lodessa | failed mythology

Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Title: Bitter Aftertaste
Characters/Pairings: Simon, River (optionally Simon/River)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 402
Written for the

fandom_arcana Death Card Challenge
Author's Note: Sort of a failed Greek Mythology metaphor attempt....but it's ON TIME for the challenge for once. The idea was to have Simon as Demeter and River as Persephone, but Simon doesn't have the power to make the whole world suffer his grief.

Primavera. River was springtime and the Tam estate seemed barren without her laughter. Ashes and dust as the world became grayscale where once it had been bright.

His father thought Simon was being overly fanciful, told him he was being overly dramatic. He laughed at what he called Simon’s conspiracy theories and insisted that River was fine down were she was. The Hades Institute had an irreproachable reputation, and father was sure she was happy there, sure she was valued there.

She was valued here.

Simon got the distinct impression that his father was almost glad that River was gone, or would have been if he’d cared enough to have a feeling about it at all. His mother certainly seemed more cheerful. The whole world was dark and empty, yet they seemed to think things were going better than ever.

So he tried. He tried studying and work, and the world still felt like all the air had gone out of it without River. He graduated at the top of his class for the med academy, received awards, but he felt like a zombie, like a robot.

His uncle, Ray, said he seemed half dead, when they met for dinner in a fancy restaurant on Osiris, and that’s when he handed him coordinates, and a name to contact.

Simon blinked, the memory key his uncle handed him, seeming to slowly bring feeling creeping back up his number arm from his finger tips. He opened his mouth to ask why Ray was helping him, but his uncle cut him off.

“Your mother…” he murmured, “You should have seen the way she danced before…”

Ray looked broken; Simon didn’t need a real explanation because he intuitively understood.

Getting up from the table to depart was awkward and difficult and they clasped hands with more manhood than necessary and Simon appreciated Ray’s promise that he would take care of her.

Simon didn’t have to ask which her.

On paper, he lost everything: the fortune, and the career, and the supposedly brilliant future. All Simon could think though, as he held his sister close, was that Persephone looked more alive than anything he’d seen since before they took her to Hades.

The beginning of his banishment was the start of springtime, and Simon did not yet know well enough to suspect, that the redness of her mouth as he kissed her was the stain of pomegranate.