Who: Simon Tam and River Tam Where: Building A, Room 108B When: May 31, evening. What: River dropped off the map, then popped up with a demand that Simon come and visit her. Given her tendency to be annoyingly present in the middle of everyone's business, this is a mite troubling. Simon comes to check on her. Rating: Possible PG for swearing. Status: Complete
Simon hadn't heard much from his sister other those few times he'd gone looking for her. He knew that River's self-inflicted isolation was certainly connected to the chess game so many days before. He knew that his sister had had a strange breakdown that she wasn't sharing with him, and he really wasn't surprised, seeing as he tended to have to medicate her when she got a little lost in the crazy.
After grabbing a few apples and a sandwich to go, Simon made his way over to Building A. Room 108B was the final destination. One day he'd find out that 108A was occupied by a person of the masculine persuasion, which would probably not be the most ideal for River, but really, right now Simon had more important things to worry about. Say like star charts pinned all over the room, some on the bed, some on the floor, and in the midst of this celestial chaos was his brilliant little sister.
"River?" Simon just stood in the doorway, staring in at the mess. He was definitely concerned. "River? What are you doing? Where did you get these? You're not fixing them are you?" Yes, he remembered the Book Bible incident.
You didn't have to be a psychic to read the exasperation on River's face. She rolled her eyes skyward - coincidentally, at a page of notebook paper with a hand-drawn diagram of Orion. "I made them," she said, as if it should be obvious. The scraps were everywhere, cobbled together like a mosaic or puzzle. The scale was not perfect, but it was as near as she could get without more precise instruments. A ruler. A ruler, a pen, paper and her eyes; with those tools, she'd built a model of the galaxy.
It had been the work of over a week. She'd been obsessing since the night of the chess game, when she'd gone outside to purge the troubling stranger from her mind and had found even more troubling stars overhead. "They're wrong. The geometry is wrong, even taking into account the changed vantage point, they should be--" River cut herself off abruptly and jabbed a finger up at her wall. "Everything is curved. We're slipping back."
No. That wasn't going to do it, he wouldn't understand. River exhaled through her nose and raked both of her hands through her hair in a frustrated tug. "Look," she demanded. "The stories in the sky are wrong. Just look."
Simon didn't step into the room, not yet anyway. He just stared at it all from his vantage point at the doorway. Some of the stars he recognized from history class. The forgotten gods and goddesses and little people who found their way into the ancient stories and stars. Not all of them would he fully understand. They weren't his stars.
"River." His brows furrowed, and he leaned in slightly as if he were sharing a secret or telling her something that's indelicate. "These aren't our stars." She probably knew that already, but sometimes focus could skew memory and common sense. He took a lean against the doorjamb heavily. These aren't their stars.
"Where are these stars?" There were a few that looked right, but they didn't fit in with the rest. The sheet beside one constellation River had called "Baby Pig" long ago was definitely not "Father's Nose." It looked more like a spoon, a dipper than a nose. "Where did you see these?"
River lifted her shoulders into a careless shrug. "Outside." Simon was solicitous. Simon was gentle; when he had bad news, he tried to ease his baby sister into it. River? River dropped bombs, heedless of how unsettling the information might be. Truth was Truth; if she couldn't protect herself from it, how could she protect others? "'The technology level seems to be around twenty-first century Earth.' That's what he said; I have the math. The geometry is wrong unless you compensate. Time, space, back down the curve of its passing to an origin." A flurry of paper stirred up around River as she heaved herself up from the ground - half formed maps and sketches flew about her like snowflakes. She dove for a notebook on her bed.
"It's not exact. Not precise. I can't--" River shook the scribbled equations in her brother's direction, silently demanding that he take them. "There is a large margin of error. Unavoidable; the images are treacherous. This may or may not be a pipe."
Simon didn't move. He couldn't. He might not be where River was as far along the intelligence scale, but he wasn't stupid. He just leaned against the jamb, staring. His eyes dropped to the offered papers. He carefully stepped through the papers, doing his best not to disrupt the arrangement. She'd placed them there for a reason, hadn't she?
The doctor set the apples and sandwich on the bed, which reminded him. He looked around for any signs that she had indeed been eating. He did not think she'd gone so far as to forget to eat, but he wasn't there to look after her like she needed. Like he needed.
"Eat." Without commenting, he risked something by pulling a small paring knife from his pocket. She might be worried about the apples; he never knew exactly what River picked up from other people as overly important. With his hands free of the food and utensil, he carefully and gently took the papers, if she let him, to look at. "What exactly are you trying to do, mei-mei?"
"Make sense." River's face scrunched up; she wasn't going to cry, not yet, but her confusion and fear threatened to overwhelm her. "This doesn't make sense - I want it to make sense." She gestured out at the sea of paper, jabbing a finger insistently at the mess, and then balled up. First she dropped onto the bed (next to the tray, which she ignored), then curled her feet under each other and put her arms over her head. Too much. It was way, way too much. "The Captain isn't coming for us, Simon. No one's coming."
Simon had seen this before, so many times. He moved quickly enough to kneel beside her, his hand going to her hair. He didn't have anything to calm her. He had nothing to quiet the noise, if any of the sedatives ever really did. All he could do was pet her hair and be there for her.
"They might. They always do." Why did he feel the need to hope that they would come, the heroes? He could take care of her. He had gotten her away from the Academy; he had gotten her on Serenity. He could take care of her here. He hoped he could anyway. "Mei-mei, stop trying to make the stars change. You can't control them."
"Not control. Understand." River shook her head like the jarring motion would knock something loose. It didn't. After rocking a few times, she gave up. "But I do -- and I can't." She teetered a moment on the edge of tears, then tipped back in the direction of calm. Simon was there, at least, a firm physical presence that couldn't be a figment of her imagination. She wasn't alone in a strange solar system and a strange somewhen. That, at least, was something.
"You brought an apple." River's eyes peeked out from behind the curtain of hair.
"I did. A few. I brought a knife." Simon could remember things. Remember what she liked, what she didn't, how stories affected her. He was her big brother after all. Shifting his weight, he sat back against her bed. "I also brought you a sandwich. You should eat."
"I doubt that there are grenades in these apples." But she'd let him cut it up anyway, just in case. In many ways, exploding apples were a lot like the bogeyman; unlikely, but scary nonetheless. "Thank you, Simon." River didn't qualify her thanks. She was grateful for everything.