August 27: Star Pupil [Firefly]
Title: Star Pupil
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Rating: T/PG-13
Crossover: Firefly/Serenity
Spoilers: Post-series for B:tVS; post-Serenity
Notes: A timestamp in the Ancient Slayers 'verse, last updated here in 2013. I've had a very busy second half of August, but hopefully I'll have time for a few more of these to move the storyline forward. :)
Summary: River might have been far from home, but she was still following in her grandmother's footsteps. 500 words.
River had dreamed of her wài pó since she was a little girl. When she was younger, she'd mostly dreamed of her dancing: a blonde teenager in brightly colored outfits leaping with pompoms in her hands, twisting to upbeat music in a crowd of her friends, and spinning and gliding across a sheet of ice balanced on sharp blades. Bodies in motion: applied physics, rotational symmetries, three-dimensional geometries sketched by the human form. When the time had come for River to choose her physical education track, there hadn't even been a question.
But that track had led her to the Academy; and at the Academy, her dreams had darkened along with her teachers' intentions. The figure in them began to dance with a different purpose: not for pleasure, but for survival, bound to fight a war she'd never volunteered for. Other girls sometimes appeared, too: young women of all shapes and sizes, of all colors and classes, slaying and being slain by an endless series of monsters. But always, through era after era, the blonde fought on-- she and her dark-haired sister. Serving the Watchers' cause.
Old men covered in blood; it never touched them, but they're drowning in it. River might have been far from home, but she was still following in her grandmother's footsteps.
The dreams didn't change back after Simon saved her; after he followed the breadcrumb trail of her letters and came to the rescue of the mèi mei he'd been missing. She wasn't exactly that little sister anymore, though, and taking her away from the Hands that would have wielded her didn't unforge the weapon she had the Potential to become. After all, it hadn't all been the scientist's meddling; they'd tried to shape her, but she'd always been the one girl in all the worlds.
In a battle that should never have been fought on a moon that circled no world, the question had come to her: are you ready to be strong? My turn, she'd replied, and picked up axe and sword.
She hadn't been sure she wasn't still dreaming when Mal's aunt first walked onto the scene. Not at Wash and Book's funeral; in the Shepherd's thoughts after a side meeting before he left the crew. Before Miranda, but after Ariel, in those months when her thoughts had finally started to become her own again but hadn't fully settled. He'd looked at her and thought violence begets violence, and that knowledge had still been in his eyes when he'd looked at River. When Faith showed up in person to mourn him, the echo of five centuries of death trailing in her wake, River had been almost too choked by ghosts to speak.
But the third time she came-- this time, not alone--
River thundered up the stairs to the galley and threw herself into Buffy Summers' arms.
They weren't through the storm yet. But Mal-- Uncle Mal-- had been right; now that her grandmother was here, they'd pass through it soon enough.
-x-
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Rating: T/PG-13
Crossover: Firefly/Serenity
Spoilers: Post-series for B:tVS; post-Serenity
Notes: A timestamp in the Ancient Slayers 'verse, last updated here in 2013. I've had a very busy second half of August, but hopefully I'll have time for a few more of these to move the storyline forward. :)
Summary: River might have been far from home, but she was still following in her grandmother's footsteps. 500 words.
River had dreamed of her wài pó since she was a little girl. When she was younger, she'd mostly dreamed of her dancing: a blonde teenager in brightly colored outfits leaping with pompoms in her hands, twisting to upbeat music in a crowd of her friends, and spinning and gliding across a sheet of ice balanced on sharp blades. Bodies in motion: applied physics, rotational symmetries, three-dimensional geometries sketched by the human form. When the time had come for River to choose her physical education track, there hadn't even been a question.
But that track had led her to the Academy; and at the Academy, her dreams had darkened along with her teachers' intentions. The figure in them began to dance with a different purpose: not for pleasure, but for survival, bound to fight a war she'd never volunteered for. Other girls sometimes appeared, too: young women of all shapes and sizes, of all colors and classes, slaying and being slain by an endless series of monsters. But always, through era after era, the blonde fought on-- she and her dark-haired sister. Serving the Watchers' cause.
Old men covered in blood; it never touched them, but they're drowning in it. River might have been far from home, but she was still following in her grandmother's footsteps.
The dreams didn't change back after Simon saved her; after he followed the breadcrumb trail of her letters and came to the rescue of the mèi mei he'd been missing. She wasn't exactly that little sister anymore, though, and taking her away from the Hands that would have wielded her didn't unforge the weapon she had the Potential to become. After all, it hadn't all been the scientist's meddling; they'd tried to shape her, but she'd always been the one girl in all the worlds.
In a battle that should never have been fought on a moon that circled no world, the question had come to her: are you ready to be strong? My turn, she'd replied, and picked up axe and sword.
She hadn't been sure she wasn't still dreaming when Mal's aunt first walked onto the scene. Not at Wash and Book's funeral; in the Shepherd's thoughts after a side meeting before he left the crew. Before Miranda, but after Ariel, in those months when her thoughts had finally started to become her own again but hadn't fully settled. He'd looked at her and thought violence begets violence, and that knowledge had still been in his eyes when he'd looked at River. When Faith showed up in person to mourn him, the echo of five centuries of death trailing in her wake, River had been almost too choked by ghosts to speak.
But the third time she came-- this time, not alone--
River thundered up the stairs to the galley and threw herself into Buffy Summers' arms.
They weren't through the storm yet. But Mal-- Uncle Mal-- had been right; now that her grandmother was here, they'd pass through it soon enough.
-x-