Disclaimer: All characters and settings are works of Joss Whedon.

Author's Note: This fic was written specifically for Finding_jay. It is their secret santa gift, and I do hope it is enjoyed.

~The Sketch

Prologue:

There was a night, while River lay in bed, that she was certain Simon would come for her. Her body was taxed and her mind ached, but she knew he would come soon. She had sent the letters to him, she had been so careful to keep them elusive yet simple. She encoded her pleas inside them so they would jump off the page when Simon read them. Simon was smart, and kind. Surely he would know what she needed.

River spent all that night half asleep, half ready to leap from her bed and set off at a run, Simon's familiar voice echoing down the hall ahead of her. She knew he would be prepared, have a plan for their escape. Simon was careful, he would have every detail mapped out so there was no chance of failure. He was coming, of that she was sure.

One year later, she lay curled in that same bed, whimpering. The people at the academy made her train, made her think. They set loose the students into a battlefield where each one of them would have to jump, leap, tumble and run to make it past the live mines and snipers firing at them. They needed to use their wits to keep alive, to barter with the seedy men who stood guard at the gates and often would not let someone pass for all the money in the world. You might need to do other things. They might ask you to kill one of your fellow students, or sleep with one of them while the dirty guards beside you watched, laughing. The heads of the academy thought it was important for the students to lose all dignity, lose all morals and inhibitions. The most effective killing machines were the ones that didn't feel.

Two years prior...

When training had begun, River felt proud of what she could accomplish. They tested her on everything- music, literature, mathematics. They tested her physicality as well, through ballet, track, martial arts, yoga. The teachers (or so they called themselves) would watch the students, sometimes grabbing one out of the middle of a class and throwing them out of the school, telling them that they could never become as great as the school promised. River was one of twenty students who remained, all teenagers between fourteen and seventeen. They came from all aspects of life, all places and all classes. Within the year, the children would find their previous breeding did not matter.

One morning, eight months into her first year, River began to notice her curriculum changing. Physical education classes were more combat based, less artistic. Their studies veered off from universal politics and sociology, and began focusing more on tactical theory. River noticed a change in her fellow classmates, and thusly a change in herself. During her studies she felt weak, subdued and tired. She hardly questioned when the instructor gave false information to the class. Yet during combat training she felt fierce, a surge of adrenaline rushing through her. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall, but she could not place them, not yet.

Then came the surgery.

One night, very late, she was taken from her bed. Although she could hear the voices above her, River couldn't talk. She discovered from overhead conversation that the academy had been drugging the water of their students, giving them sedatives in class and steroids during combat. Her eyes fluttered open as she was wheeled into the operation room. In a haze, the caught sight of Fletcher Green, another student, being wheeled out on a gurney. His eyes were closed and his head was shaved. There were angry red lines crossing all over his head, stitched closed with dark maroon thread. He looked like a monster, dead. River couldn't look away from him, even as he disappeared through the doors, even as she was strapped to a table and injected with ink and hooked up to electrodes, her eyes never left where Fletcher had been, as though she could will him to come back and explain what had happened.

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Case File #3334771 Tam, River Female, Age 15

Subject has strong reactions in every electroshock test. Temporal lobe suggests uncanny intuition, ability to recall memory in great detail. Using formula 88A, subject senses medics around her and perceives their personalities without recognition of faces. High doses may lead to psychic readings, eventual lead to total mental invasion and domination.

Subject has great potential.
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The Next Year...

The night after her surgery, everyone at the academy lost all pretense. The front door was shut with iron bars, every window was locked and barricaded. River's instructors told the students they would never leave the academy, and if they did they would be killed. They were weapons now, property. The Alliance was counting on them to train and work and become effective killing machines. This was their contribution to the betterment of tomorrow.

River had tried to escape seven times. She had nearly succeeded twice, but was taken out by the safe word. She hadn't even noticed that during classes, the instructors were subliminally weakening her resolve with drugs, and using the safe word when she and the other students were falling asleep. It became ingrained in her brain to assosciate the word with slumber, until even when previously alert she could not fight the urge even if she'd wanted to.

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Case File #3334771 Tam, River Female, Age 15

Subject continues to be unruly, screams in her sleep, fights with instructors. Suggest heavy sedatives and additional safe word. Combat training is near complete. Flexibility, strength, speed, and agility all desireable. Removing a quadrant of the amygdala has significantly improved subjects' willingness to attack. Response to memory injection is favorable, though subject is highly resistant to it.

After completion of physical training, subject will be moved to base two for intelligence reprogramming and complete self-memory wipeout. She has proved more advanced both physically and metally then her counterparts.

Subject is our most valuable asset.
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The night before the escape...

River Tam lay in bed, shivering. She was not cold, but sick. Sick in the head, sick in the heart. Her muscles ached. Her brain throbbed. She had done awful, terrible things today. But she hadn't done anything except sit in a room and watch flashes of memory cross her vision. She had been strapped to a chair, electrodes taped all around her head. Several needles punctured her skin, draining fluids of the experimental kind into her system. Of the initial twenty students, only seven remained. Seven had been slain in battle training, two had killed themselves, and four had died on the experiment table, the drugs being pumped into their systems proving too much. The children were treated worse than lab rats. There was no regard for their safety, no concern for their well-being. They were props, objects. Things.

On that night, River's last night, she became aware that all hope was indeed lost. She wondered what the heads of the school told the families of the dead students, or if they told them anything at all. The instructors forced the children to write letters home. They inspected them carefully so no secrets of the school would leak. River wondered if, maybe, the men with blue hands just forged letters from her fallen comrades, and maybe there were families far away who read those letters and smiled, proud of their child and all that they had accomplished. Families who did not know that their son Fletcher or their daughter Marie had been cut to pieces and were tossed out like used lunch meats. Families that were blissfully unaware that the baby of their family, Charles, had been performing oral sex on a gate guard when his head had been sliced off by a fellow student.

River closed her eyes and went to sleep, deciding that she would simply submit to the will of the hands of blue. She could not escape on her own, and Simon was not coming. It chilled her only a little to realize she was sleeping in her grave.

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ALL POINTS BULLETIN:

Case File #3334771 Tam, River Female, Age 16

Subject was stolen from Area 909 72 hours ago. She is in advanced training. Must be considered armed and dangerous at all times. Subject is traveling with caucasian male, appx. 5'7", aged late twenties. Pale features, blue eyes, black hair. No distinguishing facial marks. Male is believed to be Simon Tam.

Reacquire subject at all costs.
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After the escape...

While Simon and River sat in the dark room, knowing they had to be still or else they would be found out, River sought his hand and squeezed it for comfort. This must have been what Ann Frank felt like, sitting in the dark, breath low and shallow. Your very life depended on how still you could be.

"I think they're gone," Simon whispered, the words scraping their way past his teeth and just touching River's ears. "We should stay here the night, just in case." River nodded in agreement, though she knew he could not see in the dark. She was just too grateful that he was here, that they were both alive and free and everything would be okay now that they were together.

Simon slipped an arm around River, drawing her close beside him. What he needed to tell her was very important, and he wanted to make absolute sure that she could hear him. "I told the men who helped me I was your brother," he said softly.

River's eyes went wide. "Why would you do that?" she whispered. "They're going to get caught, and the men will go to mom and dad-"

"I know," he told her. "That's why I did it. They're going to go looking for Simon Tam back home. Understand?" River did not think she understood, but she was inexplainably aware of what he had in mind and she did not like it at all. She wanted to tell him no, that she couldn't agree to this, but his words cut her off. "We need to stay safe," he continued. "I drew them away from us as best I could." He stroked River's cheek with his fingertips. "This is the way it has to be, mei-mei."

Mei-mei. Little sister. The nails in River's coffin.