I own nothing.

----

River was watching him again. Kaylee had pointed it out to Simon the first time, and since then he'd noticed it happening more and more. Jayne was helping the Captain and Zoë move boxes into the hold. If this was the first time Simon had caught her watching Jayne, he'd have thought she was just calmed by the methodical movement. Pick up the box, carry it over, put it down. Pick up the box, carry it over, put it down.

Simon sat down next to River and joined her in watching them load boxes. "Why him?" he asked quietly.

"You're not going to yell?" she asked him. "Everybody who knows seems to think you would."

"River, you're twenty-one. As much as it pains me to admit it, you are an adult now. Your decisions are your own," he told her with a gentle smile. "Even if those decisions are utterly absurd."

She smiled back, but that didn't last very long. "It's... a combination of factors," she started. "On the surface, he isn't my brother or in love with someone else, and he likes me, if only platonically for now."

"River..."

"Can't force him to love me, I know. I'll... allow events to follow their natural progression. The next level down is how he thinks. He doesn't know what he thinks until he says it. Like Alice."

"Alice?"

"In Wonderland. It's quiet around him a lot, but when it's loud inside him it's also loud outside him. Very few contradictions about him. Below that is the dreams he had."

"I'm not sure I want to know what he dreams about."

"They're not all like that. He has dreams like that about nearly every woman he's ever seen. But I'm the only one in the other dreams, the ones with his mother and with children running around and with good beef stew cooking for dinner. He keeps forgetting I was in those dreams, but he remembers that the dreams were good ones. Aside from that-"

"I think you've proved that he could love you, River," Simon said. "But could you love him?"

"I don't know," River said. "I think I already do. What I feel... it's something like what Wash felt for Zoë but more... new? No, that isn't quite what I mean. Is it love like a brother or is it more? I don't know yet, and it confuses me." She looked at her brother. "Your lack of reaction doesn't help me to decide."

"Would you prefer if I yelled, like everyone thought I would?"

"No. Of course not." She looked back into the cargo bay, where Jayne had dropped the last box. "I think," she said, and then paused to take a breath. "I think we were expecting this. Everyone who had eyes to see with. It was... is... inevitable. I don't know, maybe I'm just being crazy again. Heaven knows I've had enough practice. But I feel safe around him, and it throws me off balance, but in a good way, and I want to be loved, and I wasn't even sure I'd live to see eighteen with the Alliance after me, and... and..." River turned her face away, struggling to regain her composure as she'd been taught as a child, a last fragment of a society that had torn her apart. "I am nearly sure that I love Jayne Cobb," River said eventually. "I am nearly sure that he could love me back, and I am nearly sure that we could be happy together for however long we have left. And that is why him."