Her hands never falter on the controls.

She knows the catch of every button. The grooves on the gear shifts that fit her fingers. The slight 0.26 degree pull of the right thruster.

Her hands know but they aren’t hers.

She doesn’t mind.

He filled those places in her once torn and bloody and she felt whole and more all at once. Lonely no more. She adopted him and he twisted through her, rising to fill her cracks and be again.

He tickled.

Simon didn’t believe her. Doesn’t still. It wasn’t science. Couldn’t be. River smiled and Wash laughed and he taught her faith.

She was they and he was her.

She loved him first.

Dancing, spinning, dripping sweat. She spiraled and he caught her. She’d never fall again.

They only needed one bed for her hands his hands on his skin in her body yes please oh god yes Wash.

He loved her best.

She gave him life. Shared her everything. Tore him down and built him up and loved him broken.

They played dinos and laughed. The others saw and they wept and worried and walked away.

But they that was she and he smiled and flew and breathed in. He fixed her and she lived him and the others chased the ghosts from their eyes but still they didn’t see.

When she broke--shiny like a knife cutting too deep so deep they aren’t moving wont hurt us can’t hurt us saved us all why does it hurt screaming screaming not a weapon-- it was he in they that held her.

And when Mal brandished her again--slash cut stab too often dull the blade that cut too deep she hated her and loved them--it was he that lived and breathed for them.

He that found the pieces scattered in the carnage and used glue made of tears to make a River again.

When he was they and she was his she glowed and Mal watched.

Captain Daddy with holes and cracks and no one to fill them.

When they caught him, Wash stirred and River flushed and they ebbed like the tide into him.

He wielded her again and again--his own living weapon tearing blood and bone and viscera ripping