gonna_live | (no subject)

"Talk to me about it?"

He rubs her shoulder absently with one hand.

"He said it helped. The process." A glance. "...do you want to see?"

"Do you want me to see?" Beat. "Would he be okay with me seeing?"

It's not her world; it's not her history, or anything at all that's hers. Kaylee thinks it bears some asking.

"...I don't know." Quiet. "I think ... I think he wouldn't mind, but I'm not sure."

He shakes his head. "I can tell you about it, though."

"And I'll keep my mouth shut, just in case." She gives him another faint smile. "All right."

A little hesitantly, a little haltingly, he describes the altar. Some of the details he's forgotten already; what remains in his mind is the scarf, the flower, the bottles and comb, the captures.

It's not so foreign; it's not like she's never heard of altars to ancestors, or never seen them.

"It sounds... nice," she offers.

He nods. "It was."

There's a faint tone of ... something like bemusement, something like wonder.

And it's enough to make Kaylee look at him without saying anything.

"It was..."

He's quiet for a beat, searching for the words.

"Painful. In a way. But at the same time I can see how it could help."

She's quiet for a moment. Then:

"Painful for him, or for you?"

Very low: "I'm not sure I can imagine what it was like for him."

He's thinking of one detail he didn't mention: the bride and groom skeletons.

"So -- painful for you?"

A very small nod.

"Seeing her," he says. "And also ... thinking of him building it."

She doesn't say anything, instead settling her head back on his shoulder.

Either he'll want to talk more about it, or he won't.

"It always seemed kind of ... I don't know." Distant. "Morbid. All of those little altars, at the church. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to do that."

Beat.

"I think I might understand it now."

"Yeah?"

"Not such that I could explain it, but ..."

He shakes his head. "I don't know if I'm making any sense."

"...not much," she admits. "I don't -- I don't even know how you feel about it. Not really. I can't tell."

A pause.

"I think ... on the whole, I feel good about it," he says, his tone saying that he finds that strange.

"Then how come you're fussed?"

"I'm not, really, it's just ... it's odd."

He's looking into the middle distance, frowning slightly, but not sounding particularly displeased.

"This sort of thing used to bother me, and it doesn't anymore. And I don't know why."

Half a beat, and he looks at her. "I don't, I don't mean ... I don't mean her death. I mean this." A gesture toward the datareader, by extension indicating the image.

It's Kaylee's turn to look at least a little fussed.

Very quietly she says, "Folks being open about it?"

"No," he says, sounding a little surprised -- and then a little awkward again. "No, I mean the, the religious aspect."

A beat.

"I don't think I ever told you about the time Jordie took me to see his church? When we were in undergrad together?"

Kaylee shakes her head.

And doesn't say, you never have told me much of anything about before.

(It's how she thinks of it: before Serenity, and after. Like anything before is off-limits.

She's been thinking about that more than usual.)