#⠀⊹ ˖ 𖥸 ─ ASUNDRIES.

[asundries]

WEATHERED, WHETHER WARMED OR SEARED. ⏜⠀ . ⠀⟡

STARRING… ─ firefly & gn reader. ✁ ... ❝ She knew you’d say that, too. You always do, as if it is a new, wondrous revelation each time, not a habit both of you have fallen into time and time again (just as that very sentence is as well—again and again. She hears you coming and then she can hear it in her mind, far sooner than you actually speak it. I thought I’d find you here. You knew you’d find her here). ❞ CONTAINS... ─ 2.1k words. bittersweet. intended as platonic. this is a secret santa fic for the wonderful @singularity-sam — i hope you have an amazing day filled with whimsy and cheer!! i haven’t written for firefly before, so i hope i did her justice. (i guess it’s a perfect time to start — merry christmas and happy rerun day to her as well!!)

Firefly is no stranger to extremes. 

First, there is the cold. 

Her “birth”, unnatural. Her bones felt like metal buried, rain-worn, marrow soft and skin so fragile, barely fully formed by the time her face breached the world. The artificiality of the engineered amniotic fluid she was adrift in for her first many moments was cold, so too the walls of that false egg, and the floor beneath her feet, and the exoskeleton she is ill-fitted with, and the spindly long-nailed fingers of the Empress, the first living thing she ever touched.

Nothing alive should be that cold, really. And neither should any start of life be so frigid and impersonal. 

It stays cold for a while. Then, engulfing, all-encompassing, there is the hot laving of fire. 

The stars do not stand still, nor are they unyielding. Infinitely, they dance and sway behind the rippling of the hot air rising off her burning world. Fyreflies are vastly brighter, to her, yet they emit no warmth. The stars must be freezing, too. 

There is never anything between this hot and cold. There is no soothing cool, and no comforting warmth, and anything lukewarm is simply the manifestation of her sensation’s atrophy under the relentless pressure of frigidity or torrid heat. Only ever extremes.

— —

Firefly’s body always hurts a bit more when winter comes. There is little she can do to warm herself, really; there is the cold metal of her armor and the enveloping flames of activating it, but that is only painful in another way. 

Even so, it’s more bearable in the comfort of a home. There will forever be a lingering ache, but the heat from a fireplace, from the warmth of people she’s begun to—in her mind only—call family, is much better than the all-engulfing flames she knows otherwise. She sits back on the couch and stares holes into the smoldering wood. 

On the days where Firefly can’t do much, she reminisces. 

The Stellaron Hunters, namely you, were the first lukewarm thing that she had ever felt. It’s a strange comparison to make—happiness and safety with something so seemingly mediocre, but it works. The twists and turns of different people, like moods, like temperatures—Kafka’s welcoming, warm; Blade’s taciturnity, cool; Elio’s… kindness, in his offer, a bit of both; Silver Wolf’s playfulness (fun, if a little tiring), warm again, for the most part; your… well, she didn’t know what to make of you at first, so she couldn’t say for sure—without ever falling too far into extremes. 

It’s funny, really, how such a bland feeling brought her such comfort; the sensation of nothing at all, yet no sort of emptiness to be found. It was nothing like that constricting egg, or the hard armored body she typically resides in. There is a softness in the holding of hands, in the holding of people, so unlike the harsh conditions of her life as it has been. She’s content.

“How are you doing?” you ask, peeking your head in through the cracked-open door. 

Firefly turns to look at you. “I’m okay, thank you.”

Her eyes immediately fall from your face to the tray you’re carrying. It’s wooden, handles notched in the sides, filled with food and drink (namely, two mugs of what she assumes is hot cocoa, one with marshmallows and the other with whipped cream), and decorated with festive additions on every square inch of space that is not already occupied by some sort of snack. It’s overkill, but it’s sweet. She smiles, and wonders how you managed to bring it all the way here without spilling something.

You set the tray down on the coffee table. She glances at it briefly—she doesn’t need to eat or drink much, but the gesture is kind, and she appreciates the thought nonetheless.

“Do you feel any better?” you ask, gently nudging the blanket she’s using closer to her so you can sit. She pulls her legs back a bit to give you more room. The couch dips beneath your weight and pulls her a bit closer anyway.

“I’m still sort of tired,” she says, picking up her drink and blowing on it. “But I do, a little.”

You smile. “That’s good. You worked hard. You deserve the rest.”

When she brings it to her mouth to take a sip, it’s just as she suspected—hot chocolate, no bitterness at all, nearly even too sweet. But it’s not hot, really—the temperature is perfect. Warm. 

——

Firefly was surprised the day she learned stars burned. If fyreflies gave off no warmth, yet still shone brighter than the sun, then stars surely paled in comparison to their beauty—such gentle, giving light, without the need for any destruction at all. A living thing. Fleeting. 

She knows stars will burn out, too. But it’s much slower. And you cannot hold a star in your hand, cannot feel a star illuminating every proof-of-having-lived line of your open palm, cannot choose whether to crush it or hold it close. Some say the beauty of life lies in the ephemerality of it. Sometimes Firefly agrees. Other times she thinks about how horribly unfair that is, that beautiful things should be allowed to last forever, that fyreflies should not die three days after their creation, that flowers should not wilt the moment they are cut from the stem. But that is only two extremes. Human life is much more intricate. The line of thought is irrational regardless.

She tilts her head back and lets her sight be swallowed by the darkness of the light-polluted sky. She narrows her eyes, gaze a little blurry focused so far away, and thinks she would prefer the company of a fyrefly to the stars. But they don’t exist for her anymore, not where she is now; they are fleeting, just as she is, and most perished in that all-engulfing flame. Though she moves around so very much, she has never seen another anywhere else in recent years. 

So, in their absence, she sits on the roof every night and stares out—the city lights of wherever she’s staying often obscure them, render them hazy in the swirl of candied ink and over-used paper, but she swears something in their scattered, hand-written lines speak to her regardless. Like the purpose-filled existence of every short-lived fyrefly, burning brightly before its destined end. 

The harsh scent of gasoline from the city is cloying, even from afar on the lone rooftop. The thickness of it is like stagnant smoke in her lungs, but the wintry night air flowing in from somewhere farther away—almost scentless, but damp with melted snow and crisp with re-forming frost—washes it away until it’s nothing but a distant memory. 

Snowfall is a lot like the cascade of ash. Hot enough and the heat feels frigid, freezing enough and the cold feels like fire—either way, what they have in common, hand-in-hand, face-to-face, is that they are extremes. Two sides of the same coin. The wind blows her hair away from her face, and as it carries in more snow-sodden clouds for the wintry sky to cry from, Firefly feels a snowflake alight upon her nose.

She brushes it away, and tears her gaze from the vastness of it all. She takes a deep breath and looks towards the small-in-comparison harbor instead. She watches the boats go by, the dancing light on their decks, the waving sky’s reflections in their wake, muted stars rippling like echoes in the hull-churned surface. It can be lonely, but it’s also peaceful, calming in a way nothing else is, from summer’s cloying night heat to winter’s biting cold, and back and forth, and again, and again. It’s become routine, no matter the city. You joining her has, too. (Which may, admittedly, be the reason it isn’t so lonely at all.)

Firefly wrings her fingers out, a bit cold by now, sighs, and cracks her knuckles one by one. She hears your footsteps along the rainswept roof long before she sees you.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

She knew you’d say that, too. You always do, as if it is a new, wondrous revelation each time, not a habit both of you have fallen into time and time again (just as that very sentence is as well—again and again. She hears you coming and then she can hear it in her mind, far sooner than you actually speak it. I thought I’d find you here. You knew you’d find her here).

She smiles. “You always do.”

There is no part of the script that says anything of this, implicit or explicit, but it happens over and over again regardless: Firefly steps out onto the roof to watch the stars, and you follow approximately fifteen minutes later, just in time for her to begin to feel the chill. (Though she could easily don her armor and chase the cold away herself, she finds that same familiar comfort in allowing you to do it for her.) You say “I knew I’d find you here”, and she says “You always do.” 

Or something similar, of course, as this was indeed not part of the script. Sometimes the same, sometimes with a roughness in your voice that comes only with the lingering disruption of sleep, sometimes a bit more exasperated if she promised to stay inside that night to rest. Either way, you are never upset for long, really.

“It’s windy,” you say, slowly sitting yourself down next to her, careful not to slip on the shingles. “And wet. You’re not cold?”

The unmistakable hint of disdain for the weather in your voice makes Firefly laugh. 

“Cold? A little.”

You take that as an excuse to inch closer. She doesn’t mind. Not at all.

You take her hand, fingers running over her cold ones, clutching them between your palms until you seem satisfied that they’re warmed. Even then, you continue to hold her.

“They’re pretty,” you murmur, gaze casted up at the little sliver of sky still visible through the encroaching clouds. “The stars.”

She nods. “They are. I wish you could see a Fyrefly—they’re sort of like little stars. They’re truly beautiful.”

You turn to her, a grin on your face. “…Aren’t you one?” 

“That’s… not what I meant.”

“I know. But you light up a room enough to be one, I’d say.”

She rolls her eyes, but that smile, that genuinely warm one that comes with the breaking off of a laugh, still tugs at the corners of her mouth. “Light up a room? What, with Sam’s flames?”

“Mhm. Yeah, totally.”

Your head falls against her shoulders, your arms encircling her side. She lets her cold cheek rest against your hair. It’s a strange feeling, no matter how many times it happens, no matter how many quiet nights you and her spend like this, so closely entwined, the same sky envisioned—it surprises her each time, the gentleness of it, the tenderness she feels in your arms. It’s soft, in contrast to tile floors and metal bodies and spindly fingers. The wind blows harder, and with it comes more snow in flurries, tangling in her hair and settling on her skin, melting upon it. You giggle softly, undeterred, and hug her tighter. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back inside?” she asks when you begin to shiver. “I don’t think the snow is going to stop anytime soon.”

“Not until you do.”

“You seem colder than me, though.”

“So?”

“So… why stay out here with me? I don’t want you to freeze.”

You sigh, eyes fluttering closed. A snowflake lands on your eyelash, and she resists the urge to brush it away. “You’ve asked that before.”

“I know,” she says. “You’ve never answered.”

You look up at her then.

“Because I want to, Firefly.”

And it has nothing to do with destiny. Nothing about these moments were ever scripted, nor would they ever be. It was your choice, and it was hers, time and time again. That’s what made it so wonderful.

She knows she should go back inside soon, that she should settle back into her armor and truly rest—she’s been out of it for a while, and it’s probably taking a toll, and she should allow her body to recuperate. But that should be on her terms, too. And, strangely, she’s in a lot less pain than normal, so, for now…

“Can we stay here a bit longer?”

“Of course.”

In your presence, the cold eases just a bit, and when you hold her… Even outside in the midst of winter, Firefly feels something akin to warmth. 

With you, it’s never in the extremes.

[asundries]

⠀⠀⠀⠀# 𝓐𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 ﹒⎯⎯ ⠀a⠀ clean ⠀YA ⠀short ⠀story ⠀collection ⠀written ⠀by ⠀RAINSWEPT, published ⠀by ⠀STELLARONHVNTERS.⠀⊹ ˖ ⠀

⊹ ⠀⠀for ⠀intended ⠀audiences ⠀⠀˖ ⠀⠀table ⠀of ⠀contents ⠀⠀⊹⠀ ⠀index⠀⠀ ˖⠀⠀ about the author

♪ : i tried so hard to be good⠀⠀by the paper chase