Old War Horses

[lit_gal]

The war raged across moons and planets. Browncoats versus Purple-bellies. Malcolm Reynolds fought for the Browncoat rebels... men and women who felt that the Alliance and civilized core planets were taking too much control of the rest of the system. They wanted their freedom. They lost. James Joseph Womak was a commander for the Alliance, proud to wear the purple uniform and determined to bring justice to the common farmers who lived rough lives on an outer rim dominated by smugglers and slavers and criminals. His side won, but he still lost. A shadowy group called the Institute took a little too much interest in a rare genetic gift of enhanced senses, and now he's on the run. Two bitter old war horses really aren't good at forgiving or forgetting or letting evil grow like mold in those dark corners of the universe where other men are afraid to look.

Old War Horses

Firefly x Sentinel.
Slash: Jim/Blair, Mal/Jayne
Rated ADULT

Something has to make Mal see Jim as something other than "Captain Jimmy," villain of the Browncoat defeat.  Time for that something to happen.

( Part one ) ( Part two ) ( Part Three )



"You want I should check things out, look for radiation leaks?" Kaylee asked with a strange sort of enthusiasm that Jim didn't normally associate with major mechanical failings. He also doubted that Kaylee was going to find anything. This Firefly class ship was humming with a music so perfectly tuned that Jim could well believe that she was about the only crew up to Alliance quality. Well, her and the doc. From the looks of it, he was core trained, and those core universities didn't allow someone to call themselves a doctor until they knew their business inside and out. It wasn't like the border planets where someone who knew how to pull a splinter and lance a boil could call themselves a hedge doctor and start charging settlers money for snake oil.

"You'd best," Mal agreed. "Check anything that might get a sudden urge to blow us all to pieces or start leaking radiation."

"You got it, captain," she agreed, and with a quick kiss on the cheek for the doctor, she fairly scampered out of the room. Had Jim been assigned to inspect the crew during a patrol, he would have wondered at her age because she didn't hardly seem old enough to sign a contract to serve on a ship... or she didn't act it anyway.

"You know, we should check the medications you've used on River. Some of those antipsychotics..." Blair whistled to show just how powerful they could be.

"I was acting in her best interest," the doctor said peevishly.

"Totally. I get that," Blair nodded. "You didn't have her full medical history, and her symptoms would have mirrored psychotic episodes."

"I had no medical history at all." From the tone of voice, the doctor clearly assigned some blame for that to Blair. Jim had to swallow a whole lot of angry words about how Blair had put his life and his freedom on the line to get River out at all, medical records be damned.

Blair, however, just gave a little laugh that conveyed more disgust than humor. "No offense, but first, I would have gotten caught if I even looked at her full records much less printed the scans. And second, you would have thrown a fit right there if you'd seen half of what they did, and that was not in anyone's best interest. He who fights and runs like hell before the Alliance troops catch up to him, lives to not get thrown into a itty, bitty little cell," Blair said, mangling the old saying and holding his hands out to show the tiny little cell size they were all going to end up in if they got caught. Jim wasn't going to let that happen. Not to Blair. Not after everything the man had done.

The doctor still didn't look happy, but he also looked like he couldn't argue with that logic. "Besides, I really want to see what has been going on with her blood work now that she isn't getting pumped full of the poisons they were using. Do you have any scans, anything that would show internal brain structure or blood flow through the neural pathways?" Blair's eyes lit up with the joy of science.

That seemed to break the tension that was growing between the two men. "We actually sneaked into an Alliance facility and got a full set of scans." The doctor looked very proud of that, and he should be. Either this crew was a whole lot better than Jim was giving them credit for or Alliance security was getting lax, and the Alliance was not one for letting security go lax.

"Very cool," Blair said enthusiastically. "Come on, Jim."

"Captain Jimmy and I are going to talk," Mal interrupted. Blair had been focused totally on the doctor, or at least he had given every impression of it. Jim figured he had been just as focused on getting Jim out of Mal's immediate vicinity. The man wasn't dumb, and he had to know that Mal wasn't going to let something this big drop. Blair could distract him temporarily, but even Blair's power of manipulation had a limit.

"No way," Blair said stubbornly.

"Blair, go do your thing with the doctor."

"No." Blair glanced at Jim, but his eyes went immediately back to Mal.

"Chief, I am not kidding on this one. My area of expertise, my call. Go." Jim kept his voice steady.

"But Jim..." Blair turned and looked at him with wide eyes. He wanted to stay and fight, but Jim figured most of the danger was past now, and if Mal was still angry enough to kill him, well that just meant the man was never going to calm down and Jim didn't have any shot of getting off this boat alive. If that was the case, he would rather have Blair safely out of the room.

"Go try and help River. She deserves your help just as much as I do. So go do your doctoring thing," Jim said just as firmly.

Blair caught his lower lip between his teeth as he looked from Jim to Mal and back.

"Cao. I ain't planning on gut-shooting him the minute you have your back turned," Mal complained.

"I never said you would!" Blair snapped back. He angled himself so that he squared off against Mal and crossed his arms. "Can I get your word that you don't plan to shoot him anywhere at all?"

Mal narrowed his eyes and really studied Blair. The very fact that he was hesitating meant his word was worth something. It also meant that Mal didn't want to make that promise. "Are you always this annoying?"

"Yes," Jim said at the exact moment Blair gave an indignant, "No!" Blair gave Jim a quick glare. "Hey, I am not the one who kidnaps some poor schmucks who were just trying to outrun Alliance hunters. That was you. That was all you. And killing the poor schmucks you kidnapped would be totally bad karma. Enormously bad karma," Blair said, but he started out of the room, and the core doctor stuck close to him. "And Jim, if you get yourself killed, I am so finding you in your next incarnation and kicking your ass for ordering me out of here." With than, Blair left the room, his back still stiff and his hands clenched tightly.

"And here I thought he was some sly trick." Mal sounded rather disgusted with himself for that misjudgment.

"He is a sly trick. He's just a smart one," Jim pointed out. "Then again, I'm just as sly as he is." Jim raised his chin and just dared Mal to make something out of that.

Mal actually seemed to relax. Maybe it made him feel good to know that the monster of Browncoat nightmares was taking it up the ass. He seemed like the kind of man who might take comfort in that. "So," Mal said slowly, "the great Captain Jimmy is standing in front of me. I never thought this day would come. Did you, Zoe?" Mal leaned back to look at his second who was still standing just behind him.

"No, sir, can't say I ever did."

"Are you looking for an apology?" Jim asked.

"Might make me feel better about not shootin' you."

"Not going to happen." At Jim's words, Mal's whole body tightened.

"Sir," Zoe warned, her tone of voice sounding so much like a chiding mother's that Jim really did have to wonder at the command structure on this ship. For a captain, Mal didn't seem to have much say in what went on.

"Ain't like I was going to shoot him, at least not without having Jayne cut him loose," Mal said with more than a little petulance in his voice. "Shooting a man without giving him any chance to defend himself, that's more Alliance-like than I'm generally comfortable with." Mal glared at Jim.

"I've never shot an unarmed man in my life. And I never shot at ships that weren't under a flag of war looking to shoot at me," Jim pointed out. His jaw was starting to ache from clenching it, but if he truly went off on these people, his life span was going to be unmercifully short, and then Blair... Jim sighed. Blair never did let things lie. As much as Jim didn't want to admit it, Blair would back the gorram captain into a corner until Mal had to shoot him, just out of pure self-defense.

Mal rubbed one hand against his pants. "You ain't sayin' much to make me like you more."

"I don't need you to like me. I figure I just need you to not shoot me until you can drop us off on any planet of your choice."

"Captain Jimmy." Mal shook his head like it was amusing. "The great hero who crippled the rebellion without losing a single man. And look what they've done to their shiny hero. Real nice bunch you work for, Captain Jimmy. Cain't even imagine why someone might go thinking the Alliance are a bunch of yellow-bellied cowards and scum without an ounce of honor."

"I've heard some variation on that from Blair more than once," Jim pointed out dryly. Of course, Blair said it much more diplomatically by talking about propaganda and social pressures, but it came down to the same thing if you read between the lines.

Mal looked at him and leaned back far enough to prop his boot on the chair next to him. "And you're still holding that the Alliance were the right side?"

Jim thought about that. Blair generally talked to him without demanding that Jim admit any fault or make public declarations, but it looked like Mal wanted his pound of metaphorical flesh. Jim gritted his teeth and wished that getting tied up and shoved around by a merc with the intelligence of a common sheepdog was the worst humiliation Mal demanded. However, having to admit that he'd killed for the wrong gorram side... that burned his throat like stomach acid.

"Letting farmers get raided by slavers and abused by landowners who treat them like slaves isn't right either," Jim pointed out.

"Gao yang jong duh goo yang! The rebellion weren't standing up for slavers."

"But you protected them. Slavers paid for your ships."

"The ships you blasted to scrap metal without giving them a chance to fire a single shot." Mal leaped up from his chair, his hand on his gun.

"Sir! Remember, you said you wouldn't shoot a man who had no chance to defend himself."

Mal gave Zoe a nasty look. "I reckon I'm giving him about as much of a chance as he gave our fleet."

If Jim was going to die, he sure as hell wasn't going to die with the bitter taste of confession in his mouth. If Mal was determined to do some killing, Jim was determined to say a few truths. "I'm not the one who sent out crews who didn't know their thrusters from their firing pins." Jim spat the words. "One of the best men I ever served with was in that fleet. Captain Joel Taggart would have fought like hell and taken three or four ships before his one went down, and I knew it. I knew I was going to have a long hard fight against a man I respected, even if I gorram hated the side he took in this war. But he never fired a single shot. Aiya! He was killed by his own. Idiot Browncoat rebels trying to run every direction at the first sign of a fight. Crashing into each other, taking out friendlies instead of focusing on the job at hand. I didn't put green kids and idiots on those ships--the rebellion did."

Mal had turned a special shade of white, and even Zoe had gone ashen-gray, her lips pressed tightly together.

"We came out of that comet cloud blind. One rebel ship ramming us and creating a log jam would have crippled the Alliance fleet. I took a chance hoping to surprise the rebel fleet and minimize the losses. It was a gorram gamble. If Joel had been on the near side of the rebel fleet, I would have lost. He would have rammed the first Alliance cruiser and our formation would have been fractured as every ship was left fighting for itself. That's the briefing I gave the other captains. But Joel was killed by some moron trying to run for cover that didn't exist. So don't make out that I'm the monster that took your precious dream away. Your precious dream was nothing more than smoke defended by untrained chun zi with heads full of glory instead of common sense."

"Seems like you have a whole lot of opinions," Mal said, his voice thick with contained anger.

"Yeah, I do," Jim agreed. "I'm not saying the Alliance is any better, and I figure I've had a good long time to think about that, but don't go claiming some moral high ground."

"I never claimed to be a good man-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Blair hurried right back into the room, his hands help up. "Okay, we all know that Jim has a different point of view. No need to go shooting the big idiot." Blair glared at Jim, but Jim just kept his eyes straight ahead. "Okay, clearly we can't go leaving you two without a minder. Geez. Chill."

"See? Won't stop pulling their carts," River announced as she trailed in after him.

"Blair? What is it?" The doctor trailed after River, like some sort of bizarre train.

"Horses. Whenever she talked about the war, she would use the metaphor of the soldiers as horses," Blair explained to the doctor happily enough, but Jim noticed that the man landed right in Mal's line of fire, and that was not a coincidence. Blair smiled at River. "So when she came hurrying up to us in the hall saying that the horses kept pulling their carts on the same track, I figured Mal and Jim were about ready to start up a new battle between the Alliance and the Browncoats, which is a little amusing because Jim doesn't support the Alliance anymore. He's just too gorram stubborn to admit he was wrong, and he's too gorram right about there being all kinds of shady folk mixed up with the Browncoats.

"There was this one guy... he actually sent two goons to try and grab Naomi. I mean, yeah, she walked away from the Companion Institute and rejected their regimented approach to spirituality, but this guy tried to force her into one of his whore houses. So not cool. So incredibly not cool. Man, she choose who she wanted to be enlightened with, and he was not on that list, but no one would stand up to him because he was some high-muckity-muck. He'd given ships and arms to the cause, and that was supposed to excuse the fact that he was scum. So, we all have not happy memories of the war, and we all need to stop dragging the same carts along the same tracks because, man, that war is done and over."

"All the tracks worn smooth just rut up again in the rain." River said this sadly.

"Totally," Blair agreed. "People suck. They seriously suck. So no more raining out of either of you," Blair pointed first at Mal and then Jim. "Wait. Why are you tied up?" Blair hurried toward Jim. Jim watched Mal, waiting for him to stop Blair, but he didn't comment as Blair reached around and started working the leather. "Aiya. Who did this? This is way too tight for circulation."

"Was more worried about him wiggling free," Jayne pointed out. Blair glared over at him.

"Jim can turn off pain receptors, so you can't trust him to know when something is physically damaging him."

Jim's arms feel to his sides, and Jim cringed when he saw his purpling flesh and the fingers swollen so big they looked like overripe grapes ready to split open.

"Jayne!" the doctor gasped. Mal was looking a little green around the gills, too, but it was the doctor who rushed forward, his mouth still running. "Of all the ignorant, careless things I've seen you do, and I've seen plenty, this is just about the worst. We need to elevate the hands. I'll need to get him back to medical to check for vascular damage and administer painkillers."

"Jim," Blair asked. "Do you need painkillers?"

Jim shrugged. "Tingles a mite. I've had a lot worse."

"Screams echoing down the hallway." River brought her hands up and wrung them. "Scream and scream, and they only record how loud your screams are. 101.2 decibels. 99.7 decibels."

"Yeah, but you can get your revenge by not screaming," Jim told her. River looked at him, her head tilted to the side. "It always pissed them off." Jim could feel a bitter smile tugging the edges of his lips. When you were in hell, you found amusements in the smallest revenge.

She slowly smiled. "Increase pain stimulus over and over, but no scream. Feet black from cold. Dead flesh, but no screaming. Corrupt the datum. Annoy them like fish caught in a hall of mirrors."

"Exactly," Jim agreed. "If you can't fight back, you always try to annoy the torturers." Jim got some satisfaction from Mal's stricken expression. The man might not like Alliance, but he clearly had even bigger issues with torturers. "If you're going down, at least annoy those that are about to take you down," he said with his eyes pinned firmly on the captain. From the way Mal's whole body stiffened, he got Jim's point.

"Jayne," Mal said darkly. "That were stupid. That were more stupid than usual. You want to explain just what you were thinking?"

"He weren't complaining," Jayne defended himself loudly.

"Aiya. It's like a convention of the obdurate and unenlightened." Blair used a hand on Jim's arm to guide him out of the room. "Medical for you. And man, if you can't keep control of the pain dial, you tell me. Do not try and play stoic."

"I'm not actually playing at anything. I don't feel much," Jim defended himself. "You can stop playing mother hen, Sandburg."

"Whatever."

"I've been injured far worse."

"Uh-huh."

Blair just kept agreeing with whatever Jim said, but that didn't keep him from guiding Jim with his hands on Jim's elbow or from dropping a thousand soft touches onto Jim's arm. It was mighty hard to argue with a man who just agreed with you and kept right on doing what you were asking him not to do, so Jim finally just gave up and let Blair usher him to a treatment bed. Behind him, Jim could hear Mal and Jayne start in on each other, so maybe one disaster had been averted.

"You really don't feel this?" the doctor asked. He stared at Jim's hands with a familiar fascination that made Jim's stomach tighten into a knot. "Fascinating."

"His pain receptors scream into the dark, but no one is listening," River shouted after them. She was either staying in the mess hall or going back up to pilot the ship, and Jim didn't even want to think about the craziness of allowing one of the Institutes little projects to pilot. At one point, Jim had been a damn fine pilot himself, but he sure would never let himself get behind the controls now... not with his own body so out of control.

Jim looked down. He realized that Dr. Tam was supporting his right arm and Blair was holding his left.

"I can hold my own arms up," Jim said peevishly.

"There's muscular damage. Holding the limbs up will only increase the potential for long-term harm. How can you ignore this?" Dr. Tam bent down to study Jim's purpling flesh.

"Oh man, Jim can do amazing things. This... this is more one of his anti-amazing things, because ignoring pain signals is so not cool. But he can hear a single bolt letting steam escape through the threads when it's down in the middle of a working engine. The Institute was amazed at what he could do. I mean, I can't explain the anatomy of it because my thing was always the psychology, but it's incredible."

"It's not as incredible as it is annoying," Jim disagreed.

Dr. Tam abandoned his attempt to walk and examine the damage at the same time. "Like with River. What she can do is incredible, but I'd rather have her back the way she was," Dr. Tam said quietly, and Jim really couldn't disagree. The Institute thought they were justified. He'd heard them talking in their little gathering rooms with their worthless sound insulated walls that they thought protected them. They thought the test results meant that all the pain was worth it, and they'd grown so used to seeing people as "test subject 57-B-4" that they'd lost track of what they were doing.

"That happens when people get too curious... too fascinated with science," Jim said. He only realized how Blair would hear that when he looked at his lover's guilty expression. Cao. He hadn't meant to dredge up that old guilt; he'd only wanted to make sure that this new doctor didn't show too much interest in Jim's abilities. "Chief," Jim whispered. As far as he was concerned, Blair had nothing to apologize for, but he'd still accepted Blair's apologies over and over until Jim was sure the man couldn't have any guilt left. And still, Blair always found more.

The guilt vanished as Blair gave him a bright smile that might have fooled someone who didn't know him and couldn't see the pain running just under his skin. "No problem. I know what you mean. Oh man, that is going to hurt like a hwun dan when you actually start feeling things again."

"I'll be fine," Jim promised. Blair's snort was not exactly reassuring, but then Blair had been through this with him before. They'd stowed away once, and Jim had been crushed by shifting cargo. Once they'd hit planet side, Jim's pain dial had completely spun out of control. This time would be different though. No way would it hurt as much. The injuries weren't internal, and they certainly weren't as bad as the frostbite that had turned his skin black or the acid burn test that left his skin peeling off in great sheets while the flesh weeped.

"I don't really see how you can say that," Dr. Tam said, leading them into a small examination room. Jim had to grit his teeth and force his fear back just to get himself to lie down on the examination table. Carefully settling Jim's arm at his side, Blair moved closer to his head and rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey. How are you doing? Do you think the captain would care if I eviscerated the big, stupid one?" Blair teased.

"Jayne?" Dr. Tam asked as he gathered silver equipment that shone under the medical lights. Jim closed his eyes and tried to strangle the irrational fears that rose. "Some days I wish someone would strangle him. While I believe in charity for my fellow man, Jayne can truly test a man's patience. He would do anything for money. Believe it or not, he tried to turn River and me over to the Alliance, and then he accepted our gratitude for helping us fight our way back out of the detention center where his duplicitous actions had landed us."

"Whoa. Okay, not cool," Blair said. Jim ignored the words and held on to the tone, to the sound of Blair's voice and his heart pounding steadily. "I would think Captain Mal was not exactly the sort to have a sense of humor about that."

"I still don't know what happened between those two, but Jayne is still here."

"But not regular crew? I mean, if he's a regular mercenary, he didn't go with you on a suicide run on Miranda, did he?" Jim could hear Blair's confusion, and he had to admit that Jayne was a hard one to peg. Clearly he was uneducated, bordering on just flat-out stupid, but he was the one the captain trusted to watch prisoners. He got clearly emotional when the subject of the dead came up, but the doctor seemed to think that Jayne valued only the money. Then again, maybe the others couldn't see his emotions. Jim found that sometimes his Sentinel abilities meant that he could read people so well that he didn’t realize he was seeing beyond what others could. He mentally reviewed his observations of Jayne while the doctor did something that made his hands tingle more.

When the subject of their dead came up, Jayne's eyes had dilated and his lips had thinned. He'd been unhappy, and he'd made his profile slightly smaller, pulling his shoulders in. That wasn't exactly the signature of a man who valued money. Of course, any man who wanted money would be wise to steer clear of this ship because this crew was not coming off as any sort of financial masterminds.

"I guess I just don't understand all the crew," Blair said weakly. Jim knew that admission had to hurt because Blair could usually lay out a whole person's life within five minutes of meeting them. His psychological skills were the best or else the Institute would never have hired him.

"They aren't easy people to get to know," Dr. Tam agreed. "Captain Jim, are you doing okay?"

"It's just Jim." Jim opened his eyes. "I stopped being a captain in the Alliance a long time ago." His hands were actually looking better. Some of the excess blood had been drained so the flesh had an almost normal color and the size had come down. The edges of his nails was flaking, which mean the doctor had been a little too enthusiastic about using the healer. The dried cuticles were going to annoy him for a while.

"Jim," Dr. Tam said almost reverently, and Jim gritted his teeth in the face of that idiotic adoration. "I'm almost done. The surface is going to be tender for a while, but I think I have most of the arterial damage under control."

The pain dial slipped out of Jim's control, and suddenly the slight tingling turned into a living fire that ate its way up his arms. Jim screamed as his nerve endings came to life.

"Whoa." Blair grabbed his shoulder. "Visualize that pain dial. You can see it. Look at the LED indicators on the panel, what do they say?"

"Ten," Jim hissed out.

"Is he okay?" Dr. Tam stood, the healer in his hand and a horrified look on his face. Blair shook his head, but when the doctor pulled back, the air eddies brushed over the skin, and every nerve registered the movement. A single hair moving in its pore felt like an ice pick being pried against his skin and Jim cried out roughly.

"Dial it down to a nine. You can control this. Move it from a ten  to a nine. I know it's stuck, but man, you have never backed down to anything, and you will not let a little dial beat you, dong ma?" Blair demanded. Jim struggled. In his imagination, his hands were so badly damaged that he had trouble visualizing himself turning that knob. It stuck. His fingers were so thick with pain that he couldn't bend them around it.

"Come on. Tell me when you get to nine. Blair's voice was a soft curtain that draped over Jim's pain, dulling it like a sheer diffuses the light.

"I can give him a shot of-"

"No. Jim, I know it's bad, but maybe you need to just slide away. Let the pain go. Do you see the switch for touch? Find the power button and just let it go. I'll be here. I'll watch out for you." Jim lost himself to the voice and the struggle to control his senses. "Power it down, Jim. Let us handle this." Jim let his body slide away into a place where he would feel no more pain.