Disclamer: I don’t own Firefly or Star Wars.

River is slightly different from the Firefly version. In this version, Simon did not rescue her yet. Her age is different but her problems are still the same. Her presence in the Star wars universe will be fun to write.

"She feels everything; she can't not."

Prolouge

It has been three years since; River Tam had fallen into the world of the twin suns. As a test subject for the Alliance, they were experimenting with behavioral programming. They were in short, making an assassin. She was the perfect subject. She was a prodigy; she could do anything and everything better than her predecessor could. She was a technology whiz; she could do anything and everything with them. She was also a dancer. She loved dancing. Her parents let her go to a government-funded school. Once she was in there, she could not get out. They experimented with her brain, testing and programming. She was fourteen, when she entered and sixteen when she managed to get out.

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The alliance was testing wormhole devices. They figured that if they can make a transportation device that allowed them to get to another part of the galaxy in a moment they can expand out to the unknown zone. The wormhole was suppose to be a tunnel. They did something wrong. River felt the change in the verse, as the superstrings vibrated a different tune.One night she attempted an escape; she took down the guard with a painful jab to the throat and took off. She wanted to run away where no one can find her, she heard, more like felt the frustration of the scientist and the guards. By now, she was quite insane. All the experimenting with her brain broke something, which can never be mended. She was a fragile doll that was broken but still worked. She ran to the room where the device was held and turned it on. Bypassing the security codes, which she picked from the head scientist head, she walked to the front of the device. She did not care where she ended up, just somewhere other than here. She ran into the blue liquid that looked so much like her namesake, and plunged into it.

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She fell into a world scorched by two suns. Unfortunately, for her, slavers were there. She was too busy trying to adjust to the new worlds’ smell, sense, and was taken to be sold. The training, which drilled into her by the Alliance, took over; she killed half of the group with relative ease. However, the screams of the dying and all the emotion that swirled around the slavers brought River to her knees, as she was overwhelmed. She was knocked out and drugged, put into a box where a weird fuzzy creature slept on top. For some reason, it deafened everything and for once, she felt fine. There were no screaming voices, or thoughts to make her wonder where she began and ended. The slavers whispered jedi and witch. The control collar which pacified most slaves did nothing to her but cause minor discomfort. She tried to break out again, almost successful if it wasn’t for the stims. The stims amplified her senses and the voices, thoughts, memories which wasn’t hers, flooded her mind. This time the slavers pumped her full of stims and left her in the box, as River saw and felt everything. The dark veil that usually clouded her mind all the jedi was pierced through and she saw all the anger, hate and darkness in the world that was hidden. It destroyed whatever sanity was left, from the Alliance experiment. She was complacent, and obeying when the stims were drained from her system.

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River was gone, curled up in a ball in the back of her mind, waiting for the memories, thoughts, and darkness to fade. However, it never will, once the veil was lifted, she could still see everything. Without the stims, she was back to her old self, but still different. This world operated differently than the one she was from. They built a collar that administrated shots of stims into her system, as a threat. River never wanted to see everything at once. It hurt her so much. She was sold to the Hutts, and then resold to Watto. Watto hardly used the collar, only to threaten her. He put her with the Skywalkers to bring her out of her mindless shell. Even her blank eyes disturbed him. It took two years for Anakin and Shmi to bring out the girl she was before the slavers got her. However, no amount of care could heal the scars that crisscrossed her mind from the experiments. She needed someone skilled to help her. After two years of living with the Skywalkers she considered Anakin the little brother she never had and Shmi the mom she always wanted. She still missed Simon, her big brother, who took care of her when she was a child.

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The intellect is still there. The gracefulness and technology knowledge is still there. Her ability to assimilate and understand so many things allowed her to understand and speak different languages. Her skills as an assassin were still there. It took time to get River to speak of her experience in the government facilities. Shmi understood and helped her whenever she could. Anakin started attacking like Simon, trying to protect her. She told them everything and they still loved her. She was healing slowly but surely. Her memories of the dark were fading, being replaced by the light that she was surrounded with. However, it was still there and it will resurface, it always will. The dark is never complacent. It is wild and strong. Eventually it will make its move. Her physic ability is always there barring her from being in big crowds. First time she went, all the emotions caused her brain to shut down. She passed out and had to be carried home. After that, she stayed away from big crowds. She is now happy, like she was before the experiments. She still sometimes speaks in rhymes and still “sees” but is stable, for now.

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“The shadow is moving, ready to strike. Will the light be ready?” River asked to the stars.

“River, its dinner time.” Anakin shouted. He ran inside and waited at the dinner table for River.

River still looked at the stars, “seeing” what will come. Her sight was hampered by the veil but did not care. She liked it, when she was blind to web that made up the world. The spiderlike strands that surround her and the others glimmer and shimmer. She is all seeing, all knowing, but the damage hampered any coherent translation of what she “sees”. She wants to be blind like Shmi, like Watto. She didn’t want to “see”.