She finds one under a floor panel in the engine room. She senses it there and so it is the first place she goes when Mal lets them all back onto Serenity. It is the first place Kaylee goes, too, even though no manner of oiling and ratcheting and stroking will make the thrusters grow back. River understands anyway. Some things that don't matter do matter. Some actions we go through because it's important that we go through them, not because they'll do any good.
It's the same reason the first place Zoë goes is the cockpit.
Kaylee runs her rough hands over the cold surfaces of the engine and coos reassurances. She is so busy comforting her Serenity, her girl, that she does not much notice River in the back corner of the room, lying flat on the floor with her cheek against it and her arm stuck up to the shoulder in a crevice by the wall. She stirs her hand about in the unseen darkness, looking for what she can feel is there.
The voice of the captain rattles through the dilapidated ship's corridors, calling them into the old meeting place of the kitchen. Kaylee lingers, and whispers a last apology to Serenity, and then moves to the next room. River stays, not making a noise, just stirring about, seeing with her fingers. It must have tumbled back through the corridors at the crash. She knows it's close… Maybe a little to the left…
After a minute or so, the captain's voice calls out again. "River!"
"Coming," she calls back. She reaches a bit more to the left and… there. The tips of her fingers catch it and drag it into grabbing range. She pulls it out through the crevice and runs in to the meeting, hiding it in the folds of her skirt.
Simon is searching for his scattered medicines when she goes after the next one. The latch on the door of the surgery came open in their catastrophic landing, and the precious contents of the shelves and counters ended up all over the corridor outside. When she too goes on hands and knees, she knows he assumes she is helping him search. She does not disabuse him of the notion.
They have voices. Voices small but familiar, whispering in the corners of the ship. There is one here, wedged behind a little cluster of pipes, and she snakes her slender hand in among the forest of them. It is there, waiting for her, and she pulls it out and clutches it to her chest. Simon looks up.
"Did you find some of the medicine?"
She covers her find with the splay of her fingers and shakes her head at him.
"Medicine, but not for the body. Not for the knitting of wounds or the filtering of fluids. Medicine for the deep, medicine that lasts."
"So… Not mine."
"No."
He nods and she steals softly away.
She comes into the kitchen listening for the next one. Jayne is there, rooting through drawers and hiding from Mal who wants him to lift heavy things. He shoots her a wary look, but she sees in his mind its perfunctory nature and is unconcerned. She is now in the categories of "people dangerous to people dangerous to us," which is an approximation of companionability, and "even more dangerous than me," which is an approximation of respect. This is satisfactory. She returns his glance and goes about her business as he goes about his.
The chairs that have always sat around the table are in a splintered pile in the corner. The table, on second glance, is too. She bends and reaches into the pile. She pulls out chairs, and half chairs, and chair legs, and here it is, hiding among the broken wood. Her fingers are full of splinters, but she does not mind because her latest find has joined the others and they are humming in contentment in her pockets.
Mal comes into the kitchen and barks at Jayne to come help him lift the heavy things Jayne had been avoiding. Jayne grumbles but follows. Putting the ship together. Reachieving serenity. River wraps her hands around the treasures in her pocket. She is doing her part.
It gets easier to find them as she goes. She can hear the ones in her pockets calling to the others in that familiar voice. They need each other the way the way any family needs each other.
The last one is in the cockpit. Zoë is there. She has been helping out, of course, fighting on stoically like any good soldier, but she keeps finding ways to come back here. So River thinks it's only right for her to wait for Zoë's convenience.
She is in the corner, slowly straightening some inconsequential thing, her back to the console. Simon and Mal removed the chair's skewer along with its occupant before anything else was done, but the chair itself remains, smelling slightly sour, stuffing erupting from the hole through its middle like blood from a wound. When Zoë is facing away from the console, River knows, she is trying to imagine the chair without the hole and the sour smell.
River stretches her arm into a dark corner and lays her hand unerringly on the last piece. A family again. She stands in front of the console and lines them up, just as they were, just as they should be.
Zoë Washburne spins around with a start at the tap on her shoulder. She calms her expression into a strong face, a soldier face, but does not wipe away the tears standing in her eyes. There is no shame in them.
River lifts her right hand and places in it the last piece—a plastic dinosaur, a stegosaurus, dusty but still proud. Zoë stares down at it for a moment, and then a small smile curves on her face. She looks over at the console, all of the figures in a row, and then back at River.
"Thank you," she says quietly. She walks over and sets the stegosaurus down under a plastic palm tree.
River smiles.