one step dance (Firefly)
She always loved to dance.
Mal leaned on the railing and studied the doc's crazy sister, picking her way around the floor of the cargo bay. She was a tricksy girl, sometimes childlike, sometimes catatonic, sometimes as alert and pert as Inara or Kaylee. Someone had done some disgusting things that would change a gently-raised, rich young lady into a babbling wraith.
'Course, he'd seen it in war. Alliance soldiers raped and abused young 'uns, left them with hollowed out insides. Not that Browncoats were strictly gentlefolk, but they tended to shoot any of their own soldiers who molested children.
Below him, River bent over a torn cargo net, pulling the colored strands up, peering at them intensely.
Doc said that she'd been experimented upon, that her brain had been messed with. Seemed just what Alliance scientists would think amusing, torturing people and finding some government security reason for it. And of course, wherever there was a lost cause, damned if there wasn't him, Malcolm Reynolds, about to have his kind impulse blow him straight to hell. He should put the Tams out the next planet, he should.
He should have.
They did find a use for the doctor.
What use for a dancer?
Mal stepped down the metal stairs to the cargo floor, and began coiling up the oddments of cable strewn about, working his way towards River, who was lightly stepping around the deck seams, humming. When Mal had cleared enough room, she began dancing, flaring the tails of her long shirt and ends of her scarf. And it was dancing, not crazy flailing: even Mal recognized rhythm, cadance, art. Mal pretended not to notice, just kept clearing up, throwing coils of net and cable into bins.
Then, River's dance took her near him, and she paused.
Mal put his right hand on his middle, and gave as serious a ball-room bow as he could muster.
River curtsied as he straightened.
"I think your brother's missin' you, and there's probably a fresh pot o' tea," Mal said, and held out his hand.
"Thank you," River said, gravely, and allowed him to usher her up the steps, to the galley.
Mal leaned on the railing and studied the doc's crazy sister, picking her way around the floor of the cargo bay. She was a tricksy girl, sometimes childlike, sometimes catatonic, sometimes as alert and pert as Inara or Kaylee. Someone had done some disgusting things that would change a gently-raised, rich young lady into a babbling wraith.
'Course, he'd seen it in war. Alliance soldiers raped and abused young 'uns, left them with hollowed out insides. Not that Browncoats were strictly gentlefolk, but they tended to shoot any of their own soldiers who molested children.
Below him, River bent over a torn cargo net, pulling the colored strands up, peering at them intensely.
Doc said that she'd been experimented upon, that her brain had been messed with. Seemed just what Alliance scientists would think amusing, torturing people and finding some government security reason for it. And of course, wherever there was a lost cause, damned if there wasn't him, Malcolm Reynolds, about to have his kind impulse blow him straight to hell. He should put the Tams out the next planet, he should.
He should have.
They did find a use for the doctor.
What use for a dancer?
Mal stepped down the metal stairs to the cargo floor, and began coiling up the oddments of cable strewn about, working his way towards River, who was lightly stepping around the deck seams, humming. When Mal had cleared enough room, she began dancing, flaring the tails of her long shirt and ends of her scarf. And it was dancing, not crazy flailing: even Mal recognized rhythm, cadance, art. Mal pretended not to notice, just kept clearing up, throwing coils of net and cable into bins.
Then, River's dance took her near him, and she paused.
Mal put his right hand on his middle, and gave as serious a ball-room bow as he could muster.
River curtsied as he straightened.
"I think your brother's missin' you, and there's probably a fresh pot o' tea," Mal said, and held out his hand.
"Thank you," River said, gravely, and allowed him to usher her up the steps, to the galley.