Author's Note: This was my first Firefly fic, there's a lot of problems with it, but it was fun to write and fun trying to get in the minds of the Tams. It could maybe be a kind of an Ariel missing scene, one that takes place before Simon tells the others about his plan—before he's even thinking about making a plan, actually.

He still remembers his father looking at him, like he was crazy, like he was already lost—but he wasn't the crazy one, and he had known exactly where he was and where he was going. His parents couldn't give up dinner parties for them, but he gave away it all for her. He misses lots of things, but not them. River knows.

She said their father would come for them only that once, looked in his eyes, and then knew he wouldn't. River always knew. Simon had no secrets, not from her. He still couldn't tell her, couldn't find the words to explain their parents had disowned him, and forgotten her. If she knows already there is no reason to say it out loud.

"Two by Two. Hands of Blue."

River has secrets from him. More than he guessed, probably, more than could be told. She gives him hints, though, codes and games like they used to play, only before he always found the key, deciphered the message. Now he can never tell what is code and what are words chosen on a whim, he can never be sure if they mean anything at all.

"Two by Two. Hands of Blue."

Men in sets of two, perhaps, but spilt blood wasn't blue.

If he asks what she means she won't tell him. Maybe for the same reasons he can't talk about their parents, maybe because she doesn't consciously know, either way he has little hope of finding out and has stopped asking.

"They come for me," she tells him. "And for you."

He had a perfect life before this. Mal hated the Alliance, and a year ago, Simon wouldn't have been able to understand why. Mal could see deeper than the surface in everything, and all Simon could see was the skin. River, of course, saw deeper than was sane. She whispers often that she knows, she kno