Disclaimer: characters and 'verse not mine, Joss's

Peeking

She was up there again, and Jayne couldn’t figure out why her idiot brother didn’t do something about it. Where was that moron doc? If it was his little sister, he’d have her down on solid deck plating in a heartbeat. ‘Course, she wasn’t his little – anything – so it wasn’t his problem.

He’d gotten right hungry during the small job they’d just pulled, and beaten the others back to the boat. Heading to scrounge something to eat, he’d spied crazy-girl (she still was, no matter what that brother of hers said) up on the catwalks. But not just on the catwalks like a normal person; she was up higher on the guard rails.

If that wasn’t proof right there that she still wasn’t right in the head, he didn’t know what was. And it was only a few weeks ago she'd lost it in a planet-side bathroom, because she'd killed a mosquito. The doc had had to leave the boat to get her and drag her back to it, though by that time she'd calmed down a bit. Her brother hadn't seen the screaming and cowering.

He should probably see this, though. The killer woman's eyes were shuttered. Her bare feet were balanced on parallel bars, arms just hanging, head cocked at an angle. Her long, too-large rose gown swayed slightly about her limbs.

Jayne's gaze snagged in the long brown fall of her hair for a moment before his own head tilted to the side. He drifted nearer, his fingers absently fondling the handle of the gun at his side. Those catwalks were pretty much opaque; all you could see was light or shadow when someone walked on them. But with her up higher than that, from below and slightly to the side, you could –

“JAYNE!!” The captain’s voice snapped through the quiet of the bay, and Jayne jerked guiltily before turning around with the “innocent me” look he’d used on his ma when he was a kid.

That look had never worked on his ma. It didn’t work on Mal now. The captain strode nearer as Zoë closed the bay doors.

“What in the sphincter of hell’s hound do you think you’re playin’ at?” It was his low, intimidate-the-crewman voice, and it worked. Jayne swallowed, flailed mentally for an explanation, failed to come up with one. It appeared one wasn’t really expected, anyway.

“I ever catch you at that again, you’ll wish you never heard the name ‘Serenity’. Zoë or Kaylee ‘r one thing, they can handle themselves. The little crazy girl’s another. Dong ma?”

Jayne nodded quickly, though mentally he sorted the inconsistencies in Mal’s little speech. The captain’d been insisting along with the doc that the former stowaway wasn’t really crazy no more, just a little “unstable”, but here he was using the old label. And if any one on the boat could fend off unwanted attention, surely it was the psycho martial-artist genius girl. It was just a little up-skirt peek, anyway, what was the big deal?

But he nodded anyway, to keep the peace and his head, and Mal nodded back, sharply, before striding off. Zoë trailed him.

Jayne glanced up. The girl was still poised where she’d been, but her head now inclined in his direction. As itchy as the captain had made him, meeting her gaze now was somehow even more uncomfortable. So he raised his brows in a challenge. She leaned forward, till her hair swept the rail, and he lurched a half-step toward her in fear she’d fall.

“Girl’s name is River,” she whispered, but he heard her. And then she smiled.