86) A Tethered Mind, Freed From the Lies

For all the brouhaha on Hera, life on Serenity felt less…tense. Maybe it had something to do with how Jack had helped to change the infirmary so River could work in it without feeling like she'd be attacked. Calico sheets hung like curtains outside the windows and the entire infirmary had been painted a soft creamy gold like the galley. Flowering vines outlined the windows and door. The ceiling was a gentle blue and in the corners River had painted birds and dragons. Jack's antipathy towards Mal's Lil Albatross had faded, maybe when she finally realized it would cost her Riddick's love and friendship if she hung onto it any longer. She and River weren't best friends or anything, but they could talk without Jack sneering over something. Mal had hopes that situation would continue to improve. And that what he had in mind wouldn't take all that progress and toss it by the wayside.

Mal looked up as River came on the bridge. Her step as silent as it ever was, and she might've made him jump but he happened to be looking at the door. Small mercy. He guessed she'd Read what he had on his mind. Hopefully, she'd agree with him as he had a mighty uncomfortableness when it came to deceiving Carolyn, even if it was only deceit by omission. Carolyn wasn't stupid by any means. She knew he was hiding something. Probably even knew it had to do with River, which was why she hadn't pressed him, and he hadn't talked about it.

Apropos of nothing she spoke, her voice faraway, dreamy and soft, "'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings.'" She tilted her head, and her voice became a bit more grounded, more in the here and now than wherever she'd mentally gone a moment ago. "He thinks it is time," River sat in the co-pilot's chair and regarded him thoughtfully.

Figured, she wouldn't give him an idea of which way she was leaning about that big secret. She'd gotten…it was odd to think of River as lacking in confidence before Rick, Carolyn and Jack had come aboard. But for all her self-assurance, River had still been finding her way, learning how to deal with her own mind and life on a ship where structure was only the vaguest outline. She'd clung to the outer trappings of adulthood, hair up, cargo pants, boots, shirts, all her clothing very businesslike, as if she worried they'd start to treat her like a child again.

Since Rick had started to flirt with her though she'd gotten more confidence in herself. Enough that she'd wear her skirts when she felt like it or go barefoot. Sometimes she wore her hair down, or in a braid that hit her hips. Mal would've liked Rick for that effect alone.

But the man obviously flat out adored Mal's Little Albatross. Mal didn't know if Rick had said as much or if he even needed to. He was pretty sure River could Read the man's mind easy enough. Even as he considered the notion River smiled at him. "If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear, does it truly make a sound?"

"'Fraid I don't take your meanin' 'Tross," Mal admitted after a moment of thought. He'd heard the saying but how it applied to her Reading abilities he had no clue.

"Sound is defined as the human ear receiving vibrations made by the tree falling," River pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. She was barefoot, her toes polished bright blue. "If there is no one to hear it, it is not truly considered a sound." She half smiled, "Words must be spoken for them to truly be heard. Knowledge cannot be simply assumed. To speak emotions and thoughts…is to make them real."

"Makes some sorta sense," The Captain admitted after a moment. Thoughts an' feelin's were pretty nebulous after all. Speakin' of 'em out loud, that was kind of a commitment.

"Exactly," River nodded. "Thoughts only don't count."

"It bother you any? That he ain't said it?" None of his business really but he might as well ask, she'd tell him to shove off if she didn't want him to know.

"How do you know he hasn't?" His tiny Pilot regarded him with those inscrutable witchy eyes.

"Fair enough," It wasn't an answer, but it wasn't really his business anyway. "What do you think about the other thing?"

"Dislikes keeping secrets from his liàn rén," River's smile tilted sympathetically. "Believes it is time for crew to be trusted entirely."

"I know Rick's aware. An' he ain't told Carolyn nor Jack," Mal nodded. "An' it's for the same reason I ain't told Carolyn. Ain't really our secret to tell 'Tross."

She nodded thoughtfully, "Difficult." Dark eyes met his, "Did not tell Riddick." River said finally. "Guessed. Based upon her reactions to his thoughts."

"Guessed," Mal repeated in shock. "He guessed."

River nodded again, "Many assumptions made about him. He is far more intelligent than anyone understands." Now that he could believe, because the only thing he'd seen stymie the man was River and Jack. The two of them were young women and females of the species could confound the best of men. And teenage females even more so.

"So what do you think 'Tross?" He leaned back in his chair, "Time for us to kinda 'fess up?"

River looked out at the Black and Mal liked to think he knew her well enough by now to see when she was truly thinking something over, rather than just giving the appearance of consideration to something she'd figured out long before. It was a risk, revealing secrets always were, always would be, but sometimes you had to risk, or you could lose more than you expected. "Dinner tomorrow," She said slowly. "She and Kaylee, make the meal, something good to relax everyone, and speak of it afterwards."

"You know sooner or later folks'll tip to the fact that you an' Kaylee tend to feed 'em up b'fore you drop some news on 'em," Mal joked and River gave him a smile.

"But argument is difficult when mouths are full and bellies are stuffed, minds are more relaxed when the body is sated," She shrugged. "Must go and tell him that soon he will not have to hide his knowledge."

"Probably a good idea," Mal nodded. "Don't guess he enjoys keepin' secrets from his ladies any more'n I do."

She shook her head and stood, leaving the bridge as silently as she'd entered.


River, true to her word, got together with Kaylee and between the two of them came up with a meal fit for the king of Londinium, at least in Mal's humble opinion. How those two could manage to make something taste like beef and fresh vegetables when he knew damn well there were no such things on the boat was beyond him. And then Kaylee brought out a chocolate cake. No candles this time, and Mal couldn't bring himself to mind. He didn't want to go through that kind of nerve-wracking explosion again. Or any kind of explosion really.

"What's the occasion?" Zoë had been eating her own meal and feeding Emma with some help from Simon when the baby decided she didn't want to eat strained peas and wanted to try what was on her mother's plate. (Or Simon's plate, Emma wasn't picky when it came to avoiding peas.)

"We ain't had a cake in a while," Kaylee shrugged. "Ain't had dessert much at all, figured it'd be somethin' nice for us."

"So long's Serenity don't spit no fireballs at us," Jayne commented.

"Fireballs?" Carolyn and Jack asked in unison and exchanged appalled expressions. Too taken aback by that bit of news to do their customary joking refrain of 'jinx, buy me a kělè'.

"There was some trouble with the catalyzer on the compression coil," River described the events with all the aplomb of a trained politician. "Much excitement before repairs were made."

Much excitement, Mal shook his head at her understatement and caught Zoë's amused smirk likely thinking the same thing.

"Had chocolate cake then too," River added and handed Kaylee the knife so the mechanic could slice up the dessert.

They'd all enjoyed the treat, nearly to the point of licking the plate, Jack and Jayne flipping a coin over who got the last piece and Kaylee finally told them to just split it in half. And Rick glanced at Mal and River, then leaned back in his chair, extending a hand to his nǚ péngyǒu. As if that was her cue River stood and moved to his lap, to be wrapped securely in his arms.

Jayne frowned and looked from River to Mal, "Uh Mal, why's this dinner alla the sudden feel like the bait on a hook?"

"Or like you built a better mousetrap," Zoë added in a moment of rare agreement with Jayne.

"Ain't anything to worry on Jayne," Mal shook his head. "Me and River just figured it was time to get everybody on the ship up to speed with..."

"With all the things that have been hidden," River finished quietly.

"River..." Simon's expression could only be described as worried. "Are you sure?"

"Trust goes both ways," Mal reminded him. "Why don't you get us started Doc, same as you did us back then."

"'Fore he does, you oughta know that Doc come on the boat with a big blue box. An' River was inside it," Jayne put in.

Simon sighed but nodded, "Jayne's right." He folded his hands around his mug of tea, "So I'm going to tell you what I told them, after Mal broke River's box open and she woke up screaming." He glanced at the three people who hadn't heard the story and began, "I am very smart. I went to the best Medacad in Osiris, top three percent of my class, finished my internship in eight months."

Mal held up a hand, "Doc ain't sayin' this to brag or anything. He's got a point."

Simon nodded, giving Mal a dry smile before he continued, "'Gifted' is the term. So, when I tell you that my little sister makes me look like an idiot child, I want you to understand my full meaning." His smile for his sister was tender and adoring and the exact same as Mal had seen him give River the entire time Mal had known the two of them. "River was more than gifted. She...she was a gift…" He continued, explaining his little sister's genius to the three people new (relatively) to Serenity. And then he began to tell them about the Academy. Mal kept a good eye on River during that portion of Simon's little talk but River simply pressed her face to Rick's throat and took good deep breaths. And then they got to the crux of the matter, "They said that the government was...playing with her brain. That she was in danger. If I funded them, they could sneak her out in cryo."

The next part Mal hadn't known but then again, Simon had been very close mouthed about everything he'd done to get his sister way from the Academy. "In the end, it didn't work out quite like that. I went in, disguised as an Inspector. Made a show of looking over the program. They had River in a chair, had put her into a dream state and they were…experimenting on her." His voice hardened, "The doctor there, though I rather dislike using that title as he was nothing close to what a doctor should be, said that though all of their 'subjects' were conditioned for combat, my sister was a creature of extraordinary grace."

The smirk that twisted Simon's mouth was one Mal generally enjoyed seeing as it meant the Doc was about to drop a particularly fun fact, "An Inspector carries a baton, but mine was a little different. It had a Bouncing Betty in it and when I slammed the base to the floor…"

Jayne, Zoë, Rick and Mal chuckled appreciatively, and Jayne grinned, "Knocked 'em all out huh?"

"It did." Simon nodded, "I was able to get River out of the chair, and we got to one of the central air ducts. The ship was waiting for us, lowered a platform and we escaped." He sighed, "At that point I convinced River to take a sedative and go into cryo."

River nodded and looked around the table, "When Mal broke open my box, I was unstable. The experiments, there were drugs and triggers and surgeries… They stripped my amygdala."

Jayne looked down, his eyes dark and Jack touched his forearm, worried. Mal had been concerned when he'd heard about what had happened on Hera, but thankfully Jack didn't seem to be romantically inclined towards Jayne after he'd semi rescued her. The two were pretty good pals though. And Jack knew Jayne well enough now to realize the man was upset, "We found that out when we was on Ariel. Pullin' a hospital job. Doc needed a scanner, to see what they done to her." Jayne forced the words out. "Told me, the part of her brain they messed with, it's what helps you keep from panickin', y'know, when yer scared or worried or mad an' you don' wanna be? Yer 'mygdala's what helps you push that away so you can do what you gotta. An' they sliced hers up." Jayne looked at Jack, "Makes me glad I'm from some backwater where nobody pays attention if ya got brains or not."

"Unstable means that for nigh unto a year River wasn't all there," Mal took up the tale when River didn't seem inclined to elaborate. "Simon tried to help her, but there weren't any fixin' what they did. But we didn't know what the point of it was."

"The goal, as the Academy doctor explained it to me, was to create a psychic," Simon explained flatly. "But as I didn't exactly have access to their notes…" He shook his head.

"Didn't know that I wasn't crazy because of the surgeries or the triggers or conditioning," River spoke into the silence. "They brought in some of the key members of the Parliament, to show me off. Had me read the cards for them. And I saw it… in their minds… Miranda. O, woe is me t' have seen what I have seen, see what I see."

"They turned River into a Reader," Mal added quietly. "And as you can imagine, seein' somethin' like the Miranda wave in their minds…"

There was an impressive amount of cursing from Carolyn mostly out of surprise and most of it under her breath though Jack let out a few pungent words of her own as what they'd heard reached their brains and they had some comprehension of what they'd just been told.

"Made me crazy," River explained quietly once the two women had calmed down enough to listen again. "Seeing that, the truth of Miranda in their minds, nebulous and nightmarish, but unspoken..." She shook her head, "Thoughts are...both real and unreal and what I saw was real but until thoughts are spoken, until knowledge isn't only in someone's mind... Between that and wanting to forget even if I couldn't…That kind of trauma…It drove me insane. It's the sort of event that if it happens to a very young child can create what is commonly called a split personality disorder. I was too old for that to happen which unfortunately made it very difficult for anyone to understand me."

Mal spread his hands, "Alliance, Blue Sun, they'd been after River since they lost her. They finally sent an Operative. The man pretty much burned out or killed all our contacts and friends. Part of why we're always looking for work these days, we're rebuilding our network."

"That's..." Carolyn looked at Jack and frowned thoughtfully. "This's one of the things you couldn't tell me," She met Mal's eyes.

"Wasn't my secret to tell," He shrugged helplessly.

"Riddick don't seem surprised though," Jack observed and that got the rest of the crew blinking as if they'd just noticed the same thing.

Simon's tone reproached his sister, "River, that could have-"

"She didn't tell me," Rick cut him off. "She didn't need to tell me." He looked around the table with a shrug, "I figured it out."

"How?" Jack and Simon had a moment of rare accord and Jack's mouth quirked into a half grin before she muttered, "Jinx, buy me a kělè."

River blushed and Rick chuckled, that evil sound that never failed to make Mal's spine feel like it had ants crawling up it. "She blushed," The huge man grinned down at his sweetheart.

"She blushed," Carolyn repeated that and Kaylee looked to be mentally repeating the same thing.

"Yeah I ain't followin'," Kaylee admitted. And from the expression on everyone else's face neither did the rest of the crew. Including him, Mal wasn't too proud to admit to himself. He never had heard the circumstances, only that Rick had figured it out.

"Men…tend to speculate about the women they…like," Rick clearly was making the attempt to say things politely.

Predictably, (considering the subject matter) Jayne got it first, with a guffaw and a shake of his head, "Ya mean you figured out she's a Reader from you thinkin' 'bout sexin' her an' her blushin' when she heard ya?"

"Not to put too fine a point on it," Rick nodded, rolling his eyes. "But yeah." One of those big hands ran up and down River's spine, and the girl relaxed under it.

"When'd you figure it out," Kaylee asked curiously. "Took us more'n nine months?" She looked at Mal who nodded.

"Thereabouts yeah," He agreed. "Never did hear the 'when' of you knowin', just that you knew." He glanced at Rick.

"That was…right after the whole mess with Niska," Rick shrugged. "Mercs'd been yellin' my name and there wasn't any way she'd have not heard it at least once. Figured I'd better find out if I needed to start running again."

River laughed softly and kissed his jaw, "Surprised you."

"Yeah," He chuckled again, and Mal tried to shake off the feeling that wicked sound gave him. "Yeah, I realized that she'd known from day one exactly who I am. Who all of us are." He looked at Jack and Carolyn, "And the only thing she told her crew was that we weren't dangerous to them."

Carolyn tilted her head and looked at Mal, "That's…a pretty impressive amount of trust."

"Once River got her brainpan settled down, she hadn't ever been wrong 'bout what she sees," Mal shrugged. "'Tween her and Zoë, ain't nothin' can't be sussed out or sized up. I listen to them Serenity rarely goes wrongways."

"Why would you trust us though," Jack didn't understand River's behavior, that much was obvious. Mal wondered if that was due to Jack's attitude towards River or because she and Carolyn had always known how dangerous Rick was.

"Serenity sheltered her, when she was lost in her mind, broken," River frowned searching for words. "Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh." She tilted her head, "Trying to rejoin the human race." She patted Rick's chest and nodded at Carolyn, "Looking for a clean slate. Atonement and absolution." Her eyes flicked to Jack, "Needed somewhere safe to become herself, instead of hiding behind the boy's name."

"Why didn't you tell us," Jack looked at Rick, as well she might since him, Carolyn and Jack were a little family in their weird way.

"Same reason Mal didn't tell Carolyn," Rick shrugged. "Wasn't my secret to tell. She didn't even tell the rest of the crew that I'd figured it out." Carolyn nodded and after a moment so did Jack.

"So, you can just hear our thoughts, everybody's, all the time?" Jack wondered and from the slightly confused look on her face Mal guessed she was wondering how River hadn't caught on to the nasty little pranks Jack had pulled.

"Work hard to not listen," River shook her head. "Try to let it just wash past me, thoughts like debris in the water, sift through everything only when it's needed."

"Sometimes, somethin's strong enough, emotion, intense thoughts, it'll hit her whether she wants to hear it or not," Rick added.

"That's part of why River needs that routine, the scheduled down time," Simon offered. "It's not only a break from the mental work of the bridge, but also meditation and peace, doing something purely physical… like a way to cleanse herself of the past."

River nodded, "Need the mental break. Or everything starts to feel too…crowded…" She tapped her temple, "Up here."

Mal looked at Carolyn and Jack, "So now you know. You know why Jubal Early was after us. Why we might have clean slates, but we have to step careful, so we don't make any more trouble and the Alliance decides they're better off if we're in prison or dead." And why he couldn't tell Carolyn the secret before this. Because it wasn't his to tell.

"And especially why we don't wanna talk about any of this, especially when we're dirtside," Zoë added firmly. "There's a reason we don't even generally refer to River's abilities aloud. Early's modus operandi was to spy on his targets. Watched us from the observation window and snuck aboard. Heard all about her and knew he had the right ship."

"So, no talking about it," Carolyn nodded and looked at Jack. "Not specifically and not at all if you can manage."

"I got it," Jack nodded. "I know how to keep my mouth shut."

"Amply proven," River nodded her agreement and Jack (for the first time in Mal's memory) gave River a grin of what his paranoia might call conspiracy. Oh yeah, those two were starting to get along and he shuddered to think of the mischief they could get into once they put their heads together.


Author's Note: So finally everyone is on the same page. That's good right?

Chinese Translations:

liàn rén (lover / sweetheart)

kělè (coke)

nǚ péngyǒu (girlfriend)

Quote Sources:

'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things: Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax — Of cabbages — and kings — And why the sea is boiling hot — And whether pigs have wings.'- The Walrus and the Carpenter - Lewis Carroll

O, woe is me t' have seen what I have seen, see what I see – Hamlet – William Shakespeare

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh – Hamlet – William Shakespeare