Old War Horses 23
Title: Old War Horses
Firefly x Sentinel
Mal/Jayne, Blair/Jim
Rated: ADULT
Taming the Muse prompt:
Malcolm Reynolds fought for the Browncoat rebels. They wanted their freedom. They lost. James Joseph Womak was a commander for the Alliance, determined to bring justice to the common people. His side won, but he still lost.
This time on Old War Horses:
Jim doesn't like having to follow Mal's orders, but he's a soldier, and he'll do what he needs to. He didn't, however, really think through what it would mean to bring Blair along on a raid.
If you want to read the early chapters, go to Twisting the Hellmouth.
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23
“Oh man, you should see this woman. I mean… whoa… seriously,” Blair said, his arm thrown around the guard’s shoulders as he guided him out into the night. The man looked around nervously, but after that bare hesitation, he let Blair steer him right out into the trap. “No way is she local. Total companion. I’d bet you a week’s salary she’s a companion.”
Mal was looking at Jim like he couldn’t quite believe the pure bullshit Blair was spinning and getting away with, but Jim could only shrug. He’d grown used to Blair’s obfuscations, manipulations, and outright lies.
“Where?” the man asked. He might have asked more only Jayne fist caught the guy on the cheek and he went down like a sack of potatoes.
“Oh geez. You did not have to do that,” Blair objected loudly.
Mal gave Blair an incredulous look. “That was the plan. Now keep your voice down.”
Blair’s voice got softer, but he ran after Mal as the man helped Jayne drag the Blue Sun employee into an alley. “Do you have any idea how much damage is done to a human brain when you hit someone that hard?”
“Nope,” Mal answered.
“If you hit someone hard enough to knock them out then you’ve already done serious damage. You can kill someone like that. Kill them.”
Mal took a second to glare at Jim, but if he wanted to be captain, then Jim was letting him deal with the captain-type complaints. He leaned against the corner of the building and pulled the brim of his hat down to cover his smirk as he watched the street.
“I killed three or four like that,” Jayne agreed. “I ain’t exactly sure on number four because he was already bleeding good from a bullet in the gut so I ain’t exactly positive it was my fist that ended him.”
Jim almost choked to death at that announcement. He could imagine the horrified look on Blair’s face.
“Neanderthals,” Blair finally announced in a low, hissed tone that suggested he was feeling more offended than usual. “Man, you two are total and complete Neanderthals.”
“Yep,” Mal agreed. “And now we’re going to go shoot some folk. Try to stay out of the way.”
Jim pressed his lips together and tried to figure out how to do the next bit without sounding like he was telling Mal how to run the mission. There wasn’t a captain out there who wanted crew telling him how to wipe his own ass, and Jim figured that was true of Browncoat as much as it was Alliance. “Might be Blair shouldn’t come along for the assault,” Jim said carefully.
From the cold and calculating look Mal gave him, the man wasn’t fooled.
“Hey, I’ve shot a gun,” Blair protested before Mal could go taking offense, although Jim doubted the man intended to save Jim with that bit of intervention. He looked downright pissed off.
Pursing his lips, Jim considered Blair for a second. “Yes, you shoot often enough, but I’ve never seen one of your bullets actually hit a person.”
Blair glared.
“No offense, but I ain’t looking to have someone who shoots that bad at my back,” Jayne said with an apologetic look in Blair’s direction.
“Man, I would not shoot *you*,” Blair said, his own nasty glare focusing on Jim. Jim hated that he had to ask a Browncoat’s permission to protect Blair, but he’d decided a long time ago that the universe cared very little about his pride.
“Mal?” Jim asked.
The sigh did suggest that Mal knew he was being played. For a second, Jim wondered if he would turn down Jim’s request just out of principle. “Sandburg, you need to get this key back to Inara’s.” Mal finally said as he pulled the key out of his pocket and thrust it at Blair.
“But-”
“I ain’t going to leave Inara in a spot, and we’re about to make a whole lot of noise, and if someone calls him, that’s going to leave her client wondered how his key went and got missing. You’ve got exactly ten minutes before we open fire and you’d better hope they don’t come looking for their missing guard any quicker than that. Now move,” Mal said. When it came down to it, Blair always did follow any order that made sense, and Jim could see he would follow this one. Oh, he hesitated and shifted his weight from foot to foot and even glanced over at Jim like he had any say in the matter, but in the end, he huffed and turned around.
“Just remember,” he almost hissed the words, “whatever you do in this lifetime, you have to live with the karma of that in your next one.”
“Seems like you and your partner are the ones who should be worrying about that,” Mal pointed out. Jim flinched, and Blair did too, but on Blair it looked more like a puppy getting kicked the way his shoulders drooped. Jim glared at Mal.
“Fine.” Blair turned and trotted up the street. As Blair hurried away, a rough silence fell on the rest of them. It took some time for Jim to gather his temper well enough to talk without calling Mal every name in the book. If two men wanted to have at each other with words or fists, Jim wouldn’t interfere, but some people weren’t cut out to fight. Kaylee was one. Jim wouldn’t ask her to kill any more than he’d ask River to preach a sermon. Blair was another who didn’t fight, and Mal had gone and antagonized him about as hard as he could.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go bringing up his past,” Jim warned Mal. Oh, it was a carefully worded and calmly stated warning, but it was a warning. “If you want to take a shot at me, you’ve got a right. You and I were on opposite sides, and two men who can believe things deep enough to shoot at each other ought to be able to say it to each other’s faces. But Blair never wanted to hurt anyone.”
Mal looked him up and down, but Jim refused to back away from the captain’s hard stare. “I thought you didn’t believe in the Alliance?”
“I don’t now. I did then, and I still think your Browncoats were corrupt through to the core. So you save your comments about karma for me.”
Mal got an injured look on his face. “I wasn’t the one who even brought it up. Seems like Blair can defend himself well enough without you jumping in to fight his gorram battles, Ellison. Cao. If he’s this mouthy all the time, I’m starting to regret taking him on as crew.”
Jim’s guts knotted as the thought of Blair’s safe-haven vanishing.
Jayne gave a loud snort. “You’ve been threatening to put Moonbrain’s brother off so long it ain’t like no one listens to that threat anymore, Mal.”
“Do not start with me, Jayne Cobb.”
“I’m stating a truth.”
“I can put you off,” Mal pointed out, his eyes narrowed.
“You could, but you ain’t going to find no one who sucks your cock, takes or orders or shoots your enemies half as good, so you ain’t going to,” Jayne answered with a little more cockiness than Jim was used to seeing in the man. Mal stood there, his mouth literally open, but Jim noticed that he didn’t actually contradict Jayne.
“Go tie up the guard,” Mal finally ordered Jayne.
Angling his body away from the other two, Jim checked his watch. It felt like ten minutes were up, but they’d managed to get themselves uncomfortably tangled in the world’s most awkward conversation inside of two. Luckily, everyone seemed to have run out of words, so for the next eight minutes they all stood outside the Blue Sun office, the light from one spluttering lamp casting shadows that danced across the rough wooden door. Jim could feel the temptation to watch the dust motes swirl and spin, but he forced his senses back, casting out only a net of hearing and scent. Of course, the second he caught a whiff of the breeze carrying Mal and Jayne’s musk, he turned that control down and relied on his hearing to warn him if anything was about to go particularly wrong.
“Alright, time’s up,” Mal announced either minutes later. “Ellison, you’ve got point.”
Jim nodded, he’d expected that, which is why he’d wanted Blair out of the way. The man insisted on following Jim into battle, no matter how dangerous the situation, and Jim didn’t trust Mal and Jayne enough to want Blair in the middle.
“Mal?” Jayne asked, his voice almost offended.
“If he can smell out trouble, you can shoot it,” Mal promised quietly as they approached the door, and Jayne shifted his grip on his weapon. Clearly he had no problem with that order.
Jim pushed the door open and scented carefully, drawing air in through his mouth so his taste could help identify any scents. There was machinery here, a lot more than Jim could see in this simple, dusty little office. File cabinets stood off to the side, and a single tablet-style computer lay on the desk, left behind by the man Blair had ushered out. Jim could smell his scent at the desk.
Stepping carefully into the room, Jim felt the air stir against his arm, the fan weaving back and forth as it created little air streams that flowed through his hairs.
“You planning on moving soon?” Jayne hissed. Jim glared over his shoulder before turning his attention back to the office. The floor felt wrong. Jim knelt down and rested his hand on the sanded boards. Tiny vibrations rolled up through his arm.
“They’ve got a generator,” Jim said.
“Makes sense they might. It’s easier to hide than solar.” Mal edged to the side, his gun up as he watched the room. Jayne took the other side of the door where he could watch for anyone coming in.
Jim nodded and tilted his head, searching the walls for the hidden door. He could still hear the wind whistling over the crack, and he turned toward the wall the fan was aiming at. Vision tunneled in until he could lose himself in the grain of the wood, lines and whorls became as large as canyons, and Jim had to work to convince his gaze to move against the grain of those mountains and valleys until finally his sight fall off into a valley so deep that the zone pressed against Jim, nearly taking him as he fell forward to his knees.
“Ellison?” Mal was there, a hand on Jim’s shoulder, and Jim shivered for a minute, nearly shoving the man away. No one touched him when he was near a zone, no one except Blair-not since the Institute and the doctors who saw Jim as some tool to be used and tuned and adapted to fit their needs. The memory of other hands pulled at him, and Jim battled back the nausea that took him for a second. Then Mal pulled his hand back and Jim cleared his throat.
“Found the crack,” Jim said, his voice tight. Standing up, he walked over to the wall and rested his hand on the place where the wood covered the metal.
“I don’t see nothing,” Jayne said. Jim ignored him and ran his hand up to the top of the crack, feeling for a second before moving right to trace the edge of the door.
Mal leaned in so close that Jim could feel the heat of him. “This isn’t any thrown together business. I could have searched this place for a month and not found it.”
“You see it?” Jayne asked from the door.
“Nope. I still don’t.” Mal leaned closer to the wood.
“Look four centimeters to your left,” Jim suggested. Mal shifted. “See it now?” Jim found the second corner of the door and started tracing the edge back down. There’d be a trigger somewhere in the door. A remote trigger in the desk would make it too easy for someone to track the signal. Hell, as a cop, Jim had done that often enough. He’d sit in some seedy bar with a handheld scanner and wait to pick up trigger signals, tracking them back to the source. Generally, when people felt a need to hide a door, they had something fairly interesting behind that door.
“I still don’t see anything, Ellison, so either you’re really good or you’re leading us all on a wild goose chase.”
Jim kept feeling along the edge of the doorframe. If he wanted to convince Mal and find whatever River had sent them to find, he had to focus on the job. His fingers ghosted over the wood, but he paused at one spot. Slowly, he smiled as he felt the wood worn down so smooth that even Jim couldn’t feel the grain anymore. Someone had touched this one spot a lot. Standing up, Jim gave Mal a smile before pressing hard.
A groan warned them before a doorway started sinking into the wall.
For a second, Mal looked flabbergasted, but then his weapon came up. “Jayne, point. Ellison, make sure nothing shoots us in the back.” For a second Mal stared at Jim, and Jim figured the man was trying to figure out if Jim would shoot him in the back. The fact was, Jim had stopped believing all Browncoats were wrong about the same time he’d figured out that not all Alliance were right. He wasn’t going to share that with Mal, though. The man’s ability to assume his side was always the right was could get annoying.
Jayne stepped between them, taking point down the stairs, and Mal quickly followed, leaving Jim to cover the exit. Strategically it made sense. If Jayne was as good at shooting as everyone seemed to think, then he was a good site better than Jim. However, it still rankled to get left behind when the unit went into battle. Gunshots rang out, and Jim clenched his teeth and dialed back hearing before the ricocheting sound could deafen him.
“Mal!” Jayne called out, and Jim was half-way down the stairs, gun aimed in a second.
Jayne fired a shot, taking out a man coming through an office door, pistol in hand. Mal had his back to the office as he struggled with a heavy-set woman who still had a headset hanging from her neck. A number of people were dead, sprawled out in the middle of red sprays of blood that made it clear Jayne’s oversized weapon had taken them. He had managed to take out a good number, more than Jim would have. A few more groaned on the floor, and three people huddled in the corner, unarmed, but watching with fearful eyes. Jayne ignored them.
After glancing over to see if Jim was covering the room, Jayne walked over, cocked back an arm and punched the woman grappling with Mal. Her head snapped back and she sank to the ground unconscious.
“Mal, you ain’t got one lick of sense the minute some skirt bats her eyes,” Jayne said with a snort.
“She was stronger than she looked,” Mal defended himself.
“If you’re fighting someone, it helps to hit them,” Jayne said. For a second, the two men glared at each other. Their relationship certainly wasn’t one Jim would want any part of. He and Blair might have differences, but they didn’t call each other out on their faults, not like these two. However, Mal shook off the criticism and turned to the three remaining employees.
“So, who’s going to offer to show us around the place?” he asked. Two of the survivors were men, one an older gentleman with thinning hair, and Mal focused on him, striding over and grabbing the man’s arm before pulling him up.
“We don’t have any money,” the man quickly protested.
“Do I look like a common thief?” Mal paused. “Don’t answer that.”
The woman pushed herself up. “You have to help them,” she said, looking toward the injured. One had a leg injury that looked more painful than dangerous, but one had a wound to his side and the other a gut shot. A fourth lay near the stairs, his body making so many squelching sounds that Jim’s stomach roiled before he could focus his hearing elsewhere. Someone had taken time to kick their weapons to the side, but no one had offered any first aid.
“You got them?” Jim asked Jayne. Jayne gave him a confused look, but Jim went over to the one shot in the gut and knelt down to assess the wounds. When he focused on the internal organs, he could hear the heart beating strong, the blood pushing through vessels and the intestine leaking into the abdomen.
“Oh shit,” Blair’s voice sounded from the top of the stairs. “Oh shit, shit, shit.” He took two steps down into the basement, and Jim looked around and saw the room through his friend’s eyes. It was a bloodbath. Jim could see that each fallen body had a matching weapon just out of reach, but he doubted Blair was doing that sort of threat assessment. He saw the dead and wounded, not the weapons and the threat that Jayne and Mal had managed to survive without a scratch.
“This one has a perforated colon, no other organ damage,” Jim said, anxious to move Blair past the horror of the scene and onto helping someone. Blair could handle about any gou shi the universe threw at him as long as he could do some good. That was part of who he was.
“You say that like a perforated colon isn’t enough,” Blair said, his voice tight with emotion as he hurried over. “Man, this is… this is….” Blair stopped without coming up with a way to end that.
“The man with the shot to the leg has a muscle injury, no bone or artery damage. The woman took one to the side, her lungs sound clear, and I don’t hear any internal bleeding. She’s not in immediate danger.” Jim gave Blair a quick rundown, trying to distract him. Blair might be a psychiatrist, but he’d gone through medical school. Jim wasn’t even surprised when Blair took his bag off his shoulder and pulled out medical supplies.
“I should-” Blair looked over toward a man lying on his stomach near the stairs. Jim caught his arm, stopping him.
“Don’t,” Jim said firmly.
“But…” Blair frowned. The man’s low moans made it clear he was still alive.
Jim shook his head. “There’s too much damage, Blair. Focus on the ones you can help.”
Blair crouched next to the man with the perforated colon, his face reflecting so much pain that Jim hated himself for being unable to find an excuse to leave Blair back on the ship. He shouldn’t be in the middle of this. But then Blair took a deep breath and the emotion vanished from his face. “What can you hear?” Blair asked as he took out a vial and needle. Jim knew this version of Blair-this doctor focused on the job. It wasn’t a memory he cared to relive, so he gave Blair the fastest rundown on the condition of the three who could be saved before he got up to head over to Mal and Jayne. They’d talked one of the three techs into giving them access to the system, and Mal was downloading files.
“What have we got?” Jim asked. He cast his hearing out, but it didn’t sound like anyone had noticed their raid yet.
“Lots of numbers that don’t mean much to me,” Jayne said.
“Mal?” Jim looked over.
“Keep an eye up top,” Mal ordered him. Jayne wasn’t sure whether Mal didn’t want to discuss it with the Blue Sun employees listening or if he just didn’t understand the data any better than Jayne. Either way, Jim had gone into this mission agreeing to follow orders. He looked over toward Blair who was setting up an IV over the gut-shot man and whispering reassurances to the injured woman.
“Keep an eye on Blair, okay?” Jim asked. Mal looked up from the computer station where he was downloading data and over at Blair. Already, Blair’s hands and arms were smeared with blood and his face had a serious intensity that wasn’t normal for him.
Mal frowned for a second before he nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out for him. You just give us warning if we need to clear out fast. I want to get as much of this as I can.”
Jim nodded and headed for the stairs. As much as it made his gut ache to leave Blair down there, Blair wouldn’t leave his patients, and Jim wasn’t in charge of the mission. Worse, if this plan of River’s didn’t work, he was still going to have to pull the hunters off their tail by leaving Blair behind. Then he would have to trust Mal to always have Blair’s back. It wasn’t a comforting thought. Oh, Jim was starting to think Mal was less of an idiot than Jim had first assumed, but he didn’t want anyone else taking responsibility for protecting Blair. That was his job. At the top of the stairs, Jim crouched down low and rested his fingers against the floor as he sent his hearing out to creep along the ground like a fog, searching for the sound of running feet or shouting men. Instead, the town was silent, and Jim waited for the others to finish as he stood guard at their back. It was all he could do.