Fic for katarik Firefly: Remembered Stitches
Recipient: katarik
Fandom: Firefly
Title: Remembered Stitches
Author: an_sceal/Reesa
Rating: G
Summary: Zoe is a practical woman.
A/N: Thanks to bayushi and marigot for the read-through, a_triath and dave_knight for the canon help in the middle of the night, and shrift for her awesome transcripts! Hopefully none of them will be ashamed to have their names associated with this.
----
The first weeks after Miranda are a haze for all of them. Grief, grief in everything they do, in every step taken and every bit of Serenity that must be mended. They eat their meals in silence, at first in the refuge of one of the shuttles and then in the cargo bay. Someone, usually Simon, will venture up to the kitchen to cook, and she has seen him coming out of the bridge holding a bucket of rags. They smelled of solvent, and looked like they’d been soaked in muddy water.
It wasn’t mud.
Zoe finds things to do that never take her there. At first she is as hurt as any of them, and between she and Simon the doctoring is done. They are all in need of repairs, as Kaylee so gently puts it, but her hull mends faster than her systems, and her reactor core is all kinds of unstable. With the work to be done on Serenity and the holes and patches her crew is in need of, there is no time or energy for sparring or play. There is work, there is silent nourishment, and there is sleep. She doesn’t begrudge them their comfort, but she shies away from seeing the comfort some find in each other. Another time, she might have been the one needing that kind of touch, but it isn’t for her right now.
Weeks go by and they find themselves in the black again, something she is more grateful for than she can possibly say, even though she feels a stir of wrongness about the ship every time she passes the bridge and sees the Captain and River there looking out at the vast empty of it all. Comes a day, finally, when River turns to look at her over the back of the chair, and Zoe can’t find a spot inside her that doesn’t know he’s gone. River doesn’t say anything, just cocks her head and gives her that sad smile. She walks away, but the next time she finds herself there, she steps inside the door and goes to look through the windows. There is nothing out there that she hasn’t seen before, but she is seeing it alone again, and that’s something.
-=-=-=-
Out on the rim there’s not a lot done without purpose. Most things made have a beauty found in their function. You take your joy as it comes, and find a way to make it into something that makes your life easier.
She has a hard time with the nights when she isn’t tired enough to warrant going to sleep right away. Idleness doesn’t suit her, and her mind is too occupied to enjoy reading. She finds her old duffle, stowed away neatly under their, her, bunk, and pulls out a scarf she stopped knitting 5 years past. It’s yarn she salvaged from a sweater, all purples and heathered greens. It takes her a few minutes to work a stitch, and even longer to work a stitch that she doesn’t pull out again as soon as she looks at it.
She knits for an hour that night, her mind steady on the slide of the fuzzy yarn and the cool metal. The needles move in a pattern she learned in childhood, and her fingers feel clumsy and blissfully unskilled as they move the yarn in loops. Feeling less than capable is a strange sort of meditation, and means she has to put her whole self into what she’s doing. When she’s had enough she sets it aside and goes to bed, and that night she dreams about her mother’s needles, and the trees outside their windows.
When she wakes up, leaves behind her eyes and under her skin, she gropes blindly for the scarf and knits another whole row before she reaches up to wipe away her tears.
-=-=-=-
The scarf goes to River, who twirls around the ship in it, leaving a trail of giggling in her wake. Kaylee gets the next one, reds and pinks like berries, and Simon teases her about it until her blush matches the shade, just so. Her thanks for making him a waistcoat is seeing him wear it, as tucked-in and neat as you please.
Mal gets a pair of socks, makes sure to put a spring in his step when ever he wears them. Jayne grumbles around her enough that she makes him a pair too, in shades that match his hat too well. Inara’s shawl is the closest to frippery that she can manage, but even as she stretches the cobweb of lace across her bunk to dry, she can see the purpose of it. It will offer warmth and beauty, two things Inara always has a use for.
She has always given Serenity a part of herself, and in return she’s gotten family, a home, a life. She’s never spent a lot of time thinking about the things Serenity has taken from her, and she won’t now either. There’s no use; it’s not practical to count up your losses until you’re done with the deal, and she’s nowhere near done.
The last thing she knits is utterly without use. She’s thankful that it’s so small, because every row rankles her just that little bit more. She feels an itch to move, to tear out her work and cast on something else, but she can’t think of what. So she knits the first little sock, and half of the second, thinking of all the times she and Wash argued over trying to create something of their own.
As she comes to the next row she stops, looking at the needles in her hands and the soft blue yarn. There’s no use for these, and she’s got no need to push aside what is for what might have been right now. Instead she wraps the whole thing up and shoves it back into the bottom of her duffle, unfinished, like her.
Fandom: Firefly
Title: Remembered Stitches
Author: an_sceal/Reesa
Rating: G
Summary: Zoe is a practical woman.
A/N: Thanks to bayushi and marigot for the read-through, a_triath and dave_knight for the canon help in the middle of the night, and shrift for her awesome transcripts! Hopefully none of them will be ashamed to have their names associated with this.
----
The first weeks after Miranda are a haze for all of them. Grief, grief in everything they do, in every step taken and every bit of Serenity that must be mended. They eat their meals in silence, at first in the refuge of one of the shuttles and then in the cargo bay. Someone, usually Simon, will venture up to the kitchen to cook, and she has seen him coming out of the bridge holding a bucket of rags. They smelled of solvent, and looked like they’d been soaked in muddy water.
It wasn’t mud.
Zoe finds things to do that never take her there. At first she is as hurt as any of them, and between she and Simon the doctoring is done. They are all in need of repairs, as Kaylee so gently puts it, but her hull mends faster than her systems, and her reactor core is all kinds of unstable. With the work to be done on Serenity and the holes and patches her crew is in need of, there is no time or energy for sparring or play. There is work, there is silent nourishment, and there is sleep. She doesn’t begrudge them their comfort, but she shies away from seeing the comfort some find in each other. Another time, she might have been the one needing that kind of touch, but it isn’t for her right now.
Weeks go by and they find themselves in the black again, something she is more grateful for than she can possibly say, even though she feels a stir of wrongness about the ship every time she passes the bridge and sees the Captain and River there looking out at the vast empty of it all. Comes a day, finally, when River turns to look at her over the back of the chair, and Zoe can’t find a spot inside her that doesn’t know he’s gone. River doesn’t say anything, just cocks her head and gives her that sad smile. She walks away, but the next time she finds herself there, she steps inside the door and goes to look through the windows. There is nothing out there that she hasn’t seen before, but she is seeing it alone again, and that’s something.
-=-=-=-
Out on the rim there’s not a lot done without purpose. Most things made have a beauty found in their function. You take your joy as it comes, and find a way to make it into something that makes your life easier.
She has a hard time with the nights when she isn’t tired enough to warrant going to sleep right away. Idleness doesn’t suit her, and her mind is too occupied to enjoy reading. She finds her old duffle, stowed away neatly under their, her, bunk, and pulls out a scarf she stopped knitting 5 years past. It’s yarn she salvaged from a sweater, all purples and heathered greens. It takes her a few minutes to work a stitch, and even longer to work a stitch that she doesn’t pull out again as soon as she looks at it.
She knits for an hour that night, her mind steady on the slide of the fuzzy yarn and the cool metal. The needles move in a pattern she learned in childhood, and her fingers feel clumsy and blissfully unskilled as they move the yarn in loops. Feeling less than capable is a strange sort of meditation, and means she has to put her whole self into what she’s doing. When she’s had enough she sets it aside and goes to bed, and that night she dreams about her mother’s needles, and the trees outside their windows.
When she wakes up, leaves behind her eyes and under her skin, she gropes blindly for the scarf and knits another whole row before she reaches up to wipe away her tears.
-=-=-=-
The scarf goes to River, who twirls around the ship in it, leaving a trail of giggling in her wake. Kaylee gets the next one, reds and pinks like berries, and Simon teases her about it until her blush matches the shade, just so. Her thanks for making him a waistcoat is seeing him wear it, as tucked-in and neat as you please.
Mal gets a pair of socks, makes sure to put a spring in his step when ever he wears them. Jayne grumbles around her enough that she makes him a pair too, in shades that match his hat too well. Inara’s shawl is the closest to frippery that she can manage, but even as she stretches the cobweb of lace across her bunk to dry, she can see the purpose of it. It will offer warmth and beauty, two things Inara always has a use for.
She has always given Serenity a part of herself, and in return she’s gotten family, a home, a life. She’s never spent a lot of time thinking about the things Serenity has taken from her, and she won’t now either. There’s no use; it’s not practical to count up your losses until you’re done with the deal, and she’s nowhere near done.
The last thing she knits is utterly without use. She’s thankful that it’s so small, because every row rankles her just that little bit more. She feels an itch to move, to tear out her work and cast on something else, but she can’t think of what. So she knits the first little sock, and half of the second, thinking of all the times she and Wash argued over trying to create something of their own.
As she comes to the next row she stops, looking at the needles in her hands and the soft blue yarn. There’s no use for these, and she’s got no need to push aside what is for what might have been right now. Instead she wraps the whole thing up and shoves it back into the bottom of her duffle, unfinished, like her.