Disclaimer: River Tam, Firefly, the R. Tam Sessions™, Serenity, the ‘Verse, and all of its associated Characters, places, settings, etc. are property of Joss Whedon. Not me, see? No need to get all snippy about it…

Bastards. Old men all dressed up in suits and blood. It never touched them, but they’re drowning in it. They smile and wave and laugh at me as I sit here. They think themselves safe.

They are wrong… so wrong.

When they pierce me with their needles filled with sin, when they hook me up to machines that change my rutting brain so that I can’t think straight anymore.

I never know what I’m saying anymore. I… I almost… I almost remember… before. When I could laugh and smile and feel like a real girl, and not some gorram doll for the Alliance to puppet. They made me into a killer.

River Tam, as she was, has died. She was killed the moment they first set me up on these machines, when they first made me into a sin. When they first made me into a weapon.

They smile and live and breathe and fear me. They fear that what they have made in getting out of control. They shouldn’t fear.

They never controlled me from the beginning.

How can mere men control a monster?

Fools. It will kill them. I will kill them, in the end.

“River, River,” they coo at me, with their sickeningly sweet voices and their tongues of barb and metal. They feel in control because of these chains that they have put on my mind. Better that they put chains on my body. Fools, they think that they can cage my mind?

It is like trying to grasp smoke in your hands; keep trying until you burn with the flames.

I play along with them, these arrogant fools. They think that, simply because I am by normal conventions insane, that I am less of a threat. If anything, I am more of one.

I don’t want to kill. They think that they can use me as a weapon. They can.

But a sword is as much a danger to the one who wields it as the one on who it is unleashed.

But I will let them feel all safe and cozy in their