Author’s Note: If I thought Jayne’s character was hard to write, imagine what it was like to (attempt to) write River! She is portrayed so brilliantly on the show by Joss and his incredible writers that I can only hope to reach some of that greatness. So, if she’s a bit out-of-character, I apologize. I really have my doubts about this; in places it seems like I have her pinned down, but other times I think I write too sensibly. Well, there are a ton of experts on River’s personality out there, so let me know what you think of this humble endeavor. Any and all constructive criticism (if the fic "sucks ass" I’d prefer to know why) is appreciated. This fanfic includes SPOILERS for every episode so far (up through "Objects in Space") and also a small spoiler from the pilot, "Serenity" (just a mention of one of the battles in the war).

"That girl is . . ."

". . . not quite right."

". . . just a kid!"

". . . a precious commodity!"

"She understands. She doesn’t comprehend."

Too many thoughts inside – too many people, too many bodies

Pressed tightly together

Shoving, pushing against one another

Not enough space in the one, tiny room

That is her mind.

They’re like guests who won’t leave; they come inside without ringing the doorbell and won’t go away when she asks, orders, pleads . . . begs. They don’t hear her; their minds are filled with the sounds of their own voices and their own sufferings.

They think no one else can hear, but she can. She tries to cover her ears, tries to block out the overwhelming tide of emotions, but they seep through her ears, like warm, sticky blood.

"She feels everything."

They’re crushed together, grinding, flinching, searching desperately for a way out. Anger flares, and they wrestle for dominance, scraping and scratching, bodies grappling until they trample each other to the floor under the fury of their own boots.

Maybe they’re gone; maybe she won’t have to deal with them anymore. But they live. They always come back. They should be dead, logic dictates. But logic has no place here; it is snuffed out like a candle in a downpour.

They rise again, battered and beaten, and continue to fight for control in the tiny, cramped room. Their bloody echoes – fragments, wisps, shadows – bounce off the cold stone walls, always returning, always there, fading only to start up again just as loudly. They keep fighting – like an unruly mob of cats and dogs, hissing and scratching, tearing and clawing – and they never let up. Incessant, repeating, never-ending. A haunting curse for all eternity, suffered by one person.

Bodies continue to shove, and their combined scents are overwhelming. Sweat and gunpowder, oiled leather and candle wax, perfume and silk, smoke and tobacco, engine grease, disinfectant, warm paper. The air is thick with them, breath is coming harder, harder to draw air into thin lungs. She could suffocate; a little girl, tiny and broken, overwhelmed by the sheer fury of the combined emotions.

Even though she knows them all far too personally, everyone except Simon gives her a wide berth on the ship. Yet they watch her, out of the corners of their eyes, eyes filled with pity and sympathy though they couldn’t begin to imagine her suffering. They wonder how much she has forgotten of her torture and how much she remembers, and they wonder which is worse.

Of course she is aware of what they did to her at the Academy. She’s a genius, after all. She knows the curves of every instrument, understands the kinds of incisions they’re designed to make.

What baffles her is why they used the instruments on her. They made the wrong cuts, invaded where there was no wound to fix. Doctors – healers, granters of lives, gift-givers of death – made the hurt appear, and they didn’t try to fix it. Even now she remembers with startling clarity the unspeakable things they did to her. They’re slashing neat, thin red lines across her white skin, then stabbing at the exposed tissue. There is not a spot left untouched. She feels stripped, naked and shivering and incoherent. Darkness is closing in, and there’s not a thing she can do to stop it.

One mass of people invades her mind, a constantly undulating sea of blurry darkness. Their secrets will engulf them; sinister, black, choking secrets will grow into something greater, something worse, and destroy them all someday.

Each person is a book, and she is standing in the master library. She opens dusty covers with deft fingers and thumbs through chapter after chapter. The words shine with contained light, or they are dull and rusty, but every one is burned into the ordinary pages like cattle brands. The stories are endless, and each is better than the last so that she wants to stay and read forever.

"Yeah, well, you know me real well."

"Wish I didn’t."

Bright, shining childhood gives way to anger-fueled adolescence and eventually ends with weary adulthood, resolved only by the mercy of death. Some people are drained of life, wonder how they can go on. Others live day-to-day by the simple code: Hunt or be hunted; eat or be eaten. Yet, guilt often sinks its teeth deep and won’t release them.

Love complicates everything. The Captain warns against romance on his ship, but he is powerless to fight its development. Attraction passes through the crew; the air is charged with it. And she feels the hidden, more powerful emotions, the real feelings tucked beneath the surface. She sees them all through a surface as clear as crystal, but everyone else’s views are muddled.

They all touch one another; their paths intertwine somehow. The captain loves his second-in-command, but the affection is that reserved for a comrade, whereas she is in love with her husband. Yet, there is a deeper attraction for another woman, someone the captain can never allow himself to have. The mechanic has set her sights, but her targets keep moving out of range. Even the surly mercenary has his connections with his crew; past experiences have linked him more tightly to these people than he would like to admit.

Love hurts, or maybe it's just her. Simply watching the married couple’s long-lasting and rather public affection causes her real, physical pain, like an electric jolt straight to the heart. She has actually experienced that literal agony before, but the raw contact – the touching, the closeness – races over her exposed nerve endings, sending sharp twinges all through her body, and makes shivers creep up her spine.

Skin on skin

Touching, rubbing

Soft, careful kisses with unmistakable, gentle passion simmering beneath.

Hands stroke, curl around skin, brush over in slow rhythm

Comfort,

Security,

Smooth and sweet as a dream.

It's all alien to her; yet, strangely, she is drawn to them, like a moth to a flame. But she mustn’t forget, curiosity killed the cat, and the dusky moth is eventually burned to a cinder by the searing flame. She must keep her distance. She doesn't want to, but she must.

Her hands itch to imitate those caresses, desperate for that same feeling of all-consuming passion. Her long fingers curl around ivory skin, but she is icy cold to the touch.

She blinks back hot tears, feeling fresh remorse over the inevitable truth. She is untouchable, unable even to be reached. She’ll never experience this love, or even simple attraction, no matter how much she yearns for contact. She imagines the hungry gaze of another rove over her body, searching fervently, and in her thoughts she meets it unflinchingly. But she is not suited for her phantom lover and is cast aside. She is simply cold and barren, unwanted by all.

But there is want; oh, yes, it's present, though not directed at her. She can feel the tangible desire radiating through the ship in waves. She's not blind; she sees more clearly than anyone here could want to. People want each other, but fate has a different plan. It always does.

Good and evil conflict; stark black and shining white melt into melancholy gray. The `verse is at a balance point, but both armies are equally matched. Zealous war struggles to rise over ragged, uneasy peace. Love and hate merge, then separate suddenly, only to become entwined again in the endless dance of heated passion. Things held close for so short a time are suddenly flung into the far reaches of space. The warm blanket of joy tightens around the body, a thin protection against the frigid vacuum of grief with its promise of death. At the head of the ranks are each side’s supreme warriors. Bravery shouts his battle cry and charges full-force, only to meet the impassable fear, who gnaws at the other warrior’s resolve, threatening to break down good’s greatest defense.

Screams of terror pierce the still night. Sobs rise and fall in intensity, wrenching emotions straight from the heart and exposing them in bright, harsh light for all to see. Feelings collide in a whirlwind of sounds and images, of thoughts and dreams, and she’s in the center of it.

"No power in the `verse can stop me."

And she is just a tiny speck dancing on the balance point. She skips nimbly over the smooth surface, her bare feet slapping in a measured rhythm. She is a pale, wispy ballerina, her body angled perfectly as she twirls. Her arms are held out before her, and she is perfectly balanced, oblivious to the warfare around her. She spins with fluid, boneless grace, hair flowing, feet never faltering – she knows all the steps by heart – and the spin tightens into a spiral. The universe grows swifter and darker, speeding faster than a planet can rotate, years and centuries pass in a blur.

Hands reach into her isolated whirlwind and shove her, a violent push that sends her reeling and makes her teeter on the edge of her point, her balance gone. Rushing sounds fill her ears, a deafening onslaught of noise; she is disoriented, confused, a child lost in a crowd that slowly presses inward, crushing her between larger, heavier bodies. Where have Mother and Father gone? Where is the older brother to drag her back home?

Two hands part the crowd and reach out to her. The first hand is broad and callused, and in it is a gun. She glances over her shoulder and sees the second outstretched hand; it's slender, smooth, and clad in a blue glove.

A huge shudder wracks her body from head to toe at the sight of her torturer. Her breath comes fast, her face grows hot, and she is trembling all over, like a leaf launched around by the wind. Her eyes narrow to dark slits, and fury floods her body. Her reaction is that of a feral animal, to raise its hackles and growl menacingly. She turns and reaches for the hand holding the gun, and the trigger is pulled.

She reels back, momentarily stunned as her dress flutters in the wind of the bullet that has barely grazed her, and her eyes involuntarily scrunch shut in defense. For just a moment, her resolve falters, and she sneaks a glance over one shoulder at her other option. The blue glove's fingers slowly curl, beckoning her back, back to --

-- to the place they wanted her to call home, but there was no way that it could be home. Where was the faded furniture? What about the hearty aroma of food wafting from the dinner table? Or her warm, fluffy bed?

She wouldn’t have believed Hell to be cold, but the memory of the cool, whitewashed rooms with the single ominous chair – like the electric chair on which murderers had been executed, centuries ago – gives her shivering spells that can’t seem to stop. "Two by two, hands of blue" her mind chants, and all the torture rushes back. Being poked and prodded without merciful rest because she was special. Nights filled with shrieks and moans and coughs and groans, hard hands gripping her and forcing her to silence before she screams herself hoarse. Messy experiments, but everything is cleaned and polished afterward, to make it look clean and wholesome.

With an effort, she drags her eyes away from the blue glove and turns back toward the first hand. Slowly, slowly, she looks upward into hardened eyes that soften in sympathy. Life as a fugitive is never safe; there's bound to be danger, and betrayal. But even a life on the run is better than going back there, back to that prison. She grabs his hand, and he pulls her out of the crowd; he is whisking her away, away to home. To Serenity.

Serenity: noun, not really a thing, more of a feeling, a notion. "The quality of peace or stillness." It was the desire for peace that caused the war, that led to skirmishes and attacks and the final, dismal battle played out in a valley whose name stood for the opposite of the gory display that drenched its soil. In battle, no one stood still who didn’t wind up dead. There was constant movement; sneaking, slithering through darkness, only to rise up against the enemy and empty as many bullets as they could, take as many lives of men who fought as hard as they did, but for a different cause. The dark of night is illuminated with gunfire, and former silence is filled with the screams of the dying.

Too much killing, too many dead. Bodies are stacked, their corpses rotting. Blood dries and cracks in puddles, life slowly dripping, dripping, until there’s not a single drop left.

There’s too much blood! She scrunches her eyes tightly shut and claps her hands over her ears, but the warm liquid trickles through her fingers. It courses down her face in rivulets, like red tears. More of it gushes nonstop, down her shoulders, staining her dress and skin. It’s rushing like a river, and she’s drowning, unable to keep her head above it all. Bitter and cloying, it fills her nose, stifling her, a sticky, heavy weight on her tongue. The blood’s closing in above and all around, and she can’t fight back, and she has to let out a single scream of agony.

"It’s getting very, very crowded!"

One child . . .

". . . a teenage girl."

". . . assassin."

". . . nothing that is human."

Can’t take it all, not built to contain this, has to let it out

Somehow

It hurts to fight. She can’t take it all – not now, not ever

Maybe she will simply melt away.

The waif will fade into nothingness,

Slip away from reality,

Cease to exist.

That, or she will be back in the crowded room, surrounded by everyone else under the sun but unable to locate herself.