Prologue
Musings of an Agitated Mind
After the events at Miranda, River was a different person: coherent, cogent, and a bit of a brat at times, but she had found her place finally. It happened to be in the co-pilots chair, learning the truth of the ship, and by the crews side as a competent and able combatant. Even Simon had smartened up enough to remember what it was like to live. Rapports had begun to form, tentatively even with the most difficult of the crew. And, since Simon spent most of his time with Kaylee these days, River was most pleased to have an entire bunk to herself.
Free of the memories that weren't hers, River learned what a good nights sleep really felt like. The bliss lasted for a whole gorram week! Right up until Mal announced that they were headed for Persephone, and a meeting with Badger. That very night, her dreams began again.
Hazy and disjoined, she tried to take solace in the fact that they were just like everyone else's dreams. The first two nights had faded with the morning wake-ups from Serenity's speakers. However, the third morning, Simon had to come find her when she missed breakfast. He had found her alright, clutching her silly pink bear to her chest. After taking the better part of an hour to convince her that Dr. Mathias was dead and could no longer hurt her, she appeared to recover and forget the nightmare. On the fourth night, at her insistence, Simon remained with her, and his presence warded away the worst of it. But that fifth night, the final night before they made planet-fall on Persephone…
Nothing could protect her…
Blank staring eyes were glossy with death. A flap of skin hung like a macabre smile across the girl's neck, leaking a growing, steaming pool of scarlet onto the sterile floor. The weight in her hand reminded her…
"All weapons must be cared for."
River knelt and gently wiped the blade off on the girl's shirt. Information flickered through her thoughts as she stared at the blond curls soaked in blood: Amber Valese. Age twelve years, eight months and fifteen days. Ranked fourth out of ten.
"Worst failure of all."
The room whirled in a blur of lights, even though River didn't flinch. The lips of the corpse moved again, whispering words, hidden behind a saccharine smile.
"Failure to complete. Failure to graduate."
Everything blurred again, shifting violently. Oddly, River felt no vertigo; her world had always been wildly skewed. This new world was carnage. Fires guttered in the piles of scrap and filth, filling the sky with acrid black smoke. River called out, overcome with the need to be near someone. Anyone. Friends. Family. Foe.
She wandered amid the rubble, hesitantly at first, but with increasing agitation as she recognized the scraps to be the shattered hull of a shuttle. A red twist of cloth, deep maroon and twisting in a breeze that River couldn't feel, caught her attention. Silk… the color of the curtains in Inara's sacred space… the sourness rose in her throat, the vile putrescence of bile..
She found them one by one.
Zoë: Impaled on a broken beam in a twisted parody of her husband's death…
Mal and Inara: he draped over the body of the Companion, as though he'd been trying to protect her… but half of his face was missing, blown off by a bullet issued from his own pistol.
What… what could have been Kaylee: a charred and irradiated husk, frozen in a state of eternal agony…
Jayne: one arm practically torn off… a gaping hole in his stomach where his own grenade belt blew up.
Oh, Simon? Where was Simon? River ran from the edge of the destruction, ran from the faces of her friends, corpses twisted unnaturally in state. She ran until she heard laughter. The world refused to stop with her, spinning and blurring until only two shapes remained. A young boy. And Simon's broken corpse.
A red smile marked Simon's throat..
The boy smiled sweetly
And the pain of recognition—
Woke River screaming…
Zoë was the first to her side, amazingly. She had moved into the passenger berth across the hall, in the absence of her husband. Zoë was the type that was thankful for the distraction of River's cries. When Zoë sat upon the edge of her bed, River threw her arms around the woman, pressing her palms to the flat of the warrior's stomach and a place just between her shoulder blades.
In moments, River's door was filled with a sea of concern and irritation, faces poking in to find out what was amiss with the girl who'd been so sane for the past week. Simon and Kaylee did most of the talking, but when River finally calmed down, she steadfastly refused to look at anyone. After a long while, she simply pushed Simon away, and heaved a huge sigh..
"I'm okay.." she lied softly, glancing at the gathered crew in her doorway. "Just a dream." But no matter how often she told herself that, she didn't believe it.