It was a dark and stormy night.
Simon was fascinated by the heat lightning as it made its way closer to Serenity. On Osiris, violent weather simply didn�t happen. He never quite understood why: it had something to do with either large machines or the terraforming itself. He had been so focused on becoming a doctor, that a lot of possibly vital information had gotten shuffled aside.
Nevertheless, the storm bearing down on him filled the cockpit�s windows with its ferocity. Simon waited, and caught his breath as the first few heavy droplets pounded on the windows. Shortly, the visibility was reduced to nothing. Simon breathed out slowly, and tried not to jump as an explosion of thunder boomed overhead.
He smiled at the irony of it all. The brilliant scion of a powerful and rich family, a talented surgeon with a bright future, now a fugitive from justice, on the rim and almost penniless, undone by a bit of static electricity.
Another boom. Alright, he amended, as he jumped again, a lot of static electricity.
Funny how he never used to have any phobias. Well, none that he had dealt with before. The few Psychology courses he had taken were no help, as he tried to decipher if these fears were new, brought on by the stress of his current situation, or just latent, waiting for a catalyst, a specific event to trigger them. He didn�t like feeling helpless, and that�s exactly what his fears were feeding on.
Frowning, Simon glared at nothing. The rain hadn�t let up, and was still obscuring his vision. Not that there had been much to look at before, just another scrubby wasteland. As a matter of fact, he had joked about that very same thing with Mal when they had landed. The captain had just smirked, in that sexy way he had, and said that he probably preferred even a boring rock to the black.
Simon shuddered at his memories. How in the �verse could someone end up with claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time, anyway?
Not a good combination for someone who lived on a spaceship, that was for sure. Serenity was big enough, most days, but occasionally, he could feel the walls closing in. Especially on some of the long hauls the Captain insisted they take to avoid Alliance contact, but even more so when they had landed on a planet, and it wasn�t safe for either River or him to leave the ship.
He wondered if Mal, Zoe and Jayne were going to stay in the town overnight, or if the weather would pass by faster than that. Wash was grabbing a quick nap in his bunk, Kaylee was fiddling with the engines. He had put River to sleep, not too long ago, and he assumed Book and Inara were sharing insights over a cup of tea somewhere. Simon hadn�t felt too social, so he volunteered to monitor the comms, but now he was thinking a bit of company would be nice.
The thunder was slowly drifting away, and the rain began to lighten. Simon looked out the window once more, and saw sky beginning to peek through the clouds. A few stars were showing, blinking enticingly. And he thought about how glad he was to have solid ground under his feet. But it also occurred to him that it might be nice to try and see those same stars close up, in the flat black infinity of space.
He was going to have to spend more time up here, while they were flying, he decided. Time to get used to the spacer�s life.