Naturally Simon panicked when he couldn't find River.

His jabbering drew Kaylee from under Serenity's engine. Mal had finally replaced the left anterior hydraulic fitting. She'd enjoyed installing the new part.

"Slow down. I thought River went out with you." Kaylee wiped her hands on a rag and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

"No, she didn't want to come. I left her in her bunk." Simon twisted his fingers together anxiously. "I just got back. I can't find her anywhere."

"Did you check the cargo bay?" Kaylee bit her lip. "I've found her behind the boxes a couple of times."

"Yes, I looked there, and in every compartment and closet I could think of."

"Come on, I'll help you look." Kaylee grabbed a fresher rag and wiped her hands again.

"What if she left the ship?" Simon moaned.

"She knows not to go out alone." Kaylee's brow furrowed. "Doesn't she?"

Simon groaned. "Sometimes its hard to tell."

They continued the word game for what seemed like hours, until River noticed the way Jayne was shifting his weight over and over.

"You're uncomfortable." She observed, breaking off the game on her turn.

"It's a tiny space." He said, rubbing his neck. "I'm a big guy." He winced inwardly, grateful she wouldn't catch the innuendo there. Things were awkward enough without embarrassing her.

"Lie down." She said. "Stretch."

"Where will you be?" Jayne asked suspiciously.

"The glass will not shatter on contact." River frowned at him. She tugged at her skirt.

Jayne wrenched his eyes off her knees.

He uncurled his body, inching himself towards her. He stopped when he was close to her and maneuvered until he was on his back with his legs curled up.

She sighed. "Your legs will still cramp. Roll on your side."

He did and she crawled down the length of the cell. He pushed himself straight. Pains he hadn't even been aware of eased. She settled between his legs, not looking too comfortable against the unpadded hatch.

"Will you stay with me?" She asked, biting her lip. "Wherever we… land?"

"Maybe." He grunted. "Or I could settle you somewhere if we can't get you home."

She frowned.

"I'm not a nice man, girlie." He scowled back at her. "Don't look for promises. Lets move one step at a time. They still might separate us."

She nodded slowly, warily.

"Gorramit. Stretch out next to me." He growled. "We're gonna be here awhile." He shifted his body so there was room for her too.

She hesitated.

"I won't bite." Jayne tried to adjust himself through his pants without her noticing.

"I might." River bared her teeth at him, but she stretched herself out beside him.

"You'd better not, girlie girl." He shifted so there was a few inches between them. He tried to just look at the wall behind her.

He could smell her more clearly now. She smelled, well like herself, like a woman. Even though she was just a crazy little girl.

"He is not edible?" River asked playfully.

Jayne muttered something, not sure his own self what. He could think of…

"Sigh." She shifted so she was taking up the space she'd left between them. He could feel her body heat where they were now nearly but not quite touching.

"Look. If we're gonna get through this…" His frustration filled his voice, he heard how loud he was and huffed. "This just ain't easy for me." He looked into her face trying to guess if she understood at all.

"He is used to mobility." River said, trying to decipher his meaning. "He would not normally seek out the company of this girl."

He frowned. Her gaze grew more intense as if she was nearing some answer.

"Forced immobility coupled with forced proximity are making this situation worse." She restated.

"Yeah." Jayne agreed. "That's most of it."

She smiled sadly. "She knows he doesn't like her."

"There's more to it than that."

The look she gave him felt like it burned right through him, but she moved away again, letting him breath easier.

"Girl… Gorramit. I can't keep calling you girl. I can't stand it." He huffed his breath out again.

"You could call me Jane." She suggested, watching his face closely.

"No I ruddy well couldn't. That ain't your name." He scowled at her. She beamed back. Gorramit she was getting him riled up on purpose.

"Well, it's not your name either." She lifted her eyebrows significantly.

He opened his mouth to protest, she placed a finger on his lips. He thought it over, mildly distracted by that slim white finger.

If the slavers could figure out who he was, they might connect them back to Serenity. If they both took false names… Maybe they could get through this without those gorram evil blue handed hun dans getting their hands on her.

He nodded and she moved her finger.

"You're right, it ain't." He agreed.

"Jane is a girl's name." She teased.

His hand started towards his… Gorramit, not helpful, especially since she was right, more or less.

He scowled at her and reached for a name he thought he could answer to. "James Coleson." He said finally.

"Santha Brown." She said immediately. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Santha? Did you pull that out of my brain?" Wouldn't surprise him none if she had. Santha was the name of the girl he'd been headed to see on Persephone.

She looked honestly surprised. She tilted her head at him. "It was the most common girl's name on Xirses in the year I was born."

"Huh."

"If my parents knew the trouble the name would be." She swallowed. "They would have named me exactly as they did."

"Why do I always get the feeling that we're having three conversations at once?" He grumbled.

"Not my fault that I'm an evil genius." She giggled. "Complexity of spirit defies quantifying."

After that confusing statement, she babbled on for a while, glibly using long words, most of which he had never even heard before.

After a bit he started hearing things that he thought might mean she was insulting him.

"Damn," He grumbled, "I wish your fool brother was here to tell me what the hell you're saying."

She stopped speaking and looked him in the eye. "He couldn't tell you. My fool brother never listens."

They were both silent for a long moment. It was long enough to make Jayne uncomfortable. They needed a new game.

"I'll tell you a story." She announced suddenly. "Once upon a time and long ago…"

She burbled on like the river she was named for. Some old nonsense about a spooky forest and a white flower and girls turned into birds by an ugly old hag.

Jayne tried to relax against the wall as he listened. They would be here too long to stay as tense as he was now.

He listened idly to her story, surprised again that he understood so many of her sentences. She finished one story with the traditional happily-ever-after, prince-saving-the-day ending, then she immediately began another about three brothers who went out into the 'Verse to find work.

When he interrupted her, he didn't really mean to, his rumbling belly gave him away.

"You're hungry." She announced, ending her story in the middle of a thought.

She turned over so fast that he didn't know how she'd done it. One moment she was facing him, the next she was turned to the wall and her hair was in his face.

"Hey," He sputtered, "Watch it." He smoothed the hair onto her back, away from his mouth. She shivered at his touch. He decided it were best if he didn't know why.

"Sorry." She muttered as she slid the storage cabinet open again.

From her tone, Jayne doubted she meant it much.

"We should tie back your hair somehow." He said.

"Later." River said, "Food is first. We are hungry now."

"Just don't get it in the food." He griped.

She ignored him, muttering and inspecting the ready meals.

"At least they're the good ones." She said happily, choosing two from the pile.

"There's such a thing as good ones?" Jayne asked doubtfully.

"Of course." She glanced at him with that little frown that usually made him sort of mad. "They are almost fresh too, over three years before expiration."

"Three years? Those things have a shelf life of three years?"

"More." River said, turning so that she could prop herself up on her elbows. "Fresh ones go to the troops. Surplus is sold when two years remain." She tapped the date on the box. "Our captors have a link to someone with access to an Alliance supply depot."

"Huh." Odd, but it made sense if you thought about it. He'd never had one that wasn't nearly expired.

He was mulling that over when he noticed what she was doing. "Hey, that ain't the way how you're supposed to do it." She had begun mixing the packets together in ways not indicated on the package.

"I am cooking it for you." River said calmly.

"Well you're doing it all wrong." He protested.

She looked at him like he was the crazy one. "Do you know why these ones are good?"

A scowl was the only answer he could think of.

"No, you don't." She continued. "Therefore I will cook it for you and you will realize you are grateful when you eat it." She looked back at what she was doing.

"Hey, keep your hair outa the food." He gathered up the messy locks and braided them loosely down her back.

She stilled while he was working, and turned towards him as he finished. He tied it with a strip of packaging from the meal she was 'cooking.'

"You know how to braid hair." She said, wonder filling her voice.

He shrugged awkwardly in the small space. "Not exactly hard."

She looked back at her hands, but he could tell her mind was racing faster than most people could fly a ship through the black.

After a while she handed him the meal tray. He looked at it suspiciously, but his stomach rumbled and well, he would eat anything edible, wouldn't he?

He took a bite and stared at her in amazement. "What in the 'Verse did you do to make it taste so good?"

"The overt instructions are given incorrectly." She said, serenely opening the second package. "To deliberately produce a taste like donkey piss and dog poo. It is a mess hall joke on new trainees. Double funny out on the rim where the food is ageing as well."

"You learn that at your gorram Academy?" He growled.

She looked at him with what would have been a glare if she didn't look so sad too.

It made him angry to think of that place.

"My brother was a Youth Cadet for three years before he went away to school." She sighed. "He could never figure them out either."

She lined the empty packets up in four groups of three. He didn't understand at first, but once he had stared for a moment he realized that each group had a little spot of color in common on the bottom edge of the wrapper.

"The good ones tell you." She explained. She pointed to the corner of the film that covered the tray. It had four little squares of color in a row. "Pink green red blue is my favorite."

He double checked the labels. She'd fixed her 'favorite' for both of them. He felt touched, then suspicious. "Are they all the same kind? You made us your favorite."

She arched her eyebrow at him. "Only three of them."

He turned his attention back to his plate. Neither one of them needed things to get all complicated, which is where he was starting to lean, so he should just lean the other way. They would get out of this and then they could go back to not being so…close.

"Hey, this part is warm." He'd cleared one area of his tray and gone on to the next.

"Your gut has never burned when you ate one of these?" Her brow arched at him.

Jayne thought back. "Oh."

"A chemical reaction." River explained. "Exothermic, generates heat."

Jayne sipped the 'drink.' "And this is almost cold."

"Opposite. Endothermic." She grinned. "Scary, isn't it? I wouldn't want to live on them."

River began to eat her own meal. Jayne watched her to slow down his own self. He didn't remember that she ate so daintily. She took tiny little scoops and seemed to be savoring every bite.

"It ain't that good." Jayne said after a while.

"Eating slowly fools your body into thinking it is getting more than it is." River said, forming each word carefully.

"Huh." Jayne looked down at his own tray. It was nearly empty.

Jayne was working on getting at the last possible smear of sauce when River sighed and pushed her tray towards him.

"You don't want no more?" He eyed her.

River shook her head.

"Why not?" His eyes narrowed as he measured the possibilities.

"Your caloric need is greater." She lay her head on her arms and closed her eyes.

Jayne watched her for a moment. She sure looked all peaceful. He took up her tray and polished it off with gusto.

As he finished, he realized she was watching him.

"Thank you." He licked the spoon one last time.

River smiled softly. "Watching you enjoy it was thanks enough."

"Why don't you tell more people about the mislabeled packet thing?"

River grinned. "The joke is on me when they change the packaging again."

Jayne grunted.

"Nutritional value remains constant."

"Huh." Jayne shifted against the wall. "Guess that does make it better." He reached toward the waste disposal unit.

River stopped him before he could throw away the trash.

"What?"

"Resources." She said cryptically. She rinsed out every packet and stowed them to dry in the storage compartment.

"Fen li. " Jayne muttered, hopefully too low for her to hear.

"When I have nothing, I do not dispose of an item I may later find a use for."

Jayne blinked and thought about that. That made an eerie kind of perfect sense. Not only that, she must be trying awfully hard to get him to understand her.

"Right." He agreed. "No use wasting."

Although how they'd use 'em was a mystery to him.

"Still no sign of her?" Mal asked as he entered the dinning area.

Three glum faces met him.

"Right." Mal shrugged into his coat. "I'm gonna look in some of Jayne's favorite haunts. Maybe I can track him down." He cleared his throat. "Maybe he knows something.

After another awkward moment, Inara stood. "I'll go check the Cortex again. Maybe there's…"

She paused, then just went.