There are days when I can't stop looking at her mouth. I was supposed to be helping her, giving her an injection. I was supposed to be focused on making her better and I could barely stop staring at her mouth.
She doesn't like needles, and when she doesn't like something you can see it on her face, in her mouth. The slight pursing of her lips, a tightness at the edges. And that threw me back to before all this happened. To when she would be upset with me for something I'd done. She would be so mad at me. Usually because I'd done something the hard way. Because I'd missed some bit of logic and taken 3 steps to do something instead of just one. I always got it done, she'd just be mad because I hadn't done it her way. The simple way. The efficient way. Inefficiency makes her very mad. Especially from me.
"Simon Tam," she would say, "Simon Tam, you are just so frustrating." She would scowl, then eventually smile and that's when I'd know that it was okay. "You're just so random. Sometimes Simon Tam, you drive me furious." Never crazy; furious. I drove her furious. Something like that could have only come from her mind. Back then things were so much easier, I studied and memorized and didn't sleep as much as I should have, and she always called me Simon Tam when she was being serious. Simon Tam. Simon Tam. Because no matter what everyone now thinks, River is not a Tam. River became a Tam 6 months ago. They asked me how I got her out of the Academy. Money. That's how she became my sister too. The right amount in the right hands gets you just about anything you want. I paid off the first Alliance goon that found us. One on Persephone before we came onboard. They did liquidate my accounts but not before I took most of my money and converted into gold and uncut diamonds. I don't think anyone even noticed that my foam padded luggage cases are heaver than they should have been. Top 3 remember? Not as smart as River, but I don't have to work hard to get ahead in the game. After that, the Alliance figured out that I wasn't as lacking of resources as they thought, but they knew that I couldn't keep paying off everyone they sent. At our going price though, and being here on Serenity, we could be safe for quite a while.
Unfortunately though, the Alliance isn't stupid; well, those who ran that Academy weren't, and they must know that I paid off their woman. After the one the captain shot, they don't even bother to send them anymore. They could raise the reward to higher than I could top, but that would be a very large number. The kind of number that draws a lot of attention. The kind of number that makes bounty hunters wonder why the prey is worth so much. They want us found, but they don't want people to know why they want us. Me, I'm easy: aiding and abetting a fugitive. River is not so easy though, people would want to know what a 17 year old girl did to become the Alliance's most wanted. So they started sending the men with the blue hands. Two by two, hands of blue. River is right, that's exactly what they are. I saw them once, the day of a too narrow escape. I'm not going to be able to buy them off if they ever get us, and I suspect that I'm not going to even get the chance. I'm the expendable one. I digress. So now River is a Tam. I had it changed before my contacts got her out. Because she's 17 years old and it's easier to alter every record ever made of River Ng than to tell the truth. It would make it easier to move around out here. Well it was supposed to. She wasn't to wake up until after we got off Serenity. We were just supposed to be two travellers, brother and sister, inconspicuous. That really didn't go according to plan though. The second Alliance man, and Mal bringing her out of stasis early saw to that. I was terrified she was going to blow my plan to pieces when she woke up in the cargo bay. It was in that instant when Jayne was holding me back from her that I realized that if she could understand completely what was going on she would make that angry face, her mouth would thin because once again I'd done something the hard way. In that instant I saw all the glaring flaws in my overly complicated plan. If there is one thing that I wouldn't get an A+ in it would be lying. I don't have any kind of moral objection to it. If I have to lie to protect River, I'll do it and sleep very well that night. My lies are just usually too complex.
"Lie simply," River used to say, "Then there is less chance to slip up." She would be very upset about this plan, too much opportunity for mistakes on our part. We could have been two students travelling together. Or I could have falsified ident cards for us and we could be a young doctor and his new wife. That way there would be no mistakes that would be noticed pretending to be brother and sister. But I had to go too far, too complex. I paid to have the Cortex hacked and all the records about her changed. And at the end of it all, she didn't blow or cover and she isn't likely too. Sometimes I wonder why the people from the Academy running the Alliance don't change the records back. I guess it's our faces that are important, not the alias we're going by. I worry that they will though, then everyone here will find out the truth. They wouldn't take too kindly to being lied to and I wish I could tell them, I really do, but the lies are too deep now. River won't reveal us, the incident when Saffron was onboard is proof enough of that.
Everyone thinks that she's just my crazy kid sister and no one suspects otherwise. So it's up to me not to falter, to keep us safe. To stop staring at her mouth. She doesn't even look at me strangely when I call her Mei-mei anymore.