Ocean.

Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over.

Dream Brother - Jeff Buckley

It started when the Operative caught up to them.

Their first experience with an Operative had been fairly devastating. The Reavers had caused most of the actual devastation, yes, but the Operative had been the one to set things in motion. Eventually, though, they'd won out against him, and his belief in the Alliance had been severely shaken by the same recording that weakened their power.

But it hadn't destroyed it, and so a couple of months after the Miranda Incident, as it came to be known, they had landed to get paid and an Operative came smiling along and took him. River got away, her abilities warning her in the very nick of time, but he wasn't as lucky and he was in cuffs before he realized what was going on. He remembered that his last thought as he was led away from the marketplace, Mal and the crew running up just in time to stare uselessly after him, was that he wished that he, too, had the ability to Read people.

Three weeks later, he woke up with a scar on his skull and chaos in his mind and he knew that his wish was granted.

Apparently whatever ability River had had in such strong measure was latent in him. River had been their greatest test subject, but not their only, and after the mistakes made with her they'd refined the process till it could be done without sending the subject into severe psychosis. Lucky for him, as he didn't wish to be insane. Unlucky for him, because without that greater control they would never have decided to use him as a test subject. He would have been summarily executed by the Alliance to show the public how great they were, killing a traitor like that, and most days he would have preferred a quick death to the agony of living in so many minds that were not his own.

They taught him shielding. It was rudimentary, but if he concentrated he heard very little. He couldn't concentrate while he was asleep, though. His dreams weren't his own, and as he gradually developed insomnia he reflected bitterly that he had had enough nightmares all on his own.

He wasn't sure what they were trying to train him to do, or why they thought that he would serve them at all even if they could train him into something useful. He learned enough to be able to hack into their minds, despite the desperate attempts at their own shielding, and he knew that they hadn't implanted any behavioral modification in him. He was grateful for small favors, and bitterly amused on the day that he discovered that they had no plan for him. He'd been chosen to see if psychic ability could be implanted rather than enhanced, and they picked him because he was River's brother, not because they thought it would actually work. Now that it had, they had no idea what to do with him, and it amused him endlessly that they weren't sure what to do with him now that they had him.

This amusement kept him occupied until the day that a smiling orderly came in and knocked out his guard, and Simon had been helpless to do anything but grin back at Malcolm Reynolds and follow him back to the ship. Back to his sister. Back to freedom.

Back to Serenity.

It's quiet out here, he thought. There was nobody around for miles, so the quiet was more than just physical.

He breathed in the scent of salt on the air and smiled. Peace. He'd missed this feeling, and he'd survived this long by promising himself that he would have this, as soon as possible. As soon as he was out.

As soon as he'd gotten free.

The ocean was the ultimate freedom, to Simon. Space was much bigger, and represented freedom to men like Malcolm Reynolds, but its utter blackness had always terrified Simon, and the ocean had been a refuge since childhood.

As if thinking about him conjured him, Simon heard Mal's quiet voice behind him. "I thought I might find you here."

Simon found his calm abruptly shattered, and he reached desperately for the shields that he learned during the long months after surgery. He does not want to hear anything, not now. Not when it was finally quiet.

"Why's that?"

"River said something."

Ah. Not a surprise. He could understand, now, how she knew things. She was the only safe spot in his head, the only quiet mind. She wasn't closed to him, but she loved him so completely that she didn't need to be.

"And you came to find me," was what he said out loud.

"Of course I did."

He almost shook his head. Almost. "I'm surprised you bothered," he said. "Now or two days ago. River and I aren't your crew, I know."

"You're wrong," Mal said He probably thought he sounds mild. He was wrong.

"I am?"

"You're both my crew, as much as Zoë or Kaylee," Mal insisted. "Didn't you say it yourself? That you'd earned your keep?"

"That was before," Simon said. "I doubt I'll be much use as a surgeon now, unless the patient is unconscious."

There was a loaded silence from the man behind him, and then Mal said, "I was wondering what'd been done. Was clear that something was, but I wasn't sure what. You're a Reader too, aren't you?"

"Yes," Simon said. No point in hiding it anymore. "They discovered a much more refined method of inducing greater empathic sensitivity, without stripping the amygdale. I can control what I hear, sometimes. Not often enough. My shields aren't strong enough. They tried to teach me, but…" He trailed off and shrugged, feeling Mal's gaze intent on the back of his head. "How can you teach a man something you yourself can't understand?"

"I can imagine how that'd be a mite problematic, yeah," Mal agreed. "But I have faith in you, Doc."

"That's more than I have," Simon said bitterly. He drew his knees up close to his chest, feeling the sand shift under him. "Serenity isn't a large ship, Captain. I can hear everything. It's a bit disconcerting, at the very least."

"Everything?" Mal said. Simon didn't have to see his face to know that his eyebrows were raised. "Well, no wonder you wanted to run away."

"You have a very complicated mind, Captain," Simon said. He didn't mean to. It just slipped out. He blushed, hoped that Mal didn't see it, and then forged ahead. "Very loud. It's hard to think of anything else when you're around."

There was a breathless pause, and then Mal said, "If it bothers you, I can leave."

Heart pounding, Simon said, "If it bothered me, I would have asked you to."

Mal's thoughts were, at that moment, not complicated at all. Simon smiled and felt Mal's lips curve behind him. "That's good to know," Mal said after a brief throat-clearing. "Um. Yeah, good to know."

Simon let his lips stretch into a full-blown grin, and tipped his head back so that he could see Mal's face. Not that he needed to, to know the expression there, but sometimes it was good to just see things with your own two eyes. "Are you going to stand there, or are you going to join me?"

Mal hesitated. "Well, I was going to ask you to come back to the ship…"

"I thought you said we weren't going to leave till tomorrow morning," Simon said, letting his voice tease. Mal gave him a thoughtful look.

"You're right, we don't." He smiled then, a real smile that Simon saw so very rarely. "I suppose I could sit a spell."

Simon didn't even try to hide his smile, and for a moment, all was right in Simon's head and his world.