FIC: Love and Other Unscientific Matters
I'm reposting this here simply because I can't organize it in my own tags if I don't. And not backdating it, just in case some of you missed it. *cough*
This is the story I wrote for kellyfaboo at serenity_santa this Christmas. Previously posted here, and I kinda wish I'd linked to my own journal now that so many people are reading it. (Dude! They like it! They really do!)
Title: Love and Other Unscientific Matters
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity (post movie!)
Summary: A mixed-up set of steps.
Pairing: I aimed, for River and Simon gen, but a little Mal/River and Simon/Kaylee sort of snuck in.
Warnings: Light spoilers for the movie.
Rating: PG
Love and Other Unscientific Matters
(5)
Simon doesn't know how to be like this. After a year living out here, on the run and constantly facing the kind of trouble that a good Tam son never should, he thought it was something that would have worn into his skin. He thought it would rise to the surface, like everything else, just when he happened to need it.
It didn't. Now he's in so deep with Kaylee he has her convinced that he's okay with this kind of relationship. Casual sex--not that it's completely new to him, but he's generally avoided it due to his admittedly fastidious nature and a genuinely troubling tendency to compare every girl he's ever been with to his sister. Once he'd decided that he could only overcome that by limiting himself to a committed relationship, and acknowledging the fact that he was resistant to marriage, his grades went up just as noticeably as his social interactions went down. His parents had been placated by his choice in specialties and their hope for a future filled with important contacts and celebrity stature.
Kaylee enjoys herself with abandon, something he's admired and never quite been able to achieve. She likes his body; she more than tolerates his embarrassing inability to talk about feelings, she enjoys it: plays with him when he stutters. She loves it when he doesn't hesitate, not realizing he's falling back on his medacad experience more than jumping out of it. Trust your knowledge, trust you remember it well after months of testing and the repeating it under your breath. Let your hands be the instruments of your knowledge. This is how he has always lived.
But Kaylee has instructed him in her ways for so long now that he knows how to please her. He enjoys, as he always has, his success at implementing a plan. It's not so different out on the rim, after all. This is something he understands.
(6)
Simon worries more now than he did when River was crazy. Then there was a goal, idealized perhaps but still; every moment of doubt he felt, there was an ending point he pictured: River, on the mend. River, slowly becoming herself again. His sister was never completely normal, but he just wants, someday, for there to be more moments when she looks at him and behind her eyes she's herself than there are times her blurry eyes are filtered by someone else. He misses his River, the unexpected, original one, because she was a part of him: the part that offset so many of his own foibles. As she slowly becomes someone else, less scattered but more of a stranger, it serves to remind him so many things have changed in himself.
The first time River prances down from the bridge and tells Simon she's eating in her room while she is studying, he is too shocked to ask what she's talking about.
"Studying, River?" asks Kaylee. "Studying what?"
"Serenity," River replies simply, takes a few biscuits, and leaves. Simon finds her in her room later and not only are there crumbs in her unmade bed, she's only half-dressed and she's yanking on her hair, wild-eyed and impatient with the Cortex. She's drawn schematics on bits of paper, over and over again, making such a mess nothing can be read. She's looking up the War; not the ship like Simon had assumed. "Nothing matches, Simon," River says seriously. "None of it fits; too many contradictory sources!"
"I guess that's how it works, River," he says slowly. "Like Miranda. The truth was there, but there were so many ways to cover it."
She glares at him. "Someone has to know. Who do you believe?"
"The people who were there?" Simon suggests tenatively. "I suppose you could talk to the Captain, but I don't know if that's a good idea--"
"Even witnesses it see their own way," River cuts him off, shaking her head. "Can't know the truth, just have to pick what sounds best. Is that right, Simon?"
Simon crosses his arms uncomfortably. "River...I don't understand it either." He smiles slightly. "Remeber why I went into medicine?"
She smiles at him suddenly, a curve of her mouth that takes him back in time, for an instant. The world turns upside down and the spaceship doesn't fit, because his little sister sits there, but she hasn't been that confident, taunting girl since they lived with their parents. "Simon, leave the intangibles to me," she says. "I make them up along the way."
Simon moves further into her room and moves the boots off her chair so he can sit. "How do you do that?"
"There's only a few that matter," she replies, flippantly, turning back to the screen. "Love an' faith take a man one way; fear an' hate may head off the same direction, but they're like to travel much different."
Simon laughs it off. "You're sounding a lot like the Captain."
River glances at him, over her shoulder. "I know," she says with a grin.
Simon can't tell anymore, and it frustrates him. Is she chosing to become more like him, or is it the voices in her head?
(1)
Simon took the brush and worked at the mud caked on the heel of his boot. There was a reason he didn't normally walk in the paddock. River's solution was to take off her shoes entirely, roll up her tailored pants and use the water tank after, but that only worked if nobody saw her do it. Simon took on the role of look-out entirely out of chagrin.
Now he had to clean off his boots instead of watching River ride. "Your sister should start showing," said Vischer, the horse trainer from the west barn, as he stood below Simon and leaned on the bleachers.
Simon nodded absently. "I'm sure she plans to."
"She starts now, she'll really be something when she's old enough to compete."
"You'd have to ask her, but I think this is really just a hobby," Simon replied. The mud was wedged into the crease between the heel and the boot proper. He cursed his sister in his head.
"Sure, rich kids on a lark for social convention," Vischer said. "Horsemanship isn't good manners, young Mr. Tam. It's more about good sense."
Simon glanced up. "Excuse me?"
Vischer gave him an even look. "Your sister rides well because she feels the movement." He nodded out at her. "You might pay more attention. Clean boots won't give you a better seat."
Simon watched him walk away with annoyance. He turned the brush in his hand and went after the mud more vigorously, determined to meet dress regulations for his lesson. But he keeps an eye on his sister, down in the enclosed paddock and riding circles around the instructor from Sihnon. River was riding with no stirrups, eyes closed and reins held by the index finger of each hand. Her eyelids never blinked and her face was serene.
(7)
"What's the gorram girl doing?"
Mal is watching River cover her eyes with both hands as she rides, but unlike Jayne, he has an indulgent smile on his face.
"Feng le. Both of 'em," Jayne says.
"Captain's got the lunge line; girl's safe enough," Zoe says. Simon's impressed that she of all people knows his mind before he does. Though if he were to start worrying over this scenario, it would be at Mal's control of the horse, not River's.
"She used to ride at home. Lessons every week since she was six," Simon remarks.
"She's still got a soft seat," Zoe says. She steps one foot up onto the broken down fence and smiles. "Not much wrong with her balance, neither."
"Hold the horse between your legs, darlin'," Mal says, and steps toward the back of the horse as it passes. The horse jumps slightly and breaks into a trot. Simon tenses. River extends her arms on both sides and never opens her eyes.
Simon watches her. "Heels stacked, ribs up," she says, and she's smiling like she used to have to be reminded to smile for the judges. Simon sits for a moment and reminds himself this is what he wants before he gets up and goes back inside Serenity to find Kaylee. River is in Mal's hands, and for once he's sure it's what she has chosen.
(8)
Kaylee brightens when she returns to find him by the engine, and this is what he likes about her: she's always aware when he's there. He doesn't know what he's like when he's near her himself; while slowly he's remembering what it was to show more parts of himself than the professional one, he's never visualized himself in love. Is this love?
According to Mal and River, it is. Love, for Mal isn't as limited as Simon Tam was told it is. If River agrees, having always assured him she was smarter when it came to things like this, he supposes it ought to be good enough for him.
"What's the matter, sweetie?" she asks, approaching him. "You look like the engine just fell apart." She glances past him, briefly, to make sure it still turns. "Are you here for a...visit?" she asks and tugs on the lapels of his vest. "Quick tumble before we leave world?"
Simon smiles carefully, to cover his reaction to her unadorned way of speaking. He begins to think it was built in: an imprinted reaction his parents requested at his birth. "I don't want to get in the way of whatever you're doing."
"Think the idea is you distract me," Kaylee eagerly replies. "With those eyes and them fine surgeon hands." She slides her calloused fingers up his knuckles and over his fingertips. He sighs, watching her movement.
"Mal's letting River ride that horse outside," he says, though he hadn't thought about discussing it.
Kaylee grins, then says quickly, "Oh, sure, they all get to play while I'm in here--"
"Getting distracted?"
"Well. Not for want of tryin', Simon." There is a bit of reproach in that, and Simon is aware of it. He has a catalog in his head, of the ways Kaylee gets hurt. In his bitterest moments, he thinks someday he might be able to diagnose her ailment.
"River's all right. You know that, don't you?"
Simon shakes his head. "'All right' is relative." He steps around her. "I'll leave you to your work."
(2)
"Simon, if you aren't ready in precisely sixty-three seconds--"
"Don't come in here!"
"Who's the girl in this household?" River yelled at him through his bedroom door. "Even Mother is ready before you."
"That's because they have to be there earlier." Simon yanked his door open with a flourish, his tie fluttering in the sweep of air.
River laughed at him. "After that long, this is the best you can do?"
He narrows his eyes at her. "I didn't want to go in the first place, I'll have you know, and I look fine --well enough for the Ziyous, I think."
"But well enough for me?" River tilted her head. Simon glanced at her sharply, and submitted himself to her perusal, standing up straight. He tugged rapidly at his labels, trousers, and hair, and fluffed up his tie. "I guess you'll pass," she said finally.
Simon rolled his eyes. "Xiexie."
"Mei guanxi. Now me."
River posed herself delicately, and Simon looked his sister up and down. Her dress was the result of several home fittings and more than one special fabric order, and her hair and makeup had been done by appointment at the same time as their Mother's. The way she stood on her toes and held her hands away from her hips was all River, though. "River, you look-- well, you look pretty terrible, really. Sorry to be the one who--" He laughed and batted her hands away. "Who tells you, but I'm your brother and I have to be honest. Do you have your gloves?"
River held them up and started rolling her evening gloves up over her arms. "Gloves are an extremely sanitary fashion statement, Simon."
"You wouldn't want to catch anything from the Uhlman brothers, would you?"
"You're just worried about girl germs," River retorted, smoothing the glove down each of her fingers. "Which is only natural. You are fifty percent more likely to catch something from the opposite sex than from your own, you know. Where are your gloves?"
"There is no such statistic, and they're right here."
"It's true, though." River picked up her cape from the chair in the hall and tossed it over her small shoulders. "Of course there are several caveats."
"Of course."
"If you were sly, I could do more thorough research."
"Oh, is that what you want as your Christmas present?"
"No!" She turned and peeked at him from under her hood, eyes dark against the dark blue, hair pulled back in curls. So beautiful it hurt to think he wouldn't see her for months on end next year. "Would you give me it if I did?" Before Simon had the chance to insist he most certainly would not, she laughed and answered herself, "Of course you would, I know. You'd do anything to make me happy."
That, of course, meant she got the last word.
(9)
"Good garden walk day."
"Indeed it is, little one," Mal says, hand on her shoulder, leading her down the ramp as though she needed guidance. "Like to see the sun shine when there's thievery afoot, don't we, Zoe?"
"That we do," she says, without looking up. Checking her equipment. She's carrying more guns than Jayne today.
Simon would like to ask why the Captain can't use some other girl for his plan, but he knows he can't. Inara's out of the question, and he wouldn't put Kaylee into the middle of this. Zoe is better serving as back-up. And he knows River can take care of herself. He just catches himself sometimes wishing she wouldn't.
"River," he says quietly, following them down the ramp and pulling her away from Mal. "You don't have to do everything he says just because he saved us," he says it under his breath, hoping Mal won't listen. He watches her eyes closely, so he sees very well that she thinks he's being stupid. She did, after all, volunteer: right in front of him, over breakfast. She pulls away from him and steps back to the side of the Captain.
"Won't be long, Doc."
"I'll go prep the infirmary," Simon says.
"Might have to rethink your cut of this if you're wishin' bloodshed down on us, Doctor," Mal calls over his shoulder just when Simon thinks he's ignoring him.
"Don't know why he gets a cut, anyway," Jayne mumbles. "Girl's doin' all the work."
"He's crew," River answers, despite Mal's mouth being open. "You are very tiresome, Jayne."
"Now that bears repeating," Mal says. He smiles to himself as though the job can't help but be perfect.
(10)
Simon's seen the way he looks at her, but it's never been like this. Mal loves his crew and his ship, and sometimes he even manages to act like it. He looks at River like she's a part of him, and Simon has reminded himself he treats all his people like this. Not Simon, but Simon has always held himself apart from all of them--he knows this; he understands. Can't be helped.
Mal came back in a ridiculously good mood when the job was done, with his arm around River and holding on as she twirls on her toes and tells Kaylee about the walk through the gardens, of all things. After he called her a little Albatross a few too many times, Jayne had the gall to make a joke about pilots getting bedded on this ship and got himself assigned to cleaning the docking bay. Then Mal and River disappeared upstairs. Simon knows Mal's looking over the course River plotted to Greenleaf so they can leave this world, quick and prudent at Mal's request. But down here, Kaylee is deliberately ignoring him, turning her back to him and chatting boisterously with Jayne, who is keen to discord as always and thrilled to lend a hand. So Simon follows them up to the cockpit and finds Mal leaning over River, where she's curled up in the co-pilot's chair. He's looking at the screen but she's watching his face. Her fingers trace the air as though she sees something there.
Simon snaps. "That does it! You are--I won't have you corrupting my sister!"
Mal turns around and looks at him as though he didn't make himself perfectly clear. "Say again? Not who'ing your what now?"
Simon remembers this feeling he used to get when the attending doctors would belittle the medical students. The trick was to keep a level expression and forge ahead. "She has a quick mind. She can handle the mechanics, and she seems to like it. But Jayne's right, there is a little too much... togetherness going on here and I-- I don't like it. Obviously."
"There's a bit too much togetherness going on down in my engine room, seems to me, but I haven't said a word against that, now have I, Doctor?"
"So you admit it!" Simon declares. He knows how to pull a run-around. Mal isn't in his element at that.
Mal looks from Simon to River, and appears slightly more uncomfortable. "Haven't put so much as a finger on your sister, less you count the job just this very day, and it ain't fixing to happen. Not ever."
"Been lusting in his heart, though," River says.
Mal's head jerks around. "He's been-- I haven't done no such thing!" He points a finger at Simon, unabashedly bewildered. "Don't you go an' take her word for it, neither." Simon doesn't know what to say to that.
"Wouldn't be very scientific." River, in the humming silence, agrees with him.
"Fine," Simon stutters, finally, forced to realize that this had been a very ill-fated attempt to protest. "You just keep your--heart to yourself, and we don't have a problem."
Mal glares, as though he's sufficiently recovered to realize Simon's affronted him again. "You keep a cooler tongue in your head, Doctor, an' we surely haven't." He glances down at River, and has that odd look on his face. "An' you, little one, keep things a mite more tidy in there."
River returns his expression, her eyes unfathomable. Simon can see he has no say in this.
It makes him feel better, however, that neither does Mal. Especially that he doesn't know it yet.
(3)
"I don't want you to go."
"You're just being selfish. You're going to be at the hospital, busy, busy, busy, for years. When I come back, you'll be a real doctor. Boss the other interns around. And we'll find someplace to live, and we'll be together. That's the way it's supposed to be, Simon."
"I think it's supposed to be that way now, not later," Simon replied sourly.
"If I don't go learn top secret government business, there won't be anything left for me to know more about than you do. You'll lose all respect for me." River grinned and pinched him. Her mind was obviously made up. Her eyes were dark with questions, but they were always like that.
Simon grabbed her waving hands. "But we could have that now, meimei. You can go to school in Capital City..."
"I'm not going to another regular school, Simon. I'm bored with it! I'm just wasting my time," River snapped, eyes lighting up. "Remember how we said it would be? You'll come home from the hospital, and maybe I'll cook--"
"Or I'll pick up something--"
"Or I'll meet you somewhere, after working day and night to find the solution to--"
"The solar wind problem, I'm sure," Simon said dryly.
"We'll eat somewhere new every night, and discuss things. When we go to a bar, we'll turn away everyone, and we'll laugh at them."
"When Mother and Dad call, we'll be busy and important with no time for them--"
"Or all the parties they want to respond to for us, because everyone wants us there. We'll be so--"
"Well, you--"
"You are so shuai. Siiiimon," she sing-songed. "All the girls love a medical man."
"What would you know about all the girls," he retorted, and mock glared. "Skinny-bones, Mother still has to pick your fancy dress--"
"Shut up, Simon!" She kicked at his shins. "That is an entirely illogical argument. Just because I hate shopping with Mother in Market Square--"
Simon laughed. "What does logic have to do with not liking it?"
"Sa gua! Oh, Simon, don't you remember how much better it is to be on the path to something of your own?" She put her hands on both his cheeks, barely there and then gone. Her eyes were so intent when they met his he was reminded of how often they weren't like that; he was so used to River's frequent withdrawls and her often violently frustrated struggle to satisfy questions and answers without the proper information to process them, he hadn't acknowledged how focused she'd been since her Academy acceptance.
She was right; he was selfish. He just couldn't believe that her Academy would give her any more peace than his did him. "But, River, who will you argue with if you go away to school?"
"I'll write you letters," she responded immediately. "I have very fine pensmanship, you know," she added with a teasing grin.
"What would you do without my shins to kick?"
"Live happily, I guess," she laughed and twirled away from him.
(11)
"So you think River and the Captain--"
"Kaylee. I really don't want to talk about it."
"But... the Captain? Shi ma?" Kaylee giggles. Her toes wiggle with it. "I always thought, well. I guess I thought if anybody could get the Captain into bed, it'd be Inara."
"Oh, wo de tian a," Simon says, covering his eyes with his hand.
"Sorry, sweetie," Kaylee says. "I'm sure the Captain won't do anything without asking first. He's real old fashioned like that."
Simon opens his eyes in horror. "Are you serious?"
"Well, yeah," Kaylee says. "Cap'n's real respectful of a girl, long as she's not mean an' conniving, lookin' to jerry-rig Serenity an' poison 'im with her lips--" Kaylee pauses a moment. "Or if she's a whore, sometimes, or a Companion that gets under his skin. Or if she's shot him, well, more'n once."
Simon holds up his hand. "Please stop now."
(12)
Inara sits down beside him. He can always tell she's coming because he can still recognize different kinds of expensive fabric when they swish. It reminds him of home. It makes him sit up straight and close his mouth before he remembers where he is.
She sits down beside him on Jayne's weight bench and silently contemplates the cargo bay, filled with row after row of covered containers of black dirt. Eventually, seeds would bloom into flowers.
"You heard," Simon finally says. This ship is smaller than his mother's gossip circle, and information moves fast.
"I heard," she confirms. He wonders, briefly, whether she's hurt. But he's known enough Companions over the course of his life to make him doubt it. If there's one thing he is sure about, it's that Inara keeps the best, if only, secrets on this ship. Having reached her ears, the truth could go no further.
"I gave up a lot for my sister," Simon says carefully. He wants to talk, badly, but he just wants to say it the way it is in his head. Inara is silent and won't interrupt and make him start again. "But it wasn't hard. I just believed--that River had the right to be safe. It was absolute. And absolutes are always so much easier to live with. She used to be so difficult, when she wanted her own way." He sighs and she smiles briefly. "I forgot. It's been so long since she was more than just my responsibility." He grimaces, looks down at his hands. "Do you get this a lot?" he laughs. "Everyone just tells you how they feel?"
"You'd be surprised."
Simon shifts suddenly. "But not--"
"No." Inara glances away for a moment. "Not him."
Simon nods, and they're quiet for long moments. She's waiting on him, and he doesn't mind that she can read him so well because he's not sure he can say what he needs to admit. It takes him too long to open his lips and just speak out.
"I guess I'm having a hard time letting go."
Inara gently takes his hand in hers; he looks at their hands and how they match, at pale skin and clean nails. "Take a look around at Serenity, Simon," she tells him levelly. "This ship, this crew, is all about not letting go. If you don't want to let go, you fit right in here. Haven't you figured that out by now?" What's odd is that he can feel she means what she says; her hand is not merely reassuring but a link to his past.
"Talk to Mal; believe me, he'll tell you. That man doesn't let anything go." She smiles faintly. "The good part is, he won't ask you to, either." She stands, using her free hand to smooth the back of her dress. "All you have to do is decide whether you want to hold on, good and bad--or not. That's it." She pats his hand, then lets go.
Simon watches her walk away; she's disappeared upstairs before he thinks there's something symbolic in all this. He and Inara were raised on the same principle, and both of them felt its consequence. "Unwanted secondary effect," he says outloud. He's making his own kind of sense.
(4)
"Siiiiimon," River whined, and wiped away fake tears with a rapid swish of both hands. "Don't be a baby, it's fine."
"I'm sorry, meimei. I am so sorry." Simon knew he was giving his sister ammunition for life, but he was upset enough that it didn't worry him. Had he considered himself capable of it, he really would be crying.
"Siiiimon," River repeated, and scrunched up her eyebrows. "You look terrible in the mornings. Better you're somewhere else."
Simon flinched and she smiled sweetly, drawing her hands back. "You have to go. You'll have to work twice as hard at school without me here. You can't miss a class."
Simon ignored her words. "But what if at the last second, you change your mind? Mother and Dad won't let you come back from the station."
"I won't," River replied with a smile, serious enough that he could believe it. "I won't change my mind, Simon."
"I wanted to be there," Simon said, frustrated.
"Mother and Dad won't let you come," she said simply. She went on decisively, "Physically, I am still here, but my projected self is technically gone already. My intention to leave might be compromised by your presence tomorrow, just by your desire to hinder me. I simply can't allow it."
Simon ducked his head and tried not to laugh. "I hate that."
"You can't hate science, Simon," River said seriously. She pursed her lips reproachfully and clasped her hands. "It's like hating air."
Simon snorted. "You would say that. It's not like hating air. Like hating the law, maybe--"
"No, there are too many ways around the law."
Simon laughed. "I hope you don't plan to test that theory."
"I haven't fully formed the hypothesis, Simon. I'm not at the test and observation stage yet."
Simon grabbed her hands and pulled her into his chest. "Hold off on that until we're back together, all right?"
She smiled against his cheek.
"Don't live too much while you're gone, meimei," he whispered in her ear.
"I'll be back when you're a brilliant doctor," she replied, kissing him. She looked him in the eyes, so close she was all pupil and no color. "You already are, you just have to follow the steps."
Simon felt old, suddenly, the way he felt when River wasn't around to be a distraction. "Sometimes the steps don't lead where you expect, River."
She shook her head, dismissively. "Yes they do, Simon! There are always steps!" She released him abruptly. "Backward, forward, it always makes sense. It's a pattern, Simon!" she insisted fiercely. "Put together the parts and an answer's there."
He sighed. "You just think that because that's how it's worked so far."
She looked at him as though he'd gone loopy in the head. "Of course. In the absence of contradictory evidence--"
"River--" He put a finger over her lips. "You're going away to learn, right?"
"Of course." She blinked at him innocently. "I am still quite young, you know."
"Zhufu ni, I hadn't noticed. So make it a test. If you're not scared to prove me right."
"Na mei guanxi, you know I'm not, Simon!"
He grinned. "Fine. In your letters, we'll discuss it."
She rolled her eyes. "And you can tell me all about the lovely parties I've missed."
"If I must." Simon bowed his head wearily. She touched his nose with her index finger, twirled around, and flounced back to her bedroom. "I'll be back before you know it!" she called back to him. "Now go to bed!"
Simon got into his bed and stared at the dark screen on his ceiling. After months of telling himself to accept her departure, he was still tense. He could allow himself to envy her choice of pure seclusion over the use of a heavy workload to escape social obligations. It was her choice of knowledge over him that he couldn't think about. It wasn't right for him to hold on to her. She was brilliant and amazing, and someday, if she meant more to the world, or multiple worlds, than she did to him, that was for the best. The Alliance needed people willing to donate their talent, like River and him, to make the universe a better place. Holding on to what they were must be selfish, because it was all he wanted and all he couldn't have.
He had to believe in that--because there was nothing else. If he couldn't give her up for the greater good, there was no reason to let go of her ever.
They'd lived their whole lives with no other choice, so there must not be any other way to live.
(End)
Note: Chinese words taken from here.
This is the story I wrote for kellyfaboo at serenity_santa this Christmas. Previously posted here, and I kinda wish I'd linked to my own journal now that so many people are reading it. (Dude! They like it! They really do!)
Title: Love and Other Unscientific Matters
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity (post movie!)
Summary: A mixed-up set of steps.
Pairing: I aimed, for River and Simon gen, but a little Mal/River and Simon/Kaylee sort of snuck in.
Warnings: Light spoilers for the movie.
Rating: PG
Love and Other Unscientific Matters
(5)
Simon doesn't know how to be like this. After a year living out here, on the run and constantly facing the kind of trouble that a good Tam son never should, he thought it was something that would have worn into his skin. He thought it would rise to the surface, like everything else, just when he happened to need it.
It didn't. Now he's in so deep with Kaylee he has her convinced that he's okay with this kind of relationship. Casual sex--not that it's completely new to him, but he's generally avoided it due to his admittedly fastidious nature and a genuinely troubling tendency to compare every girl he's ever been with to his sister. Once he'd decided that he could only overcome that by limiting himself to a committed relationship, and acknowledging the fact that he was resistant to marriage, his grades went up just as noticeably as his social interactions went down. His parents had been placated by his choice in specialties and their hope for a future filled with important contacts and celebrity stature.
Kaylee enjoys herself with abandon, something he's admired and never quite been able to achieve. She likes his body; she more than tolerates his embarrassing inability to talk about feelings, she enjoys it: plays with him when he stutters. She loves it when he doesn't hesitate, not realizing he's falling back on his medacad experience more than jumping out of it. Trust your knowledge, trust you remember it well after months of testing and the repeating it under your breath. Let your hands be the instruments of your knowledge. This is how he has always lived.
But Kaylee has instructed him in her ways for so long now that he knows how to please her. He enjoys, as he always has, his success at implementing a plan. It's not so different out on the rim, after all. This is something he understands.
(6)
Simon worries more now than he did when River was crazy. Then there was a goal, idealized perhaps but still; every moment of doubt he felt, there was an ending point he pictured: River, on the mend. River, slowly becoming herself again. His sister was never completely normal, but he just wants, someday, for there to be more moments when she looks at him and behind her eyes she's herself than there are times her blurry eyes are filtered by someone else. He misses his River, the unexpected, original one, because she was a part of him: the part that offset so many of his own foibles. As she slowly becomes someone else, less scattered but more of a stranger, it serves to remind him so many things have changed in himself.
The first time River prances down from the bridge and tells Simon she's eating in her room while she is studying, he is too shocked to ask what she's talking about.
"Studying, River?" asks Kaylee. "Studying what?"
"Serenity," River replies simply, takes a few biscuits, and leaves. Simon finds her in her room later and not only are there crumbs in her unmade bed, she's only half-dressed and she's yanking on her hair, wild-eyed and impatient with the Cortex. She's drawn schematics on bits of paper, over and over again, making such a mess nothing can be read. She's looking up the War; not the ship like Simon had assumed. "Nothing matches, Simon," River says seriously. "None of it fits; too many contradictory sources!"
"I guess that's how it works, River," he says slowly. "Like Miranda. The truth was there, but there were so many ways to cover it."
She glares at him. "Someone has to know. Who do you believe?"
"The people who were there?" Simon suggests tenatively. "I suppose you could talk to the Captain, but I don't know if that's a good idea--"
"Even witnesses it see their own way," River cuts him off, shaking her head. "Can't know the truth, just have to pick what sounds best. Is that right, Simon?"
Simon crosses his arms uncomfortably. "River...I don't understand it either." He smiles slightly. "Remeber why I went into medicine?"
She smiles at him suddenly, a curve of her mouth that takes him back in time, for an instant. The world turns upside down and the spaceship doesn't fit, because his little sister sits there, but she hasn't been that confident, taunting girl since they lived with their parents. "Simon, leave the intangibles to me," she says. "I make them up along the way."
Simon moves further into her room and moves the boots off her chair so he can sit. "How do you do that?"
"There's only a few that matter," she replies, flippantly, turning back to the screen. "Love an' faith take a man one way; fear an' hate may head off the same direction, but they're like to travel much different."
Simon laughs it off. "You're sounding a lot like the Captain."
River glances at him, over her shoulder. "I know," she says with a grin.
Simon can't tell anymore, and it frustrates him. Is she chosing to become more like him, or is it the voices in her head?
(1)
Simon took the brush and worked at the mud caked on the heel of his boot. There was a reason he didn't normally walk in the paddock. River's solution was to take off her shoes entirely, roll up her tailored pants and use the water tank after, but that only worked if nobody saw her do it. Simon took on the role of look-out entirely out of chagrin.
Now he had to clean off his boots instead of watching River ride. "Your sister should start showing," said Vischer, the horse trainer from the west barn, as he stood below Simon and leaned on the bleachers.
Simon nodded absently. "I'm sure she plans to."
"She starts now, she'll really be something when she's old enough to compete."
"You'd have to ask her, but I think this is really just a hobby," Simon replied. The mud was wedged into the crease between the heel and the boot proper. He cursed his sister in his head.
"Sure, rich kids on a lark for social convention," Vischer said. "Horsemanship isn't good manners, young Mr. Tam. It's more about good sense."
Simon glanced up. "Excuse me?"
Vischer gave him an even look. "Your sister rides well because she feels the movement." He nodded out at her. "You might pay more attention. Clean boots won't give you a better seat."
Simon watched him walk away with annoyance. He turned the brush in his hand and went after the mud more vigorously, determined to meet dress regulations for his lesson. But he keeps an eye on his sister, down in the enclosed paddock and riding circles around the instructor from Sihnon. River was riding with no stirrups, eyes closed and reins held by the index finger of each hand. Her eyelids never blinked and her face was serene.
(7)
"What's the gorram girl doing?"
Mal is watching River cover her eyes with both hands as she rides, but unlike Jayne, he has an indulgent smile on his face.
"Feng le. Both of 'em," Jayne says.
"Captain's got the lunge line; girl's safe enough," Zoe says. Simon's impressed that she of all people knows his mind before he does. Though if he were to start worrying over this scenario, it would be at Mal's control of the horse, not River's.
"She used to ride at home. Lessons every week since she was six," Simon remarks.
"She's still got a soft seat," Zoe says. She steps one foot up onto the broken down fence and smiles. "Not much wrong with her balance, neither."
"Hold the horse between your legs, darlin'," Mal says, and steps toward the back of the horse as it passes. The horse jumps slightly and breaks into a trot. Simon tenses. River extends her arms on both sides and never opens her eyes.
Simon watches her. "Heels stacked, ribs up," she says, and she's smiling like she used to have to be reminded to smile for the judges. Simon sits for a moment and reminds himself this is what he wants before he gets up and goes back inside Serenity to find Kaylee. River is in Mal's hands, and for once he's sure it's what she has chosen.
(8)
Kaylee brightens when she returns to find him by the engine, and this is what he likes about her: she's always aware when he's there. He doesn't know what he's like when he's near her himself; while slowly he's remembering what it was to show more parts of himself than the professional one, he's never visualized himself in love. Is this love?
According to Mal and River, it is. Love, for Mal isn't as limited as Simon Tam was told it is. If River agrees, having always assured him she was smarter when it came to things like this, he supposes it ought to be good enough for him.
"What's the matter, sweetie?" she asks, approaching him. "You look like the engine just fell apart." She glances past him, briefly, to make sure it still turns. "Are you here for a...visit?" she asks and tugs on the lapels of his vest. "Quick tumble before we leave world?"
Simon smiles carefully, to cover his reaction to her unadorned way of speaking. He begins to think it was built in: an imprinted reaction his parents requested at his birth. "I don't want to get in the way of whatever you're doing."
"Think the idea is you distract me," Kaylee eagerly replies. "With those eyes and them fine surgeon hands." She slides her calloused fingers up his knuckles and over his fingertips. He sighs, watching her movement.
"Mal's letting River ride that horse outside," he says, though he hadn't thought about discussing it.
Kaylee grins, then says quickly, "Oh, sure, they all get to play while I'm in here--"
"Getting distracted?"
"Well. Not for want of tryin', Simon." There is a bit of reproach in that, and Simon is aware of it. He has a catalog in his head, of the ways Kaylee gets hurt. In his bitterest moments, he thinks someday he might be able to diagnose her ailment.
"River's all right. You know that, don't you?"
Simon shakes his head. "'All right' is relative." He steps around her. "I'll leave you to your work."
(2)
"Simon, if you aren't ready in precisely sixty-three seconds--"
"Don't come in here!"
"Who's the girl in this household?" River yelled at him through his bedroom door. "Even Mother is ready before you."
"That's because they have to be there earlier." Simon yanked his door open with a flourish, his tie fluttering in the sweep of air.
River laughed at him. "After that long, this is the best you can do?"
He narrows his eyes at her. "I didn't want to go in the first place, I'll have you know, and I look fine --well enough for the Ziyous, I think."
"But well enough for me?" River tilted her head. Simon glanced at her sharply, and submitted himself to her perusal, standing up straight. He tugged rapidly at his labels, trousers, and hair, and fluffed up his tie. "I guess you'll pass," she said finally.
Simon rolled his eyes. "Xiexie."
"Mei guanxi. Now me."
River posed herself delicately, and Simon looked his sister up and down. Her dress was the result of several home fittings and more than one special fabric order, and her hair and makeup had been done by appointment at the same time as their Mother's. The way she stood on her toes and held her hands away from her hips was all River, though. "River, you look-- well, you look pretty terrible, really. Sorry to be the one who--" He laughed and batted her hands away. "Who tells you, but I'm your brother and I have to be honest. Do you have your gloves?"
River held them up and started rolling her evening gloves up over her arms. "Gloves are an extremely sanitary fashion statement, Simon."
"You wouldn't want to catch anything from the Uhlman brothers, would you?"
"You're just worried about girl germs," River retorted, smoothing the glove down each of her fingers. "Which is only natural. You are fifty percent more likely to catch something from the opposite sex than from your own, you know. Where are your gloves?"
"There is no such statistic, and they're right here."
"It's true, though." River picked up her cape from the chair in the hall and tossed it over her small shoulders. "Of course there are several caveats."
"Of course."
"If you were sly, I could do more thorough research."
"Oh, is that what you want as your Christmas present?"
"No!" She turned and peeked at him from under her hood, eyes dark against the dark blue, hair pulled back in curls. So beautiful it hurt to think he wouldn't see her for months on end next year. "Would you give me it if I did?" Before Simon had the chance to insist he most certainly would not, she laughed and answered herself, "Of course you would, I know. You'd do anything to make me happy."
That, of course, meant she got the last word.
(9)
"Good garden walk day."
"Indeed it is, little one," Mal says, hand on her shoulder, leading her down the ramp as though she needed guidance. "Like to see the sun shine when there's thievery afoot, don't we, Zoe?"
"That we do," she says, without looking up. Checking her equipment. She's carrying more guns than Jayne today.
Simon would like to ask why the Captain can't use some other girl for his plan, but he knows he can't. Inara's out of the question, and he wouldn't put Kaylee into the middle of this. Zoe is better serving as back-up. And he knows River can take care of herself. He just catches himself sometimes wishing she wouldn't.
"River," he says quietly, following them down the ramp and pulling her away from Mal. "You don't have to do everything he says just because he saved us," he says it under his breath, hoping Mal won't listen. He watches her eyes closely, so he sees very well that she thinks he's being stupid. She did, after all, volunteer: right in front of him, over breakfast. She pulls away from him and steps back to the side of the Captain.
"Won't be long, Doc."
"I'll go prep the infirmary," Simon says.
"Might have to rethink your cut of this if you're wishin' bloodshed down on us, Doctor," Mal calls over his shoulder just when Simon thinks he's ignoring him.
"Don't know why he gets a cut, anyway," Jayne mumbles. "Girl's doin' all the work."
"He's crew," River answers, despite Mal's mouth being open. "You are very tiresome, Jayne."
"Now that bears repeating," Mal says. He smiles to himself as though the job can't help but be perfect.
(10)
Simon's seen the way he looks at her, but it's never been like this. Mal loves his crew and his ship, and sometimes he even manages to act like it. He looks at River like she's a part of him, and Simon has reminded himself he treats all his people like this. Not Simon, but Simon has always held himself apart from all of them--he knows this; he understands. Can't be helped.
Mal came back in a ridiculously good mood when the job was done, with his arm around River and holding on as she twirls on her toes and tells Kaylee about the walk through the gardens, of all things. After he called her a little Albatross a few too many times, Jayne had the gall to make a joke about pilots getting bedded on this ship and got himself assigned to cleaning the docking bay. Then Mal and River disappeared upstairs. Simon knows Mal's looking over the course River plotted to Greenleaf so they can leave this world, quick and prudent at Mal's request. But down here, Kaylee is deliberately ignoring him, turning her back to him and chatting boisterously with Jayne, who is keen to discord as always and thrilled to lend a hand. So Simon follows them up to the cockpit and finds Mal leaning over River, where she's curled up in the co-pilot's chair. He's looking at the screen but she's watching his face. Her fingers trace the air as though she sees something there.
Simon snaps. "That does it! You are--I won't have you corrupting my sister!"
Mal turns around and looks at him as though he didn't make himself perfectly clear. "Say again? Not who'ing your what now?"
Simon remembers this feeling he used to get when the attending doctors would belittle the medical students. The trick was to keep a level expression and forge ahead. "She has a quick mind. She can handle the mechanics, and she seems to like it. But Jayne's right, there is a little too much... togetherness going on here and I-- I don't like it. Obviously."
"There's a bit too much togetherness going on down in my engine room, seems to me, but I haven't said a word against that, now have I, Doctor?"
"So you admit it!" Simon declares. He knows how to pull a run-around. Mal isn't in his element at that.
Mal looks from Simon to River, and appears slightly more uncomfortable. "Haven't put so much as a finger on your sister, less you count the job just this very day, and it ain't fixing to happen. Not ever."
"Been lusting in his heart, though," River says.
Mal's head jerks around. "He's been-- I haven't done no such thing!" He points a finger at Simon, unabashedly bewildered. "Don't you go an' take her word for it, neither." Simon doesn't know what to say to that.
"Wouldn't be very scientific." River, in the humming silence, agrees with him.
"Fine," Simon stutters, finally, forced to realize that this had been a very ill-fated attempt to protest. "You just keep your--heart to yourself, and we don't have a problem."
Mal glares, as though he's sufficiently recovered to realize Simon's affronted him again. "You keep a cooler tongue in your head, Doctor, an' we surely haven't." He glances down at River, and has that odd look on his face. "An' you, little one, keep things a mite more tidy in there."
River returns his expression, her eyes unfathomable. Simon can see he has no say in this.
It makes him feel better, however, that neither does Mal. Especially that he doesn't know it yet.
(3)
"I don't want you to go."
"You're just being selfish. You're going to be at the hospital, busy, busy, busy, for years. When I come back, you'll be a real doctor. Boss the other interns around. And we'll find someplace to live, and we'll be together. That's the way it's supposed to be, Simon."
"I think it's supposed to be that way now, not later," Simon replied sourly.
"If I don't go learn top secret government business, there won't be anything left for me to know more about than you do. You'll lose all respect for me." River grinned and pinched him. Her mind was obviously made up. Her eyes were dark with questions, but they were always like that.
Simon grabbed her waving hands. "But we could have that now, meimei. You can go to school in Capital City..."
"I'm not going to another regular school, Simon. I'm bored with it! I'm just wasting my time," River snapped, eyes lighting up. "Remember how we said it would be? You'll come home from the hospital, and maybe I'll cook--"
"Or I'll pick up something--"
"Or I'll meet you somewhere, after working day and night to find the solution to--"
"The solar wind problem, I'm sure," Simon said dryly.
"We'll eat somewhere new every night, and discuss things. When we go to a bar, we'll turn away everyone, and we'll laugh at them."
"When Mother and Dad call, we'll be busy and important with no time for them--"
"Or all the parties they want to respond to for us, because everyone wants us there. We'll be so--"
"Well, you--"
"You are so shuai. Siiiimon," she sing-songed. "All the girls love a medical man."
"What would you know about all the girls," he retorted, and mock glared. "Skinny-bones, Mother still has to pick your fancy dress--"
"Shut up, Simon!" She kicked at his shins. "That is an entirely illogical argument. Just because I hate shopping with Mother in Market Square--"
Simon laughed. "What does logic have to do with not liking it?"
"Sa gua! Oh, Simon, don't you remember how much better it is to be on the path to something of your own?" She put her hands on both his cheeks, barely there and then gone. Her eyes were so intent when they met his he was reminded of how often they weren't like that; he was so used to River's frequent withdrawls and her often violently frustrated struggle to satisfy questions and answers without the proper information to process them, he hadn't acknowledged how focused she'd been since her Academy acceptance.
She was right; he was selfish. He just couldn't believe that her Academy would give her any more peace than his did him. "But, River, who will you argue with if you go away to school?"
"I'll write you letters," she responded immediately. "I have very fine pensmanship, you know," she added with a teasing grin.
"What would you do without my shins to kick?"
"Live happily, I guess," she laughed and twirled away from him.
(11)
"So you think River and the Captain--"
"Kaylee. I really don't want to talk about it."
"But... the Captain? Shi ma?" Kaylee giggles. Her toes wiggle with it. "I always thought, well. I guess I thought if anybody could get the Captain into bed, it'd be Inara."
"Oh, wo de tian a," Simon says, covering his eyes with his hand.
"Sorry, sweetie," Kaylee says. "I'm sure the Captain won't do anything without asking first. He's real old fashioned like that."
Simon opens his eyes in horror. "Are you serious?"
"Well, yeah," Kaylee says. "Cap'n's real respectful of a girl, long as she's not mean an' conniving, lookin' to jerry-rig Serenity an' poison 'im with her lips--" Kaylee pauses a moment. "Or if she's a whore, sometimes, or a Companion that gets under his skin. Or if she's shot him, well, more'n once."
Simon holds up his hand. "Please stop now."
(12)
Inara sits down beside him. He can always tell she's coming because he can still recognize different kinds of expensive fabric when they swish. It reminds him of home. It makes him sit up straight and close his mouth before he remembers where he is.
She sits down beside him on Jayne's weight bench and silently contemplates the cargo bay, filled with row after row of covered containers of black dirt. Eventually, seeds would bloom into flowers.
"You heard," Simon finally says. This ship is smaller than his mother's gossip circle, and information moves fast.
"I heard," she confirms. He wonders, briefly, whether she's hurt. But he's known enough Companions over the course of his life to make him doubt it. If there's one thing he is sure about, it's that Inara keeps the best, if only, secrets on this ship. Having reached her ears, the truth could go no further.
"I gave up a lot for my sister," Simon says carefully. He wants to talk, badly, but he just wants to say it the way it is in his head. Inara is silent and won't interrupt and make him start again. "But it wasn't hard. I just believed--that River had the right to be safe. It was absolute. And absolutes are always so much easier to live with. She used to be so difficult, when she wanted her own way." He sighs and she smiles briefly. "I forgot. It's been so long since she was more than just my responsibility." He grimaces, looks down at his hands. "Do you get this a lot?" he laughs. "Everyone just tells you how they feel?"
"You'd be surprised."
Simon shifts suddenly. "But not--"
"No." Inara glances away for a moment. "Not him."
Simon nods, and they're quiet for long moments. She's waiting on him, and he doesn't mind that she can read him so well because he's not sure he can say what he needs to admit. It takes him too long to open his lips and just speak out.
"I guess I'm having a hard time letting go."
Inara gently takes his hand in hers; he looks at their hands and how they match, at pale skin and clean nails. "Take a look around at Serenity, Simon," she tells him levelly. "This ship, this crew, is all about not letting go. If you don't want to let go, you fit right in here. Haven't you figured that out by now?" What's odd is that he can feel she means what she says; her hand is not merely reassuring but a link to his past.
"Talk to Mal; believe me, he'll tell you. That man doesn't let anything go." She smiles faintly. "The good part is, he won't ask you to, either." She stands, using her free hand to smooth the back of her dress. "All you have to do is decide whether you want to hold on, good and bad--or not. That's it." She pats his hand, then lets go.
Simon watches her walk away; she's disappeared upstairs before he thinks there's something symbolic in all this. He and Inara were raised on the same principle, and both of them felt its consequence. "Unwanted secondary effect," he says outloud. He's making his own kind of sense.
(4)
"Siiiiimon," River whined, and wiped away fake tears with a rapid swish of both hands. "Don't be a baby, it's fine."
"I'm sorry, meimei. I am so sorry." Simon knew he was giving his sister ammunition for life, but he was upset enough that it didn't worry him. Had he considered himself capable of it, he really would be crying.
"Siiiimon," River repeated, and scrunched up her eyebrows. "You look terrible in the mornings. Better you're somewhere else."
Simon flinched and she smiled sweetly, drawing her hands back. "You have to go. You'll have to work twice as hard at school without me here. You can't miss a class."
Simon ignored her words. "But what if at the last second, you change your mind? Mother and Dad won't let you come back from the station."
"I won't," River replied with a smile, serious enough that he could believe it. "I won't change my mind, Simon."
"I wanted to be there," Simon said, frustrated.
"Mother and Dad won't let you come," she said simply. She went on decisively, "Physically, I am still here, but my projected self is technically gone already. My intention to leave might be compromised by your presence tomorrow, just by your desire to hinder me. I simply can't allow it."
Simon ducked his head and tried not to laugh. "I hate that."
"You can't hate science, Simon," River said seriously. She pursed her lips reproachfully and clasped her hands. "It's like hating air."
Simon snorted. "You would say that. It's not like hating air. Like hating the law, maybe--"
"No, there are too many ways around the law."
Simon laughed. "I hope you don't plan to test that theory."
"I haven't fully formed the hypothesis, Simon. I'm not at the test and observation stage yet."
Simon grabbed her hands and pulled her into his chest. "Hold off on that until we're back together, all right?"
She smiled against his cheek.
"Don't live too much while you're gone, meimei," he whispered in her ear.
"I'll be back when you're a brilliant doctor," she replied, kissing him. She looked him in the eyes, so close she was all pupil and no color. "You already are, you just have to follow the steps."
Simon felt old, suddenly, the way he felt when River wasn't around to be a distraction. "Sometimes the steps don't lead where you expect, River."
She shook her head, dismissively. "Yes they do, Simon! There are always steps!" She released him abruptly. "Backward, forward, it always makes sense. It's a pattern, Simon!" she insisted fiercely. "Put together the parts and an answer's there."
He sighed. "You just think that because that's how it's worked so far."
She looked at him as though he'd gone loopy in the head. "Of course. In the absence of contradictory evidence--"
"River--" He put a finger over her lips. "You're going away to learn, right?"
"Of course." She blinked at him innocently. "I am still quite young, you know."
"Zhufu ni, I hadn't noticed. So make it a test. If you're not scared to prove me right."
"Na mei guanxi, you know I'm not, Simon!"
He grinned. "Fine. In your letters, we'll discuss it."
She rolled her eyes. "And you can tell me all about the lovely parties I've missed."
"If I must." Simon bowed his head wearily. She touched his nose with her index finger, twirled around, and flounced back to her bedroom. "I'll be back before you know it!" she called back to him. "Now go to bed!"
Simon got into his bed and stared at the dark screen on his ceiling. After months of telling himself to accept her departure, he was still tense. He could allow himself to envy her choice of pure seclusion over the use of a heavy workload to escape social obligations. It was her choice of knowledge over him that he couldn't think about. It wasn't right for him to hold on to her. She was brilliant and amazing, and someday, if she meant more to the world, or multiple worlds, than she did to him, that was for the best. The Alliance needed people willing to donate their talent, like River and him, to make the universe a better place. Holding on to what they were must be selfish, because it was all he wanted and all he couldn't have.
He had to believe in that--because there was nothing else. If he couldn't give her up for the greater good, there was no reason to let go of her ever.
They'd lived their whole lives with no other choice, so there must not be any other way to live.
(End)
Note: Chinese words taken from here.