FIC: The Body's Not Secure (Firefly/Farscape)
The Body's Not Secure
by Shaye
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: The stranger's sudden presence ripped through a lazy afternoon and straight into her cerebral cortex. River's defenses were down, and she was powerless against the shotgun force of his mind.
DISCLAIMER: Firefly is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy; Farscape is the property of David Kemper and the Jim Henson Company. No infringement is intended.
NOTES: Written for lyl_devil in Multiverse 5000. Title and epigraph from The Frames. Thanks to Kernezelda and Corde for beta.
+++
the body's not secure,
the truth will not absorb,
and this crumbling apart,
is no good for you at all
+++
The stranger finally swims to consciousness in the middle of the night.
River wakes from a troubled sleep. Her dreams have not been this dark in years.
+++
He sits at her table in the early morning light, blistered hands clutched tightly around a dented metal cup. The table is a large slab of wood, painstakingly milled by hand in the first months after she came here. She found it singing out to her from where it was trapped inside a fallen tree down by the creek. The grain under her fingers feels the way the table on Serenity did, but this is nothing beyond the function of its form.
The stranger stares into the distance, downward through the wood of the table and the floor and deep into the dirt. River turns away from what he's seeing; it's bright, brighter than the sunrise, and the glare hurts her eyes from the inside. Something roughly like bacon begins to fill the room with a savory smell, and she divides it onto two plates, setting one in front of him and almost hoping that he will ignore it.
But she feels the memory of leaner days haunting him, too, and he rouses himself to eat. He still has not spoken a word.
It had taken her three days to find him in the desert, and afterwards, he slept for three more. His sudden presence had ripped through a lazy afternoon and straight into her cerebral cortex. Her defenses were down, and she had been powerless against the shotgun force of his mind. The people she meets in these parts have simple concerns; cattle and pastures and rains. It's easier to keep them out than it is to shut the door against a light wind. She wasn't protected. She wasn't even trying.
When the haze cleared to a dull but insistent cry in her mind, River was surrounded by broken glass, glittering in the late-afternoon sun. Glass. She was washing up from lunch. And then he'd come.
She walked over the glass with bare feet to fetch the broom. In the morning, she wore thick socks in her boots when she began to search for him.
She finally found him collapsed at the base of a cliff, shielded from the worst of the sun. His lips cracked and bled when she took his head in her lap and tipped water down his throat. The bottom lip breaks open again as he eats. River watches while the stranger touches the wound lightly and stares at the smear of blood.
"You almost died," she says, running a finger round the rim of her own metal cup. She has not dared to use glass with him in the house.
He meets her eye; his expression is clear. He cocks his head to one side, and she throws up every defense she has against the incursion of his mind. He's strong.
"English?" he asks finally, and River rolls her eyes as the wave of his curiosity ebbs.
"Hao de, wo bu zai shuo Zhong wen," she says, almost as if to tease.
The stranger frowns. "Why would you be speaking Chinese?"
River opens her mouth to answer, but without warning, the wave becomes a hai xiao: images and emotions, calamity and catastrophe, lovers, children, enemies, regrets. It threatens to overwhelm her; she underestimated his power, because in his own way he is as fractured as she. She didn't know. She could not have expected. She has collapsed to the floor in agony.
She hears him speaking to her, as if from a distance, or through a thick pane of glass. She cannot make out words, just panic, bursts of pain as he forces his stiff body to move out of the chair and come to her. The onslaught worsens; she sees his entire life in the space of a few seconds. River forces herself to pull back from bounding on to the future, reining it in like she might pull at a wild horse. It feels like something snaps loose, she's falling, and so she does the only thing she has left: she pushes back.
He recoils instantly. And then, it's as if he knows, because she can feel him reeling it all back into his own mind.
"Oh, God," he says. "I'm sorry, I - you're - psychic." A stray image breaks through, then recedes from her quickly: a girl, paler than ice, smiling with lips black like night.
River bares her teeth, shakes her head with her hands over her ears. It's so much more than that. "Yes," she forces out. Might as well say yes. For simplicity's sake.
"It's okay," he says, gently patting her back. She can sense his hesitancy to touch her, so that even this small gesture is like a knife to her mind. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm usually better at keeping it hidden."
"So many. Dead because of you."
His face closes down, and just like that, everything is gone. River is alone in her own head, leaving a great gaping space where he'd been. It feels as silent as a tomb.
Even though he is not yet strong in body, he turns on a determined heel and walks out the front door.
+++
River considers herself a triumph of determination. Simon, poor Simon, thought he was making her better, but it wasn't him. Just like in the old days, he wasn't quite smart enough to work it out; she raced on ahead of him and had it done before he ever really started. She would have been his greatest puzzle, if she had let him solve her. If she had believed that he could solve her.
It was difficult work, even for her, building up each fortification stone by stone, developing tricks to use against the armies of others' thoughts and the siege engines of their emotions. The machicolation, the embrasure, and in times of great need, the fei yun pi-li pao. It was easier, after Miranda, but it was never simple, never quick, never sure.
Still, until the stranger came - until he came, it was working.
It's late morning when he returns. He slumps into the front room without knocking, but then, she expects him and he knows it. He's exhausted, stumbling as he reaches the chair. River is there to help him, spinning and catching his arm before he falls. He sits, and she can feel his hunger and his thirst. She fetches him some water.
River sits across from him, and it's mostly silent, outside and in. Something pulses under the surface like the subtle rush of blood under flesh, but she feels for the first time like she can breathe with him in the room.
"I ate your bacon," she says.
The stranger laughs once, a defeated sound. "I'm sorry that you saw. I know - what it's like to see things you shouldn't."
Something bubbles up, a picture of a white ghoul in a mask, dressed in a pink tutu like the caricature of a ballet dancer. It's gone in a second, and River frowns, wondering if that came from him. It seems...curiously non-threatening.
"Not your fault," River says. "They did this to you. Didn't they?" He doesn't answer, and she tries to be clear: "Not my they. Your they. You have a they, don't you?"
He sighs, covering his face with one large hand. "I guess I have a they."
"I'm better. I'm better now - most days. Most ways."
"I wish I knew what that felt like."
"You do know. You just forgot. Weren't always like this." She stops, swallows, and with a very great effort repeats herself, each word forced precisely over her tongue. "You weren't always like this."
"Look, you gotta keep out of my head. Pretend it's, it's a present, a surprise. No peeking."
She only wishes it were that simple. In lieu of answer, River moves to stand over him, tilts his head back to examine his face. The skin is peeling in some places, and his eyes aren't as bloodshot.
"You a doctor?" he asks. His voice rasps. She makes him drink more water.
"Not a doctor. I just know everything," she says, and he laughs at her, but it wasn't a joke. It's true. When she couldn't learn things in books, she learned them from each one of the crew, things they never knew they taught her. Even some things she never thought she'd use.
"I guess you would," he says. "You know how I got here, then."
River frowns, seeing the brightness again, an icy blue glare that swallows everything else. Like a black hole, but made entirely out of light.
She knows suddenly what it is, how it works, allows herself to read from his mind the equations it would take to go anywhere, to go back and change anything. She can tell that he knows what she's doing, and he lets her. She could ensure that Serenity's crew survived the Reavers intact. She could change what they did to her before they even think to do it. She could go back and save Earth-That-Was. It's an unthinkable power, and once its full import descends on her, she retreats from it with lightning speed.
The stranger meets her eyes, and she knows that he has made the same choice, that he makes it over and over again each day. How much more weight does each one of those regrets carry, when he has to choose them continually? She pulls away from him carefully, and nods in answer to his question.
"How did you get here?" he asks. She supposes it's obvious enough that she isn't exactly where she belongs. After the captain disappeared while on a solo mission, things fell apart, and she suspects that Serenity was the only place she could truly belong.
"Entropy," she answers, toying with a lock of her hair. It twists neatly around her fingers, and she wonders if she could style it so that it resembled her own DNA. He hasn't responded. He's just staring at her, and she shuts her eyes and her mind against him, lest she sense his pity. "Heat death of the universe. The center cannot hold."
"I know what entropy is - I'm actually pretty smart, y'know. Maybe not like you, but I was one of the big fish back in the little pond we called Earth."
Earth. Earth-That-Was, there was, if ever a wiz there was, because of the wonderful--
She shakes her head sharply, just once, and the thoughts rattle all back to their places.
"You can't go home again," she says.
And he laughs, genuine and hearty. "Now you're just frelling with me."
"Were you afraid?" she asks. "Were you sad?" Because she has had many homes, and the only ones that would take her back are places she will never go.
A smile still graces his face as he shakes his head with some of those regrets, but he isn't saying no. "You know what? Don't try it. It'll only make it worse."
"I've killed people," she says, and this startles him. "Killed a lot of people. Most of them bad. Most of them barely people."
The stranger looks down, makes a face, sniffs. "Doesn't make it easier, though."
"Objectively, it wasn't that difficult," she says, and she can't escape his pity this time.
"Man, what did they do to you?"
River turns away from him. "Got into my brain. Changed stuff. Changed me." She meets his eye again, defiant. "Want a chart? I can make one."
He's chewing on his lip, making it bleed more. He evidently doesn't notice. "Nah. I think I got the full picture." He shudders. It's entirely involuntary, and he immediately wants to take it back. "They get into your brain, they make you theirs and you don't even know it," he says quietly. "People die and it seems like the right choice. It's terrifying."
River shakes her head. "I'm not afraid anymore."
"Why?" he asks, a yearning note in his voice.
"Because," she says, smiling. "I know I can beat them." Tilting her head just so, she adds, "And you know the same thing."
The stranger looks up at her, lids heavy and half-closed. "That's what I'm afraid of."
"No," River says. "You're afraid of yourself," and is almost surprised to realize that she did not read the truth of it in his mind.
She read it in his eyes.
--
end
--
CHINESE TRANSLATIONS:
"Hao de, wo bu zai shuo Zhong wen." = "Well, I'm not speaking Chinese."
hai xiao = tsunami
fei yun pi-li pao = an early Chinese cast-iron cannon; literally, "flying-cloud thunderclap eruptor'"
by Shaye
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: The stranger's sudden presence ripped through a lazy afternoon and straight into her cerebral cortex. River's defenses were down, and she was powerless against the shotgun force of his mind.
DISCLAIMER: Firefly is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy; Farscape is the property of David Kemper and the Jim Henson Company. No infringement is intended.
NOTES: Written for lyl_devil in Multiverse 5000. Title and epigraph from The Frames. Thanks to Kernezelda and Corde for beta.
+++
the body's not secure,
the truth will not absorb,
and this crumbling apart,
is no good for you at all
+++
The stranger finally swims to consciousness in the middle of the night.
River wakes from a troubled sleep. Her dreams have not been this dark in years.
+++
He sits at her table in the early morning light, blistered hands clutched tightly around a dented metal cup. The table is a large slab of wood, painstakingly milled by hand in the first months after she came here. She found it singing out to her from where it was trapped inside a fallen tree down by the creek. The grain under her fingers feels the way the table on Serenity did, but this is nothing beyond the function of its form.
The stranger stares into the distance, downward through the wood of the table and the floor and deep into the dirt. River turns away from what he's seeing; it's bright, brighter than the sunrise, and the glare hurts her eyes from the inside. Something roughly like bacon begins to fill the room with a savory smell, and she divides it onto two plates, setting one in front of him and almost hoping that he will ignore it.
But she feels the memory of leaner days haunting him, too, and he rouses himself to eat. He still has not spoken a word.
It had taken her three days to find him in the desert, and afterwards, he slept for three more. His sudden presence had ripped through a lazy afternoon and straight into her cerebral cortex. Her defenses were down, and she had been powerless against the shotgun force of his mind. The people she meets in these parts have simple concerns; cattle and pastures and rains. It's easier to keep them out than it is to shut the door against a light wind. She wasn't protected. She wasn't even trying.
When the haze cleared to a dull but insistent cry in her mind, River was surrounded by broken glass, glittering in the late-afternoon sun. Glass. She was washing up from lunch. And then he'd come.
She walked over the glass with bare feet to fetch the broom. In the morning, she wore thick socks in her boots when she began to search for him.
She finally found him collapsed at the base of a cliff, shielded from the worst of the sun. His lips cracked and bled when she took his head in her lap and tipped water down his throat. The bottom lip breaks open again as he eats. River watches while the stranger touches the wound lightly and stares at the smear of blood.
"You almost died," she says, running a finger round the rim of her own metal cup. She has not dared to use glass with him in the house.
He meets her eye; his expression is clear. He cocks his head to one side, and she throws up every defense she has against the incursion of his mind. He's strong.
"English?" he asks finally, and River rolls her eyes as the wave of his curiosity ebbs.
"Hao de, wo bu zai shuo Zhong wen," she says, almost as if to tease.
The stranger frowns. "Why would you be speaking Chinese?"
River opens her mouth to answer, but without warning, the wave becomes a hai xiao: images and emotions, calamity and catastrophe, lovers, children, enemies, regrets. It threatens to overwhelm her; she underestimated his power, because in his own way he is as fractured as she. She didn't know. She could not have expected. She has collapsed to the floor in agony.
She hears him speaking to her, as if from a distance, or through a thick pane of glass. She cannot make out words, just panic, bursts of pain as he forces his stiff body to move out of the chair and come to her. The onslaught worsens; she sees his entire life in the space of a few seconds. River forces herself to pull back from bounding on to the future, reining it in like she might pull at a wild horse. It feels like something snaps loose, she's falling, and so she does the only thing she has left: she pushes back.
He recoils instantly. And then, it's as if he knows, because she can feel him reeling it all back into his own mind.
"Oh, God," he says. "I'm sorry, I - you're - psychic." A stray image breaks through, then recedes from her quickly: a girl, paler than ice, smiling with lips black like night.
River bares her teeth, shakes her head with her hands over her ears. It's so much more than that. "Yes," she forces out. Might as well say yes. For simplicity's sake.
"It's okay," he says, gently patting her back. She can sense his hesitancy to touch her, so that even this small gesture is like a knife to her mind. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm usually better at keeping it hidden."
"So many. Dead because of you."
His face closes down, and just like that, everything is gone. River is alone in her own head, leaving a great gaping space where he'd been. It feels as silent as a tomb.
Even though he is not yet strong in body, he turns on a determined heel and walks out the front door.
+++
River considers herself a triumph of determination. Simon, poor Simon, thought he was making her better, but it wasn't him. Just like in the old days, he wasn't quite smart enough to work it out; she raced on ahead of him and had it done before he ever really started. She would have been his greatest puzzle, if she had let him solve her. If she had believed that he could solve her.
It was difficult work, even for her, building up each fortification stone by stone, developing tricks to use against the armies of others' thoughts and the siege engines of their emotions. The machicolation, the embrasure, and in times of great need, the fei yun pi-li pao. It was easier, after Miranda, but it was never simple, never quick, never sure.
Still, until the stranger came - until he came, it was working.
It's late morning when he returns. He slumps into the front room without knocking, but then, she expects him and he knows it. He's exhausted, stumbling as he reaches the chair. River is there to help him, spinning and catching his arm before he falls. He sits, and she can feel his hunger and his thirst. She fetches him some water.
River sits across from him, and it's mostly silent, outside and in. Something pulses under the surface like the subtle rush of blood under flesh, but she feels for the first time like she can breathe with him in the room.
"I ate your bacon," she says.
The stranger laughs once, a defeated sound. "I'm sorry that you saw. I know - what it's like to see things you shouldn't."
Something bubbles up, a picture of a white ghoul in a mask, dressed in a pink tutu like the caricature of a ballet dancer. It's gone in a second, and River frowns, wondering if that came from him. It seems...curiously non-threatening.
"Not your fault," River says. "They did this to you. Didn't they?" He doesn't answer, and she tries to be clear: "Not my they. Your they. You have a they, don't you?"
He sighs, covering his face with one large hand. "I guess I have a they."
"I'm better. I'm better now - most days. Most ways."
"I wish I knew what that felt like."
"You do know. You just forgot. Weren't always like this." She stops, swallows, and with a very great effort repeats herself, each word forced precisely over her tongue. "You weren't always like this."
"Look, you gotta keep out of my head. Pretend it's, it's a present, a surprise. No peeking."
She only wishes it were that simple. In lieu of answer, River moves to stand over him, tilts his head back to examine his face. The skin is peeling in some places, and his eyes aren't as bloodshot.
"You a doctor?" he asks. His voice rasps. She makes him drink more water.
"Not a doctor. I just know everything," she says, and he laughs at her, but it wasn't a joke. It's true. When she couldn't learn things in books, she learned them from each one of the crew, things they never knew they taught her. Even some things she never thought she'd use.
"I guess you would," he says. "You know how I got here, then."
River frowns, seeing the brightness again, an icy blue glare that swallows everything else. Like a black hole, but made entirely out of light.
She knows suddenly what it is, how it works, allows herself to read from his mind the equations it would take to go anywhere, to go back and change anything. She can tell that he knows what she's doing, and he lets her. She could ensure that Serenity's crew survived the Reavers intact. She could change what they did to her before they even think to do it. She could go back and save Earth-That-Was. It's an unthinkable power, and once its full import descends on her, she retreats from it with lightning speed.
The stranger meets her eyes, and she knows that he has made the same choice, that he makes it over and over again each day. How much more weight does each one of those regrets carry, when he has to choose them continually? She pulls away from him carefully, and nods in answer to his question.
"How did you get here?" he asks. She supposes it's obvious enough that she isn't exactly where she belongs. After the captain disappeared while on a solo mission, things fell apart, and she suspects that Serenity was the only place she could truly belong.
"Entropy," she answers, toying with a lock of her hair. It twists neatly around her fingers, and she wonders if she could style it so that it resembled her own DNA. He hasn't responded. He's just staring at her, and she shuts her eyes and her mind against him, lest she sense his pity. "Heat death of the universe. The center cannot hold."
"I know what entropy is - I'm actually pretty smart, y'know. Maybe not like you, but I was one of the big fish back in the little pond we called Earth."
Earth. Earth-That-Was, there was, if ever a wiz there was, because of the wonderful--
She shakes her head sharply, just once, and the thoughts rattle all back to their places.
"You can't go home again," she says.
And he laughs, genuine and hearty. "Now you're just frelling with me."
"Were you afraid?" she asks. "Were you sad?" Because she has had many homes, and the only ones that would take her back are places she will never go.
A smile still graces his face as he shakes his head with some of those regrets, but he isn't saying no. "You know what? Don't try it. It'll only make it worse."
"I've killed people," she says, and this startles him. "Killed a lot of people. Most of them bad. Most of them barely people."
The stranger looks down, makes a face, sniffs. "Doesn't make it easier, though."
"Objectively, it wasn't that difficult," she says, and she can't escape his pity this time.
"Man, what did they do to you?"
River turns away from him. "Got into my brain. Changed stuff. Changed me." She meets his eye again, defiant. "Want a chart? I can make one."
He's chewing on his lip, making it bleed more. He evidently doesn't notice. "Nah. I think I got the full picture." He shudders. It's entirely involuntary, and he immediately wants to take it back. "They get into your brain, they make you theirs and you don't even know it," he says quietly. "People die and it seems like the right choice. It's terrifying."
River shakes her head. "I'm not afraid anymore."
"Why?" he asks, a yearning note in his voice.
"Because," she says, smiling. "I know I can beat them." Tilting her head just so, she adds, "And you know the same thing."
The stranger looks up at her, lids heavy and half-closed. "That's what I'm afraid of."
"No," River says. "You're afraid of yourself," and is almost surprised to realize that she did not read the truth of it in his mind.
She read it in his eyes.
--
end
--
CHINESE TRANSLATIONS:
"Hao de, wo bu zai shuo Zhong wen." = "Well, I'm not speaking Chinese."
hai xiao = tsunami
fei yun pi-li pao = an early Chinese cast-iron cannon; literally, "flying-cloud thunderclap eruptor'"