Notes: Written for 1sentence. Contains spoilers for the BDM. The title belongs to Bird York.
_____________________
#01 � Walking
She likes the way her bare feet echo on the metal of the walkways, the way her footsteps make her feel a little less alone.
#02 � Waltz
Inara teaches Kaylee to dance, or tries, and River watches from above because it is beautiful, her legs swinging in time to their steps, while Simon�s eyes are not on the dance but on her, because there is more beauty above than below.
#03 � Wishes
Another year, another birthday, and as he closes his eyes to blow out the candles, he finds that he doesn�t have the heart to wish for anything, not this time.
#04 � Wonder
She had been told once, back in school, how many stars were visible in the sky, but she has forgotten, so sometimes she sits awake and tries to count them, and she wonders why she never can.
#05 � Worry
She doesn�t mind his concern for her, because it�s touching in an annoying sort of way, but she sees fear in his eyes when he thinks she isn�t looking, and that is what breaks her.
#06 � Whimsy
Sometimes, just to pass the time, she tells stories, to Simon, to Kaylee, to whoever will listen, and she draws little pictures to go along with them, all the while wondering if they ever really believe any of it.
#07 � Wasteland
Miranda is a part of her now, an emptiness within her, and these days it is the silence that wakes her in the nights, not the nightmares, because the silence is worse.
#08 - Whiskey and rum
He drinks too much now, and she is the only one who knows.
#09 � War
Sometimes he finds himself wishing for another war, for some way to let it all out, but he has never been comfortable with a gun in his hand, not like she is.
#10 � Weddings
Zoe never smiles anymore, except on that one night when she and the captain had sat up, telling stories about Wash, about their wedding and how she hadn�t liked him in the beginning, and she had laughed until she cried, cried so hard that Simon had to give her something to help her sleep.
#11 � Birthday
River doesn�t know her birthday, and it doesn�t matter out here in the black anyhow, because she has no reason to celebrate the day she came into this world.
#12 � Blessing
She used to like listening to the preacher pray, and now she goes to his bunk sometimes and just sits, because she never learned how to pray, and she believes in nothing.
#13 � Bias
She doesn�t like to leave the ship anymore, and Simon knows that it�s at least partially because of the way people look at her.
#14 � Burning
There are still scorch marks on Serenity�s hull, and sometimes when they are grounded Simon will see her go out and run a hand along them, as if trying to wipe them away, but it never works.
#15 � Breathing
Once in a while he wakes to find her on his floor, curled up in a ball, and when he once asked her about it, she said that she likes to hear someone other than Serenity breathing when she goes to sleep.
#16 � Breaking
He�s beginning to think that with each piece of her he puts back together, a part of him breaks a little more, and it scares him to think of what will happen when she no longer needs him at all.
#17 � Belief
Even when they were young they had only each other to believe in, and the years have changed nothing in that regard, because even though they have a crew now, they are still alone in ways that only they understand.
#18 � Balloon
He gets her off the ship in one of their ports and takes her and Kaylee to the fair, where he buys them both balloons, and they all stand and watch as River�s disappears into the sky.
#19 � Balcony
She stands there alone, leaning on the railing above the cargo hold, and he�s reminded of a modern day Juliet, still waiting for her Romeo to appear.
#20 � Bane
She is his blessing but also his curse, and he finds that once in a while he just has to escape her, to run away from the confusion and pain that she brings into his life.
#21 � Quiet
There are nights when she comes to his room and wordlessly hands him a brush, and they sit there in silence while he runs it through her hair like he used to when they were children, when their lives made sense.
#22 � Quirks
She knows that on the inside he�s just as crazy as she is, but he has learned to hide it from everyone but her, and she fears that she may have been the cause of that silent craziness.
#23 � Question
Why do you do this, she asked one night, why do you take care of me? and his answer was the same as it always is�because I love you, mei-mei.
#24 � Quarrel
They used to fight when they were children, not in earnest, but in the way all siblings fought, and River always won, not because he let her, but because he could never bring himself to hurt her and she had no such compunctions.
#25 � Quitting
There are times when she wants him to give up on her, because he�s already put so much of himself, so much of his life, into saving her, and she is beginning to believe that she is beyond salvation.
#26 � Jump
She imagines sometimes that she can jump from the ship and just fly forever, but she never does, because he does not have wings as she does, and jumping would mean leaving him behind.
#27 � Jester
There isn�t much to smile about aboard Serenity anymore, and it makes her sad because when she walks through the kitchen she can still hear the echoes of their laughter from too long ago.
#28 � Jousting
She once heard the shepherd refer to what they do as tilting at windmills, and for a while she liked that picture, but she came to realize that it�s not really true at all, because windmills are harmless and the things they tilt against are anything but.
#29 � Jewel
Sometimes, just to distract herself, she�ll go into Inara�s shuttle and try on some of her things, admiring the way the light sends shards of color through the jewels to shimmer across her skin.
#30 � Just
But when the clothes come off, she�s just River again, and she knows that she�ll never be that kind of beautiful.
#31 � Smirk
Simon caught her once, and she thought he�d be mad, but he just gave her this lopsided smile that she didn�t quite understand, and told her that she�d better put it all back where she found it before Inara returned.
#32 � Sorrow
Even with Inara back onboard, the ship feels empty, especially the bridge, and sometimes she feels like an impostor sitting there in the seat that belongs to someone else.
#33 � Stupidity
Simon watches her fly the ship now, such grace and ease, and he is reminded of the days when they were young and everything she did made him feel stupid and clumsy.
#34 � Serenade
She sings to Serenity sometimes, when she thinks no one is around, and he sits outside her door and listens, not to the words because she often gets them wrong, but to the music that reminds him of better years.
#35 � Sarcasm
She and Kaylee get off the ship the next time they�re on Persephone, and when the captain asks if they want Jayne to go and look after them, River gives him a scathing look that clearly says you think us helpless little girls can�t look after ourselves? and it�s the first time in a long while that Simon has seen the captain smile.
#36 � Sordid
�I�m showing River how she works,� Kaylee says cheerfully when Simon comes into the engine room and finds the two girls lying on the floor under the spinning gears, covered head to toe in grease, and he can�t help but grin.
#37 � Soliloquy
At night he lies alone in his bunk and writes in his journal, and as he flips back through the previous entries he begins to realize that River is getting better, little by little, and she�s making them all better as well.
#38 � Sojourn
They take a walk the next time they�re on the ground, while Mal and Jayne are off making a deal and Kaylee is buying engine parts, and River picks flowers to stick in her hair and into his shirt pockets, until they�re both blooming all over with color.
#39 � Share
She still doesn�t speak of what happened to her in the Academy, and he�s starting to think that she never will, but in the dark of night when her nightmare screams draw him to her room, she holds onto him and cries tears she will never let herself cry during the day, and he thinks that it might help more than talking ever could.
#40 � Solitary
There is never anyone there to hold him when he cries.
#41 � Nowhere
It seems to help that she has a purpose onboard now, and she likes taking the helm when they�re out in the black with emptiness around them for as far as the eye can see, and burning the engines, flying with abandon towards nothing.
#42 � Neutral
At night the ship idles in the darkness and sometimes he�ll go up to the bridge while everyone is sleeping and sit in her chair, trying to see what she sees when she looks out into the nothingness around them.
#43 � Nuance
He doesn�t think he�ll ever be able to perceive in the way that she does, but he doesn�t mind, because he has her to compensate for his blindness.
#44 � Near
He had lost her for too many years, and now that he has gotten her back, it makes him wonder how he ever survived all that time without her beside him.
#45 � Natural
She is often the first thing he sees when he wakes in the morning, coming into his room to shake him and tell him about something worrying or exciting, and it has gotten to the point where he can�t really remember waking up any other way.
#46 � Horizon
They have become each other�s balance�he is her stability and she is his abandon, and it doesn�t seem right anymore to live without either extreme.
#47 � Valiant
He has never been a brave man, and he still isn�t�he is only brave for her, when she needs him to be.
#48 � Virtuous
Why do you do this? she had asked him, and the answer was not that he was some kind of hero, but rather that he needed to put her back together so that he could feel whole again.
#49 � Victory
And for now, it seems to have worked.
#50 � Defeat
But there is a part of him that fears each morning when he wakes that he will find her shattered to a million pieces again�and there will be nothing left for him to do but break alongside her.