a/n: Hope you all like Simon, cause there's a lot of him in this chapter!

IV. Half a Heart Alone

In her bunk, River's confusion and misery are such that she would welcome any distraction, make the sight of her brother's shiny shoes descending into her space seem a relief. If what needs to be told to him is less than welcome, at least Simon is the proper person to share her burden with.

"Mei mei," he says, sitting beside her. "Are you feeling all right? Mal said you'd been upset today."

"You mean he affirmed it when you asked him," she says, well aware of the bristling still on display between her brother and Mal. She knows Mal would never openly discuss their private communications with Simon, just as Simon's acknowledgment of her relationship is mostly limited to a heightened attention in matters of contraception.

Predictably, he ignores her statement. "River, I know that Kaylee's told you. Are you bothered that-"

"Simon," she cuts him off, making a face at him, "don't be stupid. I knew you were thinking of it months ago. I'm pleased for you, really. Isn't that."

"What is it then?" he asks. "Though if it's something to do with Mal, I'd just as soon go and get Kaylee or Zoë for you, if it's all the same."

She stares at him levelly. "You've really got to get over disliking him for no good reason. Isn't attractive in a man of your upbringing."

"And it isn't attractive for you to be an obfuscating brat," he responds, giving her a gentle nudge with his elbow. "So...?"

She sighs, decides to approach the problem sideways. "Our parents. What would you say, if you could talk to them?"

"Mei mei, why would you..." He shakes his head, eyebrows drawn together as he considers her. "I honestly don't know. I suppose half of me would want to curse them for not being there when we needed them. And the other half would want to invite them to my wedding."

"We failed them," she says, a tremor building faint in her voice. "Children are supposed to honor their parents. Bring prestige to the family. They failed us, but we failed them too."

"Well, all the Tams have succeeded spectacularly in failing, then," Simon responds. "Except you, River. You never got a chance to choose any kind of path for yourself. You didn't fail anyone."

Reaching over to take his hand, a bond and comfort, she says, "You didn't fail me, Simon. I shouldn't have said it. Doesn't matter, what would have been in the Core. Not out here."

"No, I suppose it doesn't. The view does tend to be different from the black."

He has not asked her yet, has not touched again on the why of her question, but she knows he will. Knowing the only way out is through, she takes a deep breath, and plunges. "I saw our father. Here, in town."

"You what?" he asks, face disbelieving. "That couldn't possibly – River, are you sure?"

"I remember my own father, Simon," she says. There are many things still that she doesn't recall, that she chooses not to, perhaps. But more than those are the memories she had thought lost forever, those that were, in the end, only hiding in the haze of drugs and the scars in her brain. She remembers now; things that were, things she shouldn't know, and sometimes it's a difficulty, keeping them ordered. But her parents she knows, as she is convinced she would always have known Simon, no matter what had happened, no matter how much they had bent her. "I saw him today. Spoke to him."

"You talked to him?" Simon's eyes narrow. "This morning, you mean, when you were in town?" She nods, and he speaks again, his tone strained. "And you didn't tell me this right away?"

"Didn't tell anyone. Not even Mal." She shakes her head, confused now at her own actions, remembering only the driving sense of panic, of urgency and secrecy. "I didn't want to share it. Cause chaos."

"River, what-" he breaks off, the grasp of his hand tightening on hers. "It could be a trap," he says, flatly. "Why else would he be out here, after all this time?"

"It's not. I would know, Simon. He just wants to see us. See you," she amends. "Wants you to go back with him, to Osiris. He thinks it's safe now."

Simon gives a hollow laugh. "I doubt very much if it will ever be safe for us. And even if we could go back..." He sighs, then gives her a look full of appraisal. "Mei mei, do you want to go back?"

"They don't really want me," she says. "Just you. I couldn't leave Serenity anyhow. Bound here."

"No, of course not," he says, mouth twisting as he pulls his hand away. "You couldn't possibly leave your precious Captain." He sighs, and it sounds of bitterness, his face turned from hers. "Are there any other secrets you're keeping from me, or is that all?"

She tilts her head, Simon's thoughts so loud from being so long repressed that she hardly needs to read, can feel them as though they belong to her. "You're angry with me," she says, slowly. "Not just for this. Angry because I didn't tell you about Mal. For months, you've been angry over it?"

His jaw tightens, and she is reminded that her brother has always carried anger well; quietly and coiled within him, but no less fierce for that. "You should have told me you were in love with him. But no, instead you just let me stumble on it, when it was-"

"What?" she asks. "When it was too late to halt?" He doesn't answer, but he doesn't need to; she knows. "I couldn't wait, Simon. When you want something, you shouldn't wait. Too many risks."

"I waited," he says, and his voice is quiet, too quiet for the emotion behind it. "I waited until it was nearly too late, because I was too caught up with – with everything," he finishes, but she knows he means with you.

"I know," she says, taking his hand again. "That's why I couldn't. I learned from you, Simon. I always have. You teach me, and you guide me. You saved me, so that I could be a person again. And I am, because of you. Wasn't because I didn't trust you. But I needed to be my own person for once."

"It's just difficult to let you go," he says, and then he doesn't, hugging her and letting her rest her chin on his shoulder, as they've done since she was too small to remember. This is another thing she recalls; it was always Simon she went to for comfort, Simon she turned to with scraped knees and the small emotional wounds of a child. She knew, at the Academy, that if anyone came for her (if, if, never when but always if), it would be Simon. And so she tries, her words muffled by his shoulder, to ease his bitterness.

"You don't have to let me go. Just have to learn to share. I share you with Kaylee. It isn't that difficult, I promise. Emotion isn't a finite quantity, Simon."

"I've always been good at sharing," he says, as they break apart. "Since you always demanded whatever I had." It isn't true, not really, but she doesn't contradict him. The one thing Simon has never wanted to share is her; his overwhelming presence in her life is due not only to her own preference but to his, their bond excluding even their parents. "But this doesn't really matter now. Tell me about today."

"He was at the bar. Where Mal and I went, for the job. He asked after you. Said he's been looking for us, wanted me to bring him to you. But I – needed time to think, and then Mal was coming and I couldn't think, and I just ran," she says, her words spilling out in a torrent, faster and faster. "Came back here and Kaylee was waiting, and I knew I couldn't tell you then, couldn't spoil things for you, but it ate at me and now it's all soured, burned at the edges."

"Shh, River," he says, holding her close again. "I understand; it's alright. Nothing is spoiled. This doesn't change anything."

"You don't want to go back?" she asks, sniffling.

He's silent for a long moment, and worlds and lifetimes pass in the hush between them. "I don't think it would be worth it, not anymore," he says eventually. "I thought it was all I wanted, once. I wanted the life I'd built back, wanted to be the person everyone always thought I was supposed to be. The person I knew how to be."

"But now you've learned to be yourself again."

"I have. This certainly isn't Osiris, and the infirmary here will never be the same as the trauma centers there. But I've changed so much..." He shakes his head. "I couldn't be that person anymore. I can't be their son, not the one they want back. And I couldn't leave you, or Kaylee. I couldn't leave Serenity," he says, sounding vaguely surprised at his own statement, and River wonders at the way her brother can be so intelligent while taking such time to grasp things that have long been certain. "Still, I suppose I owe it to him to deliver that news in person. If you can find him again, of course."

She thinks, for a moment, of lying, of denying the possibility and leaving it all to settle in the dust of Persephone. But there is a voice, the price of her atonement and memory speaking once more, through the ship; the worn and warm voice of the flock's Shepherd.

How we treat our dead is part of what makes us different.

She knows, letting the words settle along her skin, the truth of this. Her parents are alive, as she and Simon are alive, and yet they are not; to each other, each pair is dead as though they were ashes, scattered to the winds. They just don't know it yet. The only way to have mercy is to make it known, to sever what bonds remain for a final time, or they will plague each other forever.

"I'm aware of where he'll be," she says, knowing their father will not have given up, will be waiting for their return, trusting to her slim promise because it is all he has. "We can go tomorrow, early."

Simon hesitates before speaking, his thoughts swirling around her in tumbled bits. "River, you don't have to go with me. If you don't want to, that is. It's probably safer if you don't, after all."

"Told you he has honest intentions. Safer for you if I do go, and you know it," she says, raising her eyebrows at him.

"You always did have to tag along with me," he says, smiling again, and some of her panic is soothed. "Mal won't like it though. He'll probably insist on coming with us." From Simon's expression, she knows he desires a meeting between their father and their Captain as little as she does.

"Don't tell him," she says. "He'll just fret. Make a nuisance of himself. He's very good at that."

"Mei mei," he says, using his long-suffering-patience tone, the one she has come to know too well, "it's not that I disagree with your conclusions, but you really ought to tell him. Or do you imagine he won't notice that you've suddenly vanished?"

"He shouldn't have to solve my problems. I don't want to be a burden, need to do this for myself."

"River, I may not care for him like you do, but I'm certain he doesn't see you as a burden," he says, confusion still evident.

"Don't want to give him reason to," she says, seeking desperately for the correct words to explain. "He sees me like I'm a woman. Equal to him. The past makes me small, broken, chaotic. I need to keep Mal in the present." She looks up at her brother, her eyes searching his face. "Do I make sense?"

Simon looks bemused, shaking his head slowly. "The first time the man met you, you were naked in a box, and I think he wanted to kill me because he thought I'd bought you. Even when you were at your worst, he hardly seemed to think any less of you; only of the people who'd harmed you. But yes, I understand your motivations."

"He thought you bought me? Why?" she asks, and wonders why Simon's face goes pink and he seems unable to form words, before he looks at her, giving her permission to read what he doesn't wish to say. "Oh," she says, blinking. "He has such a smutty mind."

"Please," he says, holding up a hand, "I don't need to hear about it."

She laughs, and after they work out the details (she feels like a small child again, plotting to run away from home), he leaves her to herself, and she settles, drifting in solitude among the wisps of her thoughts as hours pass. What she explained to Simon is, she knows, truth. It's easier now than it once was to understand herself, but seeing her father has upset her balance, her rhythm. Who she was seems so very far from who she is, an equation she can't make add up.

She is River Tam; a whole and a sum of parts. What fails to fit together, now, is the form of these parts; an uncertainty in whether she is meant to be woman or daughter, mate or burden. This duality is splitting her conception of self, ripping along its seams, and she knows repair will only come with excision, with something of herself left behind in the world under Serenity. Once she could have transitioned from one to the other in a gradual fashion, built one role upon the base of the other until they were one and the same. But now is too late; she's fought too hard to achieve her current form, purposely chosen and sculpted to fit. The seasons of her life have shifted; she can never again be both.

On Serenity, her life seems an ideal; free in a world where no one mistrusts her, no one fears her, a world made up of love and protection and feeling. But this, she knows, is just a conception of reality, and letting herself hide in it, quiet and safe, won't resolve the problem of her former world.

She has had enough of hiding. Tomorrow, she will depart, and face her demons without running, with only her brother at her side – as she arrived, as it should be, with their demons shared.

But for tonight – tonight, she will have Mal.

It's the click of the door locking shut that wakes Mal, though he can't really recall drifting off in the first place. Didn't think he was like to, what with the whole damn day having made him so uneasy, putting him on edge like he's expecting the tramp of Alliance boots at any moment.

Or, if he's telling the truth, like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop with River, for her to come along and tell him Kaylee was right and he's been doing this whole relationship thing wrong from the start, cause he might've been telling himself that's a load of foolishness all night long, but it still ain't stopped him from thinking on it.

So he's mighty glad to see her now, moving across the floor like a shadow through the dim bit of light he'd left on in hopes she'd make her way down to him.

Makes him even happier to note she's acting just the same as ever, leaving her clothes to lay on the floor and slipping in next to him without a word; he shifts over, making room for her to curl her body up against his, not needing to be told.

"Hey there, li'l one," he mumbles, holding onto the brief hope that she'll just snuggle up and go to sleep, and everything'll be back to normal come morning, no more secrets, no more worrying.

"Are you ever sorry?" she asks, sending that hope down in flames and making him glad he's still got a soldier's instincts, the ability to wake up almost immediately chief among them. "Sorry that you kept us on? That you're with me now?"

"Darlin', it's always a foolish question to be askin' a man if he's sorry he's got a naked woman in his bed," he says, teasing out of nothing more than habit. "But that's a damn fool question anyhow. Course I ain't sorry, and you don't gotta be askin' to know that."

"Like to hear you say it," she says softly. "I know I'm not a suitable partner for you. Things would be simpler without me."

"Fei hua. Wouldn't have nobody to fly my ship then. Anyway, ain't we been over this before?"

Trying to get a good look at her face in the pale light's near useless, even before she ducks her head down against his shoulder. It's times like this when being with a reader's the most frustrating thing in the 'verse; ain't a thought that goes through his head that he can't be certain she hasn't picked up on, but she goes and closes herself off like a wall, leaving him to guess from the outside. So, seems to him all he can do is hold her close and take a stab at it. "Look, darlin', you know I think it's best having things out in the open here, so if there's anything you want from me, anything I ain't doin' right, you just gotta ask."

He catches a gleam of light off her eyes as she looks up at him, feels the press of her lips against his collarbone, her hand sliding down his body. Woman's gotten mighty good at distracting him when she don't wanna hear what he has to say, but this time he's fair determined.

"River, you know I l-" Her fingers stop him, sliding over his lips.

"Don't," she whispers, her mouth against his. "Not now. Wait."

He's got it in mind to ask what, exactly, he's supposed to be waiting for, and just why she didn't want him saying it, among other things, but she's got her mouth to his, stopping any kind of speech. Still, his mind must keep on humming with it, cause she pulls back all sudden like, her eyebrows drawn together.

"Don't be nosy," she says. "Isn't polite. Wait for tomorrow." She closes her eyes then, easing herself on top of him, and he lets himself get lost in the familiar heat of her, hardly hearing her voice when she says, "And remember this."