Mal is surprised to hear it wasn't Riona who sounded the alarm.
"Strongest I've had it in my life, Mal," Collin tells him, looking haunted. He's laid aside his sidearm, picking up the scotch Jayne's poured into three glasses, in generous portions, without asking. Zoe's gone back to the ship for Simon, taking Kaylee with her, who volunteered at the first sign of serious talk. She's gotten nervous a lot easier since Wash died.
"Thought you didn't have it so strong as Riona," observes Jayne, who seems, as always, uninvolved, though this time Mal knows he's playing. That Jayne, of all of them, has gotten more careful, is telling. That, and Mal knows Jayne likes the Cromwells, likes Riona in particular, in a way he doesn't often assign anyone who doesn't exactly work for a living. He respects them, and he understands the friendship of people like the Cromwells well enough to be seriously bothered by any threat to them. Bothered enough to feel a little bit vengeful.
They've all changed, some.
Collin shoots him a look like someone's tickled needles down his back. "Usually don't," he says, shaking his head, some Chengdu sneaking into his accent. It makes Mal want to smile, but he doesn't. "Usually it's her. But that night..." He doesn't exactly shiver, but a strange look crosses his face before he takes a long swig of his drink. Collin's as ginger as his sister, and scared is a strange, hard look to see on his face, no matter that Mal's seen it before.
"She woke me up from it. Shaking me. Told me she'd felt me scared before I told her..." He shakes his head again. "They were quiet. Came through the back door, middle of the day... we're used to discouraging Feds, but usually they come through the front, knock on the door, make a show of being civil. These ones were smooth, polite, knocked, came in without an answer... started shooting."
"You weren't hit?" Jayne's sitting forward, a hot, dark look in his eyes, and Mal envies him the honesty of the emotion. Collin shakes his head.
"I got one on the first try, Riona got the other. The third one got around us - they cut the monitors. Came around front, through the study, as we were getting rid of the bodies. Ten minutes later, I look up and she's gone."
Jayne's sitting up a little straighter, Collin's looking wrung-out. "I heard a silencer, then an unmuffled shot. Made the front yard as they went down. She got him in the throat." He drags one hand over his face.
"All the jokes she makes about the neighbours, and none of them lifted a finger."
"Nice," murmurs Jayne, scowling. Jayne's not much for the warm fuzzies, but he knows the neighbourhood as well as Mal. Half a dozen under-the-radar types, some of them ex-Browncoats, within ten minutes' walk, sitting quiet while a little girl's getting manhandled can't mean he's pleased.
"Explains why we couldn't reach you," Mal says.
Collin nods. "Took us three weeks to get things up and running again." He chuckles, the sound harsh. "She was worried about you."
Sometimes Mal wishes Riona could be meaner than she is, like her brother. Some things don't rub off, unfortunately.
"I'm still not sure about this," Simon tells her, as he moves around the infirmary, collecting things and placing them in his bag with quick and careful hands. Kaylee likes his hands. "You say she's a... psychic?"
Kaylee chuckles, leaning in the door, ankles crossed. "You say 'psychic' like you'd never seen one," she says.
Simon pauses, looks at her, sheepish, "I... know," he says, moving again. "It's just... until River..." he doesn't elaborate, but moves on, past it, "...I always had this image of psychics as people who lurk behind beaded curtains, charming the gold out of your pockets."
"It ain't her job, Simon," Kaylee tells him, gently chiding.
He shrugs. In his head, if she's said something, it's either true, or true enough. "If you tell me this is wen tuo..."
Kaylee nods. "Riona's as gang zhèng as they come. The cap'n an' Zoe've known her since the war. Or, before, I think. Even Jayne likes her."
Simon pauses again, giving her a dubious look. "The way he likes you?"
Kaylee gives him a sunny smile.
He sighs, zipping up his red bag. "Poor woman."
Kaylee laughs again, crossing the room, and catching up his hands. "Shu chàng," she says. "It'll be shiny."
"If you say so," Simon agrees, reluctantly.
"I say so," she confirms, standing tiptoe to kiss him, softly, at the temple. Simon's eyes fall closed of their own accord.
"Besides," she continues, "the Cromwells are real hospitable folk. They've got a big tub, with real water, and Collin always lets me use it, if I want."
Simon makes a rumbling noise, deep in his chest. "That sounds nice."
Kaylee smiles.
Then Simon says, sounding surprised: "Wait - did you say Cromwell?"
Riona Cromwell has seen a great number of things, in her time, that would qualify as strange, and a few others that make "strange" seem about as exciting as protein rations without salt.
But none of that compares to what she sees - or can't quite see - in River Tam's head.
It's a few minutes - though probably longer, in real time - before she sits back and stares. River is nestled comfortably in a worn-out armchair that at some point in its life, has been expensive. She's blinking sleepily, bare feet tucked up underneath her. She puts Riona in mind of a kitten.
"Huh," says Riona, and River nods, sagely.
"Yes," she says. "That's what it looks like from inside, too."
"I would imagine it to look less ordered from your perspective." Riona is trying to sort out a thousand images in her own mind, as the translation from River has left them jumbled. But somehow it's all jarringly, fleetingly, familiar, pieces of her and River floating about in the air between them.
...Simon scowls at her, a face that makes her smile, because it means he knows she's right: "It's from the book, River..."
...her father's hands are on her shoulders. "If we don't come back in an hour, Ni Zi, you pick up and you run, you hear me...?"
"Do you want some tea?" River asks, and Riona is momentarily puzzled. But she remembers, as she looks, the tea service she brought up from the kitchen, which is basking in the glow of the hotter next to the teapot. When she nods, River deactivates it and pours two cups, still steaming, then adds just the right amount of sugar and milk to Riona's cup without instruction, which, Riona realises, makes sense. The girl is wide open as anything, and in Riona, who has made herself almost as open to read her, it sets going a low sort of twinge, from exposure. It doesn't quite hurt, but then, the mind never quite does anything the way the rest of the body does it.
"It's not as bad as it used to be," River tells her as she hands her the tea. "It used to be - crazy, I was crazy. Mal thought he was joking, but he wasn't. I was everywhere. I couldn't stay."
"And now?" inquires Riona, who remembers some of that, both from River's memories and from when it started in herself, a long time back.
River ponders, sipping the tea, her eyes wandering. "Now... I can. Now there's nothing pulling things, but they still move fast, so it's hard. I have to... it's unpredictable."
"Yes," says Riona, softly, and River looks at her, interested, probably because she's already picked up what she's going to say. "Your mind must always have moved quickly."
"Intelligence and intuition are both based upon the speed of neuroelectrical connections." She smiles, a little-girl smile. "My neurons are impatient."
"But before, you must have had walls. Now, though, instead of bouncing back inside, like they should, your thoughts go wheeling off, unsupervised." She gives River a calculating look, which the girl returns. "Must be unsettling."
"Unsettling," River agrees. "But that part's normal, isn't it? Happened to you."
...she is tired and sulky and desperate and very small, but he remains firm. "You can so do it. You are my daughter..."
"Well," Riona says, qualifying, "as normal as these things get. Just usually, your body adjusts. But in your case... I guess there wasn't enough time."
"There wasn't any time," River says, very seriously. "But you know how, don't you?" she asks. "You can make me... adjust?" She's playing with the hem of her skirt, twisting it between busy, absentminded fingers.
"I can't make you, River," Riona tells her, gently. "I can show you. But it won't be easy."
"Sweating and crying and falling down," intones River, "but challenges are good for the soul."
Riona starts, a little, because she hadn't felt River looking, but the words bring the memory hard and fresh to the surface.
She is eleven years old, and covered in dust, and weeping, and her father is patiently explaining that the horse will never respect her if it knows it has made her surrender; she replies that it's easy for him, when he's as big as the horse; the horse, for her part, is peering, her eleven-year-old self thinks, mockingly through the slats of the fence. Less than a year later, her father will use the same tact, when her powers come on strong and fast.
River is smiling at her, as if they are sharing the same joke. "Sweating and crying and falling down," Riona repeats, trying to sound stern but apparently, judging by River's expression, mostly failing. "It's hard, and it hurts, however clever you are."
..."I'm not scared of anything. So there." River makes a face.
Simon is unimpressed. "Only because you can do everything..."
River sobers, and sets down her cup. She leans forward. "I'm not scared," she says, then seems to reconsider, as Riona raises one skeptical eyebrow. "Yes, I am," she amends. "But I'm brave. Really."
Riona laughs. "I believe you." As she closes her eyes again to look inside River, the troubling sense of familiarity that has been niggling for an hour grows more clear, but not clear, yet.
By the time River is sweating from the effort of trying to make her mind do what she wants, and muttering to herself in concentration, Riona has worked through enough of River's memories that she's almost sure she should know. She just can't quite work out the how.
And when River, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, finally brings up her first wall, flimsy but substatial, it clicks into place, and Riona is so surprised that she drops her cup, and it shatters.
River opens her eyes, and laughs."I did it," she says, triumphant. "It's so quiet."
Riona is staring at the broken remnants of her cup, green enamel and red flowers in a pool of brown tea, which is soaking into the rug. How could she miss this?
River sags back into her chair, still laughing.