She liked being in the cockpit.

Her favorite place.

So quiet here, both in her mind and in her ears.

She’d often come up here when Wash had been alive.

He’d always been quieter than anyone else, and that had intrigued her.

No one knew how close they’d been.

How he could calm her tossing mind with just his presence.

She’d loved his stories, acted out with his dinosaurs.

She missed him.

She’d kept the dinosaurs.

They rode where they always had, and sometimes she would tell the stories over again with them.

Not often though, she wasn’t as good at it as he’d been.

She piloted Serenity from his chair.

It would always be his chair.

In her mind and everyone else’s.

She liked being in the cockpit the best when they were in the black.

She felt more contained within herself then.

She loved to look up at the stars.

He’d told her hundreds of stories about the stars.

Some learned just so he could tell her them.

Some barely remembered from school.

Some precious to him, told to him when he was a child, trying to share that joy with her.

Some made up just to make her laugh.

She had always been more herself with him than with anyone else.

She missed him.

For him.

But mostly she missed the stability he gave her.

He would be so happy to see how stable she was now, would forgive her selfishness.

For feeling sorrier for her loss when he died, than she did for his death.

He’d always called her River.

Not “girl”, or “meimei”, or “moonbrain” or the hundred and one names the others called her if only in their minds.

Even in the deepest part of his mind he’d called her River.

She looked out the dusty cockpit window, at the haze hanging in the air.

She watched as the people on the docks worked.

Rushing to and fro in the hustle that was the Eavesdown docks on Persephone.

Not knowing that a miracle was happening right now down in the infirmary.

It was quieter up here than was usual.

And she reveled in it.

Closing her eyes she s