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So many times River has been offered the gift of oblivion, and so many times denied herself the comfort of it. It would be so easy: a misstep here or a pause there in the middle of something dangerous-- probably something to do with her being in the wrong place, with any time being the wrong time for it. She could slip and fall into the black and be done with all these weary things.
But she doesn’t let it happen. She thinks about Simon, the boy who had such a promising life ahead of himself, all of that so much dust now. She thinks about Zoe, who lost her heart and her smile in one moment’s time. She thinks about Mal, and Inara, and Kaylee and, yes, she thinks about Jayne.
All for River, the universe altered itself and took the future on a side step into insanity. All for one little girl who loved to dance and wanted to learn everything there was to learn. For all they’ve done, she goes on.
Simon looks at her with love in his eyes and River feels so torn inside. That love is hers, something to keep her safe, but it’s selfish of her to have all to herself. She knows that she cannot keep him forever, not just for her and no one else. She’s taken too much already, and Simon doesn’t even see in himself anymore the things she can see in him. There’s longing he’s forgotten; emptiness he won’t allow himself to fill. There’s something warm and secret that he locked down deep inside, and it’s dying a little more each time he denies it.
She thinks sometimes when she is awake at night and the shivering won’t stop, that it would be so easy to go to Simon and pry open those secrets, take them for her own. For her, Simon would do anything. The life he is living gives undeniable proof of it. But it would be the most selfish thing she could do, taking that from the person it rightly belongs to.
River watches Zoe slip from one room to another, ghost of the warrior she once was. There’s a hole inside of Zoe, a Wash-sized chasm that no one will ever fill. She walks like Zoe and she talks like Zoe, but River sees the mask and the woman who wears it. If there was a little more of Zoe left, River thinks they could find the thread that binds them together. But there isn’t more than a whisper anymore. If River tries to reach out, she thinks her hand might pass right through that faint shadow and leave nothing left behind at all.
River’s lived too much life in her few years; seen too much and there’s no undoing that. No way to turn the clock and run it backwards. Forward is the only way to go, and what use would it be to take herself out of it now? Nothing comes back. No one returns.
For all she’s changed, River cannot take that gift of quiet, peaceful nothing. It would not be fair to the rest of them, and it would not honor their sacrifices. Bone deep, River knows that this life she keeps on living is her sacrifice to make.
-end