Unfinished Business

Chapter Twenty-Seven

River Tam had found something new.

She was lying down in the middle of Serenity’s catwalk, pointedly ignoring the seething sexual tension that was rapidly filling the ship (complete with a nasal cacophony of belligerent pheromones), letting her mind wander. There wasn’t really anything better to do.

She was still trying to put her recent unexpected conversation with her parents into context. It was difficult, what with the echoes of the dead of Miranda still haunting her, but the ghosts of those ghosts were receding daily from her mind and she found them less troublesome than she had . . . before. The horror of Miranda was now an established fact in the world, and she no longer had to bear the burden of the secret alone. The weight of the verse was, temporarily at least, lifted from her. She could focus on more concrete, personal issues. Her birthday. Simon. Simon and Kaylee. Mal. Mal and Inara. Zoe. Shepherd Book and Wash. Piloting. Being a pilot (which, she had learned on Muir, was a different skill from piloting). Sex. Criminal activity and its long-term effect on her career options. Teenage angst. Cannibalistic, rapacious Reavers. Raging hormones. Murderous bounty hunters. Potential boyfriends. Genocidal operatives of Parliament.

Her parents.

She made the tour of her inner thoughts thrice before she finally settled down and resigned herself to replaying and examining the episode. The still-crazy aspect of River (or the aggregate craziness River had accumulated – take your pick) had been studiously avoiding it since it had happened, letting the course of events preoccupy as much of her mind as she could stand while the ugly, nagging fact of their virtual reunion hung in her mind like rotten fruit.

It was harder for her to process such things. Her time under the tender care of Dr. Mathias and his butchers had shattered the normal human mechanisms for emotionally placing things in context within her brain. She was hard-wired to compart