Disclaimers: The usual, all rights to Joss and Mutant Enemy.

***

"Who's that then?" Badger asked, River looked around the cargo bay, but she saw a small room with a fire in the corner, a woman sat in a rocking chair, knitting. "You look at me. What's your story, love?" A shadow fell across the room, the fire flickered as if a door had been opened.

What was her story? Flashes of being strapped to a chair in the middle of a dark room, a needle advancing toward her eye came to mind.

"She's just a passenger..." Simon replied.

Badger continued staring at River, who could hear the quiet thoughts whispering in his head of the life he used to be a part of. "Yeah? Why ain't she talking? She got a secret?"

"Sure." she said, in a flawless British accent that matched his. "I got a secret. More'n one." Too many in fact. They come for me at night.

She acted as if she felt angry. "Don't seem likely I'd tell 'em to you, now, do it? Anyone off Dyton Colony know's better'n to talk to strangers." she told him, his mind telling her of his roots. Ran off in the middle of the night, must've left his poor mother weeping.

She picked at Badger's lapel, as if it were offensive to her. A lurid flamingo pin was pinned to it, giving him the gaudy look of a man who was pretending to be rich. "You're talkin' loud enough for the both of us, though, ain't ya? I've known a dozen like you. Skipped off 'ome early, minor grafting jobs 'ere and there. Spent some time in time in the lockdown, but less than you claim."

"Now you're what?" she asked looking around, seeing the many times he had cheated people out of money. Seeing that if he knew who she was, he would sell her back to the government for the highest price they would pay. He wouldn't care that they cut into her, stuck needles in her, and took away even the dreams in her head. They poisoned even the happiest of memories. "Petty thief with delusions o' standing? Sad little king of a sad little hill."

Badger seemed slightly embarassed, his thoughts showed that he h