river_meimei: (Default)
River Tam ([personal profile] river_meimei) wrote in [community profile] milliways_bar2007-01-25 11:22 pm

(no subject)

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.

[personal profile] supaahiro 2007-01-30 11:13 pm (UTC)(link)
"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."

[personal profile] supaahiro 2007-02-01 06:42 am (UTC)(link)
"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.

[personal profile] supaahiro 2007-02-01 07:01 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[personal profile] supaahiro 2007-02-01 07:14 am (UTC)(link)
"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."

[personal profile] supaahiro 2007-02-01 07:59 am (UTC)(link)
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.