Disclaimer: Firefly is the property of Joss Whedon.

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She moves. Her hips sway, her arms wave, her feet step. Her body is a canvas on which music can paint a picture, on which she can express herself howsoever she chooses.

She always did love to dance. When she was a girl she would dance just for the sake of dancing. She was always first in her class to learn a new routine and she was always magnificent at it. She never missed a step, a beat. She was always prima ballerina.

Now she dances still. She dances with tears in her eyes, Serenity’s cold metal deck plates imprinting into the soles of her feet, leaving marks. She dances with a smile on her face, the warm grass beneath her feet when Simon lets her outside sometimes while they’re out planet-side.

She dances to the phantom notes of music she imagines she can hear floating on the thick, recycled air around her. The notes are soft and ethereal; they are the beginnings of a sorrowful waltz. The music fills her with a phantom longing, a longing for the times that used to be. For the times that would never be again.

When she dances she feels free and whole. She can escape the nightmares; she can put herself out of reach of the blue hands, of all those people that tortured her. She is safe from her own brother’s concern which, although completely warranted, is sometimes a little burdening and overwhelming.

Her body moves; she sashays, twirls, spins. She spins quickly and quicker still until she loses focus, until she feels herself beginning to fall. She stares up at the cold metal hull overhead, looming over her as she catches her breath and the world stops spinning. She feels the cold metal deck plates beneath her back as she lays there, putting the pieces together again.

Every day she takes another step, another leap in the dance of life. Every day she spins. She can never stop spinning. Her life revolves around her and the lines become blurred. She can’t distinguish between fantasy or reality. She can’t tell between nightmares and dangers much closer to home. It’s the dance we do.

She’s broken, but when she dances she’s perfect. When she dances she’s herself again, the person she used to be before all the tragedy which had befallen her.

When she dances her body moves like the waves on the ocean; with an almost spectral fluidity. Tears continue to fall from her eyes, the tears that overwhelm her in sleep, in sitting. When she dances they drive her to create something beautiful, something wonderful, something artistic.

As she dances, each step builds up to something more elaborate, something unsurpassable, something unrivalled. Then her routine ends with a flourish.

River Tam is a creature of extraordinary grace, even as she draws her last breath in the grand finale of her dance of life. Now she can be whole at last forever.