DISCLAIMER: I'm just playing in the Firefly sandbox. If you recognize it from elsewhere, I don't own it.

Rosemary and Thyme

Smells lingered in the air. It was just a trick of the mind. The life support system circulated the oxygen and carbon dioxide at a natural rate. But all the same, smells lingered. They infested the fabrics and infiltrated the metals and invaded the senses. Every breath was like morphing into the people on board Serenity. The sharp taste of Kaylee's engine grease collided with Simon's eye-watering peroxide, and swirling together, they met Mal's earthy leather coat. Jayne's acrid gun smoke danced over Inara's jasmine incense and Zoe's fresh linen.

River didn't smell herself anywhere on the ship. Sometimes she thought she caught the echo of a scent, but she was always mistaken. It was a fusion of her shipmates—something sterile and sweet and sinister—that she couldn't name. The girl lay awake in her bunk staring at the ceiling that became the universe pondering this thing she couldn't identify. Herself, she corrected, she was thinking about herself. Not a thing. A person. Her name was River, but what was River?

"A natural stream of water flowing on a defined course. The constellation Eridanus." No, neither was correct. "In printing, a vertical white space between lines of letters." Yes, that was it. She was white space. Blank. Unwritten.

River blinked and eternity passed. A second later, she threw off the blankets covering her body and rose from a sleepless rest. She could hear the song Inara was humming in her mind and feel the nightmare Mal was reliving. River wanted to close her mind, but the smells would not let her go. They had their vicious blue claws in her brain.

There were other smells that lingered too, and they made it hard to forget: hot plastic dinosaurs on the console and dusty Bibles in the passenger bay. It hurt more to smell them than to see them. To see was to stay at a distance. But breathing on Serenity was so much more personal. To breathe was to become memories of dead friends.

She caught one of those aromas now. It drifted under the sliding door that was supposed to shield the room from the rest of the ship. The barrier was meaningless to River. It did not ward off stray thoughts and errant memories. They passed through like shooting stars across the night sky and formed craters in River's brain.

The petite girl rose from her bed. Delicate steps carried her past Simon's bunk and the empty place where Shepherd Book used to sleep. She followed the trail of the overpowering sweet aroma to the kitchen and paused on the threshold. River could hear more than other people. She listened with her ears and her mind. But tonight, all she could sense was a spatula against frying pan and steam rising from hot surfaces. No thoughts. Just an empty void where a mind full of words should have been.

River laid her head against the cool doorframe and closed her eyes. Pools of unshed tears formed an ocean under her eyelids, and she thought she might drown in her own sadness.

"Rosemary. An evergreen shrub of the mint family used as seasoning. A traditional symbol of remembrance. A man can live on packaged food from here 'til Judgment Day if he's got enough rosemary."

A too familiar chuckle erupted over the sizzling in the frying pan and hissing of evaporating water. It was a wordless invitation to enter the common area that River could not resist. Her mind tried to stop her body, but it wouldn't listen.

"You weren't present when I said that," Shepherd Book stated. He didn't look up from the cooking until the green tomatoes were done frying.

"But I heard it anyway," River answered. "I hear it still in their memories."

Book nodded slowly as he came around the counter with two plates. He laid them on the table and motioned for River to join him for a midnight snack. The girl hovered inside the door on the first step. Her body was tensed, as if for a fight with demons or a flight away from ghosts.

"Oh, child," Book said, smiling sadly and kindly. "Demons and ghosts are only real when they're inside our heads."

"You can read my mind, but I can't read yours. A psychological reaction meant to comfort an abnormal brain suffering from chronic insomnia, grief, and guilt. You're not really here. You're a hallucination caused by experimental brain surgery and manufactured chemical reactions. You're a conjured memory projected into the present reality."

"In that case, I'm you." Book motioned again to the chair across the table. "So come and have a chat with yourself."

River crossed the room with soft, swift steps and lowered herself gingerly into the chair. "Talking to yourself can release repressed emotions and reveal latent memories. Or prove you're crazy."

"Why aren't you asleep, River?"

"I was watching the universe and eternity, and I didn't see myself anywhere. I found everyone else, but I was missing. I was the vacuum of space."

"Eternity is an awful big concept for one person to understand. I find it's better to leave that sort of topic to God and meditate on the time I have."

"You're dead. You don't have any more time."

"I'm not dead. I'm you, remember? I have as long as you have, and you have years and years to shape your own destiny. Being void isn't always a bad thing. It gives you the control to decide who you want to become."

"Bible," River announced. "Biblio—Greek, meaning Book."

"Yes," Book answered, with a rueful smile and downcast eyes. "When I was the vacuum of space, I became a Shepherd. What will you become?"

River listened, and she found only foreign voices speaking. The girl brought her knees up to her chest and buried her face while the ocean of tears leaked from her eyes. The Shepherd offered a patient smile and placed a hand on River's head.

"Why won't you get out of my head?" River cried. "How can I find myself with so many souls speaking to me?"

"I know of many other extraordinary people who carried the weight of truth for others: Abraham, Moses, Samuel …"

"You call me a prophet, but you're wrong. I'm no prophet. I'm a harbinger. A harbinger programmed to kill, just like I killed you and Wash and everyone on Haven and …"

"… even the great prophets were sometimes misused. You're no more guilty of those deaths than Noah was of the Flood. All you did was shine a light on the truth. God makes us exactly as we are. From what your brother says, you have always been a light, River."

The pressure of the Shepherd's hand on her head eased and vanished. The aroma of rosemary faded into an echo. The kitchen transformed from a meeting place back into just a kitchen. River was left sitting alone at the table.

The girl covered her head with her hands, as if to physically block the mental assault of these many misbegotten memories filtering into her unnaturally open mind. The ocean of her tears was dry, but she rocked back and forth in the waves.

Static crackled over the intercom. River lifted her head and listened, instinctively, for the announcement. But no one was awake. She could hear their dreams, and she knew there was no one to give voice to the summons. Serenity was calling her to the bridge for a conversation with plastic dinosaurs.

River mounted the steps cautiously. The demons and ghosts circled. As Shepherd Book had said, they were real only because they were inside her head. The girl crossed the threshold and was sucked into a black hole. No thoughts. Just emptiness.

"I think we should call it your grave. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal."

The pilot's chair swung around. Wash regarded her with a mixture of humor and incredulousness. "Hey, now, that was a punch line. Say it with a little more levity."

River blinked at Wash. His Hawaiian shirt blossomed into a rainforest over his tomb. Rain fell into the dry ocean and her eyes welled up again. Trembling, she lowered herself into the co-pilot's chair where she had been sitting lately, but where she didn't belong.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!" she cried.

"Are you kidding me?" Wash asked, twirling the chair around and taking the controls again. "I'd much rather have you here than Mal. Don't tell him I said so, but if anyone other than me is going to fly this ship, I'd rather it be the girl who learned how to fly by reading my thoughts."

"Humor is a defense mechanism often used to avoid uncomfortable emotional displays." Wash's eyes crinkled in a silent smile. The void that was River became nervous. Her eyes twitched. "You're doing it again."

"Well, would you rather I do a 'woe is me' gag while you sob uncontrollably?"

"Yes."

"Too bad. I don't do grim. Now, I see Mal has been using the secondary conduit bypass pretty heavily. I'm not one to judge, but … you might tell him a little practice with lateral steadiness in atmo goes a long way."

"I did."

"And let me guess: he got all self-righteous and defensive about his flying."

"No," River said quietly. "He didn't say anything, but he thought about how much he misses you."

"Ah, well," Wash sighed. "That's bound to happen. If our places had been reversed, I would miss him too. Getting an order from Zoe—while being, I admit, sexually thrilling—ah, anyway …"

"Why is my mind projecting you?"

"You don't think I'm a real ghost?" Wash's mock offense didn't last long, just as it never had in life. His expression melted into resignation. "To tell you this: Mal is the Captain for a reason. A man that can steer a crew can't always steer the ship too."

"You say I'm a pilot, but I'm not. I'm a crash site. A broken and twisted pile of malfunctioning parts and technical glitches and operational errors. I bring pain and death. I killed you."

"I'm pretty sure it was Reavers that killed me. Every pilot goes through a bumpy reentry from time to time. The best know how to recover and course correct. According to your brother, you've always had a knack for finding the truest bearing."

Plastic dinosaur feet tapped against the console next to River, but when she looked up, Wash had already gone. The bridge turned cold in the void of space, but the scent of hot plastic hovered around the co-pilot station.

Infinity passed outside the window while River shed the ocean from her eyes. Then she rose from the chair and danced her way through the ship, mingling in the dreams of the crew as she passed their quarters.

The metal felt cool against the soles of her feet. The temperature had dropped since she had first left her bunk. The girl slid into the covers and buried herself beneath the blankets, but the absence of a body had left the bed cold. In place of void warmth, a new scent had drifted into River's quarters. The small girl smiled.

"Thyme. An evergreen shrub of the mint family used as seasoning. Pronounced the same as time."

The End