milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There are points in the rafters where two beams cross. Some of those points intersect with vertical supports; others don't, providing a broader flat surface at the junction.

A laptop is balanced on one. Early 21st century model, sleek and advanced for its time; a knowledgeable eye, given a close look at the specs, might notice that a few components look suspiciously... well, alien. And that a simple laptop probably shouldn't be capable of quite so many things.

River is reading something on it.

She's a huddle inside her long brown coat; her face is pale and tear-splotched, with dark circles under her narrowed eyes, and hot slow tears spill down her cheeks. But she doesn't move, except to scroll down, and she doesn't look away.

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"Of course," River whispers, without looking up.

And then, "Not yet."

His brows furrow. Not-- yet? "...is something going to go there?" He doesn't think that sounds good at all. "Or-- are-- are you going to save them?"

He knows she's a hero. A big damn hero.

She won't let anything bad happen, will she? OF course not.

Hiro's faith is absolute.

River's eyes close on a sudden surge of tears, and her face twists. Hiro probably can't see that; he will, however, see the way her head tilts back, and hear the shaking sniffle as she inhales.

She doesn't answer.

"...are you-- sure-- you don't want... hanky?" He doesn't like that she gets-- all upset! It's scary and frustrating!

River doesn't answer.

Doesn't open her eyes, either; her head slowly bows to rest on her knees, and her shoulders heave with nearly silent sobs.

Hiro -- begins an awkward scoot down closer, closer--

--and reaches out, hesitant, slow, and -- awkwardly pats her shoulder. Should he be doing this? Is he breeching some -- unknown propriety he doesn't know about? 'Don't pet the psychic', maybe?

He can't say. But he can't let her cry without comfort, either.

"She's trying," is all River whispers, barely audible.

She doesn't lean into Hiro's hand. But she doesn't pull away, either.

"Sometimes," Hiro says, as he becomes more sure of the touch, that she can be patted without breaking the fragile-seeming girl, "that is all we can do."

Try.

And then, try harder.

"No," River whispers, head lifting slowly.

"It's not."

Hiro looks at her for a moment, hand stilling on her shoulderblade.

"Then," he says, "You do what you must."

Whatever that may be.

River turns her head sharply away, face tight.

Silently, Hiro draws his hand away, and looks down at it and it's mate as he settles them across his thighs. He resists the urge to fidget, to scrub at his trousers or to grip at the rafter. The drop is too long for him to feel comfortable, too.

"You can't-- just-- sit and do nothing, can you?"

Is that the problem?

"Can. Can't. Isn't rutting relevant!"

"She said. And." River has to take a shuddering breath, and her face twists again. "Said it all. Every side. Put the walls in a box."

"Everybody gets to behave."

"Do you have to obey her wishes?" Whoever 'she' is, anyway. Hiro doesn't know; the words on the screen do not elude to this mystery woman at all. "Sometimes you have to ... ignore what people say, to do what is right."

"She's my friend."

"That," he says with an air of sad certainty, "makes it much harder."

He is quiet, briefly, as he orders his thuoghts. "My-- friend Ando, he keeps me on the straight an' narrow. Sometimes, though, I have to keep him from going astray too. But that-- that is what friends do. You just haev to try and see it--" He wrestles with the word, "clearly."

Abruptly, he misses Ando so very much; he would like to show him this place!

"The hard part is is knowing when your friend is right, or when your friend is wrong," Hiro says simply. "Sometimes-- we don't know what is best for ourselves. Sometimes we need someone to show us what we're doing is wrong."

"It's not relevant," River snaps, teary-eyed, even though it's very relevant, and wraps her arms tightly around herself in an abrupt jerk.

"It is," Hiro insists. "Sometimes we can't see what's good for ourselves. We can't know everything. We are only people!"

Fallible, delicate, destroyable people.

"I know!" she shouts, whirling on him.

"Nĭmen dōu shì shăguā, you think she doesn't know! Think she forgets, think she wants to watch the fall and boost the grav thrusters! Qù nĭ de, watch the faces in little dots. She remembers all of it!"

Hiro --

--has no idea what River just said to him. He's left blinking, and then he looks down at his hands.

Maybe--

--maybe he's no good at this.

"Sumimasen," he murmurs. He is a bad, and presumptuous man, thoroughly shamed.

River slumps, dropping her forehead to her knees with eyes closed, all the fury draining from her as fast as it rose.

Whisper-soft, "Doesn't matter."

"I try, and, and everybody, and -- it doesn't matter. Inertia within the gravitational well."

"I know. Some things--"
He cleaved her head in twain, took her brain-- the brain that remembered everything, the special gift, the thing that made Charlie special Charlie who learned so fast to say 'I love you'...
"Some things cannot-- cannot-- be changed."

River flinches hard, head rising with a gasp, and it looks for a moment as if she might overbalance on the rafter.

(She doesn't. Not quite. She never does.)

"I know," she whimpers, hands flying to her head in a gesture half warding and half clutching. "Stain the tiles, wash it clean. Never is. Never is, all the walls are there except the ones you need. They keep the Lady out -- stop it. Stop listening! I'm trying!"

Hiro flinches back -- it's only luck and a unique sense of space that keeps him from rolling off the rafter.

But eventually, a guy gets a clue. There are some things you cannot fix. This, like her, was one of them.

"Sumimasen," he says again, and scoots down the rafter, repeating it like a well-memorized mantra.

The Japanese do hate to offend.

River just curls in on herself again, pressing her face to her knee in slow, silent weeping.

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