The Miscalculations of River Tam by Lady Cailin
Chapter Title: Little Girl's Dream
Disclaimer: Serenity, Firefly and related materials are copyright Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy Productions, and subsequent companies. This Fan Fiction was not produced, and is not intended to be reproduced, for profit. No infringement of said copyrights is intended by the author.
Summary: River miscalculates. PG
Pain, large and sharp like claws and teeth to rip at her. Was it real? Was it now? Or just a remembrance, a phantom limb that lifts the knife somehow? It was so hard to tell, so hard to know. Something tells her it is only a memory, nerve endings firing in response to the dreams of her life before Serenity. But in the night, in the dark, it comes at her from all sides and tries to rip the girl from the weapon. Then the dreams are real, and now, now is only a dream, an illusion she played at to keep the pain away.
Usually it is Simon who fights away the pain. So close, just in the next room. Sooner or later his familiar thoughts seep into the girl, and then one by one, the crew of Serenity joins him. Young girls, experienced women, wounded warriors. One by one their noise fills her up and the dreams are left without room to breath. Then the dreams fade, and Serenity becomes her truth.
She has trained herself to search them out when the dreams come and steal the truth from her. She wraps around their minds instinctively upon waking. Like an anchor in the storm, they are the source of her shelter from the dreams and remembered pain.
But tonight is different.
Tonight the boat lies cold and empty. She cannot feel Simon, and though she reaches, the others are not found. The pain continues, when before it had always ended quickly. Blue hands crawling over her mind, pulling at the girl, cutting her out like a tumor. Simon is not here, and she wonders if she made him up as she did so many things in those days on cold tables. The longer she lay there, the pain clawing at her head, the less sure she is that it wasn't all a make-believe. The longer she reaches, and the longer she finds emptiness, the greater her fear. Serenity, Simon, this life must be real.
The girl cannot survive unless this life is real. She will die, eaten up by needles and numbers that burn her insides away.
Soon she is reaching with all her power, begging the world around her to give up one thought, one voice to make the nightmares end. There is only one voice in the world of the blue hands, and it is screaming. She suspects it is her own voice. She can distantly feel tears on her cheeks.
Just when life was ending, and the girl fading once more into what they had made her, she feels it.
Life. Thoughts, distant and hard, but there.
"What the gorram hell is that screechin'?"
The growl of the Bear. He is of Serenity, his thoughts will make things real. She latches on, throws herself around his mind with a fierceness and intensity that is dangerous. But this is calculated too late, and in the brief moment before they both loose consciousness, she hopes she has not carried out her threat.
She hopes she has not killed him with her brain.
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