To Dance


Summary: The episode Shindig according to River. Part 4 of my retelling Firefly series; in which I explore River's possible experiences throughout the series.

A/N: This was a difficult one. River's actions can be interpreted in many different ways, and with different levels of deliberateness. This story reflects one such possible interpretation, but not even my only one. Please feel free to leave a review with your opinion. (just keep it civil)


Tendrils of emotions find River in her sleep. They pull her gently from the dark. She doesn't mind waking up like this, drawn from her sleep by the subconscious call of her friends. Far too often she wakes thrashing and screaming in some vain attempt to escape the memories crashing through her unconscious mind in the shapes of dreams. Her dreams make sleep feel like a moment of weakness; the memories become beast that pry on her when she is without defense.

Her mind reaches out for the feelings, sifting through them, letting them sift through her. In a moment of clearness she wonders how her mind can do this, how she does it, but just as quickly as it came, the moment passes and the question fades away.

A sense of haste is the overtone in what reaches her; it laces each of the three crewmembers returning to the ship. River knows they were gone, she felt them leave. Sensed their feet stepping out of Serenity's protective embrace. The ape-man, big and clunky, the captain, strong and confident, and the flower, smooth as a wisp of wind. They were gone for a while, she cannot tell not how long, time is too fluid, but she knows they have returned, with haste in their steps.

There's amusement too, intermingled with the hurry, and shaded in different nuances to fit the diverse characters. The ape-man wears his merriment openly and the cause of it is equally clear. Violence. The opportunity to throw a few punches always makes the ape-man happy. River isn't sure how it makes her feel, and that in itself worries her. She flees to the amalgamation of emotions still to be explored. The captain's amusement is less overt than the ape-man's, but it is just as obvious. The flower is a puzzle though. She wears a frown on her face but River sees her insides. Sees them bubble with giggles she refuses to let the captain see. Whatever he did that was so amusing, she won't let him know she thinks so. Never lets the captain know what he really makes her feel inside. Covers it up with a scowl and scorn and sharp remarks in an everlasting dance of deception.

Dummy! What is the point of such a dance…dancing around each other as if you cannot see? Why can't they see? River sees plain enough. Sees the captain and the flower, sees their true selves and emotions. The fire that burns behind the walls they've both built. One reaching towards the other, but never letting on. Feelings held back and bound down by fears and phantoms of the past, covered up by excuses. River knows the word for the behavior, read it once in a psychology book. Defensive strategies – an approach designed to reduce the risk of loss. Lock the heart away to hide from the pain.

Pain... There's pain everywhere. There is no hiding from it. It's in the air, soaring, scorching, cutting, burning into her mind to meet with the pain erupting from within herself. There's a difference between them, the two pains, but when the whirl storm sweeps her mind away she finds it hard to distinguish between others and herself. Maybe I need a defense. A defensive strategy. Strategy – the science of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing military movements and operations. Famous tactics include the surprise attack employed by Arminius in 9AD way back on Earth-That-Was, guerilla warfare employed by the Independents in the Unification War, deception…

Her mind dances away on definitions, classifications, memories of lessons learned. There were lessons at the Academy. There must have been, because she actually believed for a while that it was a school. School is a place of education, instruction, learning. She learned a lot at the Academy. She did, though exactly what she can never quite remember. There are snippets of information, flashes of knowledge that have been hammered into her fractured mind like nails that broke it into even smaller pieces, and the details get lost in the jumble. But the lessons are there, somewhere, waiting to be implemented, the wisdom of a thousand military strategists seared into place in her brain with drugs and pain, just waiting to be used. Driver software for the weapon.

A little part of her knows what she is. A weapon. Knows what they did to her, what they turned her into. And sometimes she knows that she knows, and the knowledge threatens to pull her under. To drown her with its weight. The memories are vivid and suffocating, like a hundred tons of swirling water on her head. Her mind is drowning, desperately struggling for air. Lost in a sea that is a labyrinth inside her head. Searching, searching for a way out, for clarity, for control that she just doesn't have.

She surfaces to a shudder running through Serenity's hull. The ship is entering atmosphere. The shakes are too violent, she notes, her mind whirling off into velocity and force calculations. Coming in to steep. There's comfort in the numbers, firm and safe – like the leaf's grip on the ship controls. He won't let them crash, will bring them down safely. She knows this, because she can see his spirit soar, fluttering on the wind with ease even as the vessel fights with friction and gravity alike. He is a point of calm guiding them in to the planet waiting below.

A streak of worry slashes across her consciousness, the captain stalking through the ship towards the flower's shuttle. Involuntarily her mind is drawn to him, follows him to witness him barge in as he always does. He is acting the contradiction again, so full of honor and yet so uninterested in propriety, his very own kind of respect twisted from a complete lack of it.

Inara is on the cortex, talking to a man down on the planet below through her monitor. The man is too far away for River to sense; she can only see him through the eyes and emotions of the flower and the captain. The flower thinks fondly of him, like she thinks fondly of the captain but still sharply different. With the captain everything is complicated, but for the man on the screen she has a simple, warm emotion. She knows how to handle it, and him.

The captain catches a glimpse of the screen and a surge of jealousy flares inside him. The hotness of it makes River flinch, but he is already getting the feeling under control. Expertly he masks the frown with a grin, his resentment with wit.

"Making plans? Atherton Wing. He's a regular, ain't he?"

The flower whips a drape across the screen and pays back in kind, with defensive hostility.

"I've seen him before."

And they're off again, tippy-toeing. Not saying what they mean or telling what they feel. Dancing. River huffs to herself and leaves them to their waltz. Retreats inside herself as they trade jokes and insults in equal measures.