ficlet: Firefly, Zoe
title: the absence of
fandom: Firefly, Zoe, post-BDM
rating: pg
word count: 695
notes: Angst. Written for slightly-o for whedon-santa, and will remain f-locked until the community reveal. An accompanying mini-mix can also be found under the cut. Also, yes, Shepherd Book is in this story. I took that one liberty.
Moments from a life she’ll never have: they run through her head, now, all the time, a never-ending current streaming among her thoughts, weaving in and out amid the rational, coherent demands on her mental faculties. Receive the captain’s confidences, and she feels her husband’s whispers tickle her ear; draw a gun, and his warm, creased fingers curl against her palm; admonish Jayne, and playful bickering echoes in her skull, impressions of sound more than distinct words. In the beginning she wouldn’t say a word about it; closed herself off and boarded up her heart; but the captain don’t accept automatism on his ship, not from anyone, not even from her; especially not from her. And so she tried, a little at a time, letting measured droplets of Wash trickle from thoughts into words and slip out of her mouth. She closed her eyes and sat in the dark and told her stories, outlined the future she saw before her, clear as a memory: a memory that won’t ever happen. She allowed Mal to hear her, and the Shepherd sometimes, and River frequently. But after a time they grew uneasy with her. She could sense it, Mal’s discomfort embarrassingly apparent as he shifted from side to side when he caught that tone in her voice, that tone that meant she was venturing once again into territory fate would never permit her to chart. The Shepherd listened well, but he was disappointed, she could tell, that she had not come to terms with this tragedy, that she had stubbornly resisted discovering solace in something, anything, larger than they, be it God or her own singular, sun-speckled sort of spirituality. And River, even River began to show signs of tension when Zoe’s reveries began, detecting, perhaps, that Zoe’s words, for all their soulful weight, detailed a life which was false and unattainable.
So she retreated into silence once again, and maybe Mal really believed that she had moved past it or maybe he needed to force himself to believe because the one thing in the ‘verse he hadn’t a notion of how to fix was a ruptured Zoe. Either way, he seemed to accept her sealed lips as a sign that the Zoe he could fight alongside with assurance had made her quiet return, and that was that.
But it wasn’t. It isn’t, and she is haunted.
She can feel his hands on her in the night, ghostly fingertips brushing her sides, making her skin prickle. He tells her he loves her, over and over again, and she swears she can hear the words aloud. She fights sleep. When she loses her grip on consciousness, her dreams suffocate her with visions of motionless pilots and stillborn children, cold under her hands. She prefers to balance on the edge of slumber, that mysterious threshold of wake and sleep. It is here that he is able to find her. Here, she can grasp his arms one time more, can sense his breath on her cheeks and his lips tracing her hairline. Here, he is very nearly real, and her chest throbs with wanting him, so hard that it tears her into wakefulness and she startles, gasping.
Sometimes when she closes her eyes, if she concentrates just right, she can feel tiny, cool fingers slipping into her hand, and when she looks around, cautiously, her flesh-and-blood eyes still shut tight, she sees the beam of Wash’s smile and, looking down, a wild-haired child, two short arms extended wide as they will go, that her miniature hands might reach her mother and father, linking them together.
But always, these waking dreams spiral away, dissolving into the nightmares she has become used to, into images of engines gone cold and stars burning out, until she escapes into waking once again. In these moments she is struck with an emptiness that is crushing in its totality; empty bed, empty hands, empty cockpit, empty ‘verse, and his absence envelops her like a shroud, heavy and weighing her down until she has to fight to stand.
And she does fight, for now; she bends and bends under the weight.
She will bend until she breaks.
the absence of: a minimix
The Last Snowfall | vienna teng
if this were the last slow curling
of your fingers in my palm
if this were the last i felt you breathing
how would i carry on?
And Now We Sing | duncan sheik
thrown below the raging tide
we hoped to rest, we were denied
so now we haunt the ocean side
live this pale eternal life
Field Below | regina spektor
i wish i'd see your face below
i wish i'd hear you whispering low
but you don't live downtown no more
and everything must come and go
zip.
fandom: Firefly, Zoe, post-BDM
rating: pg
word count: 695
notes: Angst. Written for slightly-o for whedon-santa, and will remain f-locked until the community reveal. An accompanying mini-mix can also be found under the cut. Also, yes, Shepherd Book is in this story. I took that one liberty.
Moments from a life she’ll never have: they run through her head, now, all the time, a never-ending current streaming among her thoughts, weaving in and out amid the rational, coherent demands on her mental faculties. Receive the captain’s confidences, and she feels her husband’s whispers tickle her ear; draw a gun, and his warm, creased fingers curl against her palm; admonish Jayne, and playful bickering echoes in her skull, impressions of sound more than distinct words. In the beginning she wouldn’t say a word about it; closed herself off and boarded up her heart; but the captain don’t accept automatism on his ship, not from anyone, not even from her; especially not from her. And so she tried, a little at a time, letting measured droplets of Wash trickle from thoughts into words and slip out of her mouth. She closed her eyes and sat in the dark and told her stories, outlined the future she saw before her, clear as a memory: a memory that won’t ever happen. She allowed Mal to hear her, and the Shepherd sometimes, and River frequently. But after a time they grew uneasy with her. She could sense it, Mal’s discomfort embarrassingly apparent as he shifted from side to side when he caught that tone in her voice, that tone that meant she was venturing once again into territory fate would never permit her to chart. The Shepherd listened well, but he was disappointed, she could tell, that she had not come to terms with this tragedy, that she had stubbornly resisted discovering solace in something, anything, larger than they, be it God or her own singular, sun-speckled sort of spirituality. And River, even River began to show signs of tension when Zoe’s reveries began, detecting, perhaps, that Zoe’s words, for all their soulful weight, detailed a life which was false and unattainable.
So she retreated into silence once again, and maybe Mal really believed that she had moved past it or maybe he needed to force himself to believe because the one thing in the ‘verse he hadn’t a notion of how to fix was a ruptured Zoe. Either way, he seemed to accept her sealed lips as a sign that the Zoe he could fight alongside with assurance had made her quiet return, and that was that.
But it wasn’t. It isn’t, and she is haunted.
She can feel his hands on her in the night, ghostly fingertips brushing her sides, making her skin prickle. He tells her he loves her, over and over again, and she swears she can hear the words aloud. She fights sleep. When she loses her grip on consciousness, her dreams suffocate her with visions of motionless pilots and stillborn children, cold under her hands. She prefers to balance on the edge of slumber, that mysterious threshold of wake and sleep. It is here that he is able to find her. Here, she can grasp his arms one time more, can sense his breath on her cheeks and his lips tracing her hairline. Here, he is very nearly real, and her chest throbs with wanting him, so hard that it tears her into wakefulness and she startles, gasping.
Sometimes when she closes her eyes, if she concentrates just right, she can feel tiny, cool fingers slipping into her hand, and when she looks around, cautiously, her flesh-and-blood eyes still shut tight, she sees the beam of Wash’s smile and, looking down, a wild-haired child, two short arms extended wide as they will go, that her miniature hands might reach her mother and father, linking them together.
But always, these waking dreams spiral away, dissolving into the nightmares she has become used to, into images of engines gone cold and stars burning out, until she escapes into waking once again. In these moments she is struck with an emptiness that is crushing in its totality; empty bed, empty hands, empty cockpit, empty ‘verse, and his absence envelops her like a shroud, heavy and weighing her down until she has to fight to stand.
And she does fight, for now; she bends and bends under the weight.
She will bend until she breaks.
the absence of: a minimix
The Last Snowfall | vienna teng
if this were the last slow curling
of your fingers in my palm
if this were the last i felt you breathing
how would i carry on?
And Now We Sing | duncan sheik
thrown below the raging tide
we hoped to rest, we were denied
so now we haunt the ocean side
live this pale eternal life
Field Below | regina spektor
i wish i'd see your face below
i wish i'd hear you whispering low
but you don't live downtown no more
and everything must come and go
zip.