Firefly: Black Cat Blues - 3.10 Homecoming, Part 3
Previous episode here.
Morning dawns, and with it the prevailing attitude on Black Cat becomes that no one should speak of yesterday's confusing events lest they reopen old wounds. However, Osiris still has a few things to think about. Early on, he approaches Nicolas and tells him that because he carried through with his part of their agreement by telling Quinn he falsified the DNA results, they need to talk about Nicolas's end of the bargain. Since the ship is heading for Athens soon and Osiris wants no part of that trip for reasons he won't spell out, Osiris wants to take a two-week leave of absence from the ship in order to return to Bernadette and seek pastoral counseling from the Shepherds at the abbey there. Osiris explains that has been disturbed by the recent severity of his flashbacks, particularly when he considers that one of them almost caused him to kill a child, and considering that the Shepherds on Bernadette were some of the people who have been kindest to and most accepting of them, he thinks that spending some time in their care will be the best thing for him at the present time. At first, Nicolas is resistant to the idea of Osiris leaving for so long, saying that if he lets the ship's doctor leave, the rest of the crew will be in great danger if anyone gets hurt. Osiris responds that he has faith in the abilities of people like Archer, Luke, and Quinn to cover for him while he's gone, and that it will be an even greater danger in the long run if he continues to suffer from flashbacks. Nicolas can't argue with that, so he ultimately tells Osiris to take the time he needs but arrange all of his own transportation. Osiris books a flight to Bernadette (but Nicolas pays for it) and tells Nicolas that he will meet them on Lilac in two weeks' time. Then he leaves a note for Luke telling him to take care of the beer in his absence, and leaves the ship without telling anyone else where he's going.
While the rest of the crew is taking care of any last-minute business they have remaining on Paquin, Nicolas takes Jaya with him to look for a job for Athens. Unfortunately, Paquin doesn't have much to offer Athens in the way of cargo, and the best job either of them can come up with is a contract to transport a group of sculptors and stonemasons to pick out some marble in one of Athens' many quarries. But the fact that Nicolas is still reluctant to take on passengers with kids on board the ship, combined with the sculptors wanting to travel in luxury and also wanting to make a round trip, leads him to turn down the work and resign himself to going to Lilac without any cargo or passengers. The ship leaves without Osiris, of course, which inspires some questions about where he's gone; Nicolas tells the truth to anyone who asks, but a number of crew members (Quinn in particular) are a bit perplexed by his sudden departure.
Things are quiet en route to Athens. The crew passes their time with basketball, brewing, painting, and other leisure pursuits meant to keep their minds off the upcoming trip to Lilac. Birgitta repairs the damaged communications console. Daisy is perhaps the only one who's excited about the side trip to Athens (Summer included; she's surprisingly subdued about the possibility of going home to her family), saying that she's never been there and the community has the potential to yield some very interesting interviews. The big news is that midway through the voyage, the ship receives a message containing a letter of apology stating that Black Cat was labeled slavers in error and is guilty of no crime by attempting to return kidnapped children to their parents, and an official pardon from the Alliance (which Nicolas prints out and hangs on the wall in the kitchen). Everyone is happy to know that they no longer have to worry about unwanted attention from law enforcement, although it does relatively little to solve the questions that are still weighing on the crew's minds about who kidnapped the children in the first place.
After a four-day journey, Black Cat lands on Athens outside a mid-sized city on the northern continent, near to where they believe Summer's family may be found. The crew's first step is to check in with local law enforcement and try to secure their cooperation. Jaya, Luke, Nicolas, and Siqin pile into the mule and ride into town, where they meet a sheriff's deputy and tell him about why they've come. Since they don't have a lot of pointers beyond knowing that Summer's family probably lives on the northen continent of Athens, they're hoping to get the sheriff's help in broadcasting a message about the missing child and find her parents that way. The deputy agrees to enlist the sheriff's help, and tells the crew to return the following morning if they want to be directly involved with broadcasting the message (though the crew ultimately decides just to let the sheriff handle this one on his own). By the time they leave the police station, it's getting late, so Nicolas elects to wait until the next day to begin the search for Summer's family.
The next morning, the crew splits up into several groups. Quinn and Siqin will take the mule and search some nearby farms and plantations for information, since they believe it's likely that Summer is the daughter of farmers or sharecroppers. Birgitta and Luke will take Luke's shuttle and range farther afield, checking out plantations that are farther to the north. Archer and Jaya will stay on the ship to keep an eye on Summer. And Nicolas will accompany Daisy into the town as she seeks out possible interview subjects to continue her dissertation research - partially because he still thinks Daisy will benefit from supervision after what happened on St Albans, and also because he's just curious about how she spends her time when she's not on the ship.
The teams who have been tasked with trying to locate Summer's family have a quite successful day. Quinn and Siqin cover a lot of ground quickly, and ask around at almost ten plantations about any missing children. Birgitta and Luke cover much less ground, but Luke uses his social finesse to befriend a plantation owner who fills him in on all the local gossip. The radio broadcast was also helpful, since it got the people who heard it thinking about whether they had heard of missing persons in their area. Between the two groups, when everyone returns to the ship, they manage to pinpoint a fairly reasonable location for Summer's home - on the plantation of a potato grower named Tad Brooks. Both groups have heard from several sources that a four-year-old girl went missing from Mr. Brooks' plantation several months earlier, but the locals figured a cougar or other wild animal had carried her off because rural Athens does tend to be a very dangerous place.
For Daisy and Nicolas, the day is also productive, but in a different way. They begin the day at a cafe in town, since Daisy says that the first step in finding interview subjects is finding a local resident who will be friendly to your objectives and willing to introduce you to other people to interview. Daisy's in luck today, because when she strikes up a conversation with another person at the bar over the quality of the coffee on Athens, she meets just the sort of person she needs. By pure coincidence, Daisy has encountered Dr. Jennifer Oliver, a history scholar from the University of Londinum; though the two have never met before, they share many experiences and acquaintances.[1] Dr. Oliver, whose specialty is the study of war crimes, has been living and researching on Athens for some time, and when she learns that Daisy is hoping to conduct some interviews, she is glad to tell Daisy the names of a few locals who have proven amenable to Dr. Oliver's goals and will thus probably be likely to help Daisy. Dr. Oliver then says that she has some other business to conduct, so the two of them part ways after Daisy thanks her. As it turns out, Dr. Oliver's suggestions were very good ones, so Daisy and Nicolas spend the whole day conducting interviews and learning a lot about Athens and its people in the process.
When Nicolas returns to the ship and hears about the crew's success, he is pleased and suggests that the group take Summer to Mr. Brooks' plantation the following day. Everybody settles in for the night, with Nicolas falling asleep in the cockpit while watching the security monitors. As it turns out, it's a good thing he decided to stay there, because in the middle of the night he wakes up to the sound of someone pounding on the outer doors of the ship. He goes downstairs and is surprised to see Dr. Oliver standing outside the ship, looking quite disheveled and missing the suitcase she was carrying earlier. She explains somewhat cryptically that "the friends I was staying with turned out not to be my friends", and asks Nicolas if she can come aboard and get passage on his vessel. Against his better judgment, he agrees - on the condition that she explain to him what's going on.
Dr. Oliver and Nicolas sit down in the kitchen with cups of coffee, and she explains that in the course of her study of war crimes, she became interested in a little-known story having to do with a hospital that treated a large number of torture victims during the Unification War. This hospital was shut down at the end of the war, under suspicion of very dark and terrible things having happened there, and most of its remaining patients were sent to Osiris. Dr. Oliver became so interested in this hidden tale that she did everything in her power to get her hands on one of the few existing files that deals with what happened at the hospital - even going so far, she implies, as to commit theft. Nicolas asks to see the file, and she complies. The file includes doctor and nurse reports on several patients who were the victims of severe physical and psychological trauma (including victims of tortures inflicted by Alliance soldiers, Browncoats, and Reavers); however, most names and identifying details, and in fact about 2/3 of all the information in the file, is blacked out and redacted, making the data difficult to interpret.
Dr. Oliver is confident that the file's disappearance has been noticed by people who don't want it to be publicized; this is why her "friends" turned on her and she was forced to escape with the data and little else. She hasn't had much time to examine the file, but she intends to find some peaceful Rim planet to study it and write a paper on it. She asks Nicolas if he will help her by taking her anywhere but the Core - and, of course, she is willing to pay whatever exorbitant passage fee Nicolas can dream up. Not knowing what else to do (and wanting that money more than a little), Nicolas tells Dr. Oliver to settle into the vacant passenger bunk and stay on board and out of trouble until such time as they can drop her off on Lilac.
The next morning, Nicolas heads out with Daisy once again (both to keep an eye on her and to look for some sort for the ship on Lilac), leaving Archer behind with orders to keep an eye on Dr. Oliver (who has since filled the crew in on at least some of the reason for her presence on the ship, much to the interest of Quinn in particular). Birgitta, Jaya, Luke, and Quinn load Summer into Luke's shuttle and set out for Mr. Brooks' plantation. As soon as they land, they know they're in the right place, since Summer begins talking about how she recognizes various features of her home. The crew walks up to the plantation house and asks to see Mr. Brooks, who doesn't recognize Summer at first glance but, after hearing her story, is able to identify her as the girl who went missing and the daughter of the Law family. He invites the crew to get into his horse-drawn carriage and help him to return Summer to her family.
Summer's family lives in a humble two-room shack near the potato fields where her parents apparently work. The shack is inhabited by at least ten other children of various ages, who show little astonishment or gratitude at Summer coming back. They simply take her to see her mother, a thin woman who appears old beyond her years and is doing laundry in a tin basin. Summer's mother admonishes her for running off and making the family think she was dead, and tells her that she won't be allowed to play alone by the creek anymore. Then she tells her to get back to her work of weeding the vegetable patch. Summer looks glumly up at the crew, says "Bye, I guess," and walks off to get back to work. Mildly astonished but not knowing how they can possibly help this situation, the crew turns to leave...but as they go, Luke is stopped by Summer running up to him and grabbing his legs as she weeps and begs him to take her with him. She says that life on Athens is boring and bad compared to what she's seen experienced with the crew, so she doesn't want to go back. As gently as he knows how, Luke tells her that life on Black Cat is not a good or safe life for a child, so they couldn't take her even if her family would give them permission. Summer responds that in ten years, when she's 14, she will have reached the age of majority on Athens and then will be able to do whatever she wants. When that happens, she wants Luke to come back and get her. He tells her that he'll do his best to keep his promise, and tells her to write to him in the interim. Summer promises to do just that, then dries her tears and returns to her family...at least for the time being.[2]
Everyone reconvenes at the ship in the evening and shares the stories of what they've been up to. After he tells the story about how Summer was returned to her family, Luke notes that Archer seems even more quiet and stony than usual, and sees through this to the upset that it's hiding. He takes her aside and asks her what's wrong. After some prodding, Archer tells him that she's bothered by giving Summer back to her parents when it's clear they don't care about improving her life, which Archer thinks parents should always want for their children, and when their situation is so difficult for everyone involved. She doesn't think that Luke should have taken Summer back aboard, since she knows how dangerous that would be for everyone, but the issue bothers her nonetheless...especially since while she applauds Luke's efforts to promise her help later in life, she fears that by that time Summer will hardly remember her experiences and will just get stuck in her present situation. It soon becomes clear to Luke that Summer's situation reminds Archer of less pleasant aspects of her own childhood, since Archer refers to joining the military as her best way to escape how she grew up. He knows he won't change her mind, so all he can do is listen, try to comfort her, and be surprised at what he's learning about his crewmate.
After dinner, Nicolas orders Quinn to take off and head for Lilac. It's a short flight, so they'll arrive in the morning. They've put it off for as long as possible, but now that all four other children have been safely returned to their families, they can't wait any longer. It's time for the crew - Nicolas and Quinn included, of course - to return to Lilac, and to face whatever is waiting for them there...
TO BE CONTINUED...
1 - As if you couldn't tell already, Dr. Oliver is actually dayzdark's temporary NPC-ish character to be played until Osiris returns from getting decrazified. Everybody say hi.
2 - And that's how the crew of Black Cat created an anime protagonist.
Morning dawns, and with it the prevailing attitude on Black Cat becomes that no one should speak of yesterday's confusing events lest they reopen old wounds. However, Osiris still has a few things to think about. Early on, he approaches Nicolas and tells him that because he carried through with his part of their agreement by telling Quinn he falsified the DNA results, they need to talk about Nicolas's end of the bargain. Since the ship is heading for Athens soon and Osiris wants no part of that trip for reasons he won't spell out, Osiris wants to take a two-week leave of absence from the ship in order to return to Bernadette and seek pastoral counseling from the Shepherds at the abbey there. Osiris explains that has been disturbed by the recent severity of his flashbacks, particularly when he considers that one of them almost caused him to kill a child, and considering that the Shepherds on Bernadette were some of the people who have been kindest to and most accepting of them, he thinks that spending some time in their care will be the best thing for him at the present time. At first, Nicolas is resistant to the idea of Osiris leaving for so long, saying that if he lets the ship's doctor leave, the rest of the crew will be in great danger if anyone gets hurt. Osiris responds that he has faith in the abilities of people like Archer, Luke, and Quinn to cover for him while he's gone, and that it will be an even greater danger in the long run if he continues to suffer from flashbacks. Nicolas can't argue with that, so he ultimately tells Osiris to take the time he needs but arrange all of his own transportation. Osiris books a flight to Bernadette (but Nicolas pays for it) and tells Nicolas that he will meet them on Lilac in two weeks' time. Then he leaves a note for Luke telling him to take care of the beer in his absence, and leaves the ship without telling anyone else where he's going.
While the rest of the crew is taking care of any last-minute business they have remaining on Paquin, Nicolas takes Jaya with him to look for a job for Athens. Unfortunately, Paquin doesn't have much to offer Athens in the way of cargo, and the best job either of them can come up with is a contract to transport a group of sculptors and stonemasons to pick out some marble in one of Athens' many quarries. But the fact that Nicolas is still reluctant to take on passengers with kids on board the ship, combined with the sculptors wanting to travel in luxury and also wanting to make a round trip, leads him to turn down the work and resign himself to going to Lilac without any cargo or passengers. The ship leaves without Osiris, of course, which inspires some questions about where he's gone; Nicolas tells the truth to anyone who asks, but a number of crew members (Quinn in particular) are a bit perplexed by his sudden departure.
Things are quiet en route to Athens. The crew passes their time with basketball, brewing, painting, and other leisure pursuits meant to keep their minds off the upcoming trip to Lilac. Birgitta repairs the damaged communications console. Daisy is perhaps the only one who's excited about the side trip to Athens (Summer included; she's surprisingly subdued about the possibility of going home to her family), saying that she's never been there and the community has the potential to yield some very interesting interviews. The big news is that midway through the voyage, the ship receives a message containing a letter of apology stating that Black Cat was labeled slavers in error and is guilty of no crime by attempting to return kidnapped children to their parents, and an official pardon from the Alliance (which Nicolas prints out and hangs on the wall in the kitchen). Everyone is happy to know that they no longer have to worry about unwanted attention from law enforcement, although it does relatively little to solve the questions that are still weighing on the crew's minds about who kidnapped the children in the first place.
After a four-day journey, Black Cat lands on Athens outside a mid-sized city on the northern continent, near to where they believe Summer's family may be found. The crew's first step is to check in with local law enforcement and try to secure their cooperation. Jaya, Luke, Nicolas, and Siqin pile into the mule and ride into town, where they meet a sheriff's deputy and tell him about why they've come. Since they don't have a lot of pointers beyond knowing that Summer's family probably lives on the northen continent of Athens, they're hoping to get the sheriff's help in broadcasting a message about the missing child and find her parents that way. The deputy agrees to enlist the sheriff's help, and tells the crew to return the following morning if they want to be directly involved with broadcasting the message (though the crew ultimately decides just to let the sheriff handle this one on his own). By the time they leave the police station, it's getting late, so Nicolas elects to wait until the next day to begin the search for Summer's family.
The next morning, the crew splits up into several groups. Quinn and Siqin will take the mule and search some nearby farms and plantations for information, since they believe it's likely that Summer is the daughter of farmers or sharecroppers. Birgitta and Luke will take Luke's shuttle and range farther afield, checking out plantations that are farther to the north. Archer and Jaya will stay on the ship to keep an eye on Summer. And Nicolas will accompany Daisy into the town as she seeks out possible interview subjects to continue her dissertation research - partially because he still thinks Daisy will benefit from supervision after what happened on St Albans, and also because he's just curious about how she spends her time when she's not on the ship.
The teams who have been tasked with trying to locate Summer's family have a quite successful day. Quinn and Siqin cover a lot of ground quickly, and ask around at almost ten plantations about any missing children. Birgitta and Luke cover much less ground, but Luke uses his social finesse to befriend a plantation owner who fills him in on all the local gossip. The radio broadcast was also helpful, since it got the people who heard it thinking about whether they had heard of missing persons in their area. Between the two groups, when everyone returns to the ship, they manage to pinpoint a fairly reasonable location for Summer's home - on the plantation of a potato grower named Tad Brooks. Both groups have heard from several sources that a four-year-old girl went missing from Mr. Brooks' plantation several months earlier, but the locals figured a cougar or other wild animal had carried her off because rural Athens does tend to be a very dangerous place.
For Daisy and Nicolas, the day is also productive, but in a different way. They begin the day at a cafe in town, since Daisy says that the first step in finding interview subjects is finding a local resident who will be friendly to your objectives and willing to introduce you to other people to interview. Daisy's in luck today, because when she strikes up a conversation with another person at the bar over the quality of the coffee on Athens, she meets just the sort of person she needs. By pure coincidence, Daisy has encountered Dr. Jennifer Oliver, a history scholar from the University of Londinum; though the two have never met before, they share many experiences and acquaintances.[1] Dr. Oliver, whose specialty is the study of war crimes, has been living and researching on Athens for some time, and when she learns that Daisy is hoping to conduct some interviews, she is glad to tell Daisy the names of a few locals who have proven amenable to Dr. Oliver's goals and will thus probably be likely to help Daisy. Dr. Oliver then says that she has some other business to conduct, so the two of them part ways after Daisy thanks her. As it turns out, Dr. Oliver's suggestions were very good ones, so Daisy and Nicolas spend the whole day conducting interviews and learning a lot about Athens and its people in the process.
When Nicolas returns to the ship and hears about the crew's success, he is pleased and suggests that the group take Summer to Mr. Brooks' plantation the following day. Everybody settles in for the night, with Nicolas falling asleep in the cockpit while watching the security monitors. As it turns out, it's a good thing he decided to stay there, because in the middle of the night he wakes up to the sound of someone pounding on the outer doors of the ship. He goes downstairs and is surprised to see Dr. Oliver standing outside the ship, looking quite disheveled and missing the suitcase she was carrying earlier. She explains somewhat cryptically that "the friends I was staying with turned out not to be my friends", and asks Nicolas if she can come aboard and get passage on his vessel. Against his better judgment, he agrees - on the condition that she explain to him what's going on.
Dr. Oliver and Nicolas sit down in the kitchen with cups of coffee, and she explains that in the course of her study of war crimes, she became interested in a little-known story having to do with a hospital that treated a large number of torture victims during the Unification War. This hospital was shut down at the end of the war, under suspicion of very dark and terrible things having happened there, and most of its remaining patients were sent to Osiris. Dr. Oliver became so interested in this hidden tale that she did everything in her power to get her hands on one of the few existing files that deals with what happened at the hospital - even going so far, she implies, as to commit theft. Nicolas asks to see the file, and she complies. The file includes doctor and nurse reports on several patients who were the victims of severe physical and psychological trauma (including victims of tortures inflicted by Alliance soldiers, Browncoats, and Reavers); however, most names and identifying details, and in fact about 2/3 of all the information in the file, is blacked out and redacted, making the data difficult to interpret.
Dr. Oliver is confident that the file's disappearance has been noticed by people who don't want it to be publicized; this is why her "friends" turned on her and she was forced to escape with the data and little else. She hasn't had much time to examine the file, but she intends to find some peaceful Rim planet to study it and write a paper on it. She asks Nicolas if he will help her by taking her anywhere but the Core - and, of course, she is willing to pay whatever exorbitant passage fee Nicolas can dream up. Not knowing what else to do (and wanting that money more than a little), Nicolas tells Dr. Oliver to settle into the vacant passenger bunk and stay on board and out of trouble until such time as they can drop her off on Lilac.
The next morning, Nicolas heads out with Daisy once again (both to keep an eye on her and to look for some sort for the ship on Lilac), leaving Archer behind with orders to keep an eye on Dr. Oliver (who has since filled the crew in on at least some of the reason for her presence on the ship, much to the interest of Quinn in particular). Birgitta, Jaya, Luke, and Quinn load Summer into Luke's shuttle and set out for Mr. Brooks' plantation. As soon as they land, they know they're in the right place, since Summer begins talking about how she recognizes various features of her home. The crew walks up to the plantation house and asks to see Mr. Brooks, who doesn't recognize Summer at first glance but, after hearing her story, is able to identify her as the girl who went missing and the daughter of the Law family. He invites the crew to get into his horse-drawn carriage and help him to return Summer to her family.
Summer's family lives in a humble two-room shack near the potato fields where her parents apparently work. The shack is inhabited by at least ten other children of various ages, who show little astonishment or gratitude at Summer coming back. They simply take her to see her mother, a thin woman who appears old beyond her years and is doing laundry in a tin basin. Summer's mother admonishes her for running off and making the family think she was dead, and tells her that she won't be allowed to play alone by the creek anymore. Then she tells her to get back to her work of weeding the vegetable patch. Summer looks glumly up at the crew, says "Bye, I guess," and walks off to get back to work. Mildly astonished but not knowing how they can possibly help this situation, the crew turns to leave...but as they go, Luke is stopped by Summer running up to him and grabbing his legs as she weeps and begs him to take her with him. She says that life on Athens is boring and bad compared to what she's seen experienced with the crew, so she doesn't want to go back. As gently as he knows how, Luke tells her that life on Black Cat is not a good or safe life for a child, so they couldn't take her even if her family would give them permission. Summer responds that in ten years, when she's 14, she will have reached the age of majority on Athens and then will be able to do whatever she wants. When that happens, she wants Luke to come back and get her. He tells her that he'll do his best to keep his promise, and tells her to write to him in the interim. Summer promises to do just that, then dries her tears and returns to her family...at least for the time being.[2]
Everyone reconvenes at the ship in the evening and shares the stories of what they've been up to. After he tells the story about how Summer was returned to her family, Luke notes that Archer seems even more quiet and stony than usual, and sees through this to the upset that it's hiding. He takes her aside and asks her what's wrong. After some prodding, Archer tells him that she's bothered by giving Summer back to her parents when it's clear they don't care about improving her life, which Archer thinks parents should always want for their children, and when their situation is so difficult for everyone involved. She doesn't think that Luke should have taken Summer back aboard, since she knows how dangerous that would be for everyone, but the issue bothers her nonetheless...especially since while she applauds Luke's efforts to promise her help later in life, she fears that by that time Summer will hardly remember her experiences and will just get stuck in her present situation. It soon becomes clear to Luke that Summer's situation reminds Archer of less pleasant aspects of her own childhood, since Archer refers to joining the military as her best way to escape how she grew up. He knows he won't change her mind, so all he can do is listen, try to comfort her, and be surprised at what he's learning about his crewmate.
After dinner, Nicolas orders Quinn to take off and head for Lilac. It's a short flight, so they'll arrive in the morning. They've put it off for as long as possible, but now that all four other children have been safely returned to their families, they can't wait any longer. It's time for the crew - Nicolas and Quinn included, of course - to return to Lilac, and to face whatever is waiting for them there...
TO BE CONTINUED...
1 - As if you couldn't tell already, Dr. Oliver is actually dayzdark's temporary NPC-ish character to be played until Osiris returns from getting decrazified. Everybody say hi.
2 - And that's how the crew of Black Cat created an anime protagonist.