WIP Amnesty: Fallen from the Sky (BSG/Firefly)
WIP Amnesty #1: my attempt at a BSG/Firefly crossover. As of right now, I do not expect to finish this fic (and it's been years since I last looked at it) so if anyone wants to adopt it, well, go right ahead.
Title: Fallen from the Sky
Setting: Firefly 'Verse, after the BDM
Rating: PG
Summary: The maelstrom takes Kara someplace unexpected...
AN: Title is from a song by Glen Hansard.
“Someone’s coming,” River said.
Mal paused mid-step over the threshold into the bridge, one hand resting on the bulkhead. He hadn’t realized River even knew he was there, but he should have. Of course she knew. She wasn’t looking at him though, just staring out into the black with her legs drawn up beneath her in Wash’s chair. No matter how long River flew Serenity, Mal figured it’d take a mite more than forever for that to stop being Wash’s chair.
And it would take twice as long for the shuttle to stop belonging to Inara.
But now wasn’t the time for philosophizing. Mal walked forward to lean against the edge of the console, folding his arms across his chest and looking at River who kept looking at the stars.
“What kind of someone?”
“Strange,” River said. “Stranger.”
Well, guess it had been too much to hope for a plain answer. River had gotten a hell of a lot more cogent since Miranda, but she still weren’t all there, and didn’t seem inclined to making it easier for all the people who were stupider than her, meaning everyone.
“Is this someone dangerous?”
River looked at Mal, and she laughed. “Maybe to your ego.” She stopped laughing but kept right on smiling when an alarm sounded. “Distress beacon. Let’s go meet her!” And just like that, River was guiding Serenity through space that seemed so empty. Apparently not as empty as they’d thought.
Mal thought the whole thing was damn unsettling.
He called the crew up to the bridge. He hesitated a moment or two about calling on Zoe, but valued her input too much. Besides, she’d never taken to coddling before. Then again, she’d never had such reason. Still, she came on up, just two steps behind Kaylee and Simon, and three steps before Jayne. Her gaze halted briefly on River in the pilot’s chair, then moved on to meet his own steadily.
“Picked up some kind of distress signal,” Mal told them. “Weak, and a code I don’t recognize. Should have visual soon as River takes us ‘round this here moon.”
The ship was so small that Serenity had to sidle up real close to get a good look at her.
“[something Chinese],” Kaylee swore, “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”
Mal had to agree with the sentiment. “What can you tell me, Kaylee?”
“Well, she’s tiny! Can’t seat more than one person, maybe two if you don’t plan on movin’ any time soon. Engines packed in back, but...she’s drifting, dead in the water.” After a moment, she added, “and she’s got guns.”
Mal nodded, not rightly surprised at Kaylee’s assessment. “Jayne, get suited up. We’re bringin’ it in. River, reckon you can bring her around, pull a reverse swallow?”
River just nodded, and Mal figured that was all he was going to get out of her. Not long after, he and Jayne were suited up and waiting on the other side of the airlock as Serenity sidled right on up to the smaller vessel. Mal and Jayne were tethered to the bulkhead so they could safely push off towards the strange ship. Soon enough, they had it hooked up and were hauling it into Serenity’s belly.
Mal could see someone inside the cockpit, though the figure wasn’t moving and there was no light to speak of, so he couldn’t make out much else. There were some markings on the side of the thing too, numbers and letters that meant nothing to him but he figured had to be some kind of ident-code.
Once they had the ship settled inside, the hatch closed and pressurized, giving them access to the larger bay. Mal quickly relieved himself of the bulky helmet and suit, his right hand settling briefly on the gun strapped to his hip before he approached the mysterious ship and its as yet unmoving occupant. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zoe in position to take their guest out, should he or she prove a problem. Kaylee and Simon were coming down the stairs into the hangar too.
Mal looked at the ship and then turned to Jayne. “Let’s get a look inside her.”
Up close, Mal could see that the pilot was clearly unconscious or dead, slumped forward and held in place only by the straps on the seat. He and Jayne wrestled with the canopy, which refused to budge even though it had taken a hit, as evidenced by the spiderweb of cracks spinning out from a small hole on one side.
“Cap’n, you gotta hit the release.” Kaylee’s tone clearly expressed his extreme stupidity.
“The whatnow?”
“The release,” she said again. “Ship like that can’t have her opening willy-nilly in the black, so she’s got an external release. Probably got an internal one too, but that ain’t gonna do us much good.”
Mal eyed the canopy. “So where would this release be?”
Kaylee studied it for a few moments, than climbed up beside him on the wing and wrapped her hands around something. “Try her now.”
Dutifully, Mal and Jayne shoved against the canopy and this time it slid forward on its tracks. Mal grunted. “Huh. Thanks, little Kaylee. Go get the doc, will you?”
Mal paid her no mind as he leaned forward into the ship’s tiny cockpit and got a good look at its pilot for the first time. Her eyes were closed, lips tinged blue, although it was hard to tell through the plexiglass of her helmet. After a few moments, his questing fingers found the release mechanism on her collar, and he pulled the helmet away, setting it down on the floor of her cockpit. His fingers found her pale throat, and there was a pulse-slow but steady.
“Jayne, make yourself useful and give me a hand!”
Together, they made quick work of her straps and Mal hauled the unconscious woman up over his shoulder. He nearly tumbled headlong off the wing as he tried to balance her dead weight and make the jump down to the floor without hurting himself or dropping her. But he made it, and laid her out on the floor so that Simon could take a look at her. Mal took a step back, standing with Kaylee and Jayne while the doctor knelt beside the stranger. After just a minute or two, Simon stood up and snapped his small medkit closed.
“We have to get her to my infirmary. I can’t properly assess her condition here.”
They wasted no time in getting her loaded up on a stretcher, and Mal and Jayne lifted her between them and made their way to the infirmary, Simon, Kaylee, and Zoe walking alongside. Once the woman was laid out on the infirmary bed, Simon and Zoe efficiently stripped her of her flightsuit, revealing military-style tanks and shorts underneath.
Simon slipped an oxygen mask over the woman’s nose and mouth, and eyed her figure. “No visible injuries. She looks okay.”
Jayne snorted from where he was leaning against the wall by the door. “More than okay,” he said, leering at the unconscious woman.
Simon ignored the other man and, after a cursory examination, pulled a sheet over the woman’s legs and torso. He listened carefully to her chest, then gently lifted her head and ran his fingers over the back of her skull. He pulled back one eyelid and shone a penlight in her eye. When that was done, he stepped back and turned towards the others.
“As far as I can tell, she’s suffering from oxygen deprivation, and I honestly don’t know what else, if there is anything else. Although there are no visible signs of injury, she could have sustained a concussion but without the proper equipment I...”
“Small words, Doc,” Mal cut him off.
“I’m giving her oxygen,” Simon said, running one hand through his hair. “But we’ll have to wait and see what happens when she wakes up, if she wakes up.”
Kaylee made a little sound of distress and Jayne was still leering at the unconscious woman, so Mal set the two of them to the task of checking out the woman’s ship. Leaving Simon to his patient, Mal and Zoe walked silently back to the bridge where they found River in just about the same position they’d left her in, knees drawn up on the seat and face turned to the stars.
“All of this has happened before,” the girl whispered, “and all of this will happen again.”
~~~
The first thing Kara noticed was the air: familiar processed feeling of being in space, but she knew immediately that she wasn’t on the Galactica. The second thing she noticed was that she was cold and tired, very tired.
Then she noticed the voices.
“She ain’t come ‘round yet?” That was a woman, her accented tones strange to Kara’s ears. Scorpion maybe?
“Not yet. She could wake up in hours or days, minutes or...”
“Good thing we found her then, right Simon?”
Kara’s mind went on the alert at the name and she went from confused to furious in the time it took to crack open one eye.
“I suppose so,” Simon was saying. “We did find her at a very crucial window after she ran out of oxygen and before she died.”
Kara opened her other eye. This doctor (if he was a doctor) was not Simon. And this didn’t look like a basestar, but she didn’t exactly have first-hand experience with one of those. She didn’t have much time to assess this situation either, as the other woman halted mid-sentence, eyes round and looking right at Kara.
The pair immediately started invading her personal space, the Simon guy pressing a stethoscope to her chest. Or trying to. Her right hand wrapped around his wrist before he could get it within six inches of her.
They both froze, which was fine with Kara. “Where am I?” she said, displeased by how thin her voice seemed. Still, the doctor and his friend seemed intimidated enough.
“Well,” he said after a moment, “you’re on Serenity, and it looks like your reflexes are just fine.”
The words meant little to Kara, and she shook them off. “Why am I in this bed? And,” she glanced down at herself, “where the frak is my flightsuit?”
The other two looked at each other, and Simon looked like he really wanted to back away, but her grip held firm. She wondered briefly if they were deficient, as they didn’t seem to understand her very straightforward questions.
“Where,” she began again, but slower and with every ounce of anger she could manage with her still strangely hoarse voice, “the frak...” Flightsuit. She remembered suddenly but clearly, as though she were watching a movie, donning the flightsuit at the beginning of her shift. Remembered staring into an empty cockpit and the way Lee’s flightsuit brushed against her own as he stood up, just before he held out a hand for her.
Luckily, the doctor seemed to have finally found his wits, and she redirected her attention. “We found you drifting,” he was saying. “You were unconscious and on the verge of asphyxiation.”
She remembered flying, remembered clouds and something hitting her canopy and that godsdamned raider.
“As for your,” Simon continued, stumbling slightly over the word, “flightsuit...well it’s right over there and if you let go of me I can get it for you.”
She released his arm and he calmly brought her the suit. She slid off the cot, stumbling only slightly when she stood on her own. Once she had her flightsuit pulled up to her hips, Kara walked out of the infirmary. The other two tried to stop her but she easily pushed through them and, once she reached the unfamiliar corridor, picked a direction and picked up the pace.
~~~
~~~
And there you have it! That's as far as I got, besides some vague notes, which I shall spoiler-cut in case you don't want to know how I intended for it to end.
[spoilers for my own fic?]
Kaylee and Simon notice she’s awake, fail to answer her questions, Kara escapes. Not a fan of infirmaries, anyway. Gets lost anyway, stumbles through the kitchen, passenger quarters...eventually runs into Mal, bests him, but gets taken down by Zoe. Jayne slept through it maybe. She’s still freaking out though, and Mal, while tetchy, is trying to calm her down. River broke their last pair of handcuffs. And River of course shows up, says her simulacra line and Kara eventually (grudgingly) comes to the conclusion that maybe they’re human after all. They all get to talking, somebody mentions Earth-That-Was, Kara perks up...
Kara and Mal have tehsex after a bit of crime. Mal says something like, “Where to next, if you’re gonna be driving this boat?” And Kara doesn’t hesitate. “How about Earth-That-Was? Been a while since you pissed off the Alliance and uncovered top secret government conspiracies.”
“Oh hell, I knew you was gonna be trouble...”
“Gotta find my fun somewhere...”
Some time later, “I’ll take it into consideration. You know. Ask me again on the shinier side of a few well-paying jobs, if’n you’re still flying with us that is.”
Something somber flickers across her face. “Does it look like I’m leaving any time soon?” she whispers, and kisses him.
Maybe the next day/night River says something like, “You’ll see him again.” Cut to...
“Hey Lee. Don’t freak out-it really is me. I’ve been to Earth, Lee. I know where it is, and I’m going to take us there.”
A few splashed Cylon raiders and countless questions later, Lee came to her in the brig. Her hands were wrapped around the bars, and he wrapped his hands around hers.
“There’s something different about you,” Lee said. The question went unspoken.
Kara just smiled. “I guess I found my serenity.”
THE END
Title: Fallen from the Sky
Setting: Firefly 'Verse, after the BDM
Rating: PG
Summary: The maelstrom takes Kara someplace unexpected...
AN: Title is from a song by Glen Hansard.
“Someone’s coming,” River said.
Mal paused mid-step over the threshold into the bridge, one hand resting on the bulkhead. He hadn’t realized River even knew he was there, but he should have. Of course she knew. She wasn’t looking at him though, just staring out into the black with her legs drawn up beneath her in Wash’s chair. No matter how long River flew Serenity, Mal figured it’d take a mite more than forever for that to stop being Wash’s chair.
And it would take twice as long for the shuttle to stop belonging to Inara.
But now wasn’t the time for philosophizing. Mal walked forward to lean against the edge of the console, folding his arms across his chest and looking at River who kept looking at the stars.
“What kind of someone?”
“Strange,” River said. “Stranger.”
Well, guess it had been too much to hope for a plain answer. River had gotten a hell of a lot more cogent since Miranda, but she still weren’t all there, and didn’t seem inclined to making it easier for all the people who were stupider than her, meaning everyone.
“Is this someone dangerous?”
River looked at Mal, and she laughed. “Maybe to your ego.” She stopped laughing but kept right on smiling when an alarm sounded. “Distress beacon. Let’s go meet her!” And just like that, River was guiding Serenity through space that seemed so empty. Apparently not as empty as they’d thought.
Mal thought the whole thing was damn unsettling.
He called the crew up to the bridge. He hesitated a moment or two about calling on Zoe, but valued her input too much. Besides, she’d never taken to coddling before. Then again, she’d never had such reason. Still, she came on up, just two steps behind Kaylee and Simon, and three steps before Jayne. Her gaze halted briefly on River in the pilot’s chair, then moved on to meet his own steadily.
“Picked up some kind of distress signal,” Mal told them. “Weak, and a code I don’t recognize. Should have visual soon as River takes us ‘round this here moon.”
The ship was so small that Serenity had to sidle up real close to get a good look at her.
“[something Chinese],” Kaylee swore, “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”
Mal had to agree with the sentiment. “What can you tell me, Kaylee?”
“Well, she’s tiny! Can’t seat more than one person, maybe two if you don’t plan on movin’ any time soon. Engines packed in back, but...she’s drifting, dead in the water.” After a moment, she added, “and she’s got guns.”
Mal nodded, not rightly surprised at Kaylee’s assessment. “Jayne, get suited up. We’re bringin’ it in. River, reckon you can bring her around, pull a reverse swallow?”
River just nodded, and Mal figured that was all he was going to get out of her. Not long after, he and Jayne were suited up and waiting on the other side of the airlock as Serenity sidled right on up to the smaller vessel. Mal and Jayne were tethered to the bulkhead so they could safely push off towards the strange ship. Soon enough, they had it hooked up and were hauling it into Serenity’s belly.
Mal could see someone inside the cockpit, though the figure wasn’t moving and there was no light to speak of, so he couldn’t make out much else. There were some markings on the side of the thing too, numbers and letters that meant nothing to him but he figured had to be some kind of ident-code.
Once they had the ship settled inside, the hatch closed and pressurized, giving them access to the larger bay. Mal quickly relieved himself of the bulky helmet and suit, his right hand settling briefly on the gun strapped to his hip before he approached the mysterious ship and its as yet unmoving occupant. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zoe in position to take their guest out, should he or she prove a problem. Kaylee and Simon were coming down the stairs into the hangar too.
Mal looked at the ship and then turned to Jayne. “Let’s get a look inside her.”
Up close, Mal could see that the pilot was clearly unconscious or dead, slumped forward and held in place only by the straps on the seat. He and Jayne wrestled with the canopy, which refused to budge even though it had taken a hit, as evidenced by the spiderweb of cracks spinning out from a small hole on one side.
“Cap’n, you gotta hit the release.” Kaylee’s tone clearly expressed his extreme stupidity.
“The whatnow?”
“The release,” she said again. “Ship like that can’t have her opening willy-nilly in the black, so she’s got an external release. Probably got an internal one too, but that ain’t gonna do us much good.”
Mal eyed the canopy. “So where would this release be?”
Kaylee studied it for a few moments, than climbed up beside him on the wing and wrapped her hands around something. “Try her now.”
Dutifully, Mal and Jayne shoved against the canopy and this time it slid forward on its tracks. Mal grunted. “Huh. Thanks, little Kaylee. Go get the doc, will you?”
Mal paid her no mind as he leaned forward into the ship’s tiny cockpit and got a good look at its pilot for the first time. Her eyes were closed, lips tinged blue, although it was hard to tell through the plexiglass of her helmet. After a few moments, his questing fingers found the release mechanism on her collar, and he pulled the helmet away, setting it down on the floor of her cockpit. His fingers found her pale throat, and there was a pulse-slow but steady.
“Jayne, make yourself useful and give me a hand!”
Together, they made quick work of her straps and Mal hauled the unconscious woman up over his shoulder. He nearly tumbled headlong off the wing as he tried to balance her dead weight and make the jump down to the floor without hurting himself or dropping her. But he made it, and laid her out on the floor so that Simon could take a look at her. Mal took a step back, standing with Kaylee and Jayne while the doctor knelt beside the stranger. After just a minute or two, Simon stood up and snapped his small medkit closed.
“We have to get her to my infirmary. I can’t properly assess her condition here.”
They wasted no time in getting her loaded up on a stretcher, and Mal and Jayne lifted her between them and made their way to the infirmary, Simon, Kaylee, and Zoe walking alongside. Once the woman was laid out on the infirmary bed, Simon and Zoe efficiently stripped her of her flightsuit, revealing military-style tanks and shorts underneath.
Simon slipped an oxygen mask over the woman’s nose and mouth, and eyed her figure. “No visible injuries. She looks okay.”
Jayne snorted from where he was leaning against the wall by the door. “More than okay,” he said, leering at the unconscious woman.
Simon ignored the other man and, after a cursory examination, pulled a sheet over the woman’s legs and torso. He listened carefully to her chest, then gently lifted her head and ran his fingers over the back of her skull. He pulled back one eyelid and shone a penlight in her eye. When that was done, he stepped back and turned towards the others.
“As far as I can tell, she’s suffering from oxygen deprivation, and I honestly don’t know what else, if there is anything else. Although there are no visible signs of injury, she could have sustained a concussion but without the proper equipment I...”
“Small words, Doc,” Mal cut him off.
“I’m giving her oxygen,” Simon said, running one hand through his hair. “But we’ll have to wait and see what happens when she wakes up, if she wakes up.”
Kaylee made a little sound of distress and Jayne was still leering at the unconscious woman, so Mal set the two of them to the task of checking out the woman’s ship. Leaving Simon to his patient, Mal and Zoe walked silently back to the bridge where they found River in just about the same position they’d left her in, knees drawn up on the seat and face turned to the stars.
“All of this has happened before,” the girl whispered, “and all of this will happen again.”
~~~
The first thing Kara noticed was the air: familiar processed feeling of being in space, but she knew immediately that she wasn’t on the Galactica. The second thing she noticed was that she was cold and tired, very tired.
Then she noticed the voices.
“She ain’t come ‘round yet?” That was a woman, her accented tones strange to Kara’s ears. Scorpion maybe?
“Not yet. She could wake up in hours or days, minutes or...”
“Good thing we found her then, right Simon?”
Kara’s mind went on the alert at the name and she went from confused to furious in the time it took to crack open one eye.
“I suppose so,” Simon was saying. “We did find her at a very crucial window after she ran out of oxygen and before she died.”
Kara opened her other eye. This doctor (if he was a doctor) was not Simon. And this didn’t look like a basestar, but she didn’t exactly have first-hand experience with one of those. She didn’t have much time to assess this situation either, as the other woman halted mid-sentence, eyes round and looking right at Kara.
The pair immediately started invading her personal space, the Simon guy pressing a stethoscope to her chest. Or trying to. Her right hand wrapped around his wrist before he could get it within six inches of her.
They both froze, which was fine with Kara. “Where am I?” she said, displeased by how thin her voice seemed. Still, the doctor and his friend seemed intimidated enough.
“Well,” he said after a moment, “you’re on Serenity, and it looks like your reflexes are just fine.”
The words meant little to Kara, and she shook them off. “Why am I in this bed? And,” she glanced down at herself, “where the frak is my flightsuit?”
The other two looked at each other, and Simon looked like he really wanted to back away, but her grip held firm. She wondered briefly if they were deficient, as they didn’t seem to understand her very straightforward questions.
“Where,” she began again, but slower and with every ounce of anger she could manage with her still strangely hoarse voice, “the frak...” Flightsuit. She remembered suddenly but clearly, as though she were watching a movie, donning the flightsuit at the beginning of her shift. Remembered staring into an empty cockpit and the way Lee’s flightsuit brushed against her own as he stood up, just before he held out a hand for her.
Luckily, the doctor seemed to have finally found his wits, and she redirected her attention. “We found you drifting,” he was saying. “You were unconscious and on the verge of asphyxiation.”
She remembered flying, remembered clouds and something hitting her canopy and that godsdamned raider.
“As for your,” Simon continued, stumbling slightly over the word, “flightsuit...well it’s right over there and if you let go of me I can get it for you.”
She released his arm and he calmly brought her the suit. She slid off the cot, stumbling only slightly when she stood on her own. Once she had her flightsuit pulled up to her hips, Kara walked out of the infirmary. The other two tried to stop her but she easily pushed through them and, once she reached the unfamiliar corridor, picked a direction and picked up the pace.
~~~
~~~
And there you have it! That's as far as I got, besides some vague notes, which I shall spoiler-cut in case you don't want to know how I intended for it to end.
[spoilers for my own fic?]
Kaylee and Simon notice she’s awake, fail to answer her questions, Kara escapes. Not a fan of infirmaries, anyway. Gets lost anyway, stumbles through the kitchen, passenger quarters...eventually runs into Mal, bests him, but gets taken down by Zoe. Jayne slept through it maybe. She’s still freaking out though, and Mal, while tetchy, is trying to calm her down. River broke their last pair of handcuffs. And River of course shows up, says her simulacra line and Kara eventually (grudgingly) comes to the conclusion that maybe they’re human after all. They all get to talking, somebody mentions Earth-That-Was, Kara perks up...
Kara and Mal have tehsex after a bit of crime. Mal says something like, “Where to next, if you’re gonna be driving this boat?” And Kara doesn’t hesitate. “How about Earth-That-Was? Been a while since you pissed off the Alliance and uncovered top secret government conspiracies.”
“Oh hell, I knew you was gonna be trouble...”
“Gotta find my fun somewhere...”
Some time later, “I’ll take it into consideration. You know. Ask me again on the shinier side of a few well-paying jobs, if’n you’re still flying with us that is.”
Something somber flickers across her face. “Does it look like I’m leaving any time soon?” she whispers, and kisses him.
Maybe the next day/night River says something like, “You’ll see him again.” Cut to...
“Hey Lee. Don’t freak out-it really is me. I’ve been to Earth, Lee. I know where it is, and I’m going to take us there.”
A few splashed Cylon raiders and countless questions later, Lee came to her in the brig. Her hands were wrapped around the bars, and he wrapped his hands around hers.
“There’s something different about you,” Lee said. The question went unspoken.
Kara just smiled. “I guess I found my serenity.”
THE END