When she gets the thick envelope from the academy, it scares her.
The cream papers felt wrong in her hands, words printed awkwardly across the surface. Her name looked like a lie, River Tam with the e smudged and t looking violent.
Privileged to have you attend our fine institution feels like a joke, and she takes a pair of scissors and cuts the letter up into confetti. She slides her windows open, lifting herself up to her toes before releasing her handfuls of diced paper into the night sky.
Once it is gone from her hands, does she feel fine.
They tell her she's smart enough to go anywhere she wants, and looking upwards, she realizes all she wants to do now is to escape.
"Did they accept you?" Her mother asks from the door way, dark hair pulled up in an elegant bun, a pin of pearls securing it. "Your father and I have been hoping for that one the most. You need something to push you further. These traditional classes aren't pushing you hard enough."
"Yes, mother." She responds blankly. "But it's gone now."
"Pardon?" There's something strange about how startled her mother looks, one hand fluttering to her lips. Her pale, powdered skin looking paler than before, the wide eyed gaze. "You've been accepted?"
She nods simply, before speaking out. "I chose not to go. It'll be more trouble than it's worth."
River doesn't know how she knows, but the idea of going makes her think of needles.
.
Her father is outraged.
She can hear him pacing three floors below her, the low murmur of his thoughts building up. Simon's trying to spread influence over him, trying to make him see that maybe it is for the best, that she does know what she is doing.
Her mother is resting, a massive headache overwhelming her senses. River can imagine the dull throb, and touches her own smooth forehead.
Looking out her window, she can look over an entire world. Bright lights grounded by logical means, and peoples drifting down the streets in a steady sort of pattern. She's bored, looking over the same textbooks again and again and gazing through the meaning and intent again and again.
River takes hold of her scissors, looking at the empty envelope that once held something. She doesn't understand what she is doing until she is done, with dead hair scattered around her feet, and her dark brown hair brushing against her jaw.
It feels good, light. It makes her want to dance and fly, skip over cracks in space and twirl against star dust. She feels like a child for the first time in a long time, and she looks up past her world into the undefined sky and thinks hard.
.
River takes nothing but a little bit of wealth, and a dagger stolen from her father's collection.
.
Space is a daunting prospect. Leaving everything for an idea of an adventure.
She doesn't want civilization.
She is tired of silk dressed and boring men, frustrated with the same pattern of manners and behaviour. She doesn't want to hear Simon awkwardly flirt with women who aren't good enough for him, and she doesn't want the world to fawn over the gifted youngest child.
River isn't much of a child, too intense for such a role. She likes to pretend she is though, swinging her feet from her bunk on the shuttle. Sometimes she sings operas from Earth-The-Was in the shower, her voice reaching new heights.
The world is unfolding before her, and it looks beautiful.
.
She skips from planet to planet, ignoring the searches for the old River.
Eventually she ends up on a dusty planet where no one cares about anyone, and feels safe.
.
His voice is cold, she thinks as he gazes down at her.
"Little girl, you're a mighty long way from home." He informs her, eyes beetle black. "Ought to be somewhere safe, someone who could protect you."
She bristles at his touch, fingers against the cold skin of her arm.
"I believe I am fine, but thank you for your great consideration." She informs him kindly, one hand sliding down her leg to the dagger stowed away in her boot.
"Shouldn't be somewhere so rough. Never know what'll happen to a fine lady like you."
He's the stereotypical drunk, she imagines.
When he tries to grab her hand, she stabs him.
.
Another life she might have not realized what she had done. Might not have been able to comprehend that she killed a man within mere milliseconds and forgot his body in her shadow.
This life, however, the action had been thought out twice before carried out.
She didn't regret it.
.
She leaves the bar, her stool clattering to the ground beneath her quick motions. The man thuds down as well, hands at his throat where for five seconds a dagger had been plunged through.
She sprints through the streets, finding her way easily.
When she stops running, she meets him.
"Awful thing you did back there." He tells her almost kindly, his back resting against a wall. "Caused a mighty big fuss." He looks amused in the dark, the sky spiraling above the two of them.
She takes three seconds to catch her breath before speaking. "Bad." She tells him thoughtfully, slipping the dagger into her boots. She doesn't feel frightened by this figure before her, his words like candle smoke.
"Pardon?"
"Mal."
.
"Who are you running from?" Zoe asks her, setting herself down across the table. "Girls like you don't just take off."
What is she running from? Restrictions and numbers and bad places that'd hollow herself out.
"The Academy," she shrugs, because really-this is what drove her forward.
She imagines Simon searching her room for a note, and feels a twinge of guilt as she remembered that she never left one behind for him.
Oh Simon, she sighs. She has all the words in her head, but could never begin to script them out.
"What's the Academy?" Mal speaks up from behind Zoe. Purple blossoms over his chest.
River drags her fingers through her short hair before shaking her head. "Not a concern as of now, I suppose."
.
Jayne is a steady sort of figure.
He is selfish and demanding, but that's alright.
He's honest in a way men aren't. He wants what he can take, and he'll try to have what he can't.
She regards him thoughtfully as he analyzes her carefully.
"You stab some fellow back there?" He doesn't really ask her, but rather tells her straight on.
She nods carefully.
"Don't stab me."
.
She likes Serenity. The old metal beneath her feet, feeling the world shift from her stance. She likes singing Russian lullabies when she crawls up through the air ducts and makes a nest of blankets and books and candles.
"You'll get lost in there one of these days." Mal informs her, squatting down low. She can see his rough face through the grate, and the slight trace of a scar hidden by his hairline. (explosion, she sighs. Broken glass.)
"I have a map." She tells him seriously, inching forward.
"You have a map of my ship?"
She taps her forehead thoughtfully before sliding away into the dark belly of Serenity.
She can hear Kaylee's voice; old words trapped within pipes and tightened bolts. She can feel the soft touch of the other girl, imagining the lull of breathing against rusted metal. The scent of Inara's perfume travels through the ship like a phantom.
It takes River a moment to realize that something feels wrong, that she feels the sour taste of illness pressed to her neck.
Inara's dying, she realizes. She doesn't understand how she knows; it's just something she knows.
River realizes a lot of things.
.
Jayne likes exercising when he feels tense.
Which is often, she understands. Watching him rise up and down slowly on the bar, his hands clenched around the smooth metal.
He catches her watching and calls her crazy.
.
She plays dinosaurs with Wash when the Captain isn't around.
River likes pretending that the plastic toys are floating through space, waving them upwards against the window.
"You never had much of a childhood, did you?" He questions her as he bumps his plastic creature against her own.
She thinks hard about her family, remembering spending days dressed up in silks and sitting with her back forever straight. She slouches more often now, River thinks.
"My childhood was like a cat in a box," she decides. "Alive or dead, no one will ever know."
Wash doesn't understand, and yet he does understand. River likes that about Wash.
.
Three months go by, and then three more.
She changes in the way all girls who become women change.
She straps a gun to her hip and learns how to shoot properly.
.
(Mal's deals always go south, River learns. Best to keep the gun loaded and ready.)
.
They touch down on some faceless planet that hums beneath her feet, and she realizes something is wrong.
Something feels familiar, amongst the shuffling crowds lurching backwards and forwards. It doesn't belong here, like a diamond lost amongst a coal pit.
It takes three hours to understand, and then it's almost too late.
She looks different now, she supposes. No longer a little girl, but something harder. Wearing an old skirt of Inara's the hides the knife strapped to her thigh, a cleaned gun attached to her hip and feet clad in heavy combat boots.
He looks the same as ever, clean shirt tucked into dress pants ironed to perfection. She calls his name before realizing what she's done, and he turns to look at her.
Simon begins elbowing his way through the crowd, frantically pushing past the hordes of people to meet here.
She feels small in his gaze, her hair not even brushing her shoulders. Her hands smell like gunpowder and she can still feel the recoil of the gun.
"River," he whispers, grabbing her hands delicately.
She doesn't say anything until he crushes her into his arms and holds her tight.
.
For the first time in a long time, River feels safe.
.
Something about this feels familiar, she decides as she stands next to Simon in the loading bay. The crew surrounds them, unsure and unaware.
"Who is this?" Inara asks quietly. She smiles kindly at Simon.
Simon is grasping for words, and River has them.
She's always had them.
"This is Simon. He's my brother." She takes his hand easily before continuing. "He went to rescue me, and now he's here."
Jayne snorts, before shaking his head. "You're crazy. This ain't your brother. He's … different." He's imagining last night spent together with lips pressed against one another. River smiles.
"Jayne!" Kaylee chides, before grinning at Simon. "Pleased to have you aboard."
Mal steps forward. "You got money?"
Simon nods. "Yes, of course."
"Good." He walks away loudly, calling over his shoulder. "Welcome to Serenity."
.
"Mother and Father miss you." Simon tells her, lips tight.
"No they don't. They miss the old River. Long haired and compliant River."
Her words make sense.
"You should write. Let them know that you aren't dead."
"Simon?"
"Yes?"
"Smart people don't go digging for dead bodies. If I wrote, they'd be searching the galaxy." She pauses. "I like playing dead, anyways."
.
Some nights she presses her ear against Jayne's rising chest and imagines of a world different.
If she'd accepted the Academy, and had gone away.
It would have been different, she thinks.
(it also would have been the same, she realizes)
.