A Touch of Song and Salem

She Smiled Once

Notes: 

This was written for my friend elerriina 's birthday, and Amelia and Matthew in this are based off of her characterization of them!! Please go check out her profile! She is also most active on tumblr at ladynephthyss!!

*****

She's dancing.

God, Matthew thinks, how long has it been?

How long has it been since he last saw her dance?

When the war ended in some distant year—when German tyrants, and a bullet or two, were all they had to worry about? When they were children, and Earth was whole and they were more than ghosts flying through the sky?

She dips and twirls, like a mermaid in an ocean of sound, her blonde hair flickering, her pink dress fluttering, her cargo boots pounding like a heartbeat on the makeshift stage, her petite form tossed and turned with the waves.

He doesn't know the song. Neither does she. They don't have to.

There's a fiddle, and a flute, and the stage is full of people whirling and beaming, like they're on a ride at the state fair, like the world didn't foreclose all those years—(too soon)—ago.

It sounds like an old folk song back home.

Home, the ground, without inanimate metal clanking beneath their feet every time they tried to walk.

Home, where there was a whole lot of dirt and magma between them and the dark. Now the only thing keeping them from endless, breathless vacuum is a piece of rusty metal and a dream.

Home, with it's borders, telling you where to go, where not go, what's me, and what's you. Not here. Here there's nothing to say 'keep out!' but death itself. And there's no me, no you, when, where we walk. Just lawless, mindless black.

Home, where the sky was above their heads.

Home. Them.

She looks like she's home too. The ground may not be her own, but any ground feels like a reunion with an old friend, and she can allow herself to—just for a second—breathe again.

She looks like she's home.

She looks like home.

She is the only home he knows now. The only ground he can count on. The only safe place to rest his head.

How long has it been since they've heard music?

When the wars ended, girls in pretty dresses danced and sang, and everyone waved their flags?

When Papa took them to the opera and they fidgeted in their seats, trying to play games without getting caught?

When Arthur took them to see a famous singer or two, and they started to see what all the fuss was about?

It's been so long since they heard music. Not a single, lonesome melody. The black didn't provide much as far as records, radios, and mp3s go. All they had were their own voices out here, the echo swallowed by the stars.

Amelia would sing, sometimes, on the ship. He knew it. In the lone hours of the morning when she thought no one could hear her, she would sing Serenity to sleep. The witching hour when the nightmares and all-too-real-mares kept her awake.

The witching hour, when all the best witches were up.

A man in a brown jacket and sash comes to dance with her, and a smile holds her up, as if pulled on strings, pulling her back, back, tethering her to a time when she was an eager-to-please American girl. Well, no, not quite. There was something fake there, then. Something plastered on. This isn't made of stitches, and glue, and expectations.