Void
Sunday, April 17, 2005
River wants something only Jayne will give her. PG for language only. First in the Walking the Black series.
CATEGORY: FICTION TIMES READ: 2219 RATING: 9.0 (PG) SERIES: FIREFLY
Void
River stood with her face pressed against the glass, staring out at the black. Most nights, she couldn’t sleep until she climbed the steps to this little hidey-hole, and shut the door behind her, and stood at this window for a little while, letting the cool vacuum of space pull all the screaming bumping grinding hot painful things out of her, scattering them to the void.
More than anything, she wanted to take a space walk one more time. They’d had to, her and Simon, that one time when the Alliance ship had come. He’d hated it. Poor Simon. He hated nothingness. He needed light and warmth and people, human contact. She didn’t. He didn’t seem to understand that sometimes it was the worst possible thing for her.
She’d tried to tell him that once. "Simon, I need nothing--"
"Honey, mei mei, yes you do, you need your meds--"
"No!" she’d wailed. "I don’t not need anything, I need nothing!"
She should have known better. He’d doped her so hard she’d slept for a day and a half. That wasn’t the nothingness she wanted. She wasn’t awake to enjoy it. It didn’t take anything away, it just locked it up for a little while.
She needed the void.
"Wanna take a walk, little girl?"
She spun, hair flaring out around her. She’d needed the void so bad tonight that she’d forgotten to close the door behind her, and Jayne stood hipshot, sneering, shirtless in the doorway.
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Airlock’s that way, " he said. "Hike on out if you’ve a mind to."
She stood staring at him. Then she smiled, slowly. "All right."
He stepped back, fetching up against the wall with a slight thunk.
"But you’ll have to be my anchor," she said. "Someone’s got to be on the other end of the umbilical cord."
"Hold on," he said. "Hold on."
"Simon gives me drugs, but I don’t need drugs. I need that." She pointed out the viewport. "I need the black. You’re the only one who’ll do it for me, aren’t you?"
"You think your brother’s maybe still up?"
"It’s all endothermic, it needs
You can't take the sky from me
This story perfectly captures that child-like fascination people have with space. Kudos.
Keep Flyin'
K
no power in the verse
xoxox-fredikayllow-xoxox
Quote:
Jayne slouched at the controls, grumpily monitering her air, her vitals, the time. Anchor, she thought. In olden days, on the ancient sea, anchors were iron, ugly, heavy and hard, crusted all over with barnacles, dripping with seaweed and the muck of the ocean floor . . . but they were important. They kept the boats in port from drifting away out into the cruel, wild, open sea where they wanted to be. Too dangerous, all alone out in the open sea.
i love this one paragraph. it sums up so much about what little i ever witnessed about the inter-relationship between river and the rest of the crew... not just jayne but in the way he is the only one who could "anchor" her... the rest can hold her but not anchor her... does anyone else get what i mean, i dont think im explaining it too well.
its as if river and jayne are tied together in a private invisible way that cant be seen or even felt by anyone save river.
this is one shiny peice of work.
loved reading this, thx loads m8
I can't tell you how many times I've felt this in my own life. This was beautiful. Nice, smooth writing, feeling calm and free. Good motivation for Jayne helping.
Thanks for the story.
Even if this wasn't meant to show a version of River and Jayne starting to develop something of a bond that could blossom as time passed, I really think that you've shown how the two of them are connected and understand each other in ways the other BDHs can't really fathom in the same way. That and I really think that had someone clued into River's enjoyment of spacewalks, the need to keep her sedated all the time would have been drastically reduced since she would have a chance to purge all the negative emotions and feelings from herself out into the void...almost like Inara's meditation rituals;)
BEB
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