Title: She Will Be A Stone
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Author: SpiritualEnergy
Characters/Pairing: Jayne & River
Rating: T
Summary: In her haste to become a stone, she forgot that she could accidentally become something else.
Disclaimer: Firefly/Serenity © Joss Whedon
Author's Notes: I had fun writing this, even if it took me forever to finish it. I know, I know, I'm pathetic.

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Miranda clings to her insides still, after all this time. The aggression slithering away into nothing, their wills to live diminishing, all swimming inside of her. Pain, guilt. Cold, hard floor, their new coffin. They all scream at her with their silence, their bones creaking under her hands, crawling inside of her until she can practically feel the bullet in her brain. Numb, damaging needs.

"Don't ever say that." Simon, wiping her brow clean, a soft touch on her knuckles. He tries his best to heal something he can't, but she lets him try.

The last of them are different. The last of them have wills. The last of them make her see nothing at all but everything in the entire 'verse. G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate. Their fault, our numbers, everyone's death. Blood and ripped flesh adorn their walls, the metal of the catwalk against her back making her shiver with the sight of them, the memory of being torn open and raped and eaten and killed. It's not hers, nothing is ever just hers, and it makes her curl up into a little ball, a little girl in a seventeen year old body.

"Reavers." Her own breath whispering of what is to come.

She is both groups. Lifeless, cold, dead. Red, hungry, forgetful. They all seep into her, and it only makes sense that the second group wins. Monsters, all of them. The driving force is mindless, barbaric, terrifying. Men who forgot how to be men. Not human, yet they can still set traps. Use weapons. Fly ships. They understand. They do not... comprehend.

Her fingers itch for something, anything, and she runs her nails over her arms, digging deeper than she should. Burn, hurt, blood. She can smell it, taste it on her tongue; it sweeps away and crumbles into tiny bits, poking and invading and smashing into a wall, tall and grating. Closing her eyes, she dreams of rope and flowers and a threat.

"Nobody can help me." Kaylee, tears in her eyes, the bounty hunter behind her, tying her up, whispering in her ear. She can still hear her calls for help echoing in her brain. A silent apology, helpless and afraid. It's a comfort to her more than anyone when she tells them she's melted, become Serenity, not because she wants her gone, but because she knows Serenity-River is right there with her. Different, frayed, but strong. She can fly.

That memory is distant, fuzzy and jagged around the edges. It comes to her in the middle of the night, wrapped in hot coals that burn her feet when she tries to dance. It reminds her of reaching, falling, nothing. It tells her she's still prone to forget herself. Who she is, where she is, what she is.

Girl who forgot how to be a girl.

It creeps, lingers, settles. The sideways view of the cargo bay beneath her, an illusion that makes her dizzy, makes her unsteady. She considers.

"He gave me a mission." Secrets, questions, no answers. Dimmed lights flash across her eyelids, makes her open them, makes her see the weapon right in front of her. She can't tell anyone, can't give the secret away, they wanted her shut up from the very beginning (because there is no Miranda, you see). She can't tell, but she needs... to... write it down. "I can see you."

The end. Except not. She realizes she wanted him dead, is glad he's dead. Never the same, the pen stuck in his vein, full of pain. The adrenaline scortches past her, around her, inside of her. Ink and something else mars the body and the table but nothing more. No one else.

There was once a person who saw them. Was tortured by the images, deliberately changed into some sub-species. They know how to do that, too. It's all drawn out, and there's a lack of ideas, lack of feeling, but there's instinct. It's close enough, and the man is simply known as a Survivor, as if this is the scientific name for his species. She can see the Survivor in her head, the terror in his face below her, a thing from the past. Growls surround them both, the others behind her, a meal ready.

She sees them, and she shouldn't. She feels them, hears them, tastes them. They're murderous, evil creatures. They like hurting people.

"I don't belong... dangerous like you. Can't be controlled... can't be trusted." Jubal Early. Reavers. River. It all collided and the ends blurred together into one shape. The formula is needed. Can't be solved properly. Can't melt into the ship. Physics, a challenging subject.

Her spot on the floor becomes further and further away from her as she sits up, her dress tangled with her legs. Limbs, small, graceful. The lights are off, free to wander where they want for a few hours.

"Simon." Her voice is low, strained, her grip on herself slipping. It's too dark, something's wrong. Almost violent. She wants to spring up, wants to run, just to move. But not to dance. "Simon."

She grips at her hair, her fingers slipping through the dirty locks falling into her face. It doesn't feel like her hair, feels like wire spinning down to her throat, tightening, choking. Simon won't be able to hear her.

So she wanders the ship silently. First on the catwalk, pitter-pat. The cargo bay, wide and spacious like the stars in the black. The kitchen, laugher and jokes abound. The infirmary, needles and clocks and splish-splash. Then there's the engine room, Kaylee's dwelling. She stops, looks around. Serenity's life support, humming underneath her feet.

Kaylee's asleep, dreaming of love, of family, of Simon. She almost doesn't realize she sees herself somewhere, tucked away with a ball and jacks. Play time.

She's not that girl.

She thinks of running her hands through Kaylee's hair now, relieved it still feels the same in her mind. The color of the walls sing, call, inquire in place of the sleeping mechanic which she can still sense radiating off one of the fuse boxes in the back of the room.

"Brave," she answers. Be brave.

On to the next one. She has to move on to the next one, because... because. Her hands itch to touch more, want to travel down and clench too hard. Has to leave before she does.

The Captain doesn't dream, except for when he does. "You all came on this boat for different reasons, but -"

She leaves it at that, floats away as quickly as she can.

She remembers an ax, a sword. "My turn," brushes past her cheek and she slams the door shut. Instincts, protection, all for them, her little make-shift family. Something is beating inside of her, overflowing from her with sound and images that are as close to memories as they'll get. So, so close to them, she realizes. Slice, right down the bone, fast, almost painless.

Zoe. Alone. Weathered. Angriest of them all, dry of tears. Killing them is how she mourns. The force of it all strikes her like lightning. Powerful.

"No." River, she tells herself. She's River, crying because this isn't right and because Zoe can't. She twitches, closes her eyes, lets her feet take her away and back until she's leaning against the wall, the opening to another one. Guns, she knows.

She opens her eyes, wide, wider, widest. "Kill them," she whispers in someone else's voice, nails digging into her palms, nothing else to use them on. She wants to kill them. Wants to walk into their bunks and rip through them, break their necks, gourge their eyes out of their sockets, just like that man with the pen, the urge of a killer. She shakes with it, wants to eat them.

"That sister o' his is no saner than one o' them Reavers." Jayne, resentment, anger, truth. He said this when he thought no one else besides Kaylee was listening, when he thought she wasn't above him, hearing the rough clang of metal against metal as he kicked a stray part across the cargo bay with his boot. Jayne wants her gone, thinks she's too dangerous to even be kept on Serenity.

Her resolve, steadied further, buried deep underneath whatever's rising within her this moment. Hurts, to know he's right.

She has to get away from them.

When she stumbles onto the bridge and takes hold of the controls in front of her, there's a resounding click of a new pilot will be needed again and I'm a leaf on the wind that tells her even this skill isn't her own. It flutters in her heart and the equipment around her cuts into her when she grips it too hard.

Serenity keens and shifts under her hands, small and bright in the dark. The rush of air that isn't there moves her through the motions of lives she's loved and wanted for herself. Small, like a bird, a good omen, an albatross. When she dies, she'll visit them all one by one (not two by two, never two by two), and she'll be everyone she's ever thought/wondered/dreamed/remembered/screamed of being.

Grab her, hold her down, eat her. They didn't want to be her. That's her fault. She reached too much, opened herself up to them and let them fall in. In her haste to become a stone, she forgot that she could accidentally become something else. Like a party, where the guests leave and more arrive now that there's space.

Yes. She will be a stone.

She can taste the grit of sand in her mouth that lets her know they've arrived. The time-line, she thinks, is blurry. Hours, maybe? Or seconds? Time travel, thumping in her brain, making her see stars.

She wants to stick her eyes full of needles, wants to ask the age-old question, "That seem fair to you?" as the marks on her arms become consuming. Change. Not entirely evolution.

So she crawls on the dusty grounds of New Haven, a name that contradicts itself (New Her, Safe Place?). Tears stain stone now as a face rests against one of the graves. Without knowing, without seeing, it is simply Wash, with Shepard Book and Mr. Universe not even but a foot apart.

All in one go, there is begging and crying and screaming and wishing that she was somewhere else when she reaches out and starts to claw at the rock and dirt beneath her, the beat of the sun pushing her on.

Newly buried, the maggots still creepy-crawling inside the caverns of rotting flesh. Half of her weeps with the realization of what she's doing, and the other half snarls with staved-off hunger.

Something booms loudly. Everything stills, molecules dance around in liquified surprise.

She is bleeding.

It's been a long time since it's felt like her own. "Die of old age before the bullet catches you."

Leaning back, she can feel the tug of ripped skin, of an opening that tempts her to reach through and grab at what's inside. Instead, she simply lets herself lay down in the dirt, lets herself take in his face as he points his gun at her. The others are still a far ways off, a flare of static behind him.

She drawls herself up, all bones and picked off memories. Chances made of steel and powder.

"Kill me."

Jayne's eyes narrow, a movement that reminds her of a happier time where she would cut and he would hit back. "You gotta death wish or somethin'?" he asks.

She smiles. It practically glows. "You love them. Want to protect them." She runs her hand over the bullet hole in her leg. "Proved it." She cries, looking up at him pleadingly. The smell of dead crew-mates and dug-up earth is enough of a reason. "Please."

Jayne's jaw clenches. Ariel, pain and betrayal and don' tell 'em what I did.

The act of pulling out his gun again and firing another shot an inch from her head is like a last-ditch effort, a final stand at getting rid of her.

Like always, it doesn't work.

When he leans down and picks her up roughly by the arms, she can feel them coming out of their sockets, a sickening crack that leaves her immobilized. He doesn't look at her when he says, "You owe me fer this." The sound of his voice makes her remember, helps her give her back who she is for the moment as her blood stains the sand and her arms hang uselessly across his shoulders as he carries her back to Serenity. When you can't crawl, you...

"Big Damn Hero," River whispers across his skin.