River's Dance

Summary: River Tam's thoughts, during the series and the movie. Or what they might have been.

Everything was so terrible. Knives and needles. Hands of blue, two by two. They cut and they sliced and they poked and they prodded and they couldn't leave her alone. Voices that weren't voices, pictures she'd never seen. Dead and dying. Everyone lying down, everyone fighting. Pain and rage and pain and rage and the dying and the thoughts and she couldn't make it stop, couldn't make it go away. Thoughts that weren't hers. Things she shouldn't hear. Too much. Too much and too much and it was unbearable. Knives and needles and dreams in the dark and she couldn't make it stop and they never let her rest.

Simon. The first clear thing she knew in such a long time. The first thing that brought no pain. Safety. Simon. And the hands were gone, except in her dreams. Only her brother. Simon. But the dreams were so strong. Too much. Too fast, and she couldn't make it go away. Not even for Simon. So Simon put her to sleep. Deep sleep. Deep in the darkness where the blue hands and the dreams couldn't come. Where she was stone and silence and everything was better.

Light. Simon and light and firefly. Old ship. Worn ship. Broken ship. Broken crew. Mal. Mal meant bad, and maybe he was, and maybe he wasn't. Thoughts all jumbled together, life of thievery, man of honor. Honor in the dark. Sharp and blunt and fierce and cold, but strong and safe somehow because he was all those things. Like his ship, broken in the dark but utterly trustworthy. Too foreign, too dangerous for liking, too good for hating.

Others, jumble of pictures. Jayne. Dark and untrustworthy and Mal's. Cold like the ship, volatile like the inside of a star and wild like an animal. Jayne.

Zoe. Gentle figure. Mother figure. Captain's friend. Hard and strong and soft and kind. Hands on the gun and hands on the wheel and loving in the night. Darkness wrapped around fire. Strong and brave and loyal.

Wash. Fire and movement. Leaf on the wind. Nervous energy and forward speech, no hidden depths, man like a child. Played with toys on the deck, flew the ship like a dream in the empty dark, loved like there was no tomorrow. Feared because she was different, wild, liked her because she didn't like Jayne, because she was new and interesting.

Kaylee. Sunshine and engine oil and innocence. Like how she used to be, before the blue hands and the needles and the pain and the pictures and the thoughts that weren't hers and shouldn't be there and tore her up inside. Kaylee, other self. Memory made real, with extra fire and the scent of oil and passion and everything warm in the world. No darkness, no secrets to Kaylee.

Inara. Pretty. Went everywhere and saw everything and accepted everything. Pretty and complicated, but not Mal's rough complication. Ripples in a still pool that led to glittering dancing in the heart. The scent of home and loving. She loved the captain, maybe. She loved other things too. Kindness, ever present, ever soothing. Silk on raw edges, even the ones inside that nobody, not even Simon, could see. Music in her ears, in her eyes, even when she was completely silent.

Shepard. Kind man. Not afraid. Gentle, even if he didn't understand. Helping, even when he couldn't. Shouldn't. Reaching out, even when the blue hands reached to take him away in her mind and she cowered away because she couldn't trust a kind old man with his hands outstretched. Not mad, not even when she corrected his Bible and yelled at him for little things and fought him and tried to run away. Shepard with his kind eyes and he was trying to shepherd her and lead her and she wanted to go where he led, she did. But the walls were too high and the voices were too strong and the memories were too terrible and awful and she couldn't go. Not even with a Shepard. Not even with Simon, all the time.

Sometimes, she could get loose. Sometimes, she could break free. Sometimes, she followed the light and the patterns and music in her head to the people it belonged to. To Simon, strong and comforting. To the Shepard, to Kaylee's innocence, and Inara's gentleness and Zoe's warmth and Wash's childishness and Mal's strength.

Sometimes even to Jayne's dark hunger, because he was so in control of it, so easy with it and she thought that the darkness was a part of her now, and she needed to understand how he can be so comfortable with it in case it won't go away and she needs to be comfortable with it too. She doesn't like Jayne, but he survives the darkness, thrives with it, balances it against Mal's light, against the rest of the crew, and she thought she needed to learn how to do that too now. The hands of blue and the two by two had given her the dark hunger, and Jayne was the only model she had on surviving it and making it something more or less than the mindless anger and fear and hurt that sometimes possessed her.

It's only in the field, dancing with people who know nothing about her and never will know anything, laughing in the freedom and sunlight, that she began to understand a possible solution. A possible way to find the way out.

Life was a dance, and a flow and an energy. It was patterns and thoughts and movements and circling with this person here and that person there and under this and over that and kick up your heels and spin and wait for the music to catch up to you. That was life. And every song is different. Sometimes bright and pretty sometimes slow and sleepy and sometimes dark and fierce.

The hands of blue and the needles and the pain and the unwanted memories were a dance she wanted to stop dancing. But she'd have to learn a new dance before she could replace them. A new dance. A dance with fireflies and warmth and innocence and honor in the dark and shadows and light that mix and make up a complicated swirl that she wasn't sure she'd ever figure out, but she wanted to try because it looked and felt so much better than the pattern she was stuck in.

A dance that incorporates Mal and Inara and the Shepard and Kaylee and Wash and Simon and even Jayne, because their voices and the hum of the ship were the music of her days and her life now. They were the song, to which she must find the appropriate steps.

It was so hard. Some days she couldn't help falling into old rhythms and old dance steps and old patterns. Some days she couldn't help crying and screaming and fighting and struggling and getting lost in all the old moves, the old memories. And she couldn't explain to Simon, science oriented Simon with his straightforward mind and his intense medical focus. She loved him, but she knew he was too focused on what he could see to see what she saw, and she couldn't find the words to explain the picture to him, any more than she could find the words to tell him of the memories that weren't hers and yet are now, of the people that slept and the people that fought and the people that cried and the people who were lost in the dark and a thousand other things.

But finally, it began to come together. She learned to dance Kaylee's laughter, chasing through the ship with apples and playing with the engines and chatting with the others and thinking about Simon. She learned to dance Inara, quiet and still, braiding hair and soothing thoughts. Inara who held her and treated her like a sister, who could calm her when Simon didn't understand.

She learned to dance Wash's playfulness, his nervous energy, and Zoe's steady dependability and strength. Learned to dance Jayne's dark violence, and the Shepard's calm peace (even though he wasn't calm all the time inside, dark and light mixed like Mal and strong, stronger than a Shepard, but she didn't understand what he really was). She learned to dance the complicated melody of Mal's fierce, wild ways, his protectiveness, his violence, his strength.

Learned to dance the rhythm of the ship, and of the universe around them. And sometimes, sometimes, it was almost enough to push back the voices and the visions and the dreams and the thoughts that didn't belong in her head. But not always and not forever, and sometimes she still sank back into the blackness with the fears and the blue hands and the screaming that wasn't hers. Sometimes her feet still found the rhythm of old steps, dark steps, too violent to ignore and she couldn's stop it and she danced the old pattern because she didn't know how to make it end.

And then came the broadwave. The words on the broadwave. Words that lit her brain on fire. Words that made the dreams explode behind her eyes. Dreams that brought the word. Miranda. And everything changed.

She never knew where her old dance had started. And then she did. Miranda. The beginning of the dance. Her dance, and everyone elses. Miranda.

It was too much at once and too scary, and there were still pieces missing, and someone was trying to break the music, to take her away, and she knew she'd scared everyone. But she wanted the answers and she wanted to go the beginning so she could find the end. Wanted to find the beginning so maybe she could understand the rest of it, so she could have some peace and finally end the dance one way or another. And it was Mal, Mal and his mix of darkness and light, Mal who finally inserted himself into her dance, even though he didn't know the steps, even though he was stumbling along, even though it cost them the Shepard. Mal who led her to the beginning, led them all to the beginning, took them through the long slow measures that had led to the hard violent ones, to the darkness and the pain.

And now everyone could see the pattern, now they were all dancing with her. But the dance wasn't the same, wasn't as hard, even though they were all so new to the steps, even though it was still dark and violent and scary and awful, even though the voices were still screaming in her head and pounding at her brain and leaving images she couldn't erase and wanted to.

Not so bad because they were there and they were holding her, Mal and Simon and Kaylee and Inara and Zoe and even Wash and Jayne. And Zoe didn't even let go when they lost Wash, even though she could feel the darkness and the hurting, even worse than her nightmares, inside Zoe's head, could feel the madness. But they fought for her and tried for her, and finally, she knew what the dance was all about.

Finally she knew the pattern she wanted from Mal and Jayne and Kaylee and Simon and Zoe and Inara. Why she was drawn to Kaylee's light and Jayne's darkness and how they were both the same thing. Life. Love of life. Love of living and dancing and breathing and eating and fighting and everything else. Love of self and of each other.

It clicked, and suddenly she saw the difference between the old dance and the new one she'd been trying so hard to grasp. Saw how the patterns could be one and the same, how the darkness and the nightmares could fit with the laughter and the playing. How hands of blue and two by two could become Mal and Jayne and the ship.

And she danced. Danced with her dark siblings, with the ones who had forgotten as she had forgotten. With the ones who were lost in the dark. And she couldn't pull them back, but she could let them go, set them free, let them follow the sleepers. She danced her pattern and theirs together, violent and terrible and liberating because here she could accept and live with all the things inside that made her cry and curl up and hide from Simon. Now she knew what the hands of blue had made her, the pattern of the music they had put in her head, and now she could use it and dance it, because that was what she was meant to do, and that was what she wanted to do to protect everything else.

And afterward, she watched the others, as they settled back into a pattern that was easier, quieter. Back into loving, and laughing, and working and eating and talking and fighting. As they patched the ship together and found cargo. As Kaylee and Simon came together. As Zoe lit a candle on a hill and they gave Wash and the Shepard to the stars, them and the strange man she didn't know and wished she had. As Jayne ate and polished his guns and his knives. As Inara painted a hull with the word Serenity, and as Mal took them up into the sky in the storm and they flew and danced the ship through the clouds and into the blackness studded with points of light.

And finally, she had a name for her dance, for the pattern that she would follow. River's Dance. Serenity.

She didn't think Mal would mind.

Author's Note: yes, I know. Grammatically, it's a nightmare. But I wanted to capture River's state of mind, the way she thinks, and this seemed to best mirror the pattern as it was revealed in her speech during the show and the movie. So...what do you think?

It's called River's Dance because of what Simon says, that she always did love to dance.