[Firefly] When I'm Like This
Title: When I’m Like This
Day/Theme: 18. love and sanity cannot coexist
Series: Firefly
Character/Pairing: River
Rating: PG
It wasn’t right and it didn’t fit and it should fit, it was her job to make it fit, but it didn’t make sense and her senses were shutting down and it was starting to hurt because she was starting to panic. She couldn’t do what she had to do because it always ended badly and the whole point was to help, to save them, and she couldn’t because she would kill them. When things were the most clear and made the most sense, she felt the least like herself. She felt the least.
She didn’t love him when she was the most help to him. Not the way she did when she was crazy and unhelpful. She could do everything they were doing and do it better, do it faster, leave no witnesses, leave no records, but if they got in her way she would grind them under her heel and feel nothing and love no one until her focus broke and her attention wandered and her mind crumbled and she would look and they would be gone and dead and it would be her fault and she would scream and cry and this time it wouldn’t matter because no one who mattered would hear.
She knew her sanity was unraveling fast because when her brother glanced her way, concern shining under his skin like a fire behind glass, her heart nearly cracked with love for him. He touched her chin, said something reassuring and her focus shattered. She hid her face in his shirt and babbled about linchpins and lynch mobs and the sound the cortex fibers made when they were plucked with tweezers. He held her because he loved her back. Maybe more so when she was like this, because it made him remember the way she had been before.
Day/Theme: 18. love and sanity cannot coexist
Series: Firefly
Character/Pairing: River
Rating: PG
It wasn’t right and it didn’t fit and it should fit, it was her job to make it fit, but it didn’t make sense and her senses were shutting down and it was starting to hurt because she was starting to panic. She couldn’t do what she had to do because it always ended badly and the whole point was to help, to save them, and she couldn’t because she would kill them. When things were the most clear and made the most sense, she felt the least like herself. She felt the least.
She didn’t love him when she was the most help to him. Not the way she did when she was crazy and unhelpful. She could do everything they were doing and do it better, do it faster, leave no witnesses, leave no records, but if they got in her way she would grind them under her heel and feel nothing and love no one until her focus broke and her attention wandered and her mind crumbled and she would look and they would be gone and dead and it would be her fault and she would scream and cry and this time it wouldn’t matter because no one who mattered would hear.
She knew her sanity was unraveling fast because when her brother glanced her way, concern shining under his skin like a fire behind glass, her heart nearly cracked with love for him. He touched her chin, said something reassuring and her focus shattered. She hid her face in his shirt and babbled about linchpins and lynch mobs and the sound the cortex fibers made when they were plucked with tweezers. He held her because he loved her back. Maybe more so when she was like this, because it made him remember the way she had been before.