Camera pans in on Simon’s room.

He is the last to get back from the sickbay on the Alliance military ship.

River never went there: she and Inara were the only ones not injured in the fight, and she stayed with “Serenity”, trying to comfort the broken ship. And she wouldn’t set her foot on an Alliance property anyway.

Jayne and Kaylee returned the next day, and it became easier, not so empty. Kaylee would have stayed longer, but “Serenity” needed her, and Simon was in good care. In a few days Mal came back, with Zoe.

And finally, in a week, her brother returned.

He still has to stay in bed, and he sits there now, propped on pillows, bandage sticking from under a tee-shirt, face pale but happy. He is talking excitedly, and River listens, smiling.

"So I come to bit by bit and I see her standing there brandishing this thing. Nona's her name, and she's a military surgeon there. I say - whoa, where did you get that? 2 years ago it was still in an experimental stage, I had a chance to do clinical trials with it. The first Weaver ever which worked on internal organs, and it was quite a breakthrough. It could copy the organ cells and then reproduce them. Amazing. It worked great already, they were just going to bring the cost down, you know... And by the way: it worked great on me too.

And here she just stands with it like it's nothing special, and it's just an average military ship, so those things must be all over the place now. And I'm falling behind...

And she got very excited that I did the trials, and she even remembered my article about it in "Medical Research Proceedings"! And we... just talked about surgery, and talked all the times I was awake. Such terrible things happened to us, but it was so good… Too good... I even thought I was delirious, that I was dreaming it. She didn't know much about us, it was classified. She just knew that I was a fugitive, an outlaw, but she didn’t know for what. And she wasn't afraid - to help. Not at the least. She might've connected my case with Miranda cover