Worlds Collide
Saturday, December 3, 2005
<i>Not everything that rises will converge</i>
CATEGORY: FICTION TIMES READ: 1754 RATING: 9.0 (G) SERIES: FIREFLY
Worlds Collide:
Not everything that rises will converge
By Marazion
Disclaimed: I wish these characters were mine, but since they’re Joss’… That’s good too!
Requesty: Feedback is soooooperwelcome. Feed me back, please.
Spoilproof: Through the Big Damn Movie, but mainly that and Heart of Gold, Objects in Space
Ship: Mal/Inara
~~~~~~~~~
When Mal comes upon Inara on his way back down from River’s bridge, (and there’s nothing funny about that) he knows immediately that she was coming to speak with him. Knowing what she is planning is terrible, which makes him to remember the savage downturn of her pretty mouth as she said “I’m leaving," and the tears in her eyes when she turned away. Worst of all, though, is the sure and crystalline knowledge that Inara loves him. That was when he finally figured it out.
For these two, though, there will only ever be one kiss, and that is long past. Inara's leaving again.
She ducks her head down, the better to avoid his eyes, asking for the time of the next morning’s landing on Shadow. Do they both know that it is a pretext? He thinks that she must. It’s an old game they played together, back before they had to go and change the world.
The Operative was right about one thing. This is worse, much worse, than he thought it would be.
“Should be on the ground early in the mornin’, my mama’s ranch, muh- my ranch, ain’t too far a flight in the shuttle to Plymouth City. If you’ve got appointments thereabouts, you could be to your hon’rable host just in time for an early lunch. I can have River bring the shuttle back remote.”
He’s sick in his guts, because he is sure now that he is going to let her go.
He will never see that he makes her feel like a wild girl. She believes in her heart that in the court where Mal Reynolds is the judge, Inara Serra wears the red word Whore.
It makes no matter though, because for Inara Serra, all the Companion training that he hates and fears, that work in his heart and make his cruel words come out, i
This line, in particular, I love:
that it would vibrate or thrum with the extra fizz right in the molecules of him.
And oh, what a heap of sadness. The way these two can love each other without understanding... it's a marvel. They only ever see part of the picture.
Nothing is resolved and it hurts to read how much they hurt and how their pain fades with their choices.
But there's a little mite of hope at the end, or maybe just an alternate road, but it's lovely. Was a relief I needed after all that sadness. :)
That was a great read!
But I have to say I disagree with you AgentRouka.... I took that last line totally the opposite way, that River once saw a different possibiliy, but that it now no longer exists for them....
God my heart hurts....
I guess, I took the listening to the tide... simply as something that she chose to do instead of telling them about her vision. Right now, they wouldn't be ready to hear it, anyway. Maybehaps in the future.
Besides, "alternate road" was my clumsy way of saying that this would be one way they could have ended up but didn't.
I still found that image to be a relief. *g*
You can't take the sky from me
yeesh, what heartache. I'm almost sore for poor 'nara.
very well done ;)
It's interesting how we can see things differently :o)
The very fact that the "alternate road" was something that could have happened but didn't is what makes it so terribly tragic to me
<grin>
But we all get something different out of what we read and write
I can see what you're sayin' (sorta <grin>) but I still see it as sad ;o)
My idea with River at the end was that the time had passed when that road could have been taken, but I definitely wanted to leave it a little open. I was thinking that the first time she came across them there, and heard those thoughts, it still could have been saved, but that as they both convinced themselves that it couldn't be, the possibility faded. I also wondered about what the rushing sound of the ocean was that she also hear when she was eavesdropping on Wash and Zoe. The answer that came to me was that River was hearing the branching off of all the worlds in such an emotional moment. Maybe she intuited something about the futures Wash might face?
Once I had that idea in place, it filled itself in with Inara choosing to leave a second time, post-Serenity, for just the same reasons. These two people are behind such high walls, and they just can't knock them down.
Maybe I'll write a sequel with some smoochies for the night before she leaves?
What do you think? Hee...
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