Disclaimer - I do not own Firefly or Harry Potter. Rights for those go to Joss Whedon and J.K. Rowling, respectively. I'm like a five-year old, building my own small castles in the sandbox they've made for us. Hope you appreciate.


Episode One: The Endless Winter
Prologue: Shelter from the Storm

_oo00oo_

The untold want, by life and land never granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

"The Untold Want" - Walt Whitman

_oo00oo_

"Now that the war's over, our soldiers get to come home, yes?" A boy asked.

River's breath hitched and her hold on the wooden stylus in her hand faltered. It clattered to the tabletop in front of her, stretching across the grain of the desk. Under the crimson light of the translucent awnings surrounding the classroom it lay there like an omen.

Not this. Not this again.

She felt a void well up inside her stomach, a black hole carving a hollow in her chest. It tugged at her heart. None of the other children noticed her mistake or the look of pain that flashed briefly across her features. They never did. She snatched the stylus from the desktop and tucked it between her leg and the seat, as if hiding it there would somehow change the things that were about to happen. It never had before, but still she hoped.

"Some of them. Some will be stationed on the rim planets as Peace Enforcers." The teacher responded. She had kind eyes—the worst kind, really.

"I don't understand. Why were the independents even fighting us?" Another boy asked. River didn't bother to pay attention to him. Nameless, faceless, second row back and three from the left; a non-entity. Just another fragment. She felt a sliver of her lucidity slip away from her, drifting like a leaf on the current of her dream.

"That's a good question. Does anybody want to open on that?" The teacher smiled, smoothing out a few of the wrinkles in her sari. The teacher's gaze drifted over the classroom and lingered on River for a brief moment. She shuddered.

"I hear they're cannibals." One of the girls nearby stated.

"Nah. That's only the reavers!"

"Reavers aren't real!" The girl snapped back. If only she knew.

One of the other boys seemed to know better, and chipped in his own two cents. "Full well they are! They attack settlers from space. They kill them and wear their skins and rape them for hours and hours, and…"

"Chénmò, bù qiàdàng de háizi!"* The teacher snapped. For a moment River entertained the idea that some of the teacher's true nature leaked out when she admonished the boy, but she knew she was lying to herself. This was a dream-the teacher and students nothing but the glittering fragments of a long-broken memory. In the end, the only thing stabbing the thin, wooden stylus into her forehead was her own mind. A thousand wooden splinters, driven into her brain, by her brain. The perfect way to describe her own brand of brokenness. Up in front of the classroom, the teacher stared down the boy until he looked repentant enough for her standards, then continued her lecture..

"It's true that there are dangers on the outer planets. So let's follow up on Borodin's question." The Borodin-fragment (second row back and three from the left) preened himself at the attention like some exotic bird. Borodin. Bird. Not a fragment; just a feather.. Another sliver of her clarity slipped from her grasp and the edges of her dream began to blur and mix with the red hue from the awnings above. The teacher continued without paying attention to Borodin, or River. "With all the social and medical advancements that we can bring to the independents, why would they fight so hard against us?"

And there it was. Her cue. A hundred times she had been in this moment. A hundred times she had fought against the urge to speak, knowing the words that would leave her mouth, knowing that it only ended in pain, that the wooden stylus tucked between her leg and the seat would somehow wind up in the teacher's hands, and she would suffer the sharp pain behind her eyes as the teacher drove the stylus between them like a knife.

We meddle. On the inside, River cried; she didn't want this to happen again. On the inside, she set her jaw and bent all her will towards changing the damned dream, fighting back the words even as her lips opened and started to form them. For the hundredth time, she began to despair.

"We med…"

"It's about freedom." A voice came from behind her. River's twisted in her seat, her hair whipping around and flying across her face. There was a boy there. A boy, not a fragment. And suddenly the haze closing in on her popped like a soap bubble and she was back in the moment, everything crystal clear. He had wild black hair, the kind that battled valiantly against combs, and wore a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that did nothing to obscure his vivid green eyes. His stylus sat on the desk in front of him as well, but looked wrong. It wasn't the pale tan bamboo the rest of the class used for their displays, but darker, and longer as well. River's mind absently ran a few calculations. Eleven inches, give or take a half.

"What do you mean?" the teacher asked.

"You act as if the Alliance is being generous. But every gift you give them comes with a cost. Every advance you share comes at the price of more of their liberty." The boy said. The teacher smiled her kind (the worst kind of) smile and rose from her chair, walking past the class, past River, towards the boy as he continued. "That's not generosity. You're treating them like whores, giving them a coin and expecting them to bend over and take whatever you thrust at them. Why wouldn't they fight that?"

From the mouths of babes. River had never heard a stronger indictment against the Alliance.

"Harry, you misunderstand." Said the teacher. "We're not trying to force anything on them. We're trying to help them become better."

"Say what you want. I know more than my share about the costs." He responded. He'd crossed his arms in front of his chest and didn't seem to notice that his (stylus?) was now in the teacher's hands. River realized a second too late what was about to happen and tried to yell, tried to say something, anything, but just as surely as the words spilled from her mouth in every other dream, in this one they refused to budge.

"Everything we're doing is to make a better world, Harry. We're doing it for the greater good." The teacher smiled and leveled the stylus at the boy's forehead, but didn't move to stab him. Instead she started speaking again.

"Avada Kedavra"

River's world exploded in a shower pain and a flash of sickly, green light.

_oo00oo_

River sat bolt upright in her bed. She heard a disembodied scream coming from the corner of her bunk, tearing through the silence on the wings of her nightmare. It took her a moment to realize that the scream was real, and another to realize that it was her own. Cold beads of sweat ran down her face, her back, her legs. She shivered and clutched at her hair, trying to regain some semblance of control over herself. After a moment tears joined the sweat and she ground her teeth, trying to bite back the sob welling up in her throat.

Something had changed. She could feel it.

Serenity fit her like a well-worn dress. In the years since she and Simon had first boarded she found some measure of peace in the ship, in the haphazard steel framework, the soft burn of the engines, the endless black sea surrounding her. In the silence.

She loved Serenity for the silence it brought her. The only voices she heard here were the ones that mattered, or the ones she brought with her. But now the soft hum of steel and fire and family was joined by a new sound, a sort of keening screech, like the sound of metal scraping across metal. It was soft but she could hear it slowly building. She had heard it before, in the months leading up to (Miranda) the incident. She'd hoped it was all over. Maybe it was. But the sound was back anyway. Nothing good ever came of that sound.

She took a deep breath and opened her mind to Serenity. The thoughts of (her family) the crew slowly started to drift up to her. She could feel Jayne in the room next to her, his thoughts lumbering along slowly like an ox, his ears so occupied with the sound of his own snores that he hadn't heard her. Good.

Another bubble of feeling drifted to her from the engine room. Kaylee. It was warm and sounded like strawberries and tasted like the warm hum of a plasma drive and was full of nothing but soft contentment.

Most of the others were asleep. She hadn't roused them, but she could feel Wash (dinosaurs! Grr! Argh!) watching the bridge, and with him, leaving the bridge, coming through the crew quarters towards her room, was...

Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound of soft knocking came from the hatch to her room. She crawled out of her bunk and placed her ear against it.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She could feel him on the other side. Faith and iron and old parchment. She opened the hatch and peeked through at the Shepherd on the other side.

"I heard you screaming." Book said. It was all he needed to say. She moved back to her bunk, making space for him. He settled himself in the entryway.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

River hugged herself, rubbing her shoulders. She tried to figure out what to tell him but the words were (feathers) fleeting and scattered.

"Dreams. Thoughts. Sometimes I can't…" suddenly the wall was very interesting.

Book sat in the entryway, arms resting on his knees. She could feel him watching her intently, gauging her. He saw more than the others did, sometimes. She wondered what he was thinking, but for some reason none of his thoughts floated over to her.

"I understand," he told her. Again, all he needed to say, even if he was wrong. Silence lingered between the two for a moment as he tried to assemble his thoughts.

"Some things… stay with you." He said. "Can't say that my dreams are the same as yours, or that I can really understand what's happened to you or how you're feeling, but…" he looked at the corner of the room, where the wall met the ceiling. God. He was looking for God. But after a moment he just glanced back at his own hands.

"Well, we all carry our own scars." He finished. Maybe he did understand, if not her own feelings, then something like them.

"Not scars." She said. "Scabs." Book glanced up from his hands to look at her. He had that look in his eye, inquiring and expect ant and polite, and honest. The look he gave people who were about to confess something. So she confessed. "Scabs. Like blood, crusted on top. But inside it still festers. Poison, still growing."

She watched as he took her words in and mulled on them, trying to figure out if she was talking about him or everyone or just herself. She didn't know which, either. Another moment passed before she realized that he was just content to let her talk, and didn't feel the need to impose any advice on her. "How's your heart, Shepherd? How's your legs?" she asked him.

His lips turned upwards at the corners, just slightly. "Still beatin'. Still movin'. Your brother says they'll heal." He answered, then looked at his legs as if reconsidering. "Mostly, anyhow," he added, and then after another brief moment, "I never did get the chance to thank you proper. For Haven, that is. For what you did there."

And now it was his turn to wait again. She smiled softly, too, an almost mirror image of his own. She liked this game, the way the silences and the words bounced back and forth between them. She took a moment to collect her own thoughts, scattered as they were.

"Faith." She finally said.

"Mmm?"

"Faith." She repeated. "Mal, Zoe, Simon. They believe in you. Not God, but you. You remind them that…" and at that the words left her and all she could do was make a soft gesture. But she could see that he understood. "Couldn't let you die." She continued. "Would have left us empty inside. Just a void."

"Thank you."

He meant it. She nodded.

"How far along are we?" she asked, and Book shifted a bit in the doorway and then absently scratched his beard. He always did that when the subject shifted; one of those quirks that he probably didn't even know he had.

"Wash expects we got another day of burn before we get to St. Alban's. It'll probably be half that again, on account of Mal wanting to take it slow and keep fuel. Any idea of what's waitin' there for us? I was out when Mal had the meeting."

"Out" wasn't a strong enough word for it. The painkillers that Simon stocked were strong enough to knock an ox out for five hours, or Jayne for three. Book never stood a chance. River answered as best as she could.

"Sanctuary. No storm." She said. Silence lingered for a brief second before she broke it again, "Mal is a friend of St. Alban's." And then her thoughts drifted there. Friend of St. Alban's. Sanctuary. They could have peace, maybe, for a few days at least.

Book noticed as she started to drift and got up to leave. "Rest well, River." He said as he turned to exit the doorway.

"Shepherd. Wait." She said. He looked over his shoulder at her, the pale light of the crew corridor shining in behind him. His face was mostly shadow.

"Dreams have changed." She said. The shadow shifted slightly. His brows were creasing; he was trying to understand what she was telling him. If anyone would take the time to, it was him. Or perhaps Inara, but she wasn't here.

"Things are… moving? Like night, coming from behind. Pray for me?" She asked, and the shadow shifted again, this time in surprise.

"I thought you didn't…" He started.

"God can't hear it." She interrupted. This time his face stayed the same, but the muscles in his shoulders tensed ever so slightly. She flinched a bit inside. She'd learned some things about faith. Mostly about what it meant to him. She hadn't meant to…

"Don't know if he's listening." She amended. It was a compromise for her. God wasn't rational. Wasn't there. But maybe he listened anyway.

"I listen." She finally confessed. "You care for your flock. It's… peaceful." She felt him relax, felt him smile more than she saw him.

"I will." He told her, and he stepped into the hallway and closed the hatch behind him. She smiled. Once more, it was all he needed to say.

_oo00oo_

Translation Notes

Chénmò, bù qiàdàng de háizi! – Roughly, "Silence, impertinent child!" (via Google Translate)

_oo00oo_

Author's Notes

4/28/2013 – It's been a long time since I originally posted this, but it feels much shorter. I've gone back and edited it a bit, cleaning up a few words here and there, as well as reformatting some of the text so that it matches other chapters, and adding the lines to Walt Whitman's "The Untold Want" as an introduction.

For those of you who are wondering, in this fiction I have ret-conned the events of the Big Damn Movie such that both Book and Wash survived, though barely. This reflects a preference of mine; they're my favorite characters and playing around in the Firefly universe wouldn't feel the same to me without them. One reviewer brought up that exploring the crew's reaction to their deaths would make for a wonderful story, and that's true. But I'll leave that story for another time or another author.

In the meantime, I'm curious as to what you, the reader, think of my characterizations of River and Book, or what you think of the story in general. If you have opinions to offer, or just a kind word to pass along, you can submit it as a review below. Best wishes to you.

SJ84