The phantom wound in his back throbbed promting him to gently rub the scar left behind by the Operative as he started shuffling aimlessly through Serenity. He didn’t see the familiar worn metal of his ship, instead he found himself back in that thrice damned nightmare.

His people were all down, scattered on the floor bleeding and looking so much like that distant battle that he fell into his old role without thinking with Zoe’s “Sir?”

“It's done. Report.” Even though he could feel the hot trickle of his blood seeping out of the wound in his side he was past feeling the actual pain that came with it. He was more focused on how there was one body unaccounted for. Where was she? He swayed as fear drove his blood pressure wild .

“River?”

Did anyone notice how his breath caught? How he almost choked trying to get her name out? Did they see the panic and dread in his eyes? Before he could pass out, the blast doors opened and there she was, as if he had conjured her by speaking her name.

It took him a bit longer than usual for his brain to make out what his damaged eyes were seeing. The blood swirling in his left eye from a broken vein was clouding half his vision and the steady bloodloss made everything swim unsteadily. A f ew slow blinks later he was able to make the connection between the feral warrior standing bloodied but strong, surrounded by a gory sea of slaughtered Reavers... and River Tam.

Once you see a thing it can never be unseen.

The old saying rang inside his head as he took in little River, filled with a raw power he had not thought her delicate frame capable of. Gone was the fragile little girl who trailed after her older brother, lost and confused as she walked around in a daze. Her dark eyes held a power in them that pinned him in place and filled his spine with the strength he had been sorely lacking before they locked eyes.

Mal could not look past the grown woman standing in the child's place, still small and delicate but filled with a deadly calm. Knowing that she w