She stayed in the basement, hidden so well that friends that had known her family since before she had been born never even dreamed it existed. The entrance had been built into one of the three bathrooms in their home. Unless an emergency over-ride were entered the bathroom door locked, and stayed that way until you exited the basement. It was in a bathroom that only family used, and people weren’t in the habit of remarking on how long someone stayed in the bathroom, especially when the bathroom in question had no visible means of egress other than the door. At first it had been for hiding, from bandits, reavers and the governor’s men, but it had been expanded many times over in the passing years. Her father had been a structural engineer exiled far from the core when his views on the morality of forcing the outer worlds into the Alliance had annoyed too many prominent men. He had built the house, and the hidey, fearing that the people he annoyed would hold a grudge. After he had married her mother, a doctor he had begun expanding it. It made a good place for him to keep his instruments and work on his projects. A safe place for his wife to store medicines and equipment that was very valuable. And as their daughter had grown the hidey had been expanded still farter, making plenty of room for her experiments with plants. They had joked about her name, about the appropriateness of it. How her love of plants, and her ongoing struggle to bioengineer them to grow faster, with less oxygen, less sunlight, less water and less soil, to get them to bear more fruit, sooner, to help those out on the rim, who barely got by, have a garden that could sustain them for less. Eve, they had named her, Eden they had called her lab. They had always teased her about her garden. She supposed that it wasn’t really a basement, but an underground compound. She tried to focus on the mundane, on trivial thoughts she had, had every time she came down here. But each shot that rang out, followed by a shatter of glass, or the crunch of wood was like a cut to her heart. They were up there destroying her home…not content with murdering her parents they felt the need to destroy everything. She wished that she had asked them to come down into the hidey with her! She wished that she hadn’t reacted so badly when Raol had indicated interest in her. Rather than saying that she wouldn’t have him if he were the last man in the universe. She should have let him have his way with her, like Jesslyn had. But no, she was stupid, she was proud and she had refused him, had humiliated him, believing that her father and mother were too important, too affluent, too well connected for him to touch. She knew what had happened to the ones that refused him, knew that he and his friends ambushed the girl, gang raped her and beat her, then left her to be found in a public place as a reminder to other girls. Ambushed she had been, but they were sloppy and over confident. They hadn’t expected her to be armed, hadn’t expected her to be trained in martial arts, and definitely hadn’t expected her to fight back. She had fought to escape, to wound and that had been her mistake, she was too afraid to kill one of them. They were the governor’s men, Raol was his son, she had known that her parent’s importance could not shield her from daring to kill one of the governor’s own men, or daring to injure his son. So she had disabled them and had run from his son, had escaped to her home, had told her parents of what had happened and had agreed to hide here in the hidey while they faced the wrath she had engendered. She, and they, had thought that they were too important to the governor, her mother was his doctor! He would see no other, and her father his most prized possession, a thing he flaunted to his cronies. His very own core trained engineer, one of the bluest of the core bluebloods, a man who bowed his head and fawned upon him. And how the need to pay that lip service had weighed upon her father, how he loathed that man! And now they lay dead, her mother raped in her place, their home torn apart. And it was her fault; if she had just let Raol have her none of this would have happened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shopping with Jayne in tow had proved to be an experience that Simon hoped never to have to endure again. Though he hesitated to apply the word experience to the trip, but “torture”, “hell on earth” and “agony” all seemed inadequate somehow. Though it was also the fact that he hesitated to phrase anything in such an extreme manor that lead him to term it such a tame word as “experience”. Whether or not he ever figured out what to term it, it was almost done. They had gotten everything on the list (and a small box of strawberries that he had been unable not to buy for Kaylee. Jayne had, surprisingly enough refrained from saying anything about the strawberries, had just contented himself with a disgusted look.) Except for the supplies he needed. Turns out that the doctor lived “a ways” outside of town and the only place for him to get the things he needed was from her. They had been told to follow the road, when Simon had tried to get more information from the shopkeeper he had been given a look that, for all the differences between River’s face and the dour man’s, was an exact replica of River’s “Boob” look. To turn to Jayne and see the same look had almost been too much. He had shut up and left the rest to Jayne….though that had filled him with foreboding. Now that they were on the way and were following the road, Simon could understand why he had been afforded such a look. The land around the town was extremely flat, and in spite of the miles of crops that bordered the road their view was unhindered. Quite clearly he could see a house in the distance. The closer they got the more detail he could see. It was an extremely rich abode, not at all what he would expect to see out on the rim like this. The more he saw, the odder and out of place it seemed; it was built in the ancient style called Victorian. The Victorian style was one that had been ancient on Earth-that-was, and a style that had experienced some popularity a few years before he had been born. His parent’s house had been built in the same style. This house put his parent’s house to shame, it was much better built, more decorative and in infinitely better taste. It stuck out like a sore thumb (to borrow a saying from Kaylee) out here, surrounded by the fields and an hours drive from the primitive hole called a town. Simon glanced over at Jayne, wondering what he made of it, but Jayne’s face was curiously blank.