梦见: [ location: serenity | accidental visual ]

[biverbam]

River hasn't been sleeping, not well, not since Dawn, and when the tablet clicks on from its place amidst a haphazard pile of flowers to show Serenity's cargo bay.

Every few seconds she walks across the frame (step step heel turn step heel turn step turn step step step). She's holding her necklaces (one a cross, the other a locket of vervain) taut

Comments

[ voice ]

[adeadringer]

[ elena's been sleeping about as well as river lately, and it would be more evident if she chose to reply to her visually. it's quite evident anyway, as her voice sounds hoarser than usual. one could call it weary, even defeated. ]

River?

[ visual ]

[biverbam]

[ river is still pacing, but now she's directing her commentary to the tablet. it's a small improvement. ]

They're funereal.

[ voice to visual ]

[adeadringer]

What is?

[ and elena switches the function she's broadcasting in, trying to get a better look at the room river's in. (it's not clear how switching the function she's broadcasting in would help her do that, but maybe being able to see who she's talking to will help.) if river cares to look, she can see the dark circles and worry lines around elena's eyes, the mussed-up hair and downturned mouth. ]

Are you safe?

[ she's heard about dawn. she knows better than to ask 'all right'. ]

[ visual ]

[biverbam]

[ she kicks the flowers as an answer. it's not them, exactly, though she can't remember why she brought them in in the first place. (they had reminded her of gardens and sol and trees that talk and a house with a room for her inside it but then they died, just lay there and died.) just their smell, their concept, but she can't kick a concept. ]

Locked the doors.

[ it's as safe as river can get, and she goes back to pacing. ]

[action]

[mercenaryacare]

Jayne's up on the catwalk, arms hanging over the railing as he watches the moonbrained girl with a mixture of suspicion and irritation. He knows she knows he's up there, even if she's acting like she's off in her little dream -- or nightmare -- world again.

It's been pretty easy to ignore her in this place, since they're grounded and neither of them are trapped on the ship all day, but every so often they appear at the same place at the same time and she spouts her jibberish, he makes small talk, though God knows why he bothers, and they go their separate ways again.

He turns and starts for the stairs. Kaylee's been keeping herself busy lately and Jayne hasn't seen hide nor hair of her, so it's just the girl and himself. As long as she's not hiding a machete somewhere on her, which isn't likely seeing as she weighs 90 lbs. soaking wet, he thinks he'll be all right.

When she speaks, he inhales deeply and shrugs, still coming down the stairs. "Smells fine in here to me."

[action]

[biverbam]

River stops and sways on the balls of her feet with the residual momentum. "Fertilizer," and it sounds like she's insulting him just as much as she's explaining.

Left, right, forward, left, twisting the necklaces against the movement. It steadies her like a placebo counterbalance weighing against the alternative. The gravity, a shift in equilibrium, the fall and laying down and sleep and nightmares.

"Put you under and it," she pauses, looks at the flowers, frowns, continues, "...piles. We're buried."

[action]

[mercenaryacare]

At the bottom of the stairs, Jayne frowns and lifts an arm, sniffing at his armpit. He doesn't smell of daisies, but he doesn't smell of fertilizer either. Just her being a brat again then.

"I don't know 'bout you, but I ain't buried 'neath no fertilizer." He shakes his head and continues over towards his weights. He left the area a bit of a mess and he wants to get everything squared away before Kaylee comes around to scold him.

[action]

[biverbam]

"It's not the function," she yells after him, distressed and keening. Tugging at her necklaces is forgotten in favor of crushing a handful of flowers in her fist and chucking them at Jayne's head like a fragrant and ineffectual baseball.

[ visual ]

[deniedthesight]

Maybe you can open a window.

[ angela is trying to be helpful, in her way. river's obviously troubled about something, and though she doesn't know the girl very well, she doesn't want to ignore the transmission. ]

What's going on?

[ visual ]

[biverbam]

No. [ she shakes her head for emphasis as she paces. it's a spaceship, angela, they don't have windows. ]

It's cancerous.

[ visual ]

[deniedthesight]

What's cancerous?

[ the word makes her think briefly of john, and she wonders if he's all right back at home. she knows he'd been healed, somehow, but in his line of work his or someone else's life was always on the line. angela doesn't know dawn, but she's heard about someone recently having been glitched into a vampire. she doesn't know that the two cases are related. ]

What can I do?

[ if anything. ]

[ visual ]

[biverbam]

Wear a cross.

[ it's practical advice, with a vampire on the loose. kind of pithy when that vampire is your best friend, but river manages with what she can. ]

And don't breathe through your nose. It's noxious. [ said with a disgusted gesture toward the flowers. ]

i try to sleep, they're wide awake, they won't let me alone;

[biverbam]

Yǐn​cáng: to hide. River can recognize the futility in hiding from herself, how curling up in a metal cocoon like so much smuggled goods won't change the outcome, but that doesn't mean she wasn't going to try.

Stefan may be shaking her but he doesn't wake up.

Her frown deepens, face pinched and distressed. Her throat twitches like she's trying to swallow but forgot how. Her eyes are darting beneath her eyelids like pinballs and her hands are eerily still against all this movement.

A sharp intake of breath. A swallow not-swallow. A slow exhale while her head cranes back against the metal floor then lolls to the side.

She still doesn't wake up.

i try to sleep, they're wide awake, they won't let me alone;

[biverbam]

It's flat.

A thin layer of sand over hardwood. Smells antiseptic and white on top, trickles down beneath the cracks in some spots but the volume never changes. Walls are there-not-there, great flat hallways of sand and the whine of drills behind each door.

Her feet thunk-skisssh as she walks.

(Somewhere something is dead, crawled inside the floorboards all mummified and dusty old with neglect. There were no oils or brains or burials just that corner, that spot no one sees as the sand seeps in but goes nowhere.)

Her feet thunk-skissssh as she walks.

There are hands at the ends of her arms, hands she forgot she had, purple evil things that do evil deeds. The blue and the blood that stains the gray she's wearing wherever she touches it and leeches up her arms in slow spindly reaching.

(thunk-skisssh)

Her mouth is open but all that comes out is a rush of sea-foam that trickles down but goes nowhere.