Ficlet: Understand
Title: Understand (another one of my oh-so-brilliant titles)
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Simon, mentions of Mal and the rest of the crew
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own. So there.
A/N: Small little ficlet I wrote a couple days ago after rewatching Safe. I just watched the Firefly series for the first time over Christmas break, and this is the first thing I've written for it.
Kaylee was wrong. It wasn’t that Simon didn’t think much about people who chose to live on ships like Serenity, it was that he just didn’t understand them. He couldn’t imagine willingly choosing to live somewhere you couldn’t feel the sunlight or the ground beneath your feet, living a life where you were always moving, never staying in one place long enough to belong there, always surrounded by metal and plastic and pipes and engines and breathing the recycled air that Simon couldn’t help but think might run out any minute. He wouldn’t have picked this life, if he’d had any other choice.
(He missed trees. There was an apple orchard back home. He used to play there with River, eating the apples before they were ready, too impatient to wait for them to ripen, and getting sick because of it.)
He didn’t understand Mal either. Just yesterday he was telling Simon to gag River so as not to disturb the cattle, showing a lack of compassion for the sick that, as a doctor, set Simon on edge and as a brother, made him want to clench his fist and return the bruises he’d been given when he first set foot on the ship. So Simon wasn’t even surprised when he saw Serenity leaving Jiangyin without him, not really. He was used to being left on his own by now.
(He had to learn to be resourceful after his accounts were frozen. But not having money wasn’t as hard as not having a home to go back to.)
It was a surprise when Mal came back. He’d used up time, bullets and fuel (something Mal loved to complain about never having enough of) to get them back and he didn’t even like having them on his ship to begin with. Simon knew enough about the money problems on the ship to know the gesture could not be taken lightly.
(He always had whatever he wanted as a child. Only the best for him, his father had said, and Simon had never thought that was a restriction until he was abandoned, left behind because the “best” no longer included him.)
“You’re on my crew,” Mal had said, and Simon could suddenly imagine what he was like during the war, see the man--tired and dirty but proud--that could inspire such loyalty as told in all the stories that Zoe liked to share, could see him risking his life again and again to save the men he was responsible for, not caring who they were or questioning if they were worth it.
(Simon had never felt so worthless, so useless, as he did now. Years of medical training being put to waste in a tiny white room used to heal cuts and the occasional bullet wound, but he couldn’t regret it. Not when he could hold River in his arms after a nightmare and know that physically, at least, she was safe.)
They were there for you, this motley group of people Simon found himself traveling with. They were thieves and killers and a confusing mass of contradictions and twisted morals, and they didn’t live by any society rules that he had grown up with, but when you needed them, they were there.
He didn’t understand it, but maybe, he could accept it.
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Simon, mentions of Mal and the rest of the crew
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own. So there.
A/N: Small little ficlet I wrote a couple days ago after rewatching Safe. I just watched the Firefly series for the first time over Christmas break, and this is the first thing I've written for it.
Kaylee was wrong. It wasn’t that Simon didn’t think much about people who chose to live on ships like Serenity, it was that he just didn’t understand them. He couldn’t imagine willingly choosing to live somewhere you couldn’t feel the sunlight or the ground beneath your feet, living a life where you were always moving, never staying in one place long enough to belong there, always surrounded by metal and plastic and pipes and engines and breathing the recycled air that Simon couldn’t help but think might run out any minute. He wouldn’t have picked this life, if he’d had any other choice.
(He missed trees. There was an apple orchard back home. He used to play there with River, eating the apples before they were ready, too impatient to wait for them to ripen, and getting sick because of it.)
He didn’t understand Mal either. Just yesterday he was telling Simon to gag River so as not to disturb the cattle, showing a lack of compassion for the sick that, as a doctor, set Simon on edge and as a brother, made him want to clench his fist and return the bruises he’d been given when he first set foot on the ship. So Simon wasn’t even surprised when he saw Serenity leaving Jiangyin without him, not really. He was used to being left on his own by now.
(He had to learn to be resourceful after his accounts were frozen. But not having money wasn’t as hard as not having a home to go back to.)
It was a surprise when Mal came back. He’d used up time, bullets and fuel (something Mal loved to complain about never having enough of) to get them back and he didn’t even like having them on his ship to begin with. Simon knew enough about the money problems on the ship to know the gesture could not be taken lightly.
(He always had whatever he wanted as a child. Only the best for him, his father had said, and Simon had never thought that was a restriction until he was abandoned, left behind because the “best” no longer included him.)
“You’re on my crew,” Mal had said, and Simon could suddenly imagine what he was like during the war, see the man--tired and dirty but proud--that could inspire such loyalty as told in all the stories that Zoe liked to share, could see him risking his life again and again to save the men he was responsible for, not caring who they were or questioning if they were worth it.
(Simon had never felt so worthless, so useless, as he did now. Years of medical training being put to waste in a tiny white room used to heal cuts and the occasional bullet wound, but he couldn’t regret it. Not when he could hold River in his arms after a nightmare and know that physically, at least, she was safe.)
They were there for you, this motley group of people Simon found himself traveling with. They were thieves and killers and a confusing mass of contradictions and twisted morals, and they didn’t live by any society rules that he had grown up with, but when you needed them, they were there.
He didn’t understand it, but maybe, he could accept it.