At night, curled up in her bunk, she cries. The covers are wrapped around her like a cocoon, protecting her from shadows. She doesn’t sleep in the hammock anymore; she tries to avoid going into the engine room at night. Too many memories are held there, too many fears and hopes. There are too many images of an insane man in a red bodysuit and she has too many dreams where her cheek is pressed against the cold metal grating.

She hears his voice in her dreams, deep and rough, yet still with a rolling and soothing way of speech. His voice had calmed her, while his words had made her blood run cold. She preferred death to what he had suggested, and she spent her time tied up wishing that the engine would suddenly blow out, killing her and ending the nightmare. Anything was better than the slow crawl of fear through her stomach, the small certainty in her mind that he would come back, that he would take her and hurt her and violate her.

The fear that was with her all the time was not the fear of being taken; sex was something she had enjoyed many times and was no stranger to. Instead, the fear was of the pure hopelessness of it, the fear of having her hands taped behind her back as he pinned her and vandalized her body. She feared leaving the ‘verse from a bullet to the brain, and feared having her last thoughts be ones of sorrow and horror. Life was supposed to be a happy thing, and she hated how he had destroyed that for her, making her fear to be alone.

She couldn’t stop the flow of memories through her mind at night. Not sleeping was better than conjuring scenarios where he did things to her, where he made her body happy but caused her despair. She hated herself for dreaming about it, and she hated how she couldn’t stop her bodies natural reaction to him in the dreams. Nobody knew what he had threatened her with; she had never been able to tell the crew.

But she found River staring at her over the table in the kitchen, found River frowning during a happy conversation. Simon reported that River was having more nightmares than normal, and she felt bad for not being able to stop them. When River walked around the ship muttering the words that Early had said to her, she was tempted to just run away and scream. Instead, Kaylee just held it in as the nightmares turned worse and worse and as River became less and less sane.