Palindrome, by Nixa Jane

Title: Palindrome
Author: Layton Colt/Nixa Jane
Summary: It’s backwards and forwards all at once.
Rating: R
Characters: Mostly River, with Simon, Jayne, Zoe, Mal and Kaylee.
Pairing: Some pretty vague hints at Mal/Simon.
Warning: Implied character death.
Spoilers/Timeline: SERENITY SPOILERS.
Disclaimer: They do not belong to me.
Author's Note: This started out as one thing and turned out as another; basically, it’s pretty much like any other fic I’ve ever written.

It's backwards and forwards all at once.

They say there is a balance to everything. All matter has something to cancel it out. She doesn't remember which of the hundreds of books she's read has that message in its pages. She's not sure if it's true, even, but it seems to make sense. She can see symmetry in anything. It was enough to drive someone mad.

-----

River dances along the catwalks, and watches the world flicker around her. She's not wearing shoes, she rarely does. It cuts her off, stops the current, and she can't think like that. Can't function. Simon thinks it helps, and keeps giving her boots to replace the ones she's lost, but she won't wear them.

She's well enough without them. It's easier to live now, easier to be real. Easier ever since she realized what she was seeing when she looked too deep.

And if a loose wire or a metal shard cuts through the sole of her foot, she doesn't feel it. She feels everything else, but not that. Not really. Pain, like anything she feels, seems to belong to someone else and not to her. She twirls around, lifting her dress, watching her footwork. It's not really work. She knows a thousand dances by heart, and can perform them all without missing a step.

She can see a thousand possibilities with one glance, too, but she won't understand them all. Sometimes, she can't understand any of them. They fade too fast. Forwards, then back. Mal likes to take her along now; to the meets, the bargains, the deals. She can often tell him what will happen before it happens, and she's getting better.

Better is not saner, but she's good at pretending. She can be real and still be troubled.

She sees Simon and the Captain below her, but they don't look up and so can't see her. Broken hearts. Death. Love. She keeps spinning until they're gone. It's too much to think on too long. She'll protect her brother when she can.

She hears footsteps. Light. Hesitant, but purposeful. Kaylee.

"River," she calls. "Have you seen my thermo-regulator?"

She's been waiting for Kaylee to come to her with that question for fifteen minutes. She's off schedule. "I fixed it," River tells her, but doesn't stop moving. This is the important part. The dance depends on it. She doesn't want to lose the spotlight while it's there.

In the corner of her eye, she watches Kaylee deflate. "But, River, it weren't broke."

"It would have been," River tells her, and points down to the other end of the catwalk, in front of Inara's shuttle. "It's over there. It's better now."

Kaylee gives an uncertain thanks, and picks it up off the metal grate. She starts back down the stairs and River calls to her, "Careful!"

Kaylee pauses ten steps to the cargo bay and looks back up. "What?"

River stops dancing. She goes completely still. "You wouldn't want to fall," she explains.

Kaylee looks at her like she's mad, but takes the steps carefully. Kaylee wouldn't understand if River explained she would have twisted her ankle had she kept her quick pace. They never understood things like that, but mostly, they trusted her.

Only mostly, but it was enough for now.

More footsteps and its Simon, now. Measured and deliberate, but trusting. They haven’t changed pace in all her years of life.

"I've been looking for you," he says.

"You haven't," she says. "You've been talking with the Captain. You have big plans."

Simon frowns. "Well, yes, but I--"

"You haven't been looking for me at all," River says. "It's okay. It's okay to think of other things."

"River," Simon says, and he's sighing now, the way he always does when he starts to get impatient with her. "We're running out of medicine, and Mal says we can't afford to buy more."

"So you'll steal it," River says.

Simon pulls his arms around himself and won't meet her eyes. "If I have to."

"Stealing is wrong," River says, "but its fun. I'll help, if you want."

"That's okay," Simon says slowly. He still thinks he can protect her. He still believes he’s better suited to this life than her. But he’s not. "Are you okay up here? What are you doing?"

"Dancing," she says. "Mostly." It’s easier to explain the physical than the rest.

He frowns again. He does that a lot around her now. No more smiling like before, she has to scan her memories to see it. She goes back farther than she intends.

"We're getting ready to eat," he tells her. "Why don't we go together?"

River sighs but follows him. She can afford to humor him for now, but she doesn’t like crowds. They’re okay on good days, but today she can feel the universe at her back, secrets dragging her down. The weight of their lies could easily take her breath away, if her guard goes down long enough to let it.

They’re all of them liars and thieves, really. Even Kaylee. Kaylee looks Simon in the eyes and tells him that she’s fine, that she doesn’t miss him, that it’s for the best, while inside she screams and rages and cries. River hears the parts the others don’t.

River lies, too. More than most. If she were to spill all of her truths, she’d never stop talking.

There are two empty chairs at the table. No one looks at them, and in some ways it’s like they’re not there. But where would the chairs go if not here? There’s no place for them. Just empty space.

Mal thinks that Zoe looks like the war. He remembers this part of her. It never went anywhere, but she used to hide it for Wash. The rest of them aren’t worth the effort. She’ll take orders, but she won’t give them.

Zoe won’t be far behind. River can see it, and it’s quiet and lonesome, just a few familiar faces around a grave. They read a poem. Mal does. It’s written in Wash’s hand. She frowns as she sits between Kaylee and Simon.

Maybe it’s not that at all, she decides. Maybe that’s happened already. Zoe may well live forever.

“You have to eat, mei mei,” Simon tells her quietly. He’s thinking of other things besides food. He’s thinking of medicine. He wants a bandage for everything.

She’s not hungry, so she ignores him, her eyes straying over to Mal. Mal tries to hide from her, but it’s a small ship, and he has too many thoughts to hide them all. It’s like a puzzle, but River’s good at them, and it won’t take her long to get the full picture.

He’s like Wash in some ways; not in any of the obvious ones. He thinks about Simon a lot. She’s not so naïve as to not know why. She’s not naïve at all.

Jayne is surprisingly loud. He doesn’t have a quiet mind at all, not like one might think. She can hear gunfire when she gets too close.

“Vera kills you,” she tells him, and the statement brings a halt to whatever conversations they may have been having. Jayne freezes and glares at her. “Far too brazen to die all that old,” she allows, “but she’s the only one to make you sleep. One clean shot and then nothing.”

She doesn’t tell him who’s holding the gun.

“River . . . “ Simon is looking at her like she’s not his sister, like she’s someone else. Maybe she is, but she doesn’t want him looking at her that way. She’s supposed to be River to him even now, not only by name.

“I don’t know when,” she says. “I try but I can’t stop anything.”

None of them will meet her eyes. Cassandra, that’s who she is. Doomed to be misbelieved.

She sees the bureau from her old house. It holds a gun in the top drawer. Her father’s pride and joy, ivory and gold and crimson; used in some war or another. Probably killed a dozen men. And a mother. Bullet in the brainpan. There’s never much left.

She doesn’t know if this has happened yet. Could have been a year ago, could be ten more. It doesn’t really matter either way, but she notices the red polish on the finger that holds the trigger down. She dreams in that color sometimes.

Only this might not be real at all. It’s possible. She’s been told she’s crazy often enough.

She turns to look at Simon. He’s telling her that its alright. But he doesn’t know what she sees. No one does. No one should.

"I can't stop it," she tells him, desperate.

He offers her a sedative. He doesn't get it.

Anyway, sleep only makes it worse.

Another funeral soon. She’s been to too many. There are more tears than she can count, even when she tries. She wonders if he realizes, if he knows. She’s not invited, but goes anyway.

"You shouldn't have come for me," River says, looking at Simon, trying to find understanding in his eyes. "A miscalculation on my part. I shouldn't have told you."

Simon says her name. She knows that tone, what follows. She has it all memorized by heart.

You'll get better. We'll fix it. Things won't always be this way.

She covers her ears to block it out. "You shouldn't have come!" she shouts.

It was where she belonged. It was safer for her there. Safer for everyone else.

Simon is fumbling with his kit, mixing a sedative. She slams it shut again before he can take anything out. "Won't help," she says. "It's gone."

He tells her that she needs to calm down, like it might be possible, like she wouldn't have done it already if she could.

She sees patterns in his eyes. His thoughts are always so impulsive. Their parents always thought Simon was the reasonable one, but he made snap decisions at least as often as her. He never made the decision to come and rescue her.

It hadn't been a question in his mind.

Her mother is wearing red nail polish when she pulls the trigger. She whispers Simon's name before the fall. Not River. They loved him best, because he loves her best.

Simon always had a better handle on people than her; but they were both socially inept. Simon got dates anyway. Nice smile.

Jayne is screaming that they should toss her out an airlock, but that’s not how she dies. She knows the ways she might die, and none of them are pleasant, but they all involve blood; not air. Jayne is covered in red just like her.

“Lock your bunk,” she tells him. “Don’t come out for anything.”

He won’t listen. She can hear it in his mind. He trusts her least of everyone; but turnabout is fair play.

"I see it all," River tells them, a mad light in her eyes. "Death. Life. All the space between."

"River," Simon says again, grabbing her shoulders, trying to lead her away.

"It's enough to drive one mad," River shouts, and starts laughing. It isn’t long before the needle goes in, and she slips straight away.

-----

It’s sooner than she’s expecting. Possibly her words have sped the future along. Possibly this is how the universe has intended it all along. So hard to tell. She’s an instrument, but she isn’t pulling the strings.

He looks like he hasn’t slept, but he hasn’t followed her advice. He’s made his own plans. Not entirely foolish, but playing with fire all the same.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

He turns around and nearly stumbles, the large gun thrown over his shoulder and held steady with both hands. “You stay away from me you gorram crazy girl.”

His thoughts are incoherent. He’s scared, but not easily. It takes something of substance. He thinks she’s a witch, and wants nothing to do with the supernatural. She should turn around and walk away, but fate will win either way. It always does.

“It won’t work,” she says. “It never has before.”

“I love this gun,” he tells her angrily, “but I ain’t going to let it get used against me. I’ll get rid of it first.”

“You can’t get rid of something like this,” she says. If there was a way she would have found it by now. She saved Wash three times before fate won out, and only made it worse.

Time is ticking in the wrong direction again. She can hear Simon’s footsteps on the other side of the ship. He doesn’t know she’s not in her bed; he’s heading for the Captain’s.

Her brother is heading towards his own collision with time, heading into a crash with his eyes wide open. She’d warn him if she thought he’d listen, but even if he hears her, he won’t understand.

They never understand. And now Jayne is aiming the gun at her.

“You’ve been nothing but trouble,” he says. She can’t disagree. She can’t even say she’s sorry, even if she is. Everything is scripted already.

He takes a step towards her, and she sees movement on the catwalk. She makes no move herself. She’s invulnerable at this moment. She could take his gun if she wanted, but she’s afraid if she did she might use it, and the hands she saw were not her own.

“I should end this,” Jayne says. “Enough people have died because of you, I ain’t willing to join the list.”

“This isn’t because of me,” River says. “I’m only a symbol and my war is over now anyway. For awhile at the least.”

“You can’t go round tellin’ people they’re gonna die!” he shouts at her. If he fired the bullet would strike between her eyes. She wonders if maybe she’s wrong. Maybe she’s the one that’s going to die. She’d ask him to fire but he’ll only think she’s taunting him.

“I saw it,” she says. It’s the wrong thing to say. Jayne is a cornered animal. You don’t tell a cornered animal that he has no hidden backdoor. It tends to make them angry. “The pain is less than you expect.”

She wants it to be a comfort, but pain is not what men like Jayne fear. It’s mortality. It’s nothing.

“Jayne, leave her alone,” Zoe says. She’s at the bottom of the stairs. Jayne never heard her get there.

Mal is right. River can see the war in her too. Jayne would do well to listen, but he won’t. She’s led him here to slaughter by her own admission, and it’s too late to change anything now.

“Wash died because of her,” Jayne says. He thinks it will bring her to his side. He thinks they’ll become partners in a murder. Jayne is stupid to believe it. He doesn’t understand Zoe at all. “You sayin’ you don’t want to pull the trigger yourself?”

“Wash died for the memory of the dead on Miranda,” Zoe says. Her voice echoes like a scream, but she’s quieter than Jayne. “For the truth.”

“I know Mal won’t part with the doc,” Jayne says, “but no one will miss her. Bet doc will even be relieved.”

He’s wrong about that. She can see that future too. Simon might well go back on a promise; an overdose while Jayne sat in his chair. Mal wouldn’t blame him, but Simon would blame himself. No reason to think about it, though. That reality is already void. She’s chosen another.

Jayne turns his back on Zoe. An amateur’s mistake, but he doesn’t think Zoe will stop him. He tells River he’s sorry as he starts to pull the trigger, and she thinks he means it, but it doesn’t matter. She’s the one that’s sorry.

River isn’t surprised when Zoe wrests the gun from him. Fate is never pretty.