Title: Knowledge
Author: kbk
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine. I make no money from this.
Notes: I wrote this before I saw the episode with Jubal Early in it, though I had heard of it and read fic involving it. I didn't know Mal's line: "Girl knows things, things she shouldn't, things she couldn't." It's entirely possible the concept swam into my brain from a fic and this was the result, though.

River knows.

It's hard for her to express, most of the time, but she knows. She knows too much.

Time doesn't always work right inside her head, though, so she knows too early or too late or just at the exact right instant. But she always knows.

She knows that she is one of only three people on board who come screaming out of nightmares - the rest have learned to be silent.

She knows that Mal wants Inara and Inara wants Mal but they'll never get past the hurt that's already there between them, intentional or not, and Mal's eye falls on Simon even though he ain't sly. Simon ought to want Kaylee, but River doesn't want to know what her brother wants, so she pretends she can't hear him. Kaylee's obvious, Zoe and Wash might stick it out, Jayne just wants, and preacher oughtn't so he prays.

River knows the average speed of the hydrogen atoms that hit the hull, and she could calculate the number of neutrinos passing through her body per second if Wash would just let her look at his flight charts, but he's scared the crazy girl will damage them, and she knows he's scared of her. Not much, and he's always real nice, but enough.

They all are, near enough, just Simon not at all and he doesn't count because he still sees the child she was. Sometimes she wishes she could be that girl again, but on the whole she prefers it this way, because how would she look after him if she didn't know?

But she does, so she can. She's good at it, mostly, though she doesn't always remember to wait until they know what she knows before she does something about it, and then they call her crazy and put cotton wool inside her head - she knows it's sedatives, she isn't stupid, but it feels fuzzy - and then they go and do it anyway. She doesn't blame them, because they didn't know, but she did and she should have explained it better.

She knows that Mal loves them all desperately, and would give his life and his very soul to save any one of them from harm, but if she said as much he would call her a gorram crazy and avoid her for weeks and wake up silent for nights on end with all the people he didn't save hiding behind his eyelids, so she won't say, and only call him Daddy in her head and when nobody knows.

River knows why Shepherd knows the things he does, but it's a secret and he might let the hair out if she tells.

She'll tell that Vera's the name of the first girl Jayne ever lay with, if he ever stops being sufficiently wary of her. It's entertaining to watch his eyes cut over to her, every so often, and smile beatifically when they do. He never looks that way at Simon, which isn't smart of him, but then the silly boy did make a promise. Kaylee didn't, though, and she's another one he doesn't watch out for. If she had a reason...

River knows that three of the senators on Ariel have accepted monetary bribes, but only one of them was careless enough to pay it into a bank account in his own name. The transfer records for the others can be followed, with some difficulty, but it's too tenuous to use for blackmail.

River knows lots of things. She knows why it's unlucky to light three cigarettes from one flame, and all the words of Tam O'Shanter, and the salient details of her genome.

But she doesn't know how to be sane.