Prologue: River
Author's Note: This story takes the movie Serenity into account. If you haven't seen it, you may want to wait to read this story.
Mirror mirror on the wall,
silent spectator of the sins of all,
see the rise, watch the fall,
O mirror of the ages on the wall.
–Kshitij Sharma
The first few months on Serenity were hard.
She and her brother were fugitives from the powerful Alliance government. The two of them had fallen in with a group of smugglers who seemed like magnets for trouble on their own. And for a while, it was uncertain if they could stay on the ship.
But it was also the first time that she had been forced to be in close proximity with a group of people after her escape. The onslaught of thoughts and emotions had hit her like a tidal wave. For a while, it made her actually worse.
She always wondered if Simon had noticed a difference. But she never asked him, afraid of his answer. If he answered no, it was telling about how bad her mental state was at that time.
As bad as it was, there were moments when she knew herself. From time to time, the whispering voices and chaotic images faded to a manageable level. The thoughts going through her head then were hers and hers alone. These periods were longer and more frequent after the events of Miranda.
Yet she still had episodes and relapses. Simon often wondered privately if she would only be this way. He was afraid she would carry this as a permanent scar of her time in the Alliance facility.
If she was honest, she was, too.
It had taken time for her to get use to this ship and its crew. It took her a while to filter through all the thoughts and emotions. But after a while, it all began to make sense.
Though they didn't know it, they each had told her their stories.