“I can’t!” Grace was awake, and very upset. “Please! Take it away from me. Please.”

Nightmares had plagued her sleep, her mind flittering uncontrolled through the crew, picking up on their thoughts, on all the hidden things they never wanted anyone to see, and she didn’t want to, but couldn’t stop.

“Grace, I can’t.” Simon shook his head.

“Please!”

“I took an oath. This, what you have, is natural. I can’t damage –” His vision blurred and he could hear –

“Grace.”

The girl looked at Freya, and Simon refocused. “I can’t control this,” she said, her eyes tearing again. “I don’t know how. I don’t want to see … to feel … Zoe and Wash, her pain is still so alive. You and Alice … I can’t take how it makes you cry in the night, Mal holding you so tightly because he feels the same. And River … what they did to her … to you … Even with –“ She looked back at Simon. “Please.”

“I can’t,” Simon reaffirmed. “Besides, now we know they’re not real, surely we can stop them from taking us over.”

“You don’t know anything!” Grace shouted. “I could make you kill each other and not be able to stop myself!” she covered her face with her hands. “Take it away! I don’t want to see it!”

Freya held her close, rocking her gently. “It’s all right.”

“It isn’t!” the girl wailed. “You can’t stay awake forever! And I saw what that drug did. If you gave me that –”

“No!” Freya took a deep breath. “If you saw that then you saw what it did to me. I can’t let Simon do that to you, not even if you want it.”

“Freya, please!”

Mal, not wanting to be too far from his wife, looked at them. “Can you sedate her again at least?” he asked quietly. “Or would that be against your rules?”

Simon flashed him a look of fierce anger, but nodded slowly. He looked back at the girl. “It won’t help, though. She needs control, and she can’t learn that if she’s asleep.”

“It won’t be enough,“ the girl sobbed.

Freya lifted Grace’s chin to look into those eyes. “It would take the edge off, perhaps.