Disclaimer: This is meant to be a horror story set after the BDM and it contains major character death(s) and a non-explicit scene of sexual assault. It also contains minor intimations of relationships between Mal/Inara and Simon/Kaylee.
Author's Note: This is the bizarre, brain-scrambled lovechild of three fics I read around the same time: a random 'River decides she and Mal are OMG!soulmates because they're both fucked up' pairing fic, a story which started out innocuously but ultimately made Mal/River squicky as hell to me, and a fic wherein the brain surgeries had also screwed with River's moral compass.
.
Chapter One: Where there was willful ignorance.
The cargo hold of the aging transport ship Serenity had seen many events and activities over its long life, a fair number of which tended to be repetitive in nature. As of late, the most common recurrence was the sound of voices raised in argument – two specific voices.
The first was decidedly feminine and filled with both exasperation and irritation. Its sophisticated owner, who prided herself on its use as an instrument, would be appalled to realize how shrill it had become if she wasn't too busy being angry to notice. "Mal, it's too dangerous! I'm not asking you to stop altogether, just turn down this one j-"
"What you don't seem to comprehend, Inara, is we got no place bein' choosy right now!" The second voice was just as irritated, but far more belligerent than exasperated. The speaker was clearly trying not to start truly yelling, and just as clearly barely succeeding. "What contacts we have that ain't dead won't touch us. Funds from the Lilac job and supplies what the Operative stocked us with are near gone. We have to take what comes our way. You don't like it, we can drop you off at any sufficiently civilized planet you want."
A noise of angry exasperation was followed by, "Must you bring up my leaving every single time we disagree about anything? I'm here, and I'm staying here. Which is why I hate the thought of you taking such insane chances!" The clang of the shuttle door's opening and shutting again shortly thereafter ended the echoing of their voices for anyone listening with just their ears.
Of course, there was a member of Serenity's crew who possessed an ability for hearing that was not limited simply to her auditory faculties. Furthermore, when government scientists had been cutting that ability into her brain, they hadn't attempted to instill any kind of etiquette about eavesdropping, so River saw no reason to stop listening to the ongoing argument in the shuttle above. Not even when it stopped being an argument and became a hushed conversation, nor after that when it stopped being a matter of verbal communication at all.
Hands grabbing hands, then brushing over limbs and clothes, turning to lips on lips on skin, all leading up to a meeting of tongues. Moaning his name. Pulling on fabric and fastenings, falling into the softness of the bed, and then finally the heat of skin sliding against skin, everywhere, overwhelming... Run-tse duh fwotzoo, Mal...
Simon, in search of his sister, finally found the girl laying amid some random crates of cargo, eyes closed and a strange, intense expression he couldn't identify on her face as she shifted about restlessly. He'd almost suspect she was having some kind of vivid dream, except it was clear she was awake and there was something like concentration on her face.
"River, what are you doing?" At the not entirely unexpected lack of an answer, he continued. "It's time to eat, and you had so little at dinner last night. You really do need to eat something now." His sister's eyes snapped open, filled with visible annoyance at him. Whether that was for interrupting her tangled thoughts or for his babying he couldn't say, but she sighed and got up to head towards the kitchen in a docile enough manner, even if she was muttering something he couldn't discern under her breath the whole way.
As he followed her up the bare metal stairs, her brother absently mused once again on River's increased coherence since Miranda, which every single day he found himself grateful for. While she still tended to talk in riddles from time to time, and blurt out strange non sequiturs amidst ongoing conversations, it was clear from her secretive smiles that she was now doing so on purpose, rather than from an inability to communicate. She was for the most part speaking clearly and she had been handling the vast majority of the piloting of Serenity since they left the repair yards on Persephone. While there was a part of him that would always mourn the girl his sister used to be and would have one day become, he did his best to quash it under the weight of relief that she had survived to become more her own person than he had ever dared to hope in those first few months after he rescued her from the Academy.
Disappointed sibling, refusing to deal with his not dealing. Loving, loved, loves, rather love with Kaylee, now. Less temporal allocation for rushing Rivers of thoughts that flowed down proper streambeds with no need of newly concocted cocktails of manufactured chemicals. Mustn't disappoint Simon.
Kaylee had opted to put together a meal for everyone that would fare well after sitting out for a while so that the various crew could come and go as they chose. Simon was very pleased to find that Kaylee herself had waited for him and his sister to eat her own portion. He was unsurprisingly less pleased that Jayne had also chosen this particular time of day to emerge from his bunk for food. Still, Kaylee's chirped, "Hey Simon!" followed by a smile just for him made up for a lot.
"Hey, Kaylee," was his response, and he was gratified to see that Kaylee's smile seemed to get even brighter just from his acknowledgment of her. As they moved to sit at the table, he made a stab at starting a conversation with her, something that was still a challenge for him, though he'd gotten a bit better at not screwing it up. "So, how are things in the engine room today?"
"Oh, just shiny," and then she was off into a happy burble about port-side this, compression that, and plug such and such. He let the chatter wash over him, not knowing what she was talking about at all, but perfectly happy to show interest in her interest. The wonder of his still new relationship with Kaylee was even enough to ignore Jayne's disdainful snorts from across the table.
They didn't engage in any more intense conversation over the meal after that, simply trading minor discourse about their own domains aboard the ship back and forth. Jayne mostly spent the time staring intently into his food as he shoveled it towards his mouth, aside from a few jabs at the things Simon said and mutters about all the 'gorram ruttin' lovebirds'. River even managed to add a few coherent and pertinent comments to the chatter, which was still something of a pleasant rarity, even if it had become increasingly less so as of late. It was a fairly typical example of how things had been on the ship with everyone. They'd all been changed some by the events involving the Operative and Miranda, but they were all fundamentally the same people, just drawn closer together.
In general, Simon wasn't the only one pleased to see River doing so much better even if he was the most obviously so. Perhaps that was why everyone was willing to let her odder comments and behaviors slide when they did happen. With her greater stability and awareness of the world around her, the rest of the crew was no longer inclined to keep such a close watch on her anymore. She'd saved them, after all, and she was piloting the ship with a grace and skill that was remarkable for her lack of training. Unlike Simon, the rest of the crew had never known her to be anything other than whimsical, capricious, and not particularly reliable in any sense. With them being able to see this steadier version of the girl Simon remembered, it was easier to accept the other bits of strangeness that lingered. It was just one of her quirks, like Kaylee's tendency to talk to Serenity and Jayne's tendency to be ... Jayne.
Therefore when River was caught out doing something strange, usually no one thought much of it. After all, she was still recovering, and she was also a teenage girl, who Simon admitted had always possessed a fair streak for mischief with occasional brattiness. So when Kaylee caught little sister spying on her and Simon in the engine room, she didn't say a word to the doctor. She mightn't have anyway - it was perfectly normal for a girl her age to have some curiousness to Kaylee's mind. When Simon likewise caught his sister spying on similar canoodling on a different occasion he never mentioned it to anyone either, aside from chiding his sister. Even that he felt bad about afterward, since she'd implied in her oblique way that she was trying to drown out the overwhelming presence of Zoe's grief. Since any other spying she ended up doing was entirely unobservable by those involved, she didn't get caught at it again, and these incidents were soon forgotten.
A person, actual and whole. With people feelings and people needs and people wants and people desires. Could comprehend it was hormones - being not a girl but a girl making it all confused. Knowing knowledge did not make it cease! It was wrong and sick and shouldn't watch but cuts and scars on the lobes meant she would always be sick, now. No further denials. No pretty lies from her to Riverself.
If sometimes Mal turned to find her staring at him in and odd and overly intent way, it was easy to assume that she'd gotten caught up in those jumbled thoughts of hers and just happened to be looking at him – she was still a mind-readin' genius, after all, and no doubt that made her at least as likely to get caught up in her own thoughts as the rest of them, now that those thoughts were able to run a bit more coherent-like.
Bad with people, not able to make the words have proper sounds to give forth understandings. Broken, lost, betrayed by all but the closest. Couldn't trust easy, couldn't protect the self and went inward. His Simon was a Zoe. Mirror images – who else could possibly stand to understand?
Inara had certainly noticed that River seemed less inclined to spend time with her, but even with all her years of training in reading people, she just assumed that River was adjusting to her relatively new-found stability and enjoying the ability to do things like brushing her own hair without assistance. The Companion even managed to convince herself when she did notice something that seemed to look oddly like resentment on the girl that it was simply over Inara's having left them behind for all those months. Months that she spent comfortably at the training house while things had gotten increasingly desperate on Serenity.
Not broken, never shattered, couldn't understand. Smugly superior in taking the easier path. Didn't fit, didn't belong, was right to leave, shouldn't have come back. Went to an Alliance school and came out a princess, not a weapon. Unfair!
Things had been strained for everyone in the months since Miranda. As terrible as the deaths of two of their family had been, life on Serenity wasn't all darkness. River's new-found connection with reality and Simon and Kaylee's burgeoning relationship, as well as the lack of active warrants out for any of the crew, were all positive results from the same dire events. It didn't always work, but for the most part all of them were trying to make the best of things and dwell on those positives rather than what they'd lost. It didn't help that jobs were thin on the ground. With most of their contacts either dead or spooked, keeping themselves fed and flying was becoming increasingly problematical as each day passed and the supplies they'd left Persephone with dwindled yet more.
Even the captain was pointedly not mentioning how dire things might quickly become for the most part, unless someone else (Jayne, mostly) pushed on the point. So with River's cogency being one of the few considered pluses, if she was perhaps still exceptionally strange at times, everyone was very careful not to notice. Except when it was funny.
It would only be apparent in hindsight gained from scouring over their memories of that time that those who survived would realize there had been these few signs that things were so seriously wrong in the girl's head, despite all her apparent improvement. The guilt would be worse, knowing that they might have known if they hadn't been trying so very hard not to notice.
WRONG. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Mismatched pieces with too many rough edges. Not a match, not a mate. No proper alignment. Didn't work, couldn't work, NOT RIGHT. More optimal choices available. Necessary to force the application of logic, but how? A plan.