InsaneJournal

Who: River Tam and Derek Hale
What: Hugs, rambles, bonding and giving Derek his Birthday present.
When: November 18, 2018 (Backdated)
Where: Just outside the compound, near the forest
Status: Complete
Note: Chinese text inside, hold cursor over text for translation.


The fire in her hand was warm against the cold of the night as it slowly ate up the wood of the match, slowly getting closer and closer to her fingers with every second.

River had been out here since before the sun set, walking around and around, barefoot in the grass that covered the land leading to the woods, having escaped through a window while no one was paying attention. She’d spent a few hours with a fallen branch in her hands, walking around the grass pulling it behind her seemingly walking in circles. Her motions had been too intentional to be random, but what if anything she’d done would be anyone’s guess and it was now too dark to see the majority of the lines she’d dragged into the dirt, centered around a small pile of stones she’d put together in a circle.

The stones, legs tucked under her as she threw yet another match into the small camp fire she’d made. Her eyes never left it, as if she were watching a pyre. While she’d calmed down over the last week since Simon’s departure, whatever progress she’d made while here seemed to be slowly slipping away. She’d started speaking nonsense worse than normal, she hid from people most days and there had been rooms with items thrown around in her wake. She would jump at shadows in the light, and stand in the darkness as if it calmed her.

The wind picked up around her, and she threw another match into the fire as a shiver went down her spine, the cold against her as she didn’t have a coat.

“14, 34, 183. Sparks of life on the horizon won’t save the sentinel. Requirements unmet for turnover and consummation of matter in ambient stars. Direct routes in the snow.”

Whatever had driven Derek from the Facility had definitely led him to this spot. The mingled scents helped clarify things inasmuch as they could. Wood smoke. Freshly turned earth. Pain. Sadness. The barest undercurrent of a sickly-sweet melange of chemicals. River.

A little of the tension that had followed him from the building melted from his shoulders, but enough of it remained that he didn't so much walk into the clearing as lope into it. He took in the patterns on the ground with eyes that barely needed any light at all to see, but it wasn't anything he recognized. It probably meant something to her, but that seemed to be a lot of things. Derek picked his way over and around the circles, careful not to disturb them, until he was standing in front of her, just off to the side so he wasn't directly between her and the fire. It was more than obvious she was cold, and he knew better than to be the asshole who stood between her and the only source of warmth in the area—besides him, now.

"你在这里做什么，月华？你会感冒的," he said even as he took off his own jacket and put it around her shoulders. He barely needed it anyway.

At first, River said nothing. She stared into the fire in front of her, the warmth of the small campfire doing something to keep the cool of the night air from her front. She slowly curled into Derek’s jacket - which was far too big on her much smaller frame - wrapping it around herself like a suit of armor, tucking her bare feet underneath her.

"冰冻三尺非一日之寒.” Although she said them, the words sounded so unfocused and far away, as she looked at the fire that it was a question of whether she’d actually heard the question.

“Unseen overlap beyond spectrum. Fallen through fabric pulled at the seams. Same place, overlapping on and on until it's gone.” River’s eyes moved to her left, to one of the circles she’d drawn in the dirt. She clutched the matches in her hand, crushing them somewhat.

Turning back, she glanced up at Derek, the small fire casting shadows on her face. “It’s cold in the Black.”

His responding laugh at the aphorism was just a puff of cloudy air that dissipated just as quickly as it formed. While he couldn't figure out what she was saying most of the time, sometimes she could get to the heart of it—or maybe just scratch the surface. Or watch the surface roll by without a clue.

Tonight was one of the latter, at least for now.

Derek let out a near-silent breath and sat next to River before carefully putting an arm around her shoulders. "It's cold out here too, 月季花. Y'know, since it's November. And night. Granted, I know which one would kill you faster, but I'd say it's better to be in a situation where getting warm and staying safe is a viable option. Why did you come out here, River? You know it can be dangerous out here all by yourself."

Almost automatically, River leaned against Derek. It was a familiar gesture, one she had taken comfort in many times before in a different place, a different time, from a different person who was no longer with her. Gone… gone… gone… The word echoed around her, sending ripples through the air and leaving a dark tone in her ears.

“Uncontrolled, uncontained, I am danger in the dark. Never the same, the old is dead. See what remains.” In a graceful motion, River took the remains of the pack of matches she’d taken from the kitchen and held them out to Derek, without moving her head. She could see her breath forming in front of her and she dug her feet into the grass to keep them warm. Thankfully Derek was warm too. It reminded her of sneaking into Inara’s quarters; she had always kept her blankets warm.

“Loss, food, plans. Love, passion, petulance. Fear.” River began rocking a bit, her hands moving to her temples as she seemed to be recalling something. “Too much. Too loud. Too many. Voices without sound. Words with no form. All at once, echoing off walls, ignoring rules. Vibrational acoustic wave transmissions require creation and reception.”

He took the matches with his free hand, and put them in his pocket. His other hand moved in small, soothing movements over River's shoulders. Her words swirled around his head, but none of them really stuck beyond the voices. He remembered moving to New York with his sister after the fire, and just how loud everything had been outside of the natural noises of living in the middle of a nature preserve for most of his life at that point. "Focus on one. Focus on me, on my voice. It's what my mom used to tell us when we were young. Find the safe sound and let it fill your head. Makes other things more bearable."

Safe. The word felt wrong, it felt sharp and broken, like it had cracked in the middle and splintered into pins in her arms and legs. It had left a void where the voice could be. “It’s lost. An object in space, beyond touch. They talk without voice, souls grasping beyond barriers for what’s gone. Places they can’t take, trades they can’t make.”

She reached for something in the pocket of her dress, her finger tracing the first of the spirals. For a moment, River seemed in something of a trance, staring into the fire, her eyes growing wider and more panicked. She couldn’t find it, it wasn’t there, it was gone. Instead, she pulled her knees up a bit more, curling into a bit tighter of a ball against Derek.

"Blue. Different but beautiful. Claws that hide truths. They’re spinning, spinning and the planted seeds root.”

Her heart rabbited in his ear, loud as a kickdrum. He clearly hadn't said the right thing, and was at a complete loss as to what that could even be. Derek's palms were itching to draw the pain away from her, and his fingers squeezed her arm lightly, but he ignored the impulse. If his own jacket hadn't been in the way, he would have done it, just as easily as breathing. He frowned at the fire and the swirls in the ground and struggled with wanting to help, but not knowing how.

"My eyes," he said slowly after a slightly stunned moment. "They used to be blue. I… made a mistake when I was younger. Thought I was doing something for love, but I was young and stupid. Well, younger and more stupid than I am now. The guilt, it does that to us, to werewolves. Manifests as blue eyes. Gold for betas and omegas, blue for killers, and red for Alphas. Three connecting spirals." He spread his free hand out in front of him. "I suppose they do hide a lot, huh? I hide myself all the time. Might be nice not to have to anymore, in a wider sense. Not just here."

“Triskelion. Same as on your back.” A tattoo that River had never seen herself, but knew was there. The same as the one she’d carved, currently being traced by her finger in her own pocket. She leaned a bit closer, enjoying the extra warmth, her mind flashing to ‘family’ meals in Serenity’s galley - the orange light of the fire, the feeling of safety… “The wolf needs to be free, hiding is another cage. Sometimes necessary, be safe, be careful, hide away from hands that reach. Squeaky doors open slowly.”

Derek's surprise only registered physically as a very small tightening of said back, right between his shoulder blades. The way she knew things made him think of Lydia sometimes, how her banshee abilities let her glimpse things no mortal mind could conceive. He wondered now if it was like that for River, but rather than ask, he simply hummed in response to her observations. Her last analogy made him chuckle, low enough to almost be swallowed up by the crackle of the small fire. After that, he grew quiet, musing over various things as they flitted through his head, questions he had about her life before. Finally he settled on, "Tell me about traveling in space. What were your favorite parts?"

“Been around the ‘Verse: Osiris, Whitehall, Persephone. All of them different. The Black is big and you’re very small, just an object floating through.” River’s voice was almost wistful as she replied, sounding a bit more put together than before. Up above them, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, giving a clear view to the stars which River spent so many nights watching, sneaking to the roof when Simon had fallen asleep - but not so much the last few weeks. “It’s cold and quiet, except when it’s not, monsters hide in the dark,” she shivered a bit at that, clamping down on something that felt like it was about to start bubbling up. “We found a home in the Black, a home on Serenity, a family. ‘Round the table, passing the protein, stealing Jayne’s roll.”

River couldn’t help but smile a little. The warm feeling at the memories. They were her best ones. The moments when - for the most part - everyone was in sync, whether it was because of the food and drink, or conversation.

For a few moments, Derek got a little lost in the sparks and the dancing red and orange flames. He could just make out where it was licking blue against the kindling and small stack of wood. While the words weren't the same, she'd conjured up home, made him think of the one he'd left long before he ever got pulled into this universe, but also the one he was looking toward now, building for himself. He could never hope to replace Simon for River, but he hoped maybe someday he could make things a little better for her. Not that he had any clue how, except to just sit and be there for her.

He glanced over at her and felt his own mouth twitch upward. Her scent had turned sweet, and not for the first time, Derek wondered what she might have been like when she was little, back before whatever may have happened to her happened to her. He set those thoughts aside, along with the ones about all the monsters that hid in plain sight too, in favor of chuckling lightly. "A whole galaxy, and the planets have ordinary names. Did people lose their creativity in the distant future? We should do them a favor and start naming them fun things now."

A smile crept onto River’s face as she tried to hold down a small laugh. The idea of a funny named planet was odd and funny. “Settlers brought their customs and cultures, their names and their dreams. Earth-That-Was’ influence is felt, but foreign. Hundreds of planets and moons around the five.” River glanced at the stick she’d been making the circles with earlier but didn’t pick it up.

“Georgia: Huang Long, the Yellow Dragon; Kalidasa: Xuan Wu, the Black Tortoise; Red Sun: Zue Que: The Red Phoenix; The Core - The White Sun: Bai Hu, the White Tiger and," she paused, feeling a chill run down her spine. "the Blue Sun, Qing Long, the Blue Dragon." Reaching out on reflex, River felt the absence of Simon all the more, the hole that was left, but Derek’s being there, she was able to sense him instead. His mind felt different, her brother was always soft spoken, like a violin that played faster and higher as he got more worried. Derek’s mind was louder, more things intertwined within… like a major chord played on a trio of cellos.

"Earth-That-Was?" Derek took in a deep breath, drawing the scent of the natural world around him in order to ground himself. He and Steve had talked about space travel at one point, and he found the whole thing fascinating, but his entire existence was predicated on the Lunar orbit. Without any idea of what his body might do without its presence, he thought it safer to keep two feet planted right on Terra Firma. "Does that mean humanity moved beyond our galaxy? Outside of the Milky Way?"

“Earth got used up. Terraformed the new galaxy because we had to. Never goes smooth. Terraforming, transferred plants, animals, Shepard’s bible, story of Noah, ark is still problematic. Proof is in the past… future… dimensional barrier beyond eyesight—” she cut herself off and paused for a second, closing her eyes. She listened to the trees. She wanted the familiar feel but felt the cello, it was… similar. “Many planets, not the same, but home. Suns and moon in the sky. Some controlled, some more free, run by their own rules.”

Try as he might, Derek couldn't quite cast his own myopic understanding beyond what he could see, what he could smell, what he could feel just as surely as the beat of the heart in his chest. The idea that things had gotten so bad on Earth that its people had to escape to the stars left him cold and sad. And this wasn't even his Earth. There was a better than good chance it wasn't River's either. Maybe at this point it was just the principle of the thing.

He let out a small musing hum, and then glanced over at his young friend in askance. It's not like he was so wrapped up in his own head that he hadn't caught the words dimensional barrier, but she went on, and his thumb moved softly over her shoulder as though to encourage her. "Sounds about right, for flinging us out into the stars. It's all patterns, isn't it? Just the scale has changed. It's getting late. And colder. Wanna come with me to find Kaylee? I'm pretty sure she'd like to reminisce about the good times too."

“Patterns, history forgotten and repeated. Human nature, need for order against the want of individualism. Wars, peace, secrets… Sacrifices to keep her safe.” River trailed off there, eyes drifting into the still burning fire. For a moment she saw a figure in it, but it was gone in the blink of an eye, the same blink where her focus seemed to shift. Derek’s words about leaving here. Kaylee, she was a warm presence, a twinkle of bells…

“Strawberries,” she said suddenly. “If there are any, we should get them.”

Derek didn't like to make assumptions, but he did so now by figuring the "her" in this scenario was River herself. Losing Simon hadn't been fair on multiple levels, the least of which was missing the opportunity to get to know the man and his history—and that of his sister's. This, in turn, made him think of Laura and Cora and the lengths he would have gone to if he hadn't been wrapped in his own melodramatic bullshit. Fortunately, River’s request yanked him out of his own thoughts, and he nodded with a growing smile. "We'll look on our way through. Maybe see if there's any sweet cream, too. Make it a party."

Strawberries and cream. Kaylee would like that. River could almost see the smile on her almost-sister’s face if they could get the items from the kitchen. But the word ‘Party’ suddenly reminded her. It had been in her pocket this whole time. It was solid, carved from the wood she’d found, using tools from the lab she shouldn’t have snuck into. The two robots inside had been happy for the company, she could see they had been lonely, but surprised at someone coming in through the air vents instead of the door.

“You didn’t have a party,” she sat up a little, giving herself a little more room to move the object from her pocket. “But this is yours.”

The object was a wooden replica of the round stone triskele amulet. It was smooth, made of a dark wood, she’d found in the forest they sat on the edge of. “Alpha, beta, omega.”

He took the gift in emotional silence. Naturally, he had questions. So many questions. But all of them were overwhelmed by the tightness in his chest and lump in his throat. Derek gave her a quick one-armed hug and then left it there around her shoulders as they started back toward the building. "Thanks, River," he said a little while later. "This means a lot."

It meant pack. It meant home.