FIC: If I Could Turn Back Time
Title: If I Could Turn Back Time
Author: CC62827
Pairings: Mal/River
Length: 5,000
Spoilers: Post BDM
Notes: My first Firefly Fanfic. I’m a little worried I didn’t get River’s voice right-she’s hard to channel. Suggestions are very welcome. I’m playing with the idea of turning this into a chapter fic, but haven’t decided for sure.
The idea flitted across my mind for the first time on the day of the funerals.
What if? What if they didn’t have to die? What if I could change what happened?
Things were getting better fast, once the secret of Miranda left my brain, but my head was still muzzy-muffled, fuzzy. The sadness only made it harder to focus, and whatever thoughts I might have had about it escaped through the slippery fingers of my mind before I had a chance to think them. And once we were in the air again, well, there was so much emotion on the ship, it blocked everything else out for a spell.
It took me the better part of a month to learn how to filter enough that I could really start using my newly de-crazed brain. He hadn’t meant to, but Mal helped me learn to do it. We were sitting in the cockpit, looking at the stars when I started learning.
In the dark time right after Simon rescued me, the thoughts of Serenity’s crew were like Reavers tearing through the hull of a ship. I didn’t want them, but they forced themselves into my mind, sometimes all at once, sometimes when I least expected it, terrifying, foreign, and violent. Maybe it’s a little bit of a miracle that I managed to hold on to as much of my sanity as I did.
There was one exception, one set of thoughts that hid instead of shoved-the Captain’s. Even when I wanted them, they were hard to find.
When I was a little girl on Osiris, my parents took me to play in the snow in a park. I’d been fascinated by a frozen koi pond there. The ice wasn’t thick enough to skate on, but it covered the water, just this side of opaque. Underneath I could see the ghosts of fish swimming near the surface. That’s what the Captain’s thoughts were like most of the time. Fish hiding beneath a layer of ice.
He’d been restless that night, shifting in his chair. I didn’t even realize I was staring at him until he pointed it out. “Did my face change to something new and interesting since dinner, Little Albatross?”
“I’m watching the fish.” The words popped out before I could stop them, and I had to fight not to wince. Metaphors were mal-bad, in the Latin. They made people think you were moon brain crazy. I’d been trying not to use them since Miranda, but sometimes I still slipped. I knew what I was talking about, so it was hard for me to remember that other people didn’t always.
Mal looked around the cockpit, confused. “You see fish? I hate to tell you, but there isn’t a fish one in here.”
I wanted to smack myself in the forehead, but instead I struggled for the right words to explain. “Not real fish. Fish in your mind.”
“Fish? In my mind? I wasn’t thinking of fish. I was thinking of-although now that you mention it, Fish would be mighty tasty. I caught a-” He broke off suddenly, frowning like he’d just remembered something. “Now wait just a second here, I recall we had a talk about you reading my mind?”
I shook my head, frustration rising as I fought for the right words. “I-no-your thoughts are fish under ice. I can’t always see them clearly. I-it’s a good thing. I need to make my own ice. Freeze the pond to keep out the other fish. But I don’t know how. My pond is too crowded.”
A heart beat of silence followed by a doubtful chuckle that sounded like eyebrows furrowed.
“Uh, right, well. Good luck with that. Fishing or what not.” There was a pause. “You say my pond is-icy?”
I nodded.
Another pause, then slowly, this time a child turning over a new toy. “So you don’t always know what I’m going to say before I say it? That’s what you’re getting at, right?”
I shook my head yes, relieved that he understood at least that much of what I’d been trying to say. “Icy and deep. Your thoughts can hide in it.”
“Huh. Imagine that.” He looked down, pondering, at his hands.
All at once a thought I knew didn’t belong to me appeared in my head. It was cheerful, smug. Hmph. A deep pond. I like the sound of that. Have to tell Inara my pond’s deep. Won’t that just show her? That’s me, a deep pond.
I couldn’t help myself. I giggled. The Captain’s head jerked up, and he actually blushed. “I thought you said-”
I interrupted him with an eye roll. “Not all the time, silly. Sometimes your fish come to the top.”
“Ah. I’ll try to think-colder-then.” He looked thoughtful, and the cockpit settled into comfortable silence again. From above the ice, I could feel his fish. They were curious, but I didn’t know about what. And it didn’t seem like his mouth was going to let them come up to play with me any time soon.
Too bad.
Silence stretched, and his fish kept tapping.
“You can ask me if you want,” I finally said. A smile tugged at my lips, and I let it happen. Curious fish were funny to watch, especially when they belonged to the captain.
“Ask you what?”
“Whatever’s making your fish curious. I can’t see the question, but I can feel that it’s there.”
I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he did. “I aint pretending to understand how your mind works, but that ice thing,” he paused and waved his hand vaguely, “about the brain and all, it’s maybe not entirely an accident. Don’t really think about it much anymore, but it was taught to me after a fashion when I was a military man.”
It took my brain exactly three one-thousandths of a second to process his words.
The Captain looked startled when all at once I was out of my chair and beside his, but I couldn’t help it. The idea of controlling what I saw, of having my own layer of ice, was like all the birthdays and Christmases in my life before the laboratory put together.
“Whoa, there, a little personal space, Albatross.”
I clenched my fingers and forced myself to step back. Personal space. Personal space. Everyone with her own bubble. Don’t break the bubbles. When I spoke, I tried to sound as normal-as sane-as I knew how. I even folded my hands. Wouldn’t my Mother be proud.
“Will you please teach me, Sir?”
Mal snorted. “Sir? I didn’t know I was talking to Z-” He must have seen something in my face, because he broke off before the joke forming in his mind could come all the way out of his lips. And just like that, he was looking intently at my face. I held his eyes, willing him to understand what this could mean to me because I didn’t think I had to words to explain it with my mouth. Flawed or not, I was ready to get down on my knees and thank a stack full of Bibles because when the Captain continued and it sounded like he did. “I’m sorry, Little One, I shouldn’t be flip. This is important to you?”
I nodded and bit my lip.
“You think it could-help-you?”
Another nod, hands squeezing and releasing, a spastic heartbeat while seconds grew branches and spread into minutes. I wanted to cry, to scream, to demand. Instead, I waited.
Finally, the Captain nodded. “I don’t know as I’m much good for teaching, but I’ll do my best to tell you what I can.”
“Now?” I struggled not to sound hopeful. By the amused way he smiled at me, I’m fairly certain it’s safe to say I failed.
“Good a time as any-might as well make hay while the sun shines.” There was another pause, and I could tell he was taking care with his choice of words, too. “First thing is, I don’t know if its ice so much that matters. That’s just what works for me. I think the important part is picking a-picture-of something you can use to separate yourself. A, huh, I don’t know what you call it.”
I thought for a second. “A partition?”
Mal frowned and nodded slowly. “Yeah. That about describes it, something to partition your mind. When I first started, I’d think of ice on the pond on our farm. The water was as clear as you could imagine, and when it froze it froze thick, so hard a strong man with a pick ax could wear himself out before he broke through it some days.”
Somewhere along the way, I sat down. The Captain’s voice, commanding and firm flowed over me like old whiskey as he spoke. That was the beginning of me learning to choose what thoughts I listened to and what I didn’t.
It was also the beginning of my friendship with Mal.
The way we clicked together would have been baffling to anyone looking in, at least on the surface. Logically, though, it made a strange sort of sense. Friendship has its own scientific equation. There are several variables, but in general it’s the product of three primary factors-proximity, compatibility, and time.
By virtue of the fact that we lived on a ship, the Captain and I had proximity in spades. In normal times that would be tempered by the other people on Serenity, but there was nothing at all normal about the times right now. Simon and Kaylee were wrapped up in one another, grief had Zoe keeping to herself as much as possible, and even Jayne was uncharacteristically subdued and introspective. Inara always kept careful boundaries, and even though she didn’t ask to be taken back to the training house, she didn’t ease up on the separation. Sometimes I wonder how things might have been different if she had.
As far as compatibility, well, we had that, too. Odd as it was, there was a similarity about us. Maybe it was the weight of our memories. Maybe it was because we were both fighters. Or maybe it was just that neither one of us was entirely sane. Whatever the case, we fit. I don’t know who was more surprised about that, Mal or me. The rest of the crew might have been even more so than either of us, but the idea was apparently so foreign that no one could wrap their minds around it enough to see it at all.
And then there was time.
Ironic, that one.
* * *
“Albatross, you’re running late. Expect there to be a good reason.”
I let my lips curl up in the suggestion of a smile even though I knew he couldn’t see me. If I tried, I could still sneak up on the Captain, but most of the time I didn’t bother anymore. Steps light, I walked up the stairs to the cockpit. I started counting down on the second tread.
Five. Four. His head whipped the pilot’s chair around before I hit three.
“Is that-coffee?” Voice incredulous, the word in his head sounded like a prayer. This time the smile spread all the way across my face, and I nodded slow and easy. He was out of his seat and taking the tray out of my arms in a heartbeat. “Careful. Don’t spill it.”
When his burden was safely deposited, Mal looked up at me, suspicious. “How did you manage to come by actual coffee when we’ve been drifting around the black since we left Mr. Universe’s moon?”
I sat down in the co-pilot chair and folded my hands in my lap, demure, before I answered. I looked down my nose and tried to think serene thoughts when I spoke. “A girl is a being of great mystery and intrigue. What makes you think I’m going to tell you?”
He snorted. “Woman, it would be a shame if your pretty eyes froze that way.”
Shock slammed through me, and my gaze flew up. “Y-you think my eyes are pretty?” And he’d called me a woman.
Mal shrugged. “Course. Now where’d you get the coffee?”
I tried to make my voice haughty again, but I was too distracted by the compliment and gave up with a shrug. “Mr. Universe had it. I took it before we left.”
Mal froze in the act of reaching for one of the steaming mugs. “River, you can’t just be taking things that don’t belong to you. You know that.”
I rolled my eyes. “He wasn’t going to be needing it.”
There was a heartbeat of silence during which I was pretty sure Mal’s ethics were warring with his desire for the black liquid in front of him. Desire finally won. “Guess that’s a fair point.”
He picked up his cup and settled back in his chair. I leaned forward and took mine, as well, mimicking his actions. “So, what will it be tonight?”
It wasn’t really night, but I didn’t bother correcting him. Human biorhythms required a regular schedule to function properly. The rest of the ship was sleeping, observing Serenity’s self-imposed timetable. Mal and I would do the same, later, once exhaustion took us to the point where we could sleep without-or at least with fewer-nightmares.
Compatibility.
“Conversation is food for the soul,” I finally answered.
“Good choice. Wouldn’t want to put this little treasure down long enough to deal the cards or move pieces, anyway.” He raised his cup in a silent toast and sipped. I watched from beneath half-lowered lashes as his eyes closed to savor the taste. “Now that is a piece of Heaven, I must say.”
I smiled and shook my head. “Won’t be able to enjoy it if you scald your taste buds.”
“It’s a chance I’m willing to take.” He sipped again, and this time the look on his face while he drank caused a twinge low in my stomach. I tried to ignore it. All kinds of thoughts and feelings had come as part and parcel with my new found sanity, and I was still trying to figure out what to do about some of them. It was-
“Any special thing you’d like to talk about, Little Albatross?”
Mal’s voice interrupted my thoughts, and I found myself grateful for the distraction. I glanced at the steam still rising from my cup and absently reached down to pick up a piece from the chess set beside my seat, turning it over it my hand, studying it. A knight. “Jayne is making dinner tomorrow. We should remember to eat a big breakfast.”
Silence. I glanced up and saw the Captains eyes, narrowed slightly studying my hands where they fiddled with the piece and then moving up to my face.
“What’s on your mind, Little One?”
“Bone. Skin. Hair.” I twisted the piece again and started humming. Innocent, innocent me. Nothing important on this mind.
“River.”
The word was a warning. River, not Albatross. That meant he wanted a real answer and wasn’t going to be distracted. I knew Mal wasn’t a reader, but sometimes his intuition was uncanny. I held his gaze for a long moment, deciding. The words fell from my lips like pebbles into a pond.
“Zoe is pregnant.”
He lurched forward, choking on his coffee and sloshing it into his lap. A short stream of Chinese curse words followed as he stood up and frantically brushed the hot liquid off of his pants. I tried for half a second, but the giggles burst out and turned into full on laughter at the expression on his face.
He shot me a withering look. “You may be a killer warrior woman, but given the proper motivation, I think I could lay a fearsome amount of hurt on you, River Tam.”
I thought about that for a second. “Doubtful. Your pants are stained.”
“Yeah, and I may never be able to-” He broke off with a flush. And I found myself intensely curious as to what he might have been about to say.
“May never be able to what?”
“Never you mind. And don’t think you’re going to distract me from the subject at hand with your womanly wiles.”
A little thrill shot through me-that was twice tonight he’d called me a woman instead of a girl-but I tried not to let it show. Instead, I shrugged. “Zoe’s pregnant.”
“So you mentioned. How in the Gorram Hell did something like that happen?”
“She and Wash engaged in sexual intercourse, and when he achieved orgasm his sperm-”
“Wo di ma! I know how it happened. What I mean to say is-for the love of-aw, Hell, I don’t even know what I mean to say.” He clamped his lips shut, and all at once I heard from his mind a faint echo of-hurt. I looked deeper, and rushed to explain.
“She didn’t tell anyone else first. Still a special secret even from her.”
His chin jerked up. “She doesn’t-then how do you-” He broke off at the look I gave him. “Right. Stupid question.”
There was a pause. “So, are you going to-tell her?”
I shook my head. “She’ll find out soon enough. It’s only been a month. She’s still hurting. Next month she’ll notice when her cycle doesn’t come as expected.”
Mal grimaced. “As much enjoyment as I get from talking about cycles and such, it seems a might odd that you’d choose to share this particular tidbit with me. You’re usually a bit stingy about spreading around the things you pick up with that mind of yours.”
It was faint, but I could hear the slightest hint of censure in his tone. That made me angry a little, and I snapped when I answered. “No lock on my brain or lips, but secretes are safe all the same. I’m careful of sharing private information, Captain. You should know that. None of your secrets have escaped yet.”
A small wince. “You’re right. I do know it. I apologize.”
I nodded to show that he was forgiven.
“So why share this?”
I blew out a deep breath. “Sometimes a secret needs a second opinion. I’m trying to decide what to do.”
“Do? I don’t know as you can do-”
“How do you think Zoe’s going to feel when she finds out?”
“Er, happy, I assume. She’ll have a piece of Wash with her, and I expect that will be a great comfort. And I believe she’s been wanting a baby for a while now, not that she’d mention it to me, but there’s been an air about her.”
I nodded, my voice sad. All at once I felt like I was 1,000 years old. “She has. She wanted a baby to raise with Wash.”
Mal’s blue eyes dimmed a little, and he ducked his head. “Sometimes things don’t work out perfect, River.” He reached across and pulled one of my hands out of my lap. I’d been studying it, using the exploration of lines and whorls on the pads of my fingertips as an excuse not to meet his eyes. “You have to play the cards that are dealt to you, Little Albatross.”
When I looked up, I could feel my eyes burning with moisture. “But what if you don’t?” I whispered.
“I don’t get what you’re-”
“Its easy to play different cards. You just have to deal a new hand.”
Mal laughed awkwardly. “Deal a new-River, short of turning back time, there’s no way you can deal Zoe a hand that would bring Wash-” His voice cut off, and he was quiet for a long minute. I just watched him, waiting.
“That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it Albatross? Turning back time?”
“Yes.”
“River, that’s impossible. You can’t-”
“You can’t. I can. I think I can. Maybe.”
A snort then silence. Finally, “Really?”
I nodded.
“I think-no, I’m fair certain I’m going to regret asking this-but how do you propose to pull off such a thing?”
“Aa naïve application of general relativity to quantum mechanics.”
“A nia-whosis?”
He didn’t understand. Why was I surprised by that? Maybe because, more than anyone else, the Captain often seemed to understand my meanings if not my words. Of course, that was usually in the case of lunatic babbling, not scientific applications. I tried again.
“A heavy atomic nucleus in a strong magnetic field would elongate into a cylinder. If a cylinder is infinitely long and spins fast enough about its long axis, then an object flying around the cylinder on a spiral path could travel back in time-or forward, depending on the directon of its spiral.”
“Huh?”
I rolled my eyes. “Try to pay attention. The problem with that is that the density and speed required would be so great that ordinary matter isn’t strong enough to construct the apparatus.” I paused for a second, thoughtful. “Of course, a similar device might be built from a cosmic string, but since none of those are known to exist, creating one would probably be more work than-“ I shoke my head. “Nevermind. Are you with me so far?”
Mal looked dazed and blinked, which I took to mean no, but continued anyway.
“If we took Gamma rays and projected them at the nucleal cylindar, we could send information-not matter; that would be too big-back in time. It’s really quite simple, when you think about it?”
Mal shook his head, voice rising. “Simple? You think that’s simple? I don’t even know half of the words you just said, but the ones I did understand are the furthest thing from simple I’ve ever heard.”
Hair whipped across my face as I shook my head. “Simple, complex. It’s all semantics. Could is less important than should.”
For the first time since Miranda, Mal was giving me the look that said, “This girl ain’t quite right.” I didn’t like it and clenched my teeth to keep from telling him to stop. "River, if you think you can make it so Wash don’t die, so Book and the people at Haven, live, why is there even a question about that?”
“Because when you change one thing, you change everything.”
He looked confused, so rather than try to use words, I picked up the deck of cards we’d spent hours playing. When Mal opened his mouth to ask what I was doing, I held up a hand. Movements quick and precise, I shuffled and dealt. Then gestured to the cards.
“Play the cards you’re dealt.”
He looked puzzled, but picked them up and sorted them.
“Good hand?”
Eyebrows furrowed. “Not too bad.”
Moving fast, I reached across the table and snatched two of his cards.
“Hey!”
“Good hand now?”
“Considering you just stole two face cards, the hand is looking a might ugly.”
Quick as lightning, I gave him the next two cards from the top of the deck and asked the status of his hand with a lift of my eyebrows.
“Huh. Flush.”
I nodded encouragement.“Do you see the should of it now?”
Mal looked up from his cards and studied my face, his gaze intent. He was quiet for a long time, watching me. I could feel him turning things over in his mind. When he spoke his words were slow and careful. “Any change you make from the hand you were given affects-everything.” He held up his cards. “You taking my Aces ended up being a good thing-my hand ended up better-but you didn’t know that’s what would happen. I could have ended up with a hand full of go se.”
I smiled and nodded, relieved that he understood.
“Way I see it, not much could be worse than Wash and Book being dead. I mean, we’re looking at some pretty terrible cards there.”
I shook my head. “Approximately 46,295 alternative scenarios should Wash not have been impaled by the Reaver’s harpoon, and if we go all the way back to Shephard Book, the number of other possible outcomes rises to 985,842.”
Mal blanced. “That’s a lot of-those are all worse ways things could have gone?”
“Worse is an objective adjective. Its application is dependant upon the point of view of the user.”
“Smaller words, Little One. You’re losing me here.”
“If the Shephard and the Havenites hadn’t died, you might not have been berserk eoungh to try going to Miranda at all. Or if you had, you might not have had the bodies to put on the ship, and we wouldn’t have made it past the Reavers. In either case, the Miranda information would have been suppressed, and the Alliance would have won. Worse outcome according to us, better outcome according to them.”
When he spoke again, Mal’s voice was quiet. “I’d like to think I would have decided on going to Miranda with or without Book dying, Albatross. It was the right thing to do.”
I shrugged. “Even if you had, probabilities indicate many of the crew wouldn’t have gone with you without Book’s death to motivate them, which very likely would have-”
“Ok, I think I’m seeing your point. But what about Wash. He-what happened to him didn’t change things over much.”
“Forty-six thousand-”
“I remember the number,” Mal interrupted. “If there are so many worse things that could happen, why even worry about it in the first place?”
I stared hard at my hands and felt the hot moisture of a tear trickling down my cheek. “Because, there’s one change we could make that results in the largest possible percentage of favorable outcomes for the rest of the crew.”
I tried to keep my voice steady, but I could hear it shaking. I didn’t mean to do it, but my muscles retreated to the defensive position I used to sit in before Mal taught me to block out some of the voices-knees pressed against my chest, head down, arms wrapped around them. I held myself as tightly as I could, but the shaking wouldn’t stop. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to do it. But I knew I had to. Zoe’s baby. The children on Haven. Shephard Book. Wash. Even Mal. I could make things better for all of them. Just one little change. One re-deal.
I rocked.
And fought a losing battle against tears.
Then, all at once, I felt strong arms around me, and Mal was lifting me up, putting me on his lap, holding me tighter than I could hold myself.
“River, it’s allright. Whatever it is, it’s going to be ok, Darlin’.”
Nothing had ever felt quite as good as his arms around me. At least, nothing I could remember. My muscles relaxed a milimeter at a time as he stroked down the length of my hair. When his murmering turned to words of comfort in Chinese-that I was safe, that I was home, that I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to-my arms went away from my knees to wrap around his shoulders and cling on-a rock in the rapids. The security that was Mal gave me the courage to say what I didn’t want to think about.
“If you gave me to the Alliance after the Maidenhead-”
“No.” His denial was flat, fast and final.
“Zoe’s baby would have a-”
“No.”
“All those people, those innocent families on Haven-”
“No.”
“The guilt you feel over losing Wash and Book would be-”
“I said no.”
“Mal, you have to listen to me. If you weigh the value-”
And then he kissed me.