I wasn't gonna post this until Mal threatened me
This is not so much a short story as a "meanwhile, back at the ranch" vignette written after I read Rinalin's breathtakingly painful story "The End of All Things." Like hers, it has SERIOUS SERENITY SPOILERS. I would ask, beg and bribe you not to read either of them if you haven't seen our BDM. Of course if you haven't, please leave your name and address and we'll send the reavers for you as soon as possible.
I wasn't planning on posting this, as you can tell...but Mal made me do it.
Night Falls on Shadow...
by Grand Inquisitor Zoe_Jayne
Boots on the console, but the dirt on them wasn't from no ship, no war. It comes from a man's soul when he's seen all he can take and he can't lie down and he can't stand, neither. When Book and Wash shuffled off, he looked to the rest to carry him. One by one they fell and he tasted the dirt in his mouth. Had any of 'em been around to collect, he'd have lost. In his mind Jayne would have been the first, Zoe the last. Kaylee was the hardest.
They set down on Persephone one last time, promised her Badger had a good two-man job. He told her to wait for him in the cafe`, the one that served fresh strawberries. He broke atmo, he imagined, just before she realized he wasn't coming.
"We went to war, not looking to come back." Tracey once said.
It was true. And they didn't. They had just pretended to, but now Mal had nothing left to pretend. The ache got so deep, weren't nothing could touch it.
He lifted the recorder, thumbed the switch and swallowed.
"Sailing without destination on a dark sea, endlessly searching for shelter. Changed my course, tried to find some kind of light. In the end, it wasn't bright enough, never could be. Best be doing what's got to be done."
He breathed out softly and then paused it, thinking what else there was to say. The answer was nothing. No words, no hint, just endless echos of silence that reverbrated inside his head. He sat in main consol chair, curled into himself with his coat wrapped around him ~a small substitute for arms~ while the cold ebbed and flowed over him, and bitter with memories of the last time he'd been like this. Only difference was there was no distress beacon, no one coming back. He wouldn't get a gut shot and he wouldn't wake to find them hovering over him, more Wash's blood inside him than his own.
But he was tired of shadows, they'd gotten so loud, then they left leaving even emptier space to fill the gaps.
He'd left Kaylee on Persephone, if Zoe was still around, there was a chance they'd find each other. He never did figure out where Zoe was from, but if she had any people, they'd be on Persephone. No point in wishing it was otherwise. Only so many places you could go when you were hurtin', belly up.
The cortex yielded no hint about the Tams, no rumour or great mystery about their destinations. River had improved some, while Simon had been falling apart. He could only wonder by now which one was taking care of the other, if they'd avoided Alliance interference. Maybe they settled in a small community, where they'd be safe and the Doc could get on with his calling, have himself a chance at a life for him an' his sister.
Word had it that Inara was now Lady Atherton.
Jayne.... was Jayne. Anyone looking would need only to find that string of broken bones and one night stands that followed in his restless wake. She should have gone with him when he asked, when he begged the only way he could and still respect himself in the morning.
Mal'd watched him take the ramp down, didn't bother to so much as wave, though he was pretty sure his parting gift wouldn't go amiss, not many laborers carried a modified Officer's revolver from the Unification war. And he was pretty sure Jayne'd treat Cleo good. Even if she wasn't Kaylee.
It was now just him and Serenity.
And Serenity was real quiet now. Barren, alone and drifting, rust in places she had no business having, matching holes in Mal he couldn't patch up even if he were a brilliant surgeon or bubbly mechanic. There was a darkness there that coats of paint couldn't hide and no lights in the 'Verse could stop. It was a living and breathing sickness that didn't have nothing to do with no Reavers, but everything to do with him. He couldn't make it go away any more than he could stop the stars from shining, than he could bring them home. Any of them. All of them.
So it was best to let it go, before they got any more tainted than they needed to.
To leave old ghosts behind.
Click...
"The funniest things are the things that will never make you laugh. The craziest things are things that someone else did. The saddest things are things that never happen to you. Don't blame me if it's true, cause damn it, we don't even know each other. Preacher left me his book, but I ain't read it yet. Too busy, what with the darkness and the demons, the despair and the disease."
He scrubbed his face with his hand, felt the unshaven hairs bristle against his palm, and for a moment he seemed surprised he could feel it at all. Damn if it wasn't chilly.
"I done the best I could by you, and in the end, maybe my best don't count for nothing. Huhn. 'Magine me gettin' preachy and speechified here. So I'll cut it short now, let you get on with the task of living, if you can. If you remember me at all, don't remember me as a good man. Cause I wasn't. I was just plain ole Malcolm Reynolds."
Born alone on Shadow...and ended in it.
He tucked the personal recorder into his pocket and slipped his hands under the pits of opposite arms, his breath slow, the only sound in the cockpit of his ship, as his eyes watched the swirl of his home, made unliveable by the Alliance as an "Example" to the other Independant colonies at the start of the Unification war.
And then...
He simply closed his eyes to wait.