Author’s Note: The “trespassing” line was liberated from the wonderful movie “Secretary” I was watching the other night and it just screamed “River!” It actually got the ball rolling on this story. This chapter is just a silly little thing. No plot in sight. Expect more meat later.

It was good to be in the Black again. The world that was fast receding behind them was becoming a memory, and as they burned out of atmo into the vast halls of space she thought:

“Finally. Here. I’m back.”

She had missed the Black while they were dirtside. There was something about the boundless nothing of space that calmed her. It silenced the voices, or at least muffled them for a while, and allowed her mind to make room for her own thoughts. Wounds were still raw on Serenity, no amount of paint or patching had changed that, it only made them harder to see and as a result, River felt like she was constantly plugged into a live wire. It took great effort on her part to function at all, let alone normally, and sitting on the bridge, looking out at the stars seemed to help.

The rain was ceaseless on the Moon they had just left. A miserable little place called Tawaret; it could boast almost constant showers which came in two types, depending on the time of day, gray rain or black rain. Stuck on the bridge, the Captain still nervous about her and Simon’s identity, she couldn’t help thinking of the months after Miranda and that rain. The main difference between them being that after Miranda the rain seemed to, almost, serve to heal. In the absence of visible sorrow among the crew, the skies opened and allowed them to mourn…..after a fashion. On Tawaret, all the rain served to do was make dirty jobs dirtier. For three days she had been confined to the bridge and she was glad to be leaving that rock behind, crime done, and to be, finally, staring into the Black.

Most of her time was spent on the bridge now, confinement or not. She had given up hiding in ventilation shafts and smuggling holds and taken to hiding in p