First Three Kisses
Title: Five Kisses- slightly edited to fill more accurately the space it tells of, first three here
Series: Finding
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything Joss ever gave us and then some...
Characters: Jayne/River
Disclaimer: Firefly owns me, I own words
This one came from a request for Five Kisses with Jayne and River from
lattelady6 I think, I hope! and then lots of bits came from other places,
alexis_laforge had a hand in providing quotes from Plato and Martin Buber on love that fit in perfectly. So, with all that piled in there, my muse went to town, got a Grande Mocha and pulled me down the path to this, the next in a growing series that started with: Five Shirts: and continued in: The Nights: And there is a VIDEO! By my friend
lattelady6 Amazing Grace - Music Video . A whole lifetime has been growing since this was first written, a story I never expected to tell. I hope you will bear with me on the telling. I hope this flows a little better than the original... All we get for doing this is words in return; concrit is always welcome
All Jayne/River stories are in the same storyline, even if seen out of order...
First Kiss
There weren’t no hiding from it, he couldn’t lift that iron bar enough to shake the thought from his mind. He couldn’t do enough pull-ups to erase the image of her. There weren’t no exercise in the ‘Verse that could tear the memory of her standing there, blood dripping off that gorramn ax.
Months had passed, near a year in truth, they had all healed in their own way, some easier than others. A few injuries would never totally heal. Serenity had been put to rights, they were back in the Black, flying. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He was angry in ways he couldn’t even describe at her being trapped outside those blast doors with the Reavers. That was what he kept coming back to. Everything since then had been shaped by that moment.
The rage coursed through him all the time, eyes saw red no matter what he was doing. His arms shook as he kept pushing the bar into the air, sweat poured off his body, he was burning up from the heat of his anger. It felt like crimson sheeting was blurring his vision.
“Shhh, the red is taking over…” He heard her voice right next to his ear. He didn’t even flinch, didn’t stop his movement, the up, down, up, down repetition. “The fire is going to burn him.”
“Go away Girlie... don’t need to be botherin’ me right now.” He replied through gritted teeth.
“Fire will erupt, burn them both.” She singsonged, still right next to him. He felt her cool breath on his cheek.
“Ya want fire? I’ll give ya fire.” He dropped the bar in the hangers and sat up quickly, sweeping her into his arms before she could retreat. He stopped thinking, reacted purely.
A small gasp passed her lips, surprise showed clearly in her eyes.
“Ya been near to making me crazy as you, Girlie with yer watchin’ and chatterin’. Listenin’ to ya fer months now.” His anger blazed out of his blue eyes. She was surprised she didn’t feel flames licking her skin. “Well? What do ya want Girlie?” He growled low in his throat.
“I,” She stuttered, surprised. “She did not see… Fire flamed out without warning… solar flare straight to the heart…”
“Gorramnit Girlie, I ain’t playin’ with ya any more. Whaddya want!?” He was to tired and wrung out to try and figure out her confusion.
Her eyes were wide and brown, confused as she met his hard blue gaze. Without thinking, she leaned in lightning fast and kissed him square on the lips. He nearly shoved her across the bay in response. “Get away from me ya crazy witch!” he roared in reply, leaping up himself and storming past her out of the cargo bay.
Images of destruction, death, her slipped past the smoke veil his thoughts usually disguised themselves in. She smiled slightly, wonderingly. Clarity in a kiss.
Second Kiss
He vanished. Jayne disappeared on Serenity as fully as if he had jumped into the Black with no suit. River looked everywhere for him, trailed her fingers along Serenity’s walls and pipes. She looked all the places Jayne would likely be. Galley, lounge, his bunk, the bridge, the cargo bay, the engine room, even looked in the infirmary. He was nowhere. Gone. Vanished.
Day passed to evening, dinner came and River still hadn’t found him. She gave up when Simon came and told her to come and eat. Everyone was at their usual place around the rough hewn table. Captain was at the head of the table, Inara in her now usual spot to his left, then Simon and Kaylee. At the Captain’s right sat Zoë, still the warrior woman even though the cracks still showed some days. Next to her was an empty chair, a chair no one sat in these days. Then River’s chair and lastly, Jayne’s. They had all started to sit that way after the ship had returned to flying the Black when repairs were completed after Miranda. No one ever noted it or said anything of it out loud and it had been that way since.
River stopped in the door, feet stuck to the metal plating. Simon nearly bowled her over she had stopped so quickly.
“River! What the…” Simon blurted out, irritated as a normal brother with a normal younger sister would be.
“He appears, no sounds, ghost…” River whispered as she saw Jayne sitting at the table, dishing food onto his plate like he did at every meal. He looked like he had every night for months. T-shirt, wrist bands, plate filling with food enough for two or three. Simon edged around his sister, intent on joining Kaylee who was smiling back towards them.
“Little Albatross? You going to join us this evening, or stand there waiting for some unknown other shoe to drop?” Mal asked mildly. She tore her eyes from Jayne to look at the Captain.
“Was looking… could not perceive, the auditory evidence was lacking… mind left no thoughts to hear.” River spoke as he went to her seat. Jayne didn’t look up from his food, just grunted in acknowledgement when she sat down next to him. She drew her knees up to her chin once she was seated, her right thigh brushing Jayne’s as she curled it up. It was everything she could do to not cry out in surprise at the sharp spark that brief contact caused. Jayne did not react, betrayed no sign of feeling the painful shock.
River tried to eat as she normally did. But the food tasted like ashes in her mouth, the fresh vegetables Inara had added to the dinner were as textured as mush to her tongue. Next to her the big man consumed everything on his plate and said not a word to her. Around them conversation flowed and ebbed freely. The tone was light tonight, a job had gone well, another job looked to be as good as the last one had been. The Captain was in a good mood, Inara was laughing at a story Simon was recounting an outing he and Kaylee had been on that afternoon. Zoë even added her humorous insight to the situation that sparked Simon’s tale. Only Jayne was silent. The pain of the spark was still fresh on her leg when he got up to leave the table, finished.
“Jayne, you got somewhere you need to be in a hurry? We all barely got started eating here?” Mal said to the man as he was leaving the table.
“Naw Mal, just not feelin’ overly hos-spit-able tonight. Figured I’d get some o’ that new gear we picked up t’day stowed.” Jayne answered brusquely.
Everyone turned to look at either Jayne or the Captain at that pronouncement. Never had Jayne left food to go back to work. Not once in anyone’s memory. He may have grown quieter and darker since Miranda, but he still held some vestiges of his old gluttonous self most times.
“Right, well, don’t let me be keeping you from that.” Mal finished lamely. He was as surprised as everyone else. He merely shook his head and shrugged when Jayne turned and left with not another word and everyone looked at him for information. “Don’t know what that was all about?”
River watched Jayne walk away, pulling his curtain of silence with him. “Red washes over him… blood covers all… burns the skin and peels back layers to the heart…”
“Mei mei, you ok?” Simon asked, apprehension in his voice. He was still trying to detangle the mess of Jayne’s shift and River’s connection to the big man. River had been mostly coherent since Miranda, he had begun to see glimpses of the woman she would have become had the Academy not done their experiments on her. River had become River and not the shaking child of before. The change in Jayne was what concerned him more.
“She is fine Simon. Captain, may I be excused please?” River turned her eyes to Mal, silently entreating him to not ask her why.
“Go on then Albatross, don’t need folk to be staying at the table like they usually do at dinner time. Not like it is what a fine crew of reuben’s would do.” He managed to not sound curt and bothered even though it did worry him that his two guns were acting out of the norm. Inara laid her smooth, cool hand over his and squeezed his hand gently. He knew she was there with him and it calmed him some.
~*~
River left the table to go and sit on one of the high pipes above the catwalk where she could see down into the cargo bay unseen herself. Jayne was methodically putting new cables onto their cranks, winding the heavy banded metal loops with his focus solely on his task.
She reached out her thoughts to the man far below her. She could feel nothing from him. Mists billowed away from her senses, disguised a core that she knew was anguished. A small mew escaped her lips, loss, and fear escaping with the sound.
~*~
Jayne heard her, shook his head irritably. Gorramn crazy Girl had scared him again today. His eyes burned all the time now. His sleep was no longer the sleep of the ignorant. The dreams never stopped, all of them becoming nightmares before ending with him waking up shaking and shivering. And now the crazy girl was watching him again. He could taste her still on his lips. The shock of her kiss driving the memory of it completely home in his mind.
Jayne was tired and angry. He wanted to go back to not worrying about anything except getting paid, getting fed and getting trim, not necessarily in that order neither. He couldn’t forget the desiccated corpses on Miranda, the floating sea of horrific space ships. He heard the screaming in his head whenever he went to sleep. Saw the ship torn in two before his eyes, felt his own impotence to stop the Alliance assassin from killing his friend Shepherd Book. Saw her being pulled away from them, from him, and could do nothing to stop it. Jayne was tired of being a man who knew more than a simple man should. He was tired of the thoughts that came into his mind unbidden when he stopped working.
Winding the cable tightly he could focus on the job, could feel the twined metal ropes pull through his calloused hands, strained his arms to wind the wheel. He could distract his thoughts by using his body, feeling his body. What he couldn’t think about, couldn’t hurt him he figured.
He couldn’t think about her. Didn’t want to think about her. Her. Little crazy girl running past him sprawled against the wall, bleeding from his shoulder, feeling his arm go stiff and useless with the gun grasped in his hand. Zoë was nearly too far gone to notice the girl go by. He watched the leap through the blast doors, Girl diving like she were going to land in a pool of clear water, not in the hands of the Alliance created monsters.
He had wanted to go to her, his legs wouldn’t respond, his heart was pounding in his chest, blood pulsed in his ears. The Doc’s medical bag sailed through the small opening, landing near his feet. He could hear the screaming begin before he saw her hands reaching towards the closing blast door. Inside he was bellowing at himself, Get up, GET UP! You useless hundahn! Get your miserable carcass off this floor and go to the fight, don’t let the fight go to the end without you. There is no payoff in this one except her. GET UP! His body wouldn’t move, the strength he had spent his life to get was not enough to get him off that hall way floor. Right then the ignorance of his life hit him, crashed into him. He wasn’t a stupid man, just not one who had chosen to go to far down the road of evaluation and examination; just ignorant cause he liked it that way. He liked things simple. Life weren’t simple any more.
~*~
River swayed to her invisible breeze as she watched Jayne straining across his shoulders, fighting with the rigid cable in his hands. He had thrown himself to the work like nothing else mattered. She kept trying to sense his thoughts and kept getting bounced back by the curtain of quiet, red anger he drew around himself.
The cable sprang out of his hands, whipping around the crank faster than her eyes could see. He tried to grab the wound wires before the whole reel came undone. His bare hands got a hold of the wild cable, getting yanked against the crank in a metal on flesh crunch. His bellow of pain reverberated off the roof the cargo bay, nearly knocking River off her perch. She hit the ground on her feet and ran down the stairs as lightly as booted feet could. Jayne had the cable wrapped around his hands, sweat stood out on his face and soaked his shirt to his body. A body River noticed, made all the more massive by the months of weightlifting the man had done to empty his mind of his memories.
Jayne said nothing, just clenched his teeth in pain, hands caught tight to the crank. Mal was there a moment behind River, having heard the holler. “What happened?” He barked curtly at his gunman while releasing the catch on the crank and unwinding the cable enough for Jayne to get his hands free.
“Slipped is all…cable got lose and I got caught up in it.” He growled in response, keeping his now free hands close to his body, fingers curved shut.
“Better let the Doc get a look at them hands Jayne.” Mal wasn’t speaking lightly, Jayne could see the warning in his eyes.
“Yeah, all right.” No sense in arguing with the man, his hands hurt something awful. He was pretty sure he may have broken some bones, that weren’t nothing new, and the skin had been torn off his fingers and palms for sure.
“What are you doing here Albatross?” The Captain turned to River who had been standing there silently the whole time.
“Listening, hearing the blood flow, finding openings to exit through.”
“Well, that sounds somewhat creepifying little one. How about you go find Simon for Jayne here.” Mal placed a hand on her shoulder and lightly propelled her towards the stairs.
River noticed that his touch was warm and earthy feeling, not fire and heat. No spark of pain or shock there. Brown and earth had become him. Warmed by the sunlight of Inara. She smiled slightly at that. Small joys in the midst of growing unease.
~*~
“This will hurt abit.” Simon was almost kindly sounding when he dunked Jayne’s bloody hands in two basins of lukewarm saline solution. The bleeding had worsened as Jayne had followed Mal to the infirmary. He had tried to hide it by clenching his fists tighter, gritting his teeth in pain at the rubbing of a few broken ends inside the skin.
“Stop moving your hands! Do you want to be permanently crippled!” Simon ordered curtly, while gently turning those same hands over and looking at the abrasions. “This looks bad, but I want to make sure all the particles of metal are out of the skin before I scan for broken bones.”
“Yeah, whatever Doc, just know it hurts something fierce when ya try ta straighten ‘em.” Jayne was beyond tired, beyond where he would grouch at the Doc. He just wanted it all to stop. Wanted to feel his world as a place of sight, sound, taste. Not this constant screaming in his head, the inability to sleep at night, the anger that never went away.
Stop. It all had to stop. His breath caught in his throat when Simon placed his hands in the scanner and he rested his hand’s weight on broken bones. “You really think any of us is going to survive this Jayne?” “ I might?” He remembered saying the words, the last time he felt like the man he had created carefully, the last time he had been ignorant.
“He knows what it feels like now. He sees it clearly.” River appeared next to him when Simon had him return to the med chair. His right hand was in the Doc’s grip, being laid on a suture tray. Local anesthesia took hold almost immediately. He could feel nothing from his shoulder down.
“Get outta here Girlie.” Jayne managed to growl at River, turning his face away from her.
“He knows! He feels it, the constant, the forever… must not close the door for that way surely leads to oblivion, keep the paths to the light clear, the dark is rising… go not gently, bears go not gently…” River leaned in close to him, her breath touching his cheek as she spoke. He felt her hair trail across his left arm she was so close.
“River, you need to let me do my work here, you need to go now.” Simon spoke gently as was his wont with his sister.
Jayne grunted in assent, knowing he wanted her to go before she saw what his heart was trying to hide. He couldn’t keep ignoring the fear he couldn’t control, the way it made him rage inside, made him want to strike out and hurt, kill, anything that threatened to take her away. He didn’t want her to see that. He didn’t want to face it himself.
River gazed at Jayne’s cheek intently, his face still turned from her. His mind was a sea of red, she couldn’t part the sea to find his thoughts. Quickly, she tipped forward over him and placed a kiss on his cheek, leaping back immediately, hand flying to her lips. Stinging, burning, flames licked across them.
“GORRAMNIT GIRLIE! Keep your lips to yourself or I will remove them for you!” Jayne snarled at her.
“Jayne, sit still or this will become an amputation and not just a simple setting.” Simon said harshly.
“Tell yer moonbrained sister ta stop kissin’ me then!”
“River, I asked you to leave, please do so now.” Simon was trying to stay patient, but he was getting frustrated with his sister. And not a little worried. Jayne had become easier to provoke to violence and at the same retreated to silence unexpectedly. Simon knew he had little chance of figuring out what the transfusions of River’s blood over the months had done to the mercenary. And that scared him.
River felt the rise in Simon’s irritation and Jayne’s anger and stepped back quietly. She needed to find a mirror to see how badly her lips were burned.
Third Kiss
Jayne’s hands healed as quickly as all the other injuries he had ever sustained. He had an ability to heal that impressed even Simon. His thoughts stayed angry and tired. He never stopped pushing himself, pushing his body. He never wanted to have a lack of strength stop him from getting up again. He wanted his ignorance back, he wanted life simple again. He wanted to not look at her and think what if? Could he have stopped her from going through that door? Would he have been able to do what she did? Would he have died without having lived, with this knowledge that ate at him every day?
He kept working after Simon knitted the bones together, no way he could just set back and do nothing. Weeks passed, everyone cautious and curious. Something was shifting.
He couldn’t stop tasting her on his lips, feel her softness on his cheek. Her eyes looking into his, looking for something, he knew not what. The red haze was growing cloudy around him. He wondered if he would just disperse in the air like a gas no longer held by a proper container. Nothing felt like it used to.
The crew noticed him retreating from them as he worked harder, became harder in mind and body. He would joke abit around the table at mealtimes, but not as much as he used to. Simon had stopped calling him a man-ape, in return the snarling man kept his distance from the doctor unless he needed medical attention.
When Simon caught him in the cargo bay late one night, playing his guitar softly and singing Amazing Grace in the most beautiful bass voice he had stood transfixed when he heard the first notes, not sure what he was listening to, or whom in truth.
When Jayne saw Simon at the end of the last few notes he stopped singing abruptly.
“What are ya doin’ up this late? Aren’t ya usually asleep by now?” Jayne grumbled.
“Ahh, well, yes I usually am. Couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to wake Kaylee…”Simon gestured back towards the passenger dorms where Kaylee and him slept most nights. His t-shirt was rumpled and hair was all mussed so it was apparent that he hadn’t thought he would see anyone up at this hour. “I , ahh, heard you singing…it was quite… beautiful.” Simon didn’t really know how to tell Jayne how soothing his singing had been. Jayne had never given the impression that he wanted to sooth anyone.
“Yah, well, it weren’t for anyone to hear.” Jayne was not happy Simon had caught him singing. He hadn’t sung for anyone since he left home. As boy he had sung in church, his Ma had always loved his singing and so he practiced enough that the choir let him sing with them. His voice had matured into a low bass and the gospels always sounded better when he sang along. When he left home he never sang for anyone again. He would pick out tunes on his guitar once in awhile, but not sing. Not until he saw crazy girl dance to her own music did he start to think about putting words to the music again. He remembered Amazing Grace from his youth, it was one his Ma’s favorite songs. He thought he might understand now.
“Yes, well, I will just go on back to bed now…yes, I believe I am.” Simon was flustered, maybe from the late hour, the unexpected side to the big man, or some other thing he was trying to sort out on his own about Kaylee.
“Doc, you might want to ask her one of these days. She’s earned it ya know…” Jayne had nailed Simon’s predicament right on the head. The men just looked at each other for a moment. Jayne was frighteningly still for a man who was generally always a mountain of life. Simon noticed the hollowness in Jayne’s eyes, the man was not what he had come to expect before Miranda, and after he had been too caught up in his own maelstrom with Kaylee and River and everyone else one step from dying or going over the abyss. He had seen Jayne’s plunge towards it himself. The abyss yawned in the man’s eyes, Simon could see the darkness welling there, pulling Jayne down to be nothing more than a creature of pure violence. Violence that had followed the big man since the first transfusions from River. Simon cringed inside, realizing he had had a hand in creating another weapon from the Alliance’s medical research.
“I ahh..I will… Umm, thank you, I think.” Simon replied as he turned to walk away. The crew had become a family, with bonds as tight as blood would bind. It was an odd thing in the Black, to have a family this close and yet so unknown to each other. He feared that Jayne would rupture that family when the call to the abyss overwhelmed him.
Jayne turned back to his guitar after Simon left, lightly strumming out a few notes, picking a bluesy undercurrent from the strings. He sang softly, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found. Was blind but now I see…” He glanced up when he felt eyes on him. She was standing there, pale gown draped around her body like water flowing over rocks. Smooth and shimmery.
“You see, not drifting any more. “
“Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, that first hour I believed…” He played on softly, looking right into her eyes as he did. His voice didn’t catch, didn’t falter even when a tear rolled down her cheek. He kept playing and singing quietly and she spun on her toes and began a dance to the music. Her arms moved in graceful arcs around her body her legs pushed her into spirals and dips and leaps with the beat of the old Earth-That-Was song. She had never heard it before , but it went straight to her heart, his voice carrying a love from his past.
River shuddered to a halt, hair flying free around her face. “She can’t hear you, but she feels you are there.” She said to him, willing him to understand.
Jayne stilled his fingers on the frets and strings of the guitar. His voice rumbled to a stop in his throat. He wasn’t sure what happened, he just knew he understood her in that moment, understood why she sounded crazy when she talked. She felt the red, the tired. He knew he would simply fade away if he didn’t find the way past the anger, the red…
She had swirled to a halt right in front of him. Her hair was streaming over her shoulders. He put the guitar down, looked back at her intently, words forming in his mind but not wanting to pass his lips. River whispered so softly he could only just hear the words, “At first a shudder steals through him, and again the old awe steals over him…”*
“Girlie… I dunno that I have what it will take to be… “ His voice was choked.
“She sees the bear struggling to wake from his winters sleep. Comes to where it is warm and safe.” She could feel the fires burning inside him, feels her hair rising in the warm currents pouring from his skin.
He is so tired, he wonders if he is imagining the crazy girl standing right there, he wants to reach out and check, but he is afraid if he does the dream will turn into the nightmare and the screaming will start again. The red cloud thickens around him, his angry wall begins to close in on him again.
River sees his eyes shift, the blue clear light fading to darkness. Desperate to not let him retreat to his world of red and anger, she leans towards him and is stunned when he crushes her to his chest, eyes boring down into hers. A growl tears from his throat as he kisses her, hard, lips bruising against her teeth, his growl stealing her breath as his body flames around her. She tries to cry out but can’t as everything she is is consumed in a fire she cannot see.
Her mind races, trying to catch any thought that is there at all before she is utterly burned away. She can only grasp one truth as it ignites in her, maybe fire is wise enough to know when something has to be not abandoned but consumed and used to create a greater thing? She is nothing, she is reduced.
She is everything. He jerks away from her, suddenly realizing what he has just done. She stands before him, beautiful ephemeral, and cool. He can feel her cool lips still on his. “Girlie…ya need to be gettin’ away from me…” Jayne manages to stutter out, voice low and harsh in his own ears.
“Through the Thou, the person become I”* River replies, voice peaceful and content. She feels him when he touches her. His being surrounds her and gives her a solid place to be. She feels herself whole, not fragmented and pulled by the minds on the ship. She is just there with him. Feeling him.
He is emerging as from shadow.
[*Plato and Martin Buber]
Series: Finding
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything Joss ever gave us and then some...
Characters: Jayne/River
Disclaimer: Firefly owns me, I own words
This one came from a request for Five Kisses with Jayne and River from
lattelady6 I think, I hope! and then lots of bits came from other places,
alexis_laforge had a hand in providing quotes from Plato and Martin Buber on love that fit in perfectly. So, with all that piled in there, my muse went to town, got a Grande Mocha and pulled me down the path to this, the next in a growing series that started with: Five Shirts: and continued in: The Nights: And there is a VIDEO! By my friend
lattelady6 Amazing Grace - Music Video . A whole lifetime has been growing since this was first written, a story I never expected to tell. I hope you will bear with me on the telling. I hope this flows a little better than the original... All we get for doing this is words in return; concrit is always welcome
All Jayne/River stories are in the same storyline, even if seen out of order...
First Kiss
There weren’t no hiding from it, he couldn’t lift that iron bar enough to shake the thought from his mind. He couldn’t do enough pull-ups to erase the image of her. There weren’t no exercise in the ‘Verse that could tear the memory of her standing there, blood dripping off that gorramn ax.
Months had passed, near a year in truth, they had all healed in their own way, some easier than others. A few injuries would never totally heal. Serenity had been put to rights, they were back in the Black, flying. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He was angry in ways he couldn’t even describe at her being trapped outside those blast doors with the Reavers. That was what he kept coming back to. Everything since then had been shaped by that moment.
The rage coursed through him all the time, eyes saw red no matter what he was doing. His arms shook as he kept pushing the bar into the air, sweat poured off his body, he was burning up from the heat of his anger. It felt like crimson sheeting was blurring his vision.
“Shhh, the red is taking over…” He heard her voice right next to his ear. He didn’t even flinch, didn’t stop his movement, the up, down, up, down repetition. “The fire is going to burn him.”
“Go away Girlie... don’t need to be botherin’ me right now.” He replied through gritted teeth.
“Fire will erupt, burn them both.” She singsonged, still right next to him. He felt her cool breath on his cheek.
“Ya want fire? I’ll give ya fire.” He dropped the bar in the hangers and sat up quickly, sweeping her into his arms before she could retreat. He stopped thinking, reacted purely.
A small gasp passed her lips, surprise showed clearly in her eyes.
“Ya been near to making me crazy as you, Girlie with yer watchin’ and chatterin’. Listenin’ to ya fer months now.” His anger blazed out of his blue eyes. She was surprised she didn’t feel flames licking her skin. “Well? What do ya want Girlie?” He growled low in his throat.
“I,” She stuttered, surprised. “She did not see… Fire flamed out without warning… solar flare straight to the heart…”
“Gorramnit Girlie, I ain’t playin’ with ya any more. Whaddya want!?” He was to tired and wrung out to try and figure out her confusion.
Her eyes were wide and brown, confused as she met his hard blue gaze. Without thinking, she leaned in lightning fast and kissed him square on the lips. He nearly shoved her across the bay in response. “Get away from me ya crazy witch!” he roared in reply, leaping up himself and storming past her out of the cargo bay.
Images of destruction, death, her slipped past the smoke veil his thoughts usually disguised themselves in. She smiled slightly, wonderingly. Clarity in a kiss.
Second Kiss
He vanished. Jayne disappeared on Serenity as fully as if he had jumped into the Black with no suit. River looked everywhere for him, trailed her fingers along Serenity’s walls and pipes. She looked all the places Jayne would likely be. Galley, lounge, his bunk, the bridge, the cargo bay, the engine room, even looked in the infirmary. He was nowhere. Gone. Vanished.
Day passed to evening, dinner came and River still hadn’t found him. She gave up when Simon came and told her to come and eat. Everyone was at their usual place around the rough hewn table. Captain was at the head of the table, Inara in her now usual spot to his left, then Simon and Kaylee. At the Captain’s right sat Zoë, still the warrior woman even though the cracks still showed some days. Next to her was an empty chair, a chair no one sat in these days. Then River’s chair and lastly, Jayne’s. They had all started to sit that way after the ship had returned to flying the Black when repairs were completed after Miranda. No one ever noted it or said anything of it out loud and it had been that way since.
River stopped in the door, feet stuck to the metal plating. Simon nearly bowled her over she had stopped so quickly.
“River! What the…” Simon blurted out, irritated as a normal brother with a normal younger sister would be.
“He appears, no sounds, ghost…” River whispered as she saw Jayne sitting at the table, dishing food onto his plate like he did at every meal. He looked like he had every night for months. T-shirt, wrist bands, plate filling with food enough for two or three. Simon edged around his sister, intent on joining Kaylee who was smiling back towards them.
“Little Albatross? You going to join us this evening, or stand there waiting for some unknown other shoe to drop?” Mal asked mildly. She tore her eyes from Jayne to look at the Captain.
“Was looking… could not perceive, the auditory evidence was lacking… mind left no thoughts to hear.” River spoke as he went to her seat. Jayne didn’t look up from his food, just grunted in acknowledgement when she sat down next to him. She drew her knees up to her chin once she was seated, her right thigh brushing Jayne’s as she curled it up. It was everything she could do to not cry out in surprise at the sharp spark that brief contact caused. Jayne did not react, betrayed no sign of feeling the painful shock.
River tried to eat as she normally did. But the food tasted like ashes in her mouth, the fresh vegetables Inara had added to the dinner were as textured as mush to her tongue. Next to her the big man consumed everything on his plate and said not a word to her. Around them conversation flowed and ebbed freely. The tone was light tonight, a job had gone well, another job looked to be as good as the last one had been. The Captain was in a good mood, Inara was laughing at a story Simon was recounting an outing he and Kaylee had been on that afternoon. Zoë even added her humorous insight to the situation that sparked Simon’s tale. Only Jayne was silent. The pain of the spark was still fresh on her leg when he got up to leave the table, finished.
“Jayne, you got somewhere you need to be in a hurry? We all barely got started eating here?” Mal said to the man as he was leaving the table.
“Naw Mal, just not feelin’ overly hos-spit-able tonight. Figured I’d get some o’ that new gear we picked up t’day stowed.” Jayne answered brusquely.
Everyone turned to look at either Jayne or the Captain at that pronouncement. Never had Jayne left food to go back to work. Not once in anyone’s memory. He may have grown quieter and darker since Miranda, but he still held some vestiges of his old gluttonous self most times.
“Right, well, don’t let me be keeping you from that.” Mal finished lamely. He was as surprised as everyone else. He merely shook his head and shrugged when Jayne turned and left with not another word and everyone looked at him for information. “Don’t know what that was all about?”
River watched Jayne walk away, pulling his curtain of silence with him. “Red washes over him… blood covers all… burns the skin and peels back layers to the heart…”
“Mei mei, you ok?” Simon asked, apprehension in his voice. He was still trying to detangle the mess of Jayne’s shift and River’s connection to the big man. River had been mostly coherent since Miranda, he had begun to see glimpses of the woman she would have become had the Academy not done their experiments on her. River had become River and not the shaking child of before. The change in Jayne was what concerned him more.
“She is fine Simon. Captain, may I be excused please?” River turned her eyes to Mal, silently entreating him to not ask her why.
“Go on then Albatross, don’t need folk to be staying at the table like they usually do at dinner time. Not like it is what a fine crew of reuben’s would do.” He managed to not sound curt and bothered even though it did worry him that his two guns were acting out of the norm. Inara laid her smooth, cool hand over his and squeezed his hand gently. He knew she was there with him and it calmed him some.
~*~
River left the table to go and sit on one of the high pipes above the catwalk where she could see down into the cargo bay unseen herself. Jayne was methodically putting new cables onto their cranks, winding the heavy banded metal loops with his focus solely on his task.
She reached out her thoughts to the man far below her. She could feel nothing from him. Mists billowed away from her senses, disguised a core that she knew was anguished. A small mew escaped her lips, loss, and fear escaping with the sound.
~*~
Jayne heard her, shook his head irritably. Gorramn crazy Girl had scared him again today. His eyes burned all the time now. His sleep was no longer the sleep of the ignorant. The dreams never stopped, all of them becoming nightmares before ending with him waking up shaking and shivering. And now the crazy girl was watching him again. He could taste her still on his lips. The shock of her kiss driving the memory of it completely home in his mind.
Jayne was tired and angry. He wanted to go back to not worrying about anything except getting paid, getting fed and getting trim, not necessarily in that order neither. He couldn’t forget the desiccated corpses on Miranda, the floating sea of horrific space ships. He heard the screaming in his head whenever he went to sleep. Saw the ship torn in two before his eyes, felt his own impotence to stop the Alliance assassin from killing his friend Shepherd Book. Saw her being pulled away from them, from him, and could do nothing to stop it. Jayne was tired of being a man who knew more than a simple man should. He was tired of the thoughts that came into his mind unbidden when he stopped working.
Winding the cable tightly he could focus on the job, could feel the twined metal ropes pull through his calloused hands, strained his arms to wind the wheel. He could distract his thoughts by using his body, feeling his body. What he couldn’t think about, couldn’t hurt him he figured.
He couldn’t think about her. Didn’t want to think about her. Her. Little crazy girl running past him sprawled against the wall, bleeding from his shoulder, feeling his arm go stiff and useless with the gun grasped in his hand. Zoë was nearly too far gone to notice the girl go by. He watched the leap through the blast doors, Girl diving like she were going to land in a pool of clear water, not in the hands of the Alliance created monsters.
He had wanted to go to her, his legs wouldn’t respond, his heart was pounding in his chest, blood pulsed in his ears. The Doc’s medical bag sailed through the small opening, landing near his feet. He could hear the screaming begin before he saw her hands reaching towards the closing blast door. Inside he was bellowing at himself, Get up, GET UP! You useless hundahn! Get your miserable carcass off this floor and go to the fight, don’t let the fight go to the end without you. There is no payoff in this one except her. GET UP! His body wouldn’t move, the strength he had spent his life to get was not enough to get him off that hall way floor. Right then the ignorance of his life hit him, crashed into him. He wasn’t a stupid man, just not one who had chosen to go to far down the road of evaluation and examination; just ignorant cause he liked it that way. He liked things simple. Life weren’t simple any more.
~*~
River swayed to her invisible breeze as she watched Jayne straining across his shoulders, fighting with the rigid cable in his hands. He had thrown himself to the work like nothing else mattered. She kept trying to sense his thoughts and kept getting bounced back by the curtain of quiet, red anger he drew around himself.
The cable sprang out of his hands, whipping around the crank faster than her eyes could see. He tried to grab the wound wires before the whole reel came undone. His bare hands got a hold of the wild cable, getting yanked against the crank in a metal on flesh crunch. His bellow of pain reverberated off the roof the cargo bay, nearly knocking River off her perch. She hit the ground on her feet and ran down the stairs as lightly as booted feet could. Jayne had the cable wrapped around his hands, sweat stood out on his face and soaked his shirt to his body. A body River noticed, made all the more massive by the months of weightlifting the man had done to empty his mind of his memories.
Jayne said nothing, just clenched his teeth in pain, hands caught tight to the crank. Mal was there a moment behind River, having heard the holler. “What happened?” He barked curtly at his gunman while releasing the catch on the crank and unwinding the cable enough for Jayne to get his hands free.
“Slipped is all…cable got lose and I got caught up in it.” He growled in response, keeping his now free hands close to his body, fingers curved shut.
“Better let the Doc get a look at them hands Jayne.” Mal wasn’t speaking lightly, Jayne could see the warning in his eyes.
“Yeah, all right.” No sense in arguing with the man, his hands hurt something awful. He was pretty sure he may have broken some bones, that weren’t nothing new, and the skin had been torn off his fingers and palms for sure.
“What are you doing here Albatross?” The Captain turned to River who had been standing there silently the whole time.
“Listening, hearing the blood flow, finding openings to exit through.”
“Well, that sounds somewhat creepifying little one. How about you go find Simon for Jayne here.” Mal placed a hand on her shoulder and lightly propelled her towards the stairs.
River noticed that his touch was warm and earthy feeling, not fire and heat. No spark of pain or shock there. Brown and earth had become him. Warmed by the sunlight of Inara. She smiled slightly at that. Small joys in the midst of growing unease.
~*~
“This will hurt abit.” Simon was almost kindly sounding when he dunked Jayne’s bloody hands in two basins of lukewarm saline solution. The bleeding had worsened as Jayne had followed Mal to the infirmary. He had tried to hide it by clenching his fists tighter, gritting his teeth in pain at the rubbing of a few broken ends inside the skin.
“Stop moving your hands! Do you want to be permanently crippled!” Simon ordered curtly, while gently turning those same hands over and looking at the abrasions. “This looks bad, but I want to make sure all the particles of metal are out of the skin before I scan for broken bones.”
“Yeah, whatever Doc, just know it hurts something fierce when ya try ta straighten ‘em.” Jayne was beyond tired, beyond where he would grouch at the Doc. He just wanted it all to stop. Wanted to feel his world as a place of sight, sound, taste. Not this constant screaming in his head, the inability to sleep at night, the anger that never went away.
Stop. It all had to stop. His breath caught in his throat when Simon placed his hands in the scanner and he rested his hand’s weight on broken bones. “You really think any of us is going to survive this Jayne?” “ I might?” He remembered saying the words, the last time he felt like the man he had created carefully, the last time he had been ignorant.
“He knows what it feels like now. He sees it clearly.” River appeared next to him when Simon had him return to the med chair. His right hand was in the Doc’s grip, being laid on a suture tray. Local anesthesia took hold almost immediately. He could feel nothing from his shoulder down.
“Get outta here Girlie.” Jayne managed to growl at River, turning his face away from her.
“He knows! He feels it, the constant, the forever… must not close the door for that way surely leads to oblivion, keep the paths to the light clear, the dark is rising… go not gently, bears go not gently…” River leaned in close to him, her breath touching his cheek as she spoke. He felt her hair trail across his left arm she was so close.
“River, you need to let me do my work here, you need to go now.” Simon spoke gently as was his wont with his sister.
Jayne grunted in assent, knowing he wanted her to go before she saw what his heart was trying to hide. He couldn’t keep ignoring the fear he couldn’t control, the way it made him rage inside, made him want to strike out and hurt, kill, anything that threatened to take her away. He didn’t want her to see that. He didn’t want to face it himself.
River gazed at Jayne’s cheek intently, his face still turned from her. His mind was a sea of red, she couldn’t part the sea to find his thoughts. Quickly, she tipped forward over him and placed a kiss on his cheek, leaping back immediately, hand flying to her lips. Stinging, burning, flames licked across them.
“GORRAMNIT GIRLIE! Keep your lips to yourself or I will remove them for you!” Jayne snarled at her.
“Jayne, sit still or this will become an amputation and not just a simple setting.” Simon said harshly.
“Tell yer moonbrained sister ta stop kissin’ me then!”
“River, I asked you to leave, please do so now.” Simon was trying to stay patient, but he was getting frustrated with his sister. And not a little worried. Jayne had become easier to provoke to violence and at the same retreated to silence unexpectedly. Simon knew he had little chance of figuring out what the transfusions of River’s blood over the months had done to the mercenary. And that scared him.
River felt the rise in Simon’s irritation and Jayne’s anger and stepped back quietly. She needed to find a mirror to see how badly her lips were burned.
Third Kiss
Jayne’s hands healed as quickly as all the other injuries he had ever sustained. He had an ability to heal that impressed even Simon. His thoughts stayed angry and tired. He never stopped pushing himself, pushing his body. He never wanted to have a lack of strength stop him from getting up again. He wanted his ignorance back, he wanted life simple again. He wanted to not look at her and think what if? Could he have stopped her from going through that door? Would he have been able to do what she did? Would he have died without having lived, with this knowledge that ate at him every day?
He kept working after Simon knitted the bones together, no way he could just set back and do nothing. Weeks passed, everyone cautious and curious. Something was shifting.
He couldn’t stop tasting her on his lips, feel her softness on his cheek. Her eyes looking into his, looking for something, he knew not what. The red haze was growing cloudy around him. He wondered if he would just disperse in the air like a gas no longer held by a proper container. Nothing felt like it used to.
The crew noticed him retreating from them as he worked harder, became harder in mind and body. He would joke abit around the table at mealtimes, but not as much as he used to. Simon had stopped calling him a man-ape, in return the snarling man kept his distance from the doctor unless he needed medical attention.
When Simon caught him in the cargo bay late one night, playing his guitar softly and singing Amazing Grace in the most beautiful bass voice he had stood transfixed when he heard the first notes, not sure what he was listening to, or whom in truth.
When Jayne saw Simon at the end of the last few notes he stopped singing abruptly.
“What are ya doin’ up this late? Aren’t ya usually asleep by now?” Jayne grumbled.
“Ahh, well, yes I usually am. Couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to wake Kaylee…”Simon gestured back towards the passenger dorms where Kaylee and him slept most nights. His t-shirt was rumpled and hair was all mussed so it was apparent that he hadn’t thought he would see anyone up at this hour. “I , ahh, heard you singing…it was quite… beautiful.” Simon didn’t really know how to tell Jayne how soothing his singing had been. Jayne had never given the impression that he wanted to sooth anyone.
“Yah, well, it weren’t for anyone to hear.” Jayne was not happy Simon had caught him singing. He hadn’t sung for anyone since he left home. As boy he had sung in church, his Ma had always loved his singing and so he practiced enough that the choir let him sing with them. His voice had matured into a low bass and the gospels always sounded better when he sang along. When he left home he never sang for anyone again. He would pick out tunes on his guitar once in awhile, but not sing. Not until he saw crazy girl dance to her own music did he start to think about putting words to the music again. He remembered Amazing Grace from his youth, it was one his Ma’s favorite songs. He thought he might understand now.
“Yes, well, I will just go on back to bed now…yes, I believe I am.” Simon was flustered, maybe from the late hour, the unexpected side to the big man, or some other thing he was trying to sort out on his own about Kaylee.
“Doc, you might want to ask her one of these days. She’s earned it ya know…” Jayne had nailed Simon’s predicament right on the head. The men just looked at each other for a moment. Jayne was frighteningly still for a man who was generally always a mountain of life. Simon noticed the hollowness in Jayne’s eyes, the man was not what he had come to expect before Miranda, and after he had been too caught up in his own maelstrom with Kaylee and River and everyone else one step from dying or going over the abyss. He had seen Jayne’s plunge towards it himself. The abyss yawned in the man’s eyes, Simon could see the darkness welling there, pulling Jayne down to be nothing more than a creature of pure violence. Violence that had followed the big man since the first transfusions from River. Simon cringed inside, realizing he had had a hand in creating another weapon from the Alliance’s medical research.
“I ahh..I will… Umm, thank you, I think.” Simon replied as he turned to walk away. The crew had become a family, with bonds as tight as blood would bind. It was an odd thing in the Black, to have a family this close and yet so unknown to each other. He feared that Jayne would rupture that family when the call to the abyss overwhelmed him.
Jayne turned back to his guitar after Simon left, lightly strumming out a few notes, picking a bluesy undercurrent from the strings. He sang softly, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found. Was blind but now I see…” He glanced up when he felt eyes on him. She was standing there, pale gown draped around her body like water flowing over rocks. Smooth and shimmery.
“You see, not drifting any more. “
“Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, that first hour I believed…” He played on softly, looking right into her eyes as he did. His voice didn’t catch, didn’t falter even when a tear rolled down her cheek. He kept playing and singing quietly and she spun on her toes and began a dance to the music. Her arms moved in graceful arcs around her body her legs pushed her into spirals and dips and leaps with the beat of the old Earth-That-Was song. She had never heard it before , but it went straight to her heart, his voice carrying a love from his past.
River shuddered to a halt, hair flying free around her face. “She can’t hear you, but she feels you are there.” She said to him, willing him to understand.
Jayne stilled his fingers on the frets and strings of the guitar. His voice rumbled to a stop in his throat. He wasn’t sure what happened, he just knew he understood her in that moment, understood why she sounded crazy when she talked. She felt the red, the tired. He knew he would simply fade away if he didn’t find the way past the anger, the red…
She had swirled to a halt right in front of him. Her hair was streaming over her shoulders. He put the guitar down, looked back at her intently, words forming in his mind but not wanting to pass his lips. River whispered so softly he could only just hear the words, “At first a shudder steals through him, and again the old awe steals over him…”*
“Girlie… I dunno that I have what it will take to be… “ His voice was choked.
“She sees the bear struggling to wake from his winters sleep. Comes to where it is warm and safe.” She could feel the fires burning inside him, feels her hair rising in the warm currents pouring from his skin.
He is so tired, he wonders if he is imagining the crazy girl standing right there, he wants to reach out and check, but he is afraid if he does the dream will turn into the nightmare and the screaming will start again. The red cloud thickens around him, his angry wall begins to close in on him again.
River sees his eyes shift, the blue clear light fading to darkness. Desperate to not let him retreat to his world of red and anger, she leans towards him and is stunned when he crushes her to his chest, eyes boring down into hers. A growl tears from his throat as he kisses her, hard, lips bruising against her teeth, his growl stealing her breath as his body flames around her. She tries to cry out but can’t as everything she is is consumed in a fire she cannot see.
Her mind races, trying to catch any thought that is there at all before she is utterly burned away. She can only grasp one truth as it ignites in her, maybe fire is wise enough to know when something has to be not abandoned but consumed and used to create a greater thing? She is nothing, she is reduced.
She is everything. He jerks away from her, suddenly realizing what he has just done. She stands before him, beautiful ephemeral, and cool. He can feel her cool lips still on his. “Girlie…ya need to be gettin’ away from me…” Jayne manages to stutter out, voice low and harsh in his own ears.
“Through the Thou, the person become I”* River replies, voice peaceful and content. She feels him when he touches her. His being surrounds her and gives her a solid place to be. She feels herself whole, not fragmented and pulled by the minds on the ship. She is just there with him. Feeling him.
He is emerging as from shadow.
[*Plato and Martin Buber]