Like Blood in the Rayne Chapter 3
Title: Like Blood in the Rayne
Author: elsibet34
Fandom: Firefly
Pairings: Jayne/River with hints at Mal/Inara and Simon/Kaylee
Rating: R
Disclaimers: Joss is the Master of the Firefly ‘Verse. Subspecies is the product of Charles Band’s beautiful mind. It’s all theirs.
Summary: Serenity takes on more than its’ crew bargained for when they transport an ancient artifact.
Notes: This takes place after the BDM and all the Subspecies films. Everything is fair play. Also, I reserve the right to change pov at scene changes. I like to. :P
Chapter 3 - Not Able To Take Your Call Right Now
Jayne carried River’s unconscious form to her room with her harried brother dogging his heels. In the distance, he could hear the others moving along as well, their steps fading away to silence when the two paths diverged. Simon stayed right behind him all the way to River’s dorm.
The load burdened man stopped before the door by way of a hint and waited. When nothing happened to change the fact that the door was still closed, he prompted the frazzled younger man. “You mind giving me a hand here?” He jostled the floppy girl in his arms as an emphasis for his need for assistance. “Mine are all full up of crazy person.”
Simon blinked. “What? Oh, sorry.” He slid the door open and entered the room first. “Just let me get this sorted out so she’ll be comfortable.” He fussed with the pillows and blankets, looking at Jayne the entire time, making him uncomfortable. He was certainly taking his sweet time about it.
Jayne, who rapidly decided he didn’t much appreciate Simon’s thinly veiled study, pushed past the doctor, shoving him aside with one shoulder roughly, only to put River down equally as gently. He laid her legs out straight and smiled at her usual lack of shoes. He had just pulled the blanket up over her prone figure when he looked up at Simon’s incredulous face. Jayne Cobb, self-preservation instincts kicking in all of a sudden, dropped the blankets like counterfeit cash and tried to bolt.
Escape was not to be so easy. Simon came out of the room, practically right on his heels again. He was talking abnormally fast. “Jayne, I’m wondering how you managed…”
Couldn’t the man just leave him be? “Shut it, doc.” Jayne tossed back and kept walking.
Simon was catching up. How did he move so fast with them little legs? “But I’m curious…”
Jayne snorted. “No argument here but shouldn’t you stay back there and mind your nutty little sis?”
Simon stopped walking. Good. “What was that?” No, not good after all. It was bad.
Jayne stopped. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, fancy-boy.”
He looked back to see Simon was doing that nervous ear tugging thing of his. Oh, this was definitely not good. “You haven’t called her names in weeks. Why now?”
The real question was how did a guy tell someone else that his sister was starting to scare the hell out of him in many ways? Jayne went into an avoidance pattern. “All I know is you better stay down here with the girl. Whatever that was all about, weren’t good. She wakes up and goes all wooly on us again and nobody’s around to catch her, she could make a mess out of that mighty expensive box.” Or hurt her self in the process, he added to himself.
Simon’s eyes widened comically. “That hadn’t occurred to me.” He retraced his way back into River’s room at once, the door sliding shut after him.
“Well, no la shi.” Jayne said with bravado but heaved a massive breath when Simon disappeared. That had come a mite too close for his liking to being a conversation he wasn’t sure he was ready to have.
****************************************
***************
According to the time zone information in the packet, it was just past dawn where they needed to reach on Ariel. Mal hoped somebody was awake already to take the call. He punched the coordinates into the cortex right as Jayne entered the bridge, looking completely distracted. “Simon getting our girl settled in?”
“What?” Jayne sputtered.
Distracted was an understatement. Well, this was just getting all kinds of old. “Simon Tam. Short guy. Annoys you. Where is he?” Mal asked.
“Passenger quarters watching his screwball sister.” Deadpanned the merc in reply. Maybe he’d have to move up that talk he promised Zoe they’d have. A blip from the cortex screen announced the call had gone through.
Mal gave Jayne his ‘we’ll talk later’ look and faced the screen to find a blonde woman in her late 60’s or so looking back at him. She was impeccably dressed in a suit that exactly matched the blue of her eyes and had a certain air of confidence one didn’t see often off core worlds. She looked every bit the part of someone who had all the money in the ‘verse. “This is the Morgan residence. Judging by your lack of proper attire, I shall assume you made this call in error.”
Mal looked down at himself, finally remembering he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and cursed under his breath. “Tee wuh duh pee-goo.” He looked back to the screen apologetically. “I mean myself, ma’am. No disrespect intended toward your person. We had a little emergency.”
“Am I to take it then that you have business with Miss Morgan herself?” She didn’t look like she believed that were at all probable. Apparently, she was not Michelle Morgan either. Interesting. She wore an awful nice suit for a servant. Mal could see one of her hands reaching forward, presumably to disconnect their communication.
He hated when people gave him that superior tone. “As a matter of fact, lady, I do. I’m Malcolm Reynolds, the Captain of a vessel that’s transporting an item for her.” There. He felt a nice sense of satisfaction when she couldn’t cover her surprise.
She recovered quickly enough, moving straight to business. “My sincere apologies, Captain. I’m Virginia Wells, Miss Morgan’s personal assistant. We weren’t expecting you for another few days. What time will you be arriving?”
Mal cleared his throat. “You misunderstand the intent of this wave, I’m afraid. Seems I need to ask Miss Morgan a few questions about this cargo. For some unknown reason, it’s giving some of my crew a serious case of willies.”
“I’m afraid that Miss Morgan is not available to answer any questions at this time. She has a business meeting scheduled every day this week starting first thing in the morning. Perhaps if you were to call back sometime after dinner she could speak with you.” First thing in the morning? Cheng de Di yu. She wasn’t kidding. The dawn had only been ten minutes prior at that location. Who scheduled dawn business meetings, anyway?
He decided to go on the offensive. “I ain’t waiting all damn day. I got a crewmember here that’s scared to death of what’s in that box. Only information I got out of the broker is that it’s some old sculpture. Would you care to shed a little light on it for me? Otherwise, I’m feeling a powerful need to open it up and make sure there’s nothing dangerous inside, dong ma?” He knew it for certain. He saw her flinch.
“Perhaps the broker let something of the item’s legend slip to someone else on your crew and you are simply not aware of the fact. It’s all superstition, I assure you.” She smiled. “Despite not holding any belief in superstitions and legends herself, my employer finds their study most fascinating and has been building a collection of occult items for some time. This particular item has been most difficult to find. Please, take care to deliver it unopened as we do not know what effect air might have on its surfaces. Otherwise we would be forced to hold you financially culpable for any damages.” With that said, she disconnected.
Mal turned his back to rest against the console and looked at the assembled crew. Zoe volunteered an opinion first. “She’s obviously hiding something.”
Kaylee spoke up timidly. “What legend? She said there was a legend. That don’t sound to me like we want this thing on the boat.”
Mal answered her. “If I had to guess, I’d say she doesn’t want us to know what we’ve got back there in cargo.”
Inara agreed, “I noticed that she was particularly careful to avoid revealing what it actually is. She made an allusion that we might understand if we already knew but said nothing that would tell us anything.”
“Wait.” Kaylee spouted. “We’re talking in circles. Why don’t we just say to hell with what she wants and go look, see what it is? I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep right until we know.”
Jayne finally spoke. “You forgetting that whole fit the moon-brain had and said we shouldn’t open it?”
Mal had forgotten that part. Funny, why had Jayne not? “I guess we really have no other option open than to wait for her meeting to be over and hope that it don’t run late.”
He looked at Kaylee. She really was scared nearly to death, no exaggerating needed. “Would it make you feel better if Inara came and stayed in your bunk with you, that is if she don’t mind doing it?” Besides, that would kill two birds. He didn’t feel comfortable letting Inara go back to her shuttle alone but there was no way he could tell her not to go. She’d just do it out of spite. But, if she were doing a favor for Kaylee, it might be different.
Inara set an arm around Kaylee’s shoulders. “I don’t mind at all.”
Kaylee smiled at her in gratitude, “Xie xie.” They headed off to Kaylee’s room together to try getting some more sleep.
At least Inara would help rid Kaylee of the frightened look she’d had going since they all came to the bridge, Mal reasoned. Two down, two to go. “Zoe, you gonna be all right by yourself? You aren’t scared by this superstitious nonsense?”
“Seen too many things in my life to go being afraid of something I haven’t even seen yet.” She left.
Mal stopped Jayne before he could just walk off. “You forgetting something yourself?” In response to Jayne’s confused expression, Mal picked two guns up from off the pilot’s seat and held them out.
“How’d you get hold of my girls?" Suspicion clouded his face. At least it was a change. “I thought that rule of yours about not going in other people’s bunks applied to you, too.” Jayne snatched the firearms out of Mal’s hands, checked the safeties and stuffed them in the back of his pants. “It ain’t rightly fair if…”
“Would you relax? I didn’t go in your gorram bunk. You left them behind in the cargo bay.” He gauged Jayne’s expression. “You don’t mean you actually forgot guns?” This was obviously worse than Mal had even thought. He’d assumed Jayne just had his arms full and was figuring someone would grab his girls for him. If he forgot them entirely, that was a different story.
When Jayne didn’t answer him, Mal thought he better push the issue a bit. “You’ve been acting all funny like all day today. Now, Zoe, she came to the conclusion that you were up to something no good and we oughta maybe keep an eye on you. I ain’t thinking we have to worry on that but told her we’d have ourselves a little chat, just the same. Don’t you be making a liar outta me.”
Again Jayne stared back with the stone face. “We done here?”
“No! Gorramit! We ain’t done. I need you paying attention. It seems like we signed up for a pile of problems, likes of which we ain’t never seen before. I need you watching our backs.”
“No worries, Mal. I’m on it.”
Mal snapped. “No, Jayne. What you’re on is some long past its time guilt trip and we can’t be having that. Knock it off, would you?”
“Not on a guilt trip.” Jayne grimaced, flipped the guns back out from his pants and onto the copilots console, and flopped into the seat. “Not saying I didn’t start out on one but the girl already gave me the whole lecture. You can spare me.”
River knew? Of course she did. What was he thinking? It actually went a long ways toward explaining Jayne’s odd behavior. “Fine. As long as we’re clear here.” Jayne nodded back at him. Really, Mal didn’t feel any better but had come to the conclusion Jayne wasn’t prone to sharing whatever else was on his mind. “Just do me a favor and get some sleep.”
*************************************************
Jayne watched the black and found it soothing. It always seemed like things couldn’t catch you in the black. He didn’t care if Mal didn’t hold by any ‘superstitious nonsense.’ He sure did. To top it off, they all knew River was never far off the mark when she said she felt something.
He flipped off the cortex screen on his way by and trudged tiredly to his bunk. The way his brain was moving on overdrive, he didn’t think there was anything in the ‘verse could help him sleep.
Still it only took twenty minutes or so for him to fall dead asleep only to have it interrupted again. The clicking sound woke him. He had a gun out and aimed before he even saw feet but put it away again when he saw who it was. “Ain’t you supposed to be sleeping?”
TBC…
*************************************************
Chinese Translations
La shi = Shite
Tee wuh duh pee-goo = Idiomatically means I’m an idiot
Dong ma = Understand me
Cheng de Di yu= Bells of Hell (Hell’s Bells)
Xie xie = Thanks
Author: elsibet34
Fandom: Firefly
Pairings: Jayne/River with hints at Mal/Inara and Simon/Kaylee
Rating: R
Disclaimers: Joss is the Master of the Firefly ‘Verse. Subspecies is the product of Charles Band’s beautiful mind. It’s all theirs.
Summary: Serenity takes on more than its’ crew bargained for when they transport an ancient artifact.
Notes: This takes place after the BDM and all the Subspecies films. Everything is fair play. Also, I reserve the right to change pov at scene changes. I like to. :P
Chapter 3 - Not Able To Take Your Call Right Now
Jayne carried River’s unconscious form to her room with her harried brother dogging his heels. In the distance, he could hear the others moving along as well, their steps fading away to silence when the two paths diverged. Simon stayed right behind him all the way to River’s dorm.
The load burdened man stopped before the door by way of a hint and waited. When nothing happened to change the fact that the door was still closed, he prompted the frazzled younger man. “You mind giving me a hand here?” He jostled the floppy girl in his arms as an emphasis for his need for assistance. “Mine are all full up of crazy person.”
Simon blinked. “What? Oh, sorry.” He slid the door open and entered the room first. “Just let me get this sorted out so she’ll be comfortable.” He fussed with the pillows and blankets, looking at Jayne the entire time, making him uncomfortable. He was certainly taking his sweet time about it.
Jayne, who rapidly decided he didn’t much appreciate Simon’s thinly veiled study, pushed past the doctor, shoving him aside with one shoulder roughly, only to put River down equally as gently. He laid her legs out straight and smiled at her usual lack of shoes. He had just pulled the blanket up over her prone figure when he looked up at Simon’s incredulous face. Jayne Cobb, self-preservation instincts kicking in all of a sudden, dropped the blankets like counterfeit cash and tried to bolt.
Escape was not to be so easy. Simon came out of the room, practically right on his heels again. He was talking abnormally fast. “Jayne, I’m wondering how you managed…”
Couldn’t the man just leave him be? “Shut it, doc.” Jayne tossed back and kept walking.
Simon was catching up. How did he move so fast with them little legs? “But I’m curious…”
Jayne snorted. “No argument here but shouldn’t you stay back there and mind your nutty little sis?”
Simon stopped walking. Good. “What was that?” No, not good after all. It was bad.
Jayne stopped. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, fancy-boy.”
He looked back to see Simon was doing that nervous ear tugging thing of his. Oh, this was definitely not good. “You haven’t called her names in weeks. Why now?”
The real question was how did a guy tell someone else that his sister was starting to scare the hell out of him in many ways? Jayne went into an avoidance pattern. “All I know is you better stay down here with the girl. Whatever that was all about, weren’t good. She wakes up and goes all wooly on us again and nobody’s around to catch her, she could make a mess out of that mighty expensive box.” Or hurt her self in the process, he added to himself.
Simon’s eyes widened comically. “That hadn’t occurred to me.” He retraced his way back into River’s room at once, the door sliding shut after him.
“Well, no la shi.” Jayne said with bravado but heaved a massive breath when Simon disappeared. That had come a mite too close for his liking to being a conversation he wasn’t sure he was ready to have.
****************************************
***************
According to the time zone information in the packet, it was just past dawn where they needed to reach on Ariel. Mal hoped somebody was awake already to take the call. He punched the coordinates into the cortex right as Jayne entered the bridge, looking completely distracted. “Simon getting our girl settled in?”
“What?” Jayne sputtered.
Distracted was an understatement. Well, this was just getting all kinds of old. “Simon Tam. Short guy. Annoys you. Where is he?” Mal asked.
“Passenger quarters watching his screwball sister.” Deadpanned the merc in reply. Maybe he’d have to move up that talk he promised Zoe they’d have. A blip from the cortex screen announced the call had gone through.
Mal gave Jayne his ‘we’ll talk later’ look and faced the screen to find a blonde woman in her late 60’s or so looking back at him. She was impeccably dressed in a suit that exactly matched the blue of her eyes and had a certain air of confidence one didn’t see often off core worlds. She looked every bit the part of someone who had all the money in the ‘verse. “This is the Morgan residence. Judging by your lack of proper attire, I shall assume you made this call in error.”
Mal looked down at himself, finally remembering he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and cursed under his breath. “Tee wuh duh pee-goo.” He looked back to the screen apologetically. “I mean myself, ma’am. No disrespect intended toward your person. We had a little emergency.”
“Am I to take it then that you have business with Miss Morgan herself?” She didn’t look like she believed that were at all probable. Apparently, she was not Michelle Morgan either. Interesting. She wore an awful nice suit for a servant. Mal could see one of her hands reaching forward, presumably to disconnect their communication.
He hated when people gave him that superior tone. “As a matter of fact, lady, I do. I’m Malcolm Reynolds, the Captain of a vessel that’s transporting an item for her.” There. He felt a nice sense of satisfaction when she couldn’t cover her surprise.
She recovered quickly enough, moving straight to business. “My sincere apologies, Captain. I’m Virginia Wells, Miss Morgan’s personal assistant. We weren’t expecting you for another few days. What time will you be arriving?”
Mal cleared his throat. “You misunderstand the intent of this wave, I’m afraid. Seems I need to ask Miss Morgan a few questions about this cargo. For some unknown reason, it’s giving some of my crew a serious case of willies.”
“I’m afraid that Miss Morgan is not available to answer any questions at this time. She has a business meeting scheduled every day this week starting first thing in the morning. Perhaps if you were to call back sometime after dinner she could speak with you.” First thing in the morning? Cheng de Di yu. She wasn’t kidding. The dawn had only been ten minutes prior at that location. Who scheduled dawn business meetings, anyway?
He decided to go on the offensive. “I ain’t waiting all damn day. I got a crewmember here that’s scared to death of what’s in that box. Only information I got out of the broker is that it’s some old sculpture. Would you care to shed a little light on it for me? Otherwise, I’m feeling a powerful need to open it up and make sure there’s nothing dangerous inside, dong ma?” He knew it for certain. He saw her flinch.
“Perhaps the broker let something of the item’s legend slip to someone else on your crew and you are simply not aware of the fact. It’s all superstition, I assure you.” She smiled. “Despite not holding any belief in superstitions and legends herself, my employer finds their study most fascinating and has been building a collection of occult items for some time. This particular item has been most difficult to find. Please, take care to deliver it unopened as we do not know what effect air might have on its surfaces. Otherwise we would be forced to hold you financially culpable for any damages.” With that said, she disconnected.
Mal turned his back to rest against the console and looked at the assembled crew. Zoe volunteered an opinion first. “She’s obviously hiding something.”
Kaylee spoke up timidly. “What legend? She said there was a legend. That don’t sound to me like we want this thing on the boat.”
Mal answered her. “If I had to guess, I’d say she doesn’t want us to know what we’ve got back there in cargo.”
Inara agreed, “I noticed that she was particularly careful to avoid revealing what it actually is. She made an allusion that we might understand if we already knew but said nothing that would tell us anything.”
“Wait.” Kaylee spouted. “We’re talking in circles. Why don’t we just say to hell with what she wants and go look, see what it is? I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep right until we know.”
Jayne finally spoke. “You forgetting that whole fit the moon-brain had and said we shouldn’t open it?”
Mal had forgotten that part. Funny, why had Jayne not? “I guess we really have no other option open than to wait for her meeting to be over and hope that it don’t run late.”
He looked at Kaylee. She really was scared nearly to death, no exaggerating needed. “Would it make you feel better if Inara came and stayed in your bunk with you, that is if she don’t mind doing it?” Besides, that would kill two birds. He didn’t feel comfortable letting Inara go back to her shuttle alone but there was no way he could tell her not to go. She’d just do it out of spite. But, if she were doing a favor for Kaylee, it might be different.
Inara set an arm around Kaylee’s shoulders. “I don’t mind at all.”
Kaylee smiled at her in gratitude, “Xie xie.” They headed off to Kaylee’s room together to try getting some more sleep.
At least Inara would help rid Kaylee of the frightened look she’d had going since they all came to the bridge, Mal reasoned. Two down, two to go. “Zoe, you gonna be all right by yourself? You aren’t scared by this superstitious nonsense?”
“Seen too many things in my life to go being afraid of something I haven’t even seen yet.” She left.
Mal stopped Jayne before he could just walk off. “You forgetting something yourself?” In response to Jayne’s confused expression, Mal picked two guns up from off the pilot’s seat and held them out.
“How’d you get hold of my girls?" Suspicion clouded his face. At least it was a change. “I thought that rule of yours about not going in other people’s bunks applied to you, too.” Jayne snatched the firearms out of Mal’s hands, checked the safeties and stuffed them in the back of his pants. “It ain’t rightly fair if…”
“Would you relax? I didn’t go in your gorram bunk. You left them behind in the cargo bay.” He gauged Jayne’s expression. “You don’t mean you actually forgot guns?” This was obviously worse than Mal had even thought. He’d assumed Jayne just had his arms full and was figuring someone would grab his girls for him. If he forgot them entirely, that was a different story.
When Jayne didn’t answer him, Mal thought he better push the issue a bit. “You’ve been acting all funny like all day today. Now, Zoe, she came to the conclusion that you were up to something no good and we oughta maybe keep an eye on you. I ain’t thinking we have to worry on that but told her we’d have ourselves a little chat, just the same. Don’t you be making a liar outta me.”
Again Jayne stared back with the stone face. “We done here?”
“No! Gorramit! We ain’t done. I need you paying attention. It seems like we signed up for a pile of problems, likes of which we ain’t never seen before. I need you watching our backs.”
“No worries, Mal. I’m on it.”
Mal snapped. “No, Jayne. What you’re on is some long past its time guilt trip and we can’t be having that. Knock it off, would you?”
“Not on a guilt trip.” Jayne grimaced, flipped the guns back out from his pants and onto the copilots console, and flopped into the seat. “Not saying I didn’t start out on one but the girl already gave me the whole lecture. You can spare me.”
River knew? Of course she did. What was he thinking? It actually went a long ways toward explaining Jayne’s odd behavior. “Fine. As long as we’re clear here.” Jayne nodded back at him. Really, Mal didn’t feel any better but had come to the conclusion Jayne wasn’t prone to sharing whatever else was on his mind. “Just do me a favor and get some sleep.”
*************************************************
Jayne watched the black and found it soothing. It always seemed like things couldn’t catch you in the black. He didn’t care if Mal didn’t hold by any ‘superstitious nonsense.’ He sure did. To top it off, they all knew River was never far off the mark when she said she felt something.
He flipped off the cortex screen on his way by and trudged tiredly to his bunk. The way his brain was moving on overdrive, he didn’t think there was anything in the ‘verse could help him sleep.
Still it only took twenty minutes or so for him to fall dead asleep only to have it interrupted again. The clicking sound woke him. He had a gun out and aimed before he even saw feet but put it away again when he saw who it was. “Ain’t you supposed to be sleeping?”
TBC…
*************************************************
Chinese Translations
La shi = Shite
Tee wuh duh pee-goo = Idiomatically means I’m an idiot
Dong ma = Understand me
Cheng de Di yu= Bells of Hell (Hell’s Bells)
Xie xie = Thanks