It started as an experiment. There were only so many things on Serenity to keep her occupied. And she needed to be occupied. River couldn't understand how people could let themselves be bored. The utter emptiness of it.

When she was bored, she started to remember and it was all vile snakes of psyche and wizen power like dust, rot and decay and no one understood the words that bubbled and frothed up and out, eager to be free.

It made her home tense. And Serenity was her home. Her first home. The first place that felt like the word said it should be. Warm (Kaylee), Strong (Zoe), Protected (Mal), Comfortable (Inara). And every home had that one annoying thing that you just had to put up with in order to have everything else, (Jayne).

It was her home. Hers and Simon's. So she had to do something in order not to be bored anymore. And Simon would want her to keep herself occupied. Simon would want anything that made her seem more like the sister he remembered and less like this shell he'd rescued. This shell full of holes, whistling secrets every time the wind blew; the mood changed.

Simon would be pathetically easy. And her brother needed something to keep him occupied too. Otherwise he'd be even more of an idiot. She could tell he liked Kaylee honestly. She was naturally brilliant, just like the only other female who'd ever given him the time of day. So of course being around her only made him more of an idiot than he ordinarily was. He wasn't ready for Kaylee, not when he was still holding on to who he used to be; the person Mother and Father preferred him to be. The person who wouldn't have come for her, who would have done what was proper and not paid attention to the protective urges within him. Luckily, her brother had a protective streak in him so large, that if it were gold, Jayne would have set up camp by now and be merrily blowing him open. Chip chipping away; carting off pieces of Simon to the heaviest bidder.

Which is why, of course, the experiment couldn't involve Jayne.

And she would not go near the Shepard. He'd found his way to peace. But the path in his mind that led there, was filled with old memories; blood and bodies and echoes of a time he'd worn his hair loose and free and it'd tickled the faces of those who would soon be dead. Because of that, there were all these…pages of text. Words and symbols and myth and even inside his mind she couldn't understand them. She needed to understand in order for this to work.

Malcom Reynolds was the only logical choice. There would be no interference, no violence to rattle thing things inside that she'd rather not get free.

Floating down through space, as Early tilted and twisted into the darkness of forever, River made her choice. She looked at Mal, his arms about her and she smiled.

---

" Permission to come aboard?"

"You know, you ain't quite right."

" It's the popular theory."

" Go on. Get in there. Give your brother a thrashing for messing up your plan."

" He takes so much looking after."

---

Malcom Reynolds crossed his arms on his legs, pulled up as he sat on a cargo box and closed his eyes. He couldn't tell what exactly was working and what Kaylee was in the middle of fixing, but the sound of life on his ship wasn't too far from her regular pitch. Jayne squabbling over how he'd gotten shot. As if he was the only one. Zoe with a pleasant kind of silence as Wash just went on and on and on.

He opened his eyes to tell the pilot to shut up, when Simon passed in front of his vision, looking troubled. For a high and mighty doctor, he didn't seem to appreciate the calm too well. Maybe he couldn't tell the difference between a good calm, and one that meant the ma de was about to hit the fan.

"Jayne, if you don't shut yer babbling, I think the good doctor here is about to leave you to heal with that bullet in you. Provided you don't bleed to death first."

"It's his job! Hey, ain't it your job to sew us up after Mal here makes sure we all get shot at?"

Mal arched a brow. "We got the goods didn't we."

"Sure, and we got shot at." Jayne grumbled making his way up the stairs.

"I seem to recall hiring on a man who didn't mind a little gunfire."

"For a good cause." Jayne grumbled some more. "For the right price." He peered and poked at his arm. "Darn thing wasn't worth this kind of trouble."

"Pok gai"Mal grumbled back. "Xu lataipo."

"I do not chatter like an old woman!" Jayne bellowed indignantly. Simon, having climbed up after him, pushed him through the hatch and turned to give Mal a scolding look. Mal simply smiled and winked.

Though the hatch, everyone could hear Jayne's continued insistence, followed by a quick. "Do I?"

Simon smothered a smile and laugh, which Mal caught, and the two shared a moment before Simon rolled his eyes and disappeared towards the infirmary.

The smile lasted until River spoke up from her corner. She was twirling happily, while smelling her hair. "Oh the tulips. All bright pink and yellow, quivering. Sunshine does them good." She peered at the mule with it's cargo, plucking at nothing.

"And that folks, is our cue to high tail it out of here. These goods won't move themselves. Wash, get back to work and wave ahead, let the customer know his goods are coming. Zoe ?"

"Yes Captain ?"

"Time to do the heavy lifting."

---

For the life of him, Simon Tam could not figure out how he'd ended up here. Here being locked in a storage cell in an underground bunker on some dirtball fringe planet, with a hired mercenary passed out in the back, one arm wrapped around a sack of potatoes. One leg too. It was a very large sack of potatoes and Jayne seemed to be enjoying his dreams. Far too much.

He shook his head. It seemed he was always asking himself how he ended up wherever it was that was seeming more ridiculous and impossible by the moment. Granted, the question had come up more in the first few weeks on Serenity than it had his whole life. But lately he couldn't turn or toss or breathe for thinking of it.

By the door, Mal was knocking away, punching occasionally, throwing in some shouting and just generally adding more heat to the already stuffy room. Simon curled up on a stack of, he paused to read, ahh food bars. Part of him couldn't help wondering if he'd sewn crew members up on account of these very same bars. Merchandise out on the fringe seemed to get bartered around a lot.

"Zoe'll find us."

He watched Mal turn to look at him. "And since when have you been having so much faith in our Zoe, doc?"

"Since I've seen how many times her mere presence lessened my workload."

"Oh." Mal seemed to pause for a beat. "Well, she's a good woman. Good soldier." Another pause. "So, you brought any cards?"

Simon looked up, eyes wide.

"Well, you seemed so confident things were going to go badly, figured you'd have thought of a way to pass the time till Zoe catches on to this here new twist to my very cunning plan."

Simon paused in pulling off his jacket. He didn't think anyone but Zoe could ever just ride on through, without a blink, with the captain's way of re-phrasing a situation. The jacket tilted, oddly heavy in the pocket and a stack of cards spilled on the box in front of him. Simon ducked his head to hide a blush as Mal threw his head back and began to laugh. He'd forgotten they were in there.

"Planning jobs, bringing along cards. You're fitting in with this kinda life slowly but surely." Mal smirked.

The last time Simon had seen any cards was maybe half a week ago. River had been having one of her strange but good days; all wide eyes and sweet smiles. She'd presented this very deck to him, said it was for the picnic. She'd even made him promise to bring her back some flowers.

Simon shrugged, and started shuffling to deal. At least now they wouldn't be bored or reduced to god-awful awkward staring. "Well, I am part of the crew, right?" He tensed, but tried to hide it.

"Yeah, you're part of my crew." Mal said as he pulled up a crate to sit and and added. " As long as you and your sister don't cause more trouble than you're worth."

Simon shot a pointed look at Jayne.

"Yeah well, don't think I don't reconsider him every chance I get."

"Must be frustrating, with him taking up so much of your time, then."

There was a soft silence, then Mal laughed again and shrugged off his own jacket. "I do believe you're trash talking me, doc."

Simon kept his face turned, looking for something to use as ante. He was fighting a smile. "I have no idea what you're implying."

---

The sound of flesh connecting with flesh was a sound her thoughts could respond to. Right now, it was atuned. But still, River cringed, recoiling in her mind, wanting to focus on something else. Anything else. The attack on Lilac was still happening. The Reavers were still in her mind; howling, naked, scarred echoes, tearing at secrets and sanity. They were still too close. And they were done with being quiet. The hot smell of the mule's engine mixed with adrenaline and Jayne's blood only made it harder to break away. They were riled, and the terror of them, the anger, the dark lack where hatred and madness had eaten their souls — they were sharing it with the townsfolk of Lilac now, forcefully.

At night when she couldn't keep fiction from reality seperate in her head, she wondered if she was somehow becoming just like them. Somehow. But slower. So she would still be somewhat sane when it all ripped lose from inside her and spattered over everyone.

She looked up, seeing the scene in front of her play out ten spaces ahead. She clung to it and wondered how even moment to moment the others couldn't see the truth of what was happening. Bright as day it was, in every flare of their nostrils, the narrowed pupils, slitted eyes, the stances, the hips thrust away from each other, just slightly, the curled fingers into a fist. It was in their tone, what was between them. Had been between them. Mal and Simon.

She didn't expect the others to see hurt and betrayal, fright and sorrow lit up like fuel in the dark. She didn't expect them to see sepia tones of locked limbs, to hear the scrape of bristle on bristle, to have seen glimpses of Simon's lips thinned with pleasure and Mal's head cocked slightly with surprise in his eyes; a flicker of emotion over that stone gaming face.

But you didn't need to be inside their heads to read it. Did you? They didn't need to be the one Simon had crawled into bed with after, did they? She'd felt his breath on her neck and he held her close until the were breathing as one, as he tried to share that one moment of peace and pleasure.

Her experiment had worked. Not that she hadn't expected it to. What she hadn't thought about, was how to her, it didn't change anything. And she'd felt confident it wouldn't change anything for Mal. But now it seemed like she'd been wrong when she thought Kaylee was enough to make it not be anything for Simon either.

And now they were going to leave, she could tell. And as blind as the others might be to some things, she didn't think they'd be too surprised either.

"You stupid, selfish, son of a whore!"

Her brother was full into a head of steam. She turned her head away, staring at the Reaver who'd managed to get onboard in the run from the heist and the rest of his mad posse.

It had been a simple experiment. Almost trivial. Except…people weren't ever expected. Even her stupid brother could surprise.

She thought of the day after that night of rough male bodies. The night she shouldn't know about. And how Mal had been wary around her, then warm; of that moment in the kitchen when he'd ruffled her hair, and helped her snap peas and the feeling inside him had been so different from what it usually was, as if in frequency with Simon, and she'd been able to smile at him, and anchor to him for a little while, quiet and content, sitting side by side, her hand curled in his.

"He didn't lie down." Her words echoed in the cargo space and must have interrupted what was going on. But she was already past that now. Thinking. "They never lie down."

People were chaotic. Unpredictable. Even the most content could forge his own destiny, shaped from his own mistakes. No matter how small. Even the most unassuming, and idiotic, like Simon, could let passion and rage and fear and need lead him away from where he wanted to be. Human beings never sat there, unchanged. Meddling with human beings, in even the smallest things, in even the gentlest ways didn't work out right. Even for sisters. Even for brothers almost too stupid to live.

It was what made them free. Stupid, but free. She used to know that. She used to never forget it.

"River?"

She turned to see she was alone in the hangar with Mal, he was trying to herd her back towards her quarters. River met his eyes.

"You're a special kinda stupid." She smiled brightly at him. "You should be scared of me."