Mal-Susan dream.

[badinlatin]

Mal opens his eyes and he is riding faster than he ever remembers riding before. The split-rail fence is a whitewashed blur to his left, and he leans in closer to the gelding's neck. No reins and no restraints.

A blink of an eye finds Mal stopped, dropping lightly from the horse's back only to drop down again at the base of a tree, the leaves of which were a bright red, despite the heat of an oncoming Shadow summer usually keeping all trees green and vibrant. Stretching his legs out in front of him, Mal barely noticed the horse he had been riding moving off and away into the distance almost unnaturally fast.

The lack of a sun in the sky shows Mal that it's nighttime, but even as Mal stares at the familiar constellations, everything feels too bright around him - the grass too green, the fence too white, the bark of the tree too brown and the leaves still disturbingly red. The sky itself wasn't the normal shade of black-blue; more like the navy blue of Inara's favorite shawl, sequins blinking at him from his position on the back of the Reynolds Ranch property.

This may be a dream, but it's a nice and peaceful one, and Mal wouldn't mind staying for awhile.

Comments

[sai_delgado]

The sound of returning hoofbeats carries through the air like the thunder of a summer storm. The gelding races back over the land towards Mal, running swiftly, its golden mane surprisingly bright in the evening light--

Golden mane?

The sound of delighted laughter is clear -- and as the horse swerves and soars into a leap over a low-lying cluster of rocks, its rider is suddenly clearly visible as well.

Susan Allgood, Susan Delgado-that-was, bends low over the gelding's neck and calls soft encouragement, guiding the horse toward the tree with its bright red leaves, and the man beneath it.

[badinlatin]

Mal peels his attention away from the star-studded shawl above him, looking to the horse and its new rider, a quiet smile growing and wrinkling the corners of Mal's eyes.

"I keep hopin' that you show up," he starts in lieu of a hello. "How you been, meimei?"

[sai_delgado]

The gelding minces slightly as he slows to a walk and then to a halt. Susan swings down from his back and murmurs into the horse's ear, then sends him on with a pat.

She stands there before Mal, her soft smile as bright as her hair, even in the starlight.

"I've been good, Mal, say true-- and thee?"

[badinlatin]

The question gives Mal pause, and he almost looks like he's not going to answer it, until:

"Been better. You don't want to hear about all o' that, though. Come on over, sit by me."

Mal pats the spot next to him against the wide treetrunk, smirking like he almost always...used to.

[sai_delgado]

"Thee silly," she scolds gently. "Of course I would."

Susan looks after the gelding for a moment and then takes the few steps necessary in order to drop to the ground beside Mal, throwing her arms around him in a hug as she settles.

"It's good to see ye."

[badinlatin]

Mal's arms go immediately around Susan's back and remain crossed there for a long time.

"'S good to see you too, Susan."

He does let go. Eventually. By the time he does, he's moved himself closer to Susan's side, looking upward through the branches of the tree and to the sky beyond them, never seeming interested in the image of his mother's house ahead of him in the distance.

"Susan, I...uhm. 'm a lil' bit lost, at the moment."

[sai_delgado]

She settles more comfortably beside him and tosses her hair back over her shoulder. Fog-gray eyes are open and direct and solemn as they were on a day by Milliways' lake, long ago.

"Nay," she says gently. "Ye're found, do'ee ken? I've found you, even here-- and ye'll find yerself, too, if ye but look."

[badinlatin]

Mal shakes his head no, almost violently in contrast to the ease of the rest of his demeanor from earlier.

"This whole thing with Kaylee, and Niska. And Red. I can't stay in Milliways and I can't stay on the ship."

Mal pulls his hands into his lap, and he makes a mild show out of staring at his cuticles, hands almost in fists.

"She said I was supposed to know better."

[sai_delgado]

"Shhh." Susan reaches up and places gentle fingers over his mouth, stopping the flow of words.

(all is silent in the halls)

The leaves overhead echo the soft whisper, as does the breeze that blows over the grass, pulling at her hair and at the edges of his shirt.

(ka like a wind)

Things are often strange in dreams, and this one is no different-- for Susan seems to know exactly what he's talking about, all of it, without question.

"Ye'll never leave Serenity, Mal. Ye've got to live within it, instead."

(dead friends haunt old soldiers)

She searches his face, adding almost whisper-soft, "I spoke so to my dinh before too, did'ee know? Roland. I loved him, though, even then, even after everything. I still do."

[badinlatin]

Mal's almost dumbstruck with Susan's touch, and her words that make his untucked shirttails flap in their breeze.

"She thinks I don't love them," he manages eventually. "I was trying to tell her that I understood her placin' her husband and sister before the rest o' the crew and it got so wrong -- "

[sai_delgado]

And oh, but her smile is sweet and knowing, innocent and yet strangely wise. She's the girl Mal knew and remembers still, oh aye-- Susan Delgado, ever and always the lovely girl at the window, memory and dream and mayhap something more besides, here in this strange world betwixt and between.

"Love stumbles," Susan says softly. Not her words in life, but ka is strange and truth is stranger, and what is remembered in love lives on and echoes through time.

"I kennit. She'll learn, and knows already deep down, I wot. Of course thee love them-- it's why thee hurt so."

[badinlatin]

I ain't strong enough for this.

"She wants me to be perfect. Ain't ever gonna be, and I wouldn't want to be, besides. Perfect is for the black and riding horses. Not menfolk."

An almost-laugh. "Y'know I ain't even told 'Nara about anything of this? Why does Kaylee bother me about this more 'n my own wife?"

[sai_delgado]

"Ye're her dinh." Susan shrugs, smiling at him. "Leader, father, brother-- nay, not perfect, but some things are hard to see when we look to those we love."

(my fondest wish)

"Inara already knows."

She glances up, through the red leaves spread high above them like a shelter, looking to the stars beyond.

"There's time still. It's a face on the water here too." Gently, now, as she looks back at him, fog-gray eyes meeting his. "It'll come right."

[badinlatin]

Susan's eyes seem to confuse Mal; they're the only almost-dulled color in the entire landscape, yet they're the brightest things Mal can concentrate on at the moment.

Look for the man with the stars in his eyes

A smile, his eyes close and his forehead meets Susan's shoulder with a gentle thunk, light chortling directed...at himself, at the situation, at all the things he doesn't know how to change.

[sai_delgado]

(when you are old and grey and full of sleep)

She puts both her arms around him, holding him close and murmuring soft aimless words of comfort.

(take down this book ... and dream of the soft look)

"It'll come right, gē ge, say true." Softly, oh, so softly, and there's gentle laughter in her voice as well.

(your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep)

She was never Dream's, and even now she's not precisely the gift of the star-eyed Endless, although a dream she is here. Wanted and hoped for, this young woman whose presence and company is missed --

(How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;)

-- and now once again by Mal's side, brought through vivid memory and wistful, wishful longing.

(And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled)

She was ever Desire's, after all.

(And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars)

"Oh, Mal. Thee very dear. It's not easy, I kennit -- but it'll be all right."

[badinlatin]

It's an easy change from forehead-meets-shoulder to temple-meets-shoulder, making it easier for Mal to speak to Susan without sounding muffled. Not that he's sure the normal rules of volume and talking and anything really apply here, but the rules he's used to are all that he can act by.

"It's always easier when you're about. Why is that, exactly?"

[sai_delgado]

"Because," she says simply, leaning her head against his and sending the golden fall of her hair spilling down like a rain of sunlight. "Ka like a wind, but it's not always cruel."

"I never really left thee, ye ken."

[badinlatin]

Mal's not looking at Susan, so theoretically she shouldn't be able to see the smile on his face that lifts away a considerable amount of the worry and hurt he normally carries there.

He knows that she sees it anyway.

The landscape changes in front of Mal, slightly. The color of the ground and trees - even the red of the leaves tone themselves down. Not the sky though. The sequin-stars are more brilliant than anything else Mal has seen so far tonight, and he literally lets his jaw hang slightly agape at the sight.

"Ain't that somethin'."

[sai_delgado]

"Other worlds than these," Susan says softly. "They all meet, in the end. Look there-- do'ee see the eye?"

She points. Impossibly distant, impossibly bright, a few stars seem to shine like sea-pearls on a string-- one small part of Mona Lisa's Eye.

"Ye can see it better from Serenity, but it's still there even when ye can't see it all from the ground."

[badinlatin]

"Lil' piece o' the ship," is all Mal replies with, following the line of sight from Susan's pointed finger.

'Piece of home' is more the connotation.

Mona Lisa's Eye is one of those constellations that everyone at least knows about. Mal may not be Wash-level in piloting, but he knows his charts enough.

The Eye is his favorite path to follow, sometimes, and knowing it all meets in the end gives Mal the most knowing grin on his face.

"Figure I'm gonna be starin' at those stars forever."

[sai_delgado]

"Thee will, I wot," she replies softly. "Home stays with ye, wherever ye go."

Susan waves aimlessly at the stretch of land in front of them, out to where it meets the star-filled horizon.

"Yer Shadow, yer Serenity, all the rest, all that's important--"

(me and mine)

"--it'll be with thee, always."

[badinlatin]

"All that's important."

Because we are so...very...pretty.

Mal reaches under his shirt, almost subconsciously, to idly rub at the cross that hangs there in it's normal dream-position around his neck.

"Want me to point out some more local constellations or some o' the more deep-space ones?"

[sai_delgado]

"Local ones," she tells him-- and in this moment, her bright smile appears once more. "I'd like to see the stars ye grew up with, say true."

[badinlatin]

Mal's favorite stars are out closer to his birthday, and the current time of the year puts his mother's ranch in the wrong hemisphere to see them.

This doesn't seem to matter much, as Mal points out to Susan with a set of excited explanations and accompanying stories all of the star clusters he could remember, all of them seeming to appear in perfect clarity just above them.

Even the red-tinted leaves that once obscured Mal's line of sight seem to move out of the pair's way, letting them examine the patterns of the Shadow sky.