Work Text:
Prompt: 017 – Illness (list 2)
Word Count: 583
Progress: 18/100
She hadn't the heart to wake him, so she let him sleep. She knew that sleep, for him, was hard to come by – too often broken by dreams of everything he'd lost. He was a man incapable of letting go of his shadows. He was a man incapable of letting go of Shadow.
Not that she expected him too. His past was what had forged him into the man he was now – stronger than he knew; greater than he realized. He wore his dead like a cloak, kept them alive in his heart and his mind and in every action he made. It was how he honored them.
But it was killing him too. She could see him, dying a little more every day. Pieces of him just fell away as his burden became greater. He was turning into the stones he carried.
She knew Zoe saw it, but Zoe was broken as well, still reeling from having to leave her heart behind on Mr. Universe's cold moon. Zoe could not help him.
Jayne, of course, couldn't see it at all. To him, the dead were dead. You raised a glass or ten and drank to their memory, told stories about remembering when, and laid them to rest. You didn't lug them around inside you until there was no you anymore. That was just stupid.
And Kaylee and Simon – well, they were too caught up in each other to really see anything at all. The euphoria of surviving, of finally having each other, had made them blind to anyone else. They'd come down off their rainbow soon enough, but in the meantime nothing existed for them outside the joy they found in the other.
It wouldn't make a difference anyway – River was the only one on the crew that could see ghosts, besides Mal. The only difference between them was she knew when to let the ghosts go now, and he had never mastered that.
It was almost like an illness, or an addiction. As long as he kept his ghosts with him – lived for them - he wouldn't need to live for himself or for anybody else. And she didn't want him to give up his ghosts – not really. They were an inexorable part of him now and she recognized this. She just wanted him to realize that he could hold on to things other than his ghosts – her, for example. She would help him carry his burden, if only he would let her. She understood him.
Tonight, when he had come to the cockpit, she had sensed a change in him. They had talked and he had looked at her and seen her and it had been good. She had called him Tantalus and Mars, God of War, and he hadn't objected. And when she had said she was Venus he had whispered her name and kissed her.
And now, he was sleeping, hunched over the seat she was sitting in. The floor underneath him was cold and hard and the way he was propped against her knees couldn't be comfortable. But her lap was warm and her heart was open and he had been so very tired.
She ran her fingers gently through his hair, pushing it from his face and smiling at the little boy she saw hidden underneath his skin. The air around them was cool, but she didn't mind. He needed his sleep and she needed to talk to his ghosts, to figure out how she could help him.