Disclaimer: See chapter one.

A/N: Also don't own 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'.

Brompton Cocktail

Chapter Eighteen

River picked at the stew Oriole had made. The utter despair washing across her mind was more than enough to stifle the heartiest of appetites. Why is it he has so much trouble seeing the good in himself? She picked up a piece of onion and let it fall back into her bowl with a small splat of broth. I'll give him the fact that he's not an innocent. But why is it that he can't see his own honor? All he sees is that he's never raped anyone and that the men he's killed all 'deserved' it in some way. Halfheartedly, she popped a chunk of goat meat into her mouth and chewed it slowly.

And I never realized before that he had any sort of faith, though why that surprises me I'm not certain. He certainly spent enough time with Book. She sighed and gagged a little when she swallowed. She pushed the bowl away. At times, I've envied him. His simple and straightforward approach to life. At first, I thought it was just the bright primary colors of someone with less-than-average intelligence. The black and white world of children, carried forwards past the age of majority. This assumption was strengthened by the few thoughts of his that I could read, nearly all of which had to do with money, food, or sex. Biological urges, or those precipitated by biological urges; money equals food, money equals sex. But then Ariel happened. And he showed signs of more complex thought processes than I'd assumed him capable of making.

She stood and carried her half-eaten bowl back to the kitchen and washed it out. Every day since then, he's shown signs of more intelligence than I gave him credit for – and I must admit I still have difficulty reading his thoughts, though his emotions have always been an open book. Why, then, this unwavering faith in something which has not been and cannot be proven to exist? Why ascribe meaning to the meaningless? We exist to exist, nothing more and certainly nothing less. Why does he persist in furthering his own emotional anguish by believing not only in an afterlife, but in an afterlife full of nothing but pain and suffering? Her own chest felt like it was stuck in a vise. What I told him remains accurate. I look past the mask and see someone far more complicated lurking behind it. Under that, is another layer, and another, and another, and another. Each one done in a richer pallet of ever more subtle shades, each one somehow bigger than the mask it wore. It's like he's managed to invert the laws of physics to fit himself into ever narrower displays of who he is.

Returning to the bridge, she stared out at the star-spattered sky. What will we find when the last mask falls away? The first shattered months ago, weakened by cracks caused by the pressure of guilt and caring. The mercenary lies in shards on the floor, long since swept away by loyalties he hadn't even known he'd forged. The womanizer hangs in tatters, dissolving in the onslaught of a traitorous body and medicinal side-effects. The fighter is holding on with all of his impressive strength, but will soon be pushed aside for the same reasons. An old legend from Earth-that-Was which stated that stars were the light of all the souls yet to be born and those who had already died floated across her mind as she stared out at the distant pinpricks of light. I think we see flashes of who he is from time to time. Not often, certainly, but no role, no matter how well known or how close it is to reality, can be maintained indefinitely. But how to separate those flashes of truth from what he wants us to see and think? A childish urge of her own ambushed her, and she made a promise to herself to see if she could find any new stars after…

"See anything interesting, meimei?" Simon quietly asked.

River shook her head. "Not particularly. It's a quiet night."

Simon could tell something was bothering his sister. He slipped up beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. She leaned into the touch, rather like a cat, grateful for the warmth it provided. "What's on your mind, River?"

"I've read more than you," she said, her voice small. "And I'm smarter than you are. But you've not had my… issues. You've read different source-texts. Your knowledge is, by its very nature, different from my own. In all that you've learned, in all that you've seen and done and read…"

"What, meimei?"

Unexpectedly, River burst into tears and clung to her brother's waist. "Why does it hurt her when they die? Why can't she have the comfort of faith, too? Was that one of the pieces they stole from her brain?"

Simon hugged his sister tightly. His eyes traced the plastic dinosaurs ringing the controls. Took her long enough, he thought. But everyone grieves on their own schedule. "Shh, meimei. It'll be alright." He stroked her hair, wishing he had answers for her questions. Wish anyone had answers to those questions. And I wish Wash was still here, so she wouldn't even have to ask them to begin with.

He had no idea how long he stood there before her sobs ceased, but it was long enough that there was a sizable wet patch on his shirt. He cupped River's face and wiped away the last of her tears with his thumbs. "I don't know why it hurts, meimei. I know I miss Wash, too. He was a good guy and didn't deserve what happened. But even though I don't know if I believe in any sort of afterlife myself, I'm always going to keep him in my memories, so he'll continue on as long as I do – his horrible taste in clothing, inappropriate obsession with toys, and bad jokes are but a memory away."

River closed her eyes and nodded at him. He doesn't understand. He can't. He won't. Not until it's too late. Wash is dead. Book is dead. Inara is gone and might as well be dead for all we hear from her. Soon Jayne will die. How much more can Serenity take and still be whole? At what point does the soul of a family die? She opened her eyes. "You look tired, gege. You should get some sleep. Captain will need you with him tomorrow when he picks up our secondary cargo."

Simon's forehead wrinkled. "He's not going to get shot again, is he?"

The corners of River's mouth twitched. "No. The secondary cargo is going to be medicines. You will need to verify them for him before we accept the cargo."

Simon sighed. "And I somehow doubt that they're in any way legal."

"With prices what they are on Greenleaf?" River rolled her eyes. "Not hardly."

He let out a humorless chuckle. "And to think, I used to consider myself a law-abiding citizen. How far we've come." He brushed his sister's hair off of her face. "You should think about getting some sleep yourself, meimei. You look as tired as I feel."

"I will," she promised, though she doubted she would be getting anything in the way of meaningful rest. Almost unwillingly, her eyes wandered back to the starry skies outside. "Then the traveler in the dark, thanks you for your tiny spark, he could not see which way to go, if you did not twinkle so," she whispered.

A/N2: Hope I'm getting the story across the way it's been playing out in my head.

Review if you please. Thanks.