simon_doctor | (no subject)

(no subject)

The gate guard and the caretaker have been told to expect them: when the quiet gray skimmer pulls up in front of the main gate, it's waved through with only a brief exchange of words, and when they reach the house, the front door is already standing open, spilling warmth and light out into the cool evening. Another few words with the caretaker -- the main rooms and the east wing have been opened up and the kitchen stocked, please call if there's anything else you require -- and the door closes gently behind them.

Simon glances at Kaylee, and tugs gently at their joined hands.

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It's interesting, trying to suss out how he's doing, and trying to take it all in at the same time, and trying to put what's going to happen tomorrow out of her mind for now.

The third one's the easiest. Kaylee decides to focus on the first.

"Lead on," she says, and it's hushed, as though she's in a library, or at a funeral.

Impossible not to compare this to his first sight of her childhood home, over a year ago now. Impossible not to look around him with a blurred double vision -- triple, really: seeing the house as he remembers it, seeing it as Kaylee must be seeing it, seeing it as it is now.

No one's lived in the house for months; and though the caretakers have whisked the sheets off the furniture and aired out the rooms and built a fire in the long-cold fireplace, it still feels as though every sound they make is interrupting a stiff silence.

A step forward, another, and a pause.

Opposite them is a staircase leading up to where the children's rooms used to be. Nearby there's a little side table of polished wood, with a few ornaments placed on it at careful, tasteful angles; there's a small angular vase carrying a spray of dried flowers, and two holopic frames, and a silver tray with a cut-crystal decanter and two small matching glasses.

Something's different, there. Something out of place; his attention's snagged on it like a scarf catching on a splinter.

They're not moving.

Which isn't a problem in itself; it's just that if they're not moving, there's got to be a reason for it, and he's the one who has a reason not to move.

Kaylee turns her head enough to cast his eyes in his direction. Doesn't say anything.

He takes a step closer to the table.

"Look at this," he says softly, smiling a little, picking up one of the frames and handing it to her. It's a holopic of himself and River, aged roughly nine and three, respectively; they're side by side in an armchair, both dark heads bent slightly over a book open across their laps.

The other one, still on the table, is him at age four. This one's professionally taken, posed, against a variegated blue backdrop; he's looking gravely off into the middle distance, not quite smiling.

Off in their own world.

Which is how it is now. She remembers -- she's seen it before, when they were working on the door, the kind of shorthand that comes with years upon years of...

...well, of what's in the picture.

It's with something very like pride that she sets it down again, very careful to try and put it at the exact angle it was when Simon picked it up.

To Kaylee it's less a home, and more a museum, and she doesn't want to think about that too much.

That picture's new, or at least not customarily kept here; the decanter's new, too.

He's realized what's missing: the lacquered wickerwork basket where they used to drop the day's mail.

They never did get it fixed.

"So," he says -- not loudly, but consciously not whispering -- "shall I give you the full tour?"

Her eyes go from the picture of the four-year-old to his face.

And she nods, once, twice.

(There's a kind of a disconnect going on; at some deep level Kaylee is half-sure that this is some elaborate place that doesn't -- can't -- have any significance, that it's not really real, as she understands it.

That nobody could have really been a kid in a house like this.)

The parlor first; it's designed for entertaining, a little reminiscent in layout and decor of the Tams' house on Londinium, elegant and welcoming. Chairs are arranged in open groupings, surrounding low tables; the caretakers have put out fresh flowers here and there.

"This room was mostly for when we had guests." Simon's finding his voice dropping again -- it's something about the echo when he speaks too loudly.

Kaylee nods. "I can tell." Softer than him.

The flowers...help. A little. It's a strange feeling to expect somebody to walk in and ask them what they're doing there -- but she can't shake it.

Through a set of double doors, and into a room whose main piece of furniture is a polished wooden table large enough to seat perhaps twelve; a matching sideboard graces one wall, and a decorative glass-fronted cabinet the other.

"-- That's the dining room. More for formal events, dinner parties and the like." He's moving a little more quickly now, seeming more sure of his direction. "The kitchen's through here -- "

Kaylee's got her hands in her pockets as she follows.

She wonders, as she does, if he's --

If he's looking for anything.

It's possible he's wondering the same thing.

The kitchen's as large and elegant as everything else they've seen already, but it's a functional kind of elegance; this is clearly a room that's meant to be used, not just admired.

Towards the back of the room is a small circular table, covered with a cloth the same cream color as the stone countertops and set about with four comfortable rounded chairs. A slender glass vase sits in the table's precise center, holding a single lavender flower with long thin leaves; two place settings are already laid out.

Simon smiles at the sight of that. "They really did take care of everything."

"Guess they did," Kaylee says, keeping her voice light.

Something about the tone of her voice....

Simon glances at her. Not sharply; just trying to gauge her reaction to all this.

Well. She's watching him. If that says anything.

What is it? hovers on the edge of speech.

Instead, he says "Come see the upstairs?"

Kaylee nods, hands still in her pockets.

Maybe the upstairs won't look so much like a -- museum.

Through the kitchen and out the other side, and down a short hallway -- doors line one side of it, all of them closed.

(One's a closet. One's a guest room. Two were Gabriel and Regan Tam's respective offices; they're mostly empty now, except for storage boxes.)

And back to the entry where they started. Simon picks up their suitcase as they round the landing of the stairs, and offers her his free hand.

"I don't know which bedroom they've made up for tonight," he says a little apologetically. "We might be in my old room, or in my parents' old room ... I'm not sure which would be more strange."

Kaylee puts her hand in his.

And thinks about it.

"Well." Thoughtful. "Bed's a bed. And ain't like we don't got to get up at the crack of dawn anyhow."

"That's true," he agrees, as they reach the top of the stairs and step into the hallway.

Firelight flickers in the den, off to the right, and almost unconsciously Simon heads in that direction.

And there's Dad's favorite dark leather armchair, close by the fireplace -- it's the same chair from the holopic of Simon and River downstairs, though it's been refinished at least once since that was taken -- and the matching low couch on the other side. Behind the couch, high windows look out through a dusky stand of trees framing a dark expanse of lawn, barely visible through the reflections in the glass.

The oval glass-topped table that used to sit between armchair and couch was replaced by a rectangular one when Simon was sixteen; there's a small bookcase that he doesn't recognize in the alcove by the fireplace.

"This used to be ... " A pause. "We all used to sort of ... gravitate towards this room, at the end of the day. River and I did our schoolwork here more often than in our rooms, because here there was a good chance we might be interrupted by something more interesting."

"Smart," Kaylee says, quietly, with a small smile.

It's strange how you can tell, almost unconsciously, which rooms were more...lived in. Up here is much better than downstairs, and Kaylee relaxes without quite putting her finger on why.

(you two geniuses)

Through the den -- absently, Simon puts out a hand and runs it along the back of the couch as they pass it -- and out the other door, into the hallway again.

More doors, off to either side: the music room, the library, another storage closet.

He stops, his hand falling on a doorknob. "This room was mine," he says, and glances across and down the hall another few yards. "That one was River's."

It's a lot easier for Kaylee to really understand what an adjustment Serenity was. Is.

She might say that, later.

She might not.

Now she's just got her bag in her hand; she's waiting for him to open the door.

Because she...can't. It's not her place.

He doesn't know why he's hesitating.

Twist the knob, open the door --

Nothing in this room has changed.

At all.

Behind him, feet near-silent, Kaylee moves to look over his shoulder.

And up at the back of his head.

And over his shoulder again.