AN: Reading this over, I do not believe it will be the final installment. Mostly because the...I believe the appropraite phrase would be that the 'plot bunny' made off with this one. Please Reveiw. Assistance desperately needed!
"Good morning angel" "Do not be silly, angel" "Come now, angel" "Sit down here with mother, angel" "Angel, don't do that" "You mustn't speak in front of daddy's guests, angel"
Mother's little angel. Sit down, be seen, and do not be heard. Shiny, glittering people do not understand the girl. Just be smiling, polite, adorable, quiet, well-mannered.
"Simon, what's an angel?"
Young Simon looked up from his desk and blinked in surprise. His little sister was sitting across from him, her chin propped on the edge of the expensive wooden desk, wide brown eyes serious and fixed on him; Simon, source of everything new and interesting, who did not scowl her for her questions unless he was busy with important business. She thought he might be busy with his 'important business' now, but he was looking at her, thinking about her question.
She felt her heart soar. Which was, of course, impossible, but there was a rush of endorphins that elicited a light-headed feeling of mild euphoria.
"Oh. Well, an angel is a messenger from God, and sometimes they're His warriors"
"Am I God's messenger?"
"God doesn't exist, mei-mei"
"What do you mean? I thought you said He had angels?"
"That's according to the Bible"
"What's the Bible?"
"It's the Christian holy book"
"Oh! A new book! Can I read it Simon? Can I?"
A look of panic crossed her beloved gi-gi's face and he fiddled with something on his screen for a moment.
"Father says it's full of lies, River. You don't want to read a book of lies do you? Here, read my chemistry text"
Book of Lies and she was the mythical messenger and warrior. She liked the idea of being a warrior; battling the hordes of barbaric Independents and saving the beacon of civilisation, hailed a heroine. Mother and Father would look on her adoringly and proudly proclaim to the empire that she, River Tam, was their only daughter and much loved. Simon would smile and carry her on his shoulders.
Innocent and pure; like Joan of Arc, an unblemished warrior. Fierce and strong and lily white.
Then she discovered what war really meant.
Blood and violence and death and statistics that made her want to vomit. Millions of lives; just ended. Gone. Finished. She did not want to be a warrior. She would be a dancer.
Innocent and pure, chasing perfection in every graceful, arching motion and sweeping curvature. Exact. Without flaw. Dissolving into the music. Becoming something other than River Tam, who was constantly frowned at, nasty thoughts and pursed lips. Not accepted. Too smart, too inquisitive, too blunt and passive of the unwritten social coda that her parents worshipped in place of any religion or meaningful pursuit.
When they cut her, they blackened her, made her dirty, blemished the lily, and polluted the River. The trickle of intuition became a torrent and the ballerina was lost in the flood waters and drowned in Miranda and secrets and blackness and hate and secrets. War. Plans.
Simon. He held her. Protected her. Grasped her face while the tidal waves of new minds, thoughts, hates, passions, memories washed her, drowned her. Echoed so loud she could not make sense of any of it. Simon held her on his shoulders but he could not keep her out of the black acid of lies and secrets.
Then, the Ape-Man. The Man-with-the-girls name intrigued her. He did not like her, or Simon, because they disturbed his peace. Which was ironic...because it was in the presence of Jayne that River found a moment of silence. He saw the world in black and white. It was refreshing, but also as shocking as the first lungful of crisp, cold air after being submerged for too long. Those brief, startling gasps of air kept her alive.
Then Ariel. He understood. Laying there, sharing her secrets with Simon, the secret she could not verbalise because all her words echoed too loudly, she felt his mind as he finally understood. Then, it was like a long, beautiful, summery and sustained lungful of sweet air. Jayne would protect her. Nobody else was allowed to hurt the girl...except Jayne. Because, after all, he was Jayne.
The River was slowly being cleansed.
But it needed to be purged.
Miranda had to go.
She was not a saint. She was a being, as bewildering and unfathomable as the musings of a divine being. Yet she was the first thing that Malcolm Reynolds, the man with no faith, had ever believed in since his God had forsaken him. She brought about a shift in balance so profound the universe was continuing to reel. She brought an entirely different force into wondrous being; Simon and Kaylee made a rainbow when they clashed. Kaylee's sun and Simon's rain. It was beautiful.
Then there was Jayne Cobb. The Moonbrained girl found something inside the Merc that not even he had realised was in there; a love so deep it changed the course of a River.
He was not a saint. But neither was she.
She was a girl. Just a girl. With a past as twisted and black as the guts of a rodent.
And he...well. He was merc.
But he was her merc.