Objects in Motion

[cmdr_zoom]

"I can win this."

I can feel her amusement, her tolerant skepticism, before she opens her mouth. After everything that has happened, she tries to treat me like a normal girl. She wants to believe that's what I am.

But I'm not normal. I never have been. Certainly not now. Not after they peeled the layers of me away until nothing was left but a raw nerve ending for the whole verse.

I examine the ball in my hand. Its colorful swirls and mottlings make me think of an exotic planet. Planets follow Kepler's laws of orbital motion, as modified by Einstein. Give me the numbers and I can tell you where a planet will be on any day of its year.

The ball is just the same. I know its weight, its elasticity. My finger brushes over the bit of extra rubber left by the mold; I can compensate for that. I see the board chalked upon the deck, the miniature caltrops spread out to catch the unwary. If I release the sphere here, from exactly this height...

I know what will happen next, and yet I don't. Will the fear rise up in her eyes again? Will her thoughts whisper hate? Will she laugh nervously and try to pretend it was just the workings of chance, or will she hide her face and turn away?

There's not enough wood on Serenity for a witch-burning, but there are other ways they could dispose of me. I take two full seconds to count them all, and when I look up again she is still waiting, still smiling.

Perhaps I am wrong about her. She trusted me when she was scared, of him, of me. She trusted and was brave. She has heard and seen what I am and now she sits across from me with a smile that is just starting to become concerned. For me.

I can count the falls of a hundred dice before they land, but I cannot predict human behavior.

The Prisoner's Dilemma. Trust or betray. Win or lose.

I make my choice. I let go of the ball.

Comments

[pjack.livejournal.com]

N33t!

Yes, a Firefly RPG is inevitable, I think...

Pjack

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Thanks. The thing I'm still grappling with expressing is that she could lose... but that would be a lie. Is it a necessary lie? Would it reassure Kaylee, or teach her to doubt River? What's worse - being beaten by a freak, or allowed to win when you both know she let you?

So complex. Too many variables.