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"Simon doesn't like to think," she says, taking measured steps around the table, "that they made me better."
Jayne frowns a little, mainly in concentration, peering along the flat of his knife before stroking it along the stone again. He pauses, looks up. "You were sick before you went in?"
River sighs, and he catches a glimpse of rolled eyes before she dips her head, hair slipping forward, and angles the point of her toe more as she turns the corner. "Better. Improved. They improved me."
"Oh." He doesn't comment on it; ain't none of his business no how, though he can't help but smirk a little at the idea of her crazier than she is now, and the idea that the Doc's trying to get her back to that state. She pirouettes, turns, levers herself up onto the table with the heels of her hands. Jayne finds himself watching as she gets closer, fine cracks in her feet ingrained with the grease-dirt of the ship's floors, sharper than the worn polish of the old table's veins.
Jayne curses, but the fact that the blade is sharp enough that he doesn't even notice his slip at first probably saves him from more severe injury; he has the sense to jerk it away, gripping the hilt firmly in the opposite hand, instead of recoiling and dropping it automatically. Dark red wells from the clean, angular slice across the pad of his thumb, and he hisses out another stream of profanities.
The quirk of River's lips could cut glass. She leans in and wraps her fist around his thumb, pulls his hand closer to her face before his reflexes (again, belatedly) kick in and he tenses, pulling back enough that she can't draw it any closer; knife held automatically upright in his left hand.
"All better," she murmurs; mouth wet, teeth white, and he jerks back out of her grasp, scowling.
"Crazy," he mutters as he stands, turns away, the blood starting to run down in rivulets, filling the cracks of his palm. Someone really ought to blunt her edges.