Disclaimer: I don't own Firefly or Serenity.
Prompt #8: Escape - It was always on her mind.
Words: 611
She was in the Academy only six months when the idea first came to her.
I have to escape this place.
River never ignored her mind when it had those sorts of ideas. So she began to plot and plan. She learned the routines of her guards, memorized and translated tones of the keypads to decipher the electronic locks. She learned how to Read her teachers and trainers.
Her first attempt almost succeeded. If they hadn't done a surprise inspection, she might have managed to get out in time. But River was captured, and that was when the brain surgeries began.
It grew more difficult to remember things clearly. So River wrote coded letters to Simon, trusting her brother to understand their meanings. She tried to focus on Reading more clearly.
Her second attempt failed miserably. She misjudged a jump across the main ventilation duct and fell almost two stories through a glass ceiling.
That was when they began with the drugs and neural stripping. The person known as River Tam began to splinter and fracture amid the hallucinations. Memories meshed with fantasy, confusing her already fragile mind and not helped by the bits and pieces she picked up from the doctors, generals, and gentlemen who watched her like she belonged in a zoo.
Then she heard it. Miranda. It became another chain around her neck, locking her into another prison. The secret of Miranda. It tore her apart, sending her mind into a splintering frenzy as she tried to find something to make sense of the secret.
Simon never knew how close he came to rescuing an insane psychic.
And he never would.
Even after six months of breaking the hold of Miranda's secret, River would frequently feel the pressing urge to escape.
Whenever they hit atmo for a supply stop, River would disappear for a time, exploring the world and absorbing everything she could from the people around her. So much freedom was terrifying. The sheer amount of rampant emotion was enough to send her scurrying back into Serenity's hold like a rat bolting for his hole when the barn cat returns. The quiet, the cold steel walls and muted computer noises, and the predicable routine of a scavenging pirate ship on the run from the Alliance and whatever power-mad despots they managed to piss off on and off the job.
Some instincts would never be crushed, but now River knew how to curb the notion to run.
She only had to think of her family, her crew. They were a motley group, consisting of a crude mercenary, a free-spirited engineer, a strait-laced doctor, and a pair of Browncoats fighting in a war far beyond the one they had survived. They needed her to protect them from the dangers an Alliance runaway can bring from the Black.
She had to stay. For Simon, who was practically useless without her. For Kaylee, who ought to never lose her smile. For Jayne, who had a sense of honor for all he pretended not to have one. For Zoe, who needed to be reminded that life went on when you were left alone. For Mal and Inara and the hope that they would soon realize and accept their crazy, prickly, wonderful love.
It was still a difficult way to live, with her brain screaming at her to run and stay in the same burst of neurons. She was frequently torn in opposite directions, always second-guessing herself in her final decision. Whenever that happened, River fell back on a time-honored classic option.
She let her heart have the final say.
And it always said, Stay.
A little River introspective. Geez, she's a tough POV to write.
Review please!