Disclamer: I do not own Firefly, for that belongs to my God Joss. And if I did it would not have been cancled. Warning: Mal/River. If this offends, don't read it!

So wrong, it has to be right.

“They tell me I’ve gone mad,” the words fell from her crimson lips onto his ears like liquid honey. “They tell me I’ve gone insane.” She giggled to herself at the idea, the high innocent laugh of a schoolgirl. But, something about it was so sinister, so wrong, that it made the very hairs on the back of Captain Malcolm Reynolds’ neck stand on end.

Her large dark brown eyes stared up, completely ignoring the strands of her long, messy, dark hair that fell down before them. She surveyed him, stalked him, from her place perched atop the iron bed rail, her thin and toned body balanced perfectly.

“Your coverings are crooked,” she whispered suddenly.

“What?” Mal asked bewildered. She never had made much sense to him.

Muscles tensed, released. She sprang from the bed. Not quite human-like. And then she was in front of him. There had been no sound to her landing, no sight to her movement. What was she? It was all he could think as the breath hitched in Mals’ lungs.

“Let me.” The voice she used was soft, smoky.

This girl, who herself said she was mad, along with her feng le brother, took the bowl of hot protein mush that was held in Mals’ hands and placed it on the cold, hard, ship floor. Next to his hard worn boots, her own bare feet and all the while, faint steam rose up off the unfrozen, reheated sludge. Mal couldn’t help but notice the graceful hands, slender artists’ fingers with perfect, long nails.

Could they be sharp? He asked himself. With her, anything could be a weapon.

Deftly, she unbuttoned his top two buttons, which had been mis-buttoned, as was often the case with her often distracted captain. She re-buttoned the blood red shirt. Properly. She looked up into his deep, dark eyes, and raised an eyebrow with a cocky smile.

“You don’t even know my name!” The play ground taunt of so long ago, na-na-na-na-na, rang in her every word. With that she threw back her head and laughed this strange, mad, insane, surreal girl with her innocent evil laugh.

Mal stood, transfixed by the sight of her. Transfixed, but also, slightly confused.

“Does the lost little boy seek to know the night?” she wondered aloud, “does he wish to see as the moon does?”

Head angled down, hair falling forwards, eyes gazing up, she was the vision of desire, garbed in one of Kaylee’s dark, old, form fitting cast-off skirts and form fitting black tank top she had obviously pilfered from some cloths line on some forgotten world. There was the sound of the soft padding of her bare feet as she stepped closer to Mal. Into him.

He could smell her. She bore the scent of blood and sex and spices of the night, and it set him on fire. All Mal could think of was locking the bunk door and taking her. The soft breath on his neck was hoarse with sensuality.

“Can you feel me? Do you want to know me?” she asked eyes full of death. Whose’ death, Mal didn’t much care, only that those eyes never left his, and that he could touch her. “Yes…” Mal was desperate. After months of caring for her, protecting her from the Alliance, that icy silence and haunting empty gaze were forgotten left to rot in the recesses of his mind with other unpleasantness. Now she spoke, tonight she was alive, with a vengeance that clamed few and left him speechless. And all he wanted now, more than any thing at all was to be as alive as she, with her.

This unknown mad woman, no longer a girl, took his right hand and placed it above her breast. The heart beneath it thundered under his gentle touch, merging with his own, until they beat as one. It was louder then the beat of a drum, louder than the thunder of a thousand storms, louder and fiercer than anything in the ‘verse. She let him into her. A thousand voices coursed in Mals’ mind, fire flooded his lungs, and she poured into his blood, stealing into his soul. And, in that instant he knew her, completely, and she him.

River. It came to him unbidden; her name was cinnamon inside him. Or it would be, if Mal had ever tasted cinnamon. “River,” he moaned softly, “Wode tian.” Now he knew whose death her eyes had prophesied, for he knew, he belonged to her, and he would be dead to the ‘verse, for all eternity.

Ecstasy set her nerves on fire. She never guessed, in these thousands of nights, that it would be like this.

“Manic Episode,” Simon the doctor had told her once. “Moon brained girl,” they called her. They clamed she was the product of a deranged and damaged mind, of torture and experiments. But she knew different, this was her way of existence now. To find someone, who alone would comprehend the world she existed in. Who would be steel, and protect her her from the poking, prying minds who tried to giver her thoughts that were not her own.

River trembled in anticipation.

The promise of destiny tinged the air and sang to their bones.

Mall pulled her tight. “Be the angel of my, this, nightmare.” How keenly he was aware of the places their bodies’ were pressed together. “Take me into your world, Kitten.”

Pulling away from him slightly, River smiled, revealing her teeth. “Kitten?” she asked amused.

“Thought you could just read my mind, well, not that anyone be so inclined to do so.” Her Captain was rambling now, as he tended to do when nervous.

“Can’t. You’re steel, and the girl can’t get through steel, ’less the doors are opened to her. Even invitations only let her see the rooms. Never the books with secrets, and dark things that lurk.”

Is it strange that I understood everything she said? He asked himself briefly. “You’re like a kitten,” he said with a sigh, “all fragile-like. But get you backed into a corner, and it’s all teeth, fangs and claws.”

“I like kittens,” she murmured to no one in particular. “Like Kittens more than Albatrosses.” She grinned widely, revealing her white teeth, two of which seemed very sharp…

Fangs, Mal whispered to himself in a dreamy haze of intrigue. The gorram girl has fangs. In his mind she used them, biting his neck. He could imagine her long legs wrapped around his, locking their bodies together, as her long nails left bloody scratches down his shoulder while she moaned in ecstasy.

“Are you sure you want it?” The same thing he was thinking was in her brain as well.

“Some… something about you, it’s just so wrong that it may well be right.” He couldn’t stand it any longer. “And little kitten, I may just be just as crazy as you for wanting this.”

“No wanting. Needing.” River told him. In that statement, she forgave him for wanting, and she wanted back.

The passion inside him swelled with every stolen second that passed. It consumed him, and she reveled in it. Mal pulled River to him with all his force, but she was not broken, as any other would be.

River pressed her lips to his, with a desire born of a thousand nights of boiled blood. Excruciating ecstasy shot through him, and only made her bolder still. She claimed his mouth, as if afraid that should she stop, the black would steal him from her. This was the enthrallment River had been searching for, so hard, so long.

Gently, she bit down on Mals’ lower lip with her teeth, those delicate deadly fangs, and snaked her hands through his hair to tangle her fingers within it. Moaning, Mal thrust his hips against hers, intent only on her. The harsh, cold reality of the real world had dissolved away…

Only to come crashing back, in the wake of the delicious hell they had made. Footsteps echoed in the hall outside River’s room, drawing closer and closer. Too much time had passed; Mal had been gone too long. They were looking for him.

Mal pulled himself from Rivers’ soft velvet lips with despair. It had seemed they would kiss forever, never coming up for air, when the noise had broken their embrace.

“Last chance. No take backs. If the boy goes now, his mother won’t scold him.” She said seriously, “you can leave and scrub the brain pan clean.”

“No!” Mal cried fiercely into her shoulder, “I only just found you. No power in the ‘verse can take you from me.” His fierce determination shone in his eyes. “They can try. Many a man has tried an’ failed to take what’s mine.”

Mal felt flush with the desire coursing in his veins. Where had it come from? He wondered. But deep inside he knew, somehow, it came from River.

The sharp, clear footsteps were drawing steadily closer.

They had precious little time together, Mal knew, and if he was to keep his Kitten, keep his darling, he might just have to fight the whole damn universe to do it. Especially that brother of hers.

River couldn’t hear his thoughts like everyone else’s, but she could sense his emotions. Her Captain wanted to fight, he felt like he did on Miranda now, getting ready for a holy war. Like him, she would never surrender what they had found, to the light, to the world he had lived in for so long, not to any one. For, he was hers, and she would guard their fire until the end of eternity and beyond.

There was only one thing left to do…

“Do you trust me? Do you trust what is in your heart?” River questioned of Mal; “do you believe in me?” Her large eyes were full of hope.

“How could I not?” Mal asked, his face alight with reverence, “You are mine. And I am yours.”

River didn’t want to, but she knew they had to. Better this outcome than any of the other 46,783 possibilities. One ended with Simon shooting the Captain, one with Inara hanging from a pipe over the engine after catching them in bed together, and those not the worst. Confrontation should be over. Left it with Reavers. River thought ruefully, thinking again of the events of Miranda.

The footsteps could be no more than a minute away now.

“Doctor comes with questions and queries. Confessions to be made even though he is not our Preacher.” She murmured, burying her head into his muscled shoulder. “Telling lies won’t save the damned.”

Kissing the top of her soft brown hair, Mal asked “Simon’s coming? And you want to explain this? Did I hear you right?” The disbelief in his mind was almost overwhelming for River.

“Needs to know. Possibility 3,699 of 46,783 has Simon shooting Mal over incident in bunk; possibility 709 has him taking me off ship to get me away from lecherous captain, and so forth.” Her slender fingers gently traced his ear, making him quiver and want to submit to her every whim.

“Hey!” the gasp escaped his lips and River quickly caught it with her own, “That’s not fair-like! You probably know that gets me all distracted!” Fiercely cupping the nape of River’s neck, he kissed her deeply, before breaking off in a flash of realization.

“Simon shot me!” He cried indignantly. “That chusheng xai-jiao de xiang huo.”

She could hear the foot steps just out side now. Simon was almost here. She didn’t care.

“Only in 249 of the possible outcomes. And only because you didn’t tell him.”

Rivers lips were still swollen from Mals last kiss when he leaned in again. Closing her eyes she tangled the fingers of her left hand in his hair and slid her right hand to his side. Mals’ own hands were firmly on her hips, pulling her tight to his body. Their toungs struggled for domination as the latch on Rivers’ door turned and Simon tentatively called out her name.

“River, mei-mei, have you seen the…” Simon stopped dead at the sight of his sister and his Captain in a heated embrace, the protein he had sent down so long ago completely forgotten.

At the sound of her name, River broke the embrace with a soft moan of displeasure, one that Malcolm answered with one of his own, before trying to pull her back. River slapped his hands and scolded, “Naughty boy, mustn’t be greedy!”

“Liou coe shuai du biao-tze huh hoe-tze duh ur-tze!” Simon roared, anger coursing in his veins. How dare any one touch his little sister like that!?! Without a second thought, he advanced to pull his sister away.

Discretely, and quickly, with the training of the assassin she was, River slid her hand down to the holster on Malcolm’s hip. Drawing and cocking the weapon in one sleek movement, too quick for even Mals' trained eye, she pointed the weapon at her own flesh and blood. “Mustn’t touch the girls toys, Simon. “ She said coolly, “Mustn’t break them or paint them red.”

Mal was aghast at her actions, while Simon, her dear Simon, had stopped dead in his tracks. “Mei-mei, do you know what he was doing to you?” The fear rolled off him in waves, and bathed River like slimy water. Disgust and anguish were her attackers as she clutched at Mals’ shirt and pulled him closer still in an effort to protect herself.

“Girl is being a girl, Simon.” She looked at him seriously, her large eyes daring him to try and take the fire from her lungs. “The girl is playing with her new toy as Simon plays with Kaylee. With fire and hot and sweet love!” The facts were in her words, mangled and contradictory, but real and direct.

“I do believe your sister is sayin’ she’s all grown up-like and can make adult choices. Now you best be keepin’ you gorram mouth shut about all this, less you want an unpleasant meetin’ with the air lock.” Mal fixed him with a glare Simon had never seen, only to have his own sister join his with one of a smoldering intensity over the barrel of the gun. “Girl will tell when the class has quieted down. Till then, they may have their recess.”

“No choices Simon. Girl says move, boy says how far.” The rumble in her voice was dangerous now, as dangerous as it had ever been. And in that second, Simon knew he had lost. His sister had grown up and away from him.

He turned with a sigh of defeat, and left them to be alone.

The last thing her saw, as he went to drown himself in Kaylees’ home-made wine, was a bowl of cold re-constituted protein being knocked over as Captain Malcolm Reynolds swept his River, his wonderfully insane River, into his arms for all the ‘verse to see.