river_meimei | (no subject)

(no subject)

What'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.

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River looks away.

He hunches forward and looks at the floor.

"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.'"

River's head slowly turns.

She pulls her knee closer against her chest, slim fingers winding around her ankle.

Very softly, "I know."

"But, she is there. And she is so very sure that what she is doing will help us, that she is in the right, that she is stronger then any cage."

"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."

"She's watching them."

River's eyes are bright with tears.

"All the bounds."

"We can't, River. Not now."

"I know it!" she shouts at him, suddenly furious, her hands jerking into the air.

"Bù guăn nĭshì fŏu xĭ huān, I know it, wait for the code and follow! You think she forgets. Not a jot!"

He doesn't move.

"What code?"

"That's the point," River snaps, and turns away sharply, eyes squeezing shut.

"There isn't..."

He's trying to understand.

"A code Kitty cracked?"

River is silent.

But the impatient sidelong glance she casts Piotr suggests that he is entirely missing the point.

He's lost here.

"River, I don't...I don't understand."

River squeezes her eyes shut, hunching into herself and away from Piotr.

She doesn't answer.

This isn't working.

He does what he thinks is best. He crawls under the table with her.

"Please."

"Exactly."

She doesn't move towards him. But she doesn't pull away, either.

He looks down again.

"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.

River flinches.

"All the swords are inside," she whispers, tear-choked.

He doesn't get the reference. But, he thinks on it, nonetheless.

"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.

"Vsyegda," she whispers, eyes closed. всегда: always.

(River doesn't speak Russian.

Technically. Or, at least, she didn't a minute ago.)

"Never stops."

He starts when she speaks Russian. River doesn't speak Russian.

He thinks on that one again.

And offers out his hand to her, palm up.

It's a moment before she looks at him.

Face bleak, sober and tear-streaked.

He reaches out and snakes an arm around her waist, pulling her close, and wiping at her cheeks with his free hand.

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.

River doesn't resist. She closes her eyes, letting Piotr wipe at her tears while her face slowly crumples.

One shaking breath, a second, and then she slowly slumps sideways until she's collapsed against Piotr's shoulder, and sobbing helplessly.

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