Author's Note

This is a story with transgender themes. I, the author, am not transgender. Therefore, I may have made some mistakes. It is my hope that if so, my readers will point them out.

I have made one deliberate error. There is some misgendering within the narrative. This is to reflect the denial of the point-of-view character as to her true gender—until she acknowledges to herself who she is, male pronouns will be used. For those who don't know, misgendering is referring to a person by a pronoun that does not reflect their gender identity—for example, referring to a trans woman with male pronouns—and in real life, it should never be done.

I also want to acknowledge that in today's world, there is a lot more transphobia than shows up in this story. My rationale is that, five hundred years into the future, we'll have left some of that, though not all of it, behind.

Wash and Book do not die, because I want them to stay around. Otherwise, this story pretty much follows canon through the BDM. One translation: Jiejie means "older sister."

GLITTERING SHARDS

Protect (verb)—To keep someone safe from harm or injury. Synonyms—defend, guard, champion, shield.

She's a protector, from the time she learns to crawl. Oh, she's logical, quiet as the black, incisive as a scalpel. She adds up the advantages and subtracts the flaws—already the consummate surgeon, though she won't bear the title for twenty more years. But that's her knowledge. It's what can be written down and measured. What she does with that skill is protect. Huge, messy, absurdly heroic gestures that will get her disowned, beaten up, nearly burned to death, and shot multiple times. But she doesn't know that yet.

At the moment, logic is dominant, and it's twisting her into knots. People call her the Tam son and use the word him when she wishes, secretly, that they'd say daughter and use the word her. But gifted or otherwise, she still uses four-year-old logic. She doesn't care to play with dolls or wear frilly pink dresses or try on lipstick, so maybe she isn't really a girl, no matter what words feel right or wrong. Feelings are not to be trusted because they can't give you numbers to add or subtract. They can't be written down and measured.

So, with the calm practicality that she will later use to master organic chemistry and restart the heart of a patient with cardiac arrest, Simon Tam trains her mind to never think daughter, or her, or she. By the age of six, the girl is shut up in a metal file cabinet somewhere.

Not heroic, perhaps. But logical.

Seismograph (noun)—An instrument that measures and records details of earthquakes, such as force and duration.

When Simon is eight years old, his teacher has the class write an essay on the object they resemble most, and why. His classmates turn up a motley variety of topics. Chitra writes how she's like a spaceship because she wants to visit all the planets in the 'verse. Miguel writes how he's like a clock because he has a face and hands. Zitkala earns acclaim when she compares herself to a moon, because it's sometimes light and sometimes dark, just like she's sometimes happy and sometimes sad.

Simon writes an essay about how he is like a seismograph.

His teacher is pleased with his creativity and vocabulary. Gabriel and Regan Tam are proud, since they take it as a sign he'll distinguish himself in some profession requiring critical thinking. His friends react as they always do when he uses a word they don't understand—they laugh good-naturedly, accepting it as a "Simon thing."

The essay will go in a box somewhere, and it will be ten years before anyone looks at it again. The new reader will be River, and she will not laugh, nor be particularly pleased, nor take it as a sign she should be proud.

He's like a seismograph, eight-year-old Simon writes, because it's responding, always, to even the tiniest movements. It never stops. It never relaxes. And yet, even when something's very, very wrong, a seismograph still looks like a box on a table. You have to know how to read it to tell how bad the earthquake is.

Science (noun)—The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

It's when an inquisitive Simon puts a hand on his mother's stomach that the family feels River kick for the first time. Well, Gabriel and Regan feel her kick. Their son laughs and says it's not kicking, it's dancing. Which is true—even eighteen years later, when River can smash a man's skull in with her foot, she seems more a ballerina than a warrior.

Simon's tenth birthday is the November before River is born, by which time he has been asking probably-should-remain-private medical questions about his mother's pregnancy in all innocence for seven months. When his parents ask him whether he'd like to go to the zoo or perhaps to a fancy restaurant, he shakes his head and tells them he wants a promise he can witness his sister's birth. Gabriel has doubts, but Regan just smiles and says they should encourage his curiosity. They don't truly believe he'll persist in that desire, though they should have. Simon is not one to forget a promise, whether made by himself or anyone else.

Though Regan's labor begins at eleven at night and isn't over until eight in the morning, Simon never shows the slightest sign of tiredness. When he's not watching his mother with bouncing-on-feet excitement, he dashes around asking questions of the presiding obstetrician or any available nurse. What part of the baby comes out first? The head? What happens if they're faced the wrong way? A cesarean section? What's a cesarean section? Oh. Isn't that dangerous? I thought so. The doctor will sometimes try and turn the baby with her hands first? That's smart. You gave Mom anesthetics, does a mom have to get anesthetics to have a baby? No? Then why do you do it? Because it hurts? I guess it would. You said the placenta was made of blood. Isn't it dangerous to lose blood? It's a different kind of blood? Wow. What do you mean?

A spectator might be pardoned for only seeing Simon the scientist. But when the tiny baby with huge wondering eyes takes her first real breath and begins to cry, anyone clear-sighted will identify Simon the protector—and it's by that name he'll be best known in the modest history of the 'verse.

Mirror (noun)—A reflective surface, typically of glass coated with a metal amalgam, that reflects a clear image. Synonym—looking glass.

There's an enormous mirror in the Tam family hall, a stunning sight when the chandeliers are on and reflected in it, so bright and pristine. It demonstrates Regan's taste placed so strategically, and demonstrates Gabriel's success in business through the Londinium gilding around the edges—though both would be shocked at the implication that they might be showing off.

Nevertheless, not everyone likes the mirror. All the maids curse it because there are invariably fingerprints they must scrub off, and they have to haul out a ladder to dust the top. A few more jaded guests might point out that the Londinium gilding was probably made with indentured labor. And Simon absolutely hates it.

He's hated it for years and never looks in it unless he has to. The sight he sees always inspires a rush of shame and fury he can't at all understand. His family's gleaming hall, with the polished bronze urns filled with plants unsullied by even one brown leaf, with not a speck of dust on any statuette, and then his own reflection, the son, neatly dressed in pants and vest and with a haircut that costs more than said maids earn in a week.

The son fits charmingly into that charming picture, and he should be glad of that. It's what he wants, isn't it? But for some reason, it makes his stomach roil.

There's another large mirror in Simon's life, this one at school. It's blurry and covered in fingerprints and a bit warped around the edges, and he likes it much, much better. He still despises looking at his own face, but he doesn't have to, because they line up next to the mirror to go out for lunch and recess. So instead, he can stare at Chitra's face, or Zitkala's face, or his friend Miriam's face.

He looks at their faces, and pretends they belong to him.

Eventually, of course, Simon leaves that school and that mirror, but, surprisingly, it's alright. Because by this time River is walking—actually, she never truly walked, she went straight from crawling to dancing—and so he can see, in the Tam mirror, a double of the sister he adores.

When she's first learning to talk, at around six months, she calls Simon jiejie.He smiles and corrects her gently and never lets on that her puzzled looks ring a bell with him.

Simon throws himself into caring for River. He provides the exquisite questioning and cheerleading and laughter she craves, since their parents are puzzled as to why a girl so intelligent needs so much emotional attention. And letting himself be defined by River is also far, far easier than closely examining who he is alone.

Civilization (noun)—The stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced. Synonyms—progress, enlightenment, culture.

When River is seven years old, she decides to design the perfect civilization. As with most of her ideas, Simon is pulled in to serve as backup, which he doesn't mind at all. Let his classmates steal their parents' rice sake and dare each other to sneak into the nearest Companion House on weekend nights. He's happy to debate with his meimeiabout the relative merits of free market capitalism versus original Marxist socialism, even if he does usually lose.

River's pet project in this case is creating the ideal language, complete with its own alphabet and script. As she scribbles away muttering about irregular verbs and pleasing sound combinations, Simon puts his mind to the task she's given him—come up with a series of myths for the pantheon of gods she's invented. He's never exactly had a way with words, but River can polish up the prose later.

Eventually the civilization will boast, along with the ideal language, an entirely new system of government, some very complicated marriage practices, and a social philosophy based on rice farming and butterflies. It will also have a rather strange creation myth.

Humans, according to this myth, were planned by the gods to be absolutely perfect. No one knows what that would have looked like, but they would have been shining and glorious and sublime. In fact, the gods had already made the humans, carved them from the fabric of the 'verse, and were about to bring them to life. But the wild energy they were wielding flew out of control, and the humans shattered into pieces.

No one could tell which arms and legs and brains and faces and hearts had gone together. Though the gods did their best to sort it out, the shining glory had forever vanished. But the humans became obsessed with finding it again. Ever since, they have come up with thousands upon thousands of ideas for creating perfection, and each time, they murder and oppress anyone who doesn't quite fit.

Gabriel finds the myth befuddling. Regan finds it disturbing. Simon's friends merely wonder why he's choosing his oddsister over them, which is probably why they gradually fade out of his life. But it is the one persistent memory that will keep River from dropping into complete madness as months and years inch by and they open up her skull again and again, trying to create her in glory's image. Simon will come for her, because Simon understands.

The myth was one of his two relevant contributions to River's project. The other was the civilization's penchant for mosaics—iridescent, glittering, intricate mosaics.

Illusion (noun)—A thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses. Synonyms—deception, trick, smoke and mirrors.

When Simon lands on Persephone's Eavesdown Docks, he has nothing but a traumatized River in a cryo box, clothes and a medical bag that only render him conspicuous, and a soul nearly paralyzed with fright. The members of the underground movement which helped him free River advise him to hit the border planets on the least respectable ship he can find. Serenity's general disreputability makes it a reasonable choice, but truthfully, he's drawn to it mainly because Kaylee's sunny glow is like a rope thrown in a storm.

And naturally, given his luck, he's in great part responsible for her getting shot, almost fatally, in the first few hours he's on the ship.

Miraculously, though, Kaylee forgives him, not only for the bullet in her stomach but for threatening to refuse treatment. More astonishingly yet, the crew members (who were quite willing to throw him out the airlock if she died) seem to, if not precisely forgive, at least understand his reasons. It will be some time before Simon learns any details of what Mal and Zoe went through during their lost war, but he's not an idiot, and he gets the sense early on that they've both made plenty of life-and-death decisions fueled half by panic and half by desperate love.

The fact that Kaylee didn't die also probably helps.

For a short time, Simon thinks he knows why he feels so guilty whenever Kaylee flirts with him—he got her shot. But, due to his aforementioned non-idiocy, he soon realizes that's not it. It's infuriating because there's no reason for him to feel bad—he's wildly attracted to Kaylee, even if his mouth keeps spitting out all the wrong things. She's so radiant, so lovely, he doesn't have words for it. He wants to do right by her, and yet.

Simon supposes most people do not have dramatic revelations while ogling a dead cow fetus. But it's then, in that booth, as he's naming the things he thinks are beautiful about Kaylee, as she encourages him to finish his sentence about her eyes, that he gets it. It's not his feelings for her that are the problem. It's him, himself. He knows Kaylee is seeing the handsome doctor who might just sweep her off for a tumble in his quarters, and he knows there's something wrong with that picture, with that man she thinks she sees.

The next thing he knows he's blurted out some thoughtless sentence about the only other women in his life being married, related, or professional, and she's justifiably stalked off. Later, before the chaos around Tracey and his too-many organs starts, he goes to the engine room. It's blind faith that he'll find the right words, because he doesn't know himself why he can't be what Kaylee wants, and when he sees her listening to that recording, he just can't heap anything else on her then.

Which would be a better excuse if he hadn't gone back to adding the pluses and subtracting the minuses, and convincing himself that there is nothing wrong and no reason to think about the unopened file cabinet at the back of his mind.

Logical (adjective)—Of or according to the rules of logic or formal argument.

Jubal Early is a extraordinarily clever man. It's not until he looks back on the events of the evening, when he's heard the whole story, that Simon realizes just how smart he must be. (Or must have been, though assuming that he's dead is the kind of mistake that gets people murdered in nasty ways). Simon's taken basic geology, and he knows that rocks tend to have cleavage points—places they'll split when hammered. People have them too, and Early seems to have read the crew's cleavage points like a picture book.

Simon knows he doesn't think like the rest of Serenity. He splits under logic. Logic is his god, in a way, it defines who he is. That's not the case with Mal, who'll punch and hit and kick like a demon even when outnumbered ten to one, or Wash, whose love for Zoe leads him to keep coming back through all their fights, or Inara, who believes in the shy and the quote unquote deviant and in every member of the crew even when they let her down. But Simon is logical, measured, incisive.

Which is why he can't understand his quixotic, mad choice to tackle an armed Early, not only once, but twice, and the second time with a bullet hole in his thigh. Oh, he's done crazy things for love of River in the past, but only because he's believed they might work, or because he's completely lost hope. After all, he's no good to her dead. But going after Early was absurd, it could not possibly have helped. And when he looks back on those thirty seconds of insanity, the choice itself is not the only strange thing.

Early is taking her sister away, going to put River back in the hands of monsters. It's all a blur—she grabs him, there's a moment of struggle and then pain. Agony like a branding iron, and she lands on the floor, head spinning and body screaming, and then Early's going. Going to take River away and Simon will rot in hell before she will let that happen—she's up again and leaps on him, but she's horribly outmatched and soon she crashes onto the stairs and nearly blacks out.

Peculiar, and frightening. Ultimately, the experience gets catalogued in Simon's brain as a side effect of an altogether horrifying evening, though a part of him knows that can't fully explain it. He prefers to focus on confirming, several times, that the crew is sufficiently uninjured, though as Zoe points out, most of them were locked in their bunks the whole time. Book, though inflicted with a swollen temple, tells Simon he's quite alright, and Mal takes it a step further by ordering him to look after his own gorram bullet wound and snapping that what the hell was he thinking, dashing after Early like that and nearly getting killed? (As if River hadn't already asked the same thing, and as if Wash and Inara wouldn't both repeat the question later).

Logical, it was not. Heroic—well. Just maybe.

Simon decides that the most rational lesson he can take from all this is that he needs to learn to shoot. He recruits Zoe for the purpose, guessing she'll be more patient than Mal and make fun of him less than Jayne. His other, more unconscious, takeaway is that he needs to double his levels of denial.

Which he does. He denies the truth all through the ensuing months, through Book and Inara's departures and returning, the deaths of those on Haven, the discovery of the horrors on Miranda. And he goes on denying it right up until he finds himself confessing his love to Kaylee as they're about to die, in the full knowledge that though he truly does love her, deeply, he's still somehow not being quite honest. And, when they do survive, denying it all through their engine room escapades and bunk wildness and experiments with strawberries. Wondrous times.

It's Kaylee who calls it off, in the end. She says she'd rather be friends. And Simon is half devastated and half back to feeling guilty again, for the relief he feels.

Mosaic (noun)—A picture or pattern produced by arranging together small colored pieces of hard material such as stone, tile, or glass.

Some months after the newly-repaired Serenity leaves Mr. Universe's moon, they're transporting cargo to the planet Odysseus. The crew manages to wrangle a promise of shore leave out of Mal, presuming the job doesn't end in them having to retreat with guns blazing. Luckily, their clients are atypically businesslike and don't try murder as the primary option, and a couple of hours later everyone has jingling pockets—figuratively, since the pay was in credits—and permission to wander. Book takes off for an abbey he knows in the vicinity, Jayne departs to find a decent whorehouse (Simon valiantly refrains from pointing out that's a bit of an oxymoron), and Kaylee and River vanish into a fruit market with instructions not to wait for them.

Inara, who doesn't have a client until the next day, declares she's going to show anyone who's interested the most beautiful garden in all of the system, upon which Mal snorts and asks what kind of fei huathat is. Simon's surprised as well, seeing as Odysseus is basically rock—the oxygen in the atmosphere mainly comes from the algae in the oceans and artificial ponds—which makes him curious enough to hand over the entrance fee. Wash and Zoe are similarly intrigued, and though Mal grumbles about wasting his hard-earned coin, he follows them through the gate.

The sight beyond merits enough widened eyes, audible gasps, and dropped jaws to be worth twice what they've paid. It's a garden made entirely of three-dimensional mosaics—iridescent, glittering, unbelievably intricate. Flowers from tulips to jasmine to violets cluster by every path and climb every wall, shimmering birds perch on every branch, every tree bears delicate, gem-like leaves. The place isn't that big, but regardless, it must have taken years to build.

Wash and Zoe soon find a small bridge encrusted with jewel-bright red tiles and linger there, Wash pointing at their reflections in the still water and opining that one Zoe was as much as he could take; two would probably cause heart failure. Inara gets embroiled in conversation with an art historian from Ariel, abandoning Simon and Mal in front of a miniature waterfall. Mal observes the mosaic-covered reeds in the pool below and after a moment demands of a nearby aide why there ain't any gorram mosaic caterpillars, because he paid good money and expects them.

Simon laughs quietly and, when the flustered aide escapes and Mal returns, comments that "you should be in paradise right now, seeing as you're an expert mosaic maker yourself." The captain raises an eyebrow and asks if that's so, what shiny art he's done, and can they sell it. And without thinking Simon replies no, the crew is his mosaic.

Mal orders Simon to explain that, and so he does. Explains that one way or another, everyone gets smashed into pieces, out in the black. Smashed into gleaming shards, at best useless and at worst too sharp to be touched without pain. But if someone comes along and assembles them into a mosaic, well, then...

As much sense as that made in Simon's head, it sounds incredibly strange when said out loud. So he's surprised when Mal says mayhap that's so, but he reckons it's seeing the pieces in the first place that gives the mosaic-person the idea for his picture. Makes him want to create. No artist without shards, no crew without broken folks.

That brief conversation inches open the door in Simon's mind just a little further. It's validation, even if Mal isn't aware of that. A confirmation that even though Serenity's crew robs people blind and shoots Feds and is constantly walking the tightrope of are-we-going-to-eat-this-week, no one's going to toss him off the ship because he doesn't live up to some image of perfection in their heads.

They're too aware of their own brokenness.

Different (adjective)—Not the same as another or each other; unlike in nature, form, or quality. Synonyms—contrasting, divergent, dissimilar.

Jayne, whose unadulterated tactlessness is probably a matter of public record on some planet or other, once flat-out asks Simon if he's sly, due to his "wearin' them prissy clothes, silk and all." Though the mercenary doesn't seem to bear any ill feeling towards men who sleep with other men—they've encountered such on a planet or two and he's just yelled for another glass of whiskey—his speculations aren't something to wish on anyone.

Luckily, this is not a battle Simon has to fight alone, for Inara calmly states, from where she's making tea by the counter, that his clothing is typical for Osiris men of relatively high class. Mal adds that he saw plenty of silk vests and suchlike at the fancy party he'd gone to with Kaylee, and that they couldn't all be sly, unless the whole sword-and-duel thing had some weird double meaning. Inara replies that since Mal had been the one delivering the challenging blow, any euphemism could fairly be said to have been on his side, which leads to Mal laughing hard enough to sprain something. (The two of them had concluded their unsurprisingly fraught and tumultuous affair a month before with a surprisingly amiable breakup, and seemed to get along far better now than they ever had in the past.)

When he finally recovers, Mal tells Jayne that "the doc could dress like 'Nara and it wouldn't make him sly if he's not. Ain't a thing you change with clothes. Hell, he can wear that one slinky dress of Zoe's as long as we get stitched up proper." Wash naturally picks this time to enter the kitchen, and informs them that said slinky dress is reserved for his goddess and off-limits to all others.

Simon is reminded, oddly, of his seismograph essay.

He'd wondered, at the time of the writing, how powerful the earthquake would have to be before the measuring needle simply snapped—rocketed out of control. For he himself, the human seismograph, the time had come when he'd deciphered the code in River's letter. They're hurting us. Get me out. Upon reading that, Simon had dropped every other goal and quite a few notions of morality in favor of freeing his sister. But there were other earthquakes, or rather, potential earthquakes. Thoughts and actions he'd shoved away rather than let them wreak devastation.

Because Mal is right. Putting on feminine clothing won't turn you sly if you're not. But it goes further than that, and deeper. A dress wouldn't be enough to make you a woman if you weren't, and the reverse is true as well. Wearing vests and pants and suit jackets won't make you into a man if you're—

Not.

Simon remembers his school mirror, staring at Chitra's and Zitkala's and Miriam's faces and imagining they were his. He remembers attacking Early, and the locked file cabinet sliding open for thirty seconds. He remembers seeing Kaylee's face for the first time, grease-smudged and beaming and sweeter than honey, and comprehends his feelings of shame. What he'd wanted, truly, was Kaylee's reflected light. He'd wanted to lose himself in her just as he'd lost himself in River, because it was easier than admitting that he, Simon, might be deep-down different in his own way.

Sometimes revelations don't break out with a thunderclap. Sometimes they come quietly over a cup of cheap tea while your crew teases each other about slinky dresses. Simon knows this, and as he sits, he acknowledges to himself that he is deep-down different. And that maybe, just maybe, that's alright.

He doesn't know what he's going to do about it yet. For now, just the acknowledgement is enough.

Grow (verb)—Undergo natural development by increasing in size and changing physically; progress to maturity.

It's while he's pulling a bullet out of Jayne's foot (Wash has made all the requisite lame duck jokes) that Simon becomes aware that his hair is truly too long. He's cut it once while on Serenity, and done a passable enough job, but it's growing out again, and getting in his eyes. So after the stitches are put in and adequate painkillers injected, he borrows a pair of scissors from Kaylee and is heading towards Inara's shuttle to ask if he can use a mirror of hers, those being the least blurry on the ship.

But River complicates matters, as is her custom. She's debating with Book about his Bible as they lift weights—specifically, theorizing that the prophet Ezekiel bringing the dry bones to life was an early example of genetic engineering. As Simon passes above them, she glances up and says, very seriously: "Hairpins."

Book, though clearly puzzled, shrugs this off. But that one word puts ideas of the most earthquake-worthy sort into Simon's mind. What if he let his hair grow? Let it grow until it was long enough to braid, or to curl, even? And as River suggested, use hairpins to keep it out of his eyes until then? What would it be like, to feel his own long hair brushing his shoulders, dancing down his back?

The Simon of a few years ago, the Osiris Simon, would have locked the idea up into a carbon steel box and thrown it into the black. The Simon of six months ago would have mulled it over but probably gone back to denial. But the Simon of right now continues towards the shuttle and, channeling the calm he always reaches for when preparing for a particularly delicate surgery, asks Inara if she has any spare hairpins he could use.

She offers to cut his hair if he likes, and he says he'd prefer the pins.

When he shows up in the kitchen, hair held out of his face with amber-and-gold clips—apparently the plainest Inara owns—he gets more than a few stares. However, no one comments, though Simon knows better than to expect that to last, if he keeps on this path.

Imitate (verb)—Take or follow as a model. Synonyms—emulate, copy, model oneself on.

For an institute dedicated to teaching people to heal the sick, MedAcad was pretty cutthroat. The best of the best, competing to be the elite. It wasn't enough to be smart and driven—everyone was. So Simon developed a razor-sharp focus, trained himself to notice and imitate the tiniest details of whatever he saw or heard. He's used that focus to learn to reattach limbs, treat a ruptured stomach lining, diagnose the most obscure conditions.

In those days, his instructors were the best doctors Osiris gave to teach their top medical students. Now, he's learning very different skills, and his instructors—who don't even know they're teaching him—are his sister, a Companion, and Serenity's mechanic and first mate.

Simon observes how River's feet touch the floor when she walks, how she carries her weight when she dances in the cargo bay or practices shooting. He watches how Kaylee's hands move while she wields chopsticks or a wrench, the way she licks her lips after she tastes a strawberry. He listens to the tones of Inara's voice—when it's sweet in laughter, when it's warm and promising, when it's icy and indignant, when it's free and teasing. He notes how Zoe holds her shoulders and moves with her hips, the tilt of her head and the arrangement of her limbs in a chair.

Just as in MedAcad, he notices, and he imitates.

At first, it seems no one sees or cares. But as Simon's walk develops a slight sway, as his hair grows to shoulder-length, as his voice turns lilting, that changes. The crew's array of reactions intimidate him no less for their silence. Wash seems utterly bewildered and frequently glances at his wife for her reaction. Kaylee's forehead wrinkles in puzzlement whenever she sees him. It's impossible for Simon to read Zoe, and that has him imagining the worst. He catches Jayne's lip curling in disgust when he's in the vicinity. Book develops a perpetually concerned look in his presence. Mal keeps glancing at him as if he's a bank vault that should have been left unlocked, but for some unknown reason isn't.

Simon has never been more grateful for Inara's serene countenance and the fact that River, being psychic and his meimei, understands what's going on without words. The idea of shaking off what he's learned, of going back to speaking and moving his old way, sends him cringing. But he feels like a circus freak to these people he loves, and that hurts too, and scares him. This is the only home he has—he can't imagine not being on Serenity's crew now—and the idea of jeopardizing that is terrifying.

Finally Jayne, with typical crudeness, tells him at dinner that if he's "doin' all this so you can whore like 'Nara, you'd best find someone off-ship to practice on, so the rest of us don't got to watch it." Kaylee and River, who are seated adjacent to his chair, both kick him, upon which he glares and adds that "everyone's thinkin' it. Just unnatural."

Mal tells Jayne to walk away from the table, now.

It's a gesture of support Simon didn't expect at all, since it's an uphill battle to not think of himself as unnatural. But when he tries, awkwardly, to deliver thanks later, Mal seems half-ready to take offense at the notion that he'd have let Jayne's remark pass, and orders him not to stand for that kind of go-sefrom anyone. An order that if he is to obey, Simon knows, he's going to have to let go of the remaining denial about who he is.

Who she is.

Reality (noun)—The world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them. Synonyms—Actuality, truth.

To Simon, guns are nightmarish and grotesque. Having spent years studying the fragility of the human body and the painstaking process of repairing damage to it, she would vastly prefer that every rifle and shotgun and pistol in the 'verse would spontaneously evaporate. However, given that's unlikely to happen, she resigns herself to carrying one, and they do have certain advantages as weapons—they need only a minimum of strength, and she has the expert hand-eye coordination required to become an excellent shot.

These are advantages that brawling hand-to-hand most truly does not have. Deciding that a person who spends her time either in the black or on the border planets should have at least some knowledge of how to avoid and land a disabling punch, Simon's recruited Mal to help her out. This is a somewhat worrisome prospect, but Zoe's already spending enough time providing gun lessons, and she's certainly not going to ask Jayne.

The captain does not go easy on her, so Simon is now vividly aware of how much it hurts when your back and shoulders and knees hit a floor made of metal grating. Repeatedly.

Sometimes she wonders if Mal just wants to know how many times he can throw her down before she'll stop scrambling back up again. There's times—usually at the end of a lesson—that she compares herself to a rubber ball. Up she stands, Mal knocks her down with a hard shove. Back to her feet, duck one punch, but here comes another to the cheekbone. Spring up again, dodge an elbow to the stomach, but then get tripped. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Sure, she can hit him back, but the difference is that he doesn't fall. Soldiers-turned-smugglers are just stronger than doctors.

Knife fighting is doubly humiliating. Were they using real blades, Simon would be dead ten times in two minutes. She finds herself hoping any planet on which they take a job has a lot of sand she can kick in her opponents' faces.

Giving up is not an option, however. Acquiring these skills may one day save her life, or someone else's. Core doctors can leave protection of their patients to security guards, but as a ship medic with rudimentary resources, it's just as helpful to keep those in her charge from being hurt in the first place as it is to cure them afterwards. And Simon can't save lives at all if she's failed to defend herself and is unconscious when somebody gets shot. Rules are different out here—she accepted that long ago.

Osiris high society would be perplexed at the sight of Simon in the cargo bay at night, when everyone else is in bed. She works on kicks to invisible knees and groins and thighs, then paces circles until her walk becomes a smooth glide and the sway of her hips becomes an unthinking given. She works on uppercuts to nonexistent stomachs and jaws and noses, then practices imbuing grace in the gestures of her fingers and her chin and her shoulders, until the refined elegance becomes what she does automatically. She lies on the bench press, struggling with heavier and heavier weights, and then repeats back everything she said that day, imitating feminine cadences, refusing to go to sleep until the words emerge in the voice she always secretly wanted.

Yes, Osiris high society would be mystified indeed, would see inherent contradictions in Simon's actions. Fighting will give you away, they might comment, betray an already tenuous disguise, and besides, if you can cope with such masculine behavior as brawling, are you quite sure you're not mistaken?

To which Simon would reply that it's not a disguise, it's reality, albeit reality that was hidden for most of her life. And then she would introduce Osiris high society to Zoe Washburne, to River Tam, and to Mal's blushing psychotic bride of the many names, all of whom brawl far better than she ever did, and inform them that their point is invalid.

Name (noun)—A word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is known, addressed, or referred to. Synonyms—Honorific, title, label.

Among his other stellar and winning qualities, it seems Adelai Niska is as stubborn as a cross between the devil and a gadfly-stung donkey. They've just completed a job near Ezra when two armed ships fly in and attempt to threaten them into submission. River manages to scramble their nav systems, Wash and Kaylee deliver a spectacular Crazy Ivan, and Serenity flies free—this time.

Simon, who vividly recalls a sliced-off ear and the aftereffects of repeated electrocution, makes up her mind that they should have a plan, just in case the torture-happy crime lord succeeds in snatching any of them. As she's never seen or spoken to Niska, she explains her reasoning to the crew at large and then sets about questioning those of its members who might have useful information. Wash, having been in understandable panic most of the time, can only describe Niska and the effects of the electrocution machine. Mal gives a more detailed picture of the torture chamber in general. Zoe remembers quite a bit of the Skyplex layout and defining features of a few employees. Book, shockingly, tells Simon all about the hierarchy and philosophy of the organization, pretty much as if he were describing an import company. Simon isn't sure she wants to know how Book learned all that.

In the end, three pieces of their information end up becoming relevant. Firstly, Zoe recounts how, when they were first hired by Niska, he showed them the bloodied corpse of his wife's nephew and had added that "at dinner I be getting earful, but there is no help for that." Secondly, Mal describes the torture device used on him directly after Wash left as having "three weird pointy metal legs. Kind of like a crab." Thirdly, Book mentions that Niska is known for being obsessed with the works of Shan Yu, the self-styled warrior poet—ergo, psychotic dictator.

Simon has read some of those works herself, enough to think the 'verse would be a safer place if the sadist had gotten a bullet through his brain. She scans the Cortex page on Shan Yu's life in the interest of being armed with all possible information. As a doctor who's done autopsies on people who were burned alive or thrown out windows, she manages—barely—to view the captures of his victims displayed there without losing her breakfast. Inara and Wash, peering over her shoulder, aren't so lucky, and have to dash to the infirmary sink.

The only positive bit of information on that Cortex page is the account of Shan Yu's eventual defeat and conviction of war crimes and genocide. He was sentenced to life in prison by a high judge, Sonia El-Hashem, and died a few years later under suspicious circumstances. None of this is relevant to Simon's search for Niska's possible weaknesses, but she is intrigued by the name of the judge.

A few days later, she's in the infirmary, cataloguing supplies and strategizing as to how she'll talk Mal into purchasing higher-grade painkillers. River wanders up to the door, mouth curved in a proud smile, and says: "Sonia? Captain's cut his finger on broken railing. Needs stitches."

There's no real time for her to absorb thewords, because about ten seconds later said captain storms into the infirmary, demanding why, if he has to end up with a gorram bloody hand, does it have to be his trigger finger that gets marked for the slicing? Luckily for his peace of mind, Mal doesn't yet realize that the doctor stitching up his hand will find him on the bridge two days later, and state, quietly but firmly: "From now on, my name is Dr. Sonia Tam."

Save (verb)—Keep safe or rescue from harm or danger. Synonyms—Rescue, set free, liberate.

Knowing from experience that Mal can react badly when he feels out of control on his own boat, Sonia explains beforehand what she intends to tell the rest of the crew. It takes quite awhile—though Mal does have some general knowledge, there are a lot of specifics he doesn't understand, and he has no qualms about demanding answers. First comes "wait, but why didn't you get hormone blockers?" (Response being that while young enough for them she was in perpetual denial.) Second comes "you know Jayne is going to be a real hun danabout this, right?" (Response being obviously, but he is anyway.) After a few more questions, Mal finally declares that this explains more than it doesn't, and that she'd better tell everyone so they can start changing pronouns, because that will take gorram forever to get right.

The conversation with the crew, gathered around the chipped but solid dinner table, takes about ten times as long. Kaylee gets befuddled at the very beginning until Sonia is inspired to tell her that it's like if you took the engine out of Serenity and tried to use it to make a Capissen-57 fly. Maybe, with a lot of fiddling, you could make it work, but you'd waste fuel and couldn't maneuver with any finesse and besides, Serenity's engine belongs in Serenityand nowhere else. It's an awkward and oversimplified explanation, but Kaylee gets the "aha!" gleam in her eyes when Sonia puts it that way. Not to mention Wash and Mal both start to look thoughtful, and their faces soften just a little.

Jayne demands to know why: "if you's not a man, how come when you was shackin' up with Kaylee, we had to stuff pillows in our ears to drown y'all out? Ya just usin' her to cover up or somethin'?" The latter question makes Sonia grind her teeth, but she expects they're all wondering about the former. So she explains that gender is independent of sexual orientation—some women do sleep with women, after all—and that she herself is bisexual. And then she adds acerbically that Jayne still shouldn't get his hopes up, just so he'll splutter for a few minutes at the insinuation and they can have some peace.

Inara beams at her—not with a gracious Companion smile, but with a genuine grin. River wraps an arm around her and murmurs about file cabinets being only for vertical thinkers and therefore irrelevant. Zoe regards her levelly, then asks what took her so long. Book is silent, but later, when they're lifting weights together, he begins speaking about the words of Jesus in the Gnostic Gospels.

If you do not bring forth what is inside you, Book says, it will destroy you. But if you do bring forth what is inside you, it will save you.

To be continued in Part Two.