(no subject)
Jan. 27th, 2007 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
river_meimeiWhat's the best place to read somebody else's files about things you would really, really rather not know?
If you're River, it's apparently underneath the kitchen table.
She's curled up with one knee to her chest and the other leg tucked beneath her, scanning down another text file on Kitty's laptop with tears trickling slowly down her cheeks and soaking into her skirt.
If you're River, it's apparently underneath the kitchen table.
She's curled up with one knee to her chest and the other leg tucked beneath her, scanning down another text file on Kitty's laptop with tears trickling slowly down her cheeks and soaking into her skirt.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 05:10 am (UTC)Then, he comes back. Kneels down.
"...River?"
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 05:24 am (UTC)Pause.
Return, and River closes the laptop with a hasty soft click just before he kneels. She looks at him sidelong and silent, her eyes red and face splotchy.
(He'll recognize the laptop, if he looks. This isn't 26th-century tech. It's not 21st-century either, if you get right down to it, but it would pass for a customized PC laptop if you didn't know better. It's slim, and sleek, with no logo but a tiny silver cat, and Piotr's seen it many times before.)
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 05:39 am (UTC)"Little one, why do you have that?"
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 05:41 am (UTC)"Said she could."
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 06:33 am (UTC)"Do you...have any more questions?"
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 06:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 07:31 am (UTC)"I don't want her there. I want to take her away, help her, but she does not want it."
"Some days, I almost do it. I walk in, think 'I will not wear this collar', and I think, 'I will take her away today. She would be happy on Serenity.'"
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 07:45 am (UTC)She pulls her knee closer against her chest, slim fingers winding around her ankle.
Very softly, "I know."
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 07:53 am (UTC)"And I think of what would happen to our friends, our family, if I do it. If I take her away, and leave them there. If I abandon them, if I make Kitty abandon them."
Beat.
"Thinking of all the people I would kill if I took her away does not...hurt me as much as I know it should. That it would have, years ago."
"That is what stops me."
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 08:04 am (UTC)River's eyes are bright with tears.
"All the bounds."
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 08:09 am (UTC)"We can't, River. Not now."
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 08:20 am (UTC)"Bù guăn nĭshì fŏu xĭ huān, I know it, wait for the code and follow! You think she forgets. Not a jot!"
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 08:24 am (UTC)"What code?"
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 08:43 am (UTC)He's trying to understand.
"A code Kitty cracked?"
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 08:59 am (UTC)But the impatient sidelong glance she casts Piotr suggests that he is entirely missing the point.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 04:11 am (UTC)"River, I don't...I don't understand."
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 04:18 am (UTC)She doesn't answer.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 04:28 am (UTC)He does what he thinks is best. He crawls under the table with her.
"Please."
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 04:30 am (UTC)She doesn't move towards him. But she doesn't pull away, either.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 04:40 am (UTC)"I'm sorry."
All of it. That he is still just Peter, the big, dumb farmboy, and he can't make sense of her, for upsetting her, and that Kitty won't let them help her.
She never wanted to be a princess in a tower, he thinks.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 04:48 am (UTC)"All the swords are inside," she whispers, tear-choked.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 05:26 am (UTC)"Da," he says slowly.
He can see his own pain and memories like that, swords pushing out of his own skin. He can even see himself in his mind's eye, hanging there among the bramble. He tries to think of Kitty like that, but it all comes to her externalizing her pain. With violence. She is much better at that.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 05:41 am (UTC)(River doesn't speak Russian.
Technically. Or, at least, she didn't a minute ago.)
"Never stops."
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 05:58 am (UTC)He thinks on that one again.
And offers out his hand to her, palm up.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 06:02 am (UTC)Face bleak, sober and tear-streaked.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 06:39 am (UTC)He doesn't say it will be okay, that everything will get better. But he does push her hair behind her ears and offer River his shoulder to lean on.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 06:56 am (UTC)One shaking breath, a second, and then she slowly slumps sideways until she's collapsed against Piotr's shoulder, and sobbing helplessly.