Yes. That was when. Just like that.

You're amazing, Fay.

Oh, yes. Just, yes.

I'm running out of words, Fay.

Except: more.

Even though this is (coincidentally) Grenier's birthday, this post is not sponsored by Absolut, or Victoria's Secret, or any of the other companies that 'sponsored' Vinnie's last birthday.

Mrs. Ari waited in her living room, appointment book spread out before her, pen in her teeth. He'd seen her name on something on Ari's desk once, but he still thought of her as "Mrs. Ari" much as he had when he was fresh from Queens.He noticed that her blouse, nail polish and toes all matched. Really matchy rich women were the one group that tended to make Vince nervous, as if they could tell that E. had looked up how to eat with multiple forks in a book so that Vince wouldn't be embarrassed at the Oscars.Still, he did what only seemed to come naturally, and smiled brightly.

"Nice place you have here."

She made a notation in her book. "Well, I can only take a little credit. It was decorated, mostly. Still, you like to add your own little touches, right?"

Vince considered his own place...he supposed he understood, if herb, skin magazines, and playstation controls were "little touches." "Right."

"That was a nice thing you did for Sarah. Seventh grade is so hard. But I know you're not just on some movie star mission of mercy...not unless the business has changed that much since my Kendall Scott days..."

"I keep looking for a classy way to say this, Mrs. Gold, but if there is one, I need some scriptwriter to give it to me. But I'm seriously sorry about having sex in the closet during your benefit. I wasn't intending to create a distraction or anything....I'm just infatuated, and I'm sure you, along with most of this town, know I can't be trusted at times like that."

Vince wasn't really sure what to expect after letting this pour out of him so he was only a little startled when Mrs. Ari snapped her perfectly manicured finger and said "Mandy Moore, right?"

Motherfucker, Chase...how much of a punk were you that year? "Um, among others, yes."

"I'm sorry, Vincent...it's just that now I remember what I know about you.Hopefully the people in that theater watching "How to Deal" till Ari disrupted it are similarly forgetful."

"Ari did that!"

'Yes, my husband loves grand gestures...it's the day-to-day that is sometimes lacking."

"I guess, after what I did, I don't have much room to comment about that. It was mostly my idea...I just don't want you to have bad feelings about Dr. Cuddy from this."

"Well, you did disrupt the awards presentation. To put it mildly."

Something about the way she said that made him want to smile and he had to think of auto accidents to stop himself.

"So, are you in love with her?"

"Excuse me, ma'am?"

"Humor me...I'm an old married lady, far from the Hollywood gossip and I'm tempted to write a script just to get my husband's attention."

"I'm sure you'd come up with a good one, if you wanted to. Maybe I could play the gardener or something."

"Don't do that...running yourself down makes it easier for other people to do it; I used to be an actress. I know."

He wanted to say "no, you used to be a soap slut, and lick your lips and arch your back a lot." but then add a little more water and shirtlessness and that could be his gig in Head-On, too. He felt good about QB, but that didn't make him De Niro.

flails

Oh, Jesus, Erika - this is just SO awesome! You killed me with E looking up the cutlery, and the little flashes of self-knowledge. Honest to God, you nail them!

Meanwhile - oh, lord, I'm glad you thought the Mal one worked.

Part VI:

She doesn't do it for fun – although it is fun, in its way. It's thrilling, exhilarating, makes her heart race fast faster fastest (stimulates the adrenal gland) and it's a challenge, that's the thing, because although they are stupid, they are many, so many, coming for her in ravenous waves. It's like grappling with numbers computer-fast; like pulling together pieces of a puzzle made from shards of broken glass and building something beautiful. It's a dance with too many partners, and none of them know the moves – but she knows. She can see the patterns that govern each blow, each lunge. She's smiling inside, light-hearted and joyous and free; potent now, not just potential. Unrestrained. Perfect. And the reavers keep coming, furious and frenzied and unreasoning, scrambling over their fallen kin, and so River need not hold anything back.

It's ironic, in its way, because it is only here, with these unpeople, that she can be unapologetically herself. As she darts and ducks and swerves and turns, as she punches and slices and severs and kicks, her movements precise and pure and lovely, calculated and efficient, she reflects upon how strange it is that she should be unable to share her bliss with the ones who love her. That it's only here, with these poor, wretched creatures of pure craving, that she can let her mind and body do what they have been built for. Only here, amongst people too damaged to recognise her own strangeness, that she can be as strong and as whole and as human as she knows she is.

She hates the ones who did this to her, of course, because she knows that in important ways she's broken. They gave her a new edge, honed away the corners and the layers that should be there, and now she doesn't fit properly in the place that should be hers. A broken puzzle piece. Now she doesn't say the right things, doesn't quite speak the same language as her brother or his friends. She upsets him. She embarrasses him. Day by day, as he scrabbles around desperate to undo what was done, she breaks his heart. And River hates that so badly that she is sometimes racked with storms of helpless weeping, but she can't unknow the things she knows, can't remember how to be small and constrained, can't go back in time to become the little sister he remembers. She tries, though, for Simon's sake. She's always trying, always conscious of the weight of his fears and hopes. She tries to make herself small and unthreatening, and to pretend she is a normal girl.

No pretending here and now.

And although she is broken in those small, stupid ways, although she does not often remember how to play the social games, how to say unimportant things – this is what they gave her in exchange. She hates them, will probably always hate them, but she does not hate herself. She does not hate being able to keep her brother safe. She does not hate being able to hear and see and feel and move the way they have helped her to hear and see and feel and move. She does not hate becoming big. Powerful. And she has her freedom now – Simon bought her that - so she is not their tool. And she is strong in a way that she should never have been strong; she is something terrible, something glorious, something like a god, almost. An avatar, perhaps – although whose avatar, she does not want to know.

(But she thinks she knows, in spite of herself. Has seen his smile reflected, sometimes, in mirrors, has caught a glimpse of a man taller than Mal Reynolds, a man with red hair and a laugh that shakes the world. She thinks she shouldn't like him, but – he is honest, she knows. She likes that about him.)

Time passes. River Tam feels her limbs grow heavy, her muscles begin to ache, and her clothes are plastered tight against her skin with her own sweat and other (continued...)

( continues...) people's blood, but she does not slow her pace, does not hesitate, does not flinch. She is spinning like a Sufi, her flesh an extension of her will, perfectly calm and lost in something like worship as she hacks order out of chaos, and keeps her brother safe. Keeps Kaylee and Mal and Zoe and even Jayne safe, because they have been protecting her all this time, and they are the only friends she has.

When the last one falls, River is shocked out of her trance by the sudden absence and she stands there for a long moment, statue-still, coming back to herself.

No more names on her dance card. Midnight. Time to turn back into a pumpkin.

“That's my girl,” murmurs a voice she knows, and she blinks up unsmiling at the red-haired man. He looks like a pirate on Earth-that-was. A storybook figure, larger than life and slightly sad. He looks nothing like the girl with the fish and the changeable hair, but River can still see the family resemblance. She knows about protective older brothers.

He reaches out to ruffle her sticky hair, and she lets him. “Give Del a kiss, when you see her next?” he says, and then he is gone, and River is left panting softly in the stillness while the dust settles and blood drips slowly down her blade.

Oh, Fay. That's visceral, you feel it as she's doing it, as you read.

erika, I'm sorry I don't follow your fandoms. Your talent is obvious, and I wish I had a better grasp on the worlds you move in.

Thank you...I'm glad you think that. Because it's not often that America admits we have classes, let alone a class issue. But my people are so much more like Vince and Eric than most of TV's people, it makes me really conscious of that kind of thing. Although my mother did teach me which fork to use, but I get the feeling that neither of those guys had parents that had space to care whether either guy ever fit in outside the neighborhood, whether or not they really used to get beat up and stuff like some of us tend to think. Which is weird. Ellin never intended to make a social document, but that stuff's in there anyway, mixed in with all the slashy stuff, wisecracks, and famous cameos. ETA: Beverly, thank you. It's okay; I never expected to fall so hard for this one anyway...I did not like the first one I watched. I don't know why this is so often true of my fandoms...trying to prove I can have unemotional television I suppose. But I can't. ETA: And we never see what's in "Head On," but judging from Ari's actor vs. movie star thing, and Vince's early work with Mentos, I'm guessing it wasn't Shakespeare. Or William Goldman, either.

Thanks, Beverly!

Final Part:

VII

It's on the third day, when he's resigned himself to using the useless gorram rifle as a crutch, and when he's really starting to regret not carrying any water on him just in case of emergencies, that he first sees the kid with the technicolor hair. Gets so excited that he tries shouting with his parched mouth and hears himself croak out something in a voice that don't sound much like his. Tries to break into a run before he remembers about his busted-up leg, and so then there's a long, painful while with him lying face down in the dust making noises like a little girl and trying not to snivel.

When he looks up, she's gone. Must've imagined her, is all. Not surprising, with the sun beating down on his head so hot, and no water for too damn long. Anybody might start seeing things. Creeps him out, somewhat, but there ain't no helping that. Jayne scowls, and keeps on hobbling towards civilization (not that he has much of an idea whether civilization is in this direction or the other one, but a man can't just sit on his ass in the middle of nowhere expecting help to come find him), and cusses out his no good crewmates under his breath. Last time he signs on with a woman captain, that's for sure. Damn woman had no sense of gorram humour, none at all. T'ain't even like she's all that good looking in the first place – he was practically doing her a favour, making the offer. Maybe he should've prettified it up some – his Momma always told him it weren't polite to mention a woman's age, specially when you're fixing to get up close and personal with her, and maybe mentioning that even though he's a handsome studd of eighteen, and she's got to be, what, oh, forty at least, he'd still be willing to give her a good seeing to, if she were mindful – well, maybe that weren't the best way to get her all buttery after all. But it's been a long while between ports, and Jayne'd had a powerful urge to have himself a little fun, and maybe he'd had just a little bit too much of the engineer's moonshine. He'd thought she liked him. Thought she'd be flattered to have a young fella like him willing to show her a good time. Turns out he ain't quite as good at reading a woman's intentions as he'd kind of flattered himself he was. No need for her to black his eye for him, though. Jayne can take a hint. Well, eventually. When it's made real clear, and short words are employed. Ah, well, maybe he's not great at hints, actually, come to think of it – but, even so, he holds that there's no call to go blacking a fella's eye and leaving him on some dusty little two-bit excuse for a moon like she gone done. And with no water, at that. That just ain't friendly.

He really needs a drink. And not a beer, nor a stoup of liquor. He really, really needs water. It's starting to kind of not be funny.

* * *

He's going to get up again real soon. Just resting a little while. Anybody would need a rest, if'n they'd been walking across a dustbowl like this with no damn food an' no damn water for longer'n it takes to ransack three towns and get elected mayor of a fourth. And the boulder's real comfy. He's not giving up, or nothing. Just resting, until the sky decides which colour it's supposed to be, and the rocks stop dancing like they're pretty girls at some fancy shindig. Just resting.

• * *

“That's a very nice crutch,” says the girl, eyeing Jayne's rifle judiciously. He sits up straighter, and glowers at her.

“It's a gun, not a crutch,” he says, because he's not leaning on it right now, and the way she said it made him feel kind of unmanly. “It's a very dangerous weapon, for blowing the heads off of people who go poking around where they don't belong.”

“No, it's just shaped like a gun,” she says, firmly. Her eyes are wrong, Jayne notices after a moment, and it makes him stare. He wonders whether it's lenses, or a cheap-ass piece of backstreet surgery. “They come in all shapes,” she adds, planting a tulip in the barrel of his rifle. Jayne stares at the (continued...)

( continues...) tulip. He's pretty sure she didn't have a tulip in her hand a moment ago, but there it is, sticking out of his gun like a flag. He's never had occasion to learn a whole lot about flowers, but he has a feeling they don't normally come covered in black and orange polka dots. “You can get crutches shaped like people, or books, or bottles, or icecream. Or ones that blow away in a good gust of wind, like dust. I like those ones best.” She looks thoughtful. “Of course, that kind don't work so well if you want to strap them on your leg, like a parrot. Pirate. One or the other.” She eyes his damaged leg dubiously. “That's after they saw it off,” she adds. “The leg, not the parrot.”

Jayne winces at this disturbing talk of leg removal. “You got any water?” he asks, suddenly recognising this for the opportunity it is.

The girl frown, and pats her way down her body. She's wearing a fancy looking embroidered silk vest that's too big for her, with nothing underneath, and a pair of drawstring fisherman's pants. Realistically there can't be that many places where a flask could be hiding, but Jayne is an optimistic soul.

“No,” she says. “No. I've got some absinthe, and a sterling silver flask of bitter tears, and I think there's an old bottle of petroleum-mango smoothie somewhere. But no water.”

Jayne considers these options in silence for a little while, and notes, as he does so, that her long, snakey, pink-turquoise-yellow-orange hair seems to have shrunk down into a buzzcut while he wasn't paying attention. He scowls, and leans forward, and tries to look threatening, because he gets the sneaking feeling that this little girl isn't treating him with the wary deference due to a very large man with a very large gun. “Am I dreaming?”

She cocks her head and studies him closely, as if this merits serious consideration. She doesn't look even a little bit intimidated. “I shouldn't think so,” she says at last. “No. No, I don't think I'd be here if you were dreaming, would I? Silly.”

Jayne blinks. He isn't too sure about that logic, but it does seem, on some puzzlingly primal level, to make sense. He subsides back against the boulder, and pats his gun like it's a small dog.

“You should have brought water,” his new-found friend tells him, and Jayne bares his teeth. “And maybe some bullets for the gun.”

“I thought you said it was a crutch, not a gun,” says Jayne, feeling triumphant.

She looks at him with an expression of profound pity. “You weren't listening very well. All crutches are guns too. It just depends how you hold them.”

“Missy, you make about as much sense as a chimpanzee in a convent,” Jayne snaps.

“Most monkeys aren't very religious,” she says, seriously. Then her brow furrows. “Although chimps aren't monkeys. They're privates. Or is that soldiers?” She scratches her head, and looks a little embarrassed at this lapse. “I think it might be bishops that are primates. Or that might be cappucinos.”

Jayne makes a little mouth-yapping-on gesture with the hand not currently stroking his rifle. “You sure do talk a lot, for a hallucination.”

She nods. She doesn't seem offended, which is probably a good thing. “Sometimes I'm VERY VERY QUIET , like a teeny-tiny mouse, and other times I'm so loud it bursts your eardrums and sends blood snaking down your neck. It depends on the moon. And the season. And what colour mercury is that day.” She stares up at the sky. “And sometimes I just scream. I can scream for days and days and days.”

Jayne swallows dryly. “I'd take it as a real kindness if this wasn't one of those days,” he says.

She winks at him, and then digs her hand into her pocket and looks fascinated by the little bag that she finds there. “Oooh!” Jayne watches her, because there's nothing else to do. The writing on the bag looks like Chinese, but it don't make no sense to Jayne, and he thinks maybe it's older nor that, maybe one of those other languages that died out when they fled Earth-that-was. Although what the hell anyone would be thinking of, to put old (continued...)