She couldn’t see River from where she sat; couldn’t feel or sense her, acute as she normally was, but then River always did know the best places to hide. The best places where Serenity could hide you, where you could watch life from afar, disassemble it, view it and add conjecture without people wondering if you were starting to slip again- if psychosis was making a reappearance, rather then lucidity.

Now she could hear the quiet, now she didn’t need to be in the Black to hear nothing and feel free, River liked to dip down into the noisy. Dip into the chaotic mess that had overwhelmed and put her in hysterics; disjointed and confused as it had been, with memory of past and present all melding together.

She was more then surprised when Simon told her, River could feel it; shock, disbelief and even a touch of fear were bleeding from her as though her body were broken and haemorrhaging, rather than nurturing. Nurturing the tiny ball of cells which had clung to her so many weeks ago. Surviving and dividing, growing and changing.

“Twenty four pairs of chromosomes, Thirty thousand genes, four bases of dna-all forming, all changing…”

River bit off her words. She did that a lot when she was alone, tended to ramble, so similar to before. She wasn’t crazy, wasn’t disjointed and confused anymore but River still had her quirks-still wasn’t all there and healed right. Much like Serenity’s crew.

Her fingers were on the grill now, dark eyes peering through, lids closing for a moment as a memory surfaced. Not hers, one from a long time back and buried in River’s mind, brought out as the grill reminded her, the position and scene reminded her of it. Not her memory- Jayne’s memory. Of fear and worry and anxiety, all melded together with a powerful hate and loathing directed at…River’s eyes snapped open.

“Simon,” The word was a touch louder than she would have liked and through the grill she saw her brother spin around, perplexity replacing the smile that had been there. River didn’t shrink back, just kept w