A/N: The next part of the CODA to A NEW DAY. If you haven't read the first part, I recommend it: http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=13682>A NEW REASON. This part picks up immediately following part 1.

Thanks to all for the great comments, as always. Keep 'em comin'! And thanks to Leiasky for the beta!

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A NEW REASON, 2/5

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That night, everyone fell asleep easily, their bellies full with River’s yummy cooking and their minds at ease because of the closeness of one another. Everyone, except Rylee.

She was close, very close, to achieving the level of peace her aunt had been coaching her towards for months, and the proximity of her conscious mind to her subconscious thoughts was causing a vulnerability to appear in the walls she had so carefully erected to keep them separate. And now, as sleep closed over her, those walls, the only protection her mind had, dissolved, allowing all she had been trying to forget to come rushing in.

The nightmare started as so many of the others did – strange men with blue hands staring at her, their eyes burning holes into her brain, her heart, her soul. Then it changed, they were poking her with needles, the medicine hot and hurtful as it burned through her veins, coloring her world in shades of violence and fear. She thrashed about, both in her dream and in reality, her hair plastered to her forehead by sweat, her sheets wrapped around her small body making it impossible for her to move, just as the metal bindings and the drugs in her dream made it impossible for her to fight.

As the pain increased, her thrashing did as well, and she started to whimper. Not loud at first, just small, pathetic sounds as her tears started, big, hot drops that rolled out from under her eyelids, squeezed shut in an effort to not see, not hear all that was being done. And then the final piece of their puzzle, the final element of their torture – they showed Rylee her family. Her mom and dad and brother, her Aunt River, all taunting her