She came to his room.
His actual room, knocked on his actual door, probably woulda climbed down his actual ladder if Jayne hadn't flown up it and hustled her down the corridor and around the corner. "Crazy," he snarled, shoving her against the bulkhead. "You outta your mind?" Forgetting that, technically, yeah she was.
She looked at him wide-eyed, needy, then turned her head to stare down the corridor into the cargo bay.
He knew what she wanted. There was only one thing she wanted from him, ever, and he'd given it to her every night for the past week. He'd bitched and moaned the entire time, but he'd given it to her.
Escape.
River wanted out.
She wanted him to put her in a suit, open up the airlock, and stand guard while she danced the void. She actually trusted him to pull her in when her air was used up. She wanted him to tie her to the ship so she wouldn't just float away, the way she wanted to but knew she couldn't. There was just enough sense in her poor addled head to know that what she wanted most of all couldn't ever happen, and she needed him for second-best.
Just him.
He sighed. More of a moan, really. Then he stepped back, turned her by her shoulders, and gave her a little push down the corridor.
She darted away like a butterfly, and by the time he caught up with her, she was suited up and ready to go. She jigged and jittered, babbling, as he double-checked hoses and gauges. "I'm dressed for the weather, and I'm going out to play--"
"How come this works?" he asked her. "Huh? Why should a space walk make any kinda difference?"
For half a second, her eyes cleared and focused. Then her gaze wandered to the window. "Shiny knights on spiky white horses have to find a new path through the enchanted forest," she said. "Can't if there's monsters in the way. No defense. Poor things don't have swords or turtles." She smiled a sweet, loony smile with teeth. "Suck the monsters out. Phoom. Blow up. Thermodynamics. Equilibrium. Internal pressure exceeds external pressure. Wants to equalize. Guts everywhere, but not in the forest."
"No such thing as monsters," he grumbled.
Her face crumpled. "They don't mean to be. They are. Can't help themselves. Like picking up a gun and scaring Kaylee. Can't be anything but what they are. They have to go out into the black and leave me alone. Some monsters are good. Too many is bad, bad, bad, badbadbad--"
"Put on your helmet, little girl."
She broke off her mindless mumbling and looked up at him. "Time for me to go," she agreed.
He hadn't expected an answer to his question, leastways not one that made sense. She was always worst right before he put her out. It was a funny thing to watch her, over the course of the day. Sane as a tax accountant when she woke up, but crazy as a gorram Junebug by the time they all went to bed. Everyone thought it was her new meds. Only Jayne and River knew better.
Just them.
"Pinky swear secret," she crooned. Her voice, blocked by the vacuum seals of her suit and the thick plastic of her helmet's faceplate, came weirdly through the comm he'd hooked into his belt. "Sacred vow. Let me out."
This was one of the worst parts of the business, opening the bay doors just enough to let her out into the airlock. He was always paranoid that the mechanics would wake someone up. He squeezed through the tiny opening after her and pushed his thumb on an indentation, which made a panel pop open to reveal a flat, tough tether rope with a hook on the end. They were left over from Serenity's old, old days, before they got suits with magnetics that'd hold someone tight to the side of the ship. They barely ever used these, because nobody went out in the black on their own, with nothing nearby to grab onto.
Except River.
It was the longest tether on the ship, and even then it was too short for her. She'd begged him to rip it out and attach it to another one, doubling her range. He'd flat-out refused. Just his luck, Mal would find out someone had mangled the safety tether.
He hauled her away from the door and snapped the hook through the catch on the back of her air pack. She couldn't reach it herself, which meant he had hook her up every night. But it also meant she couldn't undo it out there in the black.
"Going now," she said. "Going going gone." She fussed with the catch on the little door.
"Hey! Stop that! You ain't suckin' me out there with you." The only person who knew the override to open the bay doors and the airlock both was Mal, so he wasn't in danger. But the habit jittered him anyway. Who was to say she wouldn't pluck that override code out of Mal's head some day, and decide to get back at the hundan who'd turned her and her brother in on Ariel?
She said through the comm, "You wouldn't lay any more golden eggs. Let me out."
He squished himself back through the bay doors and closed them, wincing at the grind and groan. He hit the button that would pull the air from the airlock and plucked the comm off his belt. "Okay, little girl. Go out to play."
She let out an inarticulate squawk of joy. He watched the vitals monitor for a few minutes, then took a deck of cards out of his pocket and dealt himself a game of solitaire.
An hour later, he let air back into the airlock and opened the bay doors again. While he released her tether and coiled it back up in its hidden home, she undid the seals on her suit
"This is the last time," he told her. "You hear me? The last."
She made a little humming noise in her throat. Her eyes were clear and aware now, and her fingers in their puffy space gloves didn't flutter like trapped birds. "You said that last night."
"Meant it, too." He glared. "How do you do this, little girl? Every gorram night."
She batted her lashes at him. "I say please." She did a ballerina twirl and skipped into the cargo bay.
"Gose," he said, following her. "You don't say anything. And stop that." He slapped the button to close the bay doors.
Her face crunched up with mirth, and when the bay doors clanged shut, her giggles continued.
He shook his finger in her face. "This ain't no joke! Mal finds out, he's gonna slice my nuts off and feed 'em to me!"
She cocked her head to one side. "You seem awfully concerned for your testicles."
"Well, you would be too, if you were in my position."
"I don't have any," she said airily, stripping out of the suit. "Therefore I don't have to worry."
And that made sense. Which was scary enough in its own way. Little Miss Loony-Moony was making sense. Things in that scrambled head were connecting, right in front of his eyes, and he could carry on an argument with her without having to stop and mentally translate from Ribberish into Sane-People every five seconds.
He slumped down on a crate. "Gorramit, little girl. I do."
She looked at him steadily. "All you have to do is say no."
He looked back at her, skeptically. "I've said no."
"Ooops. All you have to do is mean no." She leapt up on the crate beside him, balancing as lightly as a leaf on the balls of her feet. She leaned close and whispered in his ear, "Problem is, you don't, do you? And you won't."
He turned his head to look at her from a range of a couple of inches, and thought distantly that it wasn't right, her having a mouth like that. She wasn't but . . . how old was she? For some reason, it was suddenly important how old she was.
Her lashes dipped, and that bee-stung mouth curved. "Eighteen," she said.
"I warned you about that stuff," he growled, getting to his feet.
She giggled again, folding her legs under her and plopping her butt down on the crate. "No need to worry about Jayne-nut butter," she said. "Mal doesn't know. Nobody knows, except thee and me."
"That won't last long if you don't get some sense," he told her, knocking on her forehead and half-expecting to hear an echo. "What was with that trick tonight, huh?"
"Everyone was asleep, silly," she said.
"And you can't work a comm?"
She glared. "You didn't answer."
Damn straight he hadn't, because he wasn't gonna do this anymore. He'd thought. He'd told himself.
He picked up the suit she'd shucked, dumped it in her lap, and pointed to the passenger dorms. "Go," he said. "Put that away and go to bed."
She tipped her head back carelessly, humming to herself, and held it long enough to make the point that she wasn't doing anything just because he asked. Then she gathered the suit up and padded away toward the cabinet, her bare feet noiseless on the grating. He started up the stairs.
"Jayne," she said when he hit the first landing.
It was enough of a novelty, her calling him by name, that he stopped and stared down at her.
"Tomorrow night?" she asked.
He glared.
She waited.
No sat on his tongue, trying to be said. But he couldn't say it.
After several moments, she smiled and went to bed.
Jayne scowled, furious with himself for not being able to say that one little word. He'd lied before.
FINIS