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Two chapters in a day. River just HAD to have her say.
Big Damn Dog
Mal would go right on ignoring the changes in Jayne, only the women in his life seem determined to point out two things. One, Mal is a poophead. Two, Jayne needs him. The problem is that neither Mal nor Jayne is what you might call self-aware.
http://lit-gal.livejournal.com/287571.html - Chapter One
http://lit-gal.livejournal.com/296957.html - Chapter Two
TODAY'S CHAPTERS
http://lit-gal.livejournal.com/395768.html - Chapter Three
“Like a tithe of devotion,” River said. Jayne’s brain was dancing across the air. He’d plodded with iron heavy feet, but now he danced. River held out her hands, offering to dance with him, and his shadow body retreated. However, his brain still twirled, and River twirled with it.
“Stop that,” Jayne snapped. The shadow frowned, and River tried hard to hold onto the shadow and not the dancing streaks that tempted her. Brother always gave her more drugs when she ignored the shadows, and she didn’t like how the drugs made all the colors blur and turned to slick mud that slid through her brain leaving cold trails of slime behind. So she stilled and looked at Jayne.
“Shadow paths all winding,” she whispered as she watched new realities leak in through the growing cracks of the old. Water pushed at the walls, and one more push would send the river raging in a new direction—hopefully one without the piles of Reaver bodies lying at her feet, their brains tearing at her. Throwing her hands up around her head, River screamed and ran backwards until her back hit a wall and she collapsed to the floor shivering as those future Reaver minds ripped at her, their blackness smudging all the colors.
“What did you do?” Brother. No. She couldn’t let Reavers near Brother. River pushed herself up.
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“And why do I have trouble believing that?”
Jayne and Brother, colors clashing until they were crayons melting into each other, their shadows vanishing under the light. This was familiar. “I can kill you with my brain,” River said softly, the words an anchor to a moment. She stood outside the infirmary and Jayne was hurt. Scared. Before he’d feared them knowing. Then he’d feared for his life as Brother walked around his helpless shadow form. Now… now he didn’t fear.
“What in the gorram hell are you three doing?”
River turned her head to see the captain. Stained glass with a hundred realities and possibilities all winking at her. Colors flashed too fast for her to see, and she moved around Brother to Jayne. Jayne’s colors were slower. It didn’t hurt her head as much and his brain was still dancing.
“I don’t know what Jayne did, but he did something.”
“I walked in, and right off, she was dancing around me like I was a Maypole.”
“A Maypole—a structure erected in a community to encourage celebration and dancing.” River’s brain tripped through the cracks of reality and visited the Maypoles that had existed within her limited awareness. She hated that the cracks in realities and time only allowed her to see so far, but a little voice whispered that she could see too far already. She spun away from a crack that oozed the blackness of Reaver minds and found one with young people cavorting around a Maypole. “Cavort,” she said happily. Closing her eyes, she stayed there. The shadows were all around her, but they never danced for her the way the colors in the cracks did. They never danced the way Jayne’s brain was. Things shifted, and she liked the colors more than the shadows where Brother lived… where Brother wanted her to live.
“Seems like your sister is having a bad day.” Mal words, heavy in the air. He wasn’t dancing with Jayne yet. Colors shifted, but not enough.
“Mal should bed Jayne,” River proclaimed. She could see the crack and all its pretty colors. She should hide Brother medicine more often because the world in all its complex colors shifting realities was clearer when she could ignore the shadows that ruled his perceptions.
“Mal should what--”
“What in the gorram—”
“Mei, mei, you should come with me now.”
Shadow voices blending, but River danced away from the first brush of warm touch against her arm. Blindly, she groped for Jayne’s dancing, finding his shadow arm and holding on tight so Brother couldn’t take it.
“Jayne would be beautiful stripped by pleasure,” River said firmly, her brain finding another crack to explore.
“Get off me, Moonbrain!” Jayne’s shadow hands pushed at her, and River let herself dance with him, her shadow feet shifting as only her real self twirled through the universe. Shadows darkened and slowly took form and River could see Mal and Brother staring at her with open mouths. Brother’s reality was always clearer with Jayne because he danced with the now. Other people’s brains were forever lost in the “then” and the” yet,” but Jayne’s danced always in the now with only tendrils wandering off into time.
“Doc,” Mal said slowly. “It might be that you should consider giving her more medicine.”
Brother was frowning. “I think I need to check to see if she spit out her medicine somewhere in her room.”
“I did,” River confirmed. Brother’s face went all unhappy and his brain leaked into the past, dragging back images of River as a laughing little girl. River sighed. She hated those intruders. They should stay in the past, but Brother’s brain always leaked. Leaked and leaked.
“Mei, mei, let’s head back to the infirmary. I’ll get you more medicine,” Brother said, he held out shadow hands full of little dancing Rivers—six years old in a blue dress and ten years old in shorts with dirty knees and twelve years old with a book in hand, and all the Rivers didn’t like getting pulled out of time. They frowned at her loudly, so River abandoned Jayne and evaded Brother to reach Mal.
Clinging to his arm, she dug her fingers into the pewter and steel of his mind. Mal was stain-glass, a thousand Mals all standing around him. Soldier Mal, thief Mal, angry Mal, lover Mal. A hundred thousand realities a spun like a prism and River should have been blinded, but every single stain-glass window had the same metal framework so that no matter which glass spun in front of her, she could hold on.
“No medicine,” River said as firmly as she could. She could get control of the shadows and the light if Brother just stayed away from her. His colors danced like Jayne, no structure to hold them in place. But unlike Jayne, his colors bled into all the cracks dragging past and distant present and possible future all into one dizzying image with no stain-glass frame for River to cling to.
Mal looked down at her. “I think you need some medicine,” Mal said, but all his stained glass figures turned to look at her. That never happened before. River tilted her head at him and noticed that Jayne’s colors stained the edges of Mal’s glass. New cracks opened and realities shifted.
“I can’t see the bad coming with the medicine.”
Mal exchanged a look with Jayne before he looked down at her. “What bad, mei-mei?”
River tilted her head and closed her eyes as a thousand million hundred Reaver minds with their inky black souls threatened to soak into the colors of all the world.
“She’s doing some witching gou shi. I’m betting she told her brother about Ariel,” Jayne said, and River looked over. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Jayne was supposed to hide Ariel. Instead his dance paused and Ariel flowed up into time. Jayne’s face twisted with regret as he saw the scans. He wanted to call the betrayal off, but he’d kissed Christ. Too late.
“Do you really want to discuss Ariel?” Brother demanded, but now Mal was focusing on him, letting River cling to him without trying to dislodge her. She closed her eyes and wished Jayne would stop dancing with the past-crack. She counted on Jayne to wash away all the colors, sweeping them aside as irrelevant.
“What do you know about Ariel?” Mal asked.
Brother looked shocked. “I know I forgave Jayne.”
“For what?” Mal tried to cross his arms, frowning when he couldn’t because River wouldn’t relinquish her grip.
“For betraying us.”
“How?” Mal poked, and at least half the Mals now glared at Brother with the other half eyeing River, and one or two studying Jayne. Mals gave her a headache, but as long as Jayne kept spinning into the past, Mal was her best choice if she wanted to stay stuck in time without the medicine.
“River told me he felt guilty, okay?” Brother hated that. He hated admitting ignorance. He wanted to be the hero with the answers, but he couldn’t see Jayne’s betrayal or his guilt even though both had slipped free of time to stand in the room with them.
Mal looked down at her. “So, what bad do you see coming, River?” Mal asked gently. Jayne’s brain returned to the present, closing all the other doors, and River moved away from Mal and reached out for Jayne. He backed away, but she followed until she could rest her hand against his arm.
“Doc, you want to do something here?” Jayne said, all his colors dancing around her, just her. The cracks faded and the Reaver minds retreated, grumbling their displeasure at being denied a meal.
“Bad. Whispering in the dark. Staining the black with more black.” River wanted to say more, but word spiders skittered away and she was afraid. If she said the word “Reavers,” Jayne’s dance would stumble and the world would crack. River was too tired. But they needed to know. In all the cracks she had never been able to tell them until after the first death that made all others inevitable. She snuck a peek past Jayne into one long crack that led back and back to a young man with dark skin and curled hair standing on a sunny planet.
“Shepherd Books is standing there in his uniform,” River whispered. “All the bad gathering.”
Brother corrected her. Always wanting her to only admit to seeing one world, only sometimes River was so tired she couldn’t figure out which world to describe, and Brother always told her and told her and told her what to see. “You mean his collar, River. Shepherds don’t really have uniforms,” he said now. But that isn’t what she meant.
River shook her head. “Black uniform with red buttons, white trim at the collar.” At least half of the Mals pulled guns at that description, but the shadow Mal in Brother’s reality just stared at her.
“Mal, is she describing a Special Services uniform?” Jayne asked.
“Seems like she is,” Mal agreed.
Jayne cursed, “Tee wuh duh pee-goo. We don’t need that kind of bad, Mal.”
“I ain’t disagreeing.”
River looked at the new colors in Mal. Then she looked at a newly forming stable center in Jayne, the colors at the very center just starting to harden into the first leg of newly minted frame, still cooling from the forge. She studied both men. “Mal should sleep with Jayne. I like Jayne’s hardness, but I’m too tired to dance.”
The room erupted at the world “hardness,” each man dragging a dozen images into the room until River had to blink away all the leaking figures. Mal’s male lover from the war. Brother’s college roommate. Jayne’s… River tilted her head, amazed at the number of men who crowded into the room. One with blond hair and dark eyes winked at her before giving Jayne a salacious look.
Brother wanted her normal, normal, normal, but none of them knew normal from a hole in the wall. Leaving the three of them to shout at each other about corruptions and hardness, various lovers crowding into the space, River wandered off to find Kaylee. When Kaylee worked on engines, her mind was all cool and slick and easy to slide around in. After dealing with the men, River wanted some easy.
Big Damn DogMal would go right on ignoring the changes in Jayne, only the women in his life seem determined to point out two things. One, Mal is a poophead. Two, Jayne needs him. The problem is that neither Mal nor Jayne is what you might call self-aware.
http://lit-gal.livejournal.com/287571.html - Chapter One
http://lit-gal.livejournal.com/296957.html - Chapter Two
TODAY'S CHAPTERS
http://lit-gal.livejournal.com/395768.html - Chapter Three
“Like a tithe of devotion,” River said. Jayne’s brain was dancing across the air. He’d plodded with iron heavy feet, but now he danced. River held out her hands, offering to dance with him, and his shadow body retreated. However, his brain still twirled, and River twirled with it.
“Stop that,” Jayne snapped. The shadow frowned, and River tried hard to hold onto the shadow and not the dancing streaks that tempted her. Brother always gave her more drugs when she ignored the shadows, and she didn’t like how the drugs made all the colors blur and turned to slick mud that slid through her brain leaving cold trails of slime behind. So she stilled and looked at Jayne.
“Shadow paths all winding,” she whispered as she watched new realities leak in through the growing cracks of the old. Water pushed at the walls, and one more push would send the river raging in a new direction—hopefully one without the piles of Reaver bodies lying at her feet, their brains tearing at her. Throwing her hands up around her head, River screamed and ran backwards until her back hit a wall and she collapsed to the floor shivering as those future Reaver minds ripped at her, their blackness smudging all the colors.
“What did you do?” Brother. No. She couldn’t let Reavers near Brother. River pushed herself up.
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“And why do I have trouble believing that?”
Jayne and Brother, colors clashing until they were crayons melting into each other, their shadows vanishing under the light. This was familiar. “I can kill you with my brain,” River said softly, the words an anchor to a moment. She stood outside the infirmary and Jayne was hurt. Scared. Before he’d feared them knowing. Then he’d feared for his life as Brother walked around his helpless shadow form. Now… now he didn’t fear.
“What in the gorram hell are you three doing?”
River turned her head to see the captain. Stained glass with a hundred realities and possibilities all winking at her. Colors flashed too fast for her to see, and she moved around Brother to Jayne. Jayne’s colors were slower. It didn’t hurt her head as much and his brain was still dancing.
“I don’t know what Jayne did, but he did something.”
“I walked in, and right off, she was dancing around me like I was a Maypole.”
“A Maypole—a structure erected in a community to encourage celebration and dancing.” River’s brain tripped through the cracks of reality and visited the Maypoles that had existed within her limited awareness. She hated that the cracks in realities and time only allowed her to see so far, but a little voice whispered that she could see too far already. She spun away from a crack that oozed the blackness of Reaver minds and found one with young people cavorting around a Maypole. “Cavort,” she said happily. Closing her eyes, she stayed there. The shadows were all around her, but they never danced for her the way the colors in the cracks did. They never danced the way Jayne’s brain was. Things shifted, and she liked the colors more than the shadows where Brother lived… where Brother wanted her to live.
“Seems like your sister is having a bad day.” Mal words, heavy in the air. He wasn’t dancing with Jayne yet. Colors shifted, but not enough.
“Mal should bed Jayne,” River proclaimed. She could see the crack and all its pretty colors. She should hide Brother medicine more often because the world in all its complex colors shifting realities was clearer when she could ignore the shadows that ruled his perceptions.
“Mal should what--”
“What in the gorram—”
“Mei, mei, you should come with me now.”
Shadow voices blending, but River danced away from the first brush of warm touch against her arm. Blindly, she groped for Jayne’s dancing, finding his shadow arm and holding on tight so Brother couldn’t take it.
“Jayne would be beautiful stripped by pleasure,” River said firmly, her brain finding another crack to explore.
“Get off me, Moonbrain!” Jayne’s shadow hands pushed at her, and River let herself dance with him, her shadow feet shifting as only her real self twirled through the universe. Shadows darkened and slowly took form and River could see Mal and Brother staring at her with open mouths. Brother’s reality was always clearer with Jayne because he danced with the now. Other people’s brains were forever lost in the “then” and the” yet,” but Jayne’s danced always in the now with only tendrils wandering off into time.
“Doc,” Mal said slowly. “It might be that you should consider giving her more medicine.”
Brother was frowning. “I think I need to check to see if she spit out her medicine somewhere in her room.”
“I did,” River confirmed. Brother’s face went all unhappy and his brain leaked into the past, dragging back images of River as a laughing little girl. River sighed. She hated those intruders. They should stay in the past, but Brother’s brain always leaked. Leaked and leaked.
“Mei, mei, let’s head back to the infirmary. I’ll get you more medicine,” Brother said, he held out shadow hands full of little dancing Rivers—six years old in a blue dress and ten years old in shorts with dirty knees and twelve years old with a book in hand, and all the Rivers didn’t like getting pulled out of time. They frowned at her loudly, so River abandoned Jayne and evaded Brother to reach Mal.
Clinging to his arm, she dug her fingers into the pewter and steel of his mind. Mal was stain-glass, a thousand Mals all standing around him. Soldier Mal, thief Mal, angry Mal, lover Mal. A hundred thousand realities a spun like a prism and River should have been blinded, but every single stain-glass window had the same metal framework so that no matter which glass spun in front of her, she could hold on.
“No medicine,” River said as firmly as she could. She could get control of the shadows and the light if Brother just stayed away from her. His colors danced like Jayne, no structure to hold them in place. But unlike Jayne, his colors bled into all the cracks dragging past and distant present and possible future all into one dizzying image with no stain-glass frame for River to cling to.
Mal looked down at her. “I think you need some medicine,” Mal said, but all his stained glass figures turned to look at her. That never happened before. River tilted her head at him and noticed that Jayne’s colors stained the edges of Mal’s glass. New cracks opened and realities shifted.
“I can’t see the bad coming with the medicine.”
Mal exchanged a look with Jayne before he looked down at her. “What bad, mei-mei?”
River tilted her head and closed her eyes as a thousand million hundred Reaver minds with their inky black souls threatened to soak into the colors of all the world.
“She’s doing some witching gou shi. I’m betting she told her brother about Ariel,” Jayne said, and River looked over. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Jayne was supposed to hide Ariel. Instead his dance paused and Ariel flowed up into time. Jayne’s face twisted with regret as he saw the scans. He wanted to call the betrayal off, but he’d kissed Christ. Too late.
“Do you really want to discuss Ariel?” Brother demanded, but now Mal was focusing on him, letting River cling to him without trying to dislodge her. She closed her eyes and wished Jayne would stop dancing with the past-crack. She counted on Jayne to wash away all the colors, sweeping them aside as irrelevant.
“What do you know about Ariel?” Mal asked.
Brother looked shocked. “I know I forgave Jayne.”
“For what?” Mal tried to cross his arms, frowning when he couldn’t because River wouldn’t relinquish her grip.
“For betraying us.”
“How?” Mal poked, and at least half the Mals now glared at Brother with the other half eyeing River, and one or two studying Jayne. Mals gave her a headache, but as long as Jayne kept spinning into the past, Mal was her best choice if she wanted to stay stuck in time without the medicine.
“River told me he felt guilty, okay?” Brother hated that. He hated admitting ignorance. He wanted to be the hero with the answers, but he couldn’t see Jayne’s betrayal or his guilt even though both had slipped free of time to stand in the room with them.
Mal looked down at her. “So, what bad do you see coming, River?” Mal asked gently. Jayne’s brain returned to the present, closing all the other doors, and River moved away from Mal and reached out for Jayne. He backed away, but she followed until she could rest her hand against his arm.
“Doc, you want to do something here?” Jayne said, all his colors dancing around her, just her. The cracks faded and the Reaver minds retreated, grumbling their displeasure at being denied a meal.
“Bad. Whispering in the dark. Staining the black with more black.” River wanted to say more, but word spiders skittered away and she was afraid. If she said the word “Reavers,” Jayne’s dance would stumble and the world would crack. River was too tired. But they needed to know. In all the cracks she had never been able to tell them until after the first death that made all others inevitable. She snuck a peek past Jayne into one long crack that led back and back to a young man with dark skin and curled hair standing on a sunny planet.
“Shepherd Books is standing there in his uniform,” River whispered. “All the bad gathering.”
Brother corrected her. Always wanting her to only admit to seeing one world, only sometimes River was so tired she couldn’t figure out which world to describe, and Brother always told her and told her and told her what to see. “You mean his collar, River. Shepherds don’t really have uniforms,” he said now. But that isn’t what she meant.
River shook her head. “Black uniform with red buttons, white trim at the collar.” At least half of the Mals pulled guns at that description, but the shadow Mal in Brother’s reality just stared at her.
“Mal, is she describing a Special Services uniform?” Jayne asked.
“Seems like she is,” Mal agreed.
Jayne cursed, “Tee wuh duh pee-goo. We don’t need that kind of bad, Mal.”
“I ain’t disagreeing.”
River looked at the new colors in Mal. Then she looked at a newly forming stable center in Jayne, the colors at the very center just starting to harden into the first leg of newly minted frame, still cooling from the forge. She studied both men. “Mal should sleep with Jayne. I like Jayne’s hardness, but I’m too tired to dance.”
The room erupted at the world “hardness,” each man dragging a dozen images into the room until River had to blink away all the leaking figures. Mal’s male lover from the war. Brother’s college roommate. Jayne’s… River tilted her head, amazed at the number of men who crowded into the room. One with blond hair and dark eyes winked at her before giving Jayne a salacious look.
Brother wanted her normal, normal, normal, but none of them knew normal from a hole in the wall. Leaving the three of them to shout at each other about corruptions and hardness, various lovers crowding into the space, River wandered off to find Kaylee. When Kaylee worked on engines, her mind was all cool and slick and easy to slide around in. After dealing with the men, River wanted some easy.