dangermousie | Night: Firefly fanfic

Title: Night
Fandom: Firefly
Info: PG, 302 words. No spoilers beyond the pilot. Not mine, not profiting, etc...
Summary: Something of a Simon and River piece. Early in the season.

He has been running for so long, sometimes he doesn’t think he knows how to stop. He might have forgotten how. Before, he tried not to think too many steps ahead, or the enormity and the true nature of what he was doing would swallow him whole and he would just sit in his rented room, on the corner of his rented bed, and start shivering and never stop.

Now he doesn’t think too far ahead for a different reason. The insurmountable has happened and he only half-believes it, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Now his days are filled with the minutia of detail to ensure his victory is not meaningless. He has no white charger but he rides to her rescue again and again, tilting with phantoms. Optimism or despair are equally futile, equally draining. He can’t help but hope every time her sentences coalesce, every time his sister looks out of the meaningless eyes, in there somewhere, only to have it all fall shattered down at his feet again, as her mind slips away. And he falls for it and hopes, every time. And picking up is twice as hard, every time.

Simon lies on his bed, still neat, a bed of a polite stranger detained for a brief visit. His eyes are open.

____

The lights and colors mesh into patterns that slip through her fingers before she can decipher them. Meaning pours, unfiltered, into her brain. She wants to yell, or cry, or whimper, but she knows it will not do any good, so she refrains. Her hands pluck at her coverlet. The smells are too sharp, the colors are too bright and the thoughts slip through ragged edges, slivers of pain. She is a good girl, playing hide and seek with the monsters. River makes no noise.