t e n d i n g . t o . g r a c e

Tending to Grace
[by victoria p.]

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Simon finds the second time he leaves his whole life behind easier than the first.

Spoilers: vaguely for the movie

Notes: a long, long time ago, I promised jjtaylor some crazy space incest (that would be your incest warning, folks). Um, sorry it took so long. Also, escritoireazul gave me this title in that give me a title and I'll tell you what the story's about meme a while back, and it fit this story I'd had in my head since, well, probably since the first time I saw "Safe," way back in the day.

Thanks to luzdeestrellas for the awesome beta.

Date: April 28, 2006

Grace is a farming town on Angel, not far from the foothills of the Corpus Christi Mountains. It's small, but growing, and the people there are mighty glad when the new doctor arrives. He's a bit stiff, but they figure it's 'cause he's young, and used to the more formal ways of the central planets. He's awful handsome--some of the local spinsters were all excited when he waved the town elders to accept the job; they spent weeks getting the little white house ready for him and dreaming about what it'd be like to live there.

They were a mite disappointed he'd brought a wife with him. She's a pretty little thing--good with animals and children, if prone to odd fits and starts on occasion. She likes to dance around barefoot, and she carves poems into the dirt with a stick sometimes, and little Danny Griffin swears one evening he saw her shoot a coyote a hundred yards away without even looking, but everyone knows that kid's a born liar.

Dr. Tanner says it's because she was ill for a long time, and she's still recovering. The ladies think it's sweet how devoted he is to her, and she to him. They always have their heads together, whispering, at church socials, though Mrs. Tanner never actually attends church. They cut her some slack because of her illness--the younger ones like to speculate about it over their tea. Prissy Li and Della Monroe favor miscarriage, but Lenore Walker insists it was the cancer tried to eat her up from the inside. Kitty Cantone says she probably went crazy and killed somebody and she's on the run from the law, but that's just 'cause Kitty thought she'd snag the doctor for her own self and she wasn't happy when he turned out to be married.

Mrs. Tanner helps out at the library sometimes, shelving books and reading to the little ones, and sometimes she talks about starting a dance studio in town, but Dr. Tanner always shakes his head and says, "Maybe when you're better, bâobèi," and Mrs. Tanner's pink mouth quivers in her white face before curving into a resigned smile. She looks so brave and sad, like the heroine of an old-time novel. It's no wonder Dr. Tanner loves her so much.

***

Simon finds the second time he leaves his whole life behind easier than the first. The hardest thing to get used to is the silence.

At the medacad, on Serenity, there was always noise--the beep beep beep of equipment or the steady hum of engines, the thump thump thump of a patient's heart or the shrill shriek of River's screams.

In Grace, except for the occasional dog howling its loneliness at the next moon over, and the chirping of crickets in the summer, there is nothing but silence through the long night.

Their little white house with the clapboard windows trimmed in yellow is far from the center of town, and once night falls, there isn't much to do. Simon had thought he'd like the quiet, but it makes him nervous--he always feels as if the silence is waiting to be broken by something cataclysmic.

The first few nights, River cried herself sick. "Don't you miss her?" she'd asked through her sobs.

"Of course I miss her," he'd answered, thinking of Kaylee's soft curves and ready smile. But he and Mal had both agreed that all contact between them should be severed. It was safer that way, especially after Miranda, when the Alliance raised the reward for their capture, and the connection between them and Serenity began to make itself known throughout the criminal underworld. It wasn't right to keep asking Mal to fight their battles; the cost was too high, and he had too many battles of his own. "But it wasn't fair to ask Kaylee to--"

"I meant Serenity."

"Oh."

He'd cradled her against him and let her cry until she fell into a restless, exhausted sleep.

After that first week, he'd insisted she sleep in what was obviously intended to be the guest bedroom, though more often than not she ends up in his bed at some point during the night and he never has the heart to send her away.

Now, he lies awake in the queen-size bed the fine townsfolk of Grace provided along with the house, and concentrates on trying to hear River's breathing through the walls.

The creak of the floorboard startles him, but before he can do more than wrap his fingers around the smooth metal barrel of the shotgun--Jayne's surprise parting gift to them--River has slipped into bed beside him.

"Easier if I'm here," she says, curling up with her head on his chest and pulling his arm around her.

"What's easier?"

"Everything."

He relaxes, times his breathing to hers. Her hair smells of grass and sunlight and apple shampoo, and as he drifts off to sleep, he realizes she's right.

"Of course I am, silly," she murmurs, or maybe he's dreaming.

***

It feels like playing house sometimes--not that he and River ever played house as children. He was always a doctor and she was always having wild adventures that required him to heal her imaginary injuries. But that's what it feels like--they're all dressed up in someone else's lives, and Simon doesn't know if they're ever going to break free. He doesn't even know if he wants to.

They've settled in well, and no one questions their identities or their relationship. In fact, the townspeople have taken quite a shine to them, and the first few months they spend a lot of time eating at other people's tables. River's obviously shaky health allows them to avoid reciprocating at first, and he's grateful for that. He has no doubt River would be able to out-cook anyone on the planet, if she didn't blow up the house first, but he would rather not put it to the test until after they've built up some goodwill here.

Despite the doubts that have plagued him since he first came up with this plan--and they are many, starting with the idea of taking River from the place she most considered home, and on through the idea of them posing as husband and wife because the Alliance is still looking for a pair of siblings--he finds he likes these people and their town, and he doesn't want to leave. He especially likes having solid ground beneath his feet, and if a career of treating kids with chicken pox and old people with arthritis isn't as exciting as working in the ER on Osiris, it's also a hundred times safer than flying on Serenity.

The dangers in Grace, he learns, are less obvious, and harder to escape.

He and River are sharing a piece of chocolate cream pie at the church picnic when she leans over and kisses him. Her tongue slips into his mouth to move against his, and her hand comes up to tangle in his hair, and for a moment he thinks he's going to be sick. He forces himself not to push her away, and pulls back as soon as he can. She beams at him, eyes shining with mischief. He tries not to think about where she learned to kiss like that, and forces himself to return her smile, and the smiles on the faces of everyone around them. He feels the blush burning in his cheeks, and is grateful they think he's shy and devoted to his wife, rather than horrified.

"Why did you do that?" he asks as soon as they are away from prying eyes and ears.

"That Kitty Cantone was looking at you as if you were a piece of Mrs. Olivier's chocolate pie, and I didn't want her to think you were available for dalliance."

"Available for-- River, what--"

"It's what married people do," she answers calmly, resting her head against his arm as they walk. "We're married--"

"We are not married," he hisses through clenched teeth. "You are my sister, and--"

"No," she says. "I'm Rebecca Tanner, and I am your wife." She looks up at him and shakes her head. "It'll all be much easier once you accept it, Peter."

But he is not Peter, and she is not Rebecca, and he won't. He can't.

***

Sometimes, in between appointments, Simon sits in his office and stares at the carefully framed diplomas on the wall. They are his, but they are not his. They proclaim one Peter Alan Tanner a doctor of medicine, magna cum laude.

It's amazing what money can buy these days, money and favors and a few hints dropped into the right ears by the right people. He doesn't know who the real Peter Alan Tanner is, if he exists at all, but Simon hopes he never comes looking for his life.

He doesn't always answer to the name Peter. He pretends he's slightly hard of hearing and encourages people to call him Doc. That way, at least, he knows when they are speaking to him.

He doesn't try to keep his distance from these people--he knows it wouldn't work, and he finds he doesn't want to, either. They are kind to him and River, and if he sometimes feels as if his face will break from the false smile he wears when they tease him about filling up the nursery of the small white house, he has lived with worse things. There are worse lives, and Simon doesn't want to live any of them ever again.

Finally, he confides in Cathy Sung, the town gossip, that River's--Rebecca's--illness left her unable to bear children. Rebecca doesn't like to discuss it, he says. She's still hoping for a miracle cure.

River hovers at the door of his room that night, in her white nightgown a ghost in the darkness.

"I would have your babies, if I could. But they took that away too, the way they took everything." Her face crumples, and he opens his arms without thinking. She flies to him and he holds her close, rocks her back and forth.

"River--"

"Rebecca. Call me Rebecca and I'll build my life around you."

He takes her by the shoulders and pulls back to look at her, ready to refute her words, to promise some future where they can be normal, but he knows--they both know--this is it.

He pulls her close again, and they fall asleep tangled together beneath the blankets, and when he wakes at dawn, she is smiling in her sleep.

***

River learns to cook and clean and do laundry--of course, she is an exemplary housewife--and he feels guilty that he has taken her genius and hidden it away someplace it cannot grow and flourish.

She enjoys working with the children at the library, and they love her. They follow her through town like the pied piper, down to the ice cream parlor or the playground, and she is good at keeping track of them--of knowing how to keep Jed Nichols and Tommy Wallace from fighting over the ball, how to unsnarl the tangles in Cecilia Chen's hair after Willie Monroe pulls out her braids, and kiss the scrape on Alice Fisher's knee to take the sting away. When the weather warms up, she teaches dance to their neighbors' daughters out on the back porch on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

She is calmer now, and startles less easily, and her eyes smile at him even when her mouth doesn't. He hopes it is enough. He knows it will have to be.

After dinner sometimes, she curls up in his lap, and reads to him, and they talk of their adventures on Serenity. She is wistful now instead of urgent about it--she understands why they had to leave better than anyone, and it pains him to see her give up something she obviously loved so much, even if she is slowly filling the empty spaces with new things here in Grace.

He sometimes wonders if he insisted they stay together for her sake, or for his. It's a question he's never been able to answer.

When it's late enough to sleep, she trails after him to his bedroom and pleads with him to let her sleep in his bed. Even when he says no--and he always says no--by morning, he often wakes curled around her, her hair in his mouth.

This time when he refuses, she asks, "What would the neighbors say?"

"That I'm a very considerate husband who doesn't make demands on his wife."

"Even when his wife wants him to?" she asks, dipping her head and looking up at him through her lashes.

"You're not my wife," he shouts.

She looks stricken, and flees on silent feet. He curses himself for a heartless húndàn and calls after her, "River, bâobèi, I'm so sorry," but she slams the door to her room and doesn't answer.

He doesn't sleep that night.

***

It's close to three o'clock in the morning when he stumbles in, exhausted, to find River curled up in the middle of his bed, dark hair falling like a shadow across his pillows.

"You didn't come home for dinner," she says, startling him as he's toeing off his shoes and contemplating falling into bed fully clothed.

"I'm sorry. Mrs. Olmstead was in labor, and there were complications."

"But you saved her and her baby. It's a girl."

"It is indeed. You won the pool again. They named her Sandra." He sinks down onto the bed and she kneels up behind him, starts to rub his shoulders. Her hands are strong, steady. It feels good. He lets his head drop forward, starts to doze. She pulls him down and helps him swing his legs into the bed. Then she curls herself around him, and they sleep.

When he wakes, they've switched positions and he is spooning her. She is warm and soft and she smells of sleep and home and all good things, and his body has forgotten she is his sister even if his brain hasn't.

He closes his eyes, forces himself to think of unpleasant things--being kidnapped by hillfolk, the smell of wood burning as he stood on the pyre next to River, getting shot. He's not a praying man, but he prays she's still sleeping, and if she's not, that she won't realize what's happening. He's still panicking in a vague, dreamlike way when he drifts off to sleep again.

The next time he wakes, sunlight is streaming through the window and it is much later than it should be.

"Time is," River says, laughing, from where she's drawing back the curtains. "No should or shouldn't about it."

"I have appointments--"

"I called Sheila and she called everyone else. They know you had a late night last night." She smiles at him and presses a quick kiss to his mouth, there and gone before he can even register it. She disappears and he pushes a hand through his hair, feeling warm and relaxed and more rested than he's felt in weeks.

River comes back with a tray of food that smells delicious. Eggs and toast and tea. His stomach rumbles and they both giggle.

"Breakfast, husband," she says, kissing him again.

He takes a bite of toast and, for once, doesn't correct her.

***

River sleeps in his bed--their bed now--every night. He's given up fighting her, fighting it. There isn't going to be anything--or anyone--else, not for him, and not for her. This is their life and they have to live it.

River rolls over and kisses him good night, and he kisses her back. She sucks in a surprised breath, and then she is everywhere, mouth and fingers and hair moving over him, and he gives himself over into her hands.

When they are done, Simon Tam is gone, and only Peter Tanner remains.

***

Grace is a farming town on Angel, not far from the foothills of the Corpus Christi Mountains. It's small, but growing, and the townsfolk throw a barbecue the day Dr. Tanner and his wife bring home the baby they've adopted. Mrs. Tanner is still a little strange, but she hasn't had one of her fits in months, and the ladies of the town agree amongst themselves that no baby will ever be loved more than little Serenity Tanner.

end

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