River Tam climbed down into the bunk of one Jayne Cobb, who was at the moment sitting on his bed flipping through a Guns and Ammo magazine. He looked up at her entrance and saw the black cargo pants, black tank top shirt cut at mid-drift and the black combat boots that she was wearing. Normally, River Tam wore long summer dresses that showed little of her lithe muscular form, and hid the fact that she was a woman not a little girl. Now, standing in Jayne’s bunk, she was the woman she had been hiding for so long, her long hair usually hanging haphazardly was now tied back in a pony tail at the nape of her neck, and she looked down at Jayne with her dark brown eyes.

Upon seeing her, Jayne smiled, his heart leaping into throat at the joy of what it meant that she was dressed as she was. He reached out to grab his very favorite gun from where she hung on the wall behind him, but River shook her head.

“No, you won’t need Vera.” River said.

Jayne looked at her. River could see that he didn’t understand. She had been keeping secrets from him, not a good idea, but it had been needful in her opinion.

“We are not going to kill them.” River said. “There is no need to.”

“But those were the orders.” Jayne said still confused. He was willing to go along with whatever River wanted. He always obeyed her, even when she told him to turn her in to the Feds on Ariel, he had made that call, after all his whole purpose in being was to obey her. He belonged to her as surely as Serenity belonged to Mal, and he loved her just as much as Mal loved Serenity.

“I don’t work for them.” River said.

“It was a trick, then. Make’em think I needed yer help to find Mal’s contacts, and all this time we escaped?” Jayne laughed at that. Those blind fools with their blue gloves had no clue as to how smart River Tam really was.

“Yes.” She answered simply. “And now since they believe us to be dead, I can tell the others the truth.”

“Dead?”

“I never told them the truth. I gave them a different name you were going by a