Disclaimer: Firefly is property of Mutant Enemy and Joss Whedon, the brilliant puppet master! I own nothing except my imagination......and that's fun!

NOTES: Well ... This is a continuation of Abandon I never intended to write. But some bunny tossing mad- woman from the Jayne group..... kinda triggered that pesky, moody muse of mine. You know who you are .....so thank you!

I hope this does not disappoint.

BECKONING

Prologue

"Do you trust me?"

Her voice is shaky, lips slightly parted. She breathes through her mouth in tiny, wispy gasps.

Its cold.....for some reason it has become very cold. Her breath hangs in the air like tiny, feathery clouds of smoke.....when did the temperature fall so rapidly?

"Do you trust me?" she whispers again, her voice taking on an urgent, pleading tone.

Her pale face hovers over him like the moon, her eyes impossibly wide and round....like puddles of darkness in all that whiteness of smooth skin. Long strands of dark hair fall over her shoulders and over his face where she is leaning over him.

Do you trust me .....

The one question no one should ever ask him, because he cannot answer it.

He's never been big on the trusting side, never .....This will be no exception.

"Issues" doesn't even cover the extend of his conflict with that one tiny word....trust, the whole concept of it seems to be beyond him sometimes.

He knows her body, her skin......smell, taste, the feel of it underneath his hands. He has never touched her like that, not really, not out there in there real world.

Still ....he knows how those fragile fingers can play over him like playing an instrument, knows that those lips are the softest thing that ever touched him.....here, not out there.

He knows all that, but it does not imply that he knows her.

He let her in......knowing that even though she touched him ...here, she could never really touch him, because it was not real.

No matter how often she had told him that it doesn't need to be real to be true.

Whatever they shared here ...he thought it would have no hold over him....not out there.

Deep down, he knows how wrong that was, how presumptuous......too late now.

Do you trust me........

For the first time Jayne Cobb is in doubt how to answer that question......

MAYBE......

His eyes narrow as he looks at her, trying to hold on to the thing that ticked him off just now ....her face, it's all wrong. Everything is wrong, it's cold.......it should not be cold here.

"What's goin´ on?" he growls, his voice still raspy from sleep.

That's when it hits him. He's not asleep.

This is not a dream.

There is a crunching, rustling sound in the ceiling above them, like a big, fat snake sliding around on pebbles or sand and they both look up.

Her mouth forms a worried little "Oh".

He is already reaching under his bed for a gun.

Suddenly that one question she asked, gains a new weight.....

The soft, warm skin of her arm brushes up against him, as she stumbles back. It's just as smooth and supple as he remembers, Jayne realizes, grinding his teeth. Not real ...but true ....

"What's goin´ on here?" He hisses at her, trying to keep his voice down.

She turns around, looking him straight in the eyes.

"The thing you thought was going to happen ...." River Tam says huskily in that sweet, sing- song voice of hers.

Jayne stares back at the girl in annoyance.....should have known that if she could appear in his dreams, his wildest fantasies every gorram´ night, she was just as able to peek into his thoughts.

For some reason it does not even bother him that he knows exactly what she is referring to.

"Bout me wakin´ up next to you for real, ya mean?"

She nods, listening intently to the unnerving sounds from above.

"That day is now......"