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The Rape of Kassandra
By ReaverPoetTitle: The Rape of Kassandra
Author: ReaverPoet
Pairings: River/Other Female, River/Kaylee Rating: Ummmm R? Not sure.
Complete?: Yes
Warnings: Same sex activity, brief bondage, big angst, and non-violent non-consentuality issues (but not between R&K, of course). Disclaimer: No copyright challenge is intended, don't own this setting or these characters, just borrowing them, will have them cleaned up and returned real soon. Summary: While Inara and Zoe discuss Chinese calligraphy in the background, River contemplates the actions and thoughts of her brother and Kaylee several rooms away, and recalls a traumatic event during her captivity by the alliance, when she was able to escape an unbearable present through prescience of a future liaison with Kaylee. Archive: yes, but do not edit in any way, and keep all headings References:
Agamemnon can be found here: http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/agamemnon.html The Tempest can be found here: http://www.allshakespeare.com/plays/tempest/ "Mending Wall" can be found here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html Book of Five Rings, The Ground Book can be found here: http://www.samurai.com/5rings/ Feedback: feedback to mongoose@technologist.com. Flames will be completely ignored-I tend to crush flamers' egos, and that ain't ladylike.:) Tip: This all takes place in River's mind, so time and place are very fluid."Apollo, Apollo!
God of all ways, but only Death's to me, O thou Apollo, thou Destroyer named!
What way hast led me, to what evil home?" Kassandra, "Agammenon" by Aechylus"And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee, By help of her more potent ministers
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain..."-Prospero to Ariel, "The Tempest" by Shakespeare"Raise your wrist and elbow more," say Inara, adjusting Zoe's position.
"Like this?" asks the warrior woman.
"Yes, but your strokes need to be more decisive. You need to know exactly where you are going with them."
"'Good fences make good neighbors,'" chants River silently to herself. It is a familiar mantra, shiny with use. She used to try to count her breaths, a discipline that came easily before. Now, she has trouble remembering who is breathing, and when.
"Good. Fences. Make. Good. Neighbors," she tries again. Its hard; there is so much to wall off.
They brought all her walls down. A hundred crude horn trumpets sounded by barbarian soldiers outside the gates. Over and over. And then there was no separation.
Simon has good walls. Solid Simon. He thinks all the walls have tumbled, now that he is away from everything familiar. But he keeps the walls steady for himself. He knows who he is and where he stops. And he does not confuse himself with others. He knows he is not part of Kaylee. So, he will not kiss her, even though she has moved close to him to pour the hot water from the kettle. Even though her lips are slightly parted near his. Even though her eyes shine with mischief and promise.
Simon is not here. He is in the galley, steeping some carefully hoarded Oolong tea in a chipped blue cup. He likes tea; it makes him feel the roots of Earth inside him. He likes the warmth of it; a safer warmth than Kaylee's.
Simon is not here. "Not here" is important, though not as important as "not now". It was easier with walls.
River recognizes that kiss that Simon won't take. Kaylee's kiss, soft lips on soft lips. The little happy sigh she would make. Her body pressing eagerly.
River recognized Kaylee as soon as she stepped aboard the strange ship. Kaylee, ever friendly, extended her grease stained hand, but River just stared at it, remembering how the slightest movement of that hand could shake the world. River wouldn't look up; she couldn't bear to see what wasn't in Kaylee's eyes.
"Maybe I should just stick to fighting, "says Zoe, intruding on River's thoughts.
"Don't worry about it so much," answers Inara, patiently. "Just relax and let the brush flow. This is an art many warriors have excelled at."
"'The way of the warrior is the twofold way of the pen and the sword,'" offers River, helpfully. But then she is not so sure that the writing lesson is happening now. Is now the time when Inara is watching her for Simon?
Kaylee is drinking her tea, and thinking about how much Simon reminds her of Johnathan, that young engineer friend of her father's who taught her how human machines fit together. Kaylee was drawn to his quick mind, and later discovered she also liked his body. Kaylee loves the strength of intelligence-wants to make Simon's mind wrap itself around her.
River curls her body into a ball. She is not patient. She knows Kaylee does not love her now, and she does not know when it will be, or when now is exactly.
They had worked so hard to take that away from her. The blue hands and the doctors. To make sure she had no distinction, no definition. To break all her barriers. Some of it was physical. Most of it was painful. Torture after inventive torture, all designed to break her free of her mind's protective filters-to allow her full access to her buried knowledge.
Not all of the torture was pain, though. That one time, they had sent her the pretty redheaded nurse who wasn't a nurse. Green eyes filled with pity for River's bruised body, stretched naked and securely bound on the medical bed. Soft, warm hands checking her pulse, examining the freshest of her wounds. Then those hands had strayed, caressed her skin along the inside of her arms, the sensitive sides of her rib cage.
River had closed her eyes. The feeling was intense, delicious. No one had touched her without pain in so long. The fingers on her body had trailed to her breasts, teasing near her nipples.
Her mind had protested weakly. Not a woman. I've never. I can't. I don't even know her.
But River's body didn't care. It arched to force the fingers to her hardening nipples. Light as feathers, the fingertips grazed across her.
She opened her eyes, and knew. The girl was not a nurse, but a companion. She liked Bach and curried lamb. She had a younger brother. She had been coerced. The blue hands had ordered her to break River with ecstasy, and the companion had refused, because River was clearly not coherent and could not consent. The blue hands had shown the companion---her name was Adara-- the sickeningly horrible death at their command. Had offered her that death if she did not seduce the poor, mad girl. They were going to kill Adara anyway, in a month or so-but she didn't know that.
River's mind ran. Fled the companion's shame and fear. Ran forward seeking something, someone to wipe away the present, seeking some touch not defiled by violence and tragedy.
Found Kaylee.
Found her own body there in the future naked and entwined with Kaylee's, mouth locked in a passionate kiss. River moaned and broke the kiss to stare at this new creature in her arms.
"Its me, River-I'm here. Its right now, and you're in my arms," said Kaylee, reassuringly. She smelled of sex and engine oil, and perfume she'd begged from someone named Inara, to please River. And River could feel her love. It was real, even if it wasn't now.
"Sorry, Kaylee," River heard herself say," Cloven pine moment." She smiled, absorbing the joy her lover felt in her arms.
Kaylee kissed River gently. "Then come back to me. Come back to us."
Then it was Kaylee's fingers on her breasts, hands that knew less about sex, but more about River. Hands that knew what would make River shudder with need, what would make her moan and beg for more.
River's fingers seemed to know just as much about the beautiful engineer. They knew how to tease and tantalize until Kaylee was desperate for something more. River let her hand drift towards Kaylee's wet sex.
Suddenly, Kaylee's strong hands were on River's wrists, forcing them up, and above River's head.
"Its my turn. You just keep those to yourself a moment, and let me have my way."
Kaylee met River's eyes as she brought her tongue down to delicately lap at River's nipple. Her hand snaked down and teased its way into River, squirming inside her slowly.
River moaned and writhed with the pleasure of it; focused with such intensity that she was completely there with Kaylee, and not drifting into other times.
Kaylee's hand increased its rhythm, demanding River's ecstasy, and suddenly all walls broke. River, lost in the bardo of sex, the place outside of ego, could feel Kaylee and Adara, and every other lover who would ever have her, all at once. Every orgasm that would ever posses her arched through her body like lightning.
She screamed, and fell into blackness.
On the other side, she found herself released from her bonds, being held by the doomed companion. A tear of shame streamed down Adara's face, and there were tears on River's face too.
River reached up with one hand and touched the companion's cheek. "Poor Agamemnon," she said, wanting to warn the girl and hoping the companion was better versed in the classics than the blue hands.
Then, she drew Adara's face towards her, so their eyes met. She knew, looking into them, that the girl would not be able to escape death. There was really only one thing River could do for her.
"I consent," she said, very deliberately, and with great focus. If one had to be a bodhisattva, River reflected, one could at least afford a little grace.
The girl was long dead before River stepped on to Serenity.
Off in the galley, Simon contemplates having a second cup of tea, while Kaylee considers throwing him up against a wall and stealing a kiss. Kaylee is even less patient than River, but fortunately, does not have to live with foreknowledge. She only guesses about the future, and most of the time she is wrong.
"Like this?" asks Zoe.
"Yes, that's right. Don't rush the stroke. It's a meditation, not just writing," answers Inara. "The act of making the symbol is as important as the finished symbol."
"If you say so," answers Zoe. "I think I'd be happy just to have the results, quick and easy."
River smiles in silent agreement. And waits. Someday, Kaylee will be now.
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