Fic, We Are Rhythm and Rhyme, Partners and Crime, Mal/River
In a shocking development, this is my seconf fic of the week. Clearly, there's something not quite right here. Equally shocking, I actually finished this one, and it only took 3 months. How much do I rule? For the rest of you to whom I owe fic, you should take this as a sign that I will get there eventually. Really.
***
Title: We Are Rhythm and Rhyme, Partners in Crime
Pairing: Mal/River
Summary: All boundaries are changeable, if conditions are right
Notes: Thanks so much to kassrachel for the beta; all remaining mistakes are mine. Title taken from Thea Gilmore's Inverigo.
For musesfool, who was very patient, even though she had every right not to be. Happy belated birthday, sweetheart. You are most awesome to have around. *smooches*
***
We are rhythm and Rhyme, Partners in Crime
Simon keeps telling her to focus on the positive. Remember who you were, he says. They talk of little things, inconsequential things, though they must have had consequence enough for her to still remember. Climbing the tree of the Winchesters’ garden, alive, on fire, with the freedom of doing what she shouldn’t, while her dress and her skin got torn; Simon at the party telling everyone she’d discover the secrets of the universe before she was fourteen - grinning as he said it, meaning it all the same; sips of cool Champagne, sneaked while her parents entertained, bubbles gliding along her tongue like laughter, butterfly wings to let her float.
“Hold onto those things, mèimei,” he says. “They’ll help you.”
“Would be shameful to be fooled twice,” she says, which isn’t what she means, but the real words hide from her, like naughty children in a game she has been forced to play. She wants to say that this is only another trick - make her mind believe what’s not there, that she is River, still the girl who climbed the trees and picked berries, dreamed of a life full of glory and love. That ghost is lost somewhere, down too many dark corridors for River to follow, and even if she could, She knows there isn’t enough of her old life to fill the holes in her new one.
She knows it, just like she knows the alignment of the planets, how to conjugate verbs in Latin, how time doesn’t always work like they think it does, but she can’t make it fit alongside those things in her brain. “It’s fact,” she says in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the evenings. “Classification must be altered to reflect correctly.” She is like Serenity, alive but not, a machine that is more but not enough.
But at night, before sleep she fears she might still not wake from, she whispers, “I’m a girl, a real girl. No fairy or strings needed. Transition already complete. Girl, to love and be loved.”
She can’t quite believe that, either.
After Miranda, it gets easier.
She might not be real yet, maybe never will be, but they trust her like they didn’t before, let her laughter mingle with theirs and aren’t afraid it’ll all end in tears. Kaylee lets her help in the engine room when River isn’t flying, and River learns all Kaylee can teach, but she’ll never understand this part of Serenity like Kaylee does, and that’s okay. She likes not being the light that dims all others, for once.
Even Jayne respects her now, though his mind will always see red on a shirt, and he’ll forever hate her a little, not for what she did, but for what he did. She doesn’t know if she can fix that, but one day she might explain that she punished because he told, and he told because she punished, circular and always dangerous, time like a rope they can all hang with if they aren’t careful. But she doesn’t know he’ll understand her, or want to. For now, she lets him teach her how to clean their guns, even though she already knows, and she tries to stay as quiet as she can, so as not to frighten him.
She thinks her silence might buy her a world she can belong in now, broken for the moment, but maybe still with enough pieces to make it work again. Won’t be the same, will never be better than what was, but it’ll still turn, and maybe River can turn along with it.
Only Mal lets her turn to her own rhythm. Doesn’t even know he does. He has his own, too, and together they are almost right, syncopated, a beat she could dance to like she did before, except he can’t hear it, and she is tired of dancing alone. She wants to go to the ball, even if it’s only once.
“Every girl needs a prince to kiss,” she says, and Mal thinks he can swim and drink but never drown in water, and smiles.
“Ain’t many princes round here, little one. Plenty of princesses, but that’s about it.”
She turns in her chair to watch him, always hard on the surface, a world of gentleness beneath. “Can make a frog a prince, if the magic’s right.”
“Ain’t got many of them here, neither. Just men, too old or too stupid to be anything but what they are.”
“Then I’d better make do with what I have,” she says, and kisses him before he can stop her, feels his warmth and his strength under her palms, his mouth holding a million promises she’s never dreamed of, and time and space and all dimensions are one and none at all, and she flies.
He pulls away, but not before River knows she’s like points of fire under his skin, travelling like light to his heart. “You’re not ready,” she says. “Not yet.”
“Ain’t ever gonna be. Not for this. Ain’t right. Ain’t in the vicinity of right.”
“Points in space changeable, Mal. Not so far from right as you think.”
“River -“
She walks away, doesn’t need to hear his explanations.
It’s easier when she stays quiet, easier to let herself turn, easier to stay as they want her to be, so she says she’s sorry, and Mal says he believes her, and River doesn’t tell him she dreams of him, doesn’t tell him she knows he dreams of her now, too.
It’s hard enough for him, without River making it worse. Hard enough for everyone, because now they’re the ones with data they can’t assimilate - not data, holes, spaces where there oughtn’t to be any - and River will never stop being sorry for it. Better, probably, fairer, if Zoe blamed her, but Zoe doesn’t. River knows because she’s been trained to discover secrets she shouldn’t, but Zoe, trained to hide and kill, trained not to love and loving anyway, Zoe tells her all the same.
“Ain’t got no call to be guilty,” she says, eyes still hollow, grief still inside, coiled like a spring she thinks she can keep wound forever. “Ain’t telling you nothing you don’t already know, but he’d want me to say it.”
”Thank you,” she says, honest and straightforward like she sometimes forgets to be, sometimes can’t remember how to be. “When it comes unwound, there are people who love you still.”
Zoe almost smiles then, a quirk of her lips and a flicker in her head, and says, “I’ll keep that in mind.” She turns to leave, and then stops. “Be sure and do the same.”
River stands for a moment, letting the surprise of being taught something new fill her up.
That night, she whispers to herself. “Fact: I am loved. Unwinding doesn’t destroy.”
This time, she believes.
She carries the knowledge round with her, memorises all of them - 6 faces, six points of light in the darkness, better than a star, stronger, different. They are her talisman, her anchor, amulets and protections she never thought to have. She keeps them like charms, imagines she can see their names written on her skin, though she’ll never do that, because she knows power comes from belief, knows faith is stronger when it’s quiet.
She tells Jayne to shoot with his eyes closed, and Jayne looks at her like she’s crazy, but he does it anyway, and she says, “I won’t stab you anymore, and you won’t betray me anymore. We’ll go on a straight path, and one day I’ll explain about the circle.”
“Gorram lunatic,” is all he says in response, but River doesn’t mind, and later he plays jacks with Kaylee and her, and his mind is clear for once.
They’re with her whenever she touches Serenity, her metal cool and alive beneath her fingers. Mal flies beside her, stronger than the rest, a beacon without knowing it, and River thinks this is how it is to be a girl.
“More than a machine,” she says, “if you love her like she is.”
Mal glances over, never thrown by her like he should be, and grins. “You been paying attention, little one. I like that in my crew. Might just keep you around.”
“Might fall out of the sky if you don’t,” she says, smiling, and then, serious again, “She was a machine before you found her. Then you loved her and she wasn’t.”
Mal is quiet for a moment, and then he surprises her, which she likes anyway, because most other people can’t. He slides along in his chair, and holds out an arm to her. When she comes closer, he wraps it round her, pulling her tight against him. “Love and will can transform most anything into anything else, you want it badly enough, darlin’.”
She snuggles in against him, breathing in the smell of his skin - cheap soap and grease and warmth - and she starts to dream. “’Course,” he says, “some things don’t need changing at all.”
***
Simon changes her medication again, and River wants to sleep less, is more awake than she’s been in years. Inara says she’s glowing, and Simon looks proud and pleased, like her big brother used to look, and River doesn’t add that sometimes Mal surges in her veins, the promise of him enough to light her up like the sun. She doesn’t think Simon would want to hear that she whispers Mal’s name at night, touches herself and lets herself burn.
She knows Mal’s still aware of her, a flutter of thought he won’t ever let free, and she knows it isn’t fair of her to ask for more faith than he’s already shown, but boundaries are fluid, changeable if conditions are right, and water slides through all cracks.
So she waits and she measures her bearings, does as she’s told - flies the ship and marks coordinates, holds Serenity when the others leave for a job, steady and ready to take to the sky the minute Mal needs her to. She never forgets to love her, hands and heart and nerves part of Serenity like Serenity is part of her, because Serenity learned who she was first, and Mal knows that, too. He kisses River’s forehead and thanks her, loves her like he loves the sky, fears her like he does a storm, wild and powerful as she is in his dreams, and he pretends he still believes she’s a child.
Sometimes she goes on a job, watches Mal’s back when Zoe needs to be watching everything else, and Mal doesn’t look at her for a while after that, because he can’t look truth in the face and deny it.
Boundaries shifting, she thinks, as she drifts to sleep.
***
She thinks she hides it well; doesn’t tremble when he takes her shooting and his arm goes round her shoulder; doesn’t smile too brightly when he says her name, doesn’t push harder than he’s ready for yet, but Inara is trained to notice just like River is, and River isn’t skilled in this like she is everything else.
“Mèimei,” she says, River’s hand held between hers, “you’re too young, and he’s too pigheaded.”
River has tried not to look, and Inara has spent a lifetime hiding, so she bites her lip and asks. “Is there still a fairytale in your future?”
Inara is confused for a moment, and then she smiles. “We all have fairytales in front of us, bao bei, but mine isn’t with him, no. We might have begun well once, but my happy ending isn’t his. We both know that now.”
“Then,” River says, “I’d like the chance to begin.”
“River, none of us want to see you hurt.”
“Won’t be hurt. Have been before, wasn’t too young for that, but he never would. Won’t do anything until he knows it’s right, and you know it.”
Inara sighs, and River presses on. “Girls try and fall and fly again. Let me try. The fall won’t break me.”
“He’ll kill me if he ever finds out I knew,” Inara says, and then she stands, begins searching for clothes and hairbrushes, pins and powders, and all number of girlish things River has no idea about, and River doesn’t think this is what being a woman is - it’s what she’ll wear until they believe she really is one - but it makes her feel free and light all the same.
***
She wanders around the ship in her new clothes - dresses of soft silks and satins, that slide against her skin as she walks, curving around her, pressing gentle kisses against her bare skin - and everyone smiles (Jayne leers, but Mal’s glare stops that soon enough), and River pays attention only to Mal.
She watches him as they fly, knows his defences are wearing down, like a candle, wax melting as he burns. She’s careful never to push too far - wouldn’t know how, might mess it up if she tried - but she’s learned enough, watched Inara explaining to Kaylee, and she understands the poetry her body speaks if she lets it. She answers Mal’s rhythm, a couplet to the easy way he paces the bridge when they’re alone, silent music for dancing around the fire they make. River looks out at the stars, lets one bare leg swing lazily back and forth, perfectly in time with the beat of his walk, and smiles at the black.
“So many stars in the universe,” she says. “Taking us where we need to go, but no one to take them home. Alone in the dark.”
“Ain’t exactly like they need the help, darlin’, being dead like they are.”
She reaches out, curls her fingers round his. “Got a star right here. Alive and burning. Could take you home, if you wanted.”
He burns brighter, and River smiles.
“You let me fight,” she says, edging closer, reaching out with her other hand to touch his chest. “Let me fly. Old enough for all of that. Let me have this, too.”
“I ain’t saying I don’t want it,” he says, not pulling away anymore. “Even if I were of a mind to lie to you, you’d know what I was about, but it still ain’t right. Not while I’m captain, and not while you ain’t gonna be getting older any time soon.”
River shakes her head, exasperated at last. “All baffled by time. Time is a construct, made because we want concrete. Age is a number, and love is boundless.”
“I’ll be sure and tell that to your brother,” he says, “before he kills me and makes it look like an accident.”
“You have no poetry in your soul, Malcolm.” She rests her head on his shoulder, feels his heart beat strong and true beneath her hand. “Can change anything if you have love and will enough,” she says. “Can make this right. Wrong not to try.”
He laughs, and it feels like hope as it vibrates through her. “Ain’t fair to make a man argue against his own words, little albatross.”
She kisses him then, soft, a question still rather than an answer, and then she smiles. “I could kill you with one hand, if you’re more comfortable with that argument.”
And Mal laughs again, this time answering her question’ even before he kisses her, and River isn’t whole when he does, but she’s River, alive and real, a star that might never burn out while his body melts with hers, and that’s more than enough.
***
***
Title: We Are Rhythm and Rhyme, Partners in Crime
Pairing: Mal/River
Summary: All boundaries are changeable, if conditions are right
Notes: Thanks so much to kassrachel for the beta; all remaining mistakes are mine. Title taken from Thea Gilmore's Inverigo.
For musesfool, who was very patient, even though she had every right not to be. Happy belated birthday, sweetheart. You are most awesome to have around. *smooches*
***
We are rhythm and Rhyme, Partners in Crime
Simon keeps telling her to focus on the positive. Remember who you were, he says. They talk of little things, inconsequential things, though they must have had consequence enough for her to still remember. Climbing the tree of the Winchesters’ garden, alive, on fire, with the freedom of doing what she shouldn’t, while her dress and her skin got torn; Simon at the party telling everyone she’d discover the secrets of the universe before she was fourteen - grinning as he said it, meaning it all the same; sips of cool Champagne, sneaked while her parents entertained, bubbles gliding along her tongue like laughter, butterfly wings to let her float.
“Hold onto those things, mèimei,” he says. “They’ll help you.”
“Would be shameful to be fooled twice,” she says, which isn’t what she means, but the real words hide from her, like naughty children in a game she has been forced to play. She wants to say that this is only another trick - make her mind believe what’s not there, that she is River, still the girl who climbed the trees and picked berries, dreamed of a life full of glory and love. That ghost is lost somewhere, down too many dark corridors for River to follow, and even if she could, She knows there isn’t enough of her old life to fill the holes in her new one.
She knows it, just like she knows the alignment of the planets, how to conjugate verbs in Latin, how time doesn’t always work like they think it does, but she can’t make it fit alongside those things in her brain. “It’s fact,” she says in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the evenings. “Classification must be altered to reflect correctly.” She is like Serenity, alive but not, a machine that is more but not enough.
But at night, before sleep she fears she might still not wake from, she whispers, “I’m a girl, a real girl. No fairy or strings needed. Transition already complete. Girl, to love and be loved.”
She can’t quite believe that, either.
After Miranda, it gets easier.
She might not be real yet, maybe never will be, but they trust her like they didn’t before, let her laughter mingle with theirs and aren’t afraid it’ll all end in tears. Kaylee lets her help in the engine room when River isn’t flying, and River learns all Kaylee can teach, but she’ll never understand this part of Serenity like Kaylee does, and that’s okay. She likes not being the light that dims all others, for once.
Even Jayne respects her now, though his mind will always see red on a shirt, and he’ll forever hate her a little, not for what she did, but for what he did. She doesn’t know if she can fix that, but one day she might explain that she punished because he told, and he told because she punished, circular and always dangerous, time like a rope they can all hang with if they aren’t careful. But she doesn’t know he’ll understand her, or want to. For now, she lets him teach her how to clean their guns, even though she already knows, and she tries to stay as quiet as she can, so as not to frighten him.
She thinks her silence might buy her a world she can belong in now, broken for the moment, but maybe still with enough pieces to make it work again. Won’t be the same, will never be better than what was, but it’ll still turn, and maybe River can turn along with it.
Only Mal lets her turn to her own rhythm. Doesn’t even know he does. He has his own, too, and together they are almost right, syncopated, a beat she could dance to like she did before, except he can’t hear it, and she is tired of dancing alone. She wants to go to the ball, even if it’s only once.
“Every girl needs a prince to kiss,” she says, and Mal thinks he can swim and drink but never drown in water, and smiles.
“Ain’t many princes round here, little one. Plenty of princesses, but that’s about it.”
She turns in her chair to watch him, always hard on the surface, a world of gentleness beneath. “Can make a frog a prince, if the magic’s right.”
“Ain’t got many of them here, neither. Just men, too old or too stupid to be anything but what they are.”
“Then I’d better make do with what I have,” she says, and kisses him before he can stop her, feels his warmth and his strength under her palms, his mouth holding a million promises she’s never dreamed of, and time and space and all dimensions are one and none at all, and she flies.
He pulls away, but not before River knows she’s like points of fire under his skin, travelling like light to his heart. “You’re not ready,” she says. “Not yet.”
“Ain’t ever gonna be. Not for this. Ain’t right. Ain’t in the vicinity of right.”
“Points in space changeable, Mal. Not so far from right as you think.”
“River -“
She walks away, doesn’t need to hear his explanations.
It’s easier when she stays quiet, easier to let herself turn, easier to stay as they want her to be, so she says she’s sorry, and Mal says he believes her, and River doesn’t tell him she dreams of him, doesn’t tell him she knows he dreams of her now, too.
It’s hard enough for him, without River making it worse. Hard enough for everyone, because now they’re the ones with data they can’t assimilate - not data, holes, spaces where there oughtn’t to be any - and River will never stop being sorry for it. Better, probably, fairer, if Zoe blamed her, but Zoe doesn’t. River knows because she’s been trained to discover secrets she shouldn’t, but Zoe, trained to hide and kill, trained not to love and loving anyway, Zoe tells her all the same.
“Ain’t got no call to be guilty,” she says, eyes still hollow, grief still inside, coiled like a spring she thinks she can keep wound forever. “Ain’t telling you nothing you don’t already know, but he’d want me to say it.”
”Thank you,” she says, honest and straightforward like she sometimes forgets to be, sometimes can’t remember how to be. “When it comes unwound, there are people who love you still.”
Zoe almost smiles then, a quirk of her lips and a flicker in her head, and says, “I’ll keep that in mind.” She turns to leave, and then stops. “Be sure and do the same.”
River stands for a moment, letting the surprise of being taught something new fill her up.
That night, she whispers to herself. “Fact: I am loved. Unwinding doesn’t destroy.”
This time, she believes.
She carries the knowledge round with her, memorises all of them - 6 faces, six points of light in the darkness, better than a star, stronger, different. They are her talisman, her anchor, amulets and protections she never thought to have. She keeps them like charms, imagines she can see their names written on her skin, though she’ll never do that, because she knows power comes from belief, knows faith is stronger when it’s quiet.
She tells Jayne to shoot with his eyes closed, and Jayne looks at her like she’s crazy, but he does it anyway, and she says, “I won’t stab you anymore, and you won’t betray me anymore. We’ll go on a straight path, and one day I’ll explain about the circle.”
“Gorram lunatic,” is all he says in response, but River doesn’t mind, and later he plays jacks with Kaylee and her, and his mind is clear for once.
They’re with her whenever she touches Serenity, her metal cool and alive beneath her fingers. Mal flies beside her, stronger than the rest, a beacon without knowing it, and River thinks this is how it is to be a girl.
“More than a machine,” she says, “if you love her like she is.”
Mal glances over, never thrown by her like he should be, and grins. “You been paying attention, little one. I like that in my crew. Might just keep you around.”
“Might fall out of the sky if you don’t,” she says, smiling, and then, serious again, “She was a machine before you found her. Then you loved her and she wasn’t.”
Mal is quiet for a moment, and then he surprises her, which she likes anyway, because most other people can’t. He slides along in his chair, and holds out an arm to her. When she comes closer, he wraps it round her, pulling her tight against him. “Love and will can transform most anything into anything else, you want it badly enough, darlin’.”
She snuggles in against him, breathing in the smell of his skin - cheap soap and grease and warmth - and she starts to dream. “’Course,” he says, “some things don’t need changing at all.”
***
Simon changes her medication again, and River wants to sleep less, is more awake than she’s been in years. Inara says she’s glowing, and Simon looks proud and pleased, like her big brother used to look, and River doesn’t add that sometimes Mal surges in her veins, the promise of him enough to light her up like the sun. She doesn’t think Simon would want to hear that she whispers Mal’s name at night, touches herself and lets herself burn.
She knows Mal’s still aware of her, a flutter of thought he won’t ever let free, and she knows it isn’t fair of her to ask for more faith than he’s already shown, but boundaries are fluid, changeable if conditions are right, and water slides through all cracks.
So she waits and she measures her bearings, does as she’s told - flies the ship and marks coordinates, holds Serenity when the others leave for a job, steady and ready to take to the sky the minute Mal needs her to. She never forgets to love her, hands and heart and nerves part of Serenity like Serenity is part of her, because Serenity learned who she was first, and Mal knows that, too. He kisses River’s forehead and thanks her, loves her like he loves the sky, fears her like he does a storm, wild and powerful as she is in his dreams, and he pretends he still believes she’s a child.
Sometimes she goes on a job, watches Mal’s back when Zoe needs to be watching everything else, and Mal doesn’t look at her for a while after that, because he can’t look truth in the face and deny it.
Boundaries shifting, she thinks, as she drifts to sleep.
***
She thinks she hides it well; doesn’t tremble when he takes her shooting and his arm goes round her shoulder; doesn’t smile too brightly when he says her name, doesn’t push harder than he’s ready for yet, but Inara is trained to notice just like River is, and River isn’t skilled in this like she is everything else.
“Mèimei,” she says, River’s hand held between hers, “you’re too young, and he’s too pigheaded.”
River has tried not to look, and Inara has spent a lifetime hiding, so she bites her lip and asks. “Is there still a fairytale in your future?”
Inara is confused for a moment, and then she smiles. “We all have fairytales in front of us, bao bei, but mine isn’t with him, no. We might have begun well once, but my happy ending isn’t his. We both know that now.”
“Then,” River says, “I’d like the chance to begin.”
“River, none of us want to see you hurt.”
“Won’t be hurt. Have been before, wasn’t too young for that, but he never would. Won’t do anything until he knows it’s right, and you know it.”
Inara sighs, and River presses on. “Girls try and fall and fly again. Let me try. The fall won’t break me.”
“He’ll kill me if he ever finds out I knew,” Inara says, and then she stands, begins searching for clothes and hairbrushes, pins and powders, and all number of girlish things River has no idea about, and River doesn’t think this is what being a woman is - it’s what she’ll wear until they believe she really is one - but it makes her feel free and light all the same.
***
She wanders around the ship in her new clothes - dresses of soft silks and satins, that slide against her skin as she walks, curving around her, pressing gentle kisses against her bare skin - and everyone smiles (Jayne leers, but Mal’s glare stops that soon enough), and River pays attention only to Mal.
She watches him as they fly, knows his defences are wearing down, like a candle, wax melting as he burns. She’s careful never to push too far - wouldn’t know how, might mess it up if she tried - but she’s learned enough, watched Inara explaining to Kaylee, and she understands the poetry her body speaks if she lets it. She answers Mal’s rhythm, a couplet to the easy way he paces the bridge when they’re alone, silent music for dancing around the fire they make. River looks out at the stars, lets one bare leg swing lazily back and forth, perfectly in time with the beat of his walk, and smiles at the black.
“So many stars in the universe,” she says. “Taking us where we need to go, but no one to take them home. Alone in the dark.”
“Ain’t exactly like they need the help, darlin’, being dead like they are.”
She reaches out, curls her fingers round his. “Got a star right here. Alive and burning. Could take you home, if you wanted.”
He burns brighter, and River smiles.
“You let me fight,” she says, edging closer, reaching out with her other hand to touch his chest. “Let me fly. Old enough for all of that. Let me have this, too.”
“I ain’t saying I don’t want it,” he says, not pulling away anymore. “Even if I were of a mind to lie to you, you’d know what I was about, but it still ain’t right. Not while I’m captain, and not while you ain’t gonna be getting older any time soon.”
River shakes her head, exasperated at last. “All baffled by time. Time is a construct, made because we want concrete. Age is a number, and love is boundless.”
“I’ll be sure and tell that to your brother,” he says, “before he kills me and makes it look like an accident.”
“You have no poetry in your soul, Malcolm.” She rests her head on his shoulder, feels his heart beat strong and true beneath her hand. “Can change anything if you have love and will enough,” she says. “Can make this right. Wrong not to try.”
He laughs, and it feels like hope as it vibrates through her. “Ain’t fair to make a man argue against his own words, little albatross.”
She kisses him then, soft, a question still rather than an answer, and then she smiles. “I could kill you with one hand, if you’re more comfortable with that argument.”
And Mal laughs again, this time answering her question’ even before he kisses her, and River isn’t whole when he does, but she’s River, alive and real, a star that might never burn out while his body melts with hers, and that’s more than enough.
***