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Commentary of Twin Regrets continued -- Ch1
Chapter 1: Lurid Proofs
I guess I should say something about the chapter titles, huh? I horrible at choosing titles. Still, this one worked rather well since a large part of the chapter is about problems -- John puzzling out the dreams, River puzzling out her Solution and how to get him. Moreover, a reference to the fact that the whole thing is math to River. Just a Proof to be worked, to be solved, whose result will hopefully help her.
She sneaks up on me while I'm watching the feed from one of the DRDs. I should have locked the door to my room; but then again if I didn't want to be discovered, I'd be watching the images of the clone and Aeryn in a ventilation shaft somewhere. Instead, I have Chiana draped over my back as I watch my twin and the woman I love engage in foreplay.
--This struck me as so representative of their relationship. Chiana is his little sister and the one person that he doesn’t mind up in his business. Plus well, you know by now J/C is my OTP.
"Aww, you're kidding me, Crichton. You aren't still hung up on Aeryn after an entire monen?"
I turn off the video and shrug her off my shoulders in one fluid movement. My jaw grinds as I consider ignoring her, but inside I feel so alone that I want to leap for any amount of contact, for any recognition of the fact that it's me, John Crichton, standing in front of my friends while the clone takes my life bit by bit. "It's hard to get over someone who can't keep her hands off of you," I finally say before beginning the job of disconnecting my pirated video feed. I have no desire to see the pity in Chiana's eyes.
--Eventually Chiana comes to respect what J and A have in the series, but in S3, I never thought that Chiana understood MJ’s moping when Aeryn was gone. He really disconnected from life and his friends. At the same time, I see Chiana as the one most able to deal with the fact that there are two different John’s and accepting them for being individuals. So it’s natural that with TJ in the picture, MJ gravitates to Chiana as someone to affirm that he exists in his own right.
Her hands ghost on my back briefly before her footsteps retreat out of striking distance. "Maybe you shouldn't see it as losing her. Someone a bit more optimistic would realize that they have the chance to see if other options could be more fun," Chiana advises in a heavy voice before my door closes, leaving me alone once again.
--After deciding to expand this to a huge fic (eeeyah! What was I thinking), I really wanted the title to be something more than my normal catchy turn of phrase. To do that, I had to make “twin” mean something other than the clones. This was the start of that. I’ve tried to integrate the theme of all of John’s regrets into the fic and to have a lot of the characters echo Chiana’s advice here. Basically doing what everyone has told MJ to do since TJ left on Talyn with Aeryn --- get on with your life.
"It's not that frelling simple," I curse as my fist hits Moya's wall of its own volition.
--And it’s not. Because MJ is doing what Aeryn did after Infinite Possibilities. He’s mourning what could have been, except he’s having what could have been thrown in his face as well. It’s something I find way too easy to write due to a number of experiences.
When the dreams start, I almost dismiss them out of hand. The symbolism is horribly obvious. Two chairs of torture, each slightly different, facing each other through a long dark empty room. Predators circling the occupants just out of sight. It's easy to read the parallels into my past and present situation. Every night I wait for a raven-haired damsel in distress to be added to the scenario. Each night, I'm wrong.
--Seriously, I can’t take much credit for how great the text reads for these first four chapters or so. I was SERIOUSLY in the thrall of the muse. It’s probably why the last half is going so slow even though I have it plotted --- it’s painful that the second half doesn’t sound as great in my head as the first half. Anyway, this was more of the Twin theme resounding out in my head --- River and John have both been tortured. How else would River reach out to him and awaken his sympathy? Really, I was so surprised no one else had done this.
Until she appears, but she's not the one I expect. This damsel stands firmly on the opposite side of jail bait from Aeryn. Her face is rounder, much less severe, and her hair a hell of a lot more disorderly. She sits in the unfamiliar chair with needles digging into her skull while leather straps hold her firmly in place as she screams. The sound of her torture serves as a high-pitched counterpoint to my own soundtrack of pain as I whirl in the Aurora Chair like a never-ending, evil Tilt-a-Whirl at the Nightmare Carnival on Elm Street. I even start to look for Freddy Krueger and Jason through the darkness.
Okay….umm, this may spoil something for you that I may decide to use at a later time. I’ve been struck by the similarities of River and Aeryn—not that they really look alike, but there are enough similarities that one could almost argue that they are related. And with her black hair and John’s confusion, it’s understandable that he expects to see Aeryn. And well, while I was writing this, it kinda came to me that’s River’s abilities aren’t quite human. And they can’t be explained necessarily by the augmentations she’s been through. So what if she’s related to John? What if she’s related to him and Aeryn? It would give a more plausible explanation for why she can reach him easily. Additionally, with the whole unrealized reality part of the equation with wormholes, it’s not out of this world. Anyways, I’m not sure if I’ll use that idea and if I do, when I’ll reveal it in the story. Maybe not till the sequel. But there you have it. A sneak peak.
The surprise comes when our positions change. I almost vomit from the sudden stillness even as I realize that needles are rapidly approaching my own skull. Multiple sharp jabs cause me to jerk from my bed in wakefulness. Retching into the toilet, I firmly repeat the mantra that it was only a dream while wondering what Freud would make of it. Probably he'd say that I have obviously acquired a sadomasochistic bent during my travels in this fucked up end of the galaxy. Thinking of Freud causes me to flash back to when the Scarrans used that machine to mind-frell me and I got psychoanalyzed by Zhaan. Then, I remember the image of Sparky the Great in leather. Uggh.
--Man, I can’t bring myself to interrupt partial paragraph to make a comment. Anyways, the switching places…so necessary. Just the image of the needles and what Browder’s face would do if faced with needles that size (Okay, so yeah, sometimes I can do imagery well. But I’m my muse’s bitch). And of course, that would wake MJ up. And then, I get to throw in the Freud refs because it’s John and well, it leads to referencing the frakked up Scarran-induced dream with Sparky in leather!!!! ‘Nuff said.
After that, I'm not exactly excited to try to go back to sleep. No one really notices since I haven't been trying to wear different clothes than the other guy. TJ is what I've heard Chiana and D'argo call him when I've used the DRDs to spy on them. Talyn-John I assume. Guess that makes me MJ, huh? Gee, I always did want to be like Mike.
--I don’t remember if they ever used the terms MJ and TJ. But I couldn’t resist referencing a bit of the fangirrl talk and throwing it into the universe. So yeah, this is a big shout-out to my Farscape pimp, sdwolfpup.;) And you just know, that once MJ succumbed to paranoia to spy, he’d spy on everyone. It’s just a given that he’d have to see how everyone was comparing them. To see if his friends were still on his side.
I know, spying on my crewmates – my family - is sick, but it's not as if I have many other things to occupy my attention. It's either that or watch the clone and Aeryn frell like bunnies. Quite frankly, that novelty wore off after a while. I'm still bitter and angry, but ulcers aren't a good thing to experience in the Uncharted Territories…There's a horrible lack of Rolaids.
--Obviously, this is a few weeks after the prologue. MJ is definitely spiraling towards the insanity that we saw at the start of S4, but not quite there. But the desperation is. And god, I love my Crichton bitter and angry. That whole “save the fucked up guy” complex we women have.
Coffee is sadly missing as well. Needless to say, I pass out finally in the solarium after going for three days straight without sleep. One minute I'm trying to pretend that I'm at home counting the stars and the next I'm back in that god-damned room again. How sick is it that I'm pissed that I'm not in the Aurora Chair?
--It was important to me that the dreams of River’s torture be just as disturbing to MJ as when Harvey started to emerge. He’s pissed, angry, tortured, and now he’s finding something else in his dreams to worry about. I didn’t really put it here, but I can imagine that he’s really worried that he’s losing it even more than he is. So he tries to avoid the dream…and falls right into it like Alice in Wonderland.
Instead, I can see the girl with the messy hair spinning in my preferred torture device while I endure the needles again. This time I sleep past the pain and into the…hell, I don't know what the Yotz is happening. Nothing good. I've had enough girlfriends with biology degrees to know that your brain can't feel pain, or at least it isn't supposed to, but something not cool is occurring between those needles and my horribly mistreated grey matter.
--I didn’t want to get too specific. I wanted the reader to be as confused as John despite any knowledge of firefly. This was where Mona and I decided that we had to keep the first person and the present tense for John, if nothing else for the dreams. It just pulls the reader into the imagery so well. And I’ve advised enough of my beta-s about brain physiology when they were writing about River and the HoB’s that I couldn’t resist adding the part about the brain not feeling pain. And it’s true.
Then I see suits. At first, I decide that it has to be a hallucination. Yeah, fahrbot, I know - a hallucination inside of a dream. Have I mentioned lately that villains have literally scrambled my brains a few too many times? Anyway, these two suit fellows are just standing there staring at me, both with pretty vacant expressions. More vacant than the zombies on that rotting leviathan where all my most recent problems started. And, they have these blue gloves on…like the ones that people with latex allergies use.
--I wanted to evoke the imagery of when John was on the ice planet with his brain open. At the same time, what better way to introduce the Hands of Blue (as they are know in firefly fandom) than in the specter of a hallucination. After all, MJ has a history of having his hallucinations come to life. And yes, one brand of non-latex gloves (nytex for those informed) are blue. There are also purple and green, but blue is the most universal.
I wake up abruptly. Geez, I'm more confused than ever. This whole idea that these dreams are a way for my subconscious to work out my problems is starting to look a little shady. One thing about the Uncharted Territories and the Peacekeepers, I've yet to see anyone wearing a three-piece suit. Probably with good reason - I can't begin to imagine how many ways a Peacekeeper soldier could use a necktie to kill a person.
--Really, can you imagine what Aeryn’s reaction was the first time she saw someone in a tie? I couldn’t resist it. And, I felt like it really would be something that would tip MJ off that something else was happening.
Whatever is going on, I'm starting to get a really bad feeling. Like a Maldis-size bad feeling. No way in hell am I going to ask the other guy if he's having the same dreams though. Nope, not until Satan starts serving frozen margaritas. Speaking of which, I really need a fellip nectar.
--No matter how bad it gets, I doubt MJ would go to TJ for help. Unless it involved Aeryn…or Moya, which would mean it threatens all of them. It just wouldn’t happen.
On the other side of the universe (even at possibly a different point in time, she admits with a bit of trepidation), River began to put the pieces together and wondered if she'd found an unexpected Solution to the conundrum she has pondered for so long. Getting the Solution will be a thorny task alone.
--And here we go, into Firefly universe and third person. Mona really helped me work out the best way to make River’s voice stand out (after all, it had to be different since we were also dealing w/ John craziness). And, I wanted to show how disconnected from John she is. River can’t care less who John is or what he’s going through, at least, not right now. He’s a piece of the puzzle, the Solution.
The Solution is elegant though, even cute. Idly, she wondered if Simon would start to look like him as her brother aged. Not face-wise of course, but perhaps that's what happened to men's bodies with age, that they fill out and get broader. Two things that Simon could use sooner rather than later she feared.
--And of course, I had to put in a comparison of Simon and John. Two very cute, built men, but with oh so different bodies. Excuse me while I drool.
Pushing the future out of her mind, she focused on…well on the Solution. And getting him here. The blue whirlpool of light swirled in the center of her vision. She let it consume her consciousness, her being, and slowed her heartbeat until she surrendered to sleep. All that remained is to wait for REM sleep.
--I was a little more focused on imagery here than on mechanics. But it makes sense and works that she’s using a dream wormhole.
It came suddenly and sucked her over into the room she's visited several times before. She forced herself to ignore the spinning and the vertigo that was ever present in this place. Instead, her attention turned to the machine she inhabited as it roughly pulled the electromagnetic waves out of her head and translated them into pictures, into memories, to be played on the screen beside her. This time the Solution stood beside her instead of sitting in…no, mustn't think of it. Focus on the problem, on the theorem, complete the proof and rescue the maiden. Except his maiden has chosen another White Knight.
Thanks to what’s been done to here, ignoring the effects of the Aurora chair is nothing for River. She makes the machine her tool instead.
"Okay, wow, not that I don't appreciate the complete lack of freaky-Friday needles drilling into my head, but would you mind explaining exactly why you keep showing up in my dreams? Cause no offense, but I don't remember ever seeing any pin-up girl that looked like you and I've definitely not reached the dirty old man phase no matter what Chiana says," the Solution ranted. He had an odd way of speaking, but then again, she supposed that this machine could do that to a person.
Hee. Classic John rambling when he was stressed. And probably the best I’ve captured his voice since I started. And through River, the firefly only people can get a better sense of John.
"Patience, John. She's trying to show you why she's here," another voice said as a leather-clad finger tapped the screen on which images of her life flashed.
Enter Harvey. Because you can’t have a post-S1 fic without Harvey. And it was important that I show that River can see and hear him as well as John.
John, the Solution's name was John. Hebrew meaning God is Gracious. Data continued to indicate that her proposed solution would prove the theorem after all.
Shout out to the Train Job.
"Harvey, no one asked you. And will you turn that thing off already? My stomach is wincing in sympathy," John replied.
"No!" she screamed. She couldn't help it. It was hard to make her muscles work through the chaos and the pain. "Watch!"
John gave her a dubious look as if he had gone back to assuming she was a figment of his screwed up unconscious. He'd see soon.
She focused her mind as she tried to order the images into some type of coherent linear form. Difficult at best, this machine wasn't designed for linearity, but rather for blitzkrieg attacks to steal information out of the subject's mind. Fortunately, this was her dream and therefore her rules.
Of course River intuitively understands how Scorpius’s masterpiece operates. And here is the entire purpose of having both chairs in the first dream.
Scenes from her childhood appeared slowly and in brilliant color. Snapshots of her infant memories of her loving brother and the routine of the nannies that cared for them. Later snippets of their play, of her helping him with his mathematics, of the garden she still longs for even though she knows it was never as perfect as she imagines. Then bleak grey images of the boredom and loneliness that formed her days after Simon went away to the Med-A-Cad in Osiris City. An empty house and her things, social parties and obligations, all form with no substance.
River is great at manipulating people on any level when she puts her mind to it (plus, in her head, I always show her to be relatively sane). So of course, she starts with her memories of Simon, of their relationship, to show John. To make him connect to both of them as people. To make him care.
She braced for what would come next even as she fought with the machine to show what he would need to know to solve his puzzles. Her completed application to the Government Academy which promised exciting academic challenges and opportunities offered no where else. Her hyperactive energy as she packed to leave home and prepared for her first taste of freedom, the bittersweet last visit with dear Simon, and finally, her last moment of innocence as she stared up at the dormitory that was to become her prison.
Then shrinking classrooms as students supposedly became homesick and left the program. Her teachers pride as they encouraged her to study and learn even more esoteric subjects. Military history and strategy, religion, politics, whatever grabbed her interest and more. Until the night it all changed.
This was important to me. To show the halves of her life --- her promise, her excitement, bookended by the terror and desperation. Also, to show the little details that might have made her intuition nervous. The warnings.
It started with feeling ill after an odd and subdued meal in the cafeteria. None of the workers would look at any of the remaining children. She felt cold even as she remembered the somber atmosphere and how they all rushed to leave it for the relative comfort of their rooms. Later waking in a cold sweat, disoriented. A different place, not a room. More of a cell with a bed, a toilet, and a light over which she had no control.
This too was important to me. Everyone has a different image of how River was inducted into the program we got a glimpse of in the viral marketing files and the movie. But it makes sense that they’d start with a few till they thought they’d perfected it. Then finally spring it on the most promising.
Panic. Loss of control. She surrendered to the machine and lets it do what it is meant to. It will show the rest now easily.
And River always loses control when she remembers this part, but there’s no need for control anymore.
The chair, the needles, the suits, no one hearing her cries. Always hearing the voices from then on and worse, feeling the fear that rolled down the hall from THAT room.
Even now, she thought she could feel it.
Yes, a TLB shout out.
Then the lawman. Waking up vulnerable, but HE was there. Safety. She knew he'd come. Started to doubt, but she always knew. Mal, bad in the Latin. The whore, the preacher, and the mercenary. Humor and Honor wedded into one. The bright sunshine who kept them flying. Serenity at last.
And the images from the pilot Serenity. And descriptions of all of Serenity’s occupants.
It's too much. She can't hold on to it. She felt the whirlpool forcing things back into their proper time and place. Hopefully he understood.
River awoke, exhausted and sobbing. When Simon entered the room, she hugged him fiercely, tightly, wouldn't let go. Reduced to hysteria when he tried to leave to get the smoother. No one would ever take him from her again. Her proof is right. She knew it.
And an allusion to the main plot of the story!
I guess I should say something about the chapter titles, huh? I horrible at choosing titles. Still, this one worked rather well since a large part of the chapter is about problems -- John puzzling out the dreams, River puzzling out her Solution and how to get him. Moreover, a reference to the fact that the whole thing is math to River. Just a Proof to be worked, to be solved, whose result will hopefully help her.
She sneaks up on me while I'm watching the feed from one of the DRDs. I should have locked the door to my room; but then again if I didn't want to be discovered, I'd be watching the images of the clone and Aeryn in a ventilation shaft somewhere. Instead, I have Chiana draped over my back as I watch my twin and the woman I love engage in foreplay.
--This struck me as so representative of their relationship. Chiana is his little sister and the one person that he doesn’t mind up in his business. Plus well, you know by now J/C is my OTP.
"Aww, you're kidding me, Crichton. You aren't still hung up on Aeryn after an entire monen?"
I turn off the video and shrug her off my shoulders in one fluid movement. My jaw grinds as I consider ignoring her, but inside I feel so alone that I want to leap for any amount of contact, for any recognition of the fact that it's me, John Crichton, standing in front of my friends while the clone takes my life bit by bit. "It's hard to get over someone who can't keep her hands off of you," I finally say before beginning the job of disconnecting my pirated video feed. I have no desire to see the pity in Chiana's eyes.
--Eventually Chiana comes to respect what J and A have in the series, but in S3, I never thought that Chiana understood MJ’s moping when Aeryn was gone. He really disconnected from life and his friends. At the same time, I see Chiana as the one most able to deal with the fact that there are two different John’s and accepting them for being individuals. So it’s natural that with TJ in the picture, MJ gravitates to Chiana as someone to affirm that he exists in his own right.
Her hands ghost on my back briefly before her footsteps retreat out of striking distance. "Maybe you shouldn't see it as losing her. Someone a bit more optimistic would realize that they have the chance to see if other options could be more fun," Chiana advises in a heavy voice before my door closes, leaving me alone once again.
--After deciding to expand this to a huge fic (eeeyah! What was I thinking), I really wanted the title to be something more than my normal catchy turn of phrase. To do that, I had to make “twin” mean something other than the clones. This was the start of that. I’ve tried to integrate the theme of all of John’s regrets into the fic and to have a lot of the characters echo Chiana’s advice here. Basically doing what everyone has told MJ to do since TJ left on Talyn with Aeryn --- get on with your life.
"It's not that frelling simple," I curse as my fist hits Moya's wall of its own volition.
--And it’s not. Because MJ is doing what Aeryn did after Infinite Possibilities. He’s mourning what could have been, except he’s having what could have been thrown in his face as well. It’s something I find way too easy to write due to a number of experiences.
When the dreams start, I almost dismiss them out of hand. The symbolism is horribly obvious. Two chairs of torture, each slightly different, facing each other through a long dark empty room. Predators circling the occupants just out of sight. It's easy to read the parallels into my past and present situation. Every night I wait for a raven-haired damsel in distress to be added to the scenario. Each night, I'm wrong.
--Seriously, I can’t take much credit for how great the text reads for these first four chapters or so. I was SERIOUSLY in the thrall of the muse. It’s probably why the last half is going so slow even though I have it plotted --- it’s painful that the second half doesn’t sound as great in my head as the first half. Anyway, this was more of the Twin theme resounding out in my head --- River and John have both been tortured. How else would River reach out to him and awaken his sympathy? Really, I was so surprised no one else had done this.
Until she appears, but she's not the one I expect. This damsel stands firmly on the opposite side of jail bait from Aeryn. Her face is rounder, much less severe, and her hair a hell of a lot more disorderly. She sits in the unfamiliar chair with needles digging into her skull while leather straps hold her firmly in place as she screams. The sound of her torture serves as a high-pitched counterpoint to my own soundtrack of pain as I whirl in the Aurora Chair like a never-ending, evil Tilt-a-Whirl at the Nightmare Carnival on Elm Street. I even start to look for Freddy Krueger and Jason through the darkness.
Okay….umm, this may spoil something for you that I may decide to use at a later time. I’ve been struck by the similarities of River and Aeryn—not that they really look alike, but there are enough similarities that one could almost argue that they are related. And with her black hair and John’s confusion, it’s understandable that he expects to see Aeryn. And well, while I was writing this, it kinda came to me that’s River’s abilities aren’t quite human. And they can’t be explained necessarily by the augmentations she’s been through. So what if she’s related to John? What if she’s related to him and Aeryn? It would give a more plausible explanation for why she can reach him easily. Additionally, with the whole unrealized reality part of the equation with wormholes, it’s not out of this world. Anyways, I’m not sure if I’ll use that idea and if I do, when I’ll reveal it in the story. Maybe not till the sequel. But there you have it. A sneak peak.
The surprise comes when our positions change. I almost vomit from the sudden stillness even as I realize that needles are rapidly approaching my own skull. Multiple sharp jabs cause me to jerk from my bed in wakefulness. Retching into the toilet, I firmly repeat the mantra that it was only a dream while wondering what Freud would make of it. Probably he'd say that I have obviously acquired a sadomasochistic bent during my travels in this fucked up end of the galaxy. Thinking of Freud causes me to flash back to when the Scarrans used that machine to mind-frell me and I got psychoanalyzed by Zhaan. Then, I remember the image of Sparky the Great in leather. Uggh.
--Man, I can’t bring myself to interrupt partial paragraph to make a comment. Anyways, the switching places…so necessary. Just the image of the needles and what Browder’s face would do if faced with needles that size (Okay, so yeah, sometimes I can do imagery well. But I’m my muse’s bitch). And of course, that would wake MJ up. And then, I get to throw in the Freud refs because it’s John and well, it leads to referencing the frakked up Scarran-induced dream with Sparky in leather!!!! ‘Nuff said.
After that, I'm not exactly excited to try to go back to sleep. No one really notices since I haven't been trying to wear different clothes than the other guy. TJ is what I've heard Chiana and D'argo call him when I've used the DRDs to spy on them. Talyn-John I assume. Guess that makes me MJ, huh? Gee, I always did want to be like Mike.
--I don’t remember if they ever used the terms MJ and TJ. But I couldn’t resist referencing a bit of the fangirrl talk and throwing it into the universe. So yeah, this is a big shout-out to my Farscape pimp, sdwolfpup.;) And you just know, that once MJ succumbed to paranoia to spy, he’d spy on everyone. It’s just a given that he’d have to see how everyone was comparing them. To see if his friends were still on his side.
I know, spying on my crewmates – my family - is sick, but it's not as if I have many other things to occupy my attention. It's either that or watch the clone and Aeryn frell like bunnies. Quite frankly, that novelty wore off after a while. I'm still bitter and angry, but ulcers aren't a good thing to experience in the Uncharted Territories…There's a horrible lack of Rolaids.
--Obviously, this is a few weeks after the prologue. MJ is definitely spiraling towards the insanity that we saw at the start of S4, but not quite there. But the desperation is. And god, I love my Crichton bitter and angry. That whole “save the fucked up guy” complex we women have.
Coffee is sadly missing as well. Needless to say, I pass out finally in the solarium after going for three days straight without sleep. One minute I'm trying to pretend that I'm at home counting the stars and the next I'm back in that god-damned room again. How sick is it that I'm pissed that I'm not in the Aurora Chair?
--It was important to me that the dreams of River’s torture be just as disturbing to MJ as when Harvey started to emerge. He’s pissed, angry, tortured, and now he’s finding something else in his dreams to worry about. I didn’t really put it here, but I can imagine that he’s really worried that he’s losing it even more than he is. So he tries to avoid the dream…and falls right into it like Alice in Wonderland.
Instead, I can see the girl with the messy hair spinning in my preferred torture device while I endure the needles again. This time I sleep past the pain and into the…hell, I don't know what the Yotz is happening. Nothing good. I've had enough girlfriends with biology degrees to know that your brain can't feel pain, or at least it isn't supposed to, but something not cool is occurring between those needles and my horribly mistreated grey matter.
--I didn’t want to get too specific. I wanted the reader to be as confused as John despite any knowledge of firefly. This was where Mona and I decided that we had to keep the first person and the present tense for John, if nothing else for the dreams. It just pulls the reader into the imagery so well. And I’ve advised enough of my beta-s about brain physiology when they were writing about River and the HoB’s that I couldn’t resist adding the part about the brain not feeling pain. And it’s true.
Then I see suits. At first, I decide that it has to be a hallucination. Yeah, fahrbot, I know - a hallucination inside of a dream. Have I mentioned lately that villains have literally scrambled my brains a few too many times? Anyway, these two suit fellows are just standing there staring at me, both with pretty vacant expressions. More vacant than the zombies on that rotting leviathan where all my most recent problems started. And, they have these blue gloves on…like the ones that people with latex allergies use.
--I wanted to evoke the imagery of when John was on the ice planet with his brain open. At the same time, what better way to introduce the Hands of Blue (as they are know in firefly fandom) than in the specter of a hallucination. After all, MJ has a history of having his hallucinations come to life. And yes, one brand of non-latex gloves (nytex for those informed) are blue. There are also purple and green, but blue is the most universal.
I wake up abruptly. Geez, I'm more confused than ever. This whole idea that these dreams are a way for my subconscious to work out my problems is starting to look a little shady. One thing about the Uncharted Territories and the Peacekeepers, I've yet to see anyone wearing a three-piece suit. Probably with good reason - I can't begin to imagine how many ways a Peacekeeper soldier could use a necktie to kill a person.
--Really, can you imagine what Aeryn’s reaction was the first time she saw someone in a tie? I couldn’t resist it. And, I felt like it really would be something that would tip MJ off that something else was happening.
Whatever is going on, I'm starting to get a really bad feeling. Like a Maldis-size bad feeling. No way in hell am I going to ask the other guy if he's having the same dreams though. Nope, not until Satan starts serving frozen margaritas. Speaking of which, I really need a fellip nectar.
--No matter how bad it gets, I doubt MJ would go to TJ for help. Unless it involved Aeryn…or Moya, which would mean it threatens all of them. It just wouldn’t happen.
On the other side of the universe (even at possibly a different point in time, she admits with a bit of trepidation), River began to put the pieces together and wondered if she'd found an unexpected Solution to the conundrum she has pondered for so long. Getting the Solution will be a thorny task alone.
--And here we go, into Firefly universe and third person. Mona really helped me work out the best way to make River’s voice stand out (after all, it had to be different since we were also dealing w/ John craziness). And, I wanted to show how disconnected from John she is. River can’t care less who John is or what he’s going through, at least, not right now. He’s a piece of the puzzle, the Solution.
The Solution is elegant though, even cute. Idly, she wondered if Simon would start to look like him as her brother aged. Not face-wise of course, but perhaps that's what happened to men's bodies with age, that they fill out and get broader. Two things that Simon could use sooner rather than later she feared.
--And of course, I had to put in a comparison of Simon and John. Two very cute, built men, but with oh so different bodies. Excuse me while I drool.
Pushing the future out of her mind, she focused on…well on the Solution. And getting him here. The blue whirlpool of light swirled in the center of her vision. She let it consume her consciousness, her being, and slowed her heartbeat until she surrendered to sleep. All that remained is to wait for REM sleep.
--I was a little more focused on imagery here than on mechanics. But it makes sense and works that she’s using a dream wormhole.
It came suddenly and sucked her over into the room she's visited several times before. She forced herself to ignore the spinning and the vertigo that was ever present in this place. Instead, her attention turned to the machine she inhabited as it roughly pulled the electromagnetic waves out of her head and translated them into pictures, into memories, to be played on the screen beside her. This time the Solution stood beside her instead of sitting in…no, mustn't think of it. Focus on the problem, on the theorem, complete the proof and rescue the maiden. Except his maiden has chosen another White Knight.
Thanks to what’s been done to here, ignoring the effects of the Aurora chair is nothing for River. She makes the machine her tool instead.
"Okay, wow, not that I don't appreciate the complete lack of freaky-Friday needles drilling into my head, but would you mind explaining exactly why you keep showing up in my dreams? Cause no offense, but I don't remember ever seeing any pin-up girl that looked like you and I've definitely not reached the dirty old man phase no matter what Chiana says," the Solution ranted. He had an odd way of speaking, but then again, she supposed that this machine could do that to a person.
Hee. Classic John rambling when he was stressed. And probably the best I’ve captured his voice since I started. And through River, the firefly only people can get a better sense of John.
"Patience, John. She's trying to show you why she's here," another voice said as a leather-clad finger tapped the screen on which images of her life flashed.
Enter Harvey. Because you can’t have a post-S1 fic without Harvey. And it was important that I show that River can see and hear him as well as John.
John, the Solution's name was John. Hebrew meaning God is Gracious. Data continued to indicate that her proposed solution would prove the theorem after all.
Shout out to the Train Job.
"Harvey, no one asked you. And will you turn that thing off already? My stomach is wincing in sympathy," John replied.
"No!" she screamed. She couldn't help it. It was hard to make her muscles work through the chaos and the pain. "Watch!"
John gave her a dubious look as if he had gone back to assuming she was a figment of his screwed up unconscious. He'd see soon.
She focused her mind as she tried to order the images into some type of coherent linear form. Difficult at best, this machine wasn't designed for linearity, but rather for blitzkrieg attacks to steal information out of the subject's mind. Fortunately, this was her dream and therefore her rules.
Of course River intuitively understands how Scorpius’s masterpiece operates. And here is the entire purpose of having both chairs in the first dream.
Scenes from her childhood appeared slowly and in brilliant color. Snapshots of her infant memories of her loving brother and the routine of the nannies that cared for them. Later snippets of their play, of her helping him with his mathematics, of the garden she still longs for even though she knows it was never as perfect as she imagines. Then bleak grey images of the boredom and loneliness that formed her days after Simon went away to the Med-A-Cad in Osiris City. An empty house and her things, social parties and obligations, all form with no substance.
River is great at manipulating people on any level when she puts her mind to it (plus, in her head, I always show her to be relatively sane). So of course, she starts with her memories of Simon, of their relationship, to show John. To make him connect to both of them as people. To make him care.
She braced for what would come next even as she fought with the machine to show what he would need to know to solve his puzzles. Her completed application to the Government Academy which promised exciting academic challenges and opportunities offered no where else. Her hyperactive energy as she packed to leave home and prepared for her first taste of freedom, the bittersweet last visit with dear Simon, and finally, her last moment of innocence as she stared up at the dormitory that was to become her prison.
Then shrinking classrooms as students supposedly became homesick and left the program. Her teachers pride as they encouraged her to study and learn even more esoteric subjects. Military history and strategy, religion, politics, whatever grabbed her interest and more. Until the night it all changed.
This was important to me. To show the halves of her life --- her promise, her excitement, bookended by the terror and desperation. Also, to show the little details that might have made her intuition nervous. The warnings.
It started with feeling ill after an odd and subdued meal in the cafeteria. None of the workers would look at any of the remaining children. She felt cold even as she remembered the somber atmosphere and how they all rushed to leave it for the relative comfort of their rooms. Later waking in a cold sweat, disoriented. A different place, not a room. More of a cell with a bed, a toilet, and a light over which she had no control.
This too was important to me. Everyone has a different image of how River was inducted into the program we got a glimpse of in the viral marketing files and the movie. But it makes sense that they’d start with a few till they thought they’d perfected it. Then finally spring it on the most promising.
Panic. Loss of control. She surrendered to the machine and lets it do what it is meant to. It will show the rest now easily.
And River always loses control when she remembers this part, but there’s no need for control anymore.
The chair, the needles, the suits, no one hearing her cries. Always hearing the voices from then on and worse, feeling the fear that rolled down the hall from THAT room.
Even now, she thought she could feel it.
Yes, a TLB shout out.
Then the lawman. Waking up vulnerable, but HE was there. Safety. She knew he'd come. Started to doubt, but she always knew. Mal, bad in the Latin. The whore, the preacher, and the mercenary. Humor and Honor wedded into one. The bright sunshine who kept them flying. Serenity at last.
And the images from the pilot Serenity. And descriptions of all of Serenity’s occupants.
It's too much. She can't hold on to it. She felt the whirlpool forcing things back into their proper time and place. Hopefully he understood.
River awoke, exhausted and sobbing. When Simon entered the room, she hugged him fiercely, tightly, wouldn't let go. Reduced to hysteria when he tried to leave to get the smoother. No one would ever take him from her again. Her proof is right. She knew it.
And an allusion to the main plot of the story!
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