gonna_live | (no subject)

"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.)

"We were about sixteen or seventeen," he says, half-smiling, "and we'd only been friends for a few months by then. I didn't really know what to expect from a church, and I felt ridiculously out of place, and ... I spent most of the time we were there concentrating on not saying anything inappropriate."

"...can I ask if it worked without you gettin' offended?"

His smile goes rueful. "Yes. And ... it did. At least as far as I could tell. People may have just been making allowances for me being a guest."

She aims a glance up at him.

"How many folks did you tell about you going to a Catholic church?"

He's quiet for a moment.

"Not many." His smile goes crooked again. "Dunash, once, but that was years later. I wasn't trying to keep it a secret, exactly, I just ... never really mentioned it."

That's keeping it a secret, she doesn't say.

"But you was bothered. By whatever you saw."

"I remember it all just looked like ... people doing incomprehensible things for incomprehensible reasons." Soft. "Like some kind of benign mass hysteria. Yes. It bothered me."

There's a strange tinge of sympathy to his tone, as though he's talking about somebody else.

"I don't think it would, now."

Did you ever ask about it? she doesn't ask.

"You never saw a single shrine to somebody's ancestors. Or went to a funeral."

"I'd seen shrines before," he says. "Not ... not a funeral. Not before I left Osiris."

She knows about all the ones he's been to since then.

"But never anything like the service."