d a n s e . d u . p e t i t . c y g n e

Danse du petit cygne
[by victoria p.]

Rating: G

Summary: "I'll never be a real girl, but I don't want to be a swan anymore."

Notes: Er. Yeah. House. and Firefly.

Date: November 2, 2005

"Home," River says, but Simon's not paying attention. He's showing the captain some damn thing or other on the Cortex, never mind what's going on in hers.

"This is our home now, River." He doesn't look up from what he's doing.

"No, not home, Holmes." She shakes her head, hair flying wild, like ruffled feathers. "No. No." When she closes her eyes, she can see the face she's looking for -- bright blue eyes and unshaved jaw, not calabash pipe and deerstalker cap. "Not home," she repeats, and puts her hands over her ears, trying to tune out the unending low-level buzz of Simon's thoughts.

"I thought she was getting better," the captain says, looking from one to the other of them.

She cocks her head and smiles sweetly before upending a tray of plastic-wrapped syringes, nasty things, always poking her. "Better living through chemistry."

"Given the damage that was done..." Simon trails off, shaking his head. "I still don't know--"

"Never going to be normal," River interrupts, "but some mysteries still need solving. Puzzles, not people. House, not Holmes." She lunges toward the keypad Simon's been hunched over all afternoon and starts typing, scanning for the information she needs.

"There," she says in triumph. "That's who we need."

Simon stares at the screen -- he doesn't believe, doesn't understand.

"River, mèimei, this man's been dead for several hundred years."

"Just another state of being," she replies, already calculating. The numbers know how to do it. She just has to convince them to tell her where and when. "Matter and energy in a closed system. Always present, just different forms. Nothing ever really lost or gained. Just changed from one thing to another. Like me."

"A state of being," Simon repeats, but River is already out of the infirmary, dancing with the chorus of numbers in her head.

She sneaks onto the bridge when everyone else is asleep, fingers flying over the switches worn from Wash's loving touch.

Love is a bird, she thinks, and she punches in coordinates, and time is a tree (this life one leaf). I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar. She shivers at some future shadow passing over, too vague to be seen just yet.

They are nearly there when the captain finds her. His mind is louder than usual -- he's good at keeping his actual thoughts locked away behind a red shield of anger, a brown wall of bitter, but sleep disorders the mind, and the sharp yellow scent of fear leaks through.

"What the gorram hell are you doing?" he shouts at her. He presses the intercom. "Wash, get your ass up here now. Doc, come and get your crazy sister off my bridge, mâshàng."

"Too late," River says. "Can't stop now. Nearly there."

Wash and Simon stumble onto the bridge, half-dressed, eyes crusty with sleep and hair sticking up at all angles, hibernating hedgehogs disturbed. Zoe is behind them, calm and alert.

River laughs as the stars flare and Serenity jumps and they're all tossed around like dice in a cup, and River calculates the probabilities, hopes she hasn't rolled snake eyes instead of seven. The lights flicker.

"What the hell was that?" the captain barks.

"That's what I'd like to know." Everyone turns at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, sharp with irritation. "One minute I was sitting in my office, avoiding clinic duty, and now I'm here, wherever the hell here is." He looks out the window then looks away, as if he can't believe what he's seeing.

They all start talking at once.

"Wash, can you get us out of here?"

"Should we tie him up, Captain?"

"River, honey, what did you do?"

"Siegfried," River says with delight, springing from her seat. "You made it."

The man jabs his cane into the air in her direction. "I see the inmates are running the asylum."

"I'll never be a real girl," she says to him, "but I don't want to be a swan anymore."

"Bì zuî!" the captain yells, and everybody shuts up. He turns to her. "Come on now, River. What did you do to my boat? Where are we? Who the hell is he and how did he get here?"

"Dr. Gregory House," River answers. "Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. From Earth-that-was. Best diagnostician of his time. He'll take my case." She smiles in the face of Mal's glowering, and House's. "He's sticking it to the Man."

"I don't know, Mal," Wash says. He's playing with the navigation controls, but River is sure he won't be able to change anything until she gets what she needs.

"What don't you know?" The captain's anger is edged with fear and desperation. He doesn't like not being in control, doesn't understand yet how to let the 'verse guide him when he's lost.

"Where we are. How we got here. This place isn't on the map."

River nods. "No where. No when. Elsewhere and else when," she says. "Time folds like an origami swan. Here and there and then and now."

"That's impossible--" Wash starts

"Just because you don't know how doesn't mean it can't be done," she replies, shaking her head. "You see but you don't understand. More things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." She wraps her fingers around House's arm and pulls. He doesn't move. "Come on! Don't you want to look at my brain? It's crazy! Crazy what they did to me!" She flicks her fingers in his face and he flinches back, blinking.

"She's crazy, all right," the captain mutters, then, louder, "Not until you explain, River."

"Can't explain a river, Cap'n," she says, grinning. "River just flows."

"Don't you sass me, girl. I am still the captain of this ship and--"

"Okay, why are we all talking like John Wayne on acid?" House interrupts. He pulls a bottle of pills out of his pocket. "Did someone slip me some 'shrooms with my Vicodin?"

Simon pushes his way through Zoe and Jayne, and says, "I'm Dr. Simon Tam. This is my sister, River. She was experimented on by a secret faction of the government, and her amygdala was removed, for purposes unknown. I've been trying to figure out how to treat her; she presents with symptoms of schizophrenia, but so far none of the standard pharmacological treatments ameliorate her symptoms. I'm hoping to maybe find a drug cocktail that will duplicate the function of the amygdala but--"

She leans against House, nearly overbalancing him, but he grits his teeth and straightens. He's warm and solid for all that he's broken in almost as many ways as she is. "You're my only hope," she says, looking up into his eyes, blue like the hands that did this to her.

He wrinkles his nose at her, but she catches the bright orange scent of interest in his thoughts. "And if I help you, it pisses off this... secret government faction?" River nods vigorously. "And then you'll send me home, where I will pretend this never happened and is all the result of bad chicken curry?"

"When the music's over, the orchestra goes home," she says.

He glances at Simon, who gives an almost imperceptible shrug, and at the captain, who's too busy asking Wash to unfold the space-time continuum to notice.

He sighs in resignation. "All right," he says, following Simon to the infirmary, cane banging along the metal floor. "But you better have me home in time for General Hospital."

River follows, dancing. She's already shedding feathers.

end

***

Additional notes:
time is a tree (this life one leaf) is from e.e. cummings
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar" is, yeah, you know. Wash, from the movie
More things in heaven and earth etc. is from Hamlet
"You're my only hope" is River quoting Princess Leia.

***

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