Archive of Our Own

"If this was a fairytale, you'd be a prince," River said, dreamily. She lay in her bed, looking for all the world like something from one of the old fragments of movies from Earth-that-was. Like a princess, lying on crisp and cool sheets, her hair spilling out under her, waving out around her head like a dark halo, a dark pool. There was a princess, Simon thought, who needed to be kissed to be woken from an enchanted sleep. "Prince Simon. My prince."

River looked like that princess, whoever she was.

"You'd have to be a princess, then, meimei," he said. He went to sit beside her, leaning over her a little. His eyes crinkled with his smile and he slipped his hand into hers. "And since I'm your brother, of course I'd be a prince. Do you think Father would make a good king?"

"You'd be my prince," she told him. She moved to sit up, propping herself on one arm, tilting her head at him. "You'd come and save me, wouldn't you?"

"You know I'd do anything for you. You're my sister."

"One day, you'll have to," she said. She wasn't looking at him, but up at the ceiling, and Simon felt a quick brief chill, like an omen. He shook it off and tried to smile again, tried to beat back the chill with warmth and light. To be her prince.

"Don't pick too high a tower to be trapped in, I'm not good at climbing."

"You'd do anything for me, it doesn't matter how high the tower is. And you'll do anything for me, if you have to. You'd learn to climb," she said, not any lighter than before, but then she sat up and smiled and moved, made space. "Come here. Warm me up."

"It's not that cold," Simon said, smiling again, but he moved to her, crawling into bed beside her and putting his arms around her. She was cold; the sheets felt a little damp with the chill. He trapped her feet between his legs, wrapped his arms around her waist. "Better?"

"Mm."

He held her, just like that. He found himself running his fingers through her hair, over and over again, soothing. He found himself unable to look away from her, unable to stop thinking about the way she curled into him, the way she trusted him. He thought about someone taking her away -- and it was stupid, because there was no one, no one would dare and he wouldn't let anyone take her away, but the thought wouldn't be dismissed. She relaxed against him, closed her eyes, and for a moment he thought she was sleeping.

"You're leaving soon," she said, resting her head against his shoulder. "Then we can't do this anymore."

"I'll come home and see you."

"It won't be the same. You'll be all grown up."

Simon looked at her, at her face and her hair and the way she was changing right in front of his eyes, so that every day he was startled by something -- her longer legs, or the changing shape of her, the way her face had sharpened into focus somehow. "So will you."

There was warmth in the bed now, warmth between them, and she stroked his face and rolled her eyes and laughed, and she was just River, beautiful River, and he tickled her and she rolled them off the bed in a heap of covers and pillows and limbs, and everything was warm and bright and okay.

"Besides," he said, pinning her under him. "I'm not going away that soon. Six months. Six months still to go. And I won't be far away."

"I know," River said, and wriggled, writhed her body like a snake, and somehow ended up on top. She didn't try to tickle him though, but pressed into him, buried her face in his shoulder. "I know."

"Simon!"

For a moment, it really did feel as though nothing had changed. River spilled out of the front door and ran to him -- she was taller, and her hair was longer, and her hold on him was stronger, but things were really almost the same. Simon held onto her very tightly, and she held onto him just as tightly, almost fiercely, craning up a little and tugging him down and resting their foreheads together.

"Simon," she said, brightly, and he held her tightly.

"River," he said, quieter, softer, but oh, just as bright and warm.

"Welcome home," she said, hugging him tighter and tighter until he had to pull back, breathless, laughing.

Things had changed, he found, but not so much. Their parents were just the same, and they ate the same food they always had. Things had moved, but not far; River moved with a different kind of grace, growing into her own body perfectly, but she'd always been graceful. There were new books in the house, but they were on the same subjects as always. He still felt like it was home, as if he'd never really left.

That night, River stole into his room, curled herself into his body -- just the same as always. He stroked her hair. "You were wrong, I haven't changed," he said, smiling. She shook her head.

"I haven't been proved right yet," she said, lying very still in his arms. "You will leave, someday."

"I'll come back."

"Maybe I won't be here then."

"River..."

"Sorry," she whispered, and curled into his arms. He held her close, suddenly feeling like she might leave, slip out of his arms at any time. He tried to think of something to make her laugh, to bring the familiar light to her eyes. Then, "If I'm not here, you can come and bring me back."

"I will," he said, not sure what he was promising, only knowing he had to.

She smiled again. "I know."

The day she left, River looked more like a princess than ever. It wasn't the clothes -- the skirt was long and whirled out around her, yes, but it was the look in her eyes more than anything, and the way her hair looked, and the way she already seemed far away. Further away than ever before, further away than she'd been when he left for MedAcad, further than she'd been the times he came home to see her. Then it'd only been a few steps between them, it seemed. A distance easily closed.

She hugged him with something like decorum, and he could smell the wildflowers of her shampoo and the spring-like tang of perfume -- she'd never worn perfume before. "I'll miss you," she said, but there was excitement running like a quick stream under her words, and her thoughts were already elsewhere. He'd expected little different, in fact. He'd known how much she wanted this, and they hadn't been as close for a long time.

"Don't forget me, meimei," he said, not entirely teasing, and she did laugh and kiss him then.

"Simon," she said, fondly, but then their parents were there and some of her friends, all ready to see her off, and she fluttered among them, bright like a butterfly, smiling.

"You have to let her go sometime," his father said, not unwarmly, not unkindly, and Simon nodded.

"I know."

He stuck out like a sore thumb. Even his worst clothes were neat and clean, so neat and clean and well-kept that they'd never needed mending, never needed so much as a stitch or a button replaced. He didn't think he'd ever owned anything that needed to be mended. His hair was neatly combed, he was clean-shaven; he was just plain clean, as if the grime of the streets couldn't stick to him. Even his shoes were clean, even shiny: no mud splattered them, no damp dirty spots marred his trousers. He'd have looked the same wearing jeans, probably, looked the same if he hadn't shaved before leaving his house, if he'd neglected to comb his hair. He looked rich, and there was just about nothing he could do about that.

It was the way he talked, too -- he'd reach out a hand to an old woman, politely just keeping from actually touching, smile, and ask, "Do you know where I could find -- ?"

And she would stare at him, take a step out of his range and say no, she didn't know, there was nothin' like that going on around 'ere, and hadn't he better go back to his part o' the world?

Osiris was, of course, a core planet, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. But every place had its underside, even Alliance-run planets like Osiris, and the area of the city Simon needed to be in was where the poorer people lived, where the debtors fetched up when they'd lost everything, where everyone who didn't quite fit into the Alliance's plans ended up.

Where the rebel elements lived, if you listened to the news, where everyone was anti-Alliance and eager to spread sedition.

Simon wasn't finding much of that.

There'd been another letter that morning, another code, but the same message. More desperate now, maybe, River's looped and curling writing just a little more exaggerated, as if she wanted to scream at him, scream for him. He sensed the panic, anyway. He wondered if she'd got his letters in response. He wondered if she knew, if she would guess, what he's trying to do.

She would probably laugh at him. She'd probably have managed this so easily -- a smile here, a light touch to an old lady's arm, a little twirl. They'd have fallen in love with her in an instant and given her whatever she asked for. Everybody always did, after all. That wasn't jealousy, just the truth. She'd done the same with him, after all: his heart was probably the first she'd stolen.

He was smiling, just to think of her, when he heard the cry. He didn't know what had happened, but it was the kind of cry that could never fail to catch his attention, something in it that told him all he needed to know. He ran up the street, heedless of shiny shoes or fancy pressed trousers. Heedless of manners, even, dodging in and out of the people there, not stopping to wonder what they might think of him. He went down in the road beside a fallen body -- a skinny little thing, a child -- and hardly needed to look to know that he was right, that this one was for him. "Call an ambulance," he said, breathless but crisp. He was already moving to check the child over, not moving her in case it was some kind of accident, feeling for a pulse, for breath, for broken bones.

Nobody else moved. There was someone sobbing, probably a mother. He didn't look up.

"An ambulance," he said again, slowly turning the child onto her back, supporting her. Nobody even moved to help. He didn't look up, not yet, leaned down to breathe life into the girl, his hand always on her heart, testing, checking. He looked up after a moment, his eyes flashing. "Why won't any of you lift a finger to help this girl?"

"There's no point," someone said, without even the sense to look shame-faced.

"An ambulance could take her to hospital, they'd have the right equipment, she wouldn't even be in any danger. I can't do much for her here."

There was contempt in the reply. "Yeah, right. The ambulance won't even come to this part of town. It look like we're made o' money?"

"But -- "

"Can you do anything, doctor?"

Simon looked up. The mother, he guessed, from the look of her face, pale and bright red in patches, tearstained. Her eyes were open wide, and still swimming with tears. She was breathing hard. He noted all this in the way he always did when he had to, logging all the details perfectly in a glance, trying to match them up with solutions. He didn't answer, not right away, but leant down again to breathe for the girl, feeding her struggling lungs. He refused to look up again.

"Nobody is going to die," he said, firmly, in his doctor-voice, the one that makes people believe everything is going to be just fine. The voice that would make people believe that if the hospital were falling down around his ears.

The child was thin. Brittle. Simon was firm, stubborn, practised, angry.

It didn't, in fact, take him very long, despite what he'd said.

"Take her to the hospital," he said, getting up. He didn't bother trying to brush the dirt from his clothes. "Tell them Doctor Simon Tam sent you, and to take it out of my wages if they have to."

He didn't wait for a response to that. He'd expected something -- a thank you, maybe, a smile. But nobody said anything, and the small crowd that had collected around him parted to let him through almost in silence. He didn't know what they thought of it, whether they loved him for intervening or hated him for his condescension. It didn't even matter. "Could you tell me -- " he started, halfway down the street, but the other man gave him a resentful look and pushed on by without waiting to hear the rest.

Simon shut his mouth and didn't try to ask again. Not that day. He put his hand in his pocket, though, felt the crisp edges of the latest letter, not yet going dog-eared and tattered like the previous ones.

"I will find you, River," he said, quietly. "I'm coming."

It was stupid, to talk aloud like that. She couldn't hear. He felt stupid, saying it. But if he didn't say it, he might have to scream.

His shift started in thirty minutes, though, and he was a mess. He hurried, then, hurried back to his home -- resentful of its quiet good taste, almost annoyed by the carefully pressed clothes he found waiting there to change into.

But he did change into them, all the same, feeling like they pulled him back into shape, smoothed the slightly roughened edges. They were a comfort, too.

"We simply don't have the resources to deal with the people who can't afford to pay. If they can't be bothered to work for a living, then we shouldn't help them live a life of laziness. Everybody has to work. There are plenty of jobs -- the Alliance has seen to that -- and if they can't get along here, they can always take the chance of colonising the border planets."

There was a mumble of agreement, but Simon cleared his throat. He tried not to flinch at the sudden weight of surprised attention. "I believe you're over-simplifying the situation. There are jobs, but they require certain skills these people haven't had chance to acquire, or they'd require them to live away from their families, or move across Osiris and uproot their whole family. I don't believe any of these people are poor by choice. Who would be? They're poor because we don't take the time to help them. Because the way we live keeps them that way."

"Have you seen the way they live, Tam? It's -- "

"It's better than some places, but in comparison to us, it's pathetic." Simon stood up, leaning over the table a little, braced on his hands. His eyes were serious, focused. "I've been there often, to speak to people of my acquaintance. The last time I was there, a child nearly died and nobody lifted a finger to call an ambulance, because the ambulance wouldn't even come to that part of town. It's disgusting. Isn't it our duty to help people?"

"We have a duty to help people who are worthy of help," another doctor began, and then faltered at Simon's look.

"We treat prisoners in the Osiris prisons and not these poor people in the Osiris slums? Which of them are more deserving? Are you going to say the prisoners, really?"

There was another burst of talk -- someone tried to tell him they appreciated his viewpoint, but, but, but, while others wondered loudly about how he spent his time and why he might have been down in those poor areas, and one pointed out that it was alright for him to talk, but --

"What are your salaries?" Simon asked, suddenly, loud enough to interrupt them all. "I know I could spare the greatest part of mine, if I had to. Not that I want to, but if it would help other people...?"

"Very noble of you, I'm sure," someone said, and then they were interrupted and it all began again. Simon listened to it with his eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. River would have called it his look of righteous indignation, and perhaps teased him. She would have agreed, though, she would have said he was right. Perhaps she would have elbowed him -- she had such bony elbows -- and told him it was about time he saw it.

He always felt stupid and slow, beside River. Beside even the shadow of River he carried around in his head.

"There's nothing to be gained from this," one of the older doctors said, very loudly. "There's nothing we can do." His eyes pierced Simon. "You're a promising young doctor, Tam, but if I were you, I'd take care to stay... well, to stay out of politics."

"This isn't politics. This is human decency. Human rights."

"Are you saying that the Alliance isn't good enough for you, young man?"

Their eyes all stabbed into him at the same time. Simon clenched his hands in his pockets, crushing the letter from River, that incriminating innocent desperate letter. "No," he said, and it wasn't exactly a lie. The Alliance wasn't good enough for anybody. Not when it treated the lowest common denominator with such contempt. Not when his sister --

But he did, after all, keep his mouth shut after that. Because all thoughts led to River, and he knew that he needed money, he needed more time, he needed more luck... He needed more, and angering the Alliance and ending up on the run wouldn't help anyone.

Simon took his jacket off, smoothing out a crease, and hung it up carefully. He took his shoes off, too, sighing at the relief. He'd walked all day through the poorer parts of the city, spoken to everyone that so much as met his eyes for a moment, and -- nothing. He'd ventured into one of the zones that should've been forbidden to him, he'd almost got punched by a man in a bar, and he'd seen just about enough of dirt and bruises and poverty for one day. He'd known about it -- he'd always known -- but now he'd seen and he couldn't unsee it. He'd been angry, but -- now he was mostly just tired. He just wanted to lie down, possibly just after having a nice hot shower, and slipping into some fresh clothes. Possibly after having some good dinner.

The letter in his pocket had become like receipt-paper now, thin and worn, dirty, dog-eared. He pulled it out of his pocket and smoothed it out, just one more time, looked down at River's slanted looping writing. There was definitely desperation in the swirling 'S' for Simon; there was a despair in the sharp curves of her signature, there at the bottom. "I'm trying, River," he said, stupidly, to the letter and to the capture he kept of her, there on his table. "I'm really trying."

And he thought she'd have smiled at him, touched his hair, made some kind of impish face, but he was beginning to think, too, that even that wouldn't have made it okay. It wasn't just the loss of her that made it hard. It was everything he was seeing for her sake. The dirt and the poverty and the people, the suspicious and worn and desperate people he'd ignored all his life, and was just now beginning to see. There was even a feeling, somewhere pushed down hard and tacked in tight, something he was trying not to really think about, that compared to all of this -- compared to everything he was seeing now -- the state River was in wasn't very important. Or, at least, that it was only a priority to people who knew River.

There were obviously a lot more people who were or who knew people who were horrifically poor.

If he let himself, Simon would feel selfish and sick. Instead, he made himself dinner. He didn't bother to be imaginative about it; he found a pre-made meal, about to go out of date, and shoved it in the oven to heat up. He ignored the news, didn't bother to turn the tv on or check the Cortex for messages. He didn't particularly want to find out about what else had gone wrong on small barely terraformed moons in another part of the system. He didn't want to hear about terrorist attacks. He didn't want to hear any of it. He wanted to relax. He wanted to think about something that wasn't River, just for an evening, just for a moment.

He couldn't keep himself from feeling selfish about that one.

"I don't know what to do," he told the capture, and River just smiled at him from it, blank and cool and faraway. He looked away again.

He'd just sat down to eat when there was a beep to notify him of an incoming call. He expected it to be his father -- probably having heard of the 'little disagreement' he'd had with the other doctors, probably ready to scold him. Ready to put his mother on the phone to shame him, even. Gabriel Tam wasn't above engineering things so that his mother's disappointment got to him instead of a lecture. He didn't even want to answer the phone.

It'd be worse if he didn't, though. He'd been disappointing his mother a lot, lately -- "you left work an hour early, Simon, how could you let them down like that?"; "Simon, they told your father that you'd arrived at work in a mess"; "Simon, are you still thinking about those silly letters?"; "Simon, you need to look after yourself, or people will be starting to wonder".

He wasn't so sure if it would be such a terrible thing if people did start to wonder. People didn't seem to do enough wondering, as far as he could see. Even he hadn't wondered all that much, really.

He accepted the call without even looking for the ID. "Hello?"

"Doctor Tam?"

An unfamiliar voice, that. Not his father's, or his mother's; it wasn't even an uncle's or a cousin's. There was the hint of an accent even just in those two words, an accent of the streets, of the poorer sector of Osiris. And yet -- not quite. It was a mixture, a muddle, maybe a deliberate confusion. "Speaking," he said, cautiously, half-suspicious -- though of what, he didn't know. It was an itch in the back of his mind, an instinct he had to listen to. "Who is this?"

"I hope you don't think I'm going to actually tell you my name. Unless you think your conversations are secure? Do you really think they go unmonitored, Doctor Tam?"

"You're using my name."

"Because it's the work of a moment -- or not even that -- to find out who owns the number I just called. Is there something you would prefer me to call you?" The other voice sounded a little amused. Indulgent.

"Simon," he said, confused. "Call me Simon."

"Simon, then. Do you honestly think this call is secure?"

"I encrypt -- "

"You've got the option to encrypt turned on," the caller said, sounding amused. "Provided by the government to pander to the petty concerns of the rich families of Osiris. Pacifying them. You don't think they'd put in a form of encryption they can't break easy as winking?"

"I... never thought about it."

"You're not a very cautious man, at times, Simon, despite your brains. You've been very incautious, in fact. You need to be more suspicious. The Alliance doesn't exactly take kindly to reform -- they know best, you know, about everything. A young doctor like you couldn't possibly have any ideas worth listening to, and drawing attention to yourself is a bad idea. Especially considering your sister."

"What about my sister? What do you know about my sister?"

"River Tam. Medium height. Dark hair, light skin. A dancer. Her IQ -- let's see now. This is the important thing, really. I don't have the exact number in front of me right now. Her IQ is something ridiculous, in any case: a little higher than yours, even, and I believe you are one of the most intelligent people on Osiris -- if IQ is anything to go by. She's very smart, isn't she? Let me guess. She tore through school and then turned around and asked if it was all that easy, whether anywhere would offer her some kind of challenge? And then she heard of a certain academy, sponsored by our benevolent government, where she could have a program specially tailored to her abilities..."

"I... How do you know all this?"

"When she got there, she sent you a few letters, I suppose?"

"Yes. What -- "

"Be patient, Simon, just have a little patience. You've managed to wait months without getting anywhere, don't get impatient now. We haven't got long, of course. After about five minutes, this call will be noticed, tracked, perhaps played back. But calls under five minutes -- well, we can't have made many terrible plans in that time, can we? And while you have some unorthodox ideas, and a tendency to poke your nose in where you shouldn't, it's no more than your average suspicious young rich boy. You could just be slumming. You're not under any suspicion at the moment. Short-sighted of them, I must say."

Simon bit his lip, hard, took a deep breath. "Get to the point. Why are you talking about my sister? All you seem to care about is the Alliance. You're talking as if..."

"As if I'm an Independent, maybe? A Browncoat? Well, you'll have to see the colour of my coat when we meet."

"When we meet?"

"Of course. We'll have to meet. I only have time to say a few more things, just now. For example, I could tell you that they really are hurting your sister. They're doing some awful things to your sister."

Even Simon couldn't say, after, exactly what flashed through his mind in that moment. Scientists, yes, but other things too -- people hurting her for the fun of it, people touching her... Or something else, something worse, something he couldn't even imagine... "What are they doing?" he asked, and didn't notice the crispness, the command, the doctor-voice. As if he was asking a patient to list symptoms, so that he could make a diagnosis...

"They're playing with her brain," the man said. "Our time is almost up, so all I can tell you now is that we're sympathetic to your plight. We've been watching you, we know what kind of man you are, and we've read about what they're doing to your sister, and it spells no good for her or us. Or anybody, for that matter. So don't think us without any self-interest in this. We're willing to help you get her out. Go about your life as usual for another week -- including your little slumming trips, your little forays into the blackout zones. Do not change anything about your normal routine. Now, more than at any other time, everything has to go on just as usual, and you can't appear to have made any progress. Nor can you appear to have given up: nobody would find that convincing, coming from you. We'll contact you again in a week's time. It won't be by phone. Do you understand, Simon?"

"Alright," Simon said, and then, "Wait, how -- "

But the man had gone. Simon bit his lip again, hard, harder, almost tasting blood.

Whatever it was, whatever was happening, it was more hope than he'd had in a long time. Or what felt like a long time, anyway.

His dinner was cold. He ate it anyway, with perhaps a flicker of a thought about the people in the poorer areas of Osiris, the ones that might've been glad to have such a fancy dinner, even if it came out of a packet and had been heated up in five minutes flat and cooled just about as fast. The people who would have no meal tonight.

Mostly, he thought about River, though. River, and her quick smile, River, and her light feet. River, and the scientists messing with her brain, hurting her... Himself saving River, and an unsettling random image of River as a princess, himself as a prince, that he squashed down fast: too much hope, there, too much childish hope.

He didn't think it was going to be a night for sleep, really. He found his coat and went back to the hospital.

He'd been waiting two minutes. It felt like half an hour.

He felt conspicuous. He knew he stuck out like a sore thumb -- he always did, here -- even though he'd bought some cheaper clothes. That was one of the mistakes he'd made. His expensive clothes looked expensive even when they were worn out and worn down, soft with age. They'd been good fabrics to begin with. Now he feels strange in his cheap suit. He doesn't quite look the part even now, but he never could have done. He was pretty sure that this helped, though, this cheap suit, the kind of thing one of the Tams wouldn't be seen dead in.

He guessed he wasn't a Tam anymore, but that was okay. He thought of his father's face, and wondered what he'd been seeing there in the last days and weeks and months. Contempt? Contempt that his own son was falling into conspiracy theories and jumping at shadows? Or something worse, something that made Simon sick just to thinkabout -- complicity? Had he seen complicity in his father's eyes?

Five minutes. It felt like an hour, at least.

They'd promised Simon that this time, they really would tell him everything. Everything he needed to know, anyway. He wouldn't go back home again, this time -- he had a large suitcase, full of everything he could think of to want, and he'd had one of the poor families in the area looking after it for him for a couple of days, to keep any suspicion down. He imagined that the man he'd spoken to before, who always seemed to be either in a bad temper or a cutting one, snide and sneering, would think him an idiot for needing everything he'd brought with him -- clothes, shoes, a few captures, a few little treasures, a box of letters...

He wasn't going to leave it behind, though. He'd thought about people ransacking his home, looking for evidence; he'd thought about the scandal that would result. He'd packed his bag thinking of that more than anything. Not the things he couldn't bear to part with, but the things that might be evidence and the things that he couldn't stand thinking of as being pawed about by officers, being tossed about carelessly.

He'd planned as carefully as he could, but he had a feeling that all of it would be laughable to the man he was about to see. Well, let it be.

He didn't care.

"I'm coming, River," he said, softly, and gripped the handle of his suitcase harder, watching for the man -- his contact, like he was some kind of criminal, some kind of drug dealer.

Then he grinned, just a little. He was worse, after all. He was anti-Alliance.

Seven minutes. A minor eternity.

Simon had been with the resistance for five days. He didn't feel ready. He didn't feel as if he'd learnt anything, not anything that stuck -- he felt slower, stupider, adapting to a whole new kind of life. There was a woman who'd taught him some tricks, as she put it, and she called him as quick as he was pretty, but he didn't feel it. There was so much to think about. Ways to dodge the feds, the kind of places you could hide, passwords, a few little moves that might get him out of some trouble, some day...

He didn't feel as if he was cut out for this, at all. He was wearing his old clothes -- the cheap suit was unbearable -- and he felt he stuck out like a sore thumb, again, everywhere, far too fancy and aloof. He didn't mean to be, he just was, same as he'd been down on the streets.

But she'd called him quick, and apparently her opinion counted for something, counted more than his. The boss had decided it was time to speak to him, time to tell him what was what. Had decided, apparently, that he was going to play a fairly major part in what was going to happen.

"Any longer, and they're going to really start missin' you," the leader said, looking at him hard. Simon could never tell if this was the voice he'd heard on the phone. It sounded different, sharper, harsher, and yet there was something in the tone that was just the same. Something that stung, a goad. "You ready for this?"

He said yes. Of course he did.

"They're looking for you now, but they haven't really thought about your sister. They wouldn't, it's not something they'd expect a man to do, go running around after his sister like this... You're brave, at least." The man said it as if he knew that Simon was really petrified, on the inside. There was just that mocking hint about his face. But it softened, just a little. "Better than some city boys I've known. They wouldn't piss on their own mother if she was on fire, if the Alliance said it was unsanitary. You're a mite better than that. The girl you saved -- " for a moment, Simon couldn't even remember it, caught almost off-balance, and then he did, remembered that struggling pulse and the brittle body under his hands -- "she was my cousin's kid. You might live in the lap of luxury, but you do still have some human decency."

"I'm a doctor. I'm meant to help people. That's the reason I became a doctor in the first place."

"D'you know how many doctors really believe that?"

"All of them, I hope."

"You know they don't. They're meant to help people as long as they're getting paid, they think. Isn't that right?"

Simon didn't say anything.

"But you're different, anyway. I don't think you're ready for this, I don't know if you can do it -- "

"You haven't even told me what it is, yet," Simon said, quietly. It made him sound almost confident, assured, as if he actually thought it might be something he could do, after all. He didn't feel like that, not at all. He felt a little sick, actually.

"We're going to give you a little time to practice, of course. There'll be the trip to where she's been taken... Alright, then. I suppose it is time to tell you."

He had diagrams. He had passwords. He had a uniform. He had a getaway plan, he had fake identification, he had lists, he had names... Simon tried to take it all in, but had time for one main thought -- the uniform, he could manage the uniform, he could speak as clipped and precise as anyone, act out his part better than he could have dreamed. Maybe it was the only role he could have played, the only way he could possibly have fit in at all.

"The list of ships," one of them said, touching Simon's arm: it wasn't the leader, but one of the others, someone Simon had seen around a couple of times, even in his short time there. "If you can, look out for Serenity. If you have chance. You probably won't, you'll be running so hard, but... Serenity's not a bad boat. She don't look like much, but they got a decent mechanic on board, and the captain... he's not a bad sort. He's a Browncoat, fought in the battle of Serenity Valley. My brother fought with him. He'll do right by you. He'll do right by anyone who lets him get one up on the Alliance. And there's always Zoe. She's his second in command. She fought on for a while, after the war ended, was a whole heap of trouble the Alliance never quite managed to clean up. She'll help you, if you tell her the truth. And they might be on Persephone at the right time."

"Thanks," Simon said, more awkward than ever, without pointing out that there was a lot of maybe in all of that. It was help, an offering, and he'd take it. He'd have to take it -- that was one of the things he had to rely upon now. Or he would after this: this was a kind of point of no return. After this, he'd have nothing. Even now, he realised, he could turn back.

He could, if he was an asshole, if he was complicit, if he was a blank-faced jerk or some ignorant little rich boy. He could if he could forget River, and he knew he couldn't do that.

"Good luck," the man said, and this time he had a wry look about him, that said louder than words -- I think you'll need it.

And Simon tried to smile, tried to joke, voiced the thought: "I'll need it."

There was a kind of sympathy, then, and that was almost worse.

He was shot.

He managed to ascertain that much through a sudden heavy dizziness. He wondered if it was blood loss, but thought it more likely to be shock. His fingers found the entry wound, traced around it. There was a curious lack of pain, his thoughts slow and thick like they came through a layer of cotton wool, blurred and blunted. He knew where he was, he was in the Academy. Or in the complex where they experimented on his sister, anyway. Not necessarily the school she had originally gone to, after all. Perhaps that wasn't even likely. He couldn't remember if they had told him, or not. He suspected not: they hadn't told him very much, had they?

Nobody had ever told him it would feel like this. He thought he could feel the bullet inside him, despite the lack of pain, and he knew he was making pained noises, that blood was slick on his fingers, dripping onto the floor. He didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. But then he couldn't anyway, he'd never tried to operate on himself, that'd be crazy.

He realised that he might have to, and groaned as his head swam. His ears seemed packed with cotton wool, too. The whole of him. Cushioned. The brain's response to a situation it can't handle.

He could see River. She was lying on her back, some devices strapped to her, people gathered round her. They weren't even looking at him. He supposed he didn't matter so very much. He clearly posed no threat. But River -- he saw her body jerk, convulse, saw her mouth open and thought she might be screaming, too.

"River," he whispered.

He thought he could hear some sort of alarm, as well. It was making his ears ring, despite the cotton wool. There didn't seem to be much he could do. He tried to move, to raise himself up -- to get closer to River. But it hurt so much. It hurt so much. Funny kind of prince he made. Couldn't even lift a hand to save the princess, let alone fight the dragon or the evil witch or the evil witch who'd turned herself into a dragon, whatever the story had been. Couldn't hack through the hedge of thorns.

He thought someone was screaming his name, and that had to be River, but he couldn't get the energy to respond, to even lift his head, now. He imagined the warm dark pool of his blood on the cold floors, the way he must look -- almost like a soldier, but that was ridiculous, because he'd never fight. He couldn't fight. He would, for River, if he could, but he couldn't remember even holding a gun. And now he'd been shot by one...

Then there were hands on him, rough hands, hauling him to his feet, and he tried to fight because they were taking him away from River. But then he managed to focus, knew she was already gone, and there was a voice in his ear, gruff but warm, penetrating through the sticky cocoon of shock. "Quit fightin', boy, we're here to get you out."

"I'm hardly an asset," Simon said, but he stopped fighting, of course. He was coherent, outside of his own head. The words seemed to come out clear, anyway, and they seemed to be understood well enough. "Why would you -- "

"You could tell 'em about us," the man said, holding him tightly, half-carrying and half-dragging him. "And you're a doctor, ain't you? We need more doctors."

It was hard to speak, but it seemed important to hang on to life, to say something. "Of course. Self-interest."

"You can say that once we've got that bullet outta you."

Then the man was pushing him through a door, and people were laying hold of him, pushing and pulling him to lie down on a make-shift bed. Simon rests his head on the cool metal, tries not to think about the blood undoubtedly puddling beneath him already. He can feel the surge and ebb of his own blood. "Alright," he said, distantly, "I will."

The man looked down at him. Simon couldn't place his face at all, and he seemed to be getting further away all the time, but Simon thought they might be safe now, and that helped. "Tougher than I thought," the man said, but he probably wasn't speaking to Simon, and Simon was beyond any kind of reply in any case. Unconsciousness was warm and thick and black, and he knew no more.

There was blood slicking his hands again, but it wasn't his own. That was, at least, a good thing. Simon was used to high pressure but this --

"Get down," someone hissed, and he was about to snap or protest, but she was right, after all. He got down lower to the ground and crawled forward, dragging his latest patient with him awkwardly. She reached out and grabbed the other arm, yanking the injured man forward and behind some large crates. "I'll take care of him from here. Can he walk?"

"He'll need support, but he can walk a little. He has to."

"Right, doc," she said. She peeked over the top of the crates, firing a few shots. "Jack's been shot. Just his arm."

"Where is he?"

The woman raised her head over the barrier, fired again, then ducked behind, grabbing the unconscious man by the arms and hauling him backwards. "Over there," she said, nodding, and then it was like Simon didn't exist any more -- she was focusing back on the battle, on the blood and the guns. Simon crawled forward, his heart in his mouth.

"Doc," someone said, almost whispering compared to the noise of the guns and the cries of pain, and Simon crawled towards them, keeping his head down. "I'll cover you. You need to go help Smith."

"I heard -- "

"Smith's nearest. And I can cover you."

"Alright," Simon said, his heart sinking. When he'd agreed to do this -- he hadn't thought it'd be like this. This desperate. He should've known, should've thought... There'd always been a kind of glamour in the idea of a resistance, and the hint of a delicious fairytale. He and River had always played about it, half-romanticised it. There'd been mud and blood in their visions, but not this. Not quite this. He took a deep breath and rose to a half-crouch, ready to run for the next available cover.

"Now, doc," they said, whoever they were, and Simon went, tripping up and landing in a puddle, but safe. Not even grazed, this time.

Smith was pale and sweating, bleeding out. They were perilously close to the guns, there where he'd fallen, and Simon kept his head lower than ever. He couldn't help looking around, checking for some kind of weapon, some way to defend himself or escape... Smith's gun was right beside him, half under his body, glinting cold and steel. Simon took it, closing his hand around it, drew it out from under the man -- ignoring , and then he got to work.

He'd thought it was bad, working a hospital. Seeing little ones hurt, parents and grandparents looking to him for surety and reassurance, and him grim and tired and wordless from the fight with death. Seeing people turned almost inside out by accidents, by carelessness, and seeing their families tearing themselves apart too, as if they have to match. But the battlefield -- that was worse, that was raw. Simon could not truly give the man ease, and though his hands were steady, always steady, they were not gentle. He searched for the wounds, bandaged the man quickly, roughly, slip-shod -- work he'd have been ashamed of, before. Now he knows what's more important, though, and that's the minutes, hours, days, he might earn for this man.

He didn't know, afterwards, what had made him look up, or what instinct had made him reach for the gun. What instinct had made him bring the gun close in the first place. But his hand closed on it, brought it up just in time, without any time to mourn the necessity, the breaking of this rule --

The man fell with a shout, and Simon took a deep sharp breath and tried not to just drop the gun. "Stay there," he said, to the fallen man. He was in the colours of the other side -- clearly from the other side anyway, with his clean-shaven face and comparatively neat and clean clothes, with the neat bandage on his arm. "It's not serious. I'll deal with you once I've seen to our own."

"You're an odd one," someone said, at his elbow, but they were smiling and he, too, was smiling. Because this made a difference, made them different, gave one man a story to take back about decency and generosity.

They were laughing, teasing, and he smiled too.

The new recruits were full of energy, jittering, not yet learning the quiet patience of the older ones, the ones who'd been in this a while. Simon felt old, looking at them, even though he thought this one or that might have been older than him. They seemed fresh, somehow, naive. Simon yearned towards that, not yet hardened enough to have lost all the idealism, the shine.

"You got any family?" one of them asked. He was younger, perhaps not even twenty years of age yet, and his face was warm and open, ready to laugh. He was asking one of the veterans, but the man just gave him a look, as if to say, we don't ask that here. Simon cleared his throat.

"I have, I suppose. I was disowned by my parents, and my sister... she's why I fight."

"She killed?" the boy said, seeming at once disgusted and eager, ready to hear the worst of the Alliance. "Denied care?"

"Worse," Simon said, simply, but he could see the boy couldn't imagine worse, couldn't imagine his way out of the slums and dirt. "She's alive."

"Don't that mean you can at least rescue her?"

"I hope so. That's part of the reason why I'm here, after all."

He thought no one had been listening, but he didn't think it was a coincidence when one of the men got up and left the room. He couldn't quite remember who it had been, but it wasn't a face he recognised -- not one that he came into contact with every day.

He tried to conceal the hope on his face. Maybe, maybe this time. Maybe.

Simon never knew what he'd expected would happen when someone finally offered him another chance. He knew it'd be something big -- that he'd have had to do something big to earn it, because he'd failed them once before. He hadn't expected to be called into what looked like an old-style war room -- maps and terminals, people leaning over them and making marks, talking in low, serious voices. He wondered if this was new: there certainly hadn't been anything like this back when he was first a member. But then, he hadn't been trusted then.

People trusted him now. Most of them had found it necessary to trust him once or twice, and some people -- the ones who saw the most action, usually, because the simply clumsy ones ended up dead or deserting -- had been under his knife enough that he'd lost count.

He found it almost a surprise when he recognised every single face in the room.

"Doctor Tam," one of them said, straightening up when she saw him.

"Simon," he said, nodding slightly. "Hello, Jane."

"I'm surprised you recognised me, with how many patients you have."

"I've operated on you often enough."

She smiled, wryly. "There's that. Did you know I was..."

"One of the leaders? No. It's been a long time since I had anything direct from one of you."

"We didn't forget you," she said, putting a hand on his arm. "In fact, we've had our eye on you, and on your sister. It hasn't been easy, in her case, but we felt it was something we should take a special interest in. And my own sister is one of her... peers."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I," she said, grimacing a little, but then she shook her head. "There's something you should see. How much you were told about what was happening to your sister?"

"Experiments. Messing with her brain... Not much, honestly. And I didn't see much, during my attempt. I spent the first half of it pretending to be an ice-cold bastard, and the latter half trying not to bleed quite so much."

"You made quite a determined effort at dying. I was one of the rescue team."

Simon hesitated, looking at her face quickly and then away. "Your sister -- "

"I knew it wouldn't do any good. I didn't even see her." Jane shook her head. "But we don't have that much time. There's a meeting in here soon, I think, and I'm supposed to get this over with before then. Come on. Let's go and sit down in the quiet." She was already leading him to a connecting room, smaller, with just a couple of terminals and hard little seats. "It's not very comfortable, but... none of this is going to be comfortable. Sit down, here."

"What are you going to show me?"

"It's... your sister. You'll understand why she's a particular concern of ours." Jane didn't quite look at him. She brought up a video with a few quick movements and then stood up, leaving him alone with it.

He knew River immediately. Her hair was shorter, and she moved differently now -- graceful, more graceful than ever, but different. Still, he knew her -- the shape of her body, the quickness of her movements, always darting and quick. And her face, even though he saw barely a sliver of it, like a pale new moon. There seemed to be no expression on her face, but there were knives in her hands, bright and sharp. Simon twisted sharply, looking up at Jane, but she was turned away. He looked back quickly, knowing he shouldn't miss a moment, that there might not be a second chance to see it.

"You can watch it in your own time if you want," she said, as if she knew his thoughts. "But I don't think you'll want to."

The image flickered and changed. This time he saw River's face, and knew for sure that there was no expression. It was River, and yet not. Her mouth was set in a familiar line, her jaw tight, but her eyes were somehow blank, focused inward. She tilted her head for a moment as if listening, and Simon bit his lip as she darted suddenly up, up a wall that he knew he could not have climbed, hiding as someone came along the corridor. She seemed to almost melt out of sight, almost inhuman.

He watched when she dropped down lightly, knives in her hands again, and stole along the corridor. The image flickered again, showing something different -- a room, softly lit, a bedroom. There was a man on the bed, asleep, hair rumpled and body sprawled out.

The door opened.

"She's -- "

"Just watch," Jane said, quietly.

"Is she going to -- ?"

"Watch."

Simon looked back again. River was just entering the room. The door closed behind her, silently, and then he saw her moving up to the bed.

He couldn't watch, when she struck, quick as a snake, her expression unchanging. He opened his eyes again in time to see the blood-soaked bed, and River leaving the room.

"She's become an assassin," Jane said, softly. She turned again, putting her hand on Simon's shoulder. "Do you still want to rescue her?"

Simon looked at her and remembered her as she should have been. Smiling, laughing, dancing. Gentle. Not this silent deadly thing. "What have they done to her? She was never... She could never have done this."

"You know what they were doing. Playing with her brain. Playing with her. Brainwashing her."

"I do want this recording," Simon said, after a moment. His hands were pressed to his knees, as if he needed to force them still. He took a deep breath. "And I'll do anything to... to bring her back, to save her."

"What if she can't be saved?"

"I have to try." He hesitated. "Anything you get, of her. I don't know how you got this, but. If you can. Can I have it?"

"You're her brother," Jane said. "Of course. But it will be like this. They keep her on a tight rein except when they're using her. There won't be anything else."

He looked once more at the last still image, the bloody bed, and the door open where River had left the scene. "I have always taken River just as she was."

"This is different, though."

"I'm her brother." Simon clenched his fists hard, nails digging into his palms, deep and yet not deep enough. His jaw was clenched, and Jane thought he was shaking -- shaking with anger. "I'll save you," he said, but not to her, to the recording, to the blood-soaked bed. "I'll save you. Hold on, River."

Then he laughed, and perhaps that was the worst part, the bitter dark sound. It didn't sound as if it helped.

"Thank you," he said, getting up. "Let me know when you know what I can do. When there's some kind of plan."

"You probably won't like it."

"I don't like any of this."

Primum non nocere. Once it used to be the most important thing. First, do no harm.

He thought he would always hold to that, he thought there could never be anything that overrode it. But then he thought about River -- warmth and life as a child, never still, always running and moving, like her namesake, never still. And he thought about the glimpse of her he'd caught, tortured and pinned down, like a rare butterfly on cardboard. The way he seemed to remember her calling out his name -- and suddenly everything was easier. First there was an anger in him, that heated and moved him, prevented him from hesitating at the last moment. He knew that the people he shot probably had little to do with River, but they were all part of it. And then there was the knowledge that every step might take him closer, so every step was a hundred times more important. Every movement, every breath -- his breath, or those of the man he was supposed to kill.

It became easy. He got the guns ready, adjusted the sights, lay still in position and watched, waited for his moment. He became shockingly good at it. It was like an operation, in some ways, he told himself. You have to make sure everything is just right, first -- not just physically, but in the patient's mind, you have to know they understand, you have to know they know what you have to do and that they agree. It was more violent, though mostly not more bloody; it was so much bigger and yet further away and yet -- if he could think of it like excising a tumour --

But no. He still knew what it was. It was harm, it was death, and it didn't matter if it's for the greater good -- he had to know, remember, that the lives he took then would impact so many other lives.

That's what made it better than what they do. Because they didn't know what they do, or they didn't care, cutting River right out of the heart of her family, taking her for themselves, taking away the brightness and warmth of her that he always knew was there, like the sun.

First, do no harm. He could at least remember that, hold that in mind. Even if he couldn't hold to it.

It didn't take long for there to be more videos. Now they had her, Simon thought, they couldn't resist using her. It was noticed, even noted in the news sources that were generally Alliance-friendly. How the enemies of the Alliance were dying out like flies.

It didn't take a genius, although Simon was one, to imagine what the leaders of the resistance were thinking. River was more than just some object of pity, now. She had to be a priority, because they had to get her before she got them. Eventually the Alliance, or whoever held her leash, would work their way down the list to the leaders of the resistance.

Simon wondered for a moment what would happen to River when all the current enemies had conveniently disappeared, but it didn't take a genius to work that out, either. There'd always be some enemy. Someone would get hold of her and use her on the Alliance itself, perhaps, emptying it from the inside to facilitate a quick move up. If the resistance got hold of her --

Simon had always liked to think the best of people.

He'd seen the awe, though, as well as the fear, in the eyes of Jane and those like her. He'd seen the calculations going on behind their eyes. What they'd do with such a weapon if they could lay hand to it.

He looked down at his own hands, the growing callouses, the way they seemed to shape themselves ready to fit a gun. He looked at the gun not a metre away from him, laying ready and deadly. The opening at the end of the barrel looked almost like an eye, looking at him. He looked away.

"Both of us, River, huh? Just tools."

He gets up, turning off the recordings. He picks up his gun belt, his gun.

"I will save you," he said, but it wasn't clear who he was saying it to.

The ship was called Serenity. He remembered the name from somewhere, but it didn't really matter. What it meant was that he had a chance. He had a chance to help River. That was the important thing; that was all that mattered. He had a plan and this time he had more experience to back it. He had a case full of weapons and a head full of plans and he was ready to do whatever was necessary, this time. River was being used -- played with, messed up. He'd said, he'd been promising he'd save her. She'd always known, somehow, that it'd be his job to play Prince Charming. He'd known, too, in a part of him that he didn't really care to acknowledge.

Well, then, it was time.

The boat didn't look like anything special. It looked like the kind of ship that was running on favours and promises; it looked like a last resort. Simon supposed that was appropriate. He'd run out of money a long time ago, and all he had now were promises and dispensations. He'd fit in well enough here -- and if he didn't, it wasn't as if it mattered. To think it did was to think like he was still a rich young man on Osiris, as if he had everything he needed and could obtain almost everything he wanted.

Now he had to be like anyone else, taking his chances where he found them, whatever they looked like.

The captain greeted him on the ramp. "All we're doing is transporting you," he said, gruff. He looked like he thought he was some kind of cowboy. Simon thought that was the fashion, out here on the Rim, the ragged edge. His gun was at his side, prominent. It was all rather unsubtle, but Simon couldn't smile. "Don't want to know what you're going to do when you get there," the man said. "Don't want to get caught up in it."

"I have no intention of telling you that kind of secret," Simon said, meeting the captain's eyes steadily. "You're not a member of the resistance. Why would I trust you?"

The captain snorted softly, though there was something approving in his expression. There were others behind him: crew members, Simon assumed. One of them made an impatient little movement, some little noise. The captain turned to him, eyebrow raised. "Tracey? Got somethin' you wanna be sayin'?"

"Sarge, we should help him," the boy said. He really was barely more than a boy -- there was something terribly open and ingenuous about his face, and there seemed to be a smile there just waiting to come out. Though, there was also a look which suggested life regularly delivered a kick in the teeth, too. He was the sort of boy that could fall on his feet, with money and guidance and time to grow up, space without need for responsbilities. Simon suspected that life would deliver none of these. "We should join the resistance. It's stupid, dodging around like this, pissing the Alliance off just a bit and never enough. We hate the way things are, why don't we ever try to change it?"

"You wanna see Kaylee in the middle of some great big battle?"

The boy didn't respond, his face falling. The captain nodded at him and then looked back at Simon. His eyes were narrowed: he seemed to be sizing Simon up. Simon cleared his throat. "My name is Simon. Tam. I was a doctor."

"Still a doctor, ain't you? Maybe you can pay your passage with your skills." Mal grimaced. "Boy thinks he's a hero -- he's a barely adequate medic, at a pinch. Wouldn't trust him in a gun fight, barely trust him in the infirmary when we need him. Leaves the place in a hell of a mess."

"Sarge!"

Simon ignored that. "My passage is already paid in full. You know that, Captain."

"Not much of a doctor if you'd let someone bleed to death."

"I wasn't aware that anyone would be doing any bleeding. You're not being paid to take a detour. You're on my business, not your own."

There was an uncomfortable silence and then the captain shrugged, nodded. "That's true enough. I'm Captain Malcolm Reynolds. Mal. These are some of my crew -- Tracey, an' Zoe. Zoe's my second in command. She says something, you listen to her. Tracey, well, we're mostly just keeping him out of trouble."

Perhaps Tracey would, after all, fall on his feet, Simon thought. Not that it was any affair of his. "Small crew."

"There's more inside." Mal nodded slightly. "The pilot, Wash. Kaylee's our mechanic. We've got a companion on board. And a merc. Even a preacher."

"Unusual mix."

"We live life on the wild side," Mal said, dryly.

"I'm sure," Simon said, equally dry. There was a pause and then he nodded, carefully. "I'm coming aboard now, then."

"You don't, we'd leave without you," the captain said, with a brisk nod.

"With my fee? That would be a mistake."

Another pause, and then: "You got any baggage?"

"Just these," Simon said, indicating the two cases at his feet and the bag he carried. "Handle the cases carefully."

"I'll have you leave them in the hold."

"That will be fine." Simon picked up one of the cases and walked into the hold without any further invitation, stowing the case carefully. Zoe brought up the other one. "Are you going to strap them down?"

"No need," she said. "My husband's the best pilot you could ask for. They'll be perfectly safe."

"They'd better be. Some of the things inside these cases explode upon impact."

"Best tie 'em down," the captain said. He glanced at Simon. "You need to get anything from 'em, ask a member of the crew to bring you. I don't want you wanderin' about on your own."

"Of course."

"I'll show you your room," Zoe said, after a moment of silence. She nodded at the metal stairs. "That way. I'll introduce you to the rest of the crew, if they're about. No point to you spendin' this whole journey in your room alone."

"I'd rather he did," Mal said, but Simon -- and apparently Zoe, as well -- pretended not to hear.

Simon received a lot of advice from the others, before he left. Some of it had been terribly obvious, and some of it should have been obvious, but somehow he'd never thought of it. One of the pieces of advice he kept in mind at the meal was: Eyes and ears open, mouth shut.. It wasn't too difficult a maxim to keep in mind, especially in the rather noisy company of Mal's crew. They did seem a disparate bunch. The pilot -- Wash, Simon thought, wondering at the strange name -- was talking, brightly, to Kaylee, the mechanic. She had already tried to make friends with Simon, so open and honest that he wasn't able to keep from smiling back, from thinking that he would like to know her better. Wash wasn't really making much sense, at least not to anyone who didn't understand engines, but Kaylee was laughing, all bright and warm, and Simon thought that anyone would like to see that.

It made him think of River, even in the midst of that warmth and noise that had nothing to do with her. He tried not to think about it. Instead, he looked at the other members of the crew. He'd already taken the measure of Zoe, and of the captain. He noted, however, that the warmth touched the captain too, drawing him in, despite his attempts at distance. As Simon watched, he ruffled Kaylee's hair, smiled a surprisingly bright smile. Simon hadn't expected that of him.

The boy from before -- Tracey -- was there, too. He was making eyes at Kaylee. Every now and then she caught his eyes and smiled back, but Simon suspected that Tracey had never got up the guts to say anything to her about it.

The others, he hadn't yet met. There was the mercenary -- he could be nothing else, although they hadn't been introduced. He carried a large knife openly, even leaned across the table to stab something with it, transferring it to his own plate. Simon fought down his distaste, tried to show nothing, tried not to push himself forward into their company, but to remain outside it. To remain almost unnoticed. The preacher was distinctive, too, and before he ate he sat for a moment silently, eyes closed.

And then Inara. The companion. She is beautiful: Simon doesn't think anyone would dispute that. And she must be good at her job. Even here, she's a sensual presence, mysterious, dark-eyed.

"Simon?" Kaylee nudged him. "Don't you want any of the fruit? We don't get it often."

"Thank you," he says, taking a strawberry, smiling at Kaylee's enthusiasm. He felt the others' eyes on him, sizing him up, as he'd been sizing them up. It didn't matter.

"Is something wrong?" Kaylee asked, then, frowning just a little.

"Let him be, Kaylee," Mal said, shaking his head. "He wants to sit quiet, he's paid enough for it."

Kaylee bit her lip, but she did let him be -- for the moment, at least. Simon thought he should be thankful for that.

"If you really just want to sit quiet, I'll go, but... I thought you might be feeling lonely." Simon looked up to see Kaylee standing in the doorway, looking hopeful. She clicked on the light, padded through to make herself a drink. "You shouldn't just sit around in the dark like that. You want a drink? I'm havin' some hot chocolate -- another thing we don't always have."

"I'm fine."

Kaylee frowned. "No, you're not, you're just pretendin'. Hot chocolate will make you feel better -- a little better, at least. I'm havin' some, so it's no trouble. I'm makin' some whether you say yes or not, and then you won't want to waste it, will you?"

Simon almost wanted to laugh at that. "I won't."

"There, then. Hot chocolate it is." She gave him a bright smile and, a moment later, a mug of hot chocolate. "It'll get cold fast, Serenity's a bit chilly lately. Drink up."

"Thank you."

"I can't sleep," she said, unexpectedly, dropping into the seat behind him. She gave him another of her smiles, this one confiding. "Always worryin' on something."

"The ship?"

"Oh, no, I'd know if there was somethin' wrong with Serenity. No, I mean, the others. Tracey, mostly."

"He likes you," Simon said, not sure why he was talking at all -- glad, though, for the warmth, and not just the warmth of the mug in his hands.

"I know, but he don't ever say anythin'. You'd think he wouldn't be shy, I mean, he's always runnin' his mouth and sayin' things no one else will, and gettin' himself into trouble, but he don't talk to me. Just gives me eyes and smiles."

"Maybe you should do something."

"I've been thinkin' about it." Kaylee grinned a little again. "Just picturin' Mal's face if I take Tracey to bed, though. Or if he finds out, rather."

Simon raised an eyebrow.

"I mean, he's caught me havin' sex before, but... He thinks I'm like a little sister or somethin'."

"Have you been on this boat for long?"

"Pretty long. Mal had another mechanic before me -- he was no good, though. He brought me on board to, well, he brought me on board and I fixed the engine after Mal caught us in the engine room. And then he just kicked the other mechanic off and brought me on board, and I ain't left since. I love this boat. She has a mind of her own sometimes, but she'll talk to you."

"That's quite a gift."

Kaylee shrugged a little. "I grew up putting engines together an' takin' 'em apart -- it isn't anything much. Just instinct. Right now she's runnin' smooth, she'd tell me if she weren't... That hum, that's the sound of her engines runnin' just fine, everythin' going just right."

Simon smiled a little and shrugged. "I couldn't tell."

"It's like a heartbeat, I guess. Or breathin'. You doctor people, I doctor engines." Kaylee finished up her hot chocolate, making a little face -- at the heat, Simon guessed. "I should probably get to sleepin'. Unless you want company."

A beat, and then Simon shook his head. "Go to bed."

"If you're sure. Night, Simon," she said, getting up, putting her mug by the sink. "Sleep well."

"Sleep well, Kaylee," he said, softly, and watched her go. He held the mug in his hands carefully, feeling the transient heat of it.

"We'll be there in less than a week now," the captain said. Simon looked up, sharply.

"I thought it would take longer than that."

An uncomfortable shrug. "You're an uncomfortable cargo. I don't know what you're runnin' from or to and I don't wanna know. I just want you off my boat."

"Don't take any risks that will make us conspicuous," Simon said, frowning a little. The captain rolled his eyes.

"I know how to take care o' my ship, boy. Dong ma?"

"I understand. Just warning you. If you make my mission more conspicuous, suspicion will fall on you, as well."

"Just tellin' you, we'll be there in a week," the captain said, jaw tightening. "Maybe less."

"I understand," Simon said again. He held the flutter of panic in tightly, clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. "I'll be ready."

"That's your affair, not mine," the captain said, gruffly, and then he was gone, going about his captainy business, whatever that was. Simon sat very still, very stiffly, just trying to keep that flutter of panic down. He had to do this. He had to.

"I'm coming, meimei," he whispered, but the words didn't steady him at all.

Simon was surprised out of a reverie by Kaylee, again. She smiled at him apologetically, but she didn't bother to stand awkwardly at the doorway, just slipped in -- as if no one had ever told her no, when she'd slipped in like this before. As if it was perfectly natural. And Simon made room for her on his bed, since that was the only space for her to sit down, just as if it was perfectly natural. "Sorry," she said, and smiled again. "Tracey and Mal are havin' a bit of an argument again. Thought I'd come somewhere a bit quieter, since I haven't got to be workin' right now. Serenity's ticking over smooth as a clock."

"That's alright."

"I'm not disturbin' you too much?"

"No, I was just... thinking."

"You've got a lot to think about, huh? I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, at all." She bit her lip. "Not that I know much about it, just what Mal ferreted out about you."

"He's been looking into my past?"

"A little. Just in case. You never really know..." She shrugged. "People usually aren't who they say they are, these days."

"What did he find out?"

"That you're from Osiris. But we could tell that from the accent already. You gave us your real name, didn't you? Simon Tam. So we found out you'd been to MedAcad, and that you were a doctor in a big fancy hospital on Osiris. That you'd grown up there. That you have both parents still alive. I don't remember their names. And your sister, River, she's..." Another shrug. "We didn't really find out anything about her, where she is now or anything. Just that she went to some government sponsored academy. But the resistance told Mal that you're on a mission to rescue your sister."

"That's true."

"What... happened? Was she some kind of rebel? Don't -- you don't have to answer if you don't wanna. It doesn't really matter. This is just me bein' curious."

"She was a little girl." Simon looked down at his hands as he spoke, not quite able to look into Kaylee's open, sympathetic face. "She wanted to go somewhere where the program would be tailored to her needs. She was -- she is -- extremely smart. I mean -- " He took a deep breath, steadying himself again, and looked up. "I'm very smart. That's... I graduated in the top three percent, in less than the time usually required. I'm a brilliant doctor, and I'm not saying that out of arrogance. River... makes me look like an idiot child. She started correcting my spelling when she was three. And she was graceful and she could do just about anything she put her mind to. And she was such a brat about it, but... she was my sister. I was proud of her, more than anything."

"Yeah," Kaylee said, slipping her hand into his. Simon started a little, but Kaylee squeezed his hand and smiled and he let it happen. It would, he thought, have been like attacking something vulnerable and sweet -- like kicking a puppy. "So what happened?"

"The academy, the government sponsored academy... It had the most exciting program for her, you know? She wasn't even old enough to go, really, but Father pulled strings and of course she went. She was clever enough, and she was ready. She sent me letters, at first. She was very excited, enjoyed everything. She was making a lot of friends, people who were just as clever as her... That hadn't happened often. Sometimes I could barely keep up with her, and I've told you what I'm like."

Kaylee smiled. "Sounds like it was just right for her."

"I thought so, too."

"So... I'm guessin' something went wrong."

"Yeah. I started getting stranger letters from her. She started talking about strange things, writing about things that hadn't really happened, or injokes that weren't... I figured out pretty quickly that it was a code. And it wasn't hard to figure it out once I knew that -- she didn't pick anything too far over my head." Simon bit his lip, trying to bite back the odd, bittersweet smile that he felt twisting his mouth. "It said, 'They're hurting us. Get me out.'"

"So you're trying to?"

"Yes."

"You've been trying a while, I guess."

"Years, now. I've found out a lot more, since then. I've found out more or less what they're doing to her. They're... playing with her brain, experimenting on her."

"I don't think I want to know any more than that," Kaylee said, and squeezed his hand again. "I wouldn't want you to tell me too much. I hope you can rescue her."

"Nothing I've told you will cause any problems." He found himself squeezing back a little. "Thank you."

"For lettin' you talk? Oh, Simon, everyone's gotta talk sometime. Tell me more about her, huh? The happy stuff."

"I..."

"No point in only rememberin' the bad stuff." Another squeeze. "C'mon. Tell me about what she was like when you were little. Did you used to play with her, or were you too grown up for her?"

"I played with her all the time."

"So tell me about it."

Simon took a deep breath. Kaylee smiled at him encouragingly, still holding his hand -- almost tangling their fingers. He tried to remember when he'd last felt a touch like that -- a touch that demanding nothing, but was still comforting, intimate. Her hands was warm and dry, seeming quite small in his. He could feel callouses -- not like River's hand, which would have been soft and neat, a hand that had never really had to do a day's work. Kaylee was from a whole different world to River. He found himself wishing they'd met, thinking that River would have liked her. She smelt like sweat and engine oil, and still somehow managed to make it smell sweet.

"Go on," she said, softly. "I'm listening, okay?"

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

He had no idea where to start, and he couldn't seem to find a beginning, so he started with their games. He told her about River's playful side -- and all the things she'd made up for them to play. Word games and number games, games in other languages, games of hide and seek, games of dexterity. She usually won, except when she had let him win. He thought he was rambling, but he kept speaking anyway, telling her about everything he could think of -- arguments with their parents which she had defused, arguments with their parents that she'd made worse. The ways she'd got him into and out of trouble. The ways they'd misbehaved and the things they'd done that, even now, he rather thought had been good. The way they'd been close, closer than anyone. Eating -- stealing -- berries, eating them until they got stomach aches and didn't want their dinners.

"I wish I'd met her," Kaylee said, quietly. She was smiling but sympathetic at the same time, her eyes moist. "You really loved her, huh?"

"Yes, of course."

"My family were pretty close, too. I mean, I got to do pretty much whatever I wanted -- they let me come on Serenity, after all, gallivanting off away from home, and -- "

"Kaylee?" Tracey popped his head round the door. He looked like a kicked puppy, though he seemed to be trying to glare at Simon.

"Hey," she said, jumping up. She was smiling more than ever. Simon looked between them and shook his head at Tracey.

"I'm not encroaching on your territory," he said, to that hurt look. "All I care about is my sister."

Kaylee looked between them, confused. Tracey didn't look entirely satisfied.

"When you come back here, you'll be on the run," Zoe said, abruptly. She stood in the doorway to his room. Simon looked up from the capture he held in his hands.

"I'm used to that, by now."

"Already a wanted man, huh?"

Simon's smile had nothing of real warmth in it. He looked back down at the picture in his hands, his eyes tracking some movement in the image, his smile twisting on his lips. "I was a sniper for the resistance for two years. Draw your own conclusions."

There was silence for a moment. Zoe watched him watch the moving image, and then cleared her throat. "We're supposed to be giving you a lift. We've got paid enough to take you somewhere out of the way and drop you off. Not that we'll be considerin' it too hard. You could end up gettin' dropped someplace where's just enough atmo to keep you alive. If the captain decides you've pissed him off that much. You paid to be able to go anywhere for the askin', but since you're pretty much in our power here..."

"I'll have to take care not to irritate the captain, then."

"You could be useful, on board a ship like this. A doctor, like you. A sniper. Jayne's good but he's not that good. Looks scary, and what goes on in his mind would probably scare me, but there's not much loyalty or brain in him."

"What makes you think I would be loyal?" Simon asked, looking up, eyebrow raised.

"You don't seem like the kind to shoot someone in the back," Zoe said, shrugging.

"Don't I?" Simon asked. His eyes looked very distant for a moment. "I was a sniper, remember. I take the most convenient shot."

The silence was heavy, uncomfortable. Zoe left a moment later.

There was no blurring this time. No area of uncertainty. He was ready and he saw everything in clear cold lines. He spent the day before keeping to himself, except for when he went down into the hold. Kaylee went with him, but whatever she might have said died before it reached him, and she didn't watch him as he went through the cases, chose his weapons. There were guns, of course. He chose his guns carefully, picking for weight and how easy it would be to load. He had no room for error.

He prepared syringes: two of them. Did it carefully, measuring exactly. Taking his time. He did not allow haste.

He prepared explosives and more subtle things. He was always good with technology. Now he had to use that.

His hands were steady, steady, sure. He was steady.

Simon wore soft shoes. It was the right choice. The floors were hard and shiny, but the soft shoes made little enough noise. He wasn't stupid. He knew he couldn't have made it into the complex without being found out. All he had to do was get far enough in, and appear enough of a threat, that they would send their best weapon against him. He didn't even have to be that showy, because they liked using their weapon. The only reason they wouldn't send it was if they thought that was really his goal.

There was always a chance that they would recognise him. But Simon had been considered dead a long time -- nobody had even been sure that the Resistance had safely extracted him after the first attempt. They'd been relatively sure he'd died. Which was careless, and unlike the Alliance, and Simon didn't discount the idea of them having a file on him still open just in case. They were good at covering their asses.

He worked carefully in any case, carefully placing charges, traps. He didn't expect anyone to fall into them, but he needed the appearance of it.

He didn't hear it coming. He hadn't expected to. It was some sixth sense that warned him, made him duck and roll away from the wall as a foot almost smashed through his head. The movement was converted as quickly as thought, the foot catching him in the ribs and sending him sprawling, ungraceful and uncontrolled.

"River," he wheezed. There was no time to catch his breath. No time to think. Thinking would be the deadliest thing of all. He focused on the charges, his mission.

The expression on River's face did not change -- there was no expression, just a smooth blankness. Her face was beautiful and doll-like. Simon focused on that, on the pain in his gut at seeing it. He thought he'd been ready for this, he'd watched those videos over and over again, but they hadn't caught the horror of it.

He rolled again, trying not to think or to plan, just rolling, getting out of the way of her foot. She did not try to kick again -- he didn't see where the knife came from, or whether she'd been holding it all along. He rolled again, taking a sharp breath.

It was only on pure luck that he was surviving so long. Nothing else. He'd thought he might have some hesitation to work with, some recognition, but River was a blank.

He rolled one more time, knowing that one way or the other it was the last. He rolled towards her, sharp and sudden, and caught her leg. She moved to kick, and he held on grimly. He only had to hold on long enough -- there, and he'd done it, he'd done it. He emptied the syringe into her vein, praying it would work as fast as he'd calculated, praying he'd got it just right.

She collapsed, her strings cut. There was an expression on her face, then -- almost one of surprise -- just before unconsciousness swept over her. He picked her up, then, feeling her weight lax in his arms. He held her tightly. "I told you I'd save you," he whispered. He felt unsteady. His heart was pounding. "I told you, River."

River was so light in his arms. Light, and cold, and he held her hard, trying to give her substance, trying to give her his warmth. Her head lolled against his shoulder. He felt sick, shaky with adrenaline. It was hard to believe he'd made it out -- that he was breathing in fresh air, that he was alive.

He wouldn't exactly had said unscathed.

Serenity was waiting for him. He'd almost expected them to be gone, somehow. He stumbled a little as he carried River on up into the hold. He didn't look into any of their faces, looked only where he was going, and carried River, so still.

"Is she alright?" Kaylee asked, reaching out to touch his arm. Simon walked right past her without seeing, cradling River. He tried not to jostle her, or smash her limbs against anything, as he carried her to the infirmary. He hadn't held her like this in a long time -- it was almost like a man carrying his bride over the threshold, he thought, giddily. Only without the guests, without the happy faces, without the friends and family to surround them.

"It went okay, then," the captain said, and caught his shoulder when he didn't reply. "Hey."

"It went as expected," Simon said, laying River down with infinite care. "Take us somewhere bright."

"Huh?"

"I have the choice of where you drop us off, don't I? That's what they paid for. Take us somewhere bright. Somewhere with flowers."

"Wash will know where to go."

"Ask Wash, then," Simon said, without looking up.

"Look, Doc, you got no call to be orderin' me around -- "

"Ask Wash, please."

Mal looked at him, and at River laying there so limp and pale, and nodded. His eyes narrowed a little. "She okay?"

"She's fine. She's safe now. Please, captain."

Mal watched him for a moment longer, eyes still narrowed, then he nodded. "Be glad to be rid of you," he said, turning away.

"I'm sure," Simon said, his eyes still on River, almost unblinking.

Simon wasn't sure if it was the infirmary that was cold, or him. River lay on the bed there, very still. He wanted to say she looked as though she was sleeping, but she didn't. She looked very young and very far away, and very quiet. Her hair was a mess against the pillow, and he wished she would wake up and he could tease her gently about looking like a porcupine, or something, but she did not move and he could only think, stupidly, that he'd never seen a porcupine anyway.

Her hand was cold, between his. He chafed at her hands, leaned down and blew warmth over them.

The crew did not go to the infirmary, that day.

"Doc?"

Simon looked up. He was still holding River's hand, and Tracey looked suddenly more unsure.

"Is it okay if I come in here? I hurt my hand," he said, and Simon's eyes flicked to his hand, to the red all over his hands. The look in his eyes didn't change, though.

"It's fine," he said, quietly. He looked straight back at River then.

"I was wonderin'... Kaylee said I should maybe ask you to put a stitch or two in it. At least see whether it's bad or not. I think it needs cleanin' at least, I got it caught in the engine... I probably should stay out of the engine room, but I like spending time with Kaylee, and she asked me to hold somethin' for her. She's just so nice, all the time, you know? And I'm sorry I was so... I'm sorry I was an ass before, about you an' her. She's just so nice, and I thought... Well, you're not... Anyway, could you? Look at my hand, I mean."

It took Simon a moment to reply. "I can't help you."

"Don't we have anythin'? I thought we'd stocked up..."

"I just can't."

Tracey took a deep breath. A few drops of blood were creeping down his hand and he grimaced, grabbing something to mop up the blood. "You're a doctor, ain't you?"

"I don't know what to do right now." Simon didn't even look up. "The bandages are in the third cupboard on the left. Zoe always worked as your medic before, didn't she?"

"I have some basic medic skills myself," Tracey said, without moving, still sounding mystified. "But -- "

"I can't do it," Simon said. His hands were trembling.

Tracey looked at him for a moment more and then went to the cupboard, taking out the bandages himself. "I thought it'd help. Doin' something, instead of just sittin' there. When you're grievin', it helps a man to do somethin' with his hands. In the war, the way you kept going, you just tried to help people or do something, tried not to think about it. Sometimes you'd need help. Kaylee wouldn't mind helpin' you. I wouldn't mind. And this could be somethin' you could do. It doesn't help, to just sit there and think about it and think about it until it's the only thing you can think about."

"You're kind," Simon said, but there was still an uncrossable distance, and Tracey knew he was walking on perilously thin ice. Simon had heard Mal saying the boy had no sense, no sense at all, but he seemed to know exactly what he was walking on.

The captain stopped in the doorway of the infirmary. Simon didn't need to look up to know it was him -- he knew by the way he walked, the way he stood, and the quality of the righteous silence. That was what the captain had been like since the moment he walked back onto Serenity with River cradled in his arms, and he knew it well enough by now. He hadn't gone out of his way to seek the captain out, and Mal had certainly seemed plenty disgusted with the work he'd done out there, but nor had he ignored him. They'd crossed paths.

"You killed your own sister," Mal said, breaking the silence for the first time -- though he did nothing for the ice, still thick and deserved. "She was hardly even a woman grown. You sit there in the infirmary with her body as if you did nothin', just as if you got there too late, but you killed before you even got to the ship. I thought you were a better man than that, but I bet you didn't even try to do anything else first. Was she even really your sister?"

"Of course she was my sister," Simon said. He got up, carefully laying River's cold hand down beside her, drawing the covers up over her as if it could make some kind of difference. He lifted his head, met the captain's eyes. "She was my sister, and I loved her very much. But she'd been twisted beyond all recognition. She was an assassin, a killer. A machine."

Silence, for a beat, and then -- "You're a machine," righteous as ever, hard and cold, steel. And then, "You're just as much a killer."

"I know," Simon said, quite simply. Because it was true. He'd killed too, just as automatically as she, doing what he was told for a goal that wasn't truly his, that he'd made his own. He'd killed innocents, probably. He'd broken his oaths. It didn't matter how he'd justified it, or even if he'd remembered his broken oath as he went. "I know that, Captain Reynolds. You did not need to remind me."

Mal clenched his fists again, and his jaw, looking as if he wanted to slam Simon through the wall, or something. "You should have tried to do something for her."

"That would have risked your crew. You told me not to do anything that risked your crew."

"Don't throw my own words back at me like that, boy."

"The truth hurts," Simon noted, feeling as if he were at an awful distance from the whole conversation. He barely saw Mal move, barely felt it when Mal's fist connected with his cheek. He didn't resist it, just let Mal do it, let it throw him back a little. It barely penetrated through the ice. He waited a breath, then raised his head again, met Mal's eyes. "Did that make you feel better?"

"No," Mal said, opening and closing his fist. He didn't move, didn't leave, but he didn't say anything else, either, just watched Simon.

"How long until we make landfall?"

"Two days from now."

Simon nodded, and turned away, turned back to River's body, lying there cold, still, lifeless. He didn't notice when Mal left, and wouldn't have cared if he had noticed.

He leaned over her, leaned down, and kissed her cold mouth softly -- barely there, light as a breath. He waited for a moment, as if he honestly expected to feel the soft movement of breath, the gentle warmth of life.

Nothing.

"I always did tell you that fairytales weren't real," he said, very soft, very cold.

When it happened, instinct took over before Simon even really understood what he was seeing. Suddenly he moved from inaction to action, like a switch flipped, and suddenly his thoughts were not with River's cold body but with the warm living body he could save and fix. He didn't know what to do when it came to engines, to flying, or the warm close companionship the crew shared over dinner. But he understood this. This was something he could do. Something he knew he had to do.

Kaylee was trapped under something -- that was the first thing he saw, the human trapped in the midst. That was good: that was his job. He was by her side immediately. "Kaylee?"

"Simon," she said, breathless, and her face was all screwed up with pain. Simon took a deep breath. "It hurts."

"Try not to move. I'm going to help you, okay? I can call the others if you don't trust me."

"Trust you," she whispered, finding his hand and squeezing it. She managed to look at him, too, her eyes bright with the pain, her mouth a flat line, and yet somehow he believed her, that she trusted him, even despite... He took a deep breath, squeezing back.

"This is going to hurt even more."

"S'okay," she whispered again. He saw the effort she was making, how still she was trying to lie, and he dropped her hand. He wasn't sure exactly what to do, but -- top three percent, after all, and this wasn't rocket science, lifting away the heavy machinery laying over her legs, freeing her so carefully -- he had to try not to do more damage --

"Kaylee? Is Serenity going to be okay? Has something...?"

"Should be fine for now," she whispered, her face very tight with it. He began to lift something away, no time to hesitate, and then stopped. He swallowed hard.

"Kaylee -- "

"Just get it off," she said, and those were tears on her face with the sweat. She was biting her lip so hard it bled. "It hurts so much."

"This'll hurt more. And you'll bleed."

"Gonna bleed anyway. Now, Simon. It's okay. You told me already. I'm not stupid. S'gonna hurt. Just do it."

Simon just did what he had to do, then. There was a lot of blood, slick on his hands, he could smell it and almost taste it on the air, but this wasn't death, this was clean, this could be life, and his hands were steady despite everything. His hands remembered what to do, even if it wouldn't quite come clear in his head, and he found the things he needed without thinking.

He took her to the infirmary. He was in a kind of daze -- a trance. He was on automatic and it felt good, it felt right, like falling back into place. River lay there, cold and still, but he did not touch her, and he was warm, too warm, and not a part of her coldness any more. Tracey and Mal and Zoe were with him, sometimes, their hands stronger than his, but not so sure, helping him, helping Kaylee. Making life out of the blood, shaping the cold numbness inside into something he could do.

Mal looked at him, afterwards, with contempt, still, like he had a bad taste in his mouth. "You're a cold-hearted bastard," he said, but low, because Kaylee lay there unconscious, still.

"That's a step up from a machine, I believe," Simon said. He was shocked, a little, at the chill that still crept into his heart, the numb unbelief when he thought of River, the quiet calm in his words. But he thought he was right, and it was a step up.

"Don't talk like that with me, boy."

"I could have let her die," Simon said, and oh, ice. "Are you any better, when it comes to what has to be done?"

Mal's hands clenched, at his sides. But he didn't hit Simon.

"When I have buried my sister," Simon said, into that cold stillness, "I would like to stay on Serenity. It seems you have plenty of work that I can do."

"Lookin' to make amends?"

Simon met Mal's eyes, steady, hands steady, heart steady. "Captain, I will never make amends for the things I've done."

Simon heard Book's steps in the corridor, just outside the infirmary door, and didn't turn to look at him. He waited, instead, without pausing. He was organising a drawer of medicines. On Osiris, he'd had someone to do this for him. He'd barely ever seen the stores of medicines. He could just ask someone to fetch them for him and they'd go running. He'd never had to clean his tools, or think about what happened to them when he laid them down and left the operating theatre. He'd never cleaned blood from his instruments back, knowing he'd have to use the same instruments again -- perhaps even as soon as he'd got them clean.

Even in the resistance he'd had helpers, people who cleaned up after him when he was reeling and exhausted. It was not that he had so very much work to do on Firefly, or that he particularly wanted company, but he'd never really thought before about these menial tasks. He liked to think he was keeping his infirmary clean and ready for whatever might come. It felt like his infirmary now. It always seemed a little colder than the rest of the ship, and a little further away. People didn't yell at each other in the hallway just outside, keeping their arguments away from his sterile room. People didn't run, here, unless they were running to find him because they needed him. People didn't talk just outside his room, or come here to find him and suggest he play a game of ball with them.

Sometimes, Simon slept in the infirmary, away from the rest of the crew.

"A man can deal with things in a lot of ways," Book said. Simon realised that there had been silence for a few moments. He continued to set the drawer in order.

"I know," he said, blandly. He hoped there was no welcome in his voice.

"If I were to deal with a situation like yours, I would have prayed for guidance every day. And I would pray, now, for forgiveness for what I did." Book stayed in the doorway, mercifully. Simon would have thought it good luck, but suspected that it was more than that -- that Book knew full well he should stay on the edges, and pick at Simon only from there. The drawer of medicines was hopelessly disarranged. Simon lifted the phials and syringes and bottles with great care, straightening the racks and slotting things into place. One of the bottles had broken. Wash couldn't always fly perfectly smoothly, he supposed. Or perhaps someone had broken the bottles in a hurry. There seemed to be a decent proportion of those hurried situations.

All the more reason for him to take a lot of care in sorting everything, getting everything ready. It might be needed at any moment. Until then it could wait, sterile, sealed.

"I won't just go away, no matter how long you wait, son," Book said, not ungently. "And nor will your guilt."

"I know the guilt won't go away, but I hope you won't just stand there. You're not going to get anything out of me. I'm not interested in your religion: you're welcome to it, but I don't need it."

"You sounded very like the captain just then."

Simon almost found himself saying oh? -- but he knew what it was, a gambit to try and draw him into conversation.

"I don't want to talk, Shepherd," he said, as respectfully as he could manage.

Book stood there for a long time. Simon felt his eyes on his back as he moved around the infirmary, but he refused to look up and see him. Instead there was the drawer, and a seemingly endless inventory -- six of this and seven of that; none of this and barely half a bottle of something else. He made notes, things the infirmary needed, and whispered mantras to himself, memorising, remembering.

He thought he heard Book's voice under his own, speaking the words of a prayer. It didn't matter. He had his own catechism to say.

"How long are you going to hide?"

Simon looked up, startled. "Inara," he said, awkwardly. "Is there something..."

"I asked you a question."

"I wasn't aware that I was hiding."

Inara inclined her head. "No?"

Simon's fists clenched a little. His nails bit into his palms. "My sister is dead. I'm mourning. I should have saved her."

"You did save her."

"That makes a nice excuse for what I did."

"You're making all kinds of excuses. Hiding behind your guilt, sure it must be your fault, all of it. She chose to go to that place, Simon. You had virtually no say in it, from what you've told us. She asked you to get her out, and you did."

"I'm pretty sure she meant alive."

"Probably," Inara said. She inclined her head a little. "Would your sister have liked the idea of being a tool? Of being used? Of murdering?"

"Of course not."

"This is probably better, then, than that existence."

"That doesn't..."

"You can wallow in it as long as you like. You can hide in here. Sooner or later, though, you'll have to face the real world, and you'll have to face what you've done. The longer you refuse to, the harder it will be."

"I -- "

"Think about it," Inara said, and before Simon could get a word out, she'd left again, sliding the door shut behind her. He heard her steps, walking away, but he didn't try to follow.

Simon woke shivering, sweating, in the middle of the night. He felt as if he'd heard someone say his name, just softly. For a moment he wondered whether it had been his father -- checking if he was awake, perhaps -- or his mother, hearing some disquiet in his sleep. Or River --

Something grabbed at his heart, squeezed it tightly, so tightly Simon thought it might stop. The pain in his chest was acute: for a moment he ran through symptoms, possible causes, possible solutions. But it was ridiculous -- he was too young for -- and then it hit him, a sob, crumpling him up hard. He was breathing, but only through the sobs, sucking air, fisting his hands in his covers because he didn't have anything else to hold.

He didn't hear the door slide open; he startled when he felt the touch. It was the captain. He said something about wakin' everyone up, his voice gruff, but there was no sleep in his voice and his hold on Simon's shoulders, though firm, didn't hurt at all. Simon wanted to stop -- didn't want Mal to see him weeping like a child waking from a nightmare -- but it jolted him again, almost a physical blow, as if his grief had been locked away too long and held down too hard and now had to react, to lash out, to lash at him and lacerate him.

"It's alright, son," Mal said, gripping his shoulders a little tighter. "Gotta let it out sometime. That's right."

"Says you," Simon said, breathless through a sob, and instead of being angry, this time Simon sensed a smile, a slight huff that might be laughter.

"Not talkin' about me right now. Different rules for captain and crew, didn't you know?"

He was still shaking with it, so very glad that Mal hadn't turned a light on. The tight hold on his shoulders turned into an almost-embrace, and Simon half-remembered something like this -- his father, holding him as a child, but it was a nightmare he woke up from then, not like now, waking up to reality. Mal gripped the back of his neck, held him like that, rough but oddly gentling, giving him a foothold, bringing him through.

"I got you," Mal said, senseless, comforting -- or a promise? "I got you, Simon."

He didn't know -- didn't want to know -- how long it took. He didn't want to know how long it might have held him without that -- holding him childlike and unable to escape, alone in the dark. When at last he stopped shaking -- his hands were the last to stop; he couldn't operate then, not unless he truly had to -- Mal let go, without any embarrassment.

"You done?"

Simon scrubbed at his face, dragged in a breath and held himself steady. No shaking. "Yes."

"Least you ain't a robot." A pause, another moment in which Simon got himself back under control. "Come on. You need a drink. Something strong." Mal stood up, headed out of the room as if there was no question. Simon couldn't help but follow.

"Ordinarily I'd say a drink doesn't help with anything."

"You can drink tea if you want," Mal said, though with an edge to it, as if he'd think less of Simon if he did. "Important thing's the drinkin' together."

"I'll drink with you."

Mal didn't say anything else. He put the lights on, got out the alcohol, got out two glasses. Pushed out a chair. Simon hesitated.

"I don't..."

"You're on my crew, that's why. Now sit down. Not another word until we're halfway through this bottle."

"Captain..."

"I mean it. Not another word."

"Alright," Simon said, watching him pour the drink -- whatever it was. Alright. And, oddly, it was almost true, or beginning to be true.

Tracey cannoned into him, trying to make him drop the ball. Simon twisted out of the way, throwing the ball to Zoe, grabbing Tracey before he managed to overbalance. "Don't fall," he said, with something like a grin. "I don't want you breaking your nose or something."

"I didn't expect you to be so gorramn good at this game," Tracey muttered, pushing a hand through his sweaty hair. He glared at Simon a little, but it wasn't serious. "You come from Osiris! You're supposed to be too fancy and prissy to know how to play this game."

"We played in the resistance," Simon said. A small hush fell, a sudden stillness, but he didn't seem to notice it. He was still smiling, just a little, a shy sort of smile. The smile he got when he opened up a little and let them in, Kaylee thought, and she started to smile too. "We had to have some kind of downtime. And me and River..."

"She play too?"

"Not quite, but something like," Simon said, quietly. He glanced up, for a moment, at the barrier where Inara stood, as if he expected to see someone else there, standing beside her. He went even quieter still. "Sometimes I feel as if she's not so far away -- as if she somehow made it onto Serenity too, as if she's here... I pass an empty room and I think I hear her singing, or when I'm coming down here I think I hear her dancing -- not like she did at home, but in big combat boots, and laughing... Or I look up and I think she's there..."

Zoe bounced the ball, pointedly, and threw it back at Simon. "Enough reminiscin', doc," she said. Kaylee opened her mouth to protest, but caught a stern look from Mal.

"Not now, Kaylee," he said. "We need to be playin' this game. Zoe an' I've got work to be doin'."

"But -- "

Simon had caught the ball. He grinned, moving quickly past Tracey, who'd relaxed a bit while they were talking. He threw the ball up, missing the hoop just barely, and Zoe seized it and threw it up and through the hoop, all before Tracey or Kaylee had time to cry that it wasn't fair.

"Gotta keep your eye on the ball," Mal said, to Tracey.

"Sorry, sarge," Tracey said, and then snatched the ball as soon as he could. The hold rang with laughter, with footsteps, with shouts and the clang of the ball against the walls and ladders and the hoop.

Inara watched them, leaning against the barrier, and didn't mention that she almost felt it too, sometimes, the strange presence of something she did not understand, the way she sometimes thought there was another passenger, dark-haired and quick and lithe, there only in the corner of one's eye. She watched Simon take another shot, his hands steady and sure, a smile on his face.

"I think he'll be okay, River," she said, quietly, but she knew there was nothing beside her now. She smiled to herself. "I think you can rest."