It was the wee hours on Serenity, a time when people used to sleep like stones, a stretch of time now punctuated by screams and sobs.

For all of her shortcomings, the ship had fantastic acoustics, and, couple with a voice that carried in and of itself, everyone heard poor River when the nightmares ripped her out of sleep.

This was the eleventh day since she had been rescued out of a fetish house auction after the crew had essentially torn a town to pieces looking for her. Killing had taken place that evening, but worse than that, the crew of Serenity had been forced to bear witness to one of the nastier sides of the ‘verse.

Simon, who now bunked on the floor of River’s quarters, leapt to his feet from his dead sleep, an ability that mal admired in the doctor, one almost exclusively found in soldiers. He knew the right words, and the right ways to say them, to calm her screams and wild-eyed disorientation down to sobs and babbles.

Inara was there at the door to River’s cabin, as were Wash and Zoë. Mal sauntered over and asked “Same thing?”

“Yeah, I guess it is…..I haven’t seen the pictures Mal, and thanks, but I would just as soon not, but whatever they were doing to her must have hurt,” Wash said.

“I did see them, dearest, and I would expect they did,” Zoë said flatly. “It makes me wish the good Shepherd had the Almighty power of resurrection, so would could bring them……gentlemen back to life and get to killing them all over again.”

Wash never liked to encourage his wife’s unpleasantness like that, so he said nothing at all. Jayne, of course, was absent. He could sleep through a battlefield.

“I’m sorry, but bringing back to life is a trick I leave for higher powers than myself,” Shepherd Book said as he approached River’s cabin.

“Good God, man!” Mal exclaimed. “Would you kindly put yourself together before the poor child sees you and truly enters hysteria!”

“How about before I enter hysteria?” Wash said. He grabbed his wife‘s arm. “Zoë, make the bad man go away!”

They were referring, of c