simon_doctor | (no subject)

There's a knock on one of the wooden beams crisscrossing the door. Wash's voice filters through.

"Hey, Simon? You got a minute?"

Simon looks up, and sets the encyclopedia aside.

"Sure. Come on in."

He pushes the door back, eases inside, then promptly reconsiders and leans out into the hall. After glancing up and down its length, he steps back in and shuts the door.

"Okay. So, you know Faith. Back at..." Wash jerks an unnecessary thumb skyward, keeping his voice low. "Has she told you about what's going on with her at all?"

Simon's brow furrows with concern. "She said she was having nightmares. Apparently she believes they're prophetic, and I couldn't convince her to take any medication to stop them."

"Yeah. So you know...." He scrubs a hand through the front of his hair, exhaling. "I wouldn't exactly dismiss the 'prophetic' part so quickly, though."

"...All right, I'll believe a lot of strange stuff when it comes to That Place, but -- dreams that predict the future?"

He looks extremely dubious.

"Can't say much for that, but she told me that it's not just the future. Past and present, too. Which, yeah, I'd think is just as kuángzhĕ de if she didn't have a damn accurate one about me."

A deep breath. Unconsciously, his eyes slide back toward the door before returning to Simon's.

Flatly. "An accurate dream. About you."

"Yes. But that's -- " He waves both hands, dismissive, moving further into the room. "That's not the important part. Well, it is, because it's some sort of extraordinarly flimsy proof that I'm not out of my mind for saying things like this, but it's not why I...."

Another breath.

"What's important is that she had one about River, too."

Simon blinks.

"...what did she see?"

Quietly, "What they did to her. I didn't ask for details. It's not something I...it's not something. But, uh."

Wash scratches his jaw. "She said there was a drug they used on her, something called luzenine."

His jaw tightens at the mention of what they did to her, but Wash's last word provokes a baffled frown.

"Luzenine? That's for repair of damaged pituitary glands. That's absurd, why would they ...?"

Wash shrugs helplessly. "I don't know. She just -- she wanted me to pass that along. See if it'd be any help."

He balls one hand into a fist and taps it against his leg, gaze dropping to the floor.

Simon's face has gone thoughtful-puzzled. "I don't know, but ... I'll read up on it, see what I can find."

A pause.

"Now that my encyclopedia has reappeared and all."

Wash's gaze snaps back up. "It has? That's, uh, that's good." Admirably, he manages to keep the guilt off of his face.

....Well, most of it, anyway.

"Yeah, funny thing, that. The bar gave it to me, when we were leaving."

"Huh." He draws his lower lip between his teeth, briefly; there's another shrug, this one more casual. "Well...it's always been good about giving people what they need."

"That's true -- it gave me a new medkit when I realized I hadn't had a chance to get mine. With the right medications for River and everything."

He glances sidelong at Wash.

"This isn't a different copy, though. This is my encyclopedia. It's got my identmark in it."

"...oh? That's...."

He's humped. He's so humped, and he knows it. Wash shuts his eyes, cupping his forehead in one hand, and tries not to cringe as he says:

"That might be because I brought it into the bar when you loaned it to me a couple months back and might have temporarily misplaced it while I was there?"

Simon gives a small smile.

"I'd figured as much."

A beat.

"You did."

Wash tilts his head so one eye peeks out from behind his hand. It's a rather sulky-looking eye.

"All right, so now that you've made the pilot squirm unnecessarily and gotten your entertaiment of the day...."

"I'm practicing. For my criminal mastermind career. Next I'm going to learn how to gloat."

Wash snorts a laugh, a smile twitching his lips, and lets his hand fall. "And to think it took us over a year to send you down this deplorable road. Usually we can do it in under six months. I'll have to tell Mal we're slipping."

Simon grins. "He'll be devastated."

"Without doubt. Wailing, gnashing of teeth -- we might even get some rending of clothes in there."

He heaves a sigh. "Well, I don't relish the duty, but I'd better get right on it. Ignore any manly sobs you may hear coming from his bunk."

"I'll try."

"Xièxie. Knew I could count on you." Wash's not-quite-contained smile stretches into a grin.

Soon, though, it's fading, and he regards Simon with true seriousness. When he speaks, it's with a conviction and fervour that would have been unexpected a year ago -- or maybe, even, a few months ago.

"She'll get better."

Simon's own smile fades, and his lips press together just slightly. He looks down at his hands, which have stopped pretending to flip through the encyclopedia.

"It's been more than a year.

"There's ... there's only so much I can do."

"Maybe this'll be it, though, right? The big breakthrough. Or a tiny breakthrough that'll lead to some bigger breakthroughs."

Horse and rider under the dying sun of Earth-That-Was: Simon of all people does not need to be told that River deserves to be like that again. Nor that now that Wash has seen how she was, even just a little, it's become so much harder to see the girl that's taken her place.

"Maybe."

He looks up.

"We keep trying."

And it's almost unconscious, that we.

"Yeah." A faint smile. "We do.

"I'll see you later, Simon."

And he slips out the door, quietly shutting it behind him.