Disclaimer: I don't own Firefly.

Prompt #4: Training - They kept her going until she could react without thinking. Then they taught her how to kill.

Words: 508

They put her in a room with a man who asked lots of questions.

River liked answering his questions. He was a lot smarter than most of her other teachers.

But something felt off. She couldn't figure it out, and it pissed her off. River didn't like not being able to figure stuff out.

Then again, that's why she came to the Academy in the first place, wasn't it?

The Academy teachers first made her memorize lists of things. Bones, muscle groups, tendons, pressure points in the human body. Poisonous plants and berries. Types of weapons and their uses and purposes.

River didn't like where this was going.

They forced her to repeat endless exercises. Lunges, punches, kicks, spins, jabs and chops. Different stances for holding a blade and a blaster. Unarmed and armed combat. They made her show her moves in front of generals, admirals, councilmen, senators, and other high-ranking officials

River didn't like this at all.

They began to mess with her head. Isolation, lack of food and water, sleep deprivation. Threats against her family and friends. Threats against her person. She sent letters home to Simon, encoding pleas for help in the words, but they went unanswered.

It was when they started to threaten her family that River began to get angry. They mentioned how they could ruin her family's social standing. How they could end Simon's residency. How they could prevent him from securing a job in his field.

The next day, she broke her fighting instructor's arm. The day after that, his replacement had to be taken to emergency care for a knife wound to the gut. They ran more tests on her, pushing her mentally to a point that would have made a normal girl break, and then kept pushing.

So it was no surprise she had a psychotic episode, was it?

That's when the tests began in earnest. Needles in her arms and legs and head, beeping machines and colorful liquids and questions asked over and over and over. River sank into her mind, leaving behind the cold, sterile lab and the doctors.

She dreamed of death. She dreamed of sleep. She dreamed of a silent world and a world of screaming rage.

But from that dream-place came the strangest thing. A name, over and over. Miranda. Miranda. Miranda. She didn't know where it had come from or what it meant, but it haunted her.

What is Miranda? she asked her damaged mind. But it could never answer.

Despite losing her grip on reality, River found that she'd achieved a certain type of clarity. Her secret was important. So important that it had to be a mission. A mission to discover Miranda.

Maybe if she found out what Miranda was, the voices and pain and visions would stop.

So her days passed in splintered fragments, blending into pieces of her fantasies and dreams, until the day Simon pulled out the needle in her brain and rescued her.

This one diverged a little bit, but I like it anyway!

Review please!