Chapter Six. Said it would hurt.

True to her word, River did not accept any marriage proposals that night. The evening passed uneventfully, which was a concept Mal was starting to get used to. It was kinda nice not running from bad guys (or Feds) all of the time, not gettin' shot at or chased. He decided not to pick up any more passengers for the moment, but give River some time to recover. Besides, their jobs started taking them further and further out towards the Rim planets, and no one really wanted to go that far out these days.

Several months had passed when Badger's successor, a young man named Lyle, set them up with a job on Lampasas. This Rim planet didn't have much going for it, but the job was simple: deliver the crates. Get the cash. If they'd done it once, they'd done it a hundred times. When Mal went to go secure the cargo for landing, he found River hanging upside-down from the catwalk by her knees. Her face was unreadable.

"You're the wrong way," she said to him, her tone low.

"I reckon so," was his reply. "Maybe we all are." There were still times when he didn't understand what she meant. Most of those times he didn't bother to question, especially since they were such a rare occasion as of late. Her cryptic riddles were less and less cryptic with each passing day. Either she was getting better at communicating with him, or he was just understanding her better. He honestly wasn't too sure. He looked up at her suddenly. "Wait. Who's flyin' my ship? Ain't we supposed to be landing?" Mal questioned, his brows furrowing. After a few moments of him looking at her meaningfully, she sighed, shrugging. River pulled herself back up onto the catwalk and skipped back up to the engine room. Her voice was heard over the comms a few moments later.

"Prepare for landing. It might hurt."

"What?!" Mal shouted from the cargo bay, though he doubted she could hear him "River, don't you hurt my ship!" They broke atmo, and Mal hung on to the strapped cargo for life. Despite her warning, however, the landing was as smooth as could be. Not even a jolt the wrong way. The captain exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Gorram pilot," he muttered, shaking his head.

"Well that didn't hurt at all," Jayne mused aloud as he thudded his way down the stairs to the bay. "What the hell was Moonbrain talkin' about?"

"Let's just get the job done. I got a sinkin' feelin' about this planet." Mal was right in his feelings, and it was obvious why. The place looked like a ghost town. Hot, arid, and sparse, the planet looked more like a desert than anything else. It must have been two or three in the afternoon - the hottest part of the day. The sun beat on on them mercilessly.

"Looks like a whole buncha nothin'," Zoe remarked.

"Yeah. The town and the drop point 'is just a mile out. Let's load up the mule." They did just that, River appearing silently and taking her seat in the back, passenger side. She was quiet as she stared out into the sun with squinted eyes.

"Hard to see," she finally told them as Zoe started up the engine.

"Here," Jayne said, passing her the eye goggles she loved. Even after she put them on, she didn't seem consoled.

"You all be careful out there!" Kaylee called to them, waving as they drove the mule off ship.

"Always!" Mal called back. A minute's drive into the seemingly empty landscape brought a small town into view. Their drop point was in front of the first building; a saloon.

"Nothing," River whispered softly, though no one heard her.

The mule came to a stop, and Jayne hopped out, raising his gun and glancing around. "Uh, Mal? You 'member that sinkin' feeling you got? I'm startin' to feel it. Where the hell is everybody?"

Mal did the same, and Zoe followed suit. "I don't rightly know," he replied slowly. "Frankly I'm starting to feel a mite creepified." River frowned.

"Too many." Mal finally heard her, and turned to look at his pilot, who was tightening her combat boots.

"What?!"

But another voice answered. "I think she means to say that there are too many of us, and not enough of you." Men started to show themselves. They'd been hiding behind the buildings, obviously waiting for them. In each one of their hands was a gun, aimed at one of the crew. It was an ambush. Mal and Jayne's guns were up, but Zoe hadn't even had time to draw her weapon, so had no choice but to place her arms in the air. They were in the middle of an ambush.

"Whoa now," Mal started, "I think there's been a misunderstanding. We were sent by Lyle. Just here to drop off the goods and get his payment. Don't want no trouble."

"Neither do we," the man said. He was tall, taller than Jayne, with a long beard and a bloodied shirt. He was uninjured, but looked as though he'd put the hurt down on someone lately. "So how's about you lower your weapons and give us what you got."

Mal didn't move, and Jayne was watching him for a cue of what to do next. "Surely will, as soon as your men lower theirs. Then we can do an even exchange, just as promised." Mal sounded confident, as he always did in these situations. River was still sitting in the mule, and her lips were moving but no sound was coming out. It looked like she was counting.

Mal didn't like these odds. They had no cover, were outgunned, and outmanned. There was no place for them to go, except for the saloon, but then they'd be surrounded with nowhere to go.

This man obviously wasn't out to play nicely. "I'ma thinkin' you're gonna give us the goods and walk away real nice. Maybe then I won't have a reason to kill no folk. Motley, Goode, grab the crates." Two brutish men started heading towards the mule, and River hopped down and, to the crew's horror, stood in their way.

"Watch it, lil' girl," one of them said, shoving her roughly to the side. She didn't fight back, but Mal pointed his gun at the man who'd touched her.

"Hey! Pick on someone your own size, y'hear?" Mal hollered. The man they called Goode - or was it Motley? - grinned, and reached out, grabbing River by the throat. Mal flinched, taking a step forward, gun pointed at the man trying to attack River.

"Now, if you'd only kept your mouth shut. Motley don't like people orderin' him 'round." But even as the ironic words left the ugly man's mouth, River had already started. Mal watched as she swung herself around the man's arm and over his back. He toppled over backwards, hitting the his head on the ground hard. Out, like a light. She landed gracefully, bent down low with one hand on the ground and glancing around. Goode made his way towards River, which earned him a swift mule kick in the face as she swung her body effortlessly. "What the hell?! Someone get that lil' girl!"

That was their cue. Zoe dropped herself against the mule, pulling her shotgun out of it's holster. Mal and Jayne darted back to the mule as well, running around to cover River and Zoe. Shots started firing from the grunts, but none landed. While River took down the men who came at her, Malcolm, Zoe, and Jayne took out the ones firing at them. They'd gotten about ten down so far when the leader shouted: "Re-treat! Fall back, ya' idiots!" He then whistled, loudly.

"I think that's our signal to make like a tree and get the tā mā de out of here," Jayne suggested, flopping himself onto the mule while trying to keep himself covered.

"I second that," Zoe added, and took over the driver's seat.

"River, get back here!" Mal called. A moment later there was a loud snap as another brute fell beneath her boot. River picked up his gun and another on her way back to the mule. They high-tailed it out of there, Zoe pushing the limit on how much she could get out of the vehicle. River was counting again. Mal reached for the comm device, alerting Kaylee and Simon to prepare for a quick takeoff.

"Rather inconvenient that our most valuable asset also flies the ship," Mal muttered, checking behind them for any followers. They kept going, each second Serenity grew bigger and bigger as they neared her. A sight for sore eyes.

Jayne swore loudly in Chinese, causing Mal to look back again. Their gracious hosts had come after them. There were at least three hovercrafts chasing after them now, loaded to the teeth with weaponry, but Mal and the crew were already so close to the ship that he didn't bother trying to take them out. Zoe punched it, muttering to herself how they were almost there…

The cargo bay doors were open, and they flew in, stopping sharply. "Go, go!" Mal shouted to Kaylee and Simon, who were rubbernecked trying to see what kind of trouble was coming. "River, go pilot the damn ship!" he ordered, and she practically flew to the cockpit. Only a few seconds later, they were lifting away from the world. Mal started to close the cargo bay doors, watching as their pursuers closed in on them. Serenity groaned as they took off. Ten meters. Twenty feet. Forty. Eighty.

That's when Mal's world came crashing down. The last thing they heard was River's calm voice over the intercom.

"Hold on."

The explosion rocked the ship. She began to turn sideways, and then upside down. Sideways again. Then right side up. Kaylee screamed as they were tossed about. Mal reached for something he could hold on to, anything. The ship was spinning, and Mal closed his eyes as he awaited their certain crash landing.

BOOM.

And then nothing.

When Mal finally came to, he could hardly hear or see. He was stuck underneath some debris, and struggled to free himself. Looking around him, his heart broke. While she wasn't completely destroyed, Serenity was hurt. Bad. There were hulls breached, catwalks broken. He hadn't seen her so bad since Miranda, and it was hard to bite back the emotion. As his hearing started to return to him, he became aware of screaming in the distance. None of his own, by the sound of it. He finally was able to scramble out from underneath the broken cargo. As he stood, he was completely disoriented and nearly toppled over.

Serenity was upside down.

"Zoe!? Kaylee!" He called loudly. "Jayne! Simon!" There was a lot of heavy equipment in the bay, and he wouldn't be surprised if someone had gotten squished like a bug between metal and a hard place.

"Over here, sir," came Zoe's voice from across the way.

"You in one piece?" he questioned, and watched her pull herself out from under the mule. It had landed on top of a metal crate, leaving a perfect space for Zoe underneath it.

"Surprisingly. Never thought I'd be so grateful for this hunk of junk. Just a little banged up, Captain."

"Huuuugh." The two of them ran over to the source of the grunting, as best as they could, and began to pull the crates off of Jayne, who wasn't but ten feet from them. As they pulled him up, Mal looked around again. The ship was unrecognizable.

"Help!" Simon's voice came from far off, and Mal ran to them. He noticed a pain in his leg, but all things considered, he was perfectly fine. He found Simon and Kaylee stuck between where the stairs met the wall. Mal had to dig for them, but was relieved to see that Simon had shielded the mechanic from everything with his own body. His back had a pretty deep cut, and he'd dislocated his shoulder, but they were alive. Mal said a silent prayer to a God he'd long forsaken. It was one thing for Serenity to be down, but another thing entirely for someone to have bit it on his watch. Everyone was accounted for. That only left…

"River." Mal took off, trying to navigate his way in his upside-down ship to the cockpit. Where the hell did all of this stuff even come from? "River!" He called, his voice straining, terror nearly paralyzing him. He couldn't help but think of Wash, with the harpoon through his chest. In his mind's eye, Wash was replaced with River, her eyes open wide as the blood rushed out of her chest, but he shook that image from her mind. "River!"

She wasn't in the cockpit. The whole room was relatively intact, aside from the shattered windshield. Looking down, he saw blood everywhere. Smeared against the controls, trailing around in circles. Fear gripped his heart like an icy hand, and he fought his way back through the debris to the cargo bay. There he found his crew standing on a pile of stacked up crates so that they could see out of the cargo bay doors. Mal had forgotten about the screaming, tuned it out, since it hadn't sounded like any of his own. He climbed up the debri, and finally saw what it was his crew was staring at, their mouths hanging open in awe.

River. She was dancing.

Everyone knew that she had taken down almost three dozen Reavers singlehandedly on Mr. Universe's moon, but no one had seen it, or anything like it, since. She rarely participated in the fighting, unless needed, and it was never like this. She stood about thirty feet out, and at one point it appeared that she'd been completely surrounded. In one hand she wielded a small axe, and fired a pistol in the other. There were already twenty bodies around her feet, and more coming. The crew, every one of them, was entranced. River moved easily, beautifully, and skillfully, taking down every single man that crossed her path, sometimes two or three at a time. Finally, the last one fell as she threw her axe into his head. There was quiet, and she stopped moving altogether. Mal jumped down to the ground, ignoring the pain in his leg, and limped to her. He taste blood in his mouth, and felt it drip into his eye.

"River," he said, approaching. She dropped the pistol and stood there staring at her feet, surrounded by the men whose lives she had ended. When he got to her, he was acutely reminded of the last time she'd fought that hard. The same determined look was on her face now. Blood stained her new blue dress, dirtied her face, stuck to her hair. Mal slowed on his approach. "River, darlin'," he said slowly, softly. When he reached her, he placed a hand on her shoulder. He had no idea what kind of state she was in. She'd almost killed him looking like this one once. She turned towards him, her eyes pained and confused. There were no words.

Mal took her into his arms, wrapping her up and kissing the top of her head. He didn't care that the entire crew saw their exchange, he was just thankful that she was alive. Once again, she had saved them all. Over the top of her head, he caught sight of Serenity, and his beaten down crew standing within her. Hopelessness washed over him.

Mal's attention was drawn back to River when he felt a sob wrack her small frame, and he held her closely, his arms around her shoulders. She buried her face in his chest.

"Said it would hurt."

Everything I ever knew changed on Miranda. It shook me, ya know? When you're confronted with somethin' like that. It shook my bones. When Serenity wrecked after those goons, I didn't know what to do. I didn't have nothin' to say. And then Captain went all weird with River. Hell, I didn't see nothin' like that comin'. Everything was all shook up, and not just because our ship was all belly-up. Somethin' wasn't right, and that was for sure. That was the beginnin' of the end.

Jayne Cobb