Take Mal's reaction, double it twice, and you have Jayne and Simon. The two have disturbingly similar expressions of shocked horror on their faces when they catch a glimpse of Mal showing River Song around.

"Doctor," says Mal, roughly, gesturing at Simon. "Public relations," he says, gesturing at Jayne. Simon snorts and covers it, badly. Jayne swats the doctor on the shoulder with a fist.

"Ow," says Simon, "Hey!"

Kaylee hears the voices and her lover's cry of pain, mild though it was, and emerges from a corridor, covered in her usual patina of grease and engine oil.

"Hiya," she says, seeing River Song, "Who's this, Captain? We takin' on passengers? Simon can move into my bunk-"

"I can?"

"—I thought you'd want to—" Kaylee looks hurt. Simon's face, much to Mal and Jayne's amusement, is fighting between apology and anger that he's managed to somehow put his foot in his mouth, again. And he'd been doing so well, for almost two years.

"I just, uh, it's not that I don't want to, it's just that I'd really rather you asked me, first," said Simon. "And there's River to think of, as well…"

Eventually Kaylee will get tired of that excuse, River Song can tell already, though she doesn't yet know either Kaylee or Simon's names.

Mal eventually decides to put the good doctor out of his misery, and says, "Ain't no call for that yet, Doc, don't worry your pretty little head. We got room."

They are all silent for a moment thinking of whose room it is they have.

River Song can take no more of the tension. She's on an awkward footing, and she needs to know these people if she's going to manage here, to ever feel even a minimum of security. She smiles brightly and stretches out a hand to Kaylee, deciding that it would be politic to prevent Kaylee from feeling as though she might have even the slightest interest in the doctor. This doctor, anyhow.

"River Song," she says. "Nice to meet you."

"Kaywinnit Lee Frye, but you c'n call me Kaylee," says the mechanic, smiling sweetly. The newcomer has something like Inara's glamour, even though she's wearing a man's shirt and short pants and her hair is a mess. River Song, for her part, finds Kaylee instantly adorable, if a little saccharine. She hopes the girl will be bearable.

"Simon," Simon says, putting forth his own hand. "Hi."

"Hello," says River Song, biting back a sweetie. The goofy young doctor who says the wrong thing…the one comfort of her childhood, however occasional, the lust object of her adolescence. Okay, yeah, and now, too.

"Jayne," growls the merc, looking River up and down without the slightest hint of shame. She finds this refreshing, and returns the favor. Jayne grins. "Y'know," he says to Mal, "I like this passenger. Why can't we have ones like her all the time?"

Simon rolls his eyes. "Don't bother the human women, Jayne," he says.

"What? Then how'd I ever get—"

"Let's go look at the, uh, kitchen," says Mal, and Kaylee eagerly joins the tour and steers River Song by the elbow after the captain, chattering happily as she goes.

…

River Tam is flying solo. She is many things up here, alone. She is most of all herself because there is no one to tell her otherwise, no one to say her words aren't right the way they are, to look at her askance as she grins apropos of nothing they can see or hear. She is grinning now, looking out into the black, knees drawn up to her chest because it's easy flying for the moment and she's come to her delta, found another tributary of the great river, merged for the moment. They will diverge again, not too far in the future, of course. The melodious River must go back to her madman in his box, to her mother and father still searching all the time, though they know it's rare enough their girl can come home.

They look for her. They at least want her, whatever shape she comes in. Even if she shot the madman out of his box, it wasn't her fault, it wasn't her, Melody, it was the weapon instead.

River understands why the other changed her name. The need to be new, the reforging makes you another machine, gun gone to something less harmful. The need for a new word, because a new word has a new definition that is not theirs, and words are important, words can be weapons too. They called her River, in That Place, but so did Simon and her parents when she thought she was sure of their love. She wrote it neatly on the top of her pages of equations, saw it printed cleanly on awards and programs for dance recitals, sees it now below her photograph on a wanted bulletin on the Core. River Tam is who she was before and who she wants to be again, and she's not going to let them change her name, too, along with everything else they took.

But those people on that bright white ship, the terrifying woman with her half-sight looking over all, the soldiers and religion pervading the air, everything always war, and then that house like a nightmare, that house like River's tattered mind at the very beginning of her coming back, they were the only ones in the other River's memory who called her Melody, for a very long time.

She didn't hear music until she was ten.

This hurts River Tam, to think about the whole hole in the other girl's heart. It's larger than hers, the location different. Of course they didn't literally alter her heart (yes, she only has one, even distracted her guardian doctor would have noticed that). The nature of Time. A River in one direction, mostly; places you can't turn around, where the current is too strong; things that can't be changed despite the aching pull of every atom in a body.

And music. Stays inside your head and keeps you sane and her brother is sometimes too much like Victor Frankenstein (what does that make her? but she'd be that monster-mad if all she could find to read was Milton, anyway) and locks himself up voluntarily, hiding.

Good that Kaylee's good at sifting through mechanical parts and finding human hearts.

River has a mental image of Kaylee collecting a trove of beating human hearts from Serenity's engine and laughs out loud.

"Somethin' funny, lil Albatross?"

The captain's leaning in the doorway, trying to look irate but half-smiling at her in spite of himself.

"Hearts in the engine," she says.

"That's what Kaylee would say."

"Yes. Are you angry?"

"About Miss Song or whatever her name is? A little. She reminds me in a powerful fashion of Saffron, and that ain't an adventure I'm in a hurry to repeat."

"Not like Saffron."

"You sure?"

Dramatic eyeroll. "Yes."

Mal heaves a sigh, equally dramatic. "Mind tellin' me what she is like, then? I wouldn't object to knowin' the who, either."

"Whom," says River. She doesn't need to look to know the face Mal's making, but that's not psychic or broken, just familiarity, and it feels warm as a quilt.

"Shut up."

"You want me to speak."

"Yeah, on the question I asked you."

"Little girl lost, just like me. Parents fooled by the pretty doll, so lifelike. Even her father so good at watching didn't see. Has a doctor, too, watches over her, but she's afraid of her when she's near him. She knows things, like me, but doesn't hear them, lives them wrong, out of order. Her brain isn't broken but her mind is bent and her time is shattered in between five thousand years."

"Oh-kay…" he takes this in a moment. Doesn't seem too threatening, and the other girl's definitely not from the same cloth as this River. Way too lucid, normal-seeming. "Her name's her right name, and everything?"

"Complicated question." River Tam is grinning.

"She is who she says she is?"

"No one is who they say they are. Words are too simple. All of language wouldn't work to say a mind."

"You know what I mean, Albatross."

She smiles wider and ducks her head a little in acquiescence. "Yes. She is River Song. She has been a thief but not from us, she has been a weapon but not theirs, she will sift through the past forever and sing in an endless loop, because she took her turn with her doctor, too."

Mal has pretty much gotten lost in the woods of her words. "Not in a way Kaylee's gonna object to? I mean, that last part."

She rolls her eyes. "Different doctor, different turn. Saved her so she saved him. But she did that too. Not with Simon though."

"You vouch for her?"

"I will be her voucher, yes. I will be her security."

"Good enough for me."

"I knew it would be."

"Told you, stay outta my head."

"Didn't need to go in."

"Oh?"

"Captain," she turns her head toward him and she's grinning like an ordinary girl, brimming over with laughter at her own thoughts, thoughts she can make into words, "You gave me the order to take off three hours ago."

With the other River on board. Oh. "Oh," says Mal.

"Oh, yes," says River Tam, letting the echo loose from her mouth.