Prologue:

She knew Simon thought she was crazy. She couldn't blame him really. She saw things that weren't there. People in the infirmary that were dying or recovering, not members of the crew. She saw the cargo bay, doubled in size with a second level of grating nine feet above the cargo deck, filled with wounded and the walls hung with IV hooks as if Serenity was still a medical ship. The passenger quarters occupied by nurses and doctors.

She saw Mal in places that he wasn't, talking to people who weren't there anymore, bargaining, complaining or giving orders. Zoë was shaking her head at a mustached Wash. A cocky man with tattoos in the engine room. A behemoth of a man with a mustache and beard, Mal slung over his shoulder, both of them drunk as lords.

The shadows were alive in the corners of her room, under the catwalks and in the halls, murmuring with the voices of a million souls across the 'Verse. They filled her head with demands, wails, joys, sorrows, rage and worst of all, nothingness. She hated when they screamed with their silence. Nothing was worse, not even the continuous rage of Reavers.

Simon thought turning on the light in her room so she could sleep under its bright warmth would help her. That just made the shadows harder to see. The voices didn't stop, they simply came from nowhere.

The shadow under her bunk weren't the same as the ones in the corners or the hall. The voice was more singular, and easier to understand. Though she couldn't be any more certain that it was real.

"River, who were you talking to?" Simon's worried face stared down at her as he slid open her door.

She looked up from her seat on the floor, wondering how he couldn't see glowing eyes like a cat's reflective irises in the shadows beneath her bunk. "She is making friends," She told him solemnly.

"Friends with who?" Now his worry increased tenfold, orange and green tentacles reaching their sticky tendrils towards her.

"She is making friends with the monster under the bed." River gave the 'monster's' eyes an apologetic look and got a wave of amusement in return. She could feel he didn't mind such a soubriquet, found it appropriate and humorous both.

"I…see…"

But he didn't, not really. She might not be able to get along with all the voices, but the monster was easier than they were. Her monster always made sense. The voices didn't. Not enough to apply logic to their existence. "If we shadows have offended…" She murmured and her monster gave her a grin.

The monster wasn't always there when she looked. He'd be there for months at a time and then gone for weeks before reappearing. At least she believed him to be male. His voice sounded like a man's, deep and almost rough, but she supposed monsters could have different genders than humans.

"What're you doing when you're not talking to me little girl?" He asked her once.

"Draw, dance, explore Serenity and try to avoid the infirmary. Do my best to not be creepifying." She shrugged, untying her laces and weaving them through the eyelets differently. "What do you do when you're not talking to me."

"Run mostly," He'd sounded amused, but he often did, as if life was a perpetual game. Maybe to him it was. "Kill folks occasionally. Sometimes fly. Deal with monsters." Curiosity lightened his voice, "What's creepifying?"

She guessed he was asking what she tried to avoid rather than a definition of the word, "Try not to make remarks that are morbid. Observations on how quickly the human body can be drained of blood given adequate vacuum systems is creepifying. Staring at the Captain when he drinks coffee is discouraged. Watching the man with a girl's name improve his muscles is something he finds creepifying. He does not like the girl much."

"Why's that?"

"Thinks the girl is dangerous," River shrugged. "He is not wrong. Fugitive."

"Yeah?" His amusement was plain. "That ain't so dangerous. Little thing like you." Despite his humor she hadn't found his comment condescending, more like he was teasing her, inviting her to show off how dangerous she could be.

"She is dangerous in other ways," River had told him. But there had been no reply.

It was almost a month later before she saw him again. Sadly, she wasn't having a very good day. Simon had caught her watching the ghosts of Serenity's past and dosed her. So, she concentrated on her monster much less than usual.

"She doesn't want to see anymore," Her eyes wouldn't even focus properly. "Stick needles in my gorram eyes and show me off like a doll. Old men covered in blood but it never touches them. Tiě shí xīn cháng. The blue will take over and we will all burn. They fly without containment, too close to the sun but their wings don't melt and all they do is scream. Hubris brought Icarus down but it isn't their pride that gave them the wings, pride of old men. Covered with blood. Distant and Blue and uncaring. Tòng bù yù shēng."

"So, don't look," The suggestion was practical. "Talk to me instead."

"Her thoughts fly, ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, but the Highwayman is shot down like a dog and cannot rescue her from the monsters," River told him seriously. "She could plait a love knot into her hair but only tragedy lies down the ribbon of moonlight. Broken hearts cannot be mended. No one to stymie the Redcoats. They come marching. Look to hear the tromp of their boots any moment. He doesn't have straw hair, but blue eyes are greedy."

"Tell me the story," Her monster commanded mildly. "Tell me the whole thing, beginning to end. Focus on that. Don't worry about anything else."

"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees," River began obediently. "The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, the road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor, and the highwayman came riding- riding-riding- the highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door…"

River stopped in the middle of their conversation and tilted her head, lowering her voice, "Simon is restless." She told the monster. "He does not see what she does. Thinks her mad for talking to the monster under the bed. Making friends with him."

"Well there's lots of folks don't think I'm exactly sane," He'd chuckled, low and dark a wicked sound that simultaneously reassured and set her nerves and skin prickling with sensation.

"She is given medications to help solve a problem that only exists in Simon's mind," River told him. "Thinks she has a mental problem."

"You ain't the only one," He told her. "Why don't you just not take the drugs if you don't like them?"

"Under observation at all times," She said glumly. "Kindly meant but stifling."

"So? Stop hidin' and do what you gotta," He advised. "Can't hide what you are. Can't change what happened. Just gotta work with it. You wouldn't be the only one dealt a bad hand. We all adapt or we die. You're too stubborn to die, so you'll adapt. Put your brain to work on that for a bit. You can always talk it out with me."

She considered that for a moment, "I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour."

"Everybody lies," She told him after he'd disappeared for three weeks. "Even when they don't mean to. Say fine when they are not. Say good when they don't mean it. Say it's for the best when that is only opinion. Based truths in faith when faith is not certain and the book has anomalies. There are no believers in carnal houses."

"Yeah," He'd agreed. "Truth is the rarest thing in the 'verse."

"She doesn't like lies," River gave him an understatement. "They hurt her head. Make her confused when thoughts and words don't align. As I am an honest Puck and if we have unearned luck, we will make amends ere long. And no one ever believed Cassandra." Her monster never minded when her words would go on a tangent that had nothing to do with the conversation at hand.

"Yeah, lies smell bad to me, part of why I don't much like people." He told her with what sounded like a smile. "Maybe don't pay attention to what they're saying?"

"React to thoughts and not words and they are uneasy and she is creepifying. Thoughts and words collide and create chaos when she hears both. Contradictions upon contradictions," She sighed. "She has not felt lies from him. Likes that."

After Miranda she'd gone back to her bunk to look for her monster. He hadn't been there, not during the entire duration of the repairs to Serenity. Not when they began to sail the Black again. After five months she stopped looking. She didn't want to believe the friend she'd made was merely a symptom of her fractured mind. He'd been so real. More solid than the ghosts she still saw around Serenity.

But when he didn't return she had to accept that he was either gone for good or he'd never been there to begin with.

Author's Note: This is an experiment; I wanted to write something entirely from River's point of view. I've done my best to mix some of the Riddick-verse in with the Firefly-verse. The story began as something inspired by Eminem's song by the same name. I also experimented a little with the nature of Furyans as spirit warriors and the influence of the animal side.

Chinese Translations:

Tiě shí xīn cháng (to have a heart of stone / hard-hearted / unfeeling)

Tòng bù yù shēng (to be so in pain as to not want to live / to be so grieved as to wish one were dead)

Quote Sources:

If we shadows have offended – A Midsummer Night's Dream – William Shakespeare

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees – The Highwayman – Alfred Noyes

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, the road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor, and the highwayman came riding- riding-riding- the highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door. – The Highwayman – Alfred Noyes

I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour. – Much Ado About Nothing – William Shakespeare

As I am an honest Puck and if we have unearned luck, we will make amends ere long.- A Midsummer Night's Dream – William Shakespeare