-Firefly-

Confusion prevailed. Time passed, unrelated intervals punctuated by vivid moments that seared her with overwhelming emotion or hazy dreams that passed her by in a fog completely unrelated to moisture. Whenever she became aware, Simon was there. Even when she wasn't aware, when the voices drowned out her and the nightmares possessed her, Simon was there.

Sometimes, weary and drained and so very, very tired of treading the secrets and terrors and uncertainties that assailed her constantly, she would flee the shards-that-were-River, flee River entirely, and she'd drift through Simon. He was untainted, untarnished, undimmed. His essence was clear and clean and compartmentalized, rows upon rows of shelves filled with boxes where he'd stored up everything that was him. She would wander the long rows of shelves, trailing her fingertips along the cool boxes unmarred by dust, comforted by the purposeful efficiency that was her Simon, by the clean lack of clutter, by the purposeful order and the intensive quiet. By the overwhelming multitude of boxes and shelves and entire rows that had her name so affectionately stamped on them.

Only there, only when she was safe in the refuge he willingly provided her—gave her through virtue of his hand on her head, his arm around her shoulders, his voice in her ears—only there was she able to find a bit of respite. Only when he gave her that link could she close her eyes and sleep without being consumed by the fierce terrors waiting to drag her back to The Academy and their clawing, screaming, wounding secrets. Only with him could she remember that this broken-River wasn't normal, wasn't all she had to rely on, wasn't the entirety of her existence; only with him could she remember that there had once been a River who thought in straight lines and danced through the air and laughed without crying and effortlessly told her brother that she loved him.

But the stability of his presence and the cold that had cradled her to itself in order to rescue her from those with hands of blue and shrieks that mutely rent the air…they faded, drifted, the strength of their defense aided by novelty and surprise, both elements withering away. Simon was always there, in the background, his pulse ringing in her ears, his presence acting like skin, a dermal layer separating her from the nothingness of the Black populated by emptiness and screams and dreams that were shattered more often than granted. The cold was always there, too, surrounding the firefly that flitted from moon to moon, glowed staunchly to combat the absence of all it traversed.

They were always there…but so were the nightmares. So were the jagged, harsh, obsidian things inside her that clamored and hissed and yammered at her until she gave in and threw her hands over her ears and wept and screamed until the others in this metallic Serenity Valley yelled and shouted and hushed and commanded and Simon came to sit beside her and infuse sleep through the veins that laced her flesh, a safety net that kept her from being completely lost to the visions trying to lead her astray.

It became harder and harder to shake loose the constraints of the things inside her, almost impossible to tell that they were not the reality of existence. Slowly, she learned—learned that if Simon was there, it was real, and if he was not, then she was trapped inside the dangers planted within her. It was one of the reasons she'd so often move to wander through Simon, taking solace in the sanctuary of his clean and orderly rows, his essence a gleaming example of dedication and reason and coherence, all wrapped up in the whisper of her name and the sheer devotion he gave to family, to love, to River.

He was a sanctuary, but gradually, as the nightmares grew clearer and stronger and realer than anything else, she began to realize that it was a sanctuary she was sullying, tainting, destroying bit by little bit.

Corpses lived within her. Corpses of dreams and hopes and expectations. The decaying bodies of secrets that should never have been kept, paths that should never have been taken, orders that should never have been given and yet had not been repented. And real, literal cadavers, skeletons that had once laughed and loved and lived yet now were nothing more than premature fertilizer and shadows that blanketed her mind.

Time was non-linear for her; understanding not a daily occurrence; recollection a rare luxury. So she wondered…how many of those people had she killed?

One of them?

Some of them?

Most of them?

All of them?

It was a problem with too many variables, an equation she couldn't—maybe didn't want to—solve. The solution was more terrifying than the sight of the corpses and the knowledge that their deadness lived within her, and so she could not answer herself. Was not even sure she tried all that hard to recall whether those bodies had transitioned from people into corpses at her hand or another's.

Because better to wonder than to know. After all, no fraction as answer to that equation would ever be satisfactory—no solution at all unless it was a clear and unequivocal zero.

And River wondered, sometimes, when Simon brushed his hand so gently through her hair, when he wrapped a blanket around her, when he gave her that sweet, carefree smile he reserved only for her…she wondered what would happen to his gleaming rows and dust-free shelves and tidy boxes should he find out that his beloved mei-mei had killed. Would he still hold her hand while she sank into the dreamless sleep he gave her if he discovered that his River had stopped as many hearts from beating as he had worked to ensure continued beating?

Two halves of the same whole.

Light and dark.

Doctor and assassin.

Simon and River.

She was afraid. Afraid that he would stop loving her. Afraid that he would love her still. Afraid, afraid, afraid because all she had was Simon and losing him would rupture her heart—not just the organ, but the thing that made her smile tentatively at the girl she now knew was called Kaylee and soften at Wash and Zoë and fill with wistful yearning at Mal and Inara and respond with answering affection to Simon's care and concern—and fracture her newfound hold on herself and send her spiraling out into nothingness.

And then there'd only be her. Just one half. Another fraction that could never, ever be enough, never be satisfactory, never be a solution, only another problem.

So she retreated, ran away, hiding behind the ragged, sharp shards that gleamed so malevolently, so deceptively, so darkly. She dared not let Simon close, wasn't brave enough to risk him catching a glimpse of the dead bodies that lived within her, couldn't ever find out that he abhorred her. Or worst of all…that he feared her.

Dread suffused her at even the mere thought—though just a thought could so quickly become her reality that maybe it was no wonder at all thoughts could bring her such pain—the mere imagined picture of him flinching away from her, of her brother afraid to enter her room, reluctant to touch her, shunning her presence.

And even if he did not fear her, if he forgave her all and still took her into his arms to calm her fears and wipe away her tears and soothe her sobs, could she really make him her accomplice? Make him into a murderer like her? Already he had held a gun and told himself to pull the trigger; already she had seen that he would give up all that he loved and brave even his most primal fears for her—was it such a stretch to think that he would give up the last of what made him her-Simon in order to follow her, even into madness and murder and chaotic mayhem?

Maybe. She wasn't coherent enough to know. She only knew that Simon being close was dangerous, and so she pushed him away even as she clung to the remnants of their old life that he granted her. Pushed him away and raged at him and fled the comfort of his touch.

But he didn't leave. He didn't retreat. He just kept pace with her, always at her shoulder, always there.

It was frustrating.

It was amazing.

It was agonizing.

It was so characteristically her-Simon, refusing to budge, defying her to ever make him stop loving her, determined to be there for her always.

"I'm not going anywhere, mei-mei," he promised her over and over again when a void deeper than the Black's whispered through her mind and left her trembling and gasping and shaking in terror and a pain that defied definition. "I'm here, River. I'm not going anywhere."

And he didn't. Not when she shouted at him. Not when she whined and winced away from the blue-white-silver place where he felt most comfortable. Not when she tossed aside the bag that held so many things he found important, the med-kit that tied him, even so minutely, to the parts of the past he still missed and longed for. Not when she cursed at him and refused his comfort and ranted against the physical help he sought to give her.

The serene firefly in which they took refuge gave them anonymity and safety, but it cut her off from sunlight and blue skies and the smell of growing things. It amplified the voices and made them echo and resound deafeningly in her ears. It made her forget that she was free now, that she didn't have to be afraid anymore, that the fears within her weren't stronger than the bond between her and Simon.

By the time she remembered that, when old souls became what they were meant to be and the wind and the sun caressed her and reminded her feet that they could dance, she had already hurt Simon, already weakened and wearied him, already pushed him away and left him isolated and solitary, distanced from the others who constantly whispered at her in Serenity, alienated by the fears that swallowed her up only to vomit her back out only to swallow her yet again in an endless, useless cycle.

And yet…

He laughed when she danced.

Despite all she had done to drive him away from the nightmares that sought to devour everything good, he still smiled so proudly at her graceful movements.

She thought that was what reminded her of who she really was. All his irritation and exhaustion and growing despair was erased, swept away by the rushing rapids that was her when she let the music take hold of her and send her flying and whirling and tapping and flinging herself through open air just to remind herself that she was free, just to prove to her body that there weren't any boundaries and confines. He watched her and he smiled and he laughed, and she remembered just how long it had been since last she'd heard him laugh so freely.

And then, snapping the moment like a rotted cord, casting ominous overtones like the silence that fell after the last rumbling of thunder, she felt cold lead endanger the beating heart of one of hers, felt life teeter on a precipice, felt the one called Book waver and weaken and wash away.

But…but she had been dancing, and her hands had been caught in the hold of another warm body wanting to feel alive with the music, and she couldn't see the Shepherd with her eyes…and so she knew, jubilantly, triumphantly, that she had not been the one to strike him down.

So maybe…maybe she hadn't killed the others either. Maybe the images had been plants designed to grow in her, fester with roots that threatened to choke out Simon's-River, poison with leaves that wormed their way through her and blocked off the light of her brother, hypnotize and enchant and deceive with flowering buds that lured her away from everything good and right and whole. They were cunning and manipulative, and suddenly it made sense to her—though that didn't, she was sometimes aware, always mean much—that they would have implanted a failsafe to keep her separate, to mark her as their own.

They had tricked her, but it wasn't too late; she could take care of Simon just like he took care of her. Everything he did, every move he made, every word he said, every thought he had, all of it proved his love for her—he hadn't said the words again, she thought, not since she had missed the cues he'd given her and skipped a step and forgotten that she was supposed to say the important words back to him, but he showed it to her constantly, ceaselessly.

So she would too.

She played hide-and-seek with him in the dappled forest, laughing at his surprised horror that she found him so easily and resisting when he tried to cheat and push her back to give him more time to hide. She told his name to the others they met and assured them that he was a good doctor, doing her best to wipe away any hurt he might still hold over her refutation of his medical help. She brought him berries to let him know that she remembered his-River and the moments and days and years she had shared with her-Simon. And seeing him selflessly cure and heal those who threatened him, seeing him as brilliant as she had always known he was, she wept. For the first time, she wept not for herself, not for the corpses buried inside her, not for the nightmares eating her alive from the inside out, not for the River-that-had-been.

For the first time, she wept for Simon.

She might not have killed anyone, might have only imagined the rapid glimpses of violence and terror and brutality within her, but she had stolen Simon from the life that had been his, had ripped him from what fate ordained and cast him to the winds of chance, had threatened the perfection of the rows through which she loved to wander.

Yet he ate the berries and he laughed with her and he did not shrink away from her touch—indeed, seemed to welcome it—and in his acceptance, there was some for herself, some form of absolution. Because if Simon was there, at her side, then not everything was wrong with the 'verse.

Everything was perfect, in fact, for that moment. A moment that stretched out seamlessly, blending in with the other indistinguishable amounts of time between sleeping and fearing and waking and wandering, a moment when there was just her and her-Simon and they were once more safe, enshrined in their private chrysalis. Needles tried to pierce her with Simon's discomfort and guilt and harsh, blinding grief when she told him Daddy would come for them, but that pain faded quickly, dwindling away like mist to leave the perfection once more clear and sharp.

But even a chrysalis could be endangered and harmed by those who interfered with its development, outsiders who poked at the cocoon and played sadistically with it, stealing it from its place of safety and dangling it over the fire.

It was strange, so strange, that people told her things, showed her things, and then screamed and shivered and condemned when she spoke those things aloud. Voices surrounded her constantly, swirling about her head, dancing around her so that she had to wade through them just to take a step forward.

She thought, sometimes, when the shards of glass were near enough together for her to think with some form of confluence, that she had been hearing the constant, ceaseless voices since the hands of blue had pierced her and shrieked at her and whispered their phrases and whispers and secret statements in her ears. Waking from the cold to Simon's warmth, the blanket of confusion that swaddled and suffocated her had kept the voices always just slightly out of reach. She—maybe, occasionally—remembered the screams she'd heard when Simon had insisted there was no sound to break the stillness of the Black and knew she had wondered how she heard their screams when she found their bodies already strung up like lights on a Christmas tree, once all merry and happy and festive, now dead and cold and useless now that the holiday was over and life with it.

But it wasn't until Simon studied her with that same expression he'd worn during the first of her dance recitals he'd attended and told the interfering outsiders, "River's always been…intuitive," and held her hand protectively in his to counter the images portrayed by the girl whose voice had been broken…it wasn't until then that she realized the voices weren't really voices at all.

A voice was the sound produced by moving breath and thought through the larynx, and the 'voices' that constantly afflicted and assailed her…they weren't ever issued through a larynx, weren't given voice at all.

They were secret. Silent. Private. Intimate.

They were thoughts.

She wandered through Simon's mind, walked the rows of his thoughts, trailed her fingers over the shelves of his memories and hopes and dreams and experiences and knowledge, noted her influence on his very life.

She heard the voiceless thoughts of all those that came around her. Peered into their most private corners. Eavesdropped on their own, solitary thoughts. Saw the secrets they never wanted anyone else to know.

It seemed so obvious once she realized it that it seemed she had always known, and maybe she had. Maybe calling them 'voices' had just been a way to make it easier for her to live with them every minute of every day. Maybe it had been a way of hiding what had been done to her, what they had changed and altered and mutated until she was no more than a broken shell of herself, only tiny splinters left to remind her of what and who she had once been.

Simon was proud of her intuition—though she knew, from her tours taken through his comforting psyche, that he understood what she did, had tucked that suspicion, that idea, away deep in a tiny corner of a high shelf, packing it in carefully with hushed, urgent whispers of Captain Reynolds will never let us stay if he finds out and He'll throw us off and We'll be completely alone—how will I protect her?

Simon was proud, but the masses of angry screams that never entered the open air…they weren't. They didn't see her the way Simon did, didn't call her mei-mei, didn't love her unconditionally. They saw her as the unknown, the unfamiliar, the dangerous, the mystical.

And out of their mouths leapt fire that burned away the last of the cold burrowed deep in her bones, the cold Simon had used to secret her away from The Academy. Out of their minds leapt blood-drenched, terror-cursed, murder-riddled thoughts—filled with all the secrets they did not want her to know—to claw at her and momentarily wipe away all else, and she could not help but scream.

Their hands closed around her, dragging her with none of the tenderness apparent in Simon's hands when he guided her from place to place, their faces closed and cruel and transparent, and suddenly she was back in the cell they had locked her in, helpless to do anything but wait there for them to return and drag her back to the unknown, to the dreams that promised normality and delivered horror, to the hands of blue that dug deep inside her and altered River into the broken, shattered half-person she was now.

She fought the masses, but carefully, cautiously, all too aware of the bodies inside her, wary of adding more, desperate to prove to herself that she had not been the one to strike down the corpses that populated her own mind. They combated her easily, and then she was drowning beneath their thoughts, their murderous intent, their irrational fear. She had thought herself insane, but now…now she knew insanity. Now it burned her and blistered her flesh and chafed her wrists and engulfed her in searing heat.

And with cold calm, the orderly, quiet rows that were Simon suddenly flared with lightning-edged intensity, the shelves a diamond-sharp barricade, the boxes opened and redistributed so that the meager amounts of knowledge Simon possessed about combat and negotiation and desperation were now in the forefront. In an instant, the quiet sanctuary to which she so often fled had become a fortress that crackled and burned and seethed like the vortex in a lightning storm. And River stood there in the center of this strong, vulnerable citadel, in the very eye of the storm, and tried to add her scant, flickering strength to his.

"Take me instead—take my life for hers," Simon said, and when that did not work, he set aside those plans and looked for some other weapon, some other shield. But there was no time because the flames danced around her and lit her dress to a rosy shade that reminded her of a blanket her mother had given her when she'd been quite small, a quilt Simon had packed away with him and given her and now, in part, carried with him in a pocket close to his heart.

The flames didn't yet touch the wood, but they burned like incandescent suns in Simon's eyes, set ablaze the cold fury turning the floors of his usually calm sanctuary into frost, coursed like searing ice through his veins.

"Get away from her!" Negotiation was forgotten in exchange for the bits of fighting expertise locked inside him, fueled more by resolve and fierce will and panicked terror than any real knowledge, though…though there were glimpses in some of the boxes knocked aside in his haste, glimpses of memories she'd had no part in, flashes of dark nights in Blackout zones, of physically negotiating for information and clues, of altercations with foolish thugs who saw only a rich doctor and not the implacable brother on a quest to save his sister.

Simon struck out with fists, with accusations, with denunciations, but it wasn't enough. Fire couldn't be stopped by arguments; fanaticism dressed in a mockery of religion couldn't be deterred by a few punches.

She—River—looked out at the spectators and listened to their voices, their murmured thoughts, saw in their eyes an image of a thin girl tied to a stake, eyes blank, expression unafraid, her brother standing defiant and unarmed and outnumbered in front of her, an inferno that had flared so quickly and now began to calm and soothe beneath her gentle touch all apparent in his shadowed eyes as his hands gradually began to unclench.

Backwards he stepped, moving on faith and devotion, and River swelled, grew, solidified beneath the enormity, the simultaneous complexity and simplicity, the entirety of his love. The gaps between the shards of glass that comprised her seemed to shrink and dwindle, a few splinters merging one with another, a handful of nightmares disintegrating in a puff of smoke.

River pitied the villagers around her, felt a rush of condescension at their utter blindness. Because they couldn't see, couldn't understand the unwavering, stalwart opponent before them, the lithe and deadly danger of the one they called witch…the approaching voices of those she had grown used to since being returned to the circle of Simon's arms.

The fire in Simon died away as he looked up to meet her eyes, replaced by the violet and silver lightning that edged every line, every corner, every shadow of his mind, intensity and ferocity and resolve. Each box was carefully packed away again, placed in their slots on the shelves, order and reason returned and then proven biased and perhaps illogical when every thought he had led him to one, surely flawed conclusion.

There was no escape.

He hadn't been able to protect her.

He wouldn't—couldn't—leave her.

They would die, together.

And she smiled at him, a real, unchained smile, as easy and free as the laughter when he'd made a face at her berries, as simple and unburdened as those she had given him in the days and years—seeming almost mythical now—before The Academy. Smiled at him even though she was tied to a post buried in the hungry ground and tried to tell him she loved him, the three words he wouldn't admit he longed for, the declaration she'd been long overdue to make.

"Post-holer. For digging holes for posts."

Odd. Those words didn't sound like the ones she'd meant to speak, seemed different in some way she didn't take the time to ponder, because they seemed to be enough for Simon.

His own smile was tiny, almost indiscernible, but then, he didn't know what she did, couldn't feel the metal shell of Serenity drawing so near, hadn't heard the words she had meant to say, had thought she said. He didn't understand…and yet, he understood more than it seemed he should. Or maybe he just trusted her. Maybe he didn't know how to do otherwise. He'd followed her trail of written breadcrumbs, had rescued her from the darkness she couldn't, even now, comprehend, had remained patient while she allowed fear to control her, and now there was nothing for him to do but climb up beside her and wrap his arms once more around her.

She sank into his touch—his touch, the only physical contact she could endure, even welcome, because she didn't mind if his voice became louder, became all she could hear—her own chaotic thoughts fluttering before his quiet, calm resignation, anticipating the flurry of wind and noise and shock that would roll through the town like an earthquake.

"Time to go," she told Simon, and felt his breath caress her cheek as the lights began to dim over the rows and rows that were him just before her predictions came true—the astonished, resentful, terrified thoughts of the interfering outsiders almost deafening her—and he once more gleamed with white and silver light that chased away the black of the night and the garish hues of the threatened flames.

Daddy hadn't come for them, but home had.