Somewhere way back before the war started, the Rim was still a frontier with more of the "bracing adventure for hardy men" part and just a little of the rest of it. Mal remembers being a boy on Shadow and thinking that "may you live in interesting times" was a curse he didn't see nearly enough of.

When signs of the war were getting more certain, it was his mother that told him where to find the resistance, although he doubts she much meant to help him join up. He didn't necessarily mean to, either, until he accompanied a shipment of cattle - because it was getting so cargo was no longer safe with government transporters - to Chengdu, and met, first thing in the spaceport, a recruiting drive for the Independent Army. Mortimer Cromwell was speaking from a podium, a huge, red-haired monolith of a man in expensive clothes, who garnered no less rapt attention for his obvious money. Mal listened for half an hour before going off on his own business. His mother had told him to stay out of trouble, and keeping the ranch in food and potable water came first. But it stayed with him, through that day and into the next, until he stood in the port, considering, for fifteen whole minutes before shaking his head and boarding the transport home, still thinking, but other things came first.

Three days on a stinking, badly-run passenger ship later, he stepped out onto Shadow and went home to find it gone, the outbuildings still smouldering. His mother was gone, along with all but a few hands, who'd come back to gather their treasures before setting off for other places, getting off the moon as quick as they could. They told Mal, when they saw him, faces dark and heartbroken - because Mrs. Reynolds had been the kind of woman that attracted followers, not employees - that when the raiders had come, his mother had taken down the first wave without even rising from her chair on the verhanda. They also told him that when the authorities came, as they'd been called, it had been two hours too late. They'd only sent three men, in a patrol skimmer, and they'd done nothing but shake their heads, enter things into a form, and take the bodies away.

Mal went back to Chengdu that same day.


Simon remembers the Cromwells, though he never knew them - but every well-off family in the Core knew about them, along with knowing about every other wealthy citizen who, when the time came, chose to defy Unification, and made themselves traitors. It was told, by his teachers, as a parable, a warning against losing everything for the wrong reasons.

He was pretty sure he believed it, too, right up to the moment he learned what they'd done to River.

The Cromwells may only have been one - extremely - wealthy family amongst dozens, but Simon remembers them. At least, he remembers hearing tell of the man who must have been Collin and Catriona's father. Mortimer Cromwell made his own tragedy, and got famous afterwards, after his wife died in a hospital on Persephone, assigned limited care because, it was said, of a clerical error, but everyone knew the real reason to be her husband's controversial - and very public - politics. After that, after what was left of the family vanished among the border moons, no one was surprised when Mortimer Cromwell reappeared commanding Browncoats.

Simon's not sure, because he was much younger, and less invested in current affairs at the time, but he seems to remember it being rumoured that Cromwell's unit went three battles before losing a single man, and then it was a bloodbath that lasted two days.

He doesn't remember what's supposed to have happened to Cromwell, himself. But he doesn't imagine it was something good.

Kaylee's holding his hand as they walk down a tree-lined street on which the houses are set back from the road, as if they're hiding. Given the neighbourhood, though, that's not out of the question. When Zoe abruptly turns and leads them up a half-hidden path through an overgrown lawn, Kaylee squeezes his hand and they follow. Simon's not sure which one of them is reassuring the other. But she's smiling, and he's not, which gives him a clue.

Zoe raps on the front door, and Simon looks up at the house. Big windows, with field emitters, the expensive, invisble kind. The front door is heavy wood, carved; leaves and branches, mostly. It's a strangely graceful pattern for such a weighty thing.

Simon clutches the handle of his bag and contrives to appear comfortable. He suspects he's failing miserably, but at least he's trying. River's better at this sort of thing than he is, with fitting in with folk she's just met, but that's hardly a surprise. River always did everything more quickly than he did. It's just the way she is. He bets by now she's sitting back, drinking tea and laughing in all the right places.

He's not far off. A tall, red-haired man opens the door, beckons them in, and in the big, high-ceilinged room at the back of the house he finds his sister cross-legged on the floor at a low table, playing chess with a small, red-haired woman who, judging by the cane propped against the arm of her chair, is his patient. River is losing, and apparently delighted.

"Checkmate!" she sings, knocking down her own queen. "Again!" She speedily resets the board, and the other woman looks up, gives him an uncertain smile. River looks up, too, and smiles at him, big and bright.

"Simon!" she says, leaping up. "I lost."

"Yes," he says, as she catches up his hand and pulls him toward the table. "I see that. But, how..."

"I can't see!" she says, smile even bigger, for a moment. "I can't see what she'll play. I have to work again. Simon, fix her leg."

River pushes him down into a sofa next to them, and Simon takes in the woman facing him. "Riona Cromwell," she says, holding out one hand, which Simon takes. "Though you knew that."

"I-- yes," says Simon. "It's nice to meet you." He finds her manner confusing, as he finds the house, because it's not at all what he was expecting. He understands, suddenly, why it's strange, as he bends his head slightly over her hand, and she nods, as if it's natural, though the half-smile on her face is amused. He can't decide, in that moment, whether he's missed it, or not. A year ago, he would have been sure.

Not the captain's regular brand of old army buddy, for one thing.

River gestures impatiently. "Simon. Tit for tat. Fair's fair."

Without thinking, Simon reaches for his bag. It's certainly easier to work, at the moment. "Do you want to go somewhere else, or...?"

But when he looks up, the look in her eyes is momentarily astonished, though she wipes it away, quickly. She shakes her head. "Here's fine," she says, her gaze flickering to River, then back. "I'm not altogether sure there's anything you can do, Doctor Tam. I have had someone in to look at it."

"Well, you haven't seen me, yet," says Simon, before thinking. But he smiles, and she smiles back. Simon runs a scanner over the leg and hovers over the knee joint. He keeps looking sideways at River, who is sitting still and focused, setting the white king and queen against one another in a fierce marital dispute.

"What exactly..." he asks, still scanning, "...what did you... do?"

"Your sister, you mean?" She shrugs. "Just helped her put back what's supposed to be there." Riona tilts her head to one side, considering him. "Though I guess that's not much of an issue for you, is it, Doctor Tam?"

Simon looks up, puzzled. She shakes her head. "Never mind."

The scanner beeps at him. "There's some nerve damage," he murmurs, prodding gently with his fingers, "and I think the muscle has been torn and hasn't healed properly. It, uh..." he looks up at her, tries to ignore the very faintly triumphant look on her face. "I can do something for the pain, and repair the damage, but it'll still be a while before it's back to normal."

"To be honest, Doctor, that's a lot better than I expected." She looks relieved.


Mid-sentence with the doc, Riona meets his eyes, briefly. The look she sends Mal isn't just surprised, it's sneaky, and thoughtful, which means, or used to mean: "We'll talk later," and that it's important, somehow.

It worries Mal, more than a little, because in the old days, that look tended to end up in somebody getting arrested, or naked, or shot, or all three, or somebody, as in one memorable instance, hip-deep in live eels.

Mal doesn't like to think about it.

She's talking to Simon, who's working, focused, and for Simon, at ease - the way he only gets when he is working, though he seems as puzzled by her manner as Mal feels. Mal wonders about that. Despite appearances to the contrary, the boy's not an idiot - has some startlingly accurate insight at times - but Mal wonders which part of things he's finding odd. To Mal, the Cromwells being enigmatic and queer is matter-of-course. Though they do seem to have taken an interest in River.

He's known both families long enough for that to make him nervous.


Kaylee dashes up into the second floor, dragging behind her a Simon who's using only a fraction of his usual stiffness and nerves, a wonder Mal attributes entirely to Kaylee's influence. At the top of the stairs is the room with the big tub, which - aside from bartering for engine parts and frilly dresses, of course - is just about Kaylee's favourite thing in all the 'verse.

And then Mal stops the thought right there, because his memory carries on to helpfully remind him that the first two up those stairs, last visit, were Zoe and Wash, fingers tangled and voices low.

He shakes his head and redirects his attention, then, because River is arguing against going back to Serenity with Zoe and Jayne.

"There's a garden, though," River says, looking sulky.

"And you'll be enjoying it plenty when you come back for supper," Collin says, giving Mal a querying look.

"Hardly ever turn down an offer of real actual food," Mal says, nodding. "Anywise, lil' albatross, port control's expectin' you for the equipment check - assuming you still want to be piloting?"

River brightens like a light. "Flying and carrot cake with carrots," she says, cheerfully. "I am ienjoying/i today." And she follows Jayne and Zoe out the door.

Mal turns around, and Riona's giving him that look again.


"I've no notion of how to explain it to you, Mal," she tells him, toying with a stylus on the low table in front of her and offering him the bottle he was enjoying earlier. That she's plying him with liquor is a pretty good sign that she knows he's not going to like what she has to tell him.

"Explain what?" he asks, already feeling tired, and remembering, with an uncomfortableness, the way eels slither when they're riled.

She narrows her eyes on the inlay of the tabletop; it's a kaleidoscope-shape, flowers and circles. She's staring at it like it's a map to some answer she can't quite work out.

"Why'd you bring them here, Mal?" she asks, "aside from conjuring a reason to make sure we were still walking and talking, I mean."

Mal blinks at her, tries not to fidget. The trouble with the Cromwells is sometimes they know his answers before he has them, and it's always bothered him deep. "Girl needed some learning. You folks're the closest I've got to experts."

She stares at her hands for a long time before saying: "You had a Shepherd on your ship. Man by the name of Derrial Book."

It's not a question, though it's built like one. He grins, challenging. "You think it's outta character?"

Eyes still lowered, he sees her smile, momentarily. "That, too," she agrees, "but I had other concerns. You ever have doubts about the man, Mal?"

Mal stiffens and leans forward, ever so slightly. "Any particular reason you ask?"

She drums her fingers on one knee. She looks up briefly with a question in her face. "How much detail you willing to bear here, Mal?"

Mal stares, then falls back in his chair. He angles a glare at her. "You know full well I don't like flying blind. Don't got much of a choice."

Riona leans back and regards him with the sort of scrutiny Mal's only ever seen used on bugs and children, and he feels bothered, because he's never much liked being treated like either. He knows she doesn't mean it, so he lets it slide, but that doesn't mean he has to like it.

"Long time back," she says, slowly, eyes dropping down again, "Back when Earth was still there, before it was Earth That Was, there were always stories. About people who could... who could do what we can do. What River can do."

She doesn't need to explain what she means; it's implied.

"What sort of stories?" Mal asks, cautiously.

"Stories about our place in the world. Stories we still carry, that back then, men weren't just little things crawling on the crust of a world, but... different. Stories that say we grew from Earth That Was like trees, like birds, like water, part of it instead of just placed on it."

Mal leans forward, listening but puzzled because he's heard this before, but only in tales, and not serious ones.

"It isn't something we teach, now, because it's no longer so, to be honest. There's no man can say he feels connected to his world, not really. But back then they thought - they believed it - that how we made that bond was telling of... of why Men were made, of where we were going, of where we'd come from. They'd spend whole lives trying to work it out. But there were some people who were supposed to ken it better than others."

"You mean... like you. Readers."

"I... I think so."

"What do you mean, you think?"

She shrugs. "It's stories, Mal. It's well-meant stories, ones passed down in our family, in a lot of families, I know, though I couldn't tell you who they were - it's something we were charged with keeping. That notion... that sense we lost when we left where we came from. So I don't... I don't iknow/i it."

"How 'bout you tell me what you do know?" he says, sighing.

She folds her hands together. "Father explained it saying... saying we'd been trusted with something, with keeping a memory."

"A... memory."

She gives him an irritated look at the cynical tone, but says: "Simply put, Mal, when you can read folks you can write in them, too."

He blinks, comprehension dawning. "You mean... keeping a memory means... a true memory."

She nods.

"Whose?"

Again, a slow, thoughtful shrug, her eyes distant. "Hard to say. May have been someone, long ago, who knew that sense, that growing out of something, and didn't want it fading when his children had their own, never knowing it. Probably were others, many on many... I know of at least two other families like ours, carrying memories, different ones. Mostly it's a sense, not a real, linear sort of memory, but.." Her eyes unfocus briefly, and then fix on his face. "It's hard to explain, Mal. It's more a feeling than anything. But Father gave it to us when we were little, and kept giving it to us year after year, like making sure it would stick. Likely it's been changed by the keepers. But... I'd have to show you."

She makes no move towards him, but the offer hangs in the air in a moment, and unacknowledged, dissipates like smoke. Instead, Mal sits back again, looking at her with new eyes; like they weren't strange enough, now he learns they're magic, too.

"You said there were other families. Who?"

She shakes her head. "We were never given names. And... that's the other thing, Mal, that I should tell you; the other part of the memory, isn't just Earth That Was, but the other families. Or... family. That we were linked by something, something other than the carrying or we were, ages back. I don't know. It's faint."

Mal thinks a moment, then frowns at her. "So here's where I ask about your quickly-vanishing point."

She sits up straighter, businesslike, and Mal's a little nervous, all over again. "Far as I know," she says, "we've been doing this since... since Earth That Was, even. But lately, last ten years or so, even before the war, I became aware - not 'learned' because Father never told me, and I don't think he told Collin, either - that there were people looking for us. Trying to get us to... prove ourselves. Out ourselves, for what we do.

"There was a man... came to the house a half-dozen times when I was young, ten or so. Some kind of priest, I think, but Mother and Father never told us. That was on Persephone, here. He'd come, all politness and buttoned-down, talk with my parents, stay for supper, once or twice, just... talking. I don't know how father knew him. He may have been someone through business, or just an acquaintance through the society; it's hard to tell, sometimes. But I do know he was working his way through the neighbourhood, that he visited every family we knew, every schoolfriend of mine and Collin's. I know nobody really knew where he lived. I remember Mother saying... he was a 'hanger-on.' I didn't know what that meant, at the time, but you've seen them. Folks who make their living being friends with wealthy folk. They're tolerated, as they're harmless, mostly, and rich folks like to be flattered. But I don't think that's what he was."

"Why not?"

"Well..." she looks thoughtful, again. "I remember his manner more than anything... the way he'd talk to me and Collin, careful, like he knew how to talk to kids. He'd ask you how school was and you'd find yourself telling him about your nightmares and the berries you stole from the neighbour's garden. You know those kind of people? And I said, he came a few times, and the last time, Father threw him out of the house, polite as anything, but frightening. You remember Father's moods."

Mal nods, eyebrow arched. He was more than a little afraid of Mortimer Cromwell, and isn't ashamed to admit it, either.

"I think he was after us, Mal. I think he wanted to see what we could do. And I think... I think once he was reading us."

She shivers, and he reaches out a hand without thinking, then drops it when she shakes her head. "I'm not certain, of course. But there was something about him, all the same."

"After, Father told us, if we ever saw him again, to tell them right away, not to speak to him.

And Mal, I saw him not six months ago, in Eavesdown."


"It's troubling," says River, "quiet." She is lying, flat on her belly, along the sun-warmed cobbles of the courtyard, with the fingers of her right hand buried in the soil around a tomato plant. The warm-dark-soil-smell is filling the air, and wending through it is the smell of baking dumplings and stirfry and onions and pepper. Vaguely River can sense that Riona is beginning to wonder where are the tomatoes she sent River to gather.

They are lined up in a row on the stones near River's shoulder, and she still has a clear memory of their cool, smooth skins lingering on her fingertips. The roots between her fingers are still, but they aren't. They are drawing, drinking, breathing, and if she concentrates...

River.

River hears it and feels it, and when she feels it, directed at her with care and intention, she jumps, and she blinks, and the fingers of the hand in the dirt jerk, slightly, tighter, so that the tomato plant shivers. River draws away her fingers, shakes off the dirt, and smiles, and whispers: "Coming."

River enters the kitchen on a cloud, walks into a wall of cooking smells and content people being still, and sets the basket of tomatoes down on the table.

Riona catches her eye - the only one but Simon and Kaylee who will still do that, unhesitating, and nods, smiling. "Ooh, those look good," says Kaylee, emphatically, and does unthinkingly slaps Simon's hand away from the pile of carrot-slices she's slowly building, rapping his fingers with the flat side of the blade. Simon sucks his knuckles and smiles, ruefully, and River is briefly, profoundly happy that Simon has smiled at someone other than her. She reaches for the other little knife and sits down with a tomato in one hand.

Mal makes a motion like he wants to lean across the table. "Uh," he says, but not moving, quite, "that such a good idea, little one?" he asks, but Riona, not even turning, says chidingly, "leave her be, Mal. She's helping," as River begins cutting the tomatoes into thin little pieces and heaping them next to the carrots, so the colours seem to bleed into each other.

Chastised, Mal sits back and watches, as River looks up and makes a face. "I'm helping," she says, and feels herself slot back out of the moment like wheel-teeth, but sees that she was slotted in for a time, and is proud of herself. She puts a piece of tomato in her mouth and concentrates on the metallic tang of the flavour while she cuts, avoiding fingers and trying to find the lines of separation in the tomato skin like fracture lines in a diamond. She's never cooked like this before, with her own hands and her own nose and her own tongue, not before the ship or after, because before there were other people cooking, bringing the meal to the table like magic, and scolding River away from the door when she got curious and wanted to know how it was made. After, it was ship food, protein powder and hot water, and not the same as this, opening the tomato with a narrow edge to see what it looked like on the inside.

She likes this, this patient working, this gentle sliding-apart of pieces, and she likes that Riona has her bring the pieces to the counter and lay them, careful, mosaic, over the long, flat noodles in the dish. She likes the smell, all these things together, and how familiar it seems without being familiar. She likes Riona letting her taste what she's stirring on the stove, like her opinion can be trusted, and she likes watching the carrots disappear into the pot.

Her belly is growling, she likes it so much.

River knows that the captain worries, about her, about the crew, about Kaylee, and right now, about these two strange, clever red-haired people River has found herself liking right away, in the way she used to learn people, quickly and altogether. It's an extra thing to think on, for the captain, and she can see him worrying, the smell of it like the bitter of copper. It worries at him, and River can see that, too. But she cares more, at this moment, for the vegetables, and holding a knife with care and purpose, and suppers, and the smell, the real smell, of the room.

She can feel the ground under her feet, for the first time in a long time, and it's moving, always moving.


Mal spends months in the back-and-forth, bits-and-pieces work on the Cromwell estate, training with the militia, following Mortimer when he goes off-world needing an escort who's firm but not too threatening, staying behind in town or at the house under the unspoken command to keep an eye on the kids, although Collin's his age at least and Riona's nearing twenty. It's not quite a year before Mal's staying over for supper and being invited to drink very good scotch afterwards, and alone among the others he sees doing the same jobs Cromwell asks of him, he gets the feeling that he's being groomed for something. It's not the something he can tell that Catriona Cromwell wishes it were, though she's not as awkward about it as she could be, and is at least open and honest about it - and under different circumstances, Mal might have been receptive to it, but he's got his mind on other things, and in any case he's a little worried about the possibility of revenge being visited on his face if he happened to falter in his judgement of the situation, if not by Riona then by her brother and then her father, in that order, who like to be protective but don't like her to know it.

The girl's got other recommending qualities than her interest, anyway, and she's the sharpest shot Mal's ever met (if a bit quick on the trigger), and she tells the militia what to do (although she's not really meant to), and both her and her brother have clearly been training for a war since they could walk, or near enough. He learns that their mother's dead, and that their father blames the Alliance for taking issue with his politics, but that he really blames himself for not hot-footing it off Persephone sooner than he did.

But Mal knows he's just one part of a picture, and that things are getting worse all over the place, and that Mortimer Cromwell's not the only one spoiling for a fight.

He knows that there are more expropriations happening, and that the Alliance is getting greedier if not more ruthless, and that there have been food riots all along the Rim, these things first-hand because he spends a week on Valhelm, a moon the size of Shadow whose business is mining, and whose taxes have been getting higher and higher by the month, and whose people are ready and waiting for the word from the Independent Army, as it's coming, very quietly, to be called. They've got a fair militia, and Mal's there with a few others to assess their training, and their readiness, and how close they are to breaking, and also to carry drinks to those that want them, because, let's face it, the ones in charge are the ones paying for the guns. But he's the one the sensible men trust when they're wary of the wealthy ones, and he's the common face of the command on this part of the Rim, and he's useful that way.

He mostly spends the week convincing them to wait, to dig in and wait, and not tip their hand too soon, because nobody wants to have this bloodier than it needs to be, and the Independents aren't willing to get folks killed without direct cause. Mal goes home - it's coming to be "home" in his head, if only for practical purposes - dusty and tired and is told that Collin's back, and that he's not alone, and that he'd better eat and get a good night's rest because he's off again in the morning.

Mal does not expect, early the next day, to be handed an ident card with a travel visa logged into it. But that's what he's handed, along with a careful speech on keeping his head down and not striking up unneccessary and inflammatory conversation. Collin seems, as always, unimpressed, and today, he seems tired. Mal tries to take it in stride, especially when he's led through to the back of the house, where the horses are stamping enough dust to dim the sun, and Catriona, curly hair tied on top of her head, is perched on the outside of the fence.

Inside the ring, a woman Mal doesn't know is wrestling a horse.

At least, that's what it looks like. The horse seems a bit more alarmed by the situation than the woman does, as it's backed away and is standing, head lowered, eyes half-closed, as far away from the woman as possible. The woman stands hands-on-hips in the middle of the corral, with every symptom of a displeased parent.

"Told you," she says, to the horse, but Catriona laughs.

"Told you," she says, "took me three weeks just to get near him without getting bit, and that was knowing his moods."

"It ain't his moods that're bothering me," comes the answer. The stranger is tall and straight, with skin the colour of dark honey and curves like... Mal grins, despite himself, hiding it only because, as she stalks across the corral, slowly, she gives off signals that translate pretty clearly as "I can hurt you," and Mal is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. She moves like a cat. This is something with which the horse takes issue, because he's looking nervous as she approaches him again, he's looking cautious, though less riled.

Mal sidles up to the fence and stands next to Riona, who tilts her head into the corral. "She's been at this for an hour," she says, "since breakfast. You're late," she adds, looking at him for the first time. She smiles the smile that Mal knows is meant to be come-hither, but comes off more little-girl, and every time she uses it comes out a little more disappointed. Now it's approaching resigned, and the next smile is just cheerful. "Father's been waiting. Got a job for you."

"So long as I don't have to fight her," Mal says, indicating the woman now stroking the surprised-looking horse along its long nose.

"Hah! You haven't got it in you," Riona tells him, "Zoe'd eat you alive."

"Don't doubt it," Mal agrees, with respect. "Zoe" is slipping the bridle slowly over the horse's ears, and finally turns to look at Riona in what must be triumph, but doesn't quite register on her whole face.

"All right, you win," calls Riona, and the horse gives a little back-kick that makes the fence shudder. Zoe cuts him loose and crosses the corral towards them. Mal takes a half-step away out of instinct as she jumps the fence and looks him up and down, inspecting. She nods a little before Riona speaks.

"Malcolm Reynolds," she says, "meet Zoe Alleyne. She'll be taking you to the unit."

"As a CO?" Mal can't help asking.

"As a colleague," Zoe says, steady and amused.

They shake hands.


Supper happens in the yard, on fat shabby cushions along a low table in the grass, and Simon sits next to Kaylee and doesn't say much beyond "pass the salt" and "thank you." They spent the afternoon neck-deep in lovely, hot, iactual/i water, and he hasn't felt that content and almost dizzily happy in months - he thinks ever - but the moment they stepped back out among the other, he found himself nervous and uncertain again. Kaylee keeps sending him glances that are half brimming-over-fond and half worried, and squeezing his arm, his hand, his knee. But Kaylee is a social creature, and she's talking as she's touching him, and Simon can't help feeling left-out and an afterthought, even though he knows it's stupid. Kaylee doesn't have afterthoughts. For Kaylee, everything is important, is right now. It's one of the reasons he loves her so much.

And he does, he thinks, finding himself, as every time, deeply, freshly astonished at the idea. He is in love with Kaylee Frye. The magnitude of it escapes him, sometimes, but there it is. It is even more bewildering now, now that they are together, and in the thick of it, than it was when he was just aware of her from a distance and hating his awkwardness. He still hates his awkwardness.

This house makes him feel awkward. Even back when he was alive and a citizen, even when he knew all the steps and all the words and what the looks meant, by rote if not by instinct, he always felt a little like he was always having to keep dancing to keep up. Simon's not sure, by now, that he ihas/i any instincts. He wonders, sometimes, if things like that were left out when his genetic code was being written up. It always disconcerted him, at first, to be drawn to Kaylee, who has more than enough instinct for the both of them. Kaylee's never unsure about herself. She's rarely unsure. And it never brings her out in a cold sweat like it does Simon. He likes knowing.

It gives him a little comfort, though, to realise, gradually, that the Cromwells aren't all they seem to be, aristocratically, anyway. They're quite a few more things than they seem to be, in other ways. But Simon gathers that Colin and Catriona were taught manners in the opposite order from the way he and River were taught; last, as a necessity, rather than the very basis of everything, to be honoured above all else. Simon remembers wondering, as a boy, whether his mother ever did anything sincerely, or if she were merely a walking, talking, well-dressed frame for the manners she knew so expertly. "Manners," Simon thinks now, bitterly, were a distinctly euphemistic term for what they really were. Words for controlling people. Words for convincing yourself you felt differently than you did. Words for deciding your children mattered less to you than what your peers thought of you.

Simon fiercely reminds himself not to get angry, not now, because there's no reason, now. In fact, he thinks as he looks along the table to where River is seated, between Riona at the table's head, and Zoe, on her left. River is smiling, no, grinning, in that old intentionally manic way she used to when she was explaining something to Simon that she knew he'd hate. Her hands are moving, emphasising and shaping in the air, and her face is alive with the story. He can't hear what she's saying, but it makes him briefly, intensely happy to see River so animated, before the story ends and she drops her hands demurely to her lap, her face calm and distant again, but not so distant as a few weeks ago, or even this morning. She's getting better. She really is. It's amazing, and Simon can't quite believe, and doesn't want to, that any of it has to do with the red-haired woman smiling faintly at River's side as she picks apart a piece of bread with distracted fingers. It's ridiculous. That it seems to also be true is driving Simon crazy.

The captain hasn't spoken much throughout the meal, and he's sitting to Riona's right, chin in one hand, wearing the disturbingly thoughtful expression he usually wears before he suggests something that nearly gets them all killed. He's looking between Riona and River, and back to Riona, and over at Collin, two spaces to his right, past Jayne, and the expressions following one another across his face are starting to make Simon nervous.

But he pushes it back, because they're having a good meal, and Kaylee has just reached out to touch his arm, palm sliding down his rolled-up sleeve and warmly down his forearm, twining their fingers together without looking. And then she does look, she turns her head a little and smiles a little, and then she leans back from the table and left a little, into his shoulder.

When he realises he's threading the fingers of his left hand through her hair where it spills across his shoulder, he's surprised, because it isn't something he decided to do, or planned. It just came, like it was the right thing to do.