Chapter Six: Where viewpoints collide.
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Despite the relative state of his situational awareness, the persistence of the sensation managed to set off alarms in Mal's head, and he opened his eyes just to make sure it was only his imagination. With that expectation in mind, he nearly jumped out of his skin coming face to face with River. She was leaning over him. Though she was only touching him in once place, the spot was becoming more inappropriate by the second.
He didn't really examine her expression any further than to be definitively sure that she was really freaking him out, and he moved away as best he could, removing her hand and asking in a thoroughly irritated and confused voice, "River, what?"
"Lonely. Don't have to be." She was already sitting closer than he wanted, and she started leaning in again as she spoke.
"Woah, now! That is not," he was trying to move away, but River didn't seem willing to take the hint. Between the shock and the alcohol, he wasn't exactly at his best. Still, it seemed like one moment she was leaning in uncomfortably close, and the next she was actually in his lap.
If he'd been stunned and disconcerted before, this was so much worse, and he was trying to think of some way to let the girl down gently, but his brain just wasn't processing fast enough. He'd always had a certain fondness and protective instinct towards the doc's crazy little sis, and certainly hadn't put much thought into the fact that the girl was old enough she'd have been married off on any number of backwater settlements. It was hard not to realize that now though, as the girl was preceding on despite his stupefied state, pressing her chest against his, rolling her hips over him, breathing hotly into his ear. The sensation of her little fingers deftly parting the top closure on his pants was the final straw that actually registered through the incredulity.
There was approximately a half-second where it felt good, and then he remembered it was River, and shoved her unceremoniously off, all thoughts of talking her down easy gone. He was disgusted with himself and truly freaked by her strange behavior. He'd pushed her back down on the lounge and stepped away, putting a bit of distance between them, trying to look the girl sternly in the eye. "River, you're just a girl. This ... ain't in any way right."
"Not a little girl," he was unsurprised by her indignant tone and by the fact that she'd gotten up to stalk closer again. She obviously had even stranger things floating around in her brainpan than he'd suspected, and she was a teenager. He wasn't quite so old that he couldn't hazily remember what that had been like. Didn't excuse this any, though.
"Fine. But I still ain't interested." He backed away further and was turning away, thinking to himself about how he'd have to be having a talk with Simon about his sister's funny notions tomorrow. He'd already dismissed River's presence from his mind, so the only thing that really registered at first was pain and the strange impression that he was suddenly on the floor, and quick as a flash the girl was atop him again.
It wasn't that Mal had actually ever forgotten that the slip of a girl had taken out a bar full of toughs and a room full of reavers during that whole sorry affair over Miranda. He just didn't want to dwell on it overmuch, both because it was creepifying and he hadn't wanted to be thinking unpleasant thoughts about her what with the girl being a reader. She'd seemed anxious enough about what had happened afterward in her own mind without anyone else adding to it. So he tended not to think about the fact that she could take any one of them in a fight, easy. He had certainly never expected to suddenly be confronted again with the fact quite like this.
The girl had clearly come unhinged and was deadly dangerous to begin with, and he had absolutely no clue how to deal with her. He tried pushing her off again, but quick as he'd even had the thought, she'd slammed his head back against the floor hard enough for him to see stars. When he was able to focus again through the pain, he was distressed to realize that she'd taken advantage of his incapacitation to finish unfastening his pants and was now playing with him, watching in apparent fascination as the bit of anatomy she had her hands on responded to the stroking she was doing without permission from the rest of him.
He had to stop this, but had no idea how despite his still semi-inebriated mind racing through possibilities. Overpowering her was pretty much out and telling the girl plainly to stop hadn't phased her any. The way the crew had been doing things as of late, and the circumstances with Kaylee made it reasonably unlikely anyone would be coming back to the galley anytime soon or that anyone would be close enough to hear any calls for help. Not that he figured that would be safe in terms of how it might make the crazy girl react. He closed his eyes and tried to will his body to obey his brain and hoped that would make her give up or that he would somehow come up with something else that would convince her to do so.
Mal ran through every disgusting, unpleasant thought he could dig up through his memory, and there were a lot of them. He'd been so carefully focused on not noticing anything that River was doing that the sensation of her warm, wet mouth on him came as a complete surprise and slammed his brain from anxiously searching for a plan to straight out panic. This couldn't – God, this was wrong! It had to stop. He gritted his teeth so hard he thought his jaw might crack and tried again to talk her around using the most soothing tone he could manage. He also made to try and pull away again, slower, without pushing the girl. Attempted to placate her, asking her to explain where this was coming from.
He was hopeful when he felt her mouth moving away and felt the rest of her shifting, but then his eyes sprang open involuntarily at the sharp pain in his abdomen immediately after, to see that River had produced a knife from somewhere. A line of blood was welling up from where she was slowly dragging it across his stomach after a sharp stab. Not enough to do real damage, but definitely a warning. "Liked it when Inara did it. Wasn't right. Didn't fit. You should understand. The girl would be a much better fit." She said the last as she settled herself back straddling his legs, rubbing herself against him, and his mouth thinned in thwarted frustration that she wasn't making any kind of sense. At least his body was finally cooperating by not responding to the crazy person, as small of a victory as that seemed at the moment.
"I think I've made it certain clear that I quite plainly don't. River I don't know what notion has gotten into that head of yours, but..." she cut him off.
"She's gone. Saw to it that you should be mine now. Should never have been hers," in a dazed state of disbelief, it registered that for a girl who normally spoke with little emotion, the tone of contempt was one of the coldest he'd ever heard. "The girl is smart, the plan should have worked. Kaylee shouldn't have seen."
It hit him all at once in a flash of insight, the meaning of the words she was saying. Perhaps it was because he didn't actually think before he moved that it worked, because in that moment he had to react. He punched the girl hard as he could manage in the face and she toppled over sideways as he scrambled back away. It didn't last though. She was too quick and he hadn't gotten far before her foot came slamming down on his right knee at just the wrong angle and the joint exploded in pain. The sting of the knife slashing through the arm he threw up to protect his face as he fell backwards was a registered, but only as a minor sensation in comparison.
Looking up at the person looming over him, bloody knife in her hand, he saw into her rage-filled eyes and wondered if the thing looking back at him was something new, or if it had been lurking deep in there all along. Right now she wasn't the girl, and she wasn't the weapon either. She was a monster.
She was a monster.
The moment he had that thought, he saw his own death in her eyes.
He saw the knife start to swing down again. There was no way he could outmaneuver a mind reading assassin, that had been made more than clear enough, but he still tried to avoid the blow, thought about how he might try and get the knife somehow, despite knowing she could hear his thoughts and it wouldn't matter what he did. Mal Reynolds didn't give up. He had to try and protect what was left of his crew from this timebomb he'd allowed to shelter among them. It was who he was, to the end.