as she returned to her task, squish, squish, squish, make the space go away.
-
"The sky keeps falling," she tells Simon. "Gravity and I had a nice, long talk, and she promised to stop it, but I think she lied."
He caresses her face, trying to wipe away the lipstick. "The sky can't fall. It's just air."
"Silly, silly Simon. Gases can be turned into solids so easily. The right temperature and the right conditions and the sky is just a huge solid chunk, ready and waiting to fall."
"River - " They're alone, so he doesn't seem to care so much about sticking to the safe places. His hands are everywhere, soothing, comforting.
"Friction, also. Friction's a terrible liar. Don't listen to anything he says."
-
Mal's rage flew off him in waves, even as he seemed to remain perfectly calm. Most of his thoughts were aimed at the ones who had done this - four shots at near point blank range bang bang bang bang - but a stray one came out and hit her square in the face - this is your fault, little one.
If she had wanted to debate the veracity of his claim, she could have pointed out that she was on Serenity thanks to her brother, and that if the Alliance hadn't wanted to do evil things with her brain, she wouldn't have been a fugitive, and oh, yes, can't forget her parents - they still think she doesn't know, ha - but it didn't seem the time.
Zoe and Jayne hadn't witnessed the event in question, so the only anger there was for Kaylee's attacker, a man without a face or a name in their minds. Just a shadowy figure who had somehow somehow somehow managed to sneak onto Serenity while they were docked. They thought it was payback for a job gone wrong, and Mal hadn't gotten around to telling them the whole story yet. But when he did -
She left the infirmary - there was nothing for her to do, anyway - and went to go pack. Perhaps she should have told Simon it was futile - he was still trying to stabilize her - but she let him go on instead.
The medical supplies he was wasting could be easily replaced.
-
In the morning, she puts on thick gloves and a huge floppy hat - both of which she found in the tiny shed out back - and goes out into the garden. Her garden, now, for the time being. She has no idea how long the seeds she discovered have been back there, but it doesn't much matter.
The town already has a doctor - River doesn't understand why they wouldn't welcome having two - so he takes a job as a cook. It's practically the same thing, anyway; make an incision, remove the unwanted parts, rearrange everything so it was better than it was before, and then clean up all the blood and guts.
When he comes home, he's smiling, pretending that he enjoyed his first day at his new job, but he can't hide from her. He hates it, she knows, and he feels like his talents are being wasted, she knows, and he wants to quit already, she knows. He won't last more than a week, but none of that matters.
"The garden looks beautiful, River," he says, because in the privacy of their own home, they can be themselves.
The garden doesn't look beautiful; it's nothing but rows of dirt and handwritten signs identifying the seeds that were planted there. It's nothing but promise.
-
She could only hear bits and pieces, wafting down the hall as she folded her clothing. Kaylee's pulse finally slipped away and Mal finally decided to let the crew in on how exactly she came to be dead. The grief was bad enough; the anger threatened to destroy her.
Simon put up a good fight - they knew what the dangers were when they took two wanted fugitives aboard, after all, and it wasn't as if he and River had personally shot Kaylee and for crying out loud, weren't they part of his crew, just like the rest? But they weren't, not really. At least, not now that Mal's alliance-of-sorts with them had resulted in happy, pretty, shiny, little Kaylee bleeding out in the infirmary.
Simon didn't seem surprised to find her packing up his shirts.
"Maybe I can get them to change their minds."
"Minds don't change," she said as she tucked his journal underneath some pants. "Not unless you go in and cut."
-
Their bed is large now, because it's the bed of a husband and a wife, not the bed of a brother who ought not be sharing it with his sister.
As he moves inside her, she briefly wonders if she should cry out 'Simon' or 'Steven' - a name that doesn't really fit him, but she wasn't the one who chose it. When his fingers make her twitch and moan, she falls back into her old routine, gasping his given name in a barely audible whisper. There's no one to spy on them, no one in the town who thinks they have any secrets that need to be discovered, but they make love under the sheets, each speaking only loudly enough for the other to hear.
"What would you do without me?" she asks, trying to make it sound like sappy post-coital curiosity.
"I couldn't," he says as he cups her face. "I couldn't do anything without you."
It's not the answer she wants to hear, because it leaves her with little choice.
-
If Kaylee were alive, she would have been begging them to stay. But she was dead by then - 47 hours and counting - and every time Zoe or Wash or Mal looked at Simon or her, they didn't see the Tams. They didn't see the members of their crew, the people they had saved and sheltered. Wash looked at them and saw Zoe's corpse. Mal looked at them and saw Inara's.
It didn't matter that the man in question was now dead - all of the bullets from Mal's gun in his head. What mattered was that if Serenity had never housed the Tams, Kaylee would be alive. What mattered was that if the Tams stayed on board, there would be more men, with more guns, more deaths.
Simon carried their bags. She refused to look up when Serenity took off. When she wiped away the tears, she smeared the lipstick that she had stolen from Inara.
-
She makes up an excuse for why Simon - Steven - can't go into work today. Convinces him that he has to stay home. She doesn't surrender herself completely to fate; she makes sure their guns are loaded. She alerts Simon the second she senses them coming.
And for a split second, she believes - really believes - that everything will be okay. She drops the first three with perfectly placed shots, but she's not fast enough to prevent the fourth one from putting a bullet in her chest.
(Some voice in her head says - if you had only stayed with us, followed your training, you would have been fast enough.)
Then Simon is down and there are people who are angry - we wanted the girl alive - but no, too late. He's staring at her, reaching for her even as the blood flows out, out, out, and she knows that he understands; this is how it had to be.
(fin.)