simon_doctor | (no subject)

(no subject)

In the dream, he's falling.

He was standing on a high place looking down -- far, far down -- at the bonfire below, and the people dancing around it. One of them picked up a long pole and jabbed at the fire with it, and a ball of flame rocketed up towards him. Struck the rock he was standing on. Shattered it. And he fell.

And he's falling.

-----

Simon opens his eyes to the familiar grey walls of his cell on the Kelowna, and closes them again with an almost soundless breath of something too leaden to be despair.

The guards come for him soon, as they always do. He gets to his feet without having to be told, holds out his wrists for the cuffs, moves silently between them as they march him down the corridor.

They let him see River again yesterday. It wasn't really her, of course; it was the lookalike, pretending to be her. They think she's got him fooled. They think he can't tell that the girl who tells him she's all right and they won't hurt her if he cooperates isn't his sister. It scarcely matters. River's around here someplace.

They reach the infirmary, and the nurse hands him a pair of surgical gloves. It's awkward getting them on with the handcuffs -- almost as awkward as the surgery itself will be -- but he manages.

It's not like he has a choice. He's here for a purpose, after all.

The nurse checks the fit of his gloves, makes sure the cuffs are still fastened, helps him on with the mask. Routine. Procedure. He thanks her, tonelessly, and turns as they start bringing in the first patients.

It takes a truly astonishing amount of sedative to quiet a Reaver, but that's all taken care of before they get to him. His job's the harder part: Open the skull. Cut into the brain. Remove the part that makes them what they are.

(He also takes care of the worst of the disfiguring wounds as best he can, but most of them are old, long since healed over. As healed as they ever will be.)

There's always a long line of patients, but today it seems to go on forever. One Reaver after another coming to the operating table, drugged and still twitching; one somnolent patient after another shuffling away, no longer a Reaver. Fixed. Made better. Their faces blur together in front of his eyes, after a while.

Which is why he's three patients further on before it fully registers in his mind that one of the Reavers he fixed was Mal.

-----

Simon opens his eyes to the familiar white ceiling of his bunk on Serenity.

And lies staring at it for several seconds before beginning to shake.

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One of the problems with shaking is that it...

...tends to wake up the person sleeping next to you.

"What..."

"Simon." Low. Urgent. She's already got a hand out, resting on his arm.

"...Kaylee. Ai ren."

He turns towards her and buries his face in her shoulder.

"Hey." Arms around him. One hand gently stroking his hair. "It's okay. It's okay."

This comes first. Questions can come later, if at all.

This comes first.

His breathing slows, gradually, and his shuddering stops.

Muffled, into her hair: "'M sorry I woke you."

"Don't be. I'm here." Laced with warmth. "You're fine, ai ren. Just fine." She leans her head against his.

"It was ... just a dream."

His head shifts slightly against her shoulder.

"All it was." It's a slightly awkward position they're in; Kaylee moves just enough to prop her shoulders against the pillows, and keeps running her fingers through his hair, rhythmically, soothingly. "And it's over."

He shifts with her, half-sitting up, and draws a deep breath.

"I dreamed I was back on the Kelowna."

Her hand only pauses for an instant.

Kaylee nods against the top of his head. Doesn't say anything.

"And I'd been there for ... I don't even know how long. And no one knew where we were, and no one was coming for us."

Simon fumbles for Kaylee's other hand, and presses it.

Her eyes close, even as she returns the pressure.

Her head turns, a little, and she touches her lips lightly to the top of his head, murmuring against his hair, "I'm so sorry."

He looks up at her, a little bewildered.

"For what?"

"Meant to be sympathy. Not -- apology." A very small smile; the arm around him tightens.

"...ah."

He rests his head back against her shoulder.

It surprises him when he starts to talk again.

"I don't ... I don't know if I have the words for how good it was to hear that you knew where we were. That you were working on the outside to help us."

"We couldn't do nothin' else." Eyes closed again. Voice soft.

"I know. But as far as I knew at the time, no one saw them take us. If Mal had been only a minute later coming to pick us up, he'd have found the barn empty and no way to know where we'd gone..."

His thumb moves idly back and forth along the back of her hand.

"I was trying not to think about that at the time."

...learning to try not to worry.

Impossible, in a situation like that one. But it makes Kaylee smile anyhow. Just a little.

"'M guessin' it didn't go too well."

"It worked about as well as I could've hoped."

He studies the opposite wall.

"They ... they wanted to know who'd been sheltering us all this time, you see."

Her hand pauses again.

And starts, again.

"And the only way I could think of to be sure I wouldn't talk about Serenity was ... not to think about Serenity. Or anyone aboard her."

It's a confession, of sorts.

If she's holding him a little closer...

Well.

"Can't nobody blame you for that, Simon."

"And they only ever drugged me once. But I couldn't take the chance they wouldn't do it again, and without giving me time to prepare--"

"Prepare...how? And, and what?"

So carefully. So very carefully.

For a moment he considers not saying anything else -- does she need to hear this?

But only for a moment.

He sits up a little more and leans against the wall. It's cool on the skin of his back, and wakes him up a little further.

"The drug's called sodium thiopental," he starts, and if his tone's gone a little distant and clinical, he doesn't notice. "Its primary effect is --"

He's about to describe the effect in technical terms, and that he does notice.

A short exhalation that isn't quite a sigh, and he continues. "It makes you ... unable to think something and not say it out loud. It makes you babble."

Makes sense, doesn't it. That they'd use something like that to get information out of people.

The image that Kaylee can't quite stuff back: Simon acting like River on a bad day. She's seen the bad days.

The image hurts.

Kaylee wishes he hadn't pulled away.

She sits up as well, pulling her legs under her, sitting crosslegged. "So you...had to practice not thinkin' about the things they couldn't know." It's a question.