Disclaimers: The usual, all rights to Joss and Mutant Enemy.

***

"Who's that then?" Badger asked, River looked around the cargo bay, but she saw a small room with a fire in the corner, a woman sat in a rocking chair, knitting. "You look at me. What's your story, love?" A shadow fell across the room, the fire flickered as if a door had been opened.

What was her story? Flashes of being strapped to a chair in the middle of a dark room, a needle advancing toward her eye came to mind.

"She's just a passenger..." Simon replied.

Badger continued staring at River, who could hear the quiet thoughts whispering in his head of the life he used to be a part of. "Yeah? Why ain't she talking? She got a secret?"

"Sure." she said, in a flawless British accent that matched his. "I got a secret. More'n one." Too many in fact. They come for me at night.

She acted as if she felt angry. "Don't seem likely I'd tell 'em to you, now, do it? Anyone off Dyton Colony know's better'n to talk to strangers." she told him, his mind telling her of his roots. Ran off in the middle of the night, must've left his poor mother weeping.

She picked at Badger's lapel, as if it were offensive to her. A lurid flamingo pin was pinned to it, giving him the gaudy look of a man who was pretending to be rich. "You're talkin' loud enough for the both of us, though, ain't ya? I've known a dozen like you. Skipped off 'ome early, minor grafting jobs 'ere and there. Spent some time in time in the lockdown, but less than you claim."

"Now you're what?" she asked looking around, seeing the many times he had cheated people out of money. Seeing that if he knew who she was, he would sell her back to the government for the highest price they would pay. He wouldn't care that they cut into her, stuck needles in her, and took away even the dreams in her head. They poisoned even the happiest of memories. "Petty thief with delusions o' standing? Sad little king of a sad little hill."

Badger seemed slightly embarassed, his thoughts showed that he had developed an interest in her while she had been speaking. "Nice to see someone from the old 'omestead." he said plastering a smile on his face.

"Not really." she said. Turning to Simon, "Call me 'f anyone interesting shows up."

Then she walked cooly away, barely hearing Badger say, "I like 'er."

She returned to her room and sat on the bed, even as the woman in the rocking chair stood, knowing of the beating she was about to receive. Even as the small boy in the corner began to whimper and sob.

Maybe it was because of this he became what he was. Circumstance makes and individual. He'd certainly received many of those beatings himself, and as she continued to watch, she saw that he had gotten one that night as well.

Logically, when she did the math, it was the simple yield of the equation that he had turned out this way. Too much bad input would yield to a bad output.

In many ways, she was like him. But she had started out with a good input, then the bad was added, giving a yield that was mixed good and bad, causing signals to cross and mingle in her mind. Some of the input wasn't hers, she didn't want it, shouldn't have it. But she did, couldn't be changed.

No matter how hard one tried, the bad input simply couldn't be separated from the good. A chemical change had taken place, the ashes on the ground could never form a tree again. All that could be done was to keep adding good input.