(no subject)
As much as River loved her home and her crew, Serenity was a tense place to be just lately. Mal and Simon seemed always on the verge of beating each other to a pulp again; River knew it was because of her, and she didn't know how to stop it.
She didn't quite know how to be with either one of them when the other was around, and even when she had them on her own she felt like she couldn't say just anything, like she always had before. Now she couldn't mention the Captain to Simon, who she had spent her whole life talking to about anything, and she couldn't talk about Simon with Mal, with whom who she had become accustomed to sharing everything. It all felt too much like keeping secrets, and River did not hold with secrets.
So she had taken to spending more time than usual away from home, which came with its own set of problems. Mainly, and most upsetting, was that she kept seeing Reavers, and was nearly convinced that she was losing her mind again. Not that she wanted these Reavers to actually attack anyone, but if they did, then at least she would know they were real. As it was, they never seemed to see her, and no one but River could see them, but even if they were just in her imagination they still scared her.
She tried not to think about it, but for River, whose brain had been meddled with so much that she was missing the part that let people do that, it was physically nearly impossible. She thought, and she fretted, and the things that worried her never really left her alone. Physical activity helped quiet her mind down some, so she ran and danced a lot, and concentrating on complicated mathematics helped, too. So now, when she just couldn't dance anymore and she'd already run across half the island, River was under a tree with a notebook of closely written pages of numbers and formulas, intently focused on solving something that had been poking at the corners of her mind since she had first starting meeting people from (so they believed) flat worlds.
She thought she might be getting close to figuring out how it all might work, but there was no way to really tell, here on a world that all evidence pointed to being properly round. She wasn't going to stop until she solved it, anyway.
She didn't quite know how to be with either one of them when the other was around, and even when she had them on her own she felt like she couldn't say just anything, like she always had before. Now she couldn't mention the Captain to Simon, who she had spent her whole life talking to about anything, and she couldn't talk about Simon with Mal, with whom who she had become accustomed to sharing everything. It all felt too much like keeping secrets, and River did not hold with secrets.
So she had taken to spending more time than usual away from home, which came with its own set of problems. Mainly, and most upsetting, was that she kept seeing Reavers, and was nearly convinced that she was losing her mind again. Not that she wanted these Reavers to actually attack anyone, but if they did, then at least she would know they were real. As it was, they never seemed to see her, and no one but River could see them, but even if they were just in her imagination they still scared her.
She tried not to think about it, but for River, whose brain had been meddled with so much that she was missing the part that let people do that, it was physically nearly impossible. She thought, and she fretted, and the things that worried her never really left her alone. Physical activity helped quiet her mind down some, so she ran and danced a lot, and concentrating on complicated mathematics helped, too. So now, when she just couldn't dance anymore and she'd already run across half the island, River was under a tree with a notebook of closely written pages of numbers and formulas, intently focused on solving something that had been poking at the corners of her mind since she had first starting meeting people from (so they believed) flat worlds.
She thought she might be getting close to figuring out how it all might work, but there was no way to really tell, here on a world that all evidence pointed to being properly round. She wasn't going to stop until she solved it, anyway.