They played around in my head, violated me for their own sick and twisted pleasure, robbed me of my own gorram memories and placed somebody else's in, gave me the crosses of a thousand bad men to bear. What did I do to deserve this? I am no criminal; I committed no offence against the Alliance. All I ever wanted to do was learn. I wanted knowledge, I wanted wisdom, I wanted discernment. I had ambitions to be a great person and who am I now? A gibbering wreck hidden away by criminals on board this ship. I hardly know what I am saying sometimes, words just flow from me the way blood flows from a wound. Things float around in my head - memories, thoughts, pictures and I don't know if they are mine, whether they really happened or are a picture of things to come. This electrical storm is going on in my brain and I can't find the words to explain the way I'm feeling, it comes out all wrong and I get upset. I used to be eloquent, I used to be able to capture the attention of those around me with only a few words. Now the only attention I get is that of my brother, my beloved mei-mei, and it's not the attention I want. He sticks me with a needle whenever I am trying to get the words out of my head, he thinks he's helping me but they're still there, waiting for me until I try to sleep. I haven't slept properly since the night I went to the Academy. I was so excited, so eager to learn and they took it all away from me, every hope and every dream, made me into a monster. I have done things, seen things that no normal girl should've done; they've made me do things with the click of their fingers, a single word. I'm not me when I do them, it's like I am outside of myself watching this ruthless killer. I want to be River Tam again, I want to read and dance, play games and be a brat. Why can't I be that girl again? I feel like I have missed out on my life, like I've just been born and placed into this body without an instruction manual, nobody trained me how to function in society but I guess they never meant for me to mix with society again.
This ship, this floating rust bucket, is shown such love by those who live inside of her. I don't know that kind of love, never known what love is. Simon loves me but not in that way. I am his sister, his project, his burden. Knowing what he knows now, would he have come to get me from the Alliance? Would he have destroyed his life, his career, his family to save this gibbering puppet? He could be so much happier without me, though he could never go back to how it was before. They're sending people like me out all the time to find him and I know what'll happen when they find him. Everybody is scared of me - Kaylee, Simon, Inara, Wash, the Shepherd. I think Zoë and the Captain tolerate me not out of their charitable spirit, but their desire to stick it to the Alliance. You're scared of me too, though you try not to show it. You have to be the big brave man, the one who everybody distrusts but have to depend on for their own lives. You act like you're so detached, so unfeeling and unbothered but I know you're different. You truly feel like you belong here, this is your home more so than anywhere you've ever been. Ever since you left your mama's. Why do you act like you hate everyone when you don't? You're as lonely and as isolated as me and you know it, it eats you up inside. You're just a little boy who longs to run home to his mama, to be sat on her knee and cuddled against her breast with reassurances that everything is going to be alright, that there are no bad things in the 'verse and Reavers are just a bogey man story told to you by the older kids as a ghost story. You're lonely aren't you Jayne? Even in room full of people you feel totally alone and that is why we are so alike, the big man and the little girl with nobody to call a friend and only our thoughts, regrets and memories to occupy us in the long nights. We're in space, floating along for thousands of miles with no other person in sight, so really there is no night, no day, just endless time dragging along to tease us, torture us, torment us. Don't let it get to you Jayne, no matter how bad it gets, don't let it turn you into me.