Innate Gifts

Disclaimer: the pretty toys aren't mine, they're never mine :(

AN: I burned my hand on a sink faucet and then I sat down and wrote this in like a half an hour. I kinda like it, River can't always be slightly loony and rubbing soup in hair.

Simon and Kaylee were huddled in a corner of a dirty bar. Aside from the vicious fighting that was going on around them, it was actually quite boring. Simon sat with his arm around Kaylee, waiting for the fighters of the crew to finish up.

Simon found it funny how easily he now included River in that category. She was just one of the fighters. She went with Mal, Zoe, and Jayne on jobs where they encountered betrayal and violence more often than not.

Although, Simon thought as he looked around at the melee, the violence did not appear to be limited to jobs, but also included post-job drinks that were supposed to be quiet.

So, here they sat, just Kaylee and him, waiting for the "honest disagreement" to end and trying to look as small and inconspicious as possible. Since no one shot at them or even glanced their way, they were apparently doing a good job.

Simon's eyes followed River as she jumped up on a table and then leapt from it, bringing her leg and a man down.

"It must be hard to watch."

Simon looked down at Kaylee who was also tracking River's movements.

"What?"

"River. Fighting. It must be hard to watch what they turned her into." Kaylee rested her head against Simon's chest in what she obviously considered sympathy.

But Simon simply answered vaguely, "I suppose." And then continued to watch River as she got smacked on the back with a chair leg. She spun around and slammed the bottle she had been holding across her attacker's cheek, dropping him to the ground. Then, instead of hitting him again with the bottle, she tossed it aside and carefully placed her boot on his throat, closing off his windpipe. The man scrambled madly to move her foot and get some air, but it wasn't too long before he passed out.

Simon watched River's face carefully as she pressed on his throat a little longer, a little half smile playing across it.

Kaylee's statement bothered him and River's face bothered him, but it wasn't until that night that he realized why. He had seen that smile before.

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Simon carefully rolled out of bed so as not to disturb Kaylee. He pulled a sweater on and then slipped out of the room, silently sliding the door closed behind him. He walked over to the couch outside of the infirmary and sank down onto it.

He couldn't sleep. River's smile was haunting him. He had seen it before, many times in fact and what it meant scared Simon.

He had seen it when she was three.

Simon was sitting on the bathroom floor while Nanny tried to bathe River. Nanny was quizzing Simon on his spelling words for his test the next day, but she was distracted by River. She was being troublesome, trying to squirm out of Nanny's grip when she went to scoop her up and place her in the full tub.

"River, stop that!" A very frazzled Nanny cried. The Tam children were not the easiest to care for and it had been a long day."Aquarium."

Simon had gotten as far asthe 'q' when River screamed.

Nanny had placed her in the water, which, unfortunately, had accidently been turned up too hot. Nanny pulled River out quickly and rushed her over to the sink, splashing cold water over her bright pink body.

Nanny had apologized over and over and, honestly, River had barely been scalded, but River went to bed angry that night.

The next day Simon and River were in the kitchen. Simon was at the table eating an after-school snack and River was on the floor playing with her toy spaceships. They flew by remote control, but they also had little wheels that could be put down for when they landed.

Nanny was boiling water for their father's tea in a big kettle on the stove. It started whistling and Nanny turned off the burner and picked up the kettle with her oven mitt.

She took off the top of the kettle so she could watch for it to stop boiling and started walking over to pour the water into the teapot already put on the tray with the rest of the tea service.

As she crossed the kitchen, River zoomed one of her spaceships across the floor. It rolled right under Nanny's foot as she took a step. Nanny went flying backwards and the nearly boiling water went flying up, hitting her full on the face. She screamed and writhed on the floor.

Eyes wide with fear, Simon ran to the bottom of the stairs and called for their mother. Then he rushed back to make sure that River was alright, before he tried to help Nanny. As he got closer to her, he could see a half-smile on her face as she watched Nanny's face break out into angry red burns.

He had seen it when she was eight.

Their next door neighbor had a horribly mean dog. He would bark and leap at the fence as Simon and River walked by on their way to school.

One day, as they were walking by and trying to ignore the awful dog, the strap of River's bag broke. Her school books went flying as did her dance clothes that she had for her class after school. One of her ballet shoes flew farther than the other items and ended up rolling under the neighbor's fence.

The shoe was immediately grabbed by the dog and torn apart in his sharp teeth. River shrieked and yelled at the dog while gathering up all her things. Simon convinced her that Father would buy her new ones tomorrow and that they would be late to school if they didn't leave now.

With one last curse at the dog, River agreed and they continued on, Simon holding most of her books.

Later that evening, River returned from ballet class in tears. As she always did, she ran to Simon. Apparently, the ballet teacher had yelled (well, according to River she yelled, in reality, she was probably just strongly scolded) at River in front of the whole class for not having both of her shoes. Then, she yelled some more because she couldn't believe that River would use such an uncreative excuse as 'the dog ate it.'

Simon couldn't tell if River was more upset at being yelled at, for it being in front of everyone, or that she had been accused of being uncreative.

Simon soothed her and then they both went to Father and had him order her new shoes over the cortex that night. Simon had thought that River's bad temper had been alleviated.

Then the dog died.

A week later, the neighbor's dog had been found dead, apparently of lead poisoning. Indeed, when the autopsy had been performed, small granules of lead had been found throughout the dog's digestive tract.

And the ballet teacher was fired.

Eight days later, an anonymous letter sent to the dance school informed them of some scandalous pictures of the teacher on the cortex. The teacher was dismissed in disgrace due to the outrage of the shocked parents, including the Tams.

Simon walked into River's room to ask for some help with a math problem and saw her looking out the window. When he joined her there he saw she was watching as the neighbors sadly waited as their gardener took the box containing their dog out of the car and to the back yard to be buried.

Simon looked over and saw River's half smile.

He turned around, deciding to ask her about math later, and his eyes fell on the chemistry set that was sitting in the corner. Just like his, it contained many basic elements, iron, copper, sulfur . . . lead.

Simon turned toward the door quickly, wanting to leave before his brain jumped to terrible conclusions, and he saw River's dedicated sourcebox beside her cortex screen. It had taken a year for her to wear down Father until he got her one just like Simon's. She had promised that she would never visit improper sites . . . the ones that had scandalous pictures.

Simon froze and tried to also freeze his brain to stop it from thinking. Then River had tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned, she was smirking up at him, the weird smile gone. "You can't figure out the derivative, can you?"

Simon smiled down at his beautiful mei mei, who was the only one that he let tease him. He pushed away the dark thoughts that had clouded his mind a moment earlier and focused on the truth. River was a gift.

Simon dropped his head onto the back of the couch and covered his face with his hands. This is why Kaylee's statement had bothered him all the way home and kept him awake into the early morning hours.

She and the rest of the crew assumed that the Academy had messed with her brain to make her a psychic and then trained her to be a lethal assassin.

But River had always known things she shouldn't, things she couldn't. The Academy hadn't created that talent, simply amplified it.

Had the Academy turned River into a violent creature as Kaylee had assumed?

Simon uncovered his face and looked down the hall at River's door. Looking at that innocuous rice paper door, Simon faced something, something that had scared him since she was three.

River's vengeful darkness had always been there.