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She's not allowed sharp objects any more. No letter openers. No pens, no paper. Dangerous corners, paper. In the books, the heroine opens her veins and uses her own blood for ink.
River would rather use someone else's.
They've stolen something of hers, her soul maybe, and put it in the mirror's room. She won't look. Knows they're trying to trick her. She's not falling for it when she's already told them no, not until they bring her a letter from Simon. A real one this time.
In her room crouches a jade dragon, stolen too. It means nothing to River, but she's been fighting the mirror over it for hours. She sings to distract herself, and the mirror sings back, mistaking her purpose.
No, no, no. No progress until she gets her letter.
They sing until their throats bleed in tandem, but River still won't let the mirror have the dragon, and she won't take back her bit of soul. They'd only carve it out again, after all.
Mirror, mirror, far away, which of us will they cut today?
She wakes in the moment, everything real and happening now, still dreaming. Serenity's walls thrum. Nightclothes twist and trap. A cry escapes her, slips its leash like heavy jade slips from small fingers. She'd worn a leash once, been a cat as Simon led her around the terrace at the end of the belt from their mother's robe, until she'd read that cats had been too independent for leashes and insisted they play with historical accuracy.
Before the Academy. Before the... There's a green statuette, but it's already fading. Maybe it was blue. Two by two. Not dreaming any more, though she still feels like it.
Did she scream? She doesn't think so, but River can hear Simon moving beyond the wall. His door sliding open, his bare feet on the deck, his throat catching the end of every breath. Then he's invading her room with his brotherness.
"River?"
His voice is hoarse. He'd been touching himself, River realizes as he sits on her bed. She interrupted him, and his lust wraps around her with his arms, heat and humidity jumbled up with concern. His back is sweaty, but she's the river.
"Mirror, mirror," she tells him. "Nothing's fairest."
"Shh, it's all right. I'm here." He's not though. Part of him is still in his cabin, hands dancing over his body. It's okay. She understands.
"I used to dance too," she says. Her fright has slunk away, and wonder creeps onto the stage. Second act. Memory follows dream. "I used to dance at night with the lights out."
"You were very graceful," Simon says. He's not wearing a shirt and his skin overwhelms her. "You still are. I'd like to see you dance more often, mei mei."
She's surprised, but with time so immediate she can't hide from any fleeting thought, and she must acknowledge the thrill she also feels. Simon watching her dance... she'd leave the light on for him. He doesn't realize what he's said though, or maybe she's fixed their broken language again. No one understands her when she does. The words are better the way she speaks them, but they don't care. Cling to the familiar.
For Simon, she will try, even if it makes her tongue feel clumsy and stupid. "Would you like to masturbate with me?" she asks carefully, as though it were a rote phrase learned in another language. Sesotho, or maybe Finnish.
"Would I... what?"
"You wanted to watch me."
"... What?"
Frustrated, she touches the erection he's been thinking about, and he grabs her wrist. Hurts her. Fingers grinding bone.
"River!"
"You were doing it in your room. Why not with me?"
"Because it's not-- You were spying on me?"
"You're noisy. And you're hardly dressed." The front of his pants looks like a ship's prow. A sailing ship with a wooden figurehead. She strikes a mermaid pose, neck extended, chest thrust out to meet the waves, and Simon stares at her like she's gone mad. She hasn't though. He just doesn't want to play with her anymore, can't follow her. They could be pirates on the high seas, but Medacad constricted his thinking, made him stupid.
"Mei mei, I know this is difficult for you." Stupid and patronizing. "It's difficult for me, too, but we can make it. Sometimes I need time--"
"Time to masturbate."
He winces. "Among other things. But you know I will drop everything if you need me, no matter what I'm doing. Sometimes that will be something embarrassing to one or both of us, but I'll always come."
She believes him, and it makes her sad and special and horrified. She's the worst sister in the verse. The luckiest.
Simon is finished being stupid, and tucks her back into bed, kisses her, hugs her. His sweat is cold now, skin clammy under her fingers, and he's broken into gooseflesh. She wrinkles her nose against his chest. No sensible God would put nipples on a man. She must remember to point that out to Shepherd Book.
One more touch to her brow -- check for fever, more motherly than doctorly -- and Simon leaves, footsteps padding back the way they came. Alone, River tries dancing for the first time in forever and it's wonderful, better than she remembers. She thinks about Simon and his silly nipples, pointed with the cold. When she's finished, the now -- so full of dreamlike urgency before -- turns into real time, into lazy satisfaction, into then and now and next. She can think. She can savour the peace instead of drowning in it.
She wriggles her toes. Her nightgown is damp.
"Silly Simon," River whispers. Needles were never the answer. This is a drug she can trust. Calming, inexpensive, no negative side effects. She hopes Simon finished his dance, but when she presses her palm to the wall she finds he's too unsettled.
He tried, but he kept thinking of her.
"I feel shiny," she announces at breakfast. Kaylee beams at her, Jayne grunts, and Mal raises his eyebrows and half smiles like her good mood is contagious. She wants to infect them all. She thinks virus-y thoughts.
"Did you have any more nightmares?" Simon asks his bowl. He didn't sleep, poor thing.
"No dreams. I masturbated like you told me to." She assesses the shadows under his eyes critically, heedless of the sudden silence even when Wash drops his spoon into it. "You shouldn't have stopped. You'd have slept better."
"I..." He's gaping at her. Simon can never speak when he's startled. Too afraid he'll say something stupid. He usually does anyway. "River, that wasn't advice, that was... you invading my privacy."
"You came to my room," she reminds him.
"Because you were screaming," he says through his teeth.
"Was not. It slipped my leash is all." She folds her arms over her chest and glares at her bowl of protein. She doesn't like how this conversation is going. This is just like him not wanting to marry her.
He's struggling with his dignity, more concerned with what the others think of him than how she feels. "Well," he says at last. "I'm glad you found something to help with the dreams."
"You... stupid!" She throws her porridge at him and storms out of the galley.
Kaylee finds her in the crawlspace under the aft catwalk. River isn't surprised -- Kaylee listens when Serenity speaks, and Serenity is a big fat tattletale. She budges over anyway and they have a girl talk, just River and Kaylee and Serenity, no brothers allowed. River learns all about women and bodies and sex and things that run on batteries.
Kaylee likes Simon. She thinks about him while she explains the best parts, and it makes River feel normal. Normal to think about Simon and his skin and his stupid non-functional nipples. Normal to wish he would come to her room at night and take off her clothes and do the things Kaylee is telling her about.
She's a good friend, Kaylee, and River hugs her.
"We forget you're a grown-up woman sometimes," Kaylee says. "Why don't you come to Inara's shuttle tonight and we'll do your hair up real pretty?"
River remembers being ten and hating Simon's girlfriend with her elegant hair and trendy clothes and phony laugh, but she imagines Simon looking at her the way he looked at Wen Huo.
"Shiny," she says, "but if I turn into a phony yao noo twit I'm taking it down."
Inara paints River's toenails. Purple, the brightest shade of it in a box of hundreds. It looks like River has hodgeberries on the ends of her toes, and she wriggles them. Maggots in the fruit. Don't eat that, it's poison, and Simon spitting them out like the big dummy he is.
"Your hair is gorgeous." Kaylee sighs. "So long."
"It is," Inara says. "You should grow yours, Kaylee."
"Can't. Gets caught in the movin' parts. Wouldn't be as nice on me anyways."
River listens, wide-eyed. They shouldn't waste this wistful admiration on any part of her. Pity and dismissal and fear, that's River's lot since she broke. Only Simon loves her, and more than half of Simon's love is for the old unbroken her.
This is a girl's game, though, and River wants to play it with them. Inara dresses her in a sparkly sari, deep blood and gold. Kaylee teases Inara about Mal, and Inara teases Kaylee about Simon. Neither of them tease River.
I've seen the way Simon looks at you, River. Is he a good kisser?
No one says this, and River understands she's not a player but the doll.
That night River waits until Simon is close, until his pleasure is bleeding from their shared wall. Then she screams. Not loudly enough to draw the others. She feels crafty. She's a fox.
Next door Simon hesitates -- hesitates! She'll pay him back for that one just as soon as she can find something gross to put in his bed -- and then jerks his pyjama bottoms up and hurries to her room.
"River?"
She sits up in bed and holds out her arms. He obeys at once, and she has his sweaty back under her hands once more. She's the river and he's the ocean, and she wants to lose herself in him. She kisses his neck. Bites his ear.
Hands on her arms, pushing her away again. This time, she won't let go. This time, she's armed.
Kaylee told her just what she needed to know. River presses her chest against Simon's. Men like breasts, and even if River's aren't much at least her nipples work. She can feed a child with them, and that's what Simon's primate brain really wants in a woman.
"River, please don't start this again."
"I'm healthy," she purrs. "Don't worry about my narrow hips. You're a doctor."
"I... What?"
"I'm perfectly capable of childbearing."
"...What?"
His confusion is adorable. She kisses him, and he almost falls off the bed trying to escape. He's strong, but she's fast and supple. "Ocean can't stop the river flowing into him," she mumbles between kisses, but then he stands up and apparently the ocean can do as it pleases. She's left alone on the bed. He's across the tiny room, trying to back through the wall.
"Come back," she says, patting the blanket next to her. "I'll help you sleep."
"Mei mei, we need to have a chat about personal space."
"Ship's too small for personal space," she says sagely. "We should share a cabin."
"Goodnight, River." Simon pauses at the door. "There's a story about a little girl who cried wolf -- you understood the moral of it when you were two. Don't abuse my trust like this again."
He's gone, and he's angry, and she's sorry. It frightens him when she screams, and now he thinks she's playing games. She supposes she is. Playing Kaylee games. Simon likes them when she plays. He goes back to bed and doesn't touch himself again, though he's still hard.
She aches along with him. She doesn't deserve to sleep.
"River, I'd like to see you in the infirmary today," Simon says at breakfast. She doesn't like the sound of that.
She's not shiny today, not shiny at all. She's sandy-eyed and grumpy and very contagious. The galley resounds with silences. Dark looks and angry cutlery. It's very crowded, and she wants to toss a few of them out the airlock.
Well. Just Simon, really.
"River, did you hear me?"
She shoves her chair back, and leaves the table without excusing herself.
Simon follows her all the way to the infirmary. He doesn't have to tell her to sit on the examination table. He closes the doors behind him. A deliberate gesture. Ritual. Time to gather himself before he turns to her.
He's wearing his doctor face, and she sticks out her tongue at him. She doesn't want to talk to Doctor Tam. She wants Simon.
"You said orgasm helps you sleep."
Well now. Maybe she does want to talk to Doctor Tam. "Yes. Makes the dreams stay asleep."
"When was the last time you masturbated? Before last night." He's not blushing, but she can feel the blood waiting to storm his cheeks, and she smiles, shiny at last. He wants to know about her dancing.
"At home. On Osiris." River's smile widens. "My room was next to yours there, too. You were always loud."
He ignores her, but the blush sends the advance. "What about at the Academy?"
She looks at the infirmary windows. Everyone can see inside. All the doors had windows at the Academy, but she doesn't want to talk about that. She wants to talk about orgasms and Doctor Tam's nipples. "In the beginning."
"Why did you stop?" She doesn't answer. He's ruining her fun. "Lack of interest? Something they... something they did?"
"Can't dance in a cage."
He writes something down. She has a feeling she isn't getting sex but a needle. "I'd like to check your serotonin levels. Left arm, please."
She hates being right all the time.
Simon steals her blood and runs his tests, and then gives her a shot of something that won't help. "I want you to try masturbating every night -- alone." He pretends to study the notes he hasn't written. "I think it will help you sleep."
She rolls her eyes. Stupid brothers. No one else on board has to put up with them.
After lunch, they play ball. River and Jayne against Simon and Kaylee, with Mal and Zoe refereeing as they count boxes in the hold. River picks Jayne because then she can tackle Simon. Kaylee is happy to be on Simon's team, and Jayne is happy because River never misses if he gets her the shot. Mal and Zoe aren't actually watching, and their made-up calls make everyone but Simon laugh. Simon is upset because River didn't pick him.
Silly Simon. She tackles him a lot to show him how much she loves him. She's clinging to his back while he tries to pass to Kaylee when the loudspeaker crackles.
"RIVER TAM, YOU ARE OUT OF BOUNDS. REPORT TO PROCESSING AT ONCE."
She misses the shot and drops to the floor.
"River? Are you hurt?" Simon helps her up. His hands implore her to be good, behave, be quiet, be all right.
"RIVER TAM, YOU ARE OUT OF BOUNDS. REPORT TO PROCESSING FOR DISCIPLINE AND NEURAL PURGING."
"No!" Everyone is looking at her, but no one wonders where the voice is coming from, who hijacked Serenity's intercom.
Because no one has.
"Two by two," she moans just as the loudspeaker -- the real one, not the one in her head -- blares.
"Mal, we've got Alliance." Wash's voice.
"PREPARE FOR BOARDING, RIVER TAM."
"They're ordering us to stand down and prepare for boarding."
"Wang ba dan," Mal snarls, taking the stairs two at a time. Zoe follows, and Kaylee runs for the engine room.
Simon grabs River, but she knows, she knows, she knows. They've brought the mirror this time, and she shrieks and scratches at her eyes and kicks out when Simon tries to stop her.
"Jayne, help me with her."
"Sees with my eyes! Don't let me look, Simon, don't let me."
But they're not trying to see with her eyes, but to show her. She's dragged, screaming, across the black.
The mirror is strong now. Stronger than River, who's broken, and when the mirror looks, River looks too. Looks at the bit of her soul they've stolen.
Doctor Mitchell has a scalpel held up to the young man's face. He looks so much like Simon that River thinks she has two brothers. This one doesn't love her though. He's terrified. A dark gleaming line of blood slips down his face to soak the collar of his pristine Alliance uniform.
"River," says Doctor Mitchell. "I know you can hear me. You are truant, and you will return to the Academy at once."
Come back, the mirror whispers. Come back and give me my dragon. I'll give you your brother and we'll be perfect.
No, she says, and the mirror echoes her aloud.
"River." Doctor Mitchell cuts a hole in the not-Simon's cheek. He gurgles. The mirror can see his teeth, so River can too. "We are no longer playing games."
She can't close the mirror's eyes, can't close her own mind, can't stop feeling the hot drops of blood that land on the mirror's face. There are no restraints, nothing holding the mirror there.
Nothing physical.
Don't make us watch this, River. Come back. We'll meet, face to face, and we'll be strong and perfect and no one will ever hurt us again.
Too late, River tells her mirror. They already have.
Doctor Mitchell cuts off an ear.
She snaps back to Serenity's hold, and Simon is patting her face, Jayne looming over them both, wild-eyed in a way that gunfire and explosions will never make him.
"River," Simon says, relieved until she screams.
He has a hole cut in his face and he doesn't know it yet. They've only begun to show her the price of being out of bounds.
She bolts for the airlock, but Jayne catches her before she can open it. Hands grasping and dragging her back, carrying her to the infirmary and strapping her down.
Killing themselves saving her.
Days, they've played hide and seek, Serenity and the I.A.V. Artaxerxes. The not-Simon died in agony on the third, and Doctor Mitchell promised a thousand times worse for real-Simon.
She's tried shouting the words that boom in her head, but she only damages her voice and frightens everyone more than they already are. And they still won't send her away on the shuttle, won't let her step out the airlock and walk home to the Academy.
Simon sleeps in a chair in the infirmary, holds her hand where it's strapped to the table. When he wakes, he gives her a needle, but the drug only makes her laugh while she screams.
"RIVER TAM, YOU ARE OUT OF BOUNDS. ANYONE CAUGHT AIDING YOU IN YOUR TRUANCY WILL BE PUNISHED ACCORDINGLY."
"They're going to drip acid in your eyes," River says. Simon no longer reacts when she tells him what her mirror sees; he can't look any paler or grimmer.
Mal comes in and stares down at her. "How's she doing, Doc?"
"I'm Cricket," River says before Simon can lie, and Mal flinches. Simon looks at him.
"Dog," Mal says shortly. "Ma loved it so much she wouldn't shoot it when it took sick."
"I'm Cricket, Mal, please."
"She's not sick," Simon snaps. "They're attacking her. I just don't know how."
"Mirror, mirror, down the hall." She licks her cracked lips. Her face hurts. Yesterday Kaylee unbuckled one of River's arms while Simon slept and she'd tried to scratch the voices out.
"Best you figure it out soon, Doc. We ain't got enough fuel to run forever, and Wash ain't had no luck shakin' them."
Of course not. Simon's made River better, but weaker, and the mirror is too close. River can't hide her mind.
Fee, fi, fo, fum, says the mirror, and Simon argues with Mal, and then Mal leaves, not angry like Simon is, but sad.
"I want to dance," River says. "Can't dance when they put me back in the cage."
"You're not going back." Simon rakes his hair back. His mouth is hard and mean because he hurts inside, and River wants to kiss him and tell him how much better Mal's ma felt after Cricket finally died. "Did the injection help at all?" he asks, and he sounds so lost she can't tell him.
"No needles." She closes her eyes a moment, then opens them. They have a new not-Simon, and they're pulling his intestines out, inch by inch. "I just want to dance and dream when I'm asleep, not awake. Please, Simon."
He stares at nothing -- or maybe he stares at the inside of his head -- and then fetches a pair of latex gloves.
White, not blue.
They snap onto his hands, businesslike, and he folds down the blanket and folds up her gown.
He's touching her, just like Kaylee said men did. His hands are graceful and his movements stark and bare and beautiful like the way Grandfather Tam used to paint with a real brush and ink, like Simon's nipples. River wants him to touch hers, but he's watching the blood pressure monitor and trying to think of heart rates and serotonin levels instead of what the pheromones he's breathing in from her do to him.
"Simon." She bites her lip now, tension lifting her hips and filling her with restless energy. She must expend it or explode. "Simon!"
"RIVER TAM--"
Steady waves dim the summons, but it's not enough. The mirror's fighting her, dragging her across the black. She thinks she'll be sick if she has to watch Simon bleed while he does this for her.
"RIVER TAM, REPORT--"
"I won't!" she shrieks. "I won't go and you can't have him!"
"River," Simon says, and he's stopping, looking at her at last, now that it's the wrong thing to do.
"Simon, no. Kaylee told me... no batteries. Please, Simon!" He doesn't understand, so she sticks out her tongue to show him and he understands that.
He's done that before. Maybe with Wen Huo. One more reason to hate her.
He looks grim, but he goes to a drawer and fetches a small package. Tears it open, places something small and plastic over her. Doesn't want to touch her, her fastidious brother. Afraid of her pheromones crawling into his monkey brain and making him do what he wants instead of what he thinks he should want.
"-- FOR NEURAL PURGING AND CORRECTION."
"Shut them up," she says, and he releases her ankles and puts her feet into stirrups and reaches under the table. Click. The lower half folds down, like the clever table it is. He drags the stool over, thinks about the baby he delivered at a party on Osiris.
Thinks about River's hips, and what she said about childbearing.
"-- CAUGHT AIDING YOU --"
He licks her.
Her scream melts in her throat, emerges a mushy groan. She analyzes, compares, forgets her calculations when he licks her again. She can't think with his tongue working her in those firm, methodical strokes, and that is the point.
She lets go, lets him hide her in a part of her brain the mirror's forgotten all about.
Can't dance in a cage. River is the one restrained, but she's free.
She's arching, straining to catch the maddening pleasure, until it crashes over her and she knows she was chasing the ocean. She's drowning, and the dead don't hear voices, they only speak.
She dies a little under Simon's mouth, and the world is numb. There is only her, the thrum of her body matching Serenity's pulse, and Simon sitting back.
..., says the mirror, but River can't distinguish the words. Far away now, angry buzzing bees. Buzz, buzz, River doesn't care. Her body tingles, and Simon loves her. He strips off the gloves and drops them in the trash.
She smiles up at him, tilts her chin for a kiss. Instead he takes her pulse, then her blood pressure, then her temperature, looking at his instruments instead of her.
He thinks he's dirty.
She must be dirty too, but it's quiet inside her head, and she really is the worst sister in the verse for not being sorry.
"Is sex ever wrong?" River asks Kaylee. They're playing cards in the engine room, on their way to Boros with their tails between their legs, the Artaxerxes sniffing for their wake, cat hunting mouse. River is winning both games, but Simon is avoiding her.
"Of course not, sweetie," Kaylee says. She frowns at her hand. "Well, unless one person ain't a consenting adult. Then it's plain rape."
River chews her lip and absently trumps Kaylee's emperor. Simon's an adult. So is River. That only leaves... consent.
She drops her cards and they fly every which way, falling into the machinery. Kaylee squawks and something sparks, but River doesn't care. She dashes through the ship at full speed, nearly knocking Wash down the stairs as she vaults over the railing.
"It's all right, Simon, you didn't rape me!" she shouts as she rushes into the infirmary.
Simon is handing Shepherd Book a complex-looking pair of scissors, but he stops and pinches the bridge of his nose. He's gone very pale, and River wonders if he's been eating right.
Shepherd Book gives Simon a sympathetic smile and excuses himself. "I'll just put these back when I'm done."
Simon nods and shuts the door behind the preacher. "You." He jabs a finger at River. It's shaking. "Sit."
She hops onto the table and starts to unbutton her shirt, but he catches her wrists.
"Stop that. We need to have a talk, mei mei."
"Kaylee already told me about men and women."
"Really."
She thought he'd be pleased but he's not. "When a man and woman love each other--"
"Stop. There are different types of love, River."
"But you touched me like Kaylee said." She doesn't want those other types of love. She wants this one, with kissing and sweaty backs and nipples that might just function after all and Simon always, always coming for her. The way fathers didn't.
"I didn't know what else to do." Simon swallows, Adam's apple bobbing, but his chin is firm and stubborn. "Nothing else was working and the captain as good as threatened to put you off the boat if they kept following us. While it was unconventional and I'd lose my license if anyone found out, I consider what happened a medical treatment."
River crosses her arms. Treatment means cold metal and needles, not warm lips.
"Have you heard anything since yesterday?"
"I hear them," River mutters. "Far away. Can't hear me."
"If it gets bad again, come and see me for another... another treatment."
She narrows her eyes. "Do you like Kaylee's breasts better than mine?"
Simon throws his hands in the air. "Conversation over."
He storms out, and River follows him to the door. "My breasts are plenty big enough, Simon Tam!" she screams at his back.
Mal, striding towards the hold, gives her the strangest look.
"How do I make my breasts bigger?" River asks Inara the moment her shuttle docks. The Artaxerxes is far enough behind that Mal has stopped on Boros long enough to look for work. River knows they are not safe, but they need fuel. Lose the supply lines, lose the war.
Inara is too poised to gape. "River, baobei... Come in, and I'll make tea."
River comes in. She likes the shuttle. It's Serenity at a masque, all silks and satins and velvet disguises. They have a girl talk, just River and Inara and Serenity dressed up pretty like a doll. River learns all about women and confidence and self-image and the ways folk will undermine them.
River comes away understanding that if a man wants her to be something she's not, he isn't worthy of her.
Inara did not object when Simon used his needles to change River's brain though, so River decides to take this advice with a grain of salt.
Zoe's the last girl talk to be had, and River catches her on the bridge, where she's waiting to hear back about a potential job.
"How did you make Wash have sex with you?"
Zoe looks once at her face and sets the comm to hold all incoming waves. "It ain't Jayne, is it?"
River shakes her head. Jayne loves her like he loves the little pistol he keeps in his boot, not like he loves Vera. Not like Simon loves River.
"I'm guessing it ain't the preacher neither, not 'nless he sees a barber about that hair." They share a grin and a shudder. "And I'll pretend there ain't a chance you're setting sights on my husband." Zoe stares at River in a way that unsettles many.
River stares back in a way that unsettles many.
The word Mal hovers unspoken between them, before Zoe allows Kaylee and then Inara to join it. Only when River does not break their gaze does Zoe think of the person she should have thought of first.
Zoe thinks this might be worse than Jayne, and River doesn't understand why.
"Well now. Kaylee said she had a talk with you about men and women and growin' up. You have any questions about that part?"
River shakes her head. "Just how to make it all work. It goes right, and then wrong. Backwards. Can't calculate. Don't know all the variables."
If Zoe were Kaylee, she'd hug River, but she's not so Zoe just looks at her and feels sad. "Might be some folk just don't feel the same way about each other."
"Might be they do and don't want to admit it."
Zoe inclines her head. "Might be they have their reasons." She sighs and leans back in the pilot's chair. Wash's chair. "I didn't like Wash much to start. Thought he was flighty. Unreliable. Once we'd run a few jobs together though... he impressed me. Capability is a turn on, and damn, that man can fly."
River thinks of Simon's hands and smiles. She understands. Skill is sexy. Her smiles fades as she realizes her only skill is drawing trouble. All her other talents are a tangled mess knotted up in her crazy brain.
"That's the sort of obstacle can be rode around," Zoe says. The stare is back. Harsh kindness. Zoe's a woman in a way Kaylee wishes she was and Inara pretends to be. "There's some that can't, River, and there ain't nothin' to be done but bear it."
Blood's blood, Zoe thinks, and River understands at last.
The variable she's been missing all this time. She's had it all along, just hadn't realized it was so important.
She's going to stop calling Simon stupid. He's right; she is a big dummy.
River runs out of the bridge, then runs back to thank Zoe, and back out again. Down the stairs, down the corridor, past the crew quarters to the passenger cabins where she and Simon still live even though there's an empty bunk near the bridge. She overturns Simon's bag, and paws through his belongings until she finds his datasticks. Medical encyclopedia, history, biology journal, boring, boring, boring. She finds a single stick that holds a jumble of personal data and there, finally, is a bit of music.
I'd like to see you dance more often, mei mei.
She's been so stupid all this time. Zoe is surprised to see her again but lets River pipe the music over the intercom, and follows her as far as the catwalk when she runs back down to the hold.
There, River dances.
Dances the way Simon meant in the broken language she fixes. Dances with her feet, bare against Serenity's deck. Book and Inara come to watch. Simon too, arms folded across his chest.
I don't care, I don't care, her body says. I want you and you want me and we'll dance, dance, dance together.
He's smiling, and he loves her.
"RIVER TAM!" the loudspeaker booms, and she screams, loses her footing. Everyone runs. To her, not from her. Wrong direction.
Wash is halfway across the city collecting supplies. Mal and Jayne are in an alley at gunpoint; Mal is talking his way out, but too slowly. Book is at the market. Serenity is still fuelling. The Artaxerxes is not in orbit yet, but they have her scent again. Even if they leave now, they are caught.
No.
You are the fairest of us all, the mirror says, and River knows there is no hiding in the woods.
There is only the death of the queen.
The summons crawls along the cuts in her brain, barbed hooks sinking into flesh, and River chases the line back, back, back. All the way back to the mirror's mind, as broken and lost as her own.
Dragon of jade, sparkle in the sunlight, shatter on the floor.
I will find you, the mirror says. I will never stop until I bring you back to us.
I know, River answers.
Her name is Channah. Hebrew: favour, grace. She's eighteen, like River, and when she was nine she broke her mother's favourite dragon carving. River reaches across the black, snaps her posterior communicating artery. Intraventricular hemorrhage. She has a stroke. Dies on the table in the Artaxerxes' infirmary.
Mirror's shattered. None of the others have the same cuts in their brains. None of the others spent days, weeks, months, years trying to talk to her mind from a room down the hall. None of the others know her brain well enough to find her in the black. She's safe, Simon's safe, two-by-two is now one-by-one.
Her reflection's gone dark.
She wakes in the infirmary with a headache and a nervous brother. Simon is wringing a pair of latex gloves (white, not blue) and staring at her, jaw set. For a moment River considers pretending she needs another 'treatment', but then she remembers the little girl who cried wolf. She understood the moral when she was two.
"How do you feel?"
"Alone." Her head echoes, empty, and she feels like she's gone blind. The exam table thrums beneath her. Serenity's flying again. She's afraid to check if everyone is aboard.
Not afraid that they won't be, but that she won't be able to tell.
"Would you like a sedative?" Simon asks.
"No. No needles, no masturbation. I'm done dreaming awake." She waits. "You can untie me, dummy."
He smiles. "You were beautiful. When you were dancing."
"Skill is sexy," she tells him, rubbing her wrists, and he sighs. He's not angry now. He doesn't care about the size of her breasts or her hips or whether her hair is prettier than Wen Huo's. He feels the same way she does, inside, and that's all that matters. "Do we have a job?" she asks.
"A lead for one." He looks at her curiously. She's never been interested in business before, but supply lines... she understands those. "If that cruiser picks up our wake again --"
"No. I broke the mirror like her mother's dragon. No more seeing with my eyes." She touches his hand. He's not wearing gloves. "You should dance with me next time."
She means both ways of dancing and he knows it. He hurts from wanting to say yes, and River realizes she can still hear him. She hugs him to keep his stupid mouth from ruining things.
It's not crowded any more. There's a switch in her head now, and she flicks it on and she can hear Mal on the bridge (fretting about Serenity, his crew, the Alliance, the job, everything... just how he likes it).
Off. On. She hears Zoe (saving the heat between her legs for later, when work can be set aside for play), and Kaylee (wiping her eyes in the engine room because Simon told her she deserves someone who will give her his full attention, and Kaylee understands he really meantI don't want you enough to make room in my life).
Off. On. She hears Inara in her shuttle and Book with his book and Wash wishing Zoe would forget duty for a moment. She hears Jayne in his cabin as he throws up the tension in his belly, convinces himself he picked up a bug on Boros, wonders if he should see the doc, wonders why he can't stop thinking of River cut up on some gorram Alliance table.
Off. On.
She hears Serenity, who loves them all best.
That night she waits until Simon is ready for bed, still properly awake and in his pyjamas. She wears her nightgown and a silk robe Inara gave her, and she knocks before she opens his door.
"Can't sleep?" he asks as she sits on his bed.
"Not sleepy." She folds her legs, lotus style, and hunches over, elbows on knees, to explain the rules. "I'm your sister and you're my brother."
"Well done, Commander Obvious." He grins at her, but warily. She ignores him.
"We are prince and princess among peasants. Our royal lineage depends on us."
"We... what?"
"We need to have sex right now."
"...What?"
"To carry on the bloodline."
Simon eyes her like she might suddenly declare herself a Reaver, but he's caught up to her at least. "Inbreeding isn't good for the line. We should marry other heads of state."
"They're all enemies."
"All the better to seal an alliance with a wedding."
"They kill our envoys on sight."
"We must have some dukes and duchesses lying about."
River shakes her head, still serious. "Our mad father the king had them all beheaded."
"Can't we marry peasants?"
"No. None of them understand. It's just us, alone together. There's no other way."
He doesn't believe her, but he'll play along because that's what big brothers do.
He's trembling when she kisses him.