Author's Note: The first set-of-10 for my Joss100. This set is collectively known as the "Dream a Little Dream" set, and willl hopefully be followed by nine more sets of 10. Anyway, enjoy.

Title: But In the End She Sells Her Soul, Because She Knows That's What They Want To Buy

Summary: Time is a wheel in constant motion always / Tell me who / Wants to look back on their youth and wonder / Where those years have gone – "I Hope You Dance," Lee Ann Womack

"Round and round she goes, where she'll stop, nobody knows…"

Her fingers linger on a particularly mossy stone, tracing the words carved there. "Anna Marie Ross. Beloved Wife, Mother and Sister." She knows she should feel something, maybe sympathy or pity, but nothing floats to the surface except rage. She wants to smash everything in this graveyard, wants to break it into gravel with her bare hands, wants to prove that she exists solely in the here-and-now and not the dead, ashy-gray past.

Without warning her legs give out and she finds herself flat on her back, staring at the sky above her, gray and full of clouds. And suddenly there is an older gentleman standing over her. He is sixty-five, she knows that immediately, and she also knows that he is Anna Marie Ross's beloved husband. "Hello, little one," he says gently, and takes off his hat, a black bowler.

She says nothing; she doesn't have to yet. He hasn't threatened her safety. In fact, he looks downright gentle.

"I saw you talking to my wife," he continues. "It's been so long since we were together. How I miss her, every day."

Now she is curious – why aren't they together? The man is clearly dead. Why hasn't he been reunited with his beloved wife in Shepherd Book's version of heaven?

It hits her, but she can't move.

His face changes. He is suddenly ugly, covered with pus-oozing sores, scowling, his teeth yellow and pointy. His hands are claws, the nails long, thick, yellow. "Death comes for everyone," he rasps. "Death will come and get you when you least expect it, little sparrow. And you'll be sucked down, down, down below, to where the fires are ever burning!" He cackles. "I've saved a place for you. We're all waiting for you, River. You've been a very bad girl…"

She still can't move, frozen in place, pinned by his words. She thinks she is screaming but she can't tell.

"You've been a very bad girl, a very bad girl, a very bad girl…" His hands reach for her face, his claws going to poke out her eyes as he repeats, "A very bad girl…" His words trail off, or maybe they don't, she can't tell over the sound of her screams.

"River! Wake up!" someone is yelling. "River! Listen to me! It's just a nightmare!"

She sits up fast, breathing hard. Her hands are in the air as though she was going to grab something; they are shaking. Her chest hurts. She realizes that Simon is standing next to her, in doctor mode, and that there is a tube running into her chest, something blue running through it. She swallows and tastes blood.

"You with me?" Simon asks, quieter.

She nods.

"What happened?"

"When the devil comes for your soul, you'd better start running…" Her eyes are burning. "The devil is in the details."

Title: And Pray for the Gods' Mercy

Summary: Tell me what does he see / When he looks at you / When he looks at me – "Tell Me Why," Genesis

Soundtrack: "I Want You to Want Me" – Letters to Cleo (if you like upbeat chick rock), "Who Put the Blood" – Karan Casey (if you like angst-filled Celtic), and "Running Horses" – Barrage (if the other two didn't appeal to you)

"I am only a catalyst."

Simon looks over at her. "What?"

"Catalyst: a substance, usually used in small amounts relative to the reactants, that modifies and increases the rate of a reaction without being consumed in the process," she recites obediently.

"Okay," he agrees without argument. "Catalyst it is."

She loops her fingers around the tube in her chest and pulls gently. It hurts, which is what she had expected. It is a part of her now, she realizes, running through her, into her, divining the contents of her soul whether she likes that or not.

"Don't you tug on that," Simon warns, and she jumps. She had forgotten he was there. "That's what's getting the medicine to you," he informs her.

Medicine?

"You don't remember?" he asks, looking at her strangely.

Remember what? What was there to remember? "No."

"Mei-mei, you don't remember at all?" he asks, kindly, gently.

She shakes her head.

"Hold up your arms," he says.

She does.

"Turn them inward."

She does.

Stitches glare back at her. Long, angry, and apparently deep cuts are all over the insides of her arms, but all neatly stitched together by her doctor-brother. She looks up at Simon, confused. "No one told me to do this," she says, puzzled. "Where did all the blood come from?"

"It's all yours," Simon says. Is he angry with her? She can't tell. "All the blood is yours."

For the first time, she realizes that the infirmary is not stark white and blue as it always is. In fact, a lot of it is red. Her red. All over. Everywhere. There are puddles on the floor. Her dress is soaked through with red, turning the light blue into black. She can taste red in her mouth; it is metallic and sticky. Simon is wearing her red too; his white shirt and apron are red. "That's… all… supposed to be inside me," she says slowly, her head spinning.

"I know. I think we would have all been happier had that been the case," Simon answers sadly. Then he sighs and stands up. "Time for bed."

She shakes her head in the negative, trying to imply that she would dislike that more than anything, but apparently she doesn't have any say in the matter. The tube and its dripping blue liquid betray her, and she feels heavy and sleepy.

She dreams in red, swims in it, breathes it, drinks it. It is the rain that falls from the skies.

Title: More Like a River

Summary: Trace the footsteps gone before – "The Mighty One," Maire Brennan

"Can you make me perfect?"

Jayne looks up at the girl standing before him. She is ungodly pale and looks half-sick. "What're ya doin' outa bed? The doc let ya out?"

She shakes her head in the negative. "Sleeping, he is."

"Like any good soul should be at this ungodly hour," Jayne grumbles, and takes a long swig from the tin mug on the table in front of him. "Ya feelin' better?"

She considers this for a moment. "Maybe."

"Whaddya come out here fer?"

"Heard you."

He looks over at her. He has been making absolutely no noise, he is sure of that. "What're ya talkin' 'bout, Crazy?"

She sits down at the table across from him and regards him seriously. He notices there's some sort of medical implement sprouting from her chest, and it makes her look even more alien than before. "Tell me a story, Jayne," she says softly.

"Can't tell ya a story."

"Asked nicely."

"Doesn't matter. I ain't one fer tellin' stories and ya won't get me t' tell ya one."

She reflects on that for a moment. "Then I will be the storyteller."

"Fine," he says, and chugs down whatever's in the mug.

"Once upon a time…"

"Is this gonna be a yu ben de story?"

She frowns at him, obviously not happy about being interrupted. "Once upon a time," she repeats, firmly, "there was a girl."

"Lemme guess. This girl's name was River."

She shakes her head at him as though he's crazy. "The girl's name was Megan Felicity, but everybody called her Meg."

He groans.

"Meg was very beautiful. She was an only child and her parents loved her more than life itself. She had the best of everything. She wore bows on the ends of her braids every day. All her parents wanted for her was that she be happy, and polite, and a good girl, and so she tried very hard to please them because they loved her so much.

"But one day her parents brought home a baby brother, and he was trouble. They had to spend all their time with him and stopped paying attention to Meg. Meg had to spend all her time with her nanny, and she didn't like that one bit."

"This girl got all angry 'cause she had a brother? Seems like a right dumb thing t' do, if ya ask me."

"You're interrupting," she says tartly. "One day, when Meg's parents were still totally consumed with tending to her baby brother, she ran away. But she didn't have anywhere to go. Usually when little girls run away they go to their grandparents' houses, but Meg's grandparents had died years ago. So she went to the library."

At this, Jayne almost laughs aloud. "The library?"

"Library: a place in which literary and artistic materials, such as books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, prints, records, and tapes, are kept for reading, reference, or lending," she recites without thinking, and then continues, "Meg had always loved the library. Her parents would take her there all the time to read books, and she had a proper appreciation for the power of literature."

"Aw, now…"

"Meg went into the library and found her favorite book, and she opened it up, expecting to see beautiful pictures and well-written text. Instead, all of the pages were blank, which confused her greatly. She started to cry because nothing in her life was the same anymore, and then she made a very stupid wish. But girls are not usually known for their intelligence when they are small and it comes to things they want very much.

"Meg wished that she could be a heroine in a wonderful book in a library, where many people would read about her and enjoy her story. And do you know what happened then?"

"Her ma came 'n got her and smacked her up fer bein' dumb 'n runnin' away?"

She gives him a wan half-smile. "No, silly! The book began to glow, and it sucked Meg in! Her wish came true!

"Of course, her parents were very sad when they discovered she was gone. But to those who know where to look for her, she isn't gone at all. In fact, she may have made a smarter wish than I previously stated. Meg can never die; characters in books live on forever. Everybody gets to share them."

Jayne looks at her. "Well now, that wasn't half-bad."

"Told you." She puts her head down on the table. "Very far away right now…"

She drifts off, and in a few moments, Jayne can tell she is fast asleep. If the doc finds her out here, he'll kill Jayne. He groans, stands up, picks her up, and carries her back to the infirmary. As he sets her down, he whispers, "You asked me t' make ya perfect…" Her eyes flutter. "Yer almost there anyhow."

Title: As They See Me

Summary: Taught you to walk then you ran away from me /And that's not how it's supposed to be – "Collide," Jars of Clay

"I can come in first all I want, but it's never going to help me wake up…"

She looked at Boz, who was sitting next to her. He had his smart-ass smile on his face, as though he had beaten her again. But this time, she knew she was going to win first place. "Every year, I win first place," Boz whispered to her, leaning over to pull on her braid.

She grabbed Boz's arm, the one holding her braid, at the wrist and wrenched it to the left. Boz's eyes went wide; he gasped and released her braid, grabbing his pained wrist. She gave him her best snooty look. "I am going to win first place this year, not you," she said fiercely. "My project is better than yours."

Boz scowled and looked away.

"Attention parents, the viewing hour is over," Teacher Owen said over the amplifier system. "If you will take your seats in the audience, we will announce the winners."

The parents began to move towards the folding chairs. The girl on the other side of her, Ani, whispered, "I bet you're going to win. Your project was the best, even better than Boz's. His was so stupid… all those disgusting bugs!"

She smiled, taking in Ani's comment silently as she swung her legs, waiting for Teacher Owen to announce the winners. She had been waiting all night.

At last the parents were all seated and Teacher Owen and Teacher Roma were on the dais, ready to announce the winners. They called for silence, but for some reason, it wasn't quiet in the big gymnasium.

For there were musical noises, definite plinks, as pretty as those from a piano, echoing through the large room, playing an easily recognizable tune from a folk song, albeit one plink at a time. She turned around to look across the gymnasium at her project, and there it was, beyond all the rows of waiting parents and bored students. It was taller than she was, her project, all made out of pipes and tubes and wire, spinning wheels, and beautiful marbles, cat's eyes. As the marbles rolled around the project, through pipes and up ramps and around, around, around, they eventually went through a hole, each one through a different one at a different time, hitting a specially tuned pipe below. Somehow they always knew the right order to fall in. Hence the beautiful plinks and the one-note-at-a-time folk song. She had spent a whole month on it, and she knew it was the best. Much better than Boz's display of "Core Bugs."

Teacher Owen clapped his hands. "Thank you all for attending the science fair!" he said, smiling at everyone. Teacher Owen was always smiling, even when someone was in trouble. It was vaguely unsettling. "We have four awards to give away tonight and wonderful prizes for each winner."

First he held up a pink ribbon. All the boys were praying they wouldn't win the pink ribbon. "The Creative Genius Award goes to… drum roll please…"

One of the boys from the band did a little drum roll on his snare.

"… Kassy Brightman!"

Kassy leapt up happily and ran towards the dais to accept her prize from Teacher Owen and Teacher Roma as everyone clapped for her. Kassy also won a fantastic watercolor set in addition to her shiny pink ribbon.

Eke Small won third place for his project on the effects of music on houseplants.

Then only first and second places were left. She found that she was crossing her fingers and her toes, praying. She had come in second for four years, every year she'd entered the science fair. It just wasn't fair! She wanted to win first!

"Second place goes to…"

She held her breath, waiting for Teacher Owen to speak the next two words.

"Boz Mansell!"

She let out a shriek of excitement as Boz scowled.

"Boz? Could you come get your prize?" Teacher Roma asked gently.

Boz, frowning, went towards the dais glumly and received his ribbon and the book on bugs they'd chosen for his prize.

Then first place was left, and she was still holding her breath. Teacher Owen smiled down to where she was sitting. "And first place at the Goss Elementary School's Seventh Annual Science Fair goes to… drum roll, Ennis…" (the sharp snap of the snare drum cut through the waiting) "… River Tam!"

She laughed aloud, but it was lost in the sound of applause. She scooted past Boz and hurried up to the dais. Teacher Owen was holding out the blue ribbon, her first blue ribbon!

As she reached for the ribbon, it turned into a snake, hissing and writhing in Teacher Owen's hand, snapping out to bite her hand. She fell backwards, off the dais, her head smacking the tile floor. As she hit, all she could hear in her ears was that plink-plink of the folk song, earnestly going on as her world faded to black.

She woke up with her fingers twined around the tube running out of her chest, which this time was dripping green into her. Simon was standing before her, holding something in his hands. "Mei-mei!" he said excitedly. "Look what I found!"

He was holding out her first place ribbon.

He didn't understand when she screamed.

Title: Show Me Something Beautiful

Summary: Love you forever's a useless phrase / Who am I when I am not with you? – "Lost At Home (Album Version)," The Sun

"What do you want with me?"

Simon looks confused. "With you? Me? Want?"

She frowns at him, growing angrier by the minute. "You are plumbing my soul, ripping it out, and mark my words, you are going to pay."

"River, calm down," he said, doing something doctorish to her that she can't follow; her eyes hurt. What was she doing here, anyway? Last she knew she'd been lecturing Jayne. Or was that a dream too? What is a dream, what is real? Who is real and who has she created? "This is keeping you alive," he reminds her.

She twines her fingers around the tube, frowns at him again. If he were Boz, she'd make a snooty face at him. But she still kinda loves Simon. She kinda has to. But it doesn't change the fact that she kinda wants to rip this tube out of her before it eats her soul completely. And she knows it will, given half a chance. Or a third of a chance, or an eighth, or… she stops the fractions before she can divide any further. Any more division and she will cease to exist.

"Don't rip it out," he says, as though he knows exactly what she's thinking. She dislikes when he does that; she is the psychic in this family, doesn't he know that? "You rip it out and you'll be sorry."

"Not as sorry as you," she taunts, then singsongs, "You'll have to fix it…"

He gives her a fierce look, and she almost takes back what she's said. She still believes in "take-backs" and "do-overs," getting a second chance for things you didn't mean to do or say. Except, if she really believed in them, she'd tried to use them more often. So maybe she doesn't believe…

"I'll be the one fixing it, and you'll be the one in pain."

"You don't love me," she pouts.

"Wrong again, mei-mei. I do this because I love you."

"You don't love me," she spits again, although she can feel the world gently spinning away from her, going to red-tinged-black again. She's really going to have to talk with him about this putting-her-to-sleep thing he seems so fond of.

When she wakes up again, she is sitting outside in a chair, and it's dark out. She doesn't know what time it is, or where she is at all. The tube is still running out through the collar of her dress, up and out and to that same damned bag, still dripping its damned liquid into her. What the hell is it, anyway, that's keeping her on the razor's edge of death? The next time she remembers, she'll have to ask.

She hears Wash from behind her, although she can't tell how she knows it's Wash, because first of all it's dark and second of all he's behind her… "Wash?"

"Yeah, honey?"

"This place. It's dark. Did the sun implode?"

"Nope, it's Nellia. We're on Nellia. Waitin' fer Cap'n my Cap'n 'n Zoë t' get back."

"What's the surprise?" she asks.

Wash laughs as though he'd been expecting her to ask, which throws her. She is the psychic in this family; how did he know? "Close your eyes and wait fifteen minutes. Then open them."

She is not a patient child, but Wash seems so excited that she does as he asks, counting off the fifteen minutes in several different fractioned forms. When she opens her eyes, she gasps in spite of herself.

Red and pink and orange and yellow are smeared across the horizon like a child's messy painting, but in a totally beautiful way. The sun is coming up all golden and buttery warm, pink and orange serenading it, red and salmon heralding the way. It is the most beautiful thing she can remember seeing in a long time.

She hears Wash listening, both to the sunrise and to her, and says gravely, "Thank you."

"It's nothin'. Thought it'd be worth it t' see ya smile again."

Title: Tears in the Blood

Summary: I heard you cry / Every night in your sleep / I was so young / You should have known better than to lean on me – "Because of You," Kelly Clarkson

"My kingdom for a scalpel…"

She is expecting it to be hard, but it isn't. Surprisingly, it is fairly easy to rip out the tube. She does it quietly and gently, biting her lips so as not to scream, because it hurts. A lot. She should have known; Simon had told her it would. Tears run down her face as she gets the rest of it out, pulls it free with a strange sucking pop.

For awhile she just sits there, watching as it leaks medicine or whatever it is Simon has been giving her all over her blanket, mixing with her tears and the blood streaming freely from the now-open wound in her chest. Everything hurts; she can hear too many people screaming in her head, telling her to move, run, jump, walk, kill, don't breathe don't talk don't sleep don't eat don't live. She is breathing too fast. It's just too much.

She leans back against the pillow, intending just to close her eyes, to think about what to do next. She is flooded with things she can't remember, half-remembers, can remember. She hears herself telling Jayne the story of Meg. She sees Kaylee and Simon kissing. She feels the sun on her face as she and Wash watch the Nellia sunrise. She tastes blood in her mouth. She can hear her heartbeat in her head, feeling it like a blue blur at the base of her skull. It is too fast; she feels dizzy.

When she wakes up it is dark everywhere and she is struggling not to throw up; pain is shooting through all of her body. Shepherd Book is standing before her, which confuses her greatly. "You're dead," she moans. "Go away."

"Is that any way to treat me?" the Shepherd demands. "Matthew 4:19."

She has to think about it, which surprises her. "'He said to them, Come and follow me…' You want me to follow where you lead?"

The Shepherd does not respond, only walks through the open door. She groans and gets up stiffly, pressing one palm flat over the wound in her chest, which is still bleeding, following him. He leads her off of Serenity and down, out into the dark world they have landed on. It seems they are in an alley, brick walls on either side, strewn with garbage. The Shepherd doesn't even notice the garbage or the homeless people littering either side of the alley; he walks directly to the end of the alley and waits, his back to her.

She is a great deal slower than he is, so it takes her awhile to catch up. When she does, the world is spinning around her and her arms are aching. The Shepherd smiles as though he understands; how can he possibly understand what she has done to herself? "First Corinthians 13:12," he says.

Again, it takes a minute. "'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face…'"

The Shepherd turns around fully, and she sees that he is holding a mirror. Light from somewhere – where? – reflects off the glass and she throws her hands up instinctively, blocking her reflection from her eyes. "You must look," the Shepherd says gently.

She closes her eyes tightly, shakes her head in the negative. She isn't the Shepherd's pawn.

"Look!" the Shepherd barks, and it frightens her, so she does as he asks.

What she sees scares her. The glass is blurry… or is she? Her eyes are distant and washed-out; her skin is too pale; she looks like an alien.

"This isn't you," the Shepherd says, as she watches herself, horrified. He brings the glass above his head and smashes it down onto hers.

She tastes blood in her dreams, until Simon comes to find her again.

"Oh, mei-mei," he whispers sadly. She blinks once, and she is being carried. She blinks again, the infirmary, all clean blue and white, snaps before her eyes.

She blinks once more and feels the tube going back in, feels him stitching up her arms again, sees chunks of mirror everywhere she looks, taunting her.

It will be the last time she trusts the Shepherd.

Title: Ophelia Takes a Holiday

Summary: Solid stone is just sand and water, baby / Sand and water and a million years gone by – "Sand and Water," Beth Nielsen Chapman

"Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings…"

She pulls her heavily bandaged wrist towards her, even though it hurts a lot, just to hear the bell around it jingle. The bell is to tell Simon that she's moving, which he has expressly told her not to do, but he's sleeping and she can ring the bell all she wants, theoretically giving lots of angels their wings.

She hasn't decided if she believes in angels. It's certainly a silly concept – bosomy girls with harps and wings dancing around in white dresses giving people wishes. But if there are no angels, then what happens to people like Nona and her best friend Meg after they died?

She sees lots of things now, she isn't sure if they're angels or demons. Simon can't see them, Kaylee can't see them, no one can see what she says is there. They all patronize her, pat her on the head: "Of course there's a man in the corner, River. And yes, his jacket is awfully tacky."

She rings the bell again, just to spite Simon's stupid rule. Ever since she ripped the tube out and wandered off, following the Shepherd, he's taken to locking her in so she won't run away, and tying down her hands. Anyone could have told him his methods are ineffectual; so far no one has. Everyone's been staying far away from her; she thinks Simon is behind this, too.

She closes her eyes for just a minute, thinking she'll wake back up in a minute and keep on ringing that damned bell until either Simon hears it or she gets bored again.

When she opens her eyes she is back in the graveyard where she once talked to Anna Marie Ross' husband, but no one is there. In fact, it's raining. And for once, it's raining rain and not blood. This, she thinks, is a nice change. The rain is cool on her face and damp on the grass beneath her bare feet. She threads her way through the stones, running her fingers over each as the rain pelts them, turning the moss into slick patches of green fuzz.

As she's wandering, the rain grows heavier, and she gets progressively wetter. She scrapes her hair out of her eyes and tries to figure out where she was going, but she realizes that she doesn't know. She doesn't know what she's doing there or who she was looking for, and she can't hear and she can't see and – she panics.

She senses something behind her, something heavy and wrong, and when she turns around, she found she was right. A girl is standing behind her, definitely not an angel, even though she's wearing a white dress and a crown of flowers. That's where her similarity to an angel stops. Her skin is blue and her eyes are sunken in, and she's holding out a craggy blue hand.

And before anyone can run or say anything, the girl throws her arm around her newfound friend and they are falling, falling, falling… sucked down into the rain, sucked down into murky water filled with leaves and dead, rotting bodies. She tries to scream but all she gets for her trouble is a mouthful of water. She gasps, aspirates, and fades to black.

Simon swims into focus above her; he appears to be attempting to get the bells off her wrists.

"I drowned," she informs him blearily.

"You could call it that," he says. Is he angry again?

"I drowned," she repeats, confused.

"You have to stop this," he says. "There's no reason to do this. If you want something from me, ask."

"You never listen to me anyway," she shoots back, even though she's not quite sure what happened.

He finishes wresting the bells off her and smacks them into her hands. "If you wanted to get up, you just had to ask. You didn't have to hold your breath."

Title: Burn (yes, it's a cliché title, but the prompt is "fire"; what do you want from me?)

Summary: What do you see in me/ Are you quite proud of me? – "So Damn Beautiful," Polaroid

She takes a deep breath, like she's going to hold her breath again to punish Simon. But she isn't trying to punish Simon; in fact, she'd like nothing better than for her stupid brother to "accidentally" fall out of the airlock and aspirate nothing and die. But then Serenity would be without a doctor, and everybody who got shot up would probably die, and then there would be no more Serenity. And she doesn't want to do that to the people she now accepts as "family."

And besides, after Simon catches her doing what she's doing, she's going to need him herself. Funny how every action in her life comes back to him now, almost like he's God in her tiny world, ready to punish or praise every action.

These actions will need punishment.

She closes her eyes, although she can't say why. It's not like she can't bear to watch herself. She has done this many times before; her skin is marred with her previous attempts where it's not marred from the stitches.

When she opens her eyes she is surprised to see that she is sitting exactly where she left herself, not in some graveyard, not in the infirmary with Simon tending to her. She had better hurry before someone finds her.

She flicks the wheel and watches as the fire flashes up, golden flames in her eyes. "Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire," she murmurs.

She sees Simon and Kaylee, Zoë and Wash, Mal, Jayne… everyone. She sees them pleading with her, yelling at her, fixing her, holding her as she screams. She feels their arms around her, hears their voices.

But it is not enough to stop her, to pull her back from the brink, and without further hesitation, she shoves her hand into the flame.

It hurts, but not enough.

The tears streaming down her face are not enough to quench the fire.

Title: Teach Me How To Come Undone

Summary: Heel in heel and toe for toe / Arm in arm and row in row – "Mairi's Wedding," Wild Mountain Thyme

"You have such neat little wrists," the lecher says, holding tightly to her left arm. "You're quite pretty, did you know that?"

She is looking for an escape, a trap door, a way out. She doesn't see any of those things. She decides she'll have to make her own. This is, after all, the point of the exercise.

The lecher takes a long pull on his pipe. She tilts her head and considers him. "You remind me of my own daughter," the lecher says. "She was almost as beautiful as you… before I killed her."

Now she hates him.

Now she is determined not to let him win. She has never lost an exercise, not ever since she came. She has the highest ranking in the whole school; no one can even come close.

The lecher is still puffing away on his pipe, his heavy right hand around her skinny left wrist.

Before he can blink, she has performed an inside-out block with her right hand, throwing his right arm up into the air. This surprises him, but she's not done yet. She ducks – people like him have been known to slap her upside the head – and throws an arm around his neck, stepping behind him. She has no weapons other than her four limbs and her sharp-like-a-razor's-edge mind, but that will be enough. It is enough to cut off his air supply; his carved pipe falls to the ground. He starts making strange noises, she has heard them before but now they fall on deaf ears.

She sweeps his legs, releasing his neck, kicks him in the stomach, and strikes his nose with the flat of her palm. This drives the cartilage of his nose into his brain, and he falls on the ground, limp and presumably dead.

For some reason as soon as he hits she kneels down next to him and rolls him over.

He's not the lecher anymore, he's Simon.

She screams – Godwhathaveidone? – and throws herself backwards from her brother's body. Arms go around her, and she thinks for one deluded moment it's her mother, coming to save her. It isn't… it's someone with needles, coming to hurt her.

She jerks herself forward, trying to escape the needles, and hits something hard with a smack. Her body aches; what is going on?

"Bao-bei, what is it?" Inara's calm voice says, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

She feels her heart racing, feels the tube dripping life into her, sees the scars and the burns and the stitches. She is back where she started, and no more the wiser for the effort.

Title: And if the Silence Was a Song
Summary: Cause I'm lying here / But I am ready, good to go – "Private Radio," Vanessa Carlton

When Simon finds her, she has been long gone.

She has thought about this long and hard, who she would like to "find" her. If it has to be anyone, she would want it to be Mal. He's strong and could hold his composure in this sort of tricky situation. He would break it gently to Simon, as gently as he knew how.

But it is Simon who discovers her, a few hours after the fact. He has just come from breakfast, Kaylee was teasing him about his haircut, which Inara had done yesterday. He was in a good mood; he was coming to share it with her.

The doctor finds his sister seemingly asleep on her bed, where he has left her. She is still tied into her restraints, scars and stitches and burns still pock-mark and pucker her arms. One of the bells is around her neck. She looks, he thinks, very calm.

And then he realizes what that noise is. It's the heart monitor, which, according to his gaze, is still attached to her chest. But it is shrilling a warning, and he can't quite figure out why. And then he understands.

When Inara finds him, he is only able to look up at her with tears in his eyes and say three words:

"Her. Heart. Stopped."

Kaylee says it best later; though in the throes of sorrow, she manages to say, "She thought she was hurting us, doing all this to us. So she just gave up. She did it out of love, Simon, not to hurt you."

He has trouble believing that.

Read and review!