A/N Remember me?

*smiles sheepishly*

I'm sorry that I haven't posted in ages. The words just never came together whenever I tried to write. But then I opened up a draft chapter that I started a million years ago in response to a prompt from Togapika and suddenly a story materialised.

I'm not sure if Togapika is even following this fic anymore, but if they are, this is for you and I hope it's still enjoyable despite the veeeeery long wait.

Honestly, I'm kind of wondering if it's that great a story, but at this point I figured, why not just post something?!

So, for those still following or who love Rayne, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and hope you enjoy :)

Equilibrium

Balance had always been important to River.

Dancing required stability and poise.

But after the Academy, the need for balance had taken on a sharper edge.

She had always loved to dance but the stakes were much higher when you danced between sanity and madness.

For a long time, she couldn't get the steps right.

Prior to Miranda, balance had been near-impossible, precarious at best, and only ever maintained for all-too-short bursts before something derailed her again.

The removal of the weight of millions of silent screaming souls had left her almost light-headed, with the potential to find equilibrium for the first time in years, but also with a need to recalibrate, to find her feet, after straining so long in one direction against an impossible weight.

Lucidity was possible, but not natural. It had to be actively sustained.

Maintaining lucidity was like walking a tightrope whilst juggling geese. Lose focus, lose rhythm for one moment, and something drops. A bird here, a bird there, until you yourself fall, tumbling back to earth, breaking bones and memory.

Piecing yourself back together to tread the rope again was a painful, torturous process. Far better to adjust, amend, shift when your balance was threatened. To regain control and keep yourself on track.

The others didn't understand this. Didn't understand how adjustments, sometimes minute, sometimes vast, were vital to allow her to continue. To head off precarious wobbles. It was why Book's hair had to remain tamed at all times lest the ceiling cave in. Or why she had to snatch a hat from the startled Badger's head and borrow his voice.

It was all part of the balancing act.

The crew, too, were part of this maintenance, and the loss of some of them had made equilibrium with the current ones all the more important. Those that remained had to be carefully positioned, even more so than before, to help make up for the black holes left by Book and Wash.

Zoë's baby helped. A warm weight of tender pink whose slight physical mass was magnified tenfold by her effect on the rest of Serenity.

So, too, did the (long awaited) acknowledgement of what lay between Kaylee and Simon.

Their interactions bubbled with golden potential; its effervescence helped keep her high and steady. (Conversely, Mal and Inara's do-si-do of one step forward, two steps back was equally important. Never totally lost, never fully fulfilled, its seesaw motion an essential ingredient.)

And then there was Jayne–

A solid immovable mass that resisted all changing. A soother and irritant all in one.

Steady and constant… and ornery as hell.

He could be the perfect anchor… or a millstone round her neck, and unknowingly flip-flopped between the two.

In the early days his unmeasured distrust and dislike had continually dragged her off-course.

He was blue, blue, blue! Too much blue! Constantly threatening the equation.

Unfortunately, her fractured psyche's solution to change him back to red had lacked finesse.

The solution to the problem had been simple, brilliant. Or so she'd thought at the time.

Jayne, on the other hand, had been less than enamoured at her choice of a little blood-letting.

For awhile it had pushed him firmly into millstone territory. Right up until he switched sides again and rescued her on Ariel.

Miranda had helped with this imbalance, too. Something about her killing spree there had steadied Jayne. He was the most red she'd ever seen him after that.

So she anchored herself in that warmth and used it as counterbalance as she walked the rope.

It was not without effort, but it was sustainable.

She had finally worked out how to keep her sanity and Serenity.

…so the no-good, two-bit biǎo zi currently draping herself across Jayne and threatening that balance was about to get a crash-course in what happens when you mess with an Academy weapon!

She was voluptuous in a way River never would be, almost bursting out the top of her dress. All curves, no muscle, softer than a marshmallow.

Those red lips were no work of nature, and neither were those blonde curls… but that didn't stop Jayne twirling them round his fingers and smiling at her foolishly.

River hadn't realised she was baring her teeth until the Captain's tentative words reached her ears.

"Er, River, you okay?"

She turned scathing eyes on him and on Kaylee who was sat beside him. "What manner of name is 'Lavvy'?" She bit out. "Doesn't he realise it's an abbreviation for a toilet?" Her eyes narrowed into terrifying slits. "Then again, perhaps that is appropriate in this instance."

Mal blinked, more than a little startled.

It was Kaylee who answered. "I think it's short for Lavinia."

"Even worse." The acid in her voice only increased. "It sounds like a chemical solvent used to clean one."

Mal eyes crinkled in amusement until he noticed River's clenched fists. "Uh, River. No matter how you might feel 'bout her name, don't go pickin' any fights, you hear? For starters, I'd like to be able to do business here again some time. And, secondly, that ain't hardly a fair match. Kind of beneath you, if anything," he pointed out.

Her posture relaxed a little. "You think I could take her?"

"I think you could take ten of her armed to the teeth in a fully armoured tank," he said frankly.

She smiled a little but then scowled again. "Then what does Jayne see in her?" she almost whined. "He who loves weapons and strength and violence? That is why he has come to like me," she added almost to herself. "Why he turned red instead of blue."

"Well," Mal scratched the back of his neck, not wanting to venture too far into this conversation. "Fact of the matter is, a man don't want to bed his weapon. Not even Jayne." He paused a moment, considering. "Well, maybe if it was Vera…"

He didn't realise the full import of his words until Kaylee trod heavily on his foot. Then he winced at the look on River's face.

"Li'l Albatross, that's not what I meant… you ain't a weapon. You're a girl. We've talked about that."

"But… am I desirable?" she asked with enough wistfulness to slice through the heart. "I am not soft like her… or blonde…. or-" She moved her hands in a cupping gesture above her chest in a way that made Mal want to pull his hat over his face so he'd never have to see it again.

"Ai ya! I think I might leave you and Kaylee to talk this one out…" He started to slide off his stool.

This time Kaylee pinched his side and hissed in his ear. "Cap'n, you leave now and you'll leave her thinkin' there ain't nothin' lovable about her! She won't believe it from me in the same way!"

He looked over at River's devastated eyes and cursed under his breath as he realised she was right.

When his voice emerged it was a touch strangled but the words were decipherable.

"River, you are a beautiful young woman. It don't matter that you ain't blonde. Or more on the slender side. There are scores of men in this town alone who'd cut off their hand at the chance to be with you. Far more than I'd like, if'n we're being honest." River was listening but still looked a little sceptical. "Go ahead and Read me." He spread his arms wide. "If that's what it takes for you to believe me when I say you are very desirable." He closed his eyes as if dying a little inside.

"Even to someone like Jayne?" River asked .

At this point Mal's brain actually short-circuited at the image that presented itself.

"That's it. I'm out." Groping for his whisky he staggered off to drink as much of it as possible.

Kaylee reached out and patted River's hand.

"Captain's right, River. You are so pretty." She forestalled River's next remark. "Yes, includin' to someone like Jayne. Remember when you first came to us? You were kinda mēng when you crawled outta that box, so you might not've noticed. I saw Jayne's face when he saw you naked. He sure as hell thought you were desirable." Kaylee shook her head a little.

River considered this. "He changed his mind when he realised I was loose in the brainpan," she realised.

Kaylee shifted her feet a little. "Well… there was that whole you slashin' him across the chest thing. And on top of that, I think he knew Captain would space him if he touched you." Her gaze settled on River's face and she smiled kindly but knowingly. "Why's it matter if Jayne finds you desirable, anyhow? Or if he's with someone else?"

At her words, River looked back over where to where Lavinia was sitting in Jayne's lap, rubbing her palms up and down his biceps, batting her eyelashes. Jayne's hand was inching up towards one overgenerous mound…

River's hands tightened on her glass of honey mead until Kaylee feared she might see cracks.

Her voice emerged as a growl. "Because he is RUINING my balance." She threw back the last of her drink, making Kaylee regret talking Mal around into allowing it, and then stalked over to where Jayne was sitting.

She leant forward with clenched fists and stared straight into the chemical solvent's eyes.

"If you want to keep that cheaply dyed hair of yours on your head I suggest you get off him. Now!" she added in a bark.

Lavinia had been around enough bars to know a psycho girlfriend when she saw one so she slid off Jayne's lap without a word, lifted her skirts and hurried out of sight.

"Hey!" Jayne almost yelped in outraged protest. "Come back!" But Lavinia was long gone. He scowled at River, clearly unbothered by her frankly terrifying expression. Kaylee wondered how much of that was bravery and how much was liquor. "What the hell you doin', Crazy?" he demanded.

This time she leant forwards into his space.

"You are ruining the equilibrium!"

Jayne blinked. "Equi-what?"

"Equilibrium," she repeated. "You are making me wobble. I cannot have it. I will not allow it." She stamped her foot.

Jayne looked a little perplexed. "How am I making you wobble?"

"By dropping your anchor somewhere else!"

Jayne leant forward a little and sniffed delicately. "You been on the moonshine, Moonbrain? You ain't big enough to hold that level of homebrew, you know."

River scowled at this intimation of infancy. Like the Captain, he seemed to see a girl, not a woman.

Yet he hadn't when he first met her… Other than stripping naked, what could she do to make him see her as a woman?

Oh. Of course.

She took the spot Lavinia had just vacated and linked her arms around his neck.

For a moment something flared in his eyes then his brows drew together and she could see his thoughts forming a shield of denial.

His hands shifted to push her off.

There was only one way to end the argument.

She locked her legs round his waist and pressed her lips to his.

Jayne seemed to have frozen beneath her so she took advantage of his stupefaction, placing his hands on her waist and cupping his face so she could explore his mouth more thoroughly.

It had been a long time since River kissed anyone, but here, now, with Jayne's presence enveloping her, suddenly she could access her memories more clearly. She remembered kisses stolen outside of school, and in the gardens, before she was sent away to the Academy.

Remembered the first time someone had put their tongue in her mouth.

Being a dedicated student, she immediately put these memories to good use and improved on the technique shown at the time.

The effect on Jayne was electric. His arms tightened around her, and he upped the tempo of the kiss, stoking a slow, expanding heat in her belly.

River blinked.

So that's what the red had signified? All she had needed to do get him firmly on side was… this?

She pulled back to look at him, part-wonder, part-possessiveness.

"You are my anchor, Jayne – mine!"

Jayne looked half-horrified, half-fascinated.

"Moonbrain…"

She cut off any further thought from him by capturing his lips again.

All of their conflict could have been avoided and much of her psychosis if she'd just fallen into his arms when she crawled out the box, instead of Mal's. The more she thought about it, the more annoying that was. Men really were odd creatu- Jayne was doing something with his teeth that made pulse points she hadn't been aware of burst into radiant life.

Coherent thought became impossible.

She could no longer feel the rope beneath her.

She didn't so much wobble as spectacularly fall.

…and it was Jayne who caught her.

His arms were around her; his red was beneath her.

There was no need to think. No need to balance. No need to try.

She had never felt more out of control.

She had never felt more whole.

There was a word for falling without fear or pain, a word for falling with style.

River Tam closed her eyes.

And let herself fly.

fin

Mandarin translations:

ai ya - damn it

biǎo zi - whore

mēng - dazed, stunned, out of it