Before we begin: For those of you wondering if AJ has any relation to the man they call Jayne ,then you'd be right. Whta kind of relationship you ask? You'll find out soon enough.


8 years ago

Planet : Haven.

Shepard Book had always been a bit of an oddity to River. His belief in a book that made no logical sense had always been a point of difference between them. However today the Haven was being rebuilt in his honor. New settlers were coming here every day. Serenity had landed here for a few weeks, so the crew could relax for a while.

River sat along the wall of a school building holding a bouncy ball, that she used to play jacks with. She held it and twirled it about. A group of small children ran past her in the midst of a game of tag. One child saw River and stopped looking at her

"What'cha doin?" the child asked

River ignored the child and spun the marble in her hands "The intersection of a plane with a sphere is a circumference if the plane intersects the sphere: this circumference can have different radius depending on the distance between the plane and the center of the circumference….." she then turned to the kid that was standing across from her " run."

The child tilted his head in confusion.

"Nothing…nothing…comes from the sky…like a stone…of fury." She said and then yelled at the child "RUN!"

The child eyes widened and he took off.

A few minutes later, a flame appeared in the sky as the flame widened into a trail,as an escape pod was coming in very, very fast. It soon came crashing down, hard causing a huge scortch mark to blaze its path as it came to halt a few feet away from River.

She stood up and ran her hands over the hull of the escape pod as she closed her eyes and then concentrated.

Then reeled back holding her head in pain. Her knees buckled as blood ran from her nose.

The rest of the crew would find her later,in front of the open pod muttering harridly to herself

"Nothing times nothing is nothing……nothing times nothing is nothing…."


Present Day…

10 minutes from Atmo:

"Er de yi mǔ gǒu!." A voice rang out throughout the halls of Serenity.

"Quit whining." River said as she stitched the last suture on a Darin's back. During their tricky maneuver out of danger. He had cut up his back on the slide back.

"I'll do that once you stop missing the stitches and sticking me in the back! Aren't you s'posed to be a genius or somethin'" Darin snapped.

"Yes but that aside I'm still not my brother when it comes to medicine."

"That's for goram sure…you know it's are luck that our medic goes and settles planetside with our mechanic. " Darin said jokingly as he pushed off the table and put his shirt back on. His voice softened for a moment as he said to River " Hey, Riv…are you still takin your meds? You spaced out an awful long time back there."

"Gaps in thought is a common side effect of Diocortitriptiphane…" River rattled off as she cleaned and disinfected the needle.

"Don't pull the fact rattle right now River…I need to know."

"Yes..I'm still taking them." River said rolling her eyes " We good now?"

"Solid Riv, Solid."

A.J's voice came over the com

"Coming in over Persephone, boy and girl, gonna be a little bumpy."

River gave a small roll of her eyes " Such a good precursor to our meetin' today don't you think?

Darin gave a grimace " Have I ever told you how much I hate our client?"

"He's one of Serenity's oldest clients"

"It's just that accent, sounds so damn fake."



Dock: 12A Planet: Persephone

As the Firefly-class ship roughly settled into the docking ports at Persephone, the hatch opened and River stepped out not too far behind was Darin with the ATV wheeling out the crate of equipment.

"This deal goes through straight, we might actually have enough to get by on some light ferry work." Darin said revving the engines slightly.

"Should go through fine. I'll tell AJ to get us a few decent folk to ferry, you go on ahead." River said turning back into the ship. Darin gave a light nod and then took off heading toward the drop off point.

AJ came out soon after as she looked at River and said " What is it River?"

River went close to AJ and said " See if any passengers are looking for a ride,and if you can." River then looked around suspiciously and then leaned in close as she whispered " make sure it's in the Outer Worlds."



Later both Darin and River sat in an well furnished house, the chairs they sat in were made of fake wood, but looked real. Across the way from them was a well dressed older man. Sitting on an elegantly crafted chair he would have seemed out of place had he not been sitting with three or four well armed thugs at his side.

"You know…" said a finely dressed older gentlemen eyeing the crates on his desk " There was a time where I'd flat out refuse to take goods with an Alliance stamp on it. Had to be careful about it. Now with this New Alliance about…well let's just say that membership does have it's privileges."

"Well guess those little Medals of Valor trinkets that the Alliance handed out to you, really did you some good Badger." River said nodding to the older gentlemen.

"It's Lord Badger of Persephone now," he corrected "..and yes it did. They had quite a few for your once captain had he not been a fool and declined them."

"Guess he had more sense to know when he was being bought off." River said trying to conceal a harshness of voice and failing

"Anyway," Darin said breaking the cycle of back and forth " We got the mining equipment you wanted from the Enforcers, now you can sit on it for a bit and wait until that mine's equipment breaks and sell this stuff back to them for outrageous profit."

Badger smiled at Darin and said " Always the more levelheaded of the two, very well then. Boys." Badger said snapping his fingers as two of the thugs dropped a nice size bag at Darin's feet and he grabbed it up and opened it to make sure all the cash was where it was supposed to be. Satisfied the pair stood up and made their way out

"Pleasure doing business with you." Badger called after them

"Yeah, yeah." Darin said as they exited.


Walking back to where they parked the ATV Darin smiled " Hell, that could have gone a great deal worse. Now we got enough cash to go easy for a bit. Ferrying rich folk around the Inner rim planets. This is gonna be great."

"About that…" River said stopping.

Darin stopped as well as he looked at River for a minute before saying " No Riv you didn't...."

"I asked AJ to get us Outer Rim Passengers."

"Gāi sǐ dí suǒ yǒu xìng jiāo !" Darin swore " River you promised you'd stop this.."

"No you made me promise, there's a difference!" She snapped back

"Doesn't matter Riv, you promised! To me!" Darin said matching her anger " I thought we had an understanding that we don't use the p word with each other unless we mean it!"

"Look, I'm just….." River said

"Just nothing, the last time we went that far out, you were obsessed nearly ran the ship into the ground looking for him, remember? Because, if you don't I certainly do." he said pointing to the scar on his left eye.

"I..I just…" River said ,her head bowing down the girl was at a lost for words, for a moment her strong and confident façade faded and she looked just like the broken girl Darin had met so many years ago. His anger faded slightly as he grasped her shoulder and breifly squeezed it before saying " Fine, if we got any passengers, we'll take them to where they need to go, but I can't promise anything more."

River looked up and their eyes met as she smiled and said " Thanks."

Darin rolled his eyes and laughed it off, the moment of anger past as he said " Don't thank me yet, we aint seen what kind of passengers AJ picked up."