No touching guns. That’s the new rule. No touching guns, no shouting and no screaming. No more clawing against the walls – real or imagined, No more hiding in the corners of round rooms, eyes squeezed shut. If you can’t see them then they can’t see you. That’s the rule. Here there’s no touching guns, except on those occasions when one is pushed into everybody’s hand, even hers. Those days there is shouting and screaming. People running and shooting, kicking, punching, dying. There’s metal under her skin. Fingers curling possessively. Those days there’s blood on the walls and on the floor.

She hates the sensation of people dying. She can feel life streaming out of them onto the cargo bay floor. Once you pull the trigger they’re gone. That person is gone forever. They prickle against her skin. There’s a hole in the world and she put it there.

She loves the freedom of people dying. All she has to do is squeeze against the metal and for a second it all goes quiet. For a second the blood pounding in her veins and the dull drumming in her head is silenced. It stops the terrible pressure that builds up all the time begging her to do something, to hurt something. And it doesn’t matter that it’s just Mal bellowing out instructions instead of those others. When he tells her to shoot she shoots, and she feels free.

They put a rhythm in her blood and now she wants to dance - swords spinning and guns blazing. Wants to slash and rip, to aim and fire. It’s only quiet inside if there’s screaming outside. That’s the rule.

On normal days, the ones without a firefight, she gazes lustfully at the weapons laid out for cleaning. Wan smile on her face and eyes glazed over she watches intently as each piece is slipped out, wiped down and greased, and then slid back into its casing. When the Shepherd prepares dinner she follows the quick strokes of his knife across the chopping board, hands itching to grab and slice, to relieve the thrumming behind her eyes. Or if Kaylee leaves a spanner lying about, she’ll imagine its weight against her palm, anticipating the sickening thud when it hits someone else’s head and the brief clarity in her own. On those days she’s not allowed anywhere near the neat rows on the table. If her hand reaches too close to a sharp edge there are shouts of alarm and she’s bustled away.

She can look, but not touch. No touching. That’s the rule.