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Prompt #7: Classmate - It was a dark day when another Academy inmate found River.

Words: 1,034

River stiffened as she felt the chill race up her spine. Sharp eyes quickly scanned the milling crowds around the docks, but she knew it was a pointless effort. The target she was looking for knew how to hide itself well.

Mal's voice broke through her thoughts. "What'sa matter, lil' albatross?"

"Captain, better get everyone home now," she replied, not looking at him. "Take them home and lock the doors, lock the windows, lock the locks. There's a storm comin'."

Simon stepped into her sightline. "River, what is it?"

"Class reunion." She shook her head when he made to keep talking. "Not here, not now. Get home, bar the door. Big Bad Wolf is coming to gobble little piggies."

Simon wanted to keep talking - the big boob, didn't he get it? - but Mal understood. He knew in the way she was looking around, the way she gripped the now-ever-present blaster (a loan, courtesy of Jayne's impressive arsenal) attached to her hip, and the glint in her eye that said I am Reading, do not ask me the stupid.

"How long?" he asked instead.

"Long enough." She shot the browncoat a pleading look. "Keep Grandma and the piggies safe, woodcutter."

Red Riding Hood has to go hunting wolves.

As it turned out, once the crew was gone, he found her.

River looked at the youth, analyzing features and cataloging her finds. Male, approximately her own age, five point five centimeters taller and almost nine kilograms heavier than her, all of it lean muscle. His attire perfectly blended in with the dock crowds, not too fancy or too shabby, and his dark hair was shaggy enough to conceal the only physical imperfection he possessed.

The one River herself had given him, once upon a time.

"Subject Tam," he growled, head tilted in a feral move that spoke to his current mentality.

She inclined her head in kind, her eyes never leaving his. "You sensed me."

"Sensed another. Didn't know it was you."

And she hadn't known it was him. They had been mostly isolated from other test subjects for fear that their Reader abilities would enable them to collaborate with each other and cobble together an escape plan. "That why you are here?" she asked unnecessarily. "To hunt?"

He nodded. The movement was jerky. "Took up the work."

"Others to help?"

"None to help. Just me and you left." Bright green eyes blinked slowly, owlishly. "Told to hunt the last subject." Another slow blink. "You're Reading me."

"Yes." River knew it wasn't polite, but his broken responses weren't going to get them anywhere quickly. "You're different. Redder. Blacker."

"Lot has changed in the year you've been dark." The look in his eyes shifted into something even worse. "Losing you meant they had to overcompensate. They made it all worse."

She flinched in guilt. What she'd gone through could only be described as hell. If he'd managed to survive worse... "You're the Wolf."

He didn't reply, but she didn't need one. She could see the beast in his mind, dark and showing its fangs as it growled. Whatever was left of the boy he'd been before was not strong enough to overpower this alter persona. All he had left was his mission.

Maybe not. "I have something good now. Something better than a mission," she said. "I've got the sky."

He frowned at her. His face scrunched slightly as his head jerked to the side. Motor tic. Involuntary. "Come again?" Confusion flowered in his dark mind, palest gray and holding faint traces of green-blue longing.

She fought to keep her mind from thinking too loudly. "Can't tell me you've never thought of seeing the sky as a free man. Can't say that and not lie to me."

"Freedom's not possible for creatures like us."

"We're still people, even broken as we are. Still people."

"Not for me." His free hand raked back shaggy black bangs, bearing the thin slash of a scar going down and across his right eye. But now a star-shaped scar, more recent judging by the pinkness of the flesh, hovered above his right temple. "Not after what they did to me."

River gaped in shock. She'd borne a similar scar behind her left ear for several months after the brain surgeries, but the placement meant that they'd gone deeper with him. Done more to him. Done worse.

He nodded slowly as he let his bangs fall to cover the scars. "I'm not whole anymore." His tic reappeared, a quick, tiny jerk of his head. "Not human anymore."

"Don't believe that." After finding her own humanity despite everything that had been taken from her, River could not believe he was as far gone as he thought. She shook her head. "Not true. Everyone can find serenity, find a place of their own."

"Not me." He pulled out a laser pistol and leveled it at her head. "Draw your weapon," he ordered. "Let us finish this as we should."

River made no attempt to obey. The sight of the gun pointing at her started a chain reaction of conditioned responses. Her heart rate spiked as her breathing slowed. Adrenaline pumped through her bloodstream, but her limbs remained loose. Her mind moved at lightspeed as she processed tactics, countermoves, her own knowledge of her opponent's strengths and weaknesses, and her eyes darted around in their sockets to tag possible weapons and escape routes.

He cocked his laser pistol. "Draw. End this, once and for all." His head-jerking tic appeared again - and it affected his aim, ever so slightly.

She took one deep breath, exhaled slowly. Her hand gripped her blaster, flicked off the safety in her holster. "Shouldn't do this," she tried one last time. "Should be together, defying the Alliance and flying free."

"Can't fly free," he said in a tone that almost sounded mournful. His head jerked again.

Her blaster cleared its holster before he could readjust.

There were two shots fired.

Only one of them went down.

Le Gasp! Which one do you think went down?

Review please!