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fan_eluneTitle: Legerdemain eyes wear the sweetest of faces
Fandoms: Firefly/Heroes
Rating: PG
Summary: You'll meet his kind in the strangest of places, great what you find if you turn enough stones. Legerdemain eyes wear the sweetest of faces - you're quick to invite into your hearts and homes. - Skyclad, Snake Charming
Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_grynne, who I can never thank enough for such a beautiful prompt. River, Adam. I hope this was worth the wait, hon.
Legerdemain eyes wear the sweetest of faces
The stream is everywhere; in the voices; in the air; in the colours; in the lights; in the shadows; in the textures; in the bodies; in the smells; in the voices. She hears, tastes, smells, sees, feels it. It never stops, it never breaks, and everywhere contributes to its flow.
It never stops, it never breaks, but when River meets him, it falters.
***
Adam Monroe believes in full circles.
It's a name he goes back to regularly, a lifeline if he needed one. It is still common enough, eight centuries after he was given it, a small wonder.
Adam Monroe believes in full circles, and it stands to reason that Blue Sun would end up betraying him. Just as it stands to reason that he will, one day, take his revenge and be their ruin.
He knows the means he will choose to that end. Her name is River Tam.
***
Swans in, swans out, the market place is like a ballet. The one time she told Simon that (another moon, another market place), he laughed. Inwardly, though, he was wondering whether he should adjust her treatment.
It's true. There is music to anyone able to hear it, and they're all dancing to it. It's the stream. Actions and memories and feelings and hopes and desires and fears and needs and turning points woven together into a beautiful, evolving tapestry, every day woven a little further. It never stops.
The market place is milling with activity and the young kid beside the fruit stand on the left is picking the pocket of a man who's in love with his cousin. The woman by his side has been married to him for five years and feels it is five years too many. That echoes in the mind of the man child on the other side of the place, who has to wait two more years before he can go to school in the big town. He wants to become a doctor, and River looks up at Simon and smiles into the stream.
"I'll be alright," she says, because he wants to go pick up strawberries for Kaylee. A special treat. "I'll go listen to the music."
She means the music even he can hear, played by four musicians on the side of the market square. They're on the church steps, and the two violinists are in love. It bleeds into the stream so effortlessly that she's surprised no one else has noticed. The music is lively and makes the soles of her feet itch.
"I want to dance," she assures Simon with a wide smile, and she knows he is worried because last time he let her dance, they almost wound up burned at the stake. But she's their witch.
"Alright, I'll be right back," he assures her, as if she needed the assurance, after everything they've gone through. It's her turn to take care of him, after all, but he doesn't see it.
She weaves her way through the crowd, letting the stream wash over her. It's the best way to deal, the new treatment has helped her learn. Sometimes she still feels as if she might drown, but most times now it's fine. She's fine.
The music is something she can drown herself in without fear of hypoxia and acidosis leading to cardiac arrest. The stream retreats to the background, she becomes the foreground, and she dances. Closes her eyes at times, no need to see, until she's taken by the arm and she finds herself being danced, dancing, passing from partner to partner. There is clapping, there are cheers, and many other dancers.
The piece comes to an end and she stops, breathless with mirth, and looks up with a smile at the man next to her.
Her smile freezes, and the stream falters.
"Care for a dance?" he asks, and she watches his lips form the words in her mind, 'I need you.'
He's swept her off before she can agree, or protest. She wants to do neither. She can only bask in him, in the years rolling off of him, in the joys and the loves, the deceptions and the hatreds, the aches, the longings, and the impossibilities.
"You need me," she murmurs.
"I want you," he answers, or does he?
Both, she knows, are true.
***
Adam watches her for a while, the way her hair and her skirt fly up when she spins, the grace in her movements, the twinkle in her eyes. He surprises himself by thinking that there isn't a truer smile in the 'verse, because no one has ever smiled that knew as much as she does, that felt as much as she does.
When the music stops between songs she twirls to a halt by his side, a sign of destiny if he believed in such a thing.
"Care for a dance?" he asks, and hopes he can remember the steps, because he needs her.
He has learned a long time ago that it was best to sweep women off their feet, literally or not, if you wanted them to go along with what you wanted. He does just that, taking her thin hand in his before she has a chance to answer, other arm round her waist, and he spins them both. Just like riding a bike, the steps fall into place under his feet.
She murmurs something, almost too low for him to catch, and her breath caresses his neck. "You need me," she says, and he will not contradict her. She knows as well as him, better perhaps.
He is mesmerised by the shape of her lips in a way he has not experienced for many long years. Another time, another child, and he hasn't heard from her in a very long time.
"Don't be so sad," River tells him. "Makes my heart ache with the colours of an inverted rainbow." She frowns and adds, after a few long seconds, "Bears care?"
His thumb strokes at the soft skin of her hand, and he extends his arm, spins her under it, brings her back to him, hand soft and firm on her waist. "You're one of a kind, River Tam."
"But what kind," she answers, and fails to make it sound like a question.
"Will you help me?" he asks, and he's utterly taken in by what he sees in her eyes.
"River!"
Her brother, to the side, looking alarmed. Adam can hardly blame him; he was about to kiss her. He brushes a strand of hair away from her face; he is still capable of tenderness, after all this time.
"Later," she says, and he lets go and disappears into the crowd.
***
Simon is far too worried for his own good.
River thinks she remembers the first time she told him so. She was four, and he was concerned about her dance lessons. He'd read this article about how trainers pushed their dancers too hard and their bodies were forever marked. He told her what scoliosis and spondylolysis meant, and she pretended she hadn't already known.
Then she told him, you worry too much.
Now he worries about the snake man. Cold blood, cold eyes, a sinuosity to his spirit and gait. He is a snake man, snake charming, making her dance. She heard a million stories when she first laid eyes on him, and his hand was as soft as his grip was firm. He needs her, he wants her, and she's not sure how to cope with that.
"Snake Charming wants me," she tells Simon, interrupting his train of thoughts (she'stooyoungandwhowasthismananyway).
Simon frowns. "What?"
She shrugs. "You worry too much, Simon. Still."
"Somebody needs to," he answers.
Need. Snake Charming needs her.
She knows she'll go to him.
"River, that man, on the market place? You don't know him, do you?"
She knows him. She knows the way he dances, the spark in his eyes, the temperature of his hands, the need in him, the loneliness, the hatred, how a Japanese man once taught him how to be good, then how to hate, and how a blonde girl once taught him to laugh again.
"No," she answers. "It's okay, Simon. Everything is going to be okay."
He eyes her doubtfully; he's right. She knows she'll go to him.
***
Adam hopes she will come to him.
He knows what she is, that she can find him; what he doesn't know is whether she will agree to help. He paces in his hotel room, as if he had told her to meet him here, then realises he might as well go out for a drink. She can find him just as easily in the bar down the road.
It's been months since he's actually wanted a drink.
It's cool, fizzy, and sharp. It goes down easily, and he asks for another.
He's glancing towards the door when she walks in, her skinny figure framed in the light for a moment. She's looking at her surroundings as if they were some fantastical landscape instead of a cheap bar on a border moon. She doesn't look at him as she moves his way; she looks at everything else.
"You're quite something," he tells her when she stops beside him, and she looks at him at last, and smiles.
No truer smile.
"You'll help, I take it," he infers from her presence here. "How did you get away from your chaperon?"
"I'm a sneaky something," she answers, and she's using his accent.
It makes him laugh.
"You should do more of that," she tells him in her usual accent, smiling again. "It makes you look young."
Claire used to tell him that, and it sobers him up.
River frowns, lays a few delicate fingers on his arm. "I'll help."
He nods.
They get to work.
***
When she tells him, Simon panics.
"It's dangerous!" he protests.
"I'm dangerous," she answers.
When she tells him, Snake smiles.
"He said it was dangerous," she relates.
"You can handle it," he is sure.
***
She handles it. Adam convinces her to leave Simon and the rest of the crew out of the details, although he's not a hundred percent certain that she can ever be convinced of something she hasn't already decided in favour of. Maybe he's wrong; he's been more wrong about her than about anybody else in a long while.
She keeps making him laugh. The things she says, he can't help it, it bubbles up inside him and won't be denied.
Six weeks later and they're done. She's kept him from slaughtering them all; a hand on his chest, a look into his eyes, and he couldn't tap into his rage anymore. He wishes he could believe that it is another trick of hers, but he knows they have not given her that much power.
The power she has gained over him is of a very common kind, the power women may exert over men, and vice versa, and other such combinations of the sly variety.
Six weeks later and he feels like a free man.
She beams at him, eyes twinkling, hair in the wind. "It feels good."
"It does," he agrees, and manages a true smile. It could never be as true as hers, but it's a start.
"It'll get better," she promises, and kisses him, lips cherry sweet and he knows she's right.
It'll get better before it gets worse again. She feels a lot, but he's lived too much. He knows.
***
Six months later, he's gone.
Six weeks after that, every former board member of the Blue Sun corporation has been killed.
River could have found him. But she still aches in places so private she wasn't sure she had them, and she wouldn't have wanted to stop him.
That's a lie she tells herself. She wouldn't have wanted to see herself fail to stop him.
Instead, she finds her. Clear blue eyes, so warm when his were cold; her hair shines golden when his was a dull blond; her skin is tanned, his pale; her smile easy, his rare. And missed.
"Adam," River starts, and it's the first time she calls him by his original name. "He's…"
"I'll find him," Claire cuts in.
River can feel the years rolling off of her in waves, too, but they feel lighter than his.
"Try Sihnon," she offers, and Claire smiles.
Right before she speaks, River understands why the input was unnecessary. "Do you really think we don't keep tabs on each other? You know better, Miss Tam."
River smiles back; she never told Claire her name. "I do, Miss Bennet."
Claire nods, and moves to get going, but River catches her hand and holds on. There is such hope and love in this woman, River feels like never letting go. "A favour." Claire is simply waiting for her to speak on, so she does. "Call him Snake, once in a while. I don't want to be forgotten, lost to the winds, a whisper in nobody's ear."
"I will," Claire tells her, gently disengages her hand, and walks away.
Fandoms: Firefly/Heroes
Rating: PG
Summary: You'll meet his kind in the strangest of places, great what you find if you turn enough stones. Legerdemain eyes wear the sweetest of faces - you're quick to invite into your hearts and homes. - Skyclad, Snake Charming
Notes: Written for
the_grynne, who I can never thank enough for such a beautiful prompt. River, Adam. I hope this was worth the wait, hon.Legerdemain eyes wear the sweetest of faces
The stream is everywhere; in the voices; in the air; in the colours; in the lights; in the shadows; in the textures; in the bodies; in the smells; in the voices. She hears, tastes, smells, sees, feels it. It never stops, it never breaks, and everywhere contributes to its flow.
It never stops, it never breaks, but when River meets him, it falters.
***
Adam Monroe believes in full circles.
It's a name he goes back to regularly, a lifeline if he needed one. It is still common enough, eight centuries after he was given it, a small wonder.
Adam Monroe believes in full circles, and it stands to reason that Blue Sun would end up betraying him. Just as it stands to reason that he will, one day, take his revenge and be their ruin.
He knows the means he will choose to that end. Her name is River Tam.
***
Swans in, swans out, the market place is like a ballet. The one time she told Simon that (another moon, another market place), he laughed. Inwardly, though, he was wondering whether he should adjust her treatment.
It's true. There is music to anyone able to hear it, and they're all dancing to it. It's the stream. Actions and memories and feelings and hopes and desires and fears and needs and turning points woven together into a beautiful, evolving tapestry, every day woven a little further. It never stops.
The market place is milling with activity and the young kid beside the fruit stand on the left is picking the pocket of a man who's in love with his cousin. The woman by his side has been married to him for five years and feels it is five years too many. That echoes in the mind of the man child on the other side of the place, who has to wait two more years before he can go to school in the big town. He wants to become a doctor, and River looks up at Simon and smiles into the stream.
"I'll be alright," she says, because he wants to go pick up strawberries for Kaylee. A special treat. "I'll go listen to the music."
She means the music even he can hear, played by four musicians on the side of the market square. They're on the church steps, and the two violinists are in love. It bleeds into the stream so effortlessly that she's surprised no one else has noticed. The music is lively and makes the soles of her feet itch.
"I want to dance," she assures Simon with a wide smile, and she knows he is worried because last time he let her dance, they almost wound up burned at the stake. But she's their witch.
"Alright, I'll be right back," he assures her, as if she needed the assurance, after everything they've gone through. It's her turn to take care of him, after all, but he doesn't see it.
She weaves her way through the crowd, letting the stream wash over her. It's the best way to deal, the new treatment has helped her learn. Sometimes she still feels as if she might drown, but most times now it's fine. She's fine.
The music is something she can drown herself in without fear of hypoxia and acidosis leading to cardiac arrest. The stream retreats to the background, she becomes the foreground, and she dances. Closes her eyes at times, no need to see, until she's taken by the arm and she finds herself being danced, dancing, passing from partner to partner. There is clapping, there are cheers, and many other dancers.
The piece comes to an end and she stops, breathless with mirth, and looks up with a smile at the man next to her.
Her smile freezes, and the stream falters.
"Care for a dance?" he asks, and she watches his lips form the words in her mind, 'I need you.'
He's swept her off before she can agree, or protest. She wants to do neither. She can only bask in him, in the years rolling off of him, in the joys and the loves, the deceptions and the hatreds, the aches, the longings, and the impossibilities.
"You need me," she murmurs.
"I want you," he answers, or does he?
Both, she knows, are true.
***
Adam watches her for a while, the way her hair and her skirt fly up when she spins, the grace in her movements, the twinkle in her eyes. He surprises himself by thinking that there isn't a truer smile in the 'verse, because no one has ever smiled that knew as much as she does, that felt as much as she does.
When the music stops between songs she twirls to a halt by his side, a sign of destiny if he believed in such a thing.
"Care for a dance?" he asks, and hopes he can remember the steps, because he needs her.
He has learned a long time ago that it was best to sweep women off their feet, literally or not, if you wanted them to go along with what you wanted. He does just that, taking her thin hand in his before she has a chance to answer, other arm round her waist, and he spins them both. Just like riding a bike, the steps fall into place under his feet.
She murmurs something, almost too low for him to catch, and her breath caresses his neck. "You need me," she says, and he will not contradict her. She knows as well as him, better perhaps.
He is mesmerised by the shape of her lips in a way he has not experienced for many long years. Another time, another child, and he hasn't heard from her in a very long time.
"Don't be so sad," River tells him. "Makes my heart ache with the colours of an inverted rainbow." She frowns and adds, after a few long seconds, "Bears care?"
His thumb strokes at the soft skin of her hand, and he extends his arm, spins her under it, brings her back to him, hand soft and firm on her waist. "You're one of a kind, River Tam."
"But what kind," she answers, and fails to make it sound like a question.
"Will you help me?" he asks, and he's utterly taken in by what he sees in her eyes.
"River!"
Her brother, to the side, looking alarmed. Adam can hardly blame him; he was about to kiss her. He brushes a strand of hair away from her face; he is still capable of tenderness, after all this time.
"Later," she says, and he lets go and disappears into the crowd.
***
Simon is far too worried for his own good.
River thinks she remembers the first time she told him so. She was four, and he was concerned about her dance lessons. He'd read this article about how trainers pushed their dancers too hard and their bodies were forever marked. He told her what scoliosis and spondylolysis meant, and she pretended she hadn't already known.
Then she told him, you worry too much.
Now he worries about the snake man. Cold blood, cold eyes, a sinuosity to his spirit and gait. He is a snake man, snake charming, making her dance. She heard a million stories when she first laid eyes on him, and his hand was as soft as his grip was firm. He needs her, he wants her, and she's not sure how to cope with that.
"Snake Charming wants me," she tells Simon, interrupting his train of thoughts (she'stooyoungandwhowasthismananyway).
Simon frowns. "What?"
She shrugs. "You worry too much, Simon. Still."
"Somebody needs to," he answers.
Need. Snake Charming needs her.
She knows she'll go to him.
"River, that man, on the market place? You don't know him, do you?"
She knows him. She knows the way he dances, the spark in his eyes, the temperature of his hands, the need in him, the loneliness, the hatred, how a Japanese man once taught him how to be good, then how to hate, and how a blonde girl once taught him to laugh again.
"No," she answers. "It's okay, Simon. Everything is going to be okay."
He eyes her doubtfully; he's right. She knows she'll go to him.
***
Adam hopes she will come to him.
He knows what she is, that she can find him; what he doesn't know is whether she will agree to help. He paces in his hotel room, as if he had told her to meet him here, then realises he might as well go out for a drink. She can find him just as easily in the bar down the road.
It's been months since he's actually wanted a drink.
It's cool, fizzy, and sharp. It goes down easily, and he asks for another.
He's glancing towards the door when she walks in, her skinny figure framed in the light for a moment. She's looking at her surroundings as if they were some fantastical landscape instead of a cheap bar on a border moon. She doesn't look at him as she moves his way; she looks at everything else.
"You're quite something," he tells her when she stops beside him, and she looks at him at last, and smiles.
No truer smile.
"You'll help, I take it," he infers from her presence here. "How did you get away from your chaperon?"
"I'm a sneaky something," she answers, and she's using his accent.
It makes him laugh.
"You should do more of that," she tells him in her usual accent, smiling again. "It makes you look young."
Claire used to tell him that, and it sobers him up.
River frowns, lays a few delicate fingers on his arm. "I'll help."
He nods.
They get to work.
***
When she tells him, Simon panics.
"It's dangerous!" he protests.
"I'm dangerous," she answers.
When she tells him, Snake smiles.
"He said it was dangerous," she relates.
"You can handle it," he is sure.
***
She handles it. Adam convinces her to leave Simon and the rest of the crew out of the details, although he's not a hundred percent certain that she can ever be convinced of something she hasn't already decided in favour of. Maybe he's wrong; he's been more wrong about her than about anybody else in a long while.
She keeps making him laugh. The things she says, he can't help it, it bubbles up inside him and won't be denied.
Six weeks later and they're done. She's kept him from slaughtering them all; a hand on his chest, a look into his eyes, and he couldn't tap into his rage anymore. He wishes he could believe that it is another trick of hers, but he knows they have not given her that much power.
The power she has gained over him is of a very common kind, the power women may exert over men, and vice versa, and other such combinations of the sly variety.
Six weeks later and he feels like a free man.
She beams at him, eyes twinkling, hair in the wind. "It feels good."
"It does," he agrees, and manages a true smile. It could never be as true as hers, but it's a start.
"It'll get better," she promises, and kisses him, lips cherry sweet and he knows she's right.
It'll get better before it gets worse again. She feels a lot, but he's lived too much. He knows.
***
Six months later, he's gone.
Six weeks after that, every former board member of the Blue Sun corporation has been killed.
River could have found him. But she still aches in places so private she wasn't sure she had them, and she wouldn't have wanted to stop him.
That's a lie she tells herself. She wouldn't have wanted to see herself fail to stop him.
Instead, she finds her. Clear blue eyes, so warm when his were cold; her hair shines golden when his was a dull blond; her skin is tanned, his pale; her smile easy, his rare. And missed.
"Adam," River starts, and it's the first time she calls him by his original name. "He's…"
"I'll find him," Claire cuts in.
River can feel the years rolling off of her in waves, too, but they feel lighter than his.
"Try Sihnon," she offers, and Claire smiles.
Right before she speaks, River understands why the input was unnecessary. "Do you really think we don't keep tabs on each other? You know better, Miss Tam."
River smiles back; she never told Claire her name. "I do, Miss Bennet."
Claire nods, and moves to get going, but River catches her hand and holds on. There is such hope and love in this woman, River feels like never letting go. "A favour." Claire is simply waiting for her to speak on, so she does. "Call him Snake, once in a while. I don't want to be forgotten, lost to the winds, a whisper in nobody's ear."
"I will," Claire tells her, gently disengages her hand, and walks away.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-21 11:12 am (UTC)♥
Lovely.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-21 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-21 11:35 am (UTC)This is like poetry, Fan. It's so lyrical and beautiful, and perfect for both of them. I'm completely overwhelmed by how perfect it is.
She hears, tastes, smells, sees, feels it. It never stops, it never breaks, and everywhere contributes to its flow.
I love the way you write about River's extrasensory abilities, how natural and organic it is, the way all currents of information just flows together, forms into something meaningful - the music and the love she senses from the musicians becoming one in her mind, just one example. I love how Adam is like a rock, disturbing the flow, and how she calls him "snake charming" (I've always been intrigued by the mythology of the show, which seems to connect him with first the dragon in the Kensei legend, then later various other reptilian creatures, through the Company connection and its symbol); it's so clever and sweet, dangerous and knowing. I love the rhythm of River's thoughts, the pitter-patter of the little pauses (It's true.).
And Adam... So bitter and bored; she wakes him up, warms his cold blood. I love how self-aware he is, and how he acknowledges River, respects her, is intrigue by her: He surprises himself by thinking that there isn't a truer smile in the 'verse, because no one has ever smiled that knew as much as she does, that felt as much as she does.
This description of him: Cold blood, cold eyes, a sinuosity to his spirit and gait. He is a snake man, snake charming, making her dance. I could read it again and again, it's so beautiful. Neither of them are sentimental, but I believe the realness of the attraction, just as I believe that Adam can't be changed, he always turns back, full circle; he isn't some fallen hero to be redeemed, a wandering prince who can be won. Which is why the ending is so moving. River knows him, truly, without rose-tinted glasses, and yet she still misses him. His smile is rare, but then so is all the rest of him. Snake is deviousness personified; the way she's named him, he's like an animal-deity, a shaman, her link to a by-gone time of myth. When they are together, it's like you've opened up a bubble around them, to a spirit world, a world were girls can read minds, and men can live forever. It feels epic, and tender, and magnificent. I love this, and too many other bits to name. Thank you so much for this story.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-21 12:19 pm (UTC)They are like poetry. They are epic and tender and magnificent and it's all thanks to you. I have always enjoyed writing River but I very rarely write her point of view, but it is always something so interesting to explore, and to have her meet Adam was quite simply a stroke of genius. The potential exploded in my mind when you offered this prompt.
Adam's reptilian side has been so very strong in my mind since that shot of his hand sliding on the wall, before he kills Kaita Nakamura. Snakes are devious, yes, mesmerising, yes, they are linked with deceit but also, in some cultures, wisdom. It is also linked with transmutation, growth, and life force, all of which is absolutely dead on for Adam. I find that it is, in fact, the perfect symbol for him. Dragons are about wisdom and longevity, clear sight - also appropriate but nowhere near as complex and interesting. Adam is a snake, and she does warm his blood. Animal-deity is right, he is something unto himself, something other, and that is how he makes the stream falter. Claire doesn't, Claire feeds into the stream, but he's an anomaly. A wonderfully fascinating anomaly that River cannot but be attracted to. Knowingly. Just as he knows that as much as she might warm his blood, it will not last. Nothing ever does, apart from himself. It comes and goes, full circle.
I could rant on and on and on about them, seriously. Thank you so. Much, Di.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-21 12:34 pm (UTC)Just as he knows that as much as she might warm his blood, it will not last. Nothing ever does, apart from himself. It comes and goes, full circle.
Yes, exactly. Which is what makes the ending so fitting for both of them. *hugs self*
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 03:57 pm (UTC)He has learned a long time ago that it was best to sweep women off their feet, literally or not, if you wanted them to go along with what you wanted. He does just that, taking her thin hand in his before she has a chance to answer, other arm round her waist, and he spins them both. Just like riding a bike, the steps fall into place under his feet.
Thank you for writing and sharing!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-03 09:59 pm (UTC)(Again, really sorry!)
http://svmadelyn.livejournal.com/566217.html