Author’s Note: The “trespassing” line was liberated from the wonderful movie “Secretary” I was watching the other night and it just screamed “River!” It actually got the ball rolling on this story. This chapter is just a silly little thing. No plot in sight. Expect more meat later.

It was good to be in the Black again. The world that was fast receding behind them was becoming a memory, and as they burned out of atmo into the vast halls of space she thought:

“Finally. Here. I’m back.”

She had missed the Black while they were dirtside. There was something about the boundless nothing of space that calmed her. It silenced the voices, or at least muffled them for a while, and allowed her mind to make room for her own thoughts. Wounds were still raw on Serenity, no amount of paint or patching had changed that, it only made them harder to see and as a result, River felt like she was constantly plugged into a live wire. It took great effort on her part to function at all, let alone normally, and sitting on the bridge, looking out at the stars seemed to help.

The rain was ceaseless on the Moon they had just left. A miserable little place called Tawaret; it could boast almost constant showers which came in two types, depending on the time of day, gray rain or black rain. Stuck on the bridge, the Captain still nervous about her and Simon’s identity, she couldn’t help thinking of the months after Miranda and that rain. The main difference between them being that after Miranda the rain seemed to, almost, serve to heal. In the absence of visible sorrow among the crew, the skies opened and allowed them to mourn…..after a fashion. On Tawaret, all the rain served to do was make dirty jobs dirtier. For three days she had been confined to the bridge and she was glad to be leaving that rock behind, crime done, and to be, finally, staring into the Black.

Most of her time was spent on the bridge now, confinement or not. She had given up hiding in ventilation shafts and smuggling holds and taken to hiding in plain sight. In Wash’s chair, no one saw her. No one much cared to look in that direction and it had become a black hole on the bridge. She even slept there if Simon allowed or, as happened most often, was so involved with Kaylee that he didn’t notice, and she had become very familiar with every millimeter of space therein. Because of this familiarity, she knew he was there before he wanted her to. He displaced the air in the door, sending it rushing towards her and diffusing through the cabin, carrying with it the smell of he who had so rudely sent it on its way. The smell of rain and Jayne. She cocked her head to the side, a quick bird-like movement, but did not turn around.

“Man-Called-Jayne,” she said “You are here without invitation or permission. Trespassing. An unwarranted incursion. A gradual or stealthy entrance into the sphere of another. You are on my bridge.”

Jayne snorted derisively from the doorway.

“Don’t go getting’ yer unmentionables all complicated, Moony,” he said “’Sides, I’m fair sure it’s the Cap’n’s bridge.”

He placed a wet and muddy hand on the console and looked down at the girl. River took in the whole of him. From his boots that had obviously been mired down to their top laces in some sort of filth, to the trail of muck his hand left behind on the controls. Her controls.

Her eye twitched and she wanted nothing more than to shoo him off the bridge and scour it from top to bottom, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her lose her composure. Whenever she lost her composure around Jayne, bad, or at the very least, unsettling, things happened. So she sat there, staring a Tyrannosaurus in the eye and silently expounded on all possible scenarios for the extinction of him and all his dino kin…. Mucking up her bridge kept coming to the top of the list.

Jayne saw her eye twitch and her jaw clench and his mercenary brain processed that he was getting to her. Recent crime being without violence, only mud, he was aching for confrontation, so he sat himself down in the copilot’s chair, put both feet on the console, wrung his coat out onto the floor, and settled in, anticipating an amusing time trying to find the chink in her armor, all without realizing he was already standing right in the gaping maw of it.

River stared past the Tyrannosaurus and focused on the alternating patterns of lights the controls made. Green, yellow, yellow, red, orange, blue. Green, yellow, yellow, red, orange, blue. Green, yellow, yellow, red, orange –

“Lil’ albatross?” Mal called suddenly from the door. River jumped in her seat, startled.

“Blue!” she near screamed.

Jayne and Mal both stared at her, mouths open.

“Okaaay,” Mal drawled “That bein’ what it is and this being somethin’ else entirely….”

“Girl is gorram crazy,” Jayne muttered under his breath

“Set us a course in the Persephone direction, we have cargo to deliver and Jayne, I need you in the hold to stow said cargo.”

Mal stared at River for a moment longer before giving up understanding and taking his leave. Jayne followed a moment later. River relaxed once they had left and was about to start wiping down the console when Jayne poked his head around the corner and regarded her with what seemed to be serious contemplation. It lasted long enough that she almost commented on it, but before she was able to he said

“Purple.”

And made his way to the hold.