DISCLAIMER: It's all Joss …I just play

NOTES: WOW! Thank you all so much for your interest in this story! There will be more of course! THANK you all sooooo much! Hope you like where this will be going.


IN THE PRRESENCE OF MY ENEMY

Jayne raised an eyebrow at her, frowning. "Oh you've go to be kidding me!" he was almost yelling. "Your fancy brother is lucky I don't have a gun on me right now! What the hell you two getting' at, pretending you've gone all bonkers, is what I wanna know! I got into it with Mal all over your fake craziness! Almost got blown out of the airlock on account of me not trustin' the two of you. And all the time you were playin' us!"

"Simon doesn't know…." She said simply, looking at him.

"Yeah, right….." Jayne spat at her. "Like he wouldn't know …."

"He doesn't know, Jayne …..Now you're the only one …." River told him. "And you cannot tell anyone….Please. I swear I will explain this …everything, but you cannot say a word to anyone. Please, Jayne."

He stared at her. Later, he would ponder the situation and not quite understand, why he kept his gorram' mouth shut, when Mal turned up. Later he would wonder why he didn't burst out with her secret just like that, when he saw her resuming her part of the doctor's crazy little sister without the slightest warning or effort as Simon lead her away, talking to her in his calm voice. Maybe it was the way she said his name ….maybe the fact that for once, her motives had awoken a strange curiosity, he could not suppress …

Had to be …..He could still expose her later…….maybe there was something to gain from this. Jayne hated being kept in the dark.


Jayne had waited all night long into the hours of early morning, sitting on his bed, fully dressed, gun in hand, with his back firmly against the wall. She climbed down through the hatch, down the ladder without a sound….almost like a ghost. As her feet touched the floor, the sound of a gun being cocked was the only thing that rung through the pressing silence. She looked up, pushing her hair out of her face, her eyes searching his face.

"Better stay where you are until I decide if I like what you come to tell me …" he said, aiming the gun at her. She didn't look crazy at all now, same wide dress, same too large sweater, same unruly hair ….but her face was serious and her eyes as clear as day. It amazed him how completely she played her part, how completely she had fooled them all…

"I could have let him stab you." She said simply, her voice sounding a little deeper when she wasn't mumbling incoherent phrases but actually making sense. More sense than he'd given her credit for ….

"Coulda, woulda …shoulda…." Jayne returned, swinging his legs over so that his feet touched the floor and he sat up straight. "Why didn't ya'?" he asked with narrowed eyes. For a moment she looked conflicted, but she shrugged, taking a step towards him. The gun did not seem to threaten her all that much. "You wouldn't shoot me." She said, ignoring his question."Mal would have your neck if you did."

"You think you got this all figured out, ha'?"

"Not by a long shot, but you'd be hard-pressed to explain even if you shot me in the leg …and also…" she gave him a mocking smile. " I could kill you with my brain!" Jayne frowned, remembering lying on her brother's operating table ….paralysed, helpless….For a moment, Jayne blanched, giving her an appraising look.

"I could concentrate really hard on one of those fragile, little blood-vessels in your brain und give it pinch …just a little, just enough to puncture it. Instant aneurism…you'd be dead before you hit the ground."

Jayne swallowed hard. "Can you really do that?" he asked, his voice sounding a lot more strained that he intended. She'd got to him now, damn girl. River looked at him, pursing her lips in exasperated impatience.

"If I could …do you think we'd have gotten into all that trouble back on Ariel?"

"You got a real smart mouth on you, when you're not busy playin' little girl gone crazy, you know that?" he asked her.

"I thought a guy like you would like that." She answered simply, not looking away.

Jayne raised an eyebrow, suddenly grinning. She was right, he kind of did. He liked her better this way, adamant, scathing and annoyingly perceptive. He liked her a whole lot better this way, that was for sure.

"So ...when you gonna tell Mal and your brother for that matter, 'bout that lil´secret of yours?"

"I won't." she told him seriously. "And neither will you!"

"Now ..Why would I keep your gorram´secret considering all the trouble it got me into? You tried to stab me, remember?"

River sighed, crossing her arms under her chest. She bit her lower lip in conflict of how much to divulge to this man. He could be incredibly helpful, but he could also be a risk…..

Why had she helped him and blown her cover?

" I needed Simon to do those scans…..I needed to know what effects those months had on my brain. You gut hurt in the process, I apologize …but I needed to do something drastic."

"Drastic?" Jayne scowled . "Cutting me to ribbons, drastic enough for you …maybe you are ruttin' crazy after all."

River rolled her eyes at him, evidently thinking he exaggerated.

"You got hurt much worse before….It was a risk I had to take. I needed for him to do those scans." There was something in her voice, an urgency that made Jayne frown.

"You saw'em?" he inquired, finally putting aside his gun.

"I studied them the same night, when Simon fell asleep. Nothing I did not know before…."

Jayne mulled over this, crossing his arms to give her an appraising look.

"We gonna get to the part, where you ruttin´explain to me why you even foolin' you own brother into thinking you are off your nut any time soon?" he growled.

River swallowed, taking a deep breath. "It's not like I planned on this!" she told him angrily. Still, suddenly she realized, that she needed to explain herself to someone …to share her secret that weighed her down….even if that someone was a mercenary named Jayne Cobb.

"When I came aboard this ship…..when you saw me scrambling out of that box ….I was certifiably crazy, completely out of my mind! It took weeks for me to calm down …to find myself again. And once I did …..I realized that ….I could tell no one. It is safer for everyone concerned, if they believe I'm crazy, they have to believe!"

"Why?"

"You cannot divulge things you do not know"

Now Jayne didn't like the sound of that at all. Maybe he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed…as his aunt Ida had once put it, but he was not stupid enough to misinterpret that insinuation. That moment on Ariel, when they had tried to escape…..there had been real fear in her eyes. She'd gone through an immense load of trouble to keep her cover up…..had to be exhausting as hell to play the loon even to your own brother.

"You don't want them to know ….those guys after you. You want them to think, you've gone bonkers …" he said slowly, watching her intently

"I was crazy at first. I am not making that up. I clawed my way back to sanity with everything I had in me. I did not climb out of that black pit just to feed my brother and the people who took us in to …..them."

" So that place Simon took you from, really was an academy?"

River cursed…..and Jayne's jaw almost hit the floor at the obscenity of it. Sweet looking little girls like her should not know those kinds of words!

"Of sorts ….if you want to call it that. Why don't you try how you like being strapped to a chair in some lab and having a bunch of freaks use your brain as a pincushion ….in order to force feed your brain several life-times worth of knowledge, skill and military training. See how you like it and how much your mind can take before it shatters."

Jayne pursed his lips, still looking at her. So that was what they did? That's where the effortless ass- kicking skills came from? It made Jayne weary to think of what else she could do ….

"So you mean to tell me you playin´the nut is to protect us? Our maybe yourself?"

"Both….you should know, shouldn't you? How far did selling me out to the alliance get you?" she commented angrily.

"Oh , come on now ….they came after you, crazy or not ….with a gorram' bounty hunter no less!"

"Yes …." She sighed, suddenly rubbing her arms as though she felt cold. It amazed Jayne how completely different from the crazy role she was now. There was a toughness to her that didn't quite fit with that petite little body of hers. "But they came after me …everything else is collateral damage and of no consequence to them. They just want their little experiment back. They don't care about Simon or Mal or Kaylee ….or you. But if they thought you knew anything ….if they thought I was not crazy and had told my brother what they were up to at that place ….no one would be safe."

Jayne frowned at her, scratching his neck. "You think you might just be a little overly dramatic?" To his surprise River Tam did not answer immediately. He had expected a tart remark, a scathing look, but she just looked at her feet for a minute. When she lifted her head again, she looked straight into his eyes. She walked over to him slowly ….even her movements were different now, Jayne noted uncomfortably. She stopped in front of him, so she could look into his face from close up. Her voice was eerily quiet and pressing when she spoke again. "You don't understand how those people operate, Jayne." Even if he wanted to, suddenly Jayne could not resist leaning forward to look closer into her dark eyes, dark and big like a doe's. There was a mesmerizing quality to her. "The alliance agents who arrested you that night on Ariel?"

He nodded to show her he remembered. She nodded too. "They are dead. The people who saw us in the hospital….staff, patients, the agents in the police station…..they are all dead."

Jayne huffed. "How would you know that?"

"I checked on the cortex while everybody was asleep. There was an explodsion in the hospital ...all those people burned to death. They did not even try to cover up the massacre at the station. You have to understand this about them, Jayne ….and believe me. As long as they think that the people on this ship don't know anything about what happened to me….all of you are safe."

Jayne opened his mouth to speak, but River cut him off. "Oh, of course they will try to kill you if you happen to stand between them and me. They will brush you aside like a twig on their path. But they won't really care if you live or die, if you crawl away injured to save your life. They will step over your body as though you were not even there, to get to me….as long as they believe you are completely ignorant and really think I am just out of my mind."

Jayne could feel his brow furrow up as his frown got deeper. He did not like the sound of that at all. " But if they come to believe…..even suspect that you might have acquired the feeblest piece of information about what happened to me….or if they suspect that I am not so crazy after all, they will come after you. " River went on. "They will kill you, not matter how much of a fight you put up. They will kill you and then they will move on to your family. They will every person you've come in contact with since Simon and I came onto Serenity. They will hunt down every one you could have breathed my name to. They will stop at nothing to keep their secret, Jayne. Nothing…."

For a moment there was silence, heavy and smothering. They just stared at each other until River slowly retreated a few steps, taking a shuddering breath.

"Now you know …" she said, her voice a little shaky as though she was fighting off very strong emotions. "I'm sorry."

Jayne realized how dry his throat suddenly felt. He did not care much about some random people he might have had talks with in bars or about jobs …but his family, now that was an entirely different matter. He stared at her, contemplating the fact that sometimes ignorance was indeed bliss.

"Why do they want you back so badly, River Tam? They run out of human guinea-pigs for those mind-scrambling experiments of theirs?" he asked her with a hollow voice.

He had not expected to see so much sorrow wash over her pretty face. She bit her lips again with a dry, bitter laugh that was fit to hurt his ears. She shook her head. "No…." she answered, her voice sounding just as hollow and empty as his. "I am the only one who survived."