DISCLAIMER: I don´t own Serenity or her characters, the belong to Fox and Joss Whedon. I just borrow them to play….
Notes: I really don´t know if anybody is still reading this. I know the Jayne/River scenes have been a little scarce lately, but that will change next chapter I promise.
The Enemy Within
Mal sat down on one of the few chairs the sick-bay contained and stared at River.
Simon looked from his sister to the captain, feeling his irritation grow stronger with every passing second.
" I can´t just take her off the drugs, she could have another seizure or worse. Who knows what might happen!"
Mal didn´t look up to him, his eyes where still focused on the girl. Zoe could see his mind working, though she was not quite sure what exactly Mal was trying to work out for himself. For her , the revelation that somewhere out there a spaceship full of Reavers was following them was bad enough. And one quick look at Jayne´s menacing expression told her that they were on the same page.
" What´s going on?"
Zoe turned to find the rest of the crew standing in the doorway, it didn´t take much to figure out that all the yelling must have drawn them here.
" Sir?" She asked Mal softly, not sure how to pursue this …..whatever it was.
Mal didn´t react. He was chewing on his bottom lip, absent mindedly shaking his head. It had taken him a while to figure everything about that girl out, but slowly everything was coming together now. He had not been entirely sure before…all the displays of River´s abilities had kept him wondering, but by now he was absolutely positive that his assessment had been right. River´s foresight, her accuracy with guns, the things he had seen her do when that bounty-hunter had come for her……he had heard rumors during the war, but that was a long time ago and Mal had to admit that he had never payed them much attention. Until now…..
" How long till the effect of the drugs wear of?" he asked solemly, fully aware that all eyes were on him.
Simon pursed his lips in defiance.
" I can´t tell exaclty , it´s hard to tell…..a few hours, I guess!"
Mal nodded. He slowly got up from the chair, turning towards one of the medical trays.
" I´m afraid we can´t wait that long doctor, I´m sorry."
Before anyone could react, Mal grabbed a scalpel of the tray and hurled it at Simon. He could hear the surprised gasps of his crew and Inara´s terrified " Mal!", but it all happened so fast…
River moved in a blur, letting go of Jayne´s hand as she was jumping up, catching the scalpel in mid-air mere inches from her brother´s shocked face.
The room fell silent, everybody stared at her. She stood in front of her brother as though she planned to shield him with her body, a steely expression on her face. She breathed hard, giving Mal an assessing look.
" That´s what I thought!" he said calmly, returning her gaze. It was obvious to him, that she didn´t know what she had just done from the way her eyes went to the surgical instrument in her hand. She was not aware of her actions.
" Autopilot." Jayne uttered into the silence. All eyes turned on him, still in shock.
" What did you say?" Book asked, his voice a little shaky.
" Autopilot, that´s what she calls it. Told me that´s what it was like when she cut me and shot Niska´s men, like she was on autopilot."
" Have you completely lost your mind ?" Simon yelled at the captain, suddely realizing what happened. " You could have killed me!"
" Small chance." Mal returned, his eyes still on River. With a sharp metallic noise, the scalpel hit the ground. Struggling for breath River stared at her hand, her whole body started to tremble violently. The thing inside her was raging, trying to wriggle free from River´s grasp, now that she had lost control over her impulses.
It wanted to take over, it had found the loophole and now it fought to get to the surface.
No…..River thought. No…..there was only one way to stop it. She looked up to her brother, than her eyes searched Jayne´s , her face a mask of terror and despair …..
She would loose this fight, only one way to play this …
" Only one way…" she whispered. Than she took all the strength she had left and faced the raging thing inside of her ……and just shut down. It was as though somebody had switched off the lights, her eyes rolled back and she sank to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. This time Jayne was there to catch her before she hit the floor.
" Oh my god….." Kaylee whispered and the whole rooom erupted in noise…..
I´m sorry had already been said.
Now, there was just the three of them left in sickbay. Mal, Simon and Jayne, all three of them standing around her bed.
At Mal´s command Zoe had herded the others back into the mass, where they were waiting for Mal…..and an explanation. They sure had a right to it, Mal saw that …..he was just not quite sure what he should tell them. There were too many things occupying his mind right now, including the expression on Inara ´s face right before she had turned to leave ….but he could not ponder on this now. There were more pressing matters at hand.
" I still don´t understand…" Simon whispered. " You knew a place like that existed, you knew what they might have done to her…."
Mal shook his head, ignoring the grim expression on Jayne´s face.
" No , I did not know. I didn´t remember either. A rumor going around during the war, s´all it was to me. We never believed it, figured it might just be psychlogical warfare or such …..never suspected your sister might have anything to do with it."
" Rumor?" Jayne growled. " So you really know nuthin´?"
" Never got much intel on that, just rumors as I said……I didn´t pay much attention to it. All pretty vague as far as I remember…but now that I´ve seen and heard about some of the things she can do….might be more to that rumor than I thought!"
Simon still shook his head.
" So you think that academy was just ……some place they used to drill and brainwash my sister to turn her …into what exactly?"
" Don´t know what it was they done to her, Jayne seems to have the insight on that one since your sister showed him. But …"
Simon shot Jayne an embarrassed look He still could not believe that River would have anything to do with a man like that. He was a brute ….no manners, no education to speak of, why would his sister relate to him? Why would she share her secrets with such a man, why not with him?
They all stared at her again. She lay on the bed, completely still. Her breathing was calm and even, but apart from that she had not moved for hours. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling but not really seeing anything. From Simon´s assessment she was in a state of catatonia. He could not tell how long it was going to last……if she would ever recover from it.
His worst fear was that there was some kind of neurological damage causing her condition, but Serenity was not equipped for medical tests of those proportion. He didn´t even want to consider the possibility that her current state had psychological reasons.
" So …..what do you think they tried to do with her …..what have they done to her?"
Jayne winced at the unwelcome memory of the pain she had shared with him. Without noticing he balled his hands into fists when the image of her screaming in that weird looking chair, needles sticking out of her head, flashed through his mind.
He had been silent for quite a while, listening, letting Mal do the taliking. There was nothing he could say anyway…..but seeing her like this, remembering what she had been like when they had been alone. It all came back, images like an avalanche….her laughter, her mischievious smile, that ruddin´ lavender scent that unnerved him as much as it drew him in, her lips on his face, her slender body pressed up against him ……it tore him up inside.She was still there, in his mind, in his head.
" You´d better ask what they tried to make of her…..make her do, turn her into. When she talked about it ……it sounded like they tried to take her apart, her mind …" Jayne told the doctor roughly, but his eyes fixed on the captain.
Mal nodded in silent agreement, they had both come to the same concusion.
" The knife, the shooting, the guns, …….her perception." Mal explained carefully, looking straight at Simon.
" She´s a killer, doctor."
" What? Are you insane …River could never.."
" But she ruddin´well has!" Jayne interrupted dismissively " She shot three men without even looking their way, tricked an experienced bounty hunter and caught me by surprise with a gorram kitchen knife! Face it doctor, I´ve seen your sister assemble my best rifle in a matter of seconds and she doesn´t even know how she does it!"
" But how …why? Why River?"
" Said it yourself doctor…" Mal answered " Your sister is a genius, really smart and most likely some kind of psychic too ….they got themselves a reader and tried to turn her into…"
" The perfect assassin." Jayne finished grimly.
" But I got her out of that place ….." Simon yelled, his eyes wandering between the captain and the merc.
" That you did …..and from what I can see just in time."
Jayne shook his head, his fingers touching her hand for a second.
" Whatever it was, she does not remember most of it ……she´s fighting it with all she has. She said she´d rather die than …they could not break her Mal."
" Maybe that´s what´s causing this…"
" I think she did that herself, doctor." Mal said after thinking about it for a while. " Did you see her eyes? She was on he brink of losing it and so she just …."
Jayne looked at River´s pale face, nodding slowly. Mal could be right.
" Sounds like something she could do …….she constantly fought for control, she´d never just give it up without putting up one hell of a fight."
If the situation had been different Mal might have grinned at the way Jayne talked about River. He himself did not seem to notice, but Mal could hear that grim pride in his voice again.
" So what do we do ….?" Simon asked confused, taking his sisters hand.
" We wait, hope she wakes up, since you said there is nothing you can do to get her back…..we need her to explain about the Reavers. Meanwhile I will have Wash scan every bit of space in our trejectory, so far he has come up with nothing …and I may have to talk to the others. Seems as though I´m not done explainin´myself today. You two stay here in case she wakes up."
She was swimming, floating. It had been so long since she had had a real bath, anything like this. She had almost forgotten how good it felt. She was on her back, with clear , sivery water enveloping her….just floating in the warm liquid.
Peaceful. Safe. Far away from the noise and the pain, all the grief she had caused and all her guilt….
I must look like that painting of Ophelia, she thought, the one Mum and Dad showed me in the museum once ….Ophelia, her hair and clothing fanning out all around her……slowly drowning in the stream..
River closed her eyes. The water as clear and warm, no sharks here…..she smiled.
" Get up!" she heard someone say furiously.
Her eyes snapped open.
There on the edge of the beautiful, calm lake, crouching on a rock near the shore, sat the other thing……the creature from the dark place.
It shimmered, for a moment it looked like her, then it turned into a black, shiny insect-like creature.
" Took you long enough to show your real face!" River spat out, closing her eyes again.
" You give me form, just like this place.." it returned " You have to stop this nonsense and wake up! You have to wake up now!"
River lifted her head. It talked with her voice again!
" I don´t want to!" she said sulkily.
" You have to get up and you have to wake up now…..we need to get out of here!" she heard her own voice say angrily.
" Oh …." River taunted, staring back at it with a malicious smile. " Us …is it now? Since when? There is no us, there will never be …they put you into my mind! Created you with their experiments and tests, the men with their blue hands and black hearts …..You are no part of me! You are not a part of my mind, you´re an intruder, an invader. You were not here before! They brought you here, they made you!"
" Even so …..I´m here now." The thing stated.
River shook her head.
" That my be so, but it doesn´t mean I have to do what you say!"
The black thing bared it´s teeth at her, hissing warningly.
" If you don´t wake up we will both die!"
River shook her head again, very slowly.She did not want to leave and she had enough of the lies.
" You want to kill me anyway, it´s the only way to make this work for you. Kill the part of me you cannot touch, cannot control….burn the place inside of me where you cannot go, so you can take over for good. Because you cannot exist alone….you are not real. You are artificial, so in order to exist you need this body, you can´t function on your own. It took me some time to figure it out, but now I see clearly……the voices, the screaming in my mind, it´s all you! You made me do things, made me crazy …..if I die, so do you!"
" That works both ways…" the thing looked at her cunningly with dark, shark like eyes. Their obsidian blackness neither giving nor receiving light. It changed into her and back into it´s insect- like form.
" If we die, so does everybody on this ship! And you don´t want that!"
River breathed deep, watching the thing like a predator would it´s prey. She had to find it´s weakness, there had to be something…..she could not keep going on with a traitor inside her head.
" What do you want?" She finally asked coldly, treading the warm water.
" A truce….if you die, I die. So we have to work together on this…for the time being.we need to survive."
" And when we are done?"
" Then we will see who gets to stay …."
River thought about it for a moment, but there was no other option left to her. Slowly she swam towards the rock, glaring at the source of all her grief.
" Fine….you want to live? I have two conditions! First, you don´t try to take over anymore. You help me but you will let me do things my way! Second…if you try to betray me or hurt anybody on Serenity …I will kill us, understand?"
The black thing smiled, baring it´s pointed teeth at her dangerously. It gracefully extended what River took to be an equivalent of a hand to her.
" Deal, but we have to wake up now."
River grabbed the thing firmly and pulled it towards her to look into it´s cold, dead eyes.
" Good…" she whispered " everything else we´ll do after this is over."
The thing nodded, giving her a cunning look.
" What will we do then …..Sister?"
River seized her oponend up, contemplatting her answer carefully.
" Then ….when the Reavers are dead and all the blood has been spilled…..I will kill you." River answered, her voice filled with anger.
The thing chortled.
" Oh, but can´t you remember? Kill me …..kill yourself!"
River slowly emerged from the water, when she had reached the shore she looked back over her shoulder.
" No……I did not mean out there…" she explained with a very calm, icy tone of voice " I ment in here" She gingerly touched her forehead, holding her enemy´s stare for a beat to make sure the thing understood.
