Note: This chapter is longer than my others and chapter 8 is shorter. So...it all balances. One more secret revealed. Two more to come...

Chapter 7

The next day, Simon was able to sit up in his bed and sip some soup. He didn't remember much of the last few days. In fact, he didn't remember anything of the last few weeks except some terrifyingly real memories of pain so intense he didn't understand how he was still alive. The fragmented images that had plagued his nightmares seemed to have faded for the most part, leaving him wondering if he'd had them in the first place.

Despite his disheveled appearance, disgust at his appearance warred with his need to eat and he decided that he would eat first and then shower later. Maybe if he ate first he would be strong enough to shower alone.

Regan sat with her son as he ate, watching him carefully, offering very little in the way of conversation until he'd finally broken the silence and asked how she'd come to be on Serenity. She told him the simple story while he continued to eat.

After some more awkward silence, she added, "I expect the Captain will want us to leave soon."

Simon nodded, truly unsure of what to say. He felt betrayed by his parents, but the concern plainly etched onto his mother's face clearly indicated that she loved and cared for him. And Kaylee's praise of the woman and her dedication had warmed his opinion of the mother he'd thought had abandoned him.

River entered without knocking and the two looked at her smiling face, grateful for the interruption. She turned to Simon, clucking her tongue. "She didn't know. No one knew. Took me and didn't tell them why." She sat next to her brother on the bed and took his hand. "Only you knew. Knew what I was trying to tell you." She cocked her head and regarded him with a mildly disgusted look. "You need a shower." Then she stood and walked out leaving the two occupants staring after her.

Simon shot an annoyed look at her back, muttering 'she's such a brat' while his mother tried to hide a smile at his typical big brotherly observation. But then the sadness crept into her eyes and she sighed.

"She's different now," Regan observed, lowering her eyes.

"They did terrible things to her at the Academy. I haven't been able to help her much. Not really." Simon sipped his soup. The ice had been broken thanks to River and he felt an obligation to tell his mother just how difficult life had been trying to fix her and keep themselves hidden from the Alliance. And he'd had to do it would the support of his own family.

Regan couldn't keep the tears from dripping down her cheeks as Simon spoke. "I'm sorry, Simon," she sobbed after he'd finished. "We didn't know. We - we should have trusted you."

"Yes, you should have." Simon tried to keep the hurt out of his voice. He was angry. Angry with the parents that had always professed to love him so much could abandon him when he needed them the most.

"We can get River the medical care she needs at home -"

"We can never go home," Simon said with an air of regret. "I think my recent torture at the hands of the Feds would have convinced you of that." A lingering tremor raced down his spine and his eyes crossed for a moment but his mother didn't notice.

"They are a rogue faction that the Alliance is trying to eliminate. They didn't know about it. After the Miranda issue -"

"The Alliance isn't doing a good job then, are they?" Simon asked, disgusted. He'd seen firsthand the long, disinterested arm of the Alliance and learned the hard way that the government he had blindly supported did nothing unless it benefited them. Admitting a rogue faction had been operating beneath a masterminded cover-up had been the only way to keep its power from splintering all together.

Regan sighed. Simon was bitter and she couldn't blame him. He'd been through hell, with little to no support in his struggle to simply stay alive. "I just have to trust -"

Simon's carefully controlled temper snapped. He was tired, weak from his stressful recovery, and his mother was still defending the government that had enabled the Tam's to amass such a comfortable fortune. "I don't want to talk about this any more. You can't see my side of this argument, but I have lived on both sides. So I think I'm a far better judge of what is best for River and myself. And I do not trust for one minute that the Alliance would protect us from this rogue faction that likes to carve elite assassins out of children's brains."

Samantha stepped in with syringe in hand and could immediately feel the tension radiating throughout the room. She placed a hand on Regan's arm and smiled gently. "I want to give Simon a smoother. It will probably make him a bit drowsy. How about we give him some time to rest?"

Simon leaned back and closed his eyes. He was tired, more tired than he wanted to admit. And he missed Kaylee; missed holding her in his arms, kissing her. She made him feel safe. Safe and loved.

As Samantha injected the drug, Simon sighed. So much for the shower. It would be so incredibly easy to become addicted to some of this medication - especially when it wiped away all the pain and fear.

Simon shook his head as he sat at the dining room table for the first time in weeks. He needed to get up and walk around, regain his strength. After a day of peace, the confusing, fragmented images had returned, causing him to wonder what was real and what was a memory. He needed to talk about it, even if it made him sound as crazy as his sister.

Kaylee sat beside him, holding his hand. River sat on his other side. "I'm -" he blinked rapidly, trying to hold onto the splintered, disjointed images long enough so he could explain them. "I'm very disoriented."

Samantha pressed a syringe to his arm and injected a smoother that would clear his head. "That's the medication. The combination they injected caused some very severe reactions. Your cells need to repair themselves."

Simon nodded in agreement. "One was a truth serum of some kind. But they seemed more interested in doing something else to me rather than getting River's location. Otherwise, there are plenty of drugs available that I would never have been able to resist."

"How ya know that?" Jayne asked, leaning away from Simon as if some of that truth serum would drip from the young doctor's blood and infect him. No one wanted to know what he was thinkin'. Even he didn't want to know what he was thinkin' sometimes.

"Because of the questions they asked." Simon took a deep breath. He waved Samantha away when she took a step toward him.

Kaylee squeezed his hand, her bright eyes, and beautiful face encouraging him

"It's possible that the two men working on you had cross purposes," Samantha suggested, plainly ignoring Simon's wave. "Perhaps some of the medicinal combinations actually worked in your favor."

Simon took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. The dizziness and disorientation were becoming old.

Samantha took his pulse and pressure and when she was confident there was nothing more she could do, she returned to her spot at the end of the table beside Regan.

"Ain't used ta bein on this side of the doctorin', huh?" Jayne asked Simon with a short laugh.

"No."

Kaylee smiled softly and wrapped an arm around him. "It's about time someone patched you up. Ya done so much for us."

The tension filling his body lessoned at Kaylee's gentle touch. "I don't think there is any kind of medication that can get rid of these images floating in the back of my subconscious – none that I would prescribe for a normally sane man, that is. I can't even manage to string them together into any kind of order."

"What kind of images?" Zoe asked, curious.

Simon took a deep breath and shook his head. "I - I don't understand them. Just flashes of - a memory. But it's not my memory. I've never been to this place. I've never seen such images - except in textbooks."

Everyone was silent as they listened. Only the quiet hum of the engine could be heard as Simon spoke.

"But the memory -" he stopped and stared at River. "Can you see it?"

River shrugged. "Don't understand any more than you."

"Not what I asked."

"Yes."

"Well, what is it?" Jayne said, impatient for the doc to get on with it.

"It -" Simon struggled hard to put the images into some sort of understandable order, but his voice trailed off as he just gave up and described each image that came into his mind; Lush, fertile land, large, crystal bodies of water, tall ice-capped mountains that loomed high into the clear blue sky. Ancient cities surrounded by modern technology, wonders of a world, centuries after they were built, still respected and revered – the abandonment of a world whose resources had been stripped by its growing population.

Simon inhaled sharply as he met River's eyes. "Earth-That-Was."

River nodded. "Screaming. Didn't want you to see him. Opened the door. He showed you."

Simon's voice was filled with awe as he glanced around the table. "The old man he - he gave me these memories." He didn't remember much of his time at the hands of the Feds. He suspected memories would return in time as the trauma from his ordeal faded. But, this memory was as clear as the bodies of the people staring at him now.

"Wa?" Jayne shook his head, clearly confused.

"An old man I saw in the complex where they were keeping me. He – it was the day you rescued me – I think. My memories are jumbled so I'm not sure. The doctor with me was very angry with someone. I think I was asleep, but then all of these lifelike images started pouring into my head. It hurt so badly, I think I screamed." Simon tried to remember everything, but it was all so scattered, he wasn't sure if he was making much sense. "This man was tied to a chair, I saw him, but then the door closed and I didn't see anything else."

"Some mental patient projected old images of Earth-That-Was into your head?" Samantha asked, with a curious, yet disturbed look. If she understood River's explanation of what they'd done to Simon, perhaps it could have been done.

"That facility would not keep a simple mental patient. He was important. Otherwise, why would he have been there?" Simon shook his head, rubbing his temples. "No, the images were not old. They were - modern - familiar."

River spoke then, her voice as detached as Simon's had been. "Sleep. Wake. Sleep. That's all they do. From Earth-That-Was. Doesn't take so long now." River cocked her head to one side. "Came here to tell them. Were silenced."

Jayne glanced at River and then at Simon. "You two are beginning to - no, ya scare me all the time, jus more right now."

Kaylee squeezed Simon's hand and he smiled warily at her. He draped his arm around her shoulders and held her tight, taking the comfort he simple presence offered.

"I think what he wanted me to see is that -" Simon blinked rapidly, his mind slowly understanding, wrapping around the importance of the images that he had seen. He glanced quickly at his mother. " - that everything we've been told about Earth-That-Was is lie. It's a thriving, prospering planet. They wanted -."

"They?" Mal asked, his brow furrowing.

Simon shook his head. "I don't know. Whoever they is - the Parliament, this rogue faction of the government, I don't know. Someone doesn't want us to know that our homeland, the place from where life as we know it originated, is not gone. It's not used up. It's a thriving world."

Everyone fell silent as they digested this information. As expected, Samantha and Regan were the first to discount what Simon had said.

"The reports. The history. It all says the same thing. Earth was used up. We destroyed it. Mined its resources dry."

"But what if we didn't?" Simon asked, staring at his mother. "What if -" Simon shook his head, unable to give voice to all of the theories rushing through his head. He was good at deduction. He knew he wasn't wrong.

"We didn't use it up." River said simply, staring at nothing.

"You know something we don't, little albatross?" Mal asked, eyebrow quirked.

"Simon's memory. Not mine."

"Ya have no trouble reading minds any other time," Jayne grumbled, "what's stoppin' ya now?"

Simon looked at his sister, took her hand. "I obviously don't have the ability to access all of these memories. Do you see more?"

"Pain and death."

"Oh, the usual." Mal leaned back in his chair with a sigh. Moving for the first time since Simon's tale had begun, Inara dropped her hand into his and squeezed it gently.

They talked well into the night and more than once did Jayne glance uncomfortably at Samantha and Regan.

"You want us to leave?" Samantha finally asked, pointedly directing her question toward Jayne.

"Two Tam's on this boat's enough." Jayne mumbled, and then raised an eyebrow as he thought of something else. "Unless ya plan to take them with ya when ya leave."

"No -" Kaylee leaned forward and began to protest but Simon squeezed her hand reassuringly.

"Not leaving." River folded her arms and glared at Jayne.

Mal nodded and turned to the two women at the end of the table. "Simon an River are free to do as they want. They are members of my crew. But you must leave this boat. You all have lives. It's best ya be getting' back to 'em. We'll return you to Paquin in one of the shuttles." Mal hesitated for a moment before continuing. "I don't want to get too close to that planet again for a while."

"I won't leave my children." Regan stood.

"Must go." River smiled sadly at her mother. "Can help us. But not here."

"We can discuss this later," Mal said, pushing himself to his feet. "It's late. We've had an exhausting few weeks. Now that Simon is more or less back to his normal, cheerful self, will be nice to sleep through the night for once."

Zoe, Jayne and Inara followed Mal as he exited the room, Jayne throwing Simon and Kaylee a quick smirk as he left.

Simon stood respectfully as Kaylee pushed back her chair. Regan shot her son a look that expected him to defend her wish to remain, but he kept silent as he watched Kaylee turn in the direction of her bunk - and not toward the one they shared. Simon slid his hand around her arm stopping her progress. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No, jus' tired," Kaylee answered with a feigned yawn.

"Then come to bed." Simon wrapped an arm around her shoulders but was concerned when he felt her stiffen in his embrace.

"What did I do?" His mother and her friend were forgotten as fear sank into Simon's heart.

Kaylee looked down the corridor that led to the passenger bunks. "Well, with yer mom in the next room an' all, I didn't think -"

Simon pressed a finger to her lips. "I'm an adult." He turned his head to see Regan speaking quietly with Samantha at the end of the table. "My mother will just have to understand."

Kaylee's eyes brightened a bit but she was far from her normal, bubbly self. "She could hear an'-"

"Then we'll use your bunk," Simon insisted, bending to kiss her gently. "We're together, Kaylee. It's been so long. I just want to hold you tonight." He brought his hand up to cup her cheek. "You bring such comfort, you -" He hesitated a moment, fear gripping his heart. "Unless - you don't want - unless something has changed -"

Kaylee shushed him with a kiss, her eyes brightening. "We'll use my bunk."

Simon exhaled a sigh of relief and took her hand, glancing back to say goodnight to his mother and Samantha. He knew she wanted to talk, but he was tired and all he wanted to do was fall asleep in Kaylee's arms. He mouthed 'later' and moved toward the opposite hallway that would lead to the crew quarters, not giving his mother a chance to protest. If she was upset with his sleeping with Kaylee, she had wisely not spoken of it.

River stood between them and their escape and smiled knowingly, muttering, "You are such a boob," as she floated by them on her way up to the cockpit.

Kaylee giggled and Simon shook his head as they followed behind River stopping at Kaylee's bunk while the crazy moonbrain continued on to the cockpit. Kaylee climbed down the metal steps first, and Simon hurried after her, yawning even as he descended into the room. As soon as his feet touched the floor, the door above them slammed shut and Kaylee hugged him so tightly he thought he would fall over.

"Was so worried," she murmured against his chest, her eyes fluttering closed as she tightened her arms around him.

He held her for a long moment, unable to find comforting words. After a few moments, he led her to the bed and began to pull off his clothes. He was so tired, he didn't care that he didn't have any nightclothes in this room. He stripped to his underwear, draping the rest over a nearby chair, and turned to find Kaylee watching him with twinkling eyes.

He cocked his head and shot her such a sweet, swai smile that she felt her knees weaken.

"Need help?" Simon asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding out his hand.

"Was jus watchin'." Kaylee stepped toward him and slid her hand into his. "You're tired."

"Exhausted, actually." Talking about those images had released a torrent of tension and he found he could barely stand he was so tired. Simon reached up and slid his hands up her neck, fingers delicately brushing against the skin. He bent to press a gentle kiss to her mouth and when their lips met Kaylee melted against him.

"Than I shouldn't be here. 'Cause - I'll jus' distract -"

"I just want to hold you tonight." He threaded his fingers into her hair and kissed the corner of her mouth. He knew what she wanted but wasn't sure he could give it to her - not tonight. Hopefully, his little minx would understand. There hadn't been a day yet, since they'd been together, that he'd denied her needs. As a concession to the pout forming on her lips, he added with a wink, "You can do whatever you want to me in the morning."

Kaylee's smile brightened and she wrapped her arms around his waist, giving him a tight hug. "I'll hold ya ta that." She turned out of his arms and removed her own clothes, depositing them on the floor. When she turned around, she smiled when she found him watching her, his eyes drooping with exhaustion.

She crawled into the narrow bed with him - one of these days they would need to get a larger one - and settled into his arms. When she pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply - half asleep already. "Sleep sweet, honey."

"Love you," Simon whispered as his body relaxed and his mind sank into delightful, exhausted darkness.

Kaylee stared at him for a long while, a few tears slipping from the corner of her eyes. Simon had never before said he loved her, and Kaylee buried her face against his shoulder, knowing that just as when he'd told her she was pretty, she knew that he meant those words. When he was at his weakest, every word he said was a true account of his feelings - she only hoped he would remember speaking them in the morning.

TBC

Chapter Notes: The information on Earth-That-Was has been taken (and expounded upon for this story) from the Serenity RPG book. It has some excellent info on a lot of things in this 'verse. If you don't have it yet, I highly recommend it, simply for the spectacular historical information.
Response to reader comments:

Jessclifton – You're right. Something isn't quite right. You find out one more piece of the puzzle in this chapter. Then there are two more for the subsequent Chapter and then Epilogue.

Deirdre Reivyn – I'm glad you're looking forward to more. I hope this chapter satisfies.

Aurelia30 – Really really bad is, well, in the opinion of the reader. Yes, I suppose you and everyone else will think its bad.

Skychaser – wow, what a long review! I loved it! Thank you! I'm glad you took the chance to read it and weren't disappointed. I agree that Kaylee's speech is difficult to read, but, its how she sounds, so to keep her in character, I had to write her like that. S/K ARE the best pairing and all of my stories will feature them in some way. I'm glad someone agrees with me about Regan and Gabriel. So many people are quick to hate them for not helping Simon, but I really just think that they lived in a protected society where they trusted their government implicitly and thought it could do no wrong. So, therefore, their son had to be wrong.

You see one thing that was done to him in this chapter. One little tease about what might have been done to him in the next, and then the Prologue. Lots of little things to come. Hope you won't be disappointed!

Threatening to kill off Simon only adds to the suspense. And, I do admit it would create some pretty nice angst (which I happen to love). He's pretty badly hurt in my next one and readers will just have to follow it along to see if he dies from his – unexpected injuries. . .

Thedummie2 – I love cliffhanger endings, makes people want more (one hopes!)

Pokey – I hope I can keep everyone happy and satisfied with the upcoming twists! Everyone is so excited about them!

Reviewer – Glad you're enjoying. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Serenyty – There isn't a confrontation at all, not really. They're mutually concerned for Simon and that is what dominates everything. There is a quiet acceptance on Regan's part. It's at the end.

Scott – I didn't figure you'd like all the mushy stuff but it had to be there. Little revelation in this chapter :) Probably be of more interest to you.

Deviantart – Oh, she doesn't 'know' anything for certain….