Author's Note: This was my first Firefly fic, there's a lot of problems with it, but it was fun to write and fun trying to get in the minds of the Tams. It could maybe be a kind of an Ariel missing scene, one that takes place before Simon tells the others about his plan—before he's even thinking about making a plan, actually.

He still remembers his father looking at him, like he was crazy, like he was already lost—but he wasn't the crazy one, and he had known exactly where he was and where he was going. His parents couldn't give up dinner parties for them, but he gave away it all for her. He misses lots of things, but not them. River knows.

She said their father would come for them only that once, looked in his eyes, and then knew he wouldn't. River always knew. Simon had no secrets, not from her. He still couldn't tell her, couldn't find the words to explain their parents had disowned him, and forgotten her. If she knows already there is no reason to say it out loud.

"Two by Two. Hands of Blue."

River has secrets from him. More than he guessed, probably, more than could be told. She gives him hints, though, codes and games like they used to play, only before he always found the key, deciphered the message. Now he can never tell what is code and what are words chosen on a whim, he can never be sure if they mean anything at all.

"Two by Two. Hands of Blue."

Men in sets of two, perhaps, but spilt blood wasn't blue.

If he asks what she means she won't tell him. Maybe for the same reasons he can't talk about their parents, maybe because she doesn't consciously know, either way he has little hope of finding out and has stopped asking.

"They come for me," she tells him. "And for you."

He had a perfect life before this. Mal hated the Alliance, and a year ago, Simon wouldn't have been able to understand why. Mal could see deeper than the surface in everything, and all Simon could see was the skin. River, of course, saw deeper than was sane. She whispers often that she knows, she knows, over and over, and he never knows what it is she sees, but he trusts enough to think it might be everything.

River can't help but feel everything; the Alliance took away her choice to disconnect. She grabs his hand, tracing the lines on his palm and tells him she knows. He doesn't doubt her. "You would be happy," she says.

He knows he wouldn't be. He'd rather have River than dinner parties.

"If I had never left," she says. "We could both be happy."

"We can still be happy," he tells her, but he doesn't believe it, and she knows he doesn't. River always knows.

"Don't trust the red one," she says softly. "Promise me. I see them in him."

"I don't know what you mean," Simon says and River's eyes widen. She understands, she may know, but she didn’t, really. He's supposed to understand her meaning; she can't function when he doesn't.

"We're going to die," she says, as explanation. "No one can stop it, not even you."

He turns away. The engine is humming softly, and he wonders if Kaylee is lying beside it, whispering and making it quieter. She was a kind of doctor herself, and more useful on this ship than him. He says, "Go to sleep, River."

"I am sleeping," she says, pulling away, curling against the wall. "You are sleeping, too. You don't see. You can't see me. Not anymore, I can not even see myself." She grinds the palms of her hands into closed eyes, and whispers, "two by two, hands of blue."

He can't figure out any of it. He can't figure out what was done to her and he can't decipher her words. She isn't wrong to say he can't see her, but it still cuts him, like the thin red line on Jayne's chest. He looks better in red, River had told him—maybe she means not to trust him, maybe she's just crazy. "You need to sleep," Simon says, not meeting her eyes.

"You can not even see I am not awake," she whispers desperately, placing a hand against his cheek. "Are you awake, Simon?"

"I don't know," he tells her tiredly, and she nods.

"It is better this way," she says, and crawls deep within the covers of her bed, "better not to know too much."