Author Notes: Thank you to rodlox and fredbassett for the beta!
-***-
As all stories go, River's starts off quite placidly. Growing up on the alliance-dominated planet of Osiris, she has everything she could dream of. Toys, she quickly outgrows, but books are her salvation during the long hours when her parents are off at work and her brother is studying for his entrance exams.
Her favourite book is The Monkey King. At the age of five, she's already reading the original Chinese version, admiring the beautiful characters. She devours the Chinese language like chocolate cherry cake, learning so much that it becomes like her native tongue.
It's all so perfect.
-***-
She turns fourteen and goes off to school.
It all goes quickly downhill from there.
-***-
They're dead.
All of them. The entire planet.
She doesn't know where the planet is, or who they are but they dance through her dreams like insubstantial wraiths that eat at her mind.
River sees their bodies, slumped in everyday positions. They could be sleeping. Sometimes she pretends that they are and that one day, they'll just wake up and she'll be freed of her nightmare demons.
And always, she's haunted by the image of the men with blue hands.
-***-
Serenity is everything but serene, but River loves it anyway.
-***-
River spins around and around, watching as the droplets of rain leave her hair. Swirling, swirling, swirling until they hit the walls with a satisfyingly wet sound. "It's beautiful," she tells Simon who looks at her in bewilderment. She tries to explain: "It's like a vortex is created around me. I'm centered."
He smiles at her and she knows he still doesn't understand. She hates that smile. It's full of pity and understanding and sympathy when all she really needs is some empathy.
Empathy. From pathos. She's always liked that word. She thinks it sounds sad. Sad feelings. Sad words.
Simon looks at her and River knows he sees the ghost of the little sister he used to have, the brilliant little girl who was destroyed and molded by the Alliance and who's never coming back. She's stronger now. She understands and can control the feelings inside her, but the old River's never coming back. She wishes that Simon would understand.
Mal's the only one who doesn't look at her like that. Mal puzzles her. Sometimes she thinks she feels him staring at her, but when she turns around, he's always looking in another direction. She wants to ask him why, but there's something in his expression that discourages questions.
So River finds herself watching him instead.
The way Mal always, always defends his crew. The way he smiles when Kaylee makes a joke or when Wash plays with his dinosaurs. River tries to tell him that it's a brontosaurus and it would never, ever attack a velociraptor but Wash just grins at her and tells her that they aren't real.
River rolls her eyes. Of course she knows they're not real.
She's puzzled by the soft look in Mal's eyes whenever he looks at his crew. The look never appears when they're looking at him. Never in front of them. Oh no. Mal smiles when he thinks nobody is looking.
-***-
She thinks she's been careful but Jayne comes up one morning and corners her.
"You've been watchin' Mal," he says bluntly.
"Everybody eats and drinks; yet few appreciate the taste of food." River's always loved that old Chinese proverb.
Jayne just stares at her.
"You don't understand him," she explains.
"And you think you do, girl?" There's a note she doesn't quite understand in his voice.
We're all broken, she thinks. But the realization isn't as sad as it should be. They're all broken. They wouldn't be a crew if they weren't.
-***-
She soon learns that everybody can break more.
-***-
Mal's hands are calloused and rough as they push her hair away from her face. River closes her eyes and loses herself to the sensation. The feelings terrify her but she embraces them nonetheless. She's human. She loves. She has to. She needs to take back what the Alliance took from her.
He presses a gentle kiss on her lips and she moans with pleasure. He's always so gentle as he slowly lowers her onto the tiny bunk and rocks her to the highest depths of ecstasy.
Jayne's completely different. He pushes her up against the wall. As she turns her head, his lips find her neck and she feels the bruise blossoming under his mouth. Her skirts end up hiked over her hips as she finds herself on the floor. It's messy, hot and rough and so completely different to Mal.
She loves watching the two of them together. It's like a sinuous dance.
-***-
These days, River can't stop saying Simon's name in her sleep. Mal wakes her up each night before she starts screaming and rocks her gently in his arms.
"I'm sorry," she whispers and they both sit there and watch as Jayne sleeps with a pistol in his hand.
-***-
They dock on a quiet agricultural planet. Zoe comes up to Mal and there's a pleading look in her eyes. Her hand hovers over her stomach. "I'm sorry," she whispers.
Wash has already packed their belongings.
That night, Mal bruises her lips as he presses her into the bed, whispering, "Mine, mine, mine," into her ear.
Jayne just watches and continues to polish his guns.
-***-
As it begins, so it must end.
It's still quiet, but not the calm of her youth. It's more of a tense silence.
River stares around at the crew of Serenity. Kaylee's face is smudged with dirt and she has a grim look in her red-rimmed eyes. Jayne's doing one of two things these days, polishing his weapons or fucking her into her bunk. Mal has a terrifyingly blank look on his face.
And then there's her.
River Tam.
Prize warrior of the Alliance.
But at the end of the day, she's just a girl who misses her brother and wants the ease of childhood back.
-fin