Fic: Remember Again (Firefly: River, PG)
Because I'm stuck with my other stories (more prompts, yes, I'm getting to them *sigh*), here's a tiny something I wrote this fine afternoon, when I should be outside, not in. Why? Inspiration! It's crazy, y'all.
Title: Remember Again
Author: Jen (jazzfic)
Rating: PG
Characters: River
Words: 607
Disclaimer: Joss let me borrow them. He's good like that.
Summary: She treated memory as compartments in a box, shut into dark space, sometimes locked, sometimes not.
Notes: For ff_friday prompt 164: deja vu.
~~
She treated memory as compartments in a box, shut into dark space, sometimes locked, sometimes not. Before they took her into institution, when there was pride in her brother's eyes (pride, and love; fear was still distant back then), River used her memory as one might use a tool toward study, toward ambition. She used it not to impress her teachers, for that came without effort--instinctively, as much as she cared to place importance on such states of mind--but rather to make sense of the world. Reason was absolute, a finite thing; she had knowledge, she surrendered it. And so, understanding this, taking advantage as only cruelty knows how, they took it as it was given. They took it in pieces (they, the world, great swathes of blue--an ocean of men, a land of clinical, terrible, power) and left her to an empty space, and her memory a gamble. If she reached in, it was random; if she tried to remember, her reward was chaos.
(Simon, Simon, a blind man sees me.)
Once, when a ward held her down so that they might reach her back, capture the knots in her spine with electrodes that crept and crawled like snakes, River saw a crack in the table, and experienced a sudden, inexplicable thing: deja vu. It hit her quietly, like a wave rolling gently over her skin, and she smiled, and the tears in her eyes stopped falling, drying out before they hit the latex beneath her cheek. She saw her brother's hand, felt the weight of it on her shoulder. And she heard his voice. This is a special school, mei-mei. They can teach you, give you things to learn so that you won't be bored. You deserve the best.
(Simon, Simon, they're watching us all.)
He wasn't coming. He said he would write, and he did, through love, through pride, constantly. But River had stopped reading. She didn't trust words, any more than she trusted her memories to return again. They had taken more than could be taken, whittled her down to raw nerve, a membrane of lost humanity. She was a weapon, and she made them proud. In the stark plane of science, her abilities were almost a thing of desire.
So she made a decision: don't try. Let memory be.
The table was warm. River thought she could feel the snakes moving down her spine, but it wasn't enough to distract her from the crush, the hope that came as the wave receded, and her brother disappeared. The ward, a heavy-set young man, eyes narrowed behind the mask (white mask, to protect; she's a pariah, a venomous lash, a dangerous little girl) noticed her smiling, and with a blink of confusion, tightened his grip on the cuffs; and above the anaesthetic, River could smell his fear.
(Simon, Simon, if you come, I'll be changed. I might not know you.)
When it was gone, this feeling, she was alone on the bed again; the ward and his doctor had crept behind a mirrored wall, to wait, to watch her fight the drug. They had given her something to learn, as she'd been told out of kindness, out of love, by another doctor once before.
(Simon, I saw a blind man, behind a mask. I saw a crack in a table. I could feel you, but I'm not afraid.)
(I haven't forgotten.)
She treated memory as compartments in a box. They had emptied it, but not as they should. They had grown complacent, thinking that they had done enough.
They hadn't. River was learning.
(Simon, come fast. Please come. I will remember again.)
Title: Remember Again
Author: Jen (jazzfic)
Rating: PG
Characters: River
Words: 607
Disclaimer: Joss let me borrow them. He's good like that.
Summary: She treated memory as compartments in a box, shut into dark space, sometimes locked, sometimes not.
Notes: For ff_friday prompt 164: deja vu.
~~
She treated memory as compartments in a box, shut into dark space, sometimes locked, sometimes not. Before they took her into institution, when there was pride in her brother's eyes (pride, and love; fear was still distant back then), River used her memory as one might use a tool toward study, toward ambition. She used it not to impress her teachers, for that came without effort--instinctively, as much as she cared to place importance on such states of mind--but rather to make sense of the world. Reason was absolute, a finite thing; she had knowledge, she surrendered it. And so, understanding this, taking advantage as only cruelty knows how, they took it as it was given. They took it in pieces (they, the world, great swathes of blue--an ocean of men, a land of clinical, terrible, power) and left her to an empty space, and her memory a gamble. If she reached in, it was random; if she tried to remember, her reward was chaos.
(Simon, Simon, a blind man sees me.)
Once, when a ward held her down so that they might reach her back, capture the knots in her spine with electrodes that crept and crawled like snakes, River saw a crack in the table, and experienced a sudden, inexplicable thing: deja vu. It hit her quietly, like a wave rolling gently over her skin, and she smiled, and the tears in her eyes stopped falling, drying out before they hit the latex beneath her cheek. She saw her brother's hand, felt the weight of it on her shoulder. And she heard his voice. This is a special school, mei-mei. They can teach you, give you things to learn so that you won't be bored. You deserve the best.
(Simon, Simon, they're watching us all.)
He wasn't coming. He said he would write, and he did, through love, through pride, constantly. But River had stopped reading. She didn't trust words, any more than she trusted her memories to return again. They had taken more than could be taken, whittled her down to raw nerve, a membrane of lost humanity. She was a weapon, and she made them proud. In the stark plane of science, her abilities were almost a thing of desire.
So she made a decision: don't try. Let memory be.
The table was warm. River thought she could feel the snakes moving down her spine, but it wasn't enough to distract her from the crush, the hope that came as the wave receded, and her brother disappeared. The ward, a heavy-set young man, eyes narrowed behind the mask (white mask, to protect; she's a pariah, a venomous lash, a dangerous little girl) noticed her smiling, and with a blink of confusion, tightened his grip on the cuffs; and above the anaesthetic, River could smell his fear.
(Simon, Simon, if you come, I'll be changed. I might not know you.)
When it was gone, this feeling, she was alone on the bed again; the ward and his doctor had crept behind a mirrored wall, to wait, to watch her fight the drug. They had given her something to learn, as she'd been told out of kindness, out of love, by another doctor once before.
(Simon, I saw a blind man, behind a mask. I saw a crack in a table. I could feel you, but I'm not afraid.)
(I haven't forgotten.)
She treated memory as compartments in a box. They had emptied it, but not as they should. They had grown complacent, thinking that they had done enough.
They hadn't. River was learning.
(Simon, come fast. Please come. I will remember again.)