In her dream she danced. Twirling and twirling, gracefully maneuvering her body around the room. A small smile played across River’s lips as she lay on the catwalk above the cargo bay, feeling the cold metal of the deck plates on her arms and leg’s. Although her eyes were open she was dreaming. She was seeing everything that she wanted to see. Nothing cold, nothing scary. River saw a normal girl, smiling brightly and looking absolutely carefree. She saw the person that she used to be, that she hoped was somewhere locked away inside. It was the person that no one had seen since she’d left for the Academy.

“She’s missing,” River said quietly to herself. Still in her halfway lucid state she heard footsteps approaching. Too caught up in the daydream she was having, River continued to talk unthinkingly. “She went away to a new place and somewhere in the time there she was taken. They took parts of her and replaced them with something else. Something that wasn’t her, that didn’t belong to her. ” The young girl’s deep brown eyes were coated with a glaze of tears as the dream she had been having seemed to just dissolve away to nothing, leaving her body feeling empty and cold.

Trying to ignore the hurt and blankness that he could hear in River’s voice, Mal stood where he was at the top of the stairs in silence for a moment. He sighed quietly and shook his head as he started walking again. River blinked finally and glanced in the direction Mal was walking from, before she put her head back down and brought her finger’s up, twirling her hair in a child-like manner.

“Hey there, little one.” Mal said as he stopped in front of her, bending down slightly to see if she was okay. River knew he was going to act like he hadn’t heard what she was saying, and he would pass it off as if he didn’t really care. She moved her eyes from where they were rested and looked up at the Captain for a moment.

“No need to feel sorry for her, she’ll be fine. And she’s there, in my daydreams. Maybe they’ll find her one day, still intact. ” River said confidently, another grin tugging at the corners of her mouth, nodding. Mal stayed there for a few more moments before he smiled slightly and stood up. “Maybe so.”