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River Tam is in your post confusing you (notmymemory) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2012-07-23 23:24:00

Entry tags:

mr. dark, river tam

Who: Mr Dark and River Tam
What: Face to face meeting
When: Night of 23 July 2012
Where: Site of the Shadow Show
Warnings: TBD
Status: Thread/In Progress

The memories were there, poking at her brain, hurting her. People were loud but not as loud as they usually were. She knew it was bad, dangerous. She knew that the loudness of everyone could destroy her. Oh, River knew. She knew too much. Things she shouldn't know and it tore into her. It was a pea. Wasn't that what she had said back in the Academy? There was was a pea stuck in her spine and she couldn't get it out. It would never get out. They could cut away at her, cut into her and laugh but it never would go away. Even with the silent calm that Mara and Luke had... it would never go away. Because it was poking at her. And in the end, she needed Simon. She would always need Simon because he had come for her. Had read the letters and knew and had saved her. And she had tried to save him and now he was gone. Not because of what she did, but because she was meant to be alone. But she was never alone, not really. Luke and Mara, everyone who she couldn't shut out. And the damned memories burning a hole into her brain.

It was hot. Hot and muggy and sticky and it left River anxious. She needed to move and there was only so much she could do while inside. And the walls were buzzing with technology, the hum of false life and created things that did not feel. They were mind numbing. So she left. It wasn't uncommon. River had been known to slip out and wander at random. Mara worried because she always worried but River never disappeared. Not really. She just needed quiet and movement and air. Because there wasn't air in the black. There also wasn't this sticky heat. It was always a controlled temperature on Serenity and River didn't get to go off ship all that often. The further in the black they were, the better but still, she was mostly on ship. But here there was no control. No control of life or death, of pain and loss, no control of temperature. It was just sticky.

The sun had long gone down, the temperature just slightly cooler. She walked and wandered, watched the people happy and in love, the people who thought no one saw them and cried silently. The people who planned and wanted to hurt others and the people who just wanted to enjoy their lives. She watched them all, maneuvering through the streets and trees and through the alleys. She wasn't afraid. There was anger in the world at the loss of Moriarty, confusion amongst the criminals but she wasn't afraid. Not of them but of the dark. The shadows. Yet even as she feared them, they led her to tents and lights and people milling. Secrets were loud and the loss of hopes and dreams were deafening. They were gone and the darkness consumed people. She knew she should get away, leave. She didn't want to talk to him. Didn't want to know. He hurt her head, her heart, her feelings. She knew what he was. He created darkness and thrived on it. But the shadows kept pushing her in. People didn't think it was possible but it was and oh she was getting dizzy trying to find a way out.

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notmymemory
2012-07-26 09:57 pm UTC (link)

Very few people understood River's speaking patterns. At least, not when she was in this state. When she was more lucid, sure. But when she was worked up, or overwhelmed, her sentences became more fractured, more disorientated and so she just spoke in riddle because she followed whatever random train of thought that came up at the moment. Though the fact that she was speaking of Dark's attractions, it only made sense he'd figure it out anyway.

She didn't like the idea of time traveling backwards. It was wrong. Shouldn't exist. It was spun and the clockwork machinery creaked and groaned at the strain, taking the years away to fuel it. No death. No birth.

"Stuck in limbo. Purgatory. Hell and heaven don't exist. Rip out the pages of the symbol and they become paper. Take the soul and you become plastic."

Well, it made sense to River but that didn't really mean much if people couldn't figure out what it was they were supposed to know and understand. She knew she was broken. That there should be a bullet put to her and it would save everyone but no one agreed and so she was stuck with the memories that were not her own, stuck feeling what everyone felt. They were opposite and alike, she and Dark and that was more terrifying than anything. That he felt and heard it all but lived off of it and knew she could see it as well.

"Always a price, nothing is ever free. Say it is but not real. Give them what they want by hollowing them out. We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men...." He embodied the poem from Earth that Was, the text burned in her memory from her lessons. She always had liked poetry. Excelled in it as she did in every subject she had taken. Age had never mattered. "The shadow which falls between the idea and reality. That is your price."

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