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Tide Coming In (Open - tag Len)
Jul. 1st, 2016 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
makemeastoneShe stuck to her regiment of pills, supplements and diet (mostly) because she’d promised Simon; but when the supplies in the medical kit she had found in her room ran out, she couldn't make herself go to the clinic. She knew intellectually that she needed the medication, certainly Simon would think so. But Simon wasn’t here and River didn’t like doctors.
Decision made.
Gradually things got louder, crowded in but she'd long since learned that she had no ownership of the emotions of the people around her. She could make no demands on what they felt, or how deeply. The people on the station, often deep in their own thoughts had nothing to do with her even if she felt each emotion as strongly as her own. Their bad day was her bad day. Their joy was her joy. Their fear was her fear. It all mixed and blurred and eddied around her with its own current rolling in and out like the tide.
On Serenity she'd gotten adept at identifying whose emotions she was feeling by how it tasted on her tongue. But here on Sanctuary there were so many minds always thinking and doing and feeling something and the taste got muddied until she couldn't always tell where she ended and they began. She was everything and nothing, an empty vessel, a lighting rod - fighting the conflicting sea of emotions was exhausting and futile so she decided simply to stop.
The side effect of this was that her brain had gotten rather literal and so she simply stopped - in the middle of the Marketplace, eyes closed, arms out, head back and just... floated.
Decision made.
Gradually things got louder, crowded in but she'd long since learned that she had no ownership of the emotions of the people around her. She could make no demands on what they felt, or how deeply. The people on the station, often deep in their own thoughts had nothing to do with her even if she felt each emotion as strongly as her own. Their bad day was her bad day. Their joy was her joy. Their fear was her fear. It all mixed and blurred and eddied around her with its own current rolling in and out like the tide.
On Serenity she'd gotten adept at identifying whose emotions she was feeling by how it tasted on her tongue. But here on Sanctuary there were so many minds always thinking and doing and feeling something and the taste got muddied until she couldn't always tell where she ended and they began. She was everything and nothing, an empty vessel, a lighting rod - fighting the conflicting sea of emotions was exhausting and futile so she decided simply to stop.
The side effect of this was that her brain had gotten rather literal and so she simply stopped - in the middle of the Marketplace, eyes closed, arms out, head back and just... floated.
