karrenia_rune (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
karrenia_rune) wrote2010-06-23 10:57 am
karrenia_rune) wrote2010-06-23 10:57 am
Entry tags:
new fic (Alone Even in a Crowd) Andromeda/Firefly PG
Title: Alone Even in a Crowd
Fandoms: Andromeda/Firefly
Characters: Trance Gemini and River Tam
For Multiverse 6000 Space Show Crossover Prompt Challenge
Prompt: an enigma wrapped up in a riddle
Rating: PG
Words: 1462
Disclaimer: Andromeda and the characters who appear here or are mentioned belong to Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Productions etc; they are not mine. Firefly and its characters are the creation of Joss Whedon, the CW etc.
“Alone, Even in a Crowd“ by karrenia
From the very first moment she had come face to face with the indomitable Dylan Hunt and the Andromeda Ascendant, she had known that was where she had belonged, at least, for the present.
The most problematic thing about having an ingrained responsibility to create the perfect possible future was that there were simply too many probabilities to take into consideration.
For example, take the urgent need that pressed upon her to switch her younger, more naive and purpler self with her adult incarnation.
It had seemed the most prudent course of action; for it would not only accomplish the safety of her ship and crew; it would also afford a wider connection with
multiverse: such as it was.
While Trance could accept the various emotional and even physical responses that her sudden golden and adult incarnation had invoked from the crew: which included shock, blase' grudging acceptance and questioning: And while she could understand their engineer, Seamus Harper's anger; almost; it still hurt her.
They had been friends for so long and she had half hoped, half-expected that he would be the first to come around and accept the new 'Trance' right off the bat.
'Well, thought,' Trance, 'these things take time is all.'
River Tam, on the other hand, felt no such ingrained responsibility,: chiefly because responsibility had not been included in her programming although there would have been no way for her to have been consciously aware of that fact.
It would have been an migraine-inducing headache for just about anyone to predict what might have happened had she remained in the hands of the Alliance. For that way was fraught with an assortment of variables, regrets, fears and could-have, might-have beens.
Not that long ago her brother, Simon Tam, had taken it upon himself to remove both her and himself and damn the consequences. River was a child prodigy, whose brain was subjected to experiments. As a result, she displays schizophrenia and often hears voices. It is later revealed that she is a "reader", one who possesses telepathic abilities.
Simon gave up a highly successful career as a trauma surgeon to rescue her from the Alliance and as a result of this rescue they are both wanted fugitives.
Simon had agreed to join Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew as a paying passenger with River smuggled on board as cargo.
The problem with an plan of that magnitude carried out with the exact same precision that had made him such an excellent doctor was it was only later; that one could appreciate just what those consequences might come back with a vengeance.
River hummed a half-remembered tune that in its pitch and timbre somehow exactly matched the pitch and yaw of the Serenity as it traversed the space lanes at a good clip while clinging to one of the gantries overlooking the cargo bay.
Beneath her the activity of the crew going on about their activities continued unabated.
The cargo was heavy and had come in about a dozen separate containers. The last time something dangerous had come sinuously concealed within a container whose size and shape generally conformed to the length of a human body; Captain Malcolm Reynolds had thrown a fit. Mainly because the person concealed inside one of those crates had been an old friend.
River did not entirely understand the subtler nuances of encountering an old friend who now wished you harm, whether intentionally or not. River, much like her name, often seemed to exist in a constant stream of now; although she was aware of the passage of time on a peripheral level. And even if she were not, she could always ask her brother, Simon Tam, to fill her on the missing details.
The throb of the ship suddenly gave her a sudden wrench in the pit of her stomach even as the ship listed to one side and she could her Jayne and Zoe utter some rather creative curses as they struggled for purchase on the crazily listing deck.
In the back of her mind River wondered what would have cause such an abrupt change in course and speed, and the harmonics of the both the crew’s interaction with each other and the ship. It was like a metallic music and it while it lasted she felt it pull herself, or at last an essential essence out of her body, and to somewhere that could only be described as ‘Somewhere Else.”
Encounter
River opened her eyes, even though, in this place, she did not feel as if she possessed a body and if that were true, then they she could not have opened her eyes, but it fit.
Her deep brown eyes met and held contact with a pair of wide, golden and to her way of thinking, very startled golden ones.
Once the initial shock had subsided, the owner of those golden eyes, blinked and broke the contact taking several involuntary steps backwards.
“What is this place?” River asked
“Not a place, in so many words,” the woman with the golden eyes responded, “I guess the best way of explaining it would be to term it a when, or better yet, one of several possibilities. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anyone here.”
River shook her head. “I…. I don’t understand, realizing that, from a distance, as if it played somewhere outside the confines of the ‘nothing place, an invisible orchestra played, she could still her the music that she had been listening until she had been pulled out of her waking body by an irresistible force.
“Did you call me here?” River asked, and in the back of her mind, where she sometimes felt that her brother, Simon, held a secret piece of her heart, she realized that these were not the typical questions that a normal person would ask under the circumstance; then again she had would never really fit the narrow parameters of what most people would consider ‘normal, so it hardly signified.
Trance Gemini, the golden-eyed enigma; even among those who knew and cared for her the most, shook her head and returned her gaze back upon the dark-eyed, dark-haired waif that had suddenly appeared in the nexus where she went to consider all the various permutations of how to go about creating the most perfect possible future; it was an unlooked for precedent; and one that even she was not entirely certain was either good or bad; and did it really matter.
Instead she grinned. “Yeah, well, I didn’t mean to ‘call’ you at all. By now that you are here, it’s nice to have someone else besides me, myself and I, to talk to you. Usually it’s just me and my plants.”
“Lonely,” River murmured, and she glanced around and their narrow and nondescript surroundings. “Having someone to talk to… helps….”
Trance crossed the few steps that separated her from the fragile-seeming but underneath that very fragility was a core of strength that she could sense but not put her finger on…and placed her hands on River’s shoulders. “I’ll do what I can. I don’t make any guarentees, you understand?
River nodded and then asked: If, when…. I go back…will you call me here again. It is not so empty, so cold here in the when of posibilties as it has been. The others try to help as they can but it’s not the same thing..”
“I will have to send you back,” Trance replied. “It’s the nature of the place. Even I am not permitted to spend very much time, sidereal, though it may be, in the Nexus.”
“Is that what this place is called?” River asked.
Trance shrugged and then replied, “It’s as good a name as any.”
River nodded.
Trance gasped as she felt the slender shoulders underneath her hand shake. “You’re cold, for someone whose body is not really here. You know, I don’t know anything about you and I don’t think it really matters, Here, but you’re fractured.”
“I never meant it to be this way,” River said, more harshly than she had intended.
“I’ll give you the initial push back to your body, but the rest is up to you. For what it’s worth, I wish I could do more to help you, but I get the sneaky suspicion, that like me; sometimes we are both alone, even in a crowd.”
Fandoms: Andromeda/Firefly
Characters: Trance Gemini and River Tam
For Multiverse 6000 Space Show Crossover Prompt Challenge
Prompt: an enigma wrapped up in a riddle
Rating: PG
Words: 1462
Disclaimer: Andromeda and the characters who appear here or are mentioned belong to Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Productions etc; they are not mine. Firefly and its characters are the creation of Joss Whedon, the CW etc.
“Alone, Even in a Crowd“ by karrenia
From the very first moment she had come face to face with the indomitable Dylan Hunt and the Andromeda Ascendant, she had known that was where she had belonged, at least, for the present.
The most problematic thing about having an ingrained responsibility to create the perfect possible future was that there were simply too many probabilities to take into consideration.
For example, take the urgent need that pressed upon her to switch her younger, more naive and purpler self with her adult incarnation.
It had seemed the most prudent course of action; for it would not only accomplish the safety of her ship and crew; it would also afford a wider connection with
multiverse: such as it was.
While Trance could accept the various emotional and even physical responses that her sudden golden and adult incarnation had invoked from the crew: which included shock, blase' grudging acceptance and questioning: And while she could understand their engineer, Seamus Harper's anger; almost; it still hurt her.
They had been friends for so long and she had half hoped, half-expected that he would be the first to come around and accept the new 'Trance' right off the bat.
'Well, thought,' Trance, 'these things take time is all.'
River Tam, on the other hand, felt no such ingrained responsibility,: chiefly because responsibility had not been included in her programming although there would have been no way for her to have been consciously aware of that fact.
It would have been an migraine-inducing headache for just about anyone to predict what might have happened had she remained in the hands of the Alliance. For that way was fraught with an assortment of variables, regrets, fears and could-have, might-have beens.
Not that long ago her brother, Simon Tam, had taken it upon himself to remove both her and himself and damn the consequences. River was a child prodigy, whose brain was subjected to experiments. As a result, she displays schizophrenia and often hears voices. It is later revealed that she is a "reader", one who possesses telepathic abilities.
Simon gave up a highly successful career as a trauma surgeon to rescue her from the Alliance and as a result of this rescue they are both wanted fugitives.
Simon had agreed to join Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew as a paying passenger with River smuggled on board as cargo.
The problem with an plan of that magnitude carried out with the exact same precision that had made him such an excellent doctor was it was only later; that one could appreciate just what those consequences might come back with a vengeance.
River hummed a half-remembered tune that in its pitch and timbre somehow exactly matched the pitch and yaw of the Serenity as it traversed the space lanes at a good clip while clinging to one of the gantries overlooking the cargo bay.
Beneath her the activity of the crew going on about their activities continued unabated.
The cargo was heavy and had come in about a dozen separate containers. The last time something dangerous had come sinuously concealed within a container whose size and shape generally conformed to the length of a human body; Captain Malcolm Reynolds had thrown a fit. Mainly because the person concealed inside one of those crates had been an old friend.
River did not entirely understand the subtler nuances of encountering an old friend who now wished you harm, whether intentionally or not. River, much like her name, often seemed to exist in a constant stream of now; although she was aware of the passage of time on a peripheral level. And even if she were not, she could always ask her brother, Simon Tam, to fill her on the missing details.
The throb of the ship suddenly gave her a sudden wrench in the pit of her stomach even as the ship listed to one side and she could her Jayne and Zoe utter some rather creative curses as they struggled for purchase on the crazily listing deck.
In the back of her mind River wondered what would have cause such an abrupt change in course and speed, and the harmonics of the both the crew’s interaction with each other and the ship. It was like a metallic music and it while it lasted she felt it pull herself, or at last an essential essence out of her body, and to somewhere that could only be described as ‘Somewhere Else.”
Encounter
River opened her eyes, even though, in this place, she did not feel as if she possessed a body and if that were true, then they she could not have opened her eyes, but it fit.
Her deep brown eyes met and held contact with a pair of wide, golden and to her way of thinking, very startled golden ones.
Once the initial shock had subsided, the owner of those golden eyes, blinked and broke the contact taking several involuntary steps backwards.
“What is this place?” River asked
“Not a place, in so many words,” the woman with the golden eyes responded, “I guess the best way of explaining it would be to term it a when, or better yet, one of several possibilities. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting anyone here.”
River shook her head. “I…. I don’t understand, realizing that, from a distance, as if it played somewhere outside the confines of the ‘nothing place, an invisible orchestra played, she could still her the music that she had been listening until she had been pulled out of her waking body by an irresistible force.
“Did you call me here?” River asked, and in the back of her mind, where she sometimes felt that her brother, Simon, held a secret piece of her heart, she realized that these were not the typical questions that a normal person would ask under the circumstance; then again she had would never really fit the narrow parameters of what most people would consider ‘normal, so it hardly signified.
Trance Gemini, the golden-eyed enigma; even among those who knew and cared for her the most, shook her head and returned her gaze back upon the dark-eyed, dark-haired waif that had suddenly appeared in the nexus where she went to consider all the various permutations of how to go about creating the most perfect possible future; it was an unlooked for precedent; and one that even she was not entirely certain was either good or bad; and did it really matter.
Instead she grinned. “Yeah, well, I didn’t mean to ‘call’ you at all. By now that you are here, it’s nice to have someone else besides me, myself and I, to talk to you. Usually it’s just me and my plants.”
“Lonely,” River murmured, and she glanced around and their narrow and nondescript surroundings. “Having someone to talk to… helps….”
Trance crossed the few steps that separated her from the fragile-seeming but underneath that very fragility was a core of strength that she could sense but not put her finger on…and placed her hands on River’s shoulders. “I’ll do what I can. I don’t make any guarentees, you understand?
River nodded and then asked: If, when…. I go back…will you call me here again. It is not so empty, so cold here in the when of posibilties as it has been. The others try to help as they can but it’s not the same thing..”
“I will have to send you back,” Trance replied. “It’s the nature of the place. Even I am not permitted to spend very much time, sidereal, though it may be, in the Nexus.”
“Is that what this place is called?” River asked.
Trance shrugged and then replied, “It’s as good a name as any.”
River nodded.
Trance gasped as she felt the slender shoulders underneath her hand shake. “You’re cold, for someone whose body is not really here. You know, I don’t know anything about you and I don’t think it really matters, Here, but you’re fractured.”
“I never meant it to be this way,” River said, more harshly than she had intended.
“I’ll give you the initial push back to your body, but the rest is up to you. For what it’s worth, I wish I could do more to help you, but I get the sneaky suspicion, that like me; sometimes we are both alone, even in a crowd.”