(Untitled)

[simon_doctor]

Kaylee's out for the evening, having stayed just long enough to say hello to Jordie when he arrived. (She's going to Milliways, Simon knows; she'll be back late.)

They're on their own for dinner.

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[walk_ins]

Jordie looks at him, and shakes his head.

"You got ditched," he says. Flat. "And I have no idea how you begin to be able to forgive that."

[simon_doctor]

Simon looks at him, and shakes his head minutely.

"It would have been easier to forgive if it had been me they'd ditched. I was fine."

[walk_ins]

"With no career, no clean record, and for all any of us thought, no friends?" Simon's not the only one shaking his head. "I'm not saying you shouldn't've gone through with it -- absolutely, absolutely you should have done it, absolutely it was worth it -- but do you really think that little of what you had?"

[simon_doctor]

(you gave up everything you had)

"I was fine when it started, I mean. If I'd gone along with my parents' advice, if I hadn't ..." He trails off, and brushes that aside with a motion of one hand.

"They didn't abandon me. They abandoned River. And I think she forgave them for it long before I did."

[walk_ins]

The sentiment is understandable. It's one Jordie agrees with. Still, the point stands: Simon doesn't have it in him to be upset on his own behalf. And his parents effectively ruined both their children. It was something they all knew: Simon had the wherewithal to be brilliant. Jordie was just striving for competent surgeon who could volunteer his services in understaffed clinics in Fremont a weekend a month or so. But Liz had her research, and Simon -- medical elite. They all knew it. All of them.

"All right," Jordie says, and scrubs a hand over his face. "Okay. What's next. In the story."

[simon_doctor]

They got sidetracked; it takes Simon a moment to remember where they were. (Absently, he eats a few more bites of his lamb-and vegetable skewer while he's thinking.)

"...I don't know how they got River out of the Academy," he says. "Not the details. I met with one of them on Persephone, and took delivery of a camouflaged cryobox with River inside."

[walk_ins]

Jordie settles back. His fingertip sets to moving over the upholstery again.

[simon_doctor]

"And I bought passage on a cargo ship heading as far out on the Rim as I could find. I ... didn't originally plan to stay on it."

He's smiling faintly; it's reminiscent, and not entirely happy.

"I never really planned anything. I just had to keep River safe."

Beat.

Softly: "I was so scared. I can't begin to tell you."

[walk_ins]

From what Simon's saying, there's no way he could anticipate the extent of his sister's injuries -- and no way to anticipate what he'd need to care for her, much less expect to find anything he'd need out on the Rim. It's not the most logical place to run when you know you'll be charged with a dependent in need of medical -- and psychological -- attention. And yet -- no other options.

Says Jordie: "I believe it."

[simon_doctor]

"What ended up happening was that they opened the cryobox and found River. And I had to tell them everything. Everything I knew," he amends. "Which at the time wasn't any more than I've already told you. Finding out the rest...."

He's quiet for a moment.

"I guess that started at St. Lucy's on Ariel."

[walk_ins]

Jordie focuses. "That came up in court."

[simon_doctor]

"Yes." An abrupt laugh. "The ironic thing is that if the portable imager had been invented five years ago, we might never have had to go there in the first place."

[walk_ins]

"...they focused on the stolen meds -- some of which were antipsychotics, so I wondered -- "

Jordie stops.

"Because there wasn't any way you could see what they did. Right? Is that it?"

[simon_doctor]

He nods. It's a little grim.

Even after all this time, the horror of that moment of realization is still very much with him.

"River couldn't talk about it. Not ... never coherently; most of the time not at all. And they'd told me -- the men who broke her out, they told me at the start of it all -- that the government had done something to her brain." Beat. "So I had to find out what."

[walk_ins]

That didn't make it onto the news.

Jordie is very, very still.

[simon_doctor]

"She'd undergone repeated brain surgery over the previous two years."

Simon's face is set.

"They stripped her amygdala."