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[gidge]

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

Comments

[subsulcus]

"I took him," is her initial answer. Plaintive, regretful, lilting at the end almost as if it's a question. A rare declaration of the ownership of guilt.

Holden worries about putting them in danger. About pulling them away from their home, of making things worse and breaking promises made with the best intentions. Second guesses the choices, creates little escape pods out of his armor to run from the consequences of his own decisions and hands them out like candy and carnival tokens. The option to get off the ride he doesn't have. He stands there and is sincere and honest and trying.

But River can trace the backwards branching paths of probability and effect to a cause. Follow the lines back to now.

"From what he was supposed to be. Supposed to do." She takes a deep breath, eyes back on her knees. "Gotta fix something to fix himself. It's recursive, it-- It's..."

Agitation is another part of the cycle the closer they get to their own system, swirled in with the morose and the fearful. Makes her stumble over a single syllable when she finally wants to speak clearly.

"Necessity of a problem. To fix. When the first one won't solve." She sighs again, almost benign annoyance. "Did the answers in pen and now it can't be corrected."

[acreage]

He listens, patiently, through River's entire explanation. And then he approaches her, slowly and carefully, like the boy who once calmed a startled bull. He stops a little short of her bunk, then kneels so he can be close to eye level.

And then he says, just as slowly, "River. It is not your responsibility to make sure your brother has someone to treat."

He means River herself, he means himself, he means anyone. It's not her fault that she's like this, and it's not her fault Simon had to leave his work. None of it's Simon's, either. It's just the shitty situation they've found themselves in.

"And I think you understand that not all problems can be fixed. Some things get better. And some things you live with."

River will get better. But she'll never be the girl who'd never heard of the Academy before. And Holden, with a device where his thyroid is supposed to be, and reminders that beep on his hand terminal regularly (take your medicine!), will never be the man who first set foot on Eros looking for Lionel Polanski. No doctor can fix that, no matter how well-meaning he is.

[subsulcus]

It's easy enough to listen to Holden. It's just vibrations in the air, intentions projected. She doesn't look at him at first, even when he approaches, but she listens.

Tears, also, are not an uncommon part of her current rollercoaster.

"No," and she shakes her head for emphasis when she looks up. "He needs someone to."

Has to be her, by process of elimination. Holden looks out for everyone, but no one makes sure he's okay. Their parents certainly didn't do much taking care, won't do it now. It's her fault Simon is here, at the edge of everything, living a life he never wanted. So it's her responsibility to keep him from breaking, at least any more than he already has.

[acreage]

"That's not all on you."

He doesn't move, even when she starts crying; not because he doesn't care, but because he doesn't dare disturb her. God knows she's had too many people lay hands on her without giving a shit about her consent.

"What do you think being the captain means? I'm going to take care of the both of you, same as the rest of my crew."

[subsulcus]

He says I'm going to take care of the both of you and it's too soft. She doesn't know what to do with it other than feel it, get carried away and confused by implications and things unsaid. Holden is a good man, but he's not their father, not another brother. It seems significant, suddenly, the blood in relation and veins and wounds, and River looks particularly distressed.

Simon has told them, when explaining what it is that changed in his sister, that River feels everything -- that she can't stop it, can't regulate it. Half the meds she's on are to mimic regulation, or just dampen the physiological reaction to emotion so her heart doesn't beat out of her chest with it all.

She's crying in earnest now, all hiccuping breaths and squeezing her arms around her legs.

"Not the same, it's-- I don't--" Her face crumples with confusion, because that's another part of it. There's too much going on to know which way is up. There's going back, and options not to, and Holden giving those options, and his assurances, and needing in some deep and primal way for him to understand that she needs her brother to be the genius doctor he is, because if he's that then maybe she can be River again.