Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Firefly or any of the Characters ( I wish I owned Jayne though , mhmmmmm Jayne ..Ups , Sorry!)

Firefly belongs to Fox  and Mutant Enemy ( Joss, make a movie out of it already …)

Notes:

Sorry it took me longer than anticipated to write the new Chapter and I apologize for it being so weird......please bear with me a little longer and it will be explained!

Thank the hopefully- going – to – that – special – hell – bastard  who broke into my car and stole my laptop! ( MY PRECIOUS!)  So I had to rewrite the whole chapter !!!

 ( You are soo going to be reborn as a Dungbeetle!!!!)

So please  have a little patience and I will have something new for you besides this ….

but last but definetly not least : THANX so much to all you guys who reviewed my story …I never thought you would like it that much ! Thank you !  I really appreciate it! You are the reason I keep going on!

This Chapter is dedicated to my best friend Franzi….you are the best ! Thanks for your support and bearing with my craziness!

SHELTER

At first Jayne thought she was gone. He woke up and his bunk was so dark that he could barely see the hand in front of his eyes.

" Hey.." she whispered, standing right in front of his bed. She was basked in some kind of luminiscent light that shone from somewhere behind her. She  looked different, he couldn ´t quite put his finger on what it was.

River extended her hand and he took it without thinking.

" What is it? " he growled sleepily.

" I want to show you something." She walked him towards the wall of his tiny cabin, but suddenly there was no wall….or if there was one they went right through it.

What the …. ?

Something really weird was happening here and Jayne didn´t like it one bit. There was nothing around them as far as he could see, only obsidian darkness. He stopped walking. River turned around, still holding on to his hand. He pulled her towards him until he could see her tiny frame right in front of him.

" What the ruddin´ hell is going on?"

" There is something I need you to see, you´ll understand. Please …" she whispered, squeezing his hand very gently.

Jayne could see lightning cracking in the distance …somewhere behind her.

" This is a dream…" he said slowly, staring at her intendly. River nodded.

" Well, whose gorram dream is this, yours or mine?"

" Your dream,……. my mind." She clarified, turning around to go on.

They walked on for a few minutes in silence until he could see the light becoming brighter…and there she was in the middle of that light. Jayne furrowed his brow ….now that was really unsettling. There were two of her, two Rivers.

 One standing next to him, holding his hand and another one in the middle of that weird, very bright light. She was propped up in some bizarre, very high chair with  long needles sicking out her head and all sorts of cables attached to her.

She was screaming, screaming with abandon, eyes screwed shut, her whole face a mask of pain and terror.

" Please, make it stop!"

There were men there too, tall creepy looking fellows wearing blue plastic gloves, working on machines, taking notes, staring at different monitors.

" Please, please …make it stop!"

Jayne turned around to where River was standing next to him. Her hand had gone completely limp in his as she stared at herself in that chair, tears running down her face without her making a sound.

" What is this place?" he asked her again. He thought he knew the answer to that question, but it scared him more than he would like to admit. He needed her to say it, needed to be sure …hoping he was wrong.

" I live here." River answered tonelessly, not taking her eyes off the events unfolding in front of them.  " This is the dark place."

" This what they did  to you?"

" Part of it."

Jayne looked back to the other River, she had started crying too. Big, violent sobs shook her tiny body. The men didn´t seem to care.

How anyone could have done that to her was beyond him.

Now, he had seen a lot of bad things in his life, done a whole lotta bad things too. And he was proud to say that he had inflicted a fair share of pain on people who had the misfortune to piss him off. But this ….whatever they did seemed to have a purpose, what that purpose was he could only guess, it still did not make it right.

" Looks an awful lot like torture to me. " he mumbled, wondering if the display of pain he was just witnessing came anywhere close to what Niska had done to Mal.

" You wanna see?" River whispered. Before he knew it she had put her hands around his face. I was like a soundless explosion, a thunderous but silent impact. Pain unlike any he had ever experienced before….as if somebody was pouring boiling hot metal into his scull. He couldn´t even scream. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees. Jayne caught the look on her face as she went down with him, she was feeling the exact same thing. She was not just inflicting this pain on him, she felt it too……she always felt it.

Her hands left his face.

" Sorry…"

And then it just stopped. The light went out, everything went black and they were alone in the dark. Jayne shook his head. The pain was gone , no aftermath…..he fought down the anger he had felt…..thinking she had trapped him …

River sat next to him on the ground, not looking at him, face buried in her hands.

" Sorry …" she whispered again and again " Sorry ….I did not mean to ..I just ….wanted you to understand. "

Then they were back in his bunk. He sitting on the edge of his bed, she standing in front of him, her face in the dark.

" What happened?"

" We are back."

" Back?" Jayne didn´t like what was happening. He hated to not be in control and the way things were going, that was exactly what happened every time she was around.

" At your place........the safe place."

" I don´t get this........" he said angrily, looking up at her with a warning glint in his eyes.

" This is the place they cannot go. They don´t exist here, they cease to be.... this is my place, my mind ...my rules. They cannot go here, can´t find me here. Here I´m alone,……. myself! This is the place they could not touch, could not influence or control." River elaborated huskily.

" Looks an awful lot like my bunk to me!" Jayne growled, still unable to make out her face in the shadows. He wasn´t sure if he liked what she was implying.

" It is."

River said, finally moving out of the darkness. He searched her face unsure what it was he was looking for. She looked different, calm and assured.

" I gave this place form." She explained " My mind, my rules.....here."

River looked a lot less like a little girl Jayne realised, more like the young women she was, calm and serious.

" You are different ..here...."

She nodded again, showing the faintest hint of a smile at his observation.

" Yes, that is why I took you here. I needed you to see, to understand. Sometimes I get so lost in my head and everything I try to say comes out twisted and wrong......so that no one can understand me. Yet, there are times when you of all people do. It is different with you.......I don´t comprehend why. I´m sure I will find out in time. But for now I needed to make you see, so that you could understand why I turned out to be like this."

" What they did, you mean?" he asked, squinting at her uncomfortably.

" Those needles and the gorram pain?"

" I did not mean to harm you." She whispered.

" How did you do this?" he growled " How does this ruddin´ place work...this ruddin´ dream- mojo- crap?"

" I can not explain how I do or know things. I don´t really know how I do it, I just know I can. And I wanted to talk to you ...as myself without them interfering. Don´t know how long it will last. When I come here, they loose control over me. It´s like breaking through an icy surface and suddenly I can breathe freely. Being with you .....makes me feel collected as of late, so I can tidy up some of the mess in my mind. One day I will be strong enough to throw out all the things that do not belong there."

River smiled at him, blushing a little bit.

" You make me feel safe and at the same time so fuzzy inside......this fuzzy feeling blossoming in my chest, all warm and golden...." she giggled," I like it even though I don´t know where it comes from or what triggered it......or when it started. You always intrigued me but ...."

" Gorramit River......stop talking girl!"

Jayne almost jumped of the bed in order to shake her, instead he closed his eyes and breathed deep.

" I don´t know what goes on in that ruddin´ crazy head of yours, don´t even know if any of this is real! I know and I think you ruddin´ well know by now, that I´m not a good man, not all honourable and knightly and educated like that gorram brother of yours....but even I can see that what is going on ........what we could end up doing, what I sometimes wanna do is all sorts of wrong!"

He shook his head.

 " Hell, most of the time you are out of your gorram mind....said it yourself! And I don´t wanna hear all about feelings or watcha´ think you feel.....I told you that is not a thing I do! For all I know none of it is real!"

Jayne did not look at her while he rambled on, but River didn´t take her eyes of him.

 He spoke to her in that dismissive, harsh tone he usually reserved for yelling at people. She did not like it ! When he finished none of them said a word.

River knew he hated this situation, he felt trapped and he was neither very good at nor did he like to convey his feelings. Mostly he loathed having them at all. River waited until he finally looked up to see if he got his point across.

" This is real if you believe it." She said slowly, her eyes showed no fear or doubt, but she frowned.

" I´m myself here, just a girl you can hurt. You are right, sometimes I have no control over what I do or the things I say and I don´t remember some of the things they did to me at the dark place. But some of those things they taught me ...forced me to learn, they take over at times. They conditioned me to behave in a certain way under certain circumstances. Sometimes the things I do reflect the battle my mind is fighting to not be governed by those impulses forced upon me.......but I know what I feel and I know what I want! This is me right here and now! My feelings are my own, they could not take that from me!" She explained angrily.

Jayne squinted at her again, he could not help but smile a little.

" You have an answer to everything, don´t you , sparrow?" he growled.

River lifted an eyebrow at him, smiling playfully.

" You hate that, don´t you?" she challenged.

Jayne grinned at her. " Yeah ..."

This girl definetly had a way of vexing him unlike any person he had ever met.…….and he knew Wash!

She was obviously not afraid to arouse his anger, that was a new thing.....a quality not too many people possessed: Mal, Zoe....and now this tiny slip of a girl. Every time he tried to turn his back on whatever it was that was going on between them, she managed to disarm him completely. She had achieved what no one else could, she had sneaked  past all his defences.

" You think too much!"

She said quietly, sitting down next to him.

Jayne laughed out loud.

Now that was something he had never been accused of before, quite the opposite had been the case so far. He rarely thought things through and that´s what usually got him in trouble.

" You want to do right, that is good."

River went on seriously, turning towards him.

" But I don´t want this ...us to be like that. It does not need to be. I need all my strength to fight my way out of the dark place inside of me and get rid of those voices that whisper to me.

I need my strength to shut them up and make them leave me be. I don´t have enough strength to push you uphill all the time! I need you to stop thinking about this and be here with me, at the same place. I know that you ask yourself if I really know....because you think that I might not know, or that I might forget wanting to be with you and then all hell would break lose.

But I want to, I need to. This is my shelter from the storm  raging inside of me, the only thing I know without a doubt in my mind! You cannot do wrong with me."

" Gorramit River, but I already have and you know it!" he yelled at her.

His sudden outburst made her flinch, but not shrink away. She just looked at him, her face set.

For maybe the hundredth  time in these past days Jayne found himself wondering where all her trust came from.

She knew he was referring to his betrayal again. Did he even listen when she said that she did not want to push him uphill constantly? She was growing impatient.

" The past is gone, you cannot take it back, ......it has passed us." She returned, looking at his angry face with those dark, knowing eyes.

" Will you do it gain?"

Now what kind of question was that?

Jayne´s brow furrowed up as he took her in, her dark hair tumbling over her pale shoulders.

Her facial expression was so calm and self- assured, she almost looked like a portrait of some women he had never seen before.

There were a whole lotta´ things he was willing to do for money.....handing her over to the alliance was not among those things anymore, no matter how good the money was.

He knew her now, Jayne realised. She had become more than a job, more than just a pale face, more than Simon Tam´s crazy sister. Hell, he couldn´t even imagine what they would have done to her. The sheer memory of the pain he had felt in that one instant made him want to wince, and he prided himself on how much pain he was able to take....

Jayne could feel the shame wallow up inside him. Now that he knew.....after seeing her fear, feeling her pain. He couldn´t even imagine Serenity without her anymore.

" No" he simply answered.

It was the simply truth, nothing he cared to elaborate.

More likely he would kill anybody who tried to lay hands on her......yep, kill them ruddin well slowly and painfully.

Gingerly he tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

" I don´t even know how old you are!"

River looked at him, feeling the back of his hand touch her temple.

" I think that if I´m old enough to be tortured and  brainwashed by people working for the government and hunted down like the last specimen of some rare animal species by the alliance, then I´m old enough to do what I please!" She answered defiantly.

Jayne laughed at her sassy return.

" You might wanna mention that in so many words to some of the other people on this ship."

River lifted both of her fine eyebrows at him.

" You care what people think?"

" No." Jayne answered indignantly as though she had just asked him if he liked ballet.

" Then why would you care if .."

"Well,  I don´t really fancy people thinking I´m some depraved, degenerated pervert for one. And they´d sure as hell think that if anybody found you sleeping in my bed! I mean ....C´mon you gotta know how it looks, right?  Me .....touching you?  Let me tell ya´ ....it´s gotta look pretty bad! And then there is also the ruddin´ question if I enjoy being alive and aboard this ship. Mal would have my ruddin ´ head if he managed to beat Zoe to the kill......cause that´s what´ll happen if they thought I was taking advantage of you. As for your brother ...."

" You don´t." River interrupted him.

" What?"

" You don´t take advantage...maybe I do." She smiled, leaning into the touch of his hand on her cheek. " I know I want you to touch me, that´s not going to change any time soon!"

Jayne pulled back his hand as though he had been burned. He felt like she had just clubbed him over the head. What the hell....

Control had just gone out the window again.....now this was all about restraint, and he had never been very good with that.

River gave him an annoyed look and sighed.

" Not going downhill again!" she muttered and before he knew it, she had crawled into his lap. Cuddling up to him, River leaned her head against his chest.

" As for my brother...." she yawned ," …..you need not worry about him. I can handle Simon , I always could....even when I was a little girl. Haven´t you heard, ......I´m a genius!

Right now Simon feels that he needs to protect me .....he saved me and I love him. But he is in way over his head.....I could probably tie him up like a rodeo- calf ..." she giggled at the thought. Tender, loving Simon ...always so proper .....River started to feel sleepy, this was costing her too much strenght , she realised.

" Watcha mean?" She could her his dark voice rumble in his chest and smiled.

Jayne looked a little helpless, looking at her being completely comfortable to just cuddle up to him like this.

" Part of my training, what they taught me I guess...not just smart things like math or feeling things.......they must have taught me some other stuff too. I know I can take most people on this ship. You , Zoe or the Captain might be a little harder though......I know about guns too. I know what types you have and how they work, the modifications you made ....memorised everything....." she yawned again.

Jayne noticed that his vision was becoming blurry . Now ...she had just said something that unsettled him , but he could not remember what it was. Could you feel tired in a dream?

He sunk down onto the bed with River sprawled across him.

" I won´t be like this, when I wake up, you know. Sometimes they get very angry when I manage to elude them and then they make me worse. But remember the things I told you...."

Jayne wanted to nod, but he was just so tired, he felt his eyes close on their own accord. He could feel her breathing falling into rythm with his. It was the last thing he noticed before the lights went out.