There was always a vibration on Serenity. One didn't notice it usually, but it was there, waiting for the crew when they went to bed, ready to ease them gently into sleep. Most of the crew weren't even aware of it. It was just a fact of life on Serenity. But River noticed everything on that ship, and she was always conscious of those vibrations, the hum tickling at the back of her mind.
Late at night, when everyone had gone to bed, the resonance would go on, a hum just on the edge of hearing, echoing through the corridors of the ship. For River, it soothed her nerves, caressing her feet comfortingly and making the voices quiet down just a little. I marked Serenity as her home, and reminded her that, even when she couldn't see them, the stars were all around her.
She stepped over the door into the darkened cargo bay, her bare toes touching the floor and being met by that familiar hum. She smiled, placed her heel down, and stepped over the doorway with the other foot. Anyone watching would have thought the movement graceful, but there was no one there to see. They were all... where were they exactly? The answer came immediately, as if she had already known it: most of them were asleep, up near the front of the ship where the crew's bunks were. At the thought of those bunks, memories flooded her mind, and her happy smile slipped. The laughing girl had invited her into her own room a few weeks ago. The one who was like the sweetest honey... What was her name?... It was a fitting name, a name made of beauty and unspoken grace. The dress was still there, and as they had talked the laughing girl had kept staring at it. River always smiled when she saw her in that dress, even if it didn't happen often. It made both of them happy. They were friends, maybe. Sometimes they were, anyways. Sometimes the laughing girl was scared of her, and sometimes River was scared too. Scared of what she could do. Scared of what she was always doing whether she meant to or not. Scared of what they had done to her. Blue. All of it was blue and stark, sterile white, and the hands grabbed at her, tried to make her sit still. Needles. Simon was always using needles too. He said they could help her, but they all felt cold, felt just like the ones the blue men held, when they... no! She fumbled around for something to hold onto, as the sea of her own memories threatened to engulf her, to drag her under and absorb her now into the ocean of then. A river, flowing to the sea, and her present would all be past eventually, becoming a part of that ocean of memory. There had to be something that was immovable, something she could use as an anchor...
Always.
The word stopped her, and helped her regain control of her own thoughts. It was a gentle word, and the concept it went with was even gentler. It seemed to River as if it carried a sweetness to it, and love... Where had it come from? She felt around in her memories, carefully now, so as not to slip into the deep, dark well she had so nearly fallen down. She skirted it, looking for that word again, and, when she found it, she let it guide her.
So off she went, making her way across the dark cargo bay with only a whisper of fabric to break the silence. She reached foot of the stairs up to the catwalk, turned and, still making barely any sound at all, ascended the metal staircase.
There was someone in one of the shuttles. The calm one, sleeping, her mind like a still pool of ink. Or paint. Something dark, certainly. That one rarely dreamed, River had learned, and staring into the tranquil depths of her mind was always a good way to make River tired as well. Tonight, though, it was like there were ripples across it. Not really dreaming, but without the mirror-like quality it usually had.
River stopped in front of the door to the shuttle for a long moment, staring at the bulkhead with her head tilted to one side. It was something about the faded one, she decided. It usually was when the calm one dreamed. She felt his mind, too, cold and bitter without the usual mask he kept up when he was awake. He was in his bunk, its door opening off the hallway to the bridge, and River found herself walking towards it. He was dreaming about the calm one, a simple, needy dream that he was focused in on. But it was buried under layers of other thoughts, the workings of his mind shifting as he slept to prepare for the new day. And one extra layer, dormant and unused. It was his mask, ready to awaken the moment that he did, but sleeping for now. It was odd. He was scary under that layer, but also beautiful in a way. His connections to the crew were all there, solid and central, and she saw the way he relied on them. They would be there for him.
Always.
There the word was again. It cut through the bitterness of his mind, the turmoil that he always kept tucked away. In that moment he wasn't the Faded Man anymore. He was simply himself. He would be here, for his crew. For his family. Always.
She walked onward, past the shuttle doors and toward the bunks. As she stepped over the bulkhead and into the hallway that led to the bridge, she let her mind wander. There were the wind and the warrior, their minds and bodies tangled together. They were down below her, their masks discarded and basking in each other's glow. River hummed a little song as she thought about them, a song of sunlight and laughter, of a picnic by a lake. She wasn't sure if it was real or not, and she didn't care. Reality was all a matter of perception anyway.
She watched them closely. The wind flitted this way and that, directionless and always moving from one thought to the next. But she was his anchor, just as the whole crew was River's. The wind had one thought he came back to again and again: I will be here for you.
Always.
River drifted from one person to the next: the ape, who had fallen asleep clutching his very favorite gun. He did this out of habit, not because of fear. He knew, deep down, that he had nothing to fear here. Serenity was his home. Gone were the days he had to be ready for a fight the moment he heard a noise at night.
River wasn't sure how she knew this. Honestly, she wasn't sure how much of it she knew, and how much she just knew that he knew. But he was real. Something else real to hold onto. And she was thankful, at least, for that bit of certainty. The ape would always be there. He wouldn't disappear like clouds of mist like her memories did when the breeze of the now swept through. He wouldn't change, warping out of shape like her thoughts when she tried to put them into words. He wouldn't change. Not just another voice in her head. He was really here. Whether she liked it or not.
River's mind was quiet now, filled only with the sensation of the vibrating deck. She was home, anchored in the black by these specks of brilliant thought. The word "blue" was meaningless to her, at least for the moment, and no sea of memories threatened to swallow her. There was nothing but the ship, and the present.
She sank down, slowly, to her knees, still feeling the reverberations in the deck that meant she was home. She lay down, the metal of the floor cold against her face and chest. And she closed her eyes. The dreams of her family swirled around her, and, slowly, she drifted off to sleep, curled up on the floor of the passageway, with a smile on her face.