Simon is sitting on his bed, one of River's books that he spent so long buying back at the hub that Mal nearly left without him, is on his lap. It's open, but his eyes have a deadened, shut-off kind of look and its clear his thoughts are elsewhere.

River slips into the room unnoticed by him until she reaches out and touches his shoulder. He flinches in shock and she recoils too as if she's been burnt. “Simon?” she says.

He shuts the book carefully. “Hey,” he says, with a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, “How're you feeling?”

“Like I did before,” she says, “Before all of this, when there was thought and feeling and words and they weren't all mixed together.”

Simon nods. “I... That's good,” he settles for, sighing.

She sits next to him. “You don't have to feel afraid, Simon,” she says. She reaches for the book and smiles.

“Hamlet,” he says, “It was your favourite. Do you remember, when we read it together?”

“Under the oak tree in the garden, the sun was bright. I fell asleep and you pretended to be the ghost.”

He nods again. “Feel like a long time ago,” he says before he can stop himself.

Her smile falters a little, but she understands. He can't quite bring himself to believe that she's what Mal would call “a reader.” It puts her outside the realm of his understanding and thus outside his help – he can't fix what he can't understand, and it scares him. He wants to make her back to the way she was, or as close as can be. On a logical level he knows its impossible, her mutilated brain will never function like it used to, and that was clearly their purpose. But the idea that the true function they were working towards is something so... so beyond the realms of sensible, moral science. It scares him. He's close to cracking and there's no one here he can turn to, except maybe Kaylee, but there's still enough pride in him not to cry on the shoulder of the pretty mechanic he'd much rather kiss instead.

River puts a reassuring hand on his arm. “There are more things,” she says quietly