Drabbles
This is the last of the drabbles I promised. Sorry kaseitomodatchi that it took so long! Based on the song Must Be Dreaming, by FrouFrou.
Numb
Incendiary glance
Be come and collide in me
She’d never liked waiting.
It wore on her like a water on stone, slowly grinding away until sand was all that was left. Patience was the one skill she never quite mastered at the training house on Sihnon. Instead, she’d used her other skills to disguise the fact that being left to wait made her wish to scream from the top of her lungs.
This instance, more than ever.
A dozen feet away, River stood her forehead pressed to the large glass panels looking in on the opulent surgical suite where multiple operations were taking place. Every few seconds, she would move down a few paces, her large brown eyes moving from Simon to Mal to Zoe and back again.
She turned, her eyes passing over the opposite wall to the door to the room Kaylee was in, laying unconscious as the poison was filtered from her system. Numbly, she looked away.
Her reverie was startled as the door opened, and Jayne slipped into the hallway, a sling supporting his wounded shoulder.
Slipped. The observation struck her oddly, that until this moment, she had always seen Jayne as a commanding presence. Not like Mal with leadership and quiet authority, but with spectacular bravado and a sense of ownership in every breath he took.
Now, he looked every inch beaten. Quiet. Withdrawn.
Scared.
He didn’t take more than a few steps into the room, his blue eyes immediately taking account of River before anything else. She watched the path of his gaze as he focused through the windows on one surgical team after another. “Kaylee?”
She inclined her head to the door behind her and he nodded, finally meeting her eyes.
Her world tilted just slightly off axis to find everything she’d been to numb too feel reflected in his blue eyes.
Casualty
Is the right turn wrong
The ship he’s been looking for loomed over him, just as expected. The girl sitting out front however, wasn’t. The bright umbrella was outshone only by her smile, and he couldn’t imagine a single thing more out of place.
He smiled and talked with her, that smile of hers so utterly innocent. She made him falter. Second guess. A girl like that couldn’t be caught up in the kind of mess he’s looking to clean up. He forces the doubts from his mind, the ‘verse is a strange and mysterious place, and he’s seen a wealth of oddity in this life.
There was a job he had to do. A man with a mission that must be stopped. A life that was more precious than any other in the ‘verse.
But as he handed over the strawberries and received that glowing smile in return, he felt his stomach drop to his knees. It wasn’t he who would pay the price, but this girl.
This girl with the pretty umbrella and a smile that moved mountains.
Ambushed
For I don't fall in love lawlessly
He gave up on Love many, many years ago. Before Inara. Before Serenity. Before the War. Before he’d even left Shadow. That part of him was long dead and buried eight feet under. It was Love that destroyed his Mama.
And Malcolm Reynolds would be damned to the devil’s doorstep before he let it destroy him.
Problem was the rest of his crew was made up of a buncha feng le romantics. Even Jayne, who had to run his mouth about every-damn-thing didn’t so much a smirk when River made a point of sittin’ beside him at meals.
And Simon. The gorram doctor thought the whole thing was healthy. When Mal had gone to him to tell him to get her to stop, he’d shook his head. “It’s good for her, having feelings of her own, recognizing them and then acting upon them. It’s almost more than I’d hoped for. Besides, better you than Jayne.”
While, yes, that was true, Mal still found the whole business distracting. She’d pop up outta nowhere when he was least expecting it. Those big, huge eyes of hers fixed adoringly on him. Weren’t a man in the ‘verse less deserving of it than him.
Then there was that job on Rathine.
Zoe got shot up bad, and weren’t a one of them sure she’d make it through the night. They’d sat in the lounge, all of them; Simon, Kaylee, Jayne, and Inara. River had chosen him to sit with. Curled up against his side, resting her head on his shoulder, her thin arm wound around his, and they waited.
Damned if he couldn’t think of anything he needed more at that moment than her.
Wasn’t that he loved her. Not yet.
But it was happening. An’ judging by the tiny little smile she was givin’ him, she knew it too.