He found her, unsurprisingly, in the engine room huddled in a corner crying. Jayne looked around before holstering Boo, glad to see the engine was still turning and nothing seemed to be broken.

“Ah, Kaylee,” He said in his best reassuring voice, “Ain’t no need to be crying, I ain’t going to shoot ya.” He walked toward her as un-threatenly as he could.

Kaylee lifted her head and stared at him through red-rimmed eyes. “What’s going on?” She asked her tone frightened and worried.

“Just summin needed do’in.” He kneeled down next to Kaylee, sweet trusting Kaylee, who after a moment’s hesitation wrapped her arms around him in an attempt to comfort herself.

It was quick and painless and a moment later Kaylee’s body slumped to the floor of the engine room, her head at an odd angle.

Jayne looked up from staring at Kaylee’s body when he felt Her near. He smiled when River entered the engine room. The crazy girl was no longer wearing those summer dresses that fell limply around her body and hid the well-defined muscles. Instead she was wearing a pair of green cargo pants and a black tank top along with her combat boots. Around her hips was a familiar belt and holster. Her right hand rested on the butt of the Mare’s Leg.

River smiled at Jayne’s look of disappointment. She knew he had coveted that gun the first time he saw it.

“The doc?” He asked.

“Dead. It’s done.” She answered him.

He smiled with a leer as he gained his feet. She could feel the energy and sexual lust coming off him in waves and welcomed it, bathing her mind in it, careful to keep the blocks in his mind in place.

The sex was quick and painful. He thrusted his huge maleness into her with rough abandon. She only tightened her strong legs around his waist, opening herself to him even more, biting down on his right nipple, her heels digging into his buttocks and her nails leaving bleeding trails on his back.

After he came spilling himself inside her, she had them get dressed, and ordered him to deal with the bodies of the crew while she would see to their course.

Jayne dragged Kaylee’s body to the airlock first since it was closest. He found Simon’s body in the infirmary and at first laid it over Kaylee’s body, groin to face until River chided him in his mind and moved her brother’s body to lay beside Kaylee. Then he went to the bloody mess that was Mal’s body, riddled with holes from Boo. The face was still recognizable, though, which was necessary. Always beside him was Zoë, shot through the head from Boo’s last bullet. Grabbing an arm from each he dragged them down to the airlock.

When he dragged Wash and Book down to the airlock he made sure to drop them a few times on the catwalk laughing at his revenge from when they had hauled his unconscious body after the Doc had drugged him. River didn’t reprimand him for it. Inara was in her shuttle, neck broken like Kaylee. He noticed that his bondmate had done a nice clean job. He stared at Inara’s body the longest, wanting to reach out and tear away the clothes that hid the secret places of her body that he had always wanted to see. River, however, filled his mind and forced him to just take the body to be with the others in the airlock.

When that was done, Jayne made his way to the bridge and kneeled down beside the pilot’s chair were River sat deftly controlling the ship. He laid his head in her lap and waited. She was quick to idly begin petting his short hair with her hand while continuing to pilot the ship. Jayne practically purred beneath her touch, glad that she had forgiven him for his earlier mistakes.

He nuzzled her thigh as she petted him, her mind filling his in all the good spots, reinforcing the mental blocks, and caressing his pleasure center.

It didn’t take long for them to reach to the Alliance base.

Once they were in range, River opened up communications and contacted the ship.

The man on the screen had blue-gloved hands and smiled at River. “Welcome back, I take it the mission was a success.”

“Of course.” River smiled still petting the short hair beneath her hand.

The blue-hand glanced at Jayne and frowned, but only said, “The usual implements are waiting for you in the adjoining airlock.”

Jayne whimpered a bit at that, but quieted under River’s soothing hand and mind.

“Of course.” She said though inwardly she laughed.

Once docked, Jayne and River made their way to the airlock. They ignored the bodies that were laying in neat rows. River opened the adjoining airlock and stepped inside. She laughed to herself at the implements that hung on the wall.

It always amused her that even though she was a psychic assassin who had killed twenty Operatives sent against her, that most if not all of the people at the lab were more terrified of Jayne. She supposed it was because she would just kill them if she decided to: Jayne on the other hand.

River turned to look at Jayne who was quick to kneel down under her gaze. She smiled at him and ruffled his hair before taking down the first of the implements. She buckled the wide leather collar around Jayne’s neck and then took down the handcuffs from the wall. She cuffed his hands in front of him, running the chain through his belt to keep hid hands at his waist. The muzzle with its barred mouth plate to keep him from biting anyone with his reconstructed teeth was then buckled in place around his head. Finally, River snapped the chain leash to the metal ring on the front of the collar and Jayne was then able to get to his feet and followed his bondmate through the adjoining airlock and into the Alliance/Blue Sun lab.

Waiting for them was their handlers, the two men with blue gloves on their hands. The two men were also psychically linked and had extensive training. They were not psychic like, River, however. River could not read them, though, like she could anyone else.

The blue hands led them through the corridors of the lab. People in the halls were quick to hug the walls as they went by, terrified of the bogeyman in their midst. Some of them remembered Jayne from before River came to the Academy. They had the right to their fears.

And some knew the sins of Miranda, and they feared what might be the wielder of retribution that walked in their midst.

As they came closer to the lab, she felt the slack on the leash leave as Jayne slowed in their movement. She could feel the reluctance echoing down the link that made his steps falter. She sympathized, but was quick to admonish both in his mind and using the leash to tug him along.

Inside the lab was the chair that made River afraid, but she no longer had to endure it. Along with the medical equipment and lab personnel was the object of Jayne’s reluctance: an eight cube metal cage that had been his home for two years before River had come to the Academy and had bonded him to her. The bonding had been slow and it had taken months before the bond managed to break through the insanity caused by the PAX. Eventually she found some remnant of the man who along with his wife and two children had answered the call by the Alliance to settle on the planet of Miranda: a remnant of the man who unlike his family had not lain down to die. And that man had been pulled forth kicking and screaming both from River’s bond and Alliance medicine used to alter his appearance from the hideous visage that came from self inflicted wounds and radiation burns.

It was River who unlocked the steel reinforced cage, and opened the door. She removed all the implements but the leather collar and using the bond that she had created and strengthened and used to keep him partially sane and able to do his job she forced him to go into the cage and then locked it.

She soothed him with her mind as she followed the blue hands into the interrogation room where the debriefing would begin. There she would tell them everything she had gleaned from Mal and his many and varied contacts about the rebel movement and the enclaves where former Independents plotted the second war. Afterwards, Operatives and strike teams would be sent to wipe them out and hopefully put an end to the absurd idea of rebelling against the Alliance.

And then, she thought, they would find a new mission for them. Because that’s what they did, they slipped themselves into the lives of those whom they must and slept, waiting for the moment to awaken.