Fic: 4 miscellaneous requested ficlets
Title: sometimes I get overcharged
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG equivalent
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing: Wash/Zoe
Genre: het, I guess.
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Firefly" and I won't own "Firefly" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 136
Status: drabble, finished.
Author's Note: written for the whedonland ficfest challenge for iulieki who wanted Wash/Zoe and something romantic.
Summary: The way she sometimes hummed to herself as she undressed for bed.
-
If Wash were paid extravagant sums of money to list the things that he loved about his wife, he wouldn't be able to collect, because the list never seemed to stop.
The curve of her waist right as it hit her hips.
Her smile whenever she entered the bridge to see him.
The way she sometimes hummed to herself as she undressed for bed.
How she refused to cook him soup unless he really desperately needed it.
The way her sweat made the her hair curl around the nape of her neck.
Her drunken kisses, and bashful she always got afterward.
The way she tolerated his dinosaurs, completely absent of mocking.
How he could turn over in their bed each morning and she would be just exactly right there.
(And that was after 20 seconds of work.)
-
Title: this one just came out of the swamp
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG equivalent
Fandom: Firefly
Character: River
Genre: gen
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Firefly" and I won't own "Firefly" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 113
Status: drabble, finished
Author's Note: written for the whedonland ficfest challenge for trialbymagic who wanted River/insane powers
Summary: It wasn't that she meant to dance with death, but that they were sewn up together like patchwork.
-
River knew lots of secrets, very important ones mixed all in with everything else. Guns were born as firebreathers. She knew the contents of every locked box aboard Serenity, and the way her right propeller ached. Too many things, too many gaps and spaces between the molecules.
Brains squished when she walked, like sponges full of jelly, and the neurons fired hotter than gunpowder and lead. And the currents waved all around her like invisible ribbons that wrapped around her ankles and yanked.
It wasn't that she meant to dance with death, but that they were sewn up together like patchwork. The bodies fell from her feet like leaves, empty husks signifying nothing.
-
Title: who's got the loneliest feeling
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG equivalent
Fandoms: Firefly, Battlestar Galactica
Characters: River Tam, Leoben
Genre: gen
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Firefly" or "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't own "Firefly" or "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 1261
Status: one-shot, finished.
Author's Note: written for the whedonland ficfest challenge for killmotion who didn't really get any of her prompts filled.
Summary: "I'm the soul," River stated. "I possess the body. They cut me out of there, and I got unstuck and can't fit back in again."
-
Two was meditating and a girl appeared to him the way the sky opened up with sunshine. She was wearing a white dress, barefoot, and her dark hair was tangled.
"Good morning," she greeted, politely. "I've gotten accidentally unstuck."
"It appears so," he replied. She was not tangible like his body was, but no less present.
She looked very intently at him, like she was looking through the marrow of him. "You're a puzzle," she stated. "A robot made of human parts. Contradiction isn't the proper word."
She stood and idly twirled in place. He could see the outline of her ribs through the dress, and he knew the slant of her eyebrows. "You're a messenger," he said.
"I don't choose the message," she whispered, as though it were a secret. She turned and pressed her ear to the wall. "I like your ship, the way she sings."
And then she simply wasn't there, as though the air had taken her. Two was patient, he could wait for her return.
-
She came the next day, but at night. "Good morning," she greeted, curtsying as she appeared.
"Good evening," Two replied.
"I have a secret," she said, leaning close to his ear. If she had breath, he would have been able to feel it. "Space has no morning and night. Every time is afternoon."
She pressed her ear to the side wall of the ship again, then sighed and lay across his bed. Two sat quietly beside her and asked, "What is your name?" She was intangibly solid against him, and he could see engine grease underneath her fingernails.
"A name is just a very specific pronoun," she replied. "Or a title. You just have a title." He had a name, and his name was Two. She spoke before he could. "A numeral, because you're a robot. But you haven't got any gears."
She turned over to her back and looked very earnestly at him. "Sometimes I dream that I have a battery for a heart, and that all of my bones have turned to metal. And my skin isn't skin, and I've got a navigation computer but no engine. It will usually linger after I wake up, whole days of it."
"Dreams are messages," Two replied. He found that he very much wanted to stroke her forehead where it was frowned. "The message wasn't made to be clear, only honest."
She looked as though she were going to move, but stayed perfectly still instead. "You see the sentence and not the words. I think I could become fond of you eventually." Two was already tender for her.
"My family calls me River," she admitted. He might have called her that if God had not already named it.
"Rivers are some of my favorite things in the world," he admitted.
"I know," River giggled.
-
River's dress was purple, and her mouth was berry-red, hair pulled back in a messy braid and still barefoot. She felt like a sunrise against Two's skin.
"I crushed grapes today," River announced, almost mournfully. "Between my toes, like they had insulted personally. And then the pulp got stuck to all over me, and washing couldn't get the spots out."
Two was always careful to listen to the whole message and all of its nuances.
She draped herself over the nearest chair. "But they didn't follow me here."
"Your soul," Two started.
"I'm the soul," River stated. "I possess the body. They cut me out of there, and I got unstuck and can't fit back in again."
Two leaned close to her, smiling as reassuringly as he could. "Souls aren't sticky," he promised.
River laughed. "You're a very illogical robot. And you've got no antenna."
"But I do have a soul," He said.
"Everything valuable has got a soul, even if they stole it." River smacked her lips together. "But souls do not necessarily guarantee the existence of a deity."
"God is love," Two told her.
She turned to face him. "I think it's odd how you've got the God and worship programmed right into your source code, down to the very binary of you. Would you be able to recognize plot holes and paradoxes?"
River was disappeared before he could respond.
-
River had been crying, and he could see the spots on her cheeks where the tears were supposed to be. He wanted to wrap his arms around her waist, but she was too great for physical touch.
"Looking at me takes a very small hammer to the capillaries in my brother's heart. I want him to stop." River pouted and rubbed at her eyes. "And I want to go back to today, even with the vomiting."
"He is your brother because he is incapable of not loving you," Two comforted.
She rolled over next to him and sighed. "It is a good thing that we are very patient." River never used his name outright. Sometimes, she talked about giving him a nickname. "And that 2 is the only even prime number."
River was almost as cryptic as the Hybrid in all of their holiness.
"I am sorry that things are going to have to change soon," She said, rolling to beside him on the bed. River sat up and mimicked his meditation pose exactly. "I had oatmeal for breakfast, but it glued itself to my tonsils and now my balance is all wrong."
River, for all of her sadness, never actually cried outright.
-
Two was paying tribute to the Hybrid, and then River was there. She looked at him only once, before staring at the Hybrid in fascination and horror. "The heart of your ship is a person? No engines?"
She was wearing a blue dress patterned like a quilt, and her hair was perfectly combed. River looked radiant contrasted against the hybrid.
River held one hand to the Hybrid's forehead, the Hybrid twisting as though she could feel it. And then River began to scream, long drags of sound that ripped loudly from her throat.
"How could you?" Her knuckles were taut white against the sides of the tank. "Cut open her brain and take out all of the human bits, mess around with what's left and shove more bits in there? It's torture."
"She is divine," Two tried to explain. "She sees the true God."
"To know the face of God is to know madness," River shrieked. "You tortured her. Scooped out all of her soul and made like she was an object. Cut into it with knives and lasers and wires."
River was hysterical, and the Hybrid was panting and Two didn't know what to do.
"You did to her what was done to me," River spat, her face contorted with rage. "I have a message for you, from God and everybody else." She began to dance, feet clever and sad against the floor. "Your hubris is going to kill you. Your siblings will be killed off and purged from the face of the planet like cattle. Your flaws will open so wide that they swallow you completely. You will see and know love and never attain it. Your family will be cast dead into the sky, all of it, until you die off slowly and alone and gasping."
She turned to face him, placing a benevolent kiss on his forehead. "And all you had to do was avoid the mistakes of your ancestors. I had such hope for you."
And then she was gone, and Two couldn't breathe with the loss and the tears together.
-
River didn't return.
-
Title: I could burst a million bubbles
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG13 equivalent
Fandoms: Firefly, Doctor Who
Characters: River Tam, Jack Harkness
Genre: gen
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Firefly" or "Doctor Who" and I won't own "Firefly" or "Doctor Who" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 1203
Status: one-shot, finished.
Author's Note: written for the whedonland ficfest challenge for fall_away_from who wanted River, a crossover, and something inspired by a Beatles song.
Summary: Jack took her to his big, fancy house, where the neighbors stared at her in the way that signified that he often took girls to his house and had them stay over and it wasn't so that they could get brain examinations.
-
The best places to hide were always the ones overflowing with other people, River knew. Even if the press of their minds was like being gently smothered with blankets, and she always had to push them away. Constant vigilance had gotten that name because it was so exhausting.
And she was hiding from everything, all of the nooks and pockets in it. The whole 'verse was always crowded, but River could find different places to be trapped in it. Strange that there was so much space in the universe and so few places in it.
She went to Londinium, because it was crowded and Simon wouldn't look for her there. He thought that the general populace would still remember their faces from all of those poster boards, but River knew better. She walked slowly in front of whole crowds bounty hunters, just to prove that their memories were tiny.
Cities were full of bodies that were just so similar to hers, they had all the same functions. Anonymity tasted like frosting on her tongue, coating it. She could buy fresh papaya from street vendors, and pineapple, and wax beans.
When she left, she had told Kaylee that she had to learn how to be a whole person. Or at least the way to pretend to be a woman, the way that they could twist all around the eyes and tug.
All of the minds in Londinium were foamy, tiny, frantic.
-
He was wearing a shiny hat. And his body was not like her body, all of the molecules were warped different, she could tell. He smelled like dust and ashes all the way through, like they got caught in the spaces between his cells.
He was just walking, but it made her gut catch up all in her throat, tugging. It was complicated and raw. She recognized his picture from the Academy because sometimes the fragments overcame her. He was important, just like Mal was important, but older.
River danced over to him, even though she had lost her shoes. He didn't bother keeping his mind all contained, but there was so much of it that she couldn't see everything. He was very old, she knew. Improbably old. "Hello, sweetheart," he said.
River asked, "What's your name?"
"Bobby," he lied.
She turned her head. "That's not your real name," she accused.
He raised an eyebrow up at her. "Adam," he lied.
"That's not your real name, either." River said.
He started smirking, in the charming way that made her knees feel overwhelmed. "John," he lied. She shook her head. "Paul. Bill. George. Ted. Michael. Toby. Henry. David. Jack."
She stopped him. "That's probably the truest name," she explained, "Even though you weren't born with it."
And then Jack grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her from the club like she was made of marshmallow.
-
"It's been a long time since I've met a psychic," he explained. "I always like to hear what's going on." That was the truth, she could tell.
"Not a real psychic," River replied, because she wasn't. "Just brain surgery." She was sticky stuck to Jack like his skin was coated in adhesive, and she moved when he did, pressed up beside her on the chair. He held one eyebrow up and waited for her to clarify. "They cut into the brain, took the girl parts out."
His face got tight like a mask. "Who did that?"
"Alliance," River said. "They have a school where they teach geniuses to stop being people, with knives."
Jack cursed, but it was a very old word. "They let you out? You work for them?"
"No," she said. "My brother stole me. We were hiding, but I got tired of running. Decided to try and see what settling felt like."
"Oh honey," Jack said. "Settling is overrated."
He bit into a chocolate pastry.
-
Jack took her back to his big, fancy house, where the neighbors stared at her in the way that signified that he often took girls to his house and had them stay over and it wasn't so that they could get brain examinations. And he kept looking at her.
Her dress felt too loose, like the weave in the fabric had gotten angry and tried to rebel. Inara would have known what to do, except that she was so far away.
River very consciously avoided his skin.
Maybe he was infectious. Jack put his whole hand on the top of her head, just rested it there like Shepherd Book used to do sometimes before he became dead. "So you're River Tam," Jack said. His voice was very comforting, but River could only nod. "Don't worry, I wouldn't turn you in to those incompetent bastards," Jack said.
"I'm a troublemaker," River admitted. "Can't fit all the thoughts in my head, and I'm not very good at getting everybody else's out, either." Jack was wearing a very old coat, brown like Mal's was, except not a statement. "I know you're very old."
"I'm a time-traveler," Jack said, and it was the sort of lie that had enough truth to keep it from ringing with falseness. "I can help you." His help wasn't ever simple or uncomplicated, she could already tell. And he looked just as much at her body he paid attention to her words.
River had wanted to learn how to be a woman, so that's what she did.
-
Jack's biggest secret was more the center of his gravity, and he put all of his thoughts around it like an asteroid field. He forgot to guard it all of the time, so one day during stargazing, River found it.
She let it roll around in her head like a polished stone, getting smaller and smoother and more useful. It took a very long time to learn what she wanted to ask him, besides the usual questions about the relationship between quantum mechanics, wormholes and shoelaces.
River found the question while she was dancing, and didn't bother to pause in her pirouette, because he didn't ever mind that sort of thing. "When you look at your death, are you still afraid?"
Jack paused, like he had just been crested by a wave of sadness. "No," he said.
"The times I looked at dying, I knew I wasn't going to," River said. "It kept my body moving. I don't understand how other people do it without knowing."
Jack spun her, and her dress swirled. "I don't remember any more."
"There are lots of things that you don't remember," River said. "The brain only has so many neurons." She paused, finding an answer. "The song used to go, limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns."
And then Jack started singing, and he only did that sometimes, and it was like River could hear the violins. When he had finished, River looked up at him through her eyelashes like he had taught her to. "Will you teach me about mortality?"
"Of course," Jack said, and dipped her.
-
River used to think that the fascinating part was the sound of his spine snapping; but really, the noise Jack made as the bones repaired themselves was the best.
-
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG equivalent
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing: Wash/Zoe
Genre: het, I guess.
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Firefly" and I won't own "Firefly" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 136
Status: drabble, finished.
Author's Note: written for the whedonland ficfest challenge for iulieki who wanted Wash/Zoe and something romantic.
Summary: The way she sometimes hummed to herself as she undressed for bed.
-
If Wash were paid extravagant sums of money to list the things that he loved about his wife, he wouldn't be able to collect, because the list never seemed to stop.
The curve of her waist right as it hit her hips.
Her smile whenever she entered the bridge to see him.
The way she sometimes hummed to herself as she undressed for bed.
How she refused to cook him soup unless he really desperately needed it.
The way her sweat made the her hair curl around the nape of her neck.
Her drunken kisses, and bashful she always got afterward.
The way she tolerated his dinosaurs, completely absent of mocking.
How he could turn over in their bed each morning and she would be just exactly right there.
(And that was after 20 seconds of work.)
-
Title: this one just came out of the swamp
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG equivalent
Fandom: Firefly
Character: River
Genre: gen
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Firefly" and I won't own "Firefly" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 113
Status: drabble, finished
Author's Note: written for the whedonland ficfest challenge for trialbymagic who wanted River/insane powers
Summary: It wasn't that she meant to dance with death, but that they were sewn up together like patchwork.
-
River knew lots of secrets, very important ones mixed all in with everything else. Guns were born as firebreathers. She knew the contents of every locked box aboard Serenity, and the way her right propeller ached. Too many things, too many gaps and spaces between the molecules.
Brains squished when she walked, like sponges full of jelly, and the neurons fired hotter than gunpowder and lead. And the currents waved all around her like invisible ribbons that wrapped around her ankles and yanked.
It wasn't that she meant to dance with death, but that they were sewn up together like patchwork. The bodies fell from her feet like leaves, empty husks signifying nothing.
-
Title: who's got the loneliest feeling
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG equivalent
Fandoms: Firefly, Battlestar Galactica
Characters: River Tam, Leoben
Genre: gen
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Firefly" or "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't own "Firefly" or "Battlestar Galactica" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 1261
Status: one-shot, finished.
Author's Note: written for the whedonland ficfest challenge for killmotion who didn't really get any of her prompts filled.
Summary: "I'm the soul," River stated. "I possess the body. They cut me out of there, and I got unstuck and can't fit back in again."
-
Two was meditating and a girl appeared to him the way the sky opened up with sunshine. She was wearing a white dress, barefoot, and her dark hair was tangled.
"Good morning," she greeted, politely. "I've gotten accidentally unstuck."
"It appears so," he replied. She was not tangible like his body was, but no less present.
She looked very intently at him, like she was looking through the marrow of him. "You're a puzzle," she stated. "A robot made of human parts. Contradiction isn't the proper word."
She stood and idly twirled in place. He could see the outline of her ribs through the dress, and he knew the slant of her eyebrows. "You're a messenger," he said.
"I don't choose the message," she whispered, as though it were a secret. She turned and pressed her ear to the wall. "I like your ship, the way she sings."
And then she simply wasn't there, as though the air had taken her. Two was patient, he could wait for her return.
-
She came the next day, but at night. "Good morning," she greeted, curtsying as she appeared.
"Good evening," Two replied.
"I have a secret," she said, leaning close to his ear. If she had breath, he would have been able to feel it. "Space has no morning and night. Every time is afternoon."
She pressed her ear to the side wall of the ship again, then sighed and lay across his bed. Two sat quietly beside her and asked, "What is your name?" She was intangibly solid against him, and he could see engine grease underneath her fingernails.
"A name is just a very specific pronoun," she replied. "Or a title. You just have a title." He had a name, and his name was Two. She spoke before he could. "A numeral, because you're a robot. But you haven't got any gears."
She turned over to her back and looked very earnestly at him. "Sometimes I dream that I have a battery for a heart, and that all of my bones have turned to metal. And my skin isn't skin, and I've got a navigation computer but no engine. It will usually linger after I wake up, whole days of it."
"Dreams are messages," Two replied. He found that he very much wanted to stroke her forehead where it was frowned. "The message wasn't made to be clear, only honest."
She looked as though she were going to move, but stayed perfectly still instead. "You see the sentence and not the words. I think I could become fond of you eventually." Two was already tender for her.
"My family calls me River," she admitted. He might have called her that if God had not already named it.
"Rivers are some of my favorite things in the world," he admitted.
"I know," River giggled.
-
River's dress was purple, and her mouth was berry-red, hair pulled back in a messy braid and still barefoot. She felt like a sunrise against Two's skin.
"I crushed grapes today," River announced, almost mournfully. "Between my toes, like they had insulted personally. And then the pulp got stuck to all over me, and washing couldn't get the spots out."
Two was always careful to listen to the whole message and all of its nuances.
She draped herself over the nearest chair. "But they didn't follow me here."
"Your soul," Two started.
"I'm the soul," River stated. "I possess the body. They cut me out of there, and I got unstuck and can't fit back in again."
Two leaned close to her, smiling as reassuringly as he could. "Souls aren't sticky," he promised.
River laughed. "You're a very illogical robot. And you've got no antenna."
"But I do have a soul," He said.
"Everything valuable has got a soul, even if they stole it." River smacked her lips together. "But souls do not necessarily guarantee the existence of a deity."
"God is love," Two told her.
She turned to face him. "I think it's odd how you've got the God and worship programmed right into your source code, down to the very binary of you. Would you be able to recognize plot holes and paradoxes?"
River was disappeared before he could respond.
-
River had been crying, and he could see the spots on her cheeks where the tears were supposed to be. He wanted to wrap his arms around her waist, but she was too great for physical touch.
"Looking at me takes a very small hammer to the capillaries in my brother's heart. I want him to stop." River pouted and rubbed at her eyes. "And I want to go back to today, even with the vomiting."
"He is your brother because he is incapable of not loving you," Two comforted.
She rolled over next to him and sighed. "It is a good thing that we are very patient." River never used his name outright. Sometimes, she talked about giving him a nickname. "And that 2 is the only even prime number."
River was almost as cryptic as the Hybrid in all of their holiness.
"I am sorry that things are going to have to change soon," She said, rolling to beside him on the bed. River sat up and mimicked his meditation pose exactly. "I had oatmeal for breakfast, but it glued itself to my tonsils and now my balance is all wrong."
River, for all of her sadness, never actually cried outright.
-
Two was paying tribute to the Hybrid, and then River was there. She looked at him only once, before staring at the Hybrid in fascination and horror. "The heart of your ship is a person? No engines?"
She was wearing a blue dress patterned like a quilt, and her hair was perfectly combed. River looked radiant contrasted against the hybrid.
River held one hand to the Hybrid's forehead, the Hybrid twisting as though she could feel it. And then River began to scream, long drags of sound that ripped loudly from her throat.
"How could you?" Her knuckles were taut white against the sides of the tank. "Cut open her brain and take out all of the human bits, mess around with what's left and shove more bits in there? It's torture."
"She is divine," Two tried to explain. "She sees the true God."
"To know the face of God is to know madness," River shrieked. "You tortured her. Scooped out all of her soul and made like she was an object. Cut into it with knives and lasers and wires."
River was hysterical, and the Hybrid was panting and Two didn't know what to do.
"You did to her what was done to me," River spat, her face contorted with rage. "I have a message for you, from God and everybody else." She began to dance, feet clever and sad against the floor. "Your hubris is going to kill you. Your siblings will be killed off and purged from the face of the planet like cattle. Your flaws will open so wide that they swallow you completely. You will see and know love and never attain it. Your family will be cast dead into the sky, all of it, until you die off slowly and alone and gasping."
She turned to face him, placing a benevolent kiss on his forehead. "And all you had to do was avoid the mistakes of your ancestors. I had such hope for you."
And then she was gone, and Two couldn't breathe with the loss and the tears together.
-
River didn't return.
-
Title: I could burst a million bubbles
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG13 equivalent
Fandoms: Firefly, Doctor Who
Characters: River Tam, Jack Harkness
Genre: gen
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: I don't own "Firefly" or "Doctor Who" and I won't own "Firefly" or "Doctor Who" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: 1203
Status: one-shot, finished.
Author's Note: written for the whedonland ficfest challenge for fall_away_from who wanted River, a crossover, and something inspired by a Beatles song.
Summary: Jack took her to his big, fancy house, where the neighbors stared at her in the way that signified that he often took girls to his house and had them stay over and it wasn't so that they could get brain examinations.
-
The best places to hide were always the ones overflowing with other people, River knew. Even if the press of their minds was like being gently smothered with blankets, and she always had to push them away. Constant vigilance had gotten that name because it was so exhausting.
And she was hiding from everything, all of the nooks and pockets in it. The whole 'verse was always crowded, but River could find different places to be trapped in it. Strange that there was so much space in the universe and so few places in it.
She went to Londinium, because it was crowded and Simon wouldn't look for her there. He thought that the general populace would still remember their faces from all of those poster boards, but River knew better. She walked slowly in front of whole crowds bounty hunters, just to prove that their memories were tiny.
Cities were full of bodies that were just so similar to hers, they had all the same functions. Anonymity tasted like frosting on her tongue, coating it. She could buy fresh papaya from street vendors, and pineapple, and wax beans.
When she left, she had told Kaylee that she had to learn how to be a whole person. Or at least the way to pretend to be a woman, the way that they could twist all around the eyes and tug.
All of the minds in Londinium were foamy, tiny, frantic.
-
He was wearing a shiny hat. And his body was not like her body, all of the molecules were warped different, she could tell. He smelled like dust and ashes all the way through, like they got caught in the spaces between his cells.
He was just walking, but it made her gut catch up all in her throat, tugging. It was complicated and raw. She recognized his picture from the Academy because sometimes the fragments overcame her. He was important, just like Mal was important, but older.
River danced over to him, even though she had lost her shoes. He didn't bother keeping his mind all contained, but there was so much of it that she couldn't see everything. He was very old, she knew. Improbably old. "Hello, sweetheart," he said.
River asked, "What's your name?"
"Bobby," he lied.
She turned her head. "That's not your real name," she accused.
He raised an eyebrow up at her. "Adam," he lied.
"That's not your real name, either." River said.
He started smirking, in the charming way that made her knees feel overwhelmed. "John," he lied. She shook her head. "Paul. Bill. George. Ted. Michael. Toby. Henry. David. Jack."
She stopped him. "That's probably the truest name," she explained, "Even though you weren't born with it."
And then Jack grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her from the club like she was made of marshmallow.
-
"It's been a long time since I've met a psychic," he explained. "I always like to hear what's going on." That was the truth, she could tell.
"Not a real psychic," River replied, because she wasn't. "Just brain surgery." She was sticky stuck to Jack like his skin was coated in adhesive, and she moved when he did, pressed up beside her on the chair. He held one eyebrow up and waited for her to clarify. "They cut into the brain, took the girl parts out."
His face got tight like a mask. "Who did that?"
"Alliance," River said. "They have a school where they teach geniuses to stop being people, with knives."
Jack cursed, but it was a very old word. "They let you out? You work for them?"
"No," she said. "My brother stole me. We were hiding, but I got tired of running. Decided to try and see what settling felt like."
"Oh honey," Jack said. "Settling is overrated."
He bit into a chocolate pastry.
-
Jack took her back to his big, fancy house, where the neighbors stared at her in the way that signified that he often took girls to his house and had them stay over and it wasn't so that they could get brain examinations. And he kept looking at her.
Her dress felt too loose, like the weave in the fabric had gotten angry and tried to rebel. Inara would have known what to do, except that she was so far away.
River very consciously avoided his skin.
Maybe he was infectious. Jack put his whole hand on the top of her head, just rested it there like Shepherd Book used to do sometimes before he became dead. "So you're River Tam," Jack said. His voice was very comforting, but River could only nod. "Don't worry, I wouldn't turn you in to those incompetent bastards," Jack said.
"I'm a troublemaker," River admitted. "Can't fit all the thoughts in my head, and I'm not very good at getting everybody else's out, either." Jack was wearing a very old coat, brown like Mal's was, except not a statement. "I know you're very old."
"I'm a time-traveler," Jack said, and it was the sort of lie that had enough truth to keep it from ringing with falseness. "I can help you." His help wasn't ever simple or uncomplicated, she could already tell. And he looked just as much at her body he paid attention to her words.
River had wanted to learn how to be a woman, so that's what she did.
-
Jack's biggest secret was more the center of his gravity, and he put all of his thoughts around it like an asteroid field. He forgot to guard it all of the time, so one day during stargazing, River found it.
She let it roll around in her head like a polished stone, getting smaller and smoother and more useful. It took a very long time to learn what she wanted to ask him, besides the usual questions about the relationship between quantum mechanics, wormholes and shoelaces.
River found the question while she was dancing, and didn't bother to pause in her pirouette, because he didn't ever mind that sort of thing. "When you look at your death, are you still afraid?"
Jack paused, like he had just been crested by a wave of sadness. "No," he said.
"The times I looked at dying, I knew I wasn't going to," River said. "It kept my body moving. I don't understand how other people do it without knowing."
Jack spun her, and her dress swirled. "I don't remember any more."
"There are lots of things that you don't remember," River said. "The brain only has so many neurons." She paused, finding an answer. "The song used to go, limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns."
And then Jack started singing, and he only did that sometimes, and it was like River could hear the violins. When he had finished, River looked up at him through her eyelashes like he had taught her to. "Will you teach me about mortality?"
"Of course," Jack said, and dipped her.
-
River used to think that the fascinating part was the sound of his spine snapping; but really, the noise Jack made as the bones repaired themselves was the best.
-