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[river_meimei]

In one sense: River is curled up in her bunk's narrow bed, a tidy lump under blankets with dark hair fanning all around her head. She's sound asleep.



In another sense: River is in a maze, old-fashioned, planetside -- a hedge of high green bushes with white flowers, with a floor of incongruously dead dry grass. It crackles under her ballet slippers. The blossoming walls are too dense to see through, rearing twice as tall as River, and the corridors are green and cool and silent. It's a labyrinth.

She doesn't know her way through. But in the dream, she hasn't really stopped to notice that. She just has to keep moving, and she'll get... somewhere.

She hasn't really thought about that one, either.

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[lastgunslinger]

Around a corner: a single rose, growing in the middle of the path. Nothing special. Just a rose.

Another corner: an autumn leaf, orange-gold, brilliant.

Then, one more corner: a

(stone, a leaf, a)

door.

It's standing open.

[river_meimei]

The key to this door isn't hers. But it's in her hand, an ornate affair of ancient iron and scrollwork; and it doesn't matter anyway, because the door is open. There isn't even a lock.

(Not right now.)

The path stretches to either side, verdant, branching, endless. She ignores it, and slips through the doorway.

[lastgunslinger]

An oak-framed mirror stands to one side, reflecting greenery back on itself. To the right of the mirror, a tall, high-backed oak chair.

In the chair, a man, unsmiling. He has his back to the door.

[river_meimei]

River pauses for an instant in the doorway, her bare toes curling in grass. She's not surprised; only looking.

There are many reasons to con your vantage.

Then, slowly -- steadily -- she moves.

[lastgunslinger]

Slowly and steadily, Roland stands from the chair and turns around. He's not smiling; neither is he foreboding.

One word:

"Hile."

[river_meimei]

"Gunslinger," River says softly.

(Anything, said right, can be a kind of endearment.)

"Hile."

[lastgunslinger]

"Will'ee bide?" Roland holds out a hand (the one with the missing finger); now there are two high-backed chairs. "We'll call it a palaver, if thee would."

[river_meimei]

River's hand has always looked slim and dainty tucked inside Roland's weathered, scarred one. Now is no exception.

She nods, and her smile is very faint.

"I came," she says, even though maybe this was her destination and maybe it wasn't (and maybe it still isn't, but does it matter?) and what she means is yes.

[lastgunslinger]

Without moving or warning they're seated in the chairs. Roland is already reaching in his shirt pocket for his tobacco pouch. "Your brother," he says, graveled and calm, "wouldn't like it. Would you like one?"

[river_meimei]

"I don't." Just as conversational.

She holds up her palm anyway.

[lastgunslinger]

Another fast jump; River's holding a lit cigarette; Roland is lifting his to his lips. The tobacco pouch is nowhere to be seen.

Somewhere: the sound of crickets.

[river_meimei]

River doesn't raise her cigarette. It rests between two fingers, held with the easy habit of a lifelong smoker, but she only lets it burn. The smoke coils upward in a thin white stream. It smells of rose petals and old clean leather.

She leans back in her chair -- comfortable as an armchair, despite the oak ladderback -- and tucks her legs up underneath her.

Time passes. A minute, an hour, a year.

[lastgunslinger]

"Your brother," he says.

That's all.

[river_meimei]

"Simon."

In the waking world, at the moment, this is where River would stare down at the table or her hands, tense and fretful and quiet. River's not much good with awkward subjects, and emotionally laden ones.

Here, now, in this waystation of a hedge-chamber, she only breathes out, and watches two streams of white smoke twine through the air between them.

Low: "I want him to stay."

It's not miserable. It's not pleading. It's just quiet, and wistful.

[lastgunslinger]

"Yes." The single word is reflective. "He will not. He will return, I think. But he'll go."

[river_meimei]

"I know."

Their chairs stand on a floor layered with carpeted rugs. The patterns are multicolored, dizzyingly complex.

Now, even in the dream, it's them River's staring at. But she can see Roland's face anyway. (It's a dream.)

Her voice is low, and layered with tangled emotions. "It's an excellent opportunity."

[lastgunslinger]

Still in that same slow, thoughtful tone: "Not all opportunities are like the Academy, my dear. He'll con his vantage. He knows that much now."

[river_meimei]

River's glance flicks up. Her mouth twists in a small, subdued version of her old I know that, dummy face.

"I know it," she says, anyway.

"Constant checkpoints."

That's (mostly) not the problem.

Somewhere indefinably near, the crickets sing on.

[lastgunslinger]

"Then what don't you know?"

He's blowing smoke rings.

[river_meimei]

The cigarette in River's hand is a thorny stem, the end smoldering with the same drifting white smoke. Maybe it always was. She holds it with the same careless, dreamy grace.

The walls around them are white, painted, clean. They stretch up past vision.



Small: "I don't want to leave."

[lastgunslinger]

Peacefully

(and smiling)

he says, "Then don't leave."

[river_meimei]

"He's Simon."

It's not the same as I have to. It's not even the same as I will.

But it's small, and sad, and strangely (here in this dream) peaceful.

[lastgunslinger]

"He makes his decisions, as you do yours. No shame, if they're not the same."

One arched eyebrow. "You might even learn something, mayhap."

[river_meimei]

No shift: they're on a couch, old and sagging, with stuffing billowing out from scattered rents in the upholstery.

(It's popcorn.)

River leans against his brown-coated shoulder in silence.

[lastgunslinger]

Roland, monolithic, seems comfortable maintaining it.

In front of them: a map of the Anglo-Sino Union of Allied Planets.

It moves, slowly.

[river_meimei]

Eventually: "It's hard."

She isn't whining. Even in her dreams, River lost the habit of self-pity a long while ago, and this isn't a dream to bring it back out.

But Roland's shoulder is warm against her cheek, and the map in front of them swings through its colorful rotations (inaccurate, but in the dream it isn't), and her voice is soft and sad.

[lastgunslinger]

"Yes." And Roland is thoughtful, rather than impatient. "But not the hardest you've done, I wot."

[river_meimei]

River makes a little face.

It says, I know.

And it says, But still.

[lastgunslinger]

"Then when will you tell?"

[river_meimei]

The answer in the waking world is: soon.

Today, maybe, when the day has properly begun. It's nearly morning. And the deadline's coming up fast for Simon and Kaylee to settle their housing arrangements.

The answer here is: "I will."

[lastgunslinger]

When Roland looks at River, it's with that piercing dead-on blue gaze that's more intimidating than the gun by far.

Simply:

"It is very well."

[river_meimei]

River meets his

(faded bombadier)

eyes in silence for a long moment. She doesn't flinch, or blink. Instead, one corner of her mouth crooks up, just enough to see.

"I miss you," she whispers. This, too, is wistfully accepting.

[lastgunslinger]

And Roland replies, with something approaching uncustomary warmth.

(Uncustomary, if you're not River Tam.)

His eyes stay bright; the rest begins to fade.

[river_meimei]

River's eyes fill with tears.

Stay, she says, Roland, stay, but she can't talk. The words break on the air, splintering around her, and no sound is audible.

The couch is gone too; the rug is gone, the walls, and the hedge and the mirrors and the fine drifting cigarette smoke. And Roland.



River is left in a narrow cobblestoned street, alone, on a warm summer's night. She's wearing toe shoes, taking tiny delicate steps (pas de bourrée, triple run, assemblé) en pointe, even though her feet are relaxed and comfortable as they never could be doing in this position. She's holding a cupcake; it has sprinkles. The candle in it burns a faded, piercing blue. She doesn't remember why she was sad a moment ago.



But when she wakes, she will.