Firefly fic: Snapshots from the War (PG-13)
Title: Snapshots from the War
Characters: Jayne/Simon, River, Mal, Zoe
Rating: PG-13
Words: About 3200
Summary: Simon rents an office, and Jayne never does find a way to leave.
Disclaimer: Clearly I claim no ownership to the Firefly 'verse or its characters; nor am I making money from this fic writing thing.
Notes: This will only make sense if you've read the prompt ficlet Choice, which sets up the background to this story; I also wrote a brief, smutty follow-up, Half-life. I kept thinking about the universe from that story, and I wanted to write more, small pictures of River and Simon coping with a new war against the Alliance.
"I ain't stayin'," Jayne says, two days after Serenity leaves. "Just so you know. You maybe wanna set up shop here, but there ain't nothin' for me."
"All right," Simon replies, looking around their small rooms. Already, people have heard rumours that there's a doctor in the area. Women heavy with pregnancy have approached him on the street, telling him due dates and offering money and goods.
Even through the haze he's living in - River gone, River alone - Simon is aware enough to know that soon there will be people standing outside of the door of the small, dingy set of rooms he and Jayne have rented. He can picture it now - dirty children with running noses and miserable eyes; old men, wheezing and coughing. Townsfolk with infected cuts or abscessed teeth.
These images of the townspeople are indistinct, rough around the edges. But he knows that when people come, he won't be able to treat them, not here. He's going to need better light.
"I'm going to need an office," he says quietly, mostly to himself. Something with white walls and metal shelves. A place where he can stock the medical supplies that Mal insisted he take from Serenity's infirmary.
*
Simon rents an office for an absurdly low price, and Jayne never does quite find a way to leave. He looks over the ships that come through the town - looks over the crews and the captains. He always turns away.
"Independents," he says of some of them, and Simon sees it too, the way their eyes gleam when someone brings up the war. "Just holdin' out a little longer before joinin' up."
Some of the ships are deathtraps, enough that even Simon can see it. He can imagine the disgust on Kaylee's face if she ever heard that Jayne even considered stepping foot on one of them.
"I ain't plannin' on gettin' killed my first run out," he always mutters to Simon, when he comes back from looking around.
Eventually, Jayne stops looking. "Farmhand work ain't so bad, least for now," he says, one night. "Pay's decent. Least I know I got air to breathe."
*
There's blood in River's hair. It's under her fingernails too; she stands ankle-deep in mud and gore. Everything is tinged with red. The air is full of screams and gunfire; sobs and explosions. She struggles to breathe in the thickness of it.
The commander of this battalion doesn't see her. They never do. She walks up to him, stands at his shoulder, looks at the way his armour is cracking along one seam. The Parliament is beginning to have difficulties with resupplying troops.
She watches as he shouts orders, as he sends his soldiers out. She listens to what he says, and everything he leaves unsaid.
After a while, she can't look anymore - she can't look at the scared faces of the conscripts, at the stubborn set of the career soldiers' jaws. Instead, she lowers her gaze to her hands, focuses on the patterns of the blood. Her scalp itches, and she lets her eyelids close.
When she opens her eyes, when she looks in the mirror on the wall of her room, her hair is clean. The ship is quiet. Her skin is soft and dry, her nails are curved and uncracked.
She walks to Serenity's kitchen - not homey any more, just another place to lay out plans, to discuss strategy - passing by people she should know; some of them nod at her, but most look away quickly.
She knows the stories they tell about her. By now, some of them have seen her fight, but that isn't what worries them. River isn't here to go out and fight; the only time that happens is when something unexpected comes along.
The others know her real role in this war. They know what she can see, what she hears.
Arriving at the kitchen, she stands by the doorway until Mal glances up from his plans, from his notations. He's not in charge, but he has weight in the rebellion. He has resources that the Independent commanders value and acknowledge. "What? What is it?"
"Ariel. Their troops aren't doing well; the tide is turning."
He grins, and for a moment, it's like it used to be.
The moment passes. "I know what they're planning to do next."
He pats the seat next to her. "Wanna share?"
Carefully, she sits. He doesn't notice the way she moves. He doesn't notice how hard it is to hold herself together these days. Instead, he listens to her words, the orders and strategies that she parrots.
Under the table, River's right thumb strokes along her left wrist, repetitive. The skin begins to feel raw.
He doesn't notice, and she keeps talking.
Simon would have seen the changes. He would have known.
*
The war goes badly for the Alliance. Simon has his thoughts on exactly why - the Independents have a rallying cause far greater than in the past; they have support in new places, unexpected strongholds; they have River. He's under no illusions on what her role likely is.
People flock to the Independent army, either to fight or to offer material support. Some of the Alliance troops are deserting, switching sides.
The Parliament is desperate enough to start conscription, particularly on smaller moons and planets, places that aren't key to Independent actions.
They've seen the captures on the Cortex - farmers, miners, shopkeepers being forcibly rounded up. Rumour is that they're being used as cannon fodder at the bloodiest battles. That they're being put on the front lines, as a way to make the Independents alter their tactics to avoid killing innocents.
"Gorram under-handed tactics," Jayne says after coming in with new rumours, new updates.
"Did you expect anything less?" It's logical. Foolish, but logical.
Jayne shrugs. "Don't much matter what I expect. Folk know what's comin'. Also know they can't do a gorram thing about it. They're farmers. Hell, they don't even slaughter their own livestock. Send 'em out for it." His tone is derisive. "They ain't got no fight in 'em."
Simon leans against the headboard of the bed, and thinks of the pastures and farmsteads that have been carved out of the rock of this moon. He thinks about the way people struggle with the harsh conditions, and how they somehow manage to make a living.
This place isn't luxurious. It isn't pretty. But people have enough money to hire extra farmhands, and to pay for the services of a doctor.
He's seen them deal with the pain of broken limbs, the horrors of burns and severed limbs. They're stoic. They clamp down on the urge to scream or cry. Even the children have an air of determination around them.
"You're wrong," he says. "They'll fight."
Jayne stares at him for a moment, then focuses down on the knife he's sharpening. "Maybe. But it won't do no good."
Later, much later, Jayne asks, "What about you? You gonna fight when they come?"
He's already thought about it. Thought about going when they come. He's thought about suiting up in the armour that they hand out, hefting an unfamiliar gun, and walking out to the frontlines.
Maybe he'll come face to face with River. He imagines how it might be - the ground slick with blood, rich with bodies. Behind there would be explosions, screams, gunfire. And she'd be there, not even wearing a uniform. He imagines her in one of her old dresses - the edges frayed with new tears, the body blackened by mud, blood, sweat.
"I've found you," he'd say.
He wonders if she would recognize him, before she cut him down.
He has no answer for Jayne.
*
Time passes, slow day after slow day. It seems endless, until one day minutes start seeming shorter and hours pass without thought.
The moon is small, but towns are far between. Still, news travels fast, when it needs to. When Jayne barges into Simon's office one afternoon, holding a large bag, it can only mean one thing. Still, Simon asks, "What?"
"Conscription, three towns over. Came in yesterday, took thirty, and took off."
"They'll come back, won't they." It isn't a question.
"Yeah."
"Any idea when?"
"Nope. Seems maybe they ain't doing it regular. Throws folk off better that way."
Simon nods. "They're desperate."
"They're losin'."
It's true. The Parliament will lose the war, there's no doubt of that now. The only uncertainty is how many they'll kill in the process.
Jayne pulls a gun out of a bag, and puts it down on the table. "Just in case. Know you can't shoot worth beans, but -"
Simon nods. And they both know he's a decent shot, these days.
Jayne always goes to work with a gun - the town might be small, but there are still people who sometimes try to steal livestock. So he always takes a gun, a smallish one, but one that gets the job done.
After the news comes, he heads off each day more heavily armed.
*
After their first time, surrounded by falling water, the sex is frequent. Jayne comes back from work at the end of the day, and Simon is almost always waiting. If he isn't, if there's some emergency or too many patients, Jayne showers, eats, and shows up at the clinic. At first, he'd sit silently, but it didn't take long before Simon would call in the next patient and find Jayne trading stories or boasting with someone's husband, brother, father.
It's irresponsible to rush through patients, so Simon takes his time, listens, thinks. And after the last one leaves, he locks the door to the clinic and lets Jayne back him against the wall, or push him down onto the bench.
Simon always wears gloves when he's examining patients. His hands are clean and sterile and careful when he's working. With Jayne, his fingers are insistent and sometimes rough; they become streaked with come and saliva and sweat; Simon's fingers sometimes curve too tightly into Jayne's skin, leaving pale curves and minor scratches.
On those nights in the clinic, after they've finished and dressed, Jayne always slouches against a wall and smirks at Simon as he puts away equipment and sterilizes surfaces.
Eventually, Jayne will shift, impatient, and say something like "Come on, let's go eat," or bitch about wanting a second round before the sun comes up.
Sometimes, Simon laughs. Sometimes, he thinks about things he doesn't want to lose.
*
When it gets too much, when there are too many people, River searches out quiet spots on the ship. Places people avoid, or aren't interested in, or are too busy to care about for a while. She might settle in the engine room, quiet and impersonal now that Kaylee is gone; more often, she finds an empty storage room, or a corner walled off by boxes of guns, ammunition, food.
Wherever it is, she settles herself to the floor, and pulls her knees up to her chest.
"They can use me," she remembers saying to Simon. "I can help." Let me go, she'd thought, even as she spoke. The feel of his face in her hands is still fresh, burned into the smooth skin of her palms. The curve of his jaw; his skin, already heating under the hot sun, already slightly damp.
His anger and despair were so sharp that even now she jerks away slightly, hisses in anticipated pain as she pokes at the edges of the memory.
Almost daily, River reaches out to one Alliance contingent or another. She stretches the boundaries of her awareness. She shouldn't be able to do this, but she can. When she comes back to herself, grounded in Serenity, she always brings news, tactics, impressions, images.
Mal takes them, uses them to fuel his certainty. Small tidbits, or crucial details, all eagerly awaited, transmitted, and acted upon. They leave her exhausted, ragged, and afterwards, she always needs time alone, away.
River never looks in on Simon. She never intrudes. Alone, she remembers the way he looked after her as she left him.
*
When it happens, it doesn't happen quietly. The war might have started as rumblings and protests, but by now it's always loud, violent, messy. Even so far away from the fighting, Simon has seen how it leaves things broken.
Now, the fighting is around him, in front of him.
"Ah, hell," Jayne yells, as the butt of the rifle comes down towards his forehead, "I didn't fight in the last gorram war, and I ain't fightin' in this one neither!"
Then he falls, hitting the ground hard, and Simon finds he has a clear shot. There's a Jayne-shaped space, and the Conscription Officers move to fill it. Crouching down behind an upturned barrel, he aims carefully, pulls the trigger, and watches as the Conscription Officer's head explodes.
The blood spatters against the dirty wall of the building behind him.
Simon turns, and shoots again. This one is closer to him; the blood makes graceless patterns on the ground.
After the fifth shot, after the fifth kill, something feels wrong on his face. He aims with one hand, and reaches the other to stroke across his cheek. His fingers come away wet, red. Looking down, he sees the stippling on his shirt.
He looks up in time to see the last soldier running at him. Simon fires before he thinks, and his aim is lucky. The soldier goes down, and things are suddenly quiet, still.
Slowly, he looks around him. Some of the townsfolk are standing, stunned. Others are holding makeshift weapons, bloodied and battered. Some have guns.
Rumour has it that the Alliance sends out a minimum of fifteen soldiers per conscription squad. Simon had never expected to be left standing when they came. Carefully, he sets his gun on the ground, and says to the nearest person - Clarissa Brown, daughter of Jayne's employer - "Please go to my office and get anything you can carry." He wipes at his face, clearing gore away from his eyes.
He ignores the horrified look on her face, and starts to examine survivors.
*
In her nightmares, Simon rots under a hot sun.
In her dreams, she goes back to the moon, and she finds him changed. "You were safe," she says, when he stares at her accusingly. "I needed you to be safe."
"It isn't safe anywhere," he replies.
Jayne walks up behind her, and when she turns, he grins down at her. It isn't a nice grin.
In her nightmares, she stands on the edge of a battlefield. It doesn't matter what kinds of new technologies humans develop. War is still played out between individuals, in a wider arena.
When Simon finds her, he's wearing Alliance armour. He's carrying an Alliance gun, and she stabs him in the chest before she sees who he really is.
At first, she would wake from these dreams gasping, terrified.
Now, she just wakes and stares at the ceiling of her room.
It never changes.
*
It doesn't take long to distinguish the injured from the dead; the ones he'll be able to save, and the ones who are too far gone.
Afterwards, his body exhausted from the repetitive motions of binding wounds, and tying off sutures, he takes a moment to look around him. The worst of the injured are in a makeshift infirmary in the primary school. Others have been taken home by family.
The Conscription Officers - all dead - were carted off by silent men. Simon didn't ask about the plans for the bodies.
Jayne sits against one wall, his head bandaged and his eyes unfocussed. He isn't wounded badly enough to warrant being here, but Simon can't send him back to their rooms with no one there to watch for any complications.
When Simon crouches down in front of him, Jayne focuses briefly on him. "They'll come back," he says, slowly.
Simon shines a light into each of Jayne's eyes, making him wince. Pupils dilate nicely, and Simon half-smiles with relief. "Maybe."
As he's standing, ready to check on a stomach wound, an explosion rocks the building. He runs outside without thinking, but there aren't any soldiers, there aren't any missing buildings. He just sees Clarissa walking towards him, her arms laden with boxes and bags.
"Blew up the ship," she says, when she sees him watching at her. "Next, they'll start taking the scraps away."
It makes sense - hide the evidence, protect the townsfolk - but part of him is horrified by the waste.
"Took everything we could from it first, though. Got told to bring you these." She holds out her arms, and Simon sees she's holding medical supplies.
"Thank you," he says, slowly, precisely.
*
The end is close, River knows. All around her, the Independents swell with anticipation, with triumph. This time, they'll win.
Some of them wonder what will happen next. Sometimes, River catches Zoe watching her quietly, thoughtfully. She always nods her head, and Zoe nods back.
"You helped bring us this far," Zoe says one night. River understands what she means. It's River who helped Mal into the position he's in now - a commander, someone in charge of making plans, and following through. River isn't the only advantage that Mal has, but she's played a role. A part.
"I know," she replies.
The others think of her as someone to be avoided, because she knows their thoughts, and she could kill them without blinking.
Some - more than she wants to admit - look at her and think that if there were more like her, the war would have ended more quickly. Fewer lives would have been lost. If there were more like River, the old powerholders of the Alliance and the Parliament would never, ever, return to power again.
Mal doesn't know some of his people think this way. But River knows, and so does Zoe.
"They'll want to thank you," Zoe says, her expression impassive. "Publicly."
Of course they will. She will be held up as a war hero, key to the Independents' efforts. Her skills will be extolled, her virtues written large.
The idea of River - of people like her - will spread, slowly.
Mal doesn't see that what he fights for has always had the potential to turn into what he's fighting against. Once, River knows, Zoe might not have seen it either. But Zoe has changed, and she sees the shadows around her.
"Don't worry." Zoe steps close, one hand falling on River's shoulder.
And River nods, like she believes everything will end well. Like she believes that after the war ends, she'll find Simon, and they'll find a home. She closes her eyes, and smiles at Zoe, brittle and whole. "I don't."
End.
Characters: Jayne/Simon, River, Mal, Zoe
Rating: PG-13
Words: About 3200
Summary: Simon rents an office, and Jayne never does find a way to leave.
Disclaimer: Clearly I claim no ownership to the Firefly 'verse or its characters; nor am I making money from this fic writing thing.
Notes: This will only make sense if you've read the prompt ficlet Choice, which sets up the background to this story; I also wrote a brief, smutty follow-up, Half-life. I kept thinking about the universe from that story, and I wanted to write more, small pictures of River and Simon coping with a new war against the Alliance.
"I ain't stayin'," Jayne says, two days after Serenity leaves. "Just so you know. You maybe wanna set up shop here, but there ain't nothin' for me."
"All right," Simon replies, looking around their small rooms. Already, people have heard rumours that there's a doctor in the area. Women heavy with pregnancy have approached him on the street, telling him due dates and offering money and goods.
Even through the haze he's living in - River gone, River alone - Simon is aware enough to know that soon there will be people standing outside of the door of the small, dingy set of rooms he and Jayne have rented. He can picture it now - dirty children with running noses and miserable eyes; old men, wheezing and coughing. Townsfolk with infected cuts or abscessed teeth.
These images of the townspeople are indistinct, rough around the edges. But he knows that when people come, he won't be able to treat them, not here. He's going to need better light.
"I'm going to need an office," he says quietly, mostly to himself. Something with white walls and metal shelves. A place where he can stock the medical supplies that Mal insisted he take from Serenity's infirmary.
*
Simon rents an office for an absurdly low price, and Jayne never does quite find a way to leave. He looks over the ships that come through the town - looks over the crews and the captains. He always turns away.
"Independents," he says of some of them, and Simon sees it too, the way their eyes gleam when someone brings up the war. "Just holdin' out a little longer before joinin' up."
Some of the ships are deathtraps, enough that even Simon can see it. He can imagine the disgust on Kaylee's face if she ever heard that Jayne even considered stepping foot on one of them.
"I ain't plannin' on gettin' killed my first run out," he always mutters to Simon, when he comes back from looking around.
Eventually, Jayne stops looking. "Farmhand work ain't so bad, least for now," he says, one night. "Pay's decent. Least I know I got air to breathe."
*
There's blood in River's hair. It's under her fingernails too; she stands ankle-deep in mud and gore. Everything is tinged with red. The air is full of screams and gunfire; sobs and explosions. She struggles to breathe in the thickness of it.
The commander of this battalion doesn't see her. They never do. She walks up to him, stands at his shoulder, looks at the way his armour is cracking along one seam. The Parliament is beginning to have difficulties with resupplying troops.
She watches as he shouts orders, as he sends his soldiers out. She listens to what he says, and everything he leaves unsaid.
After a while, she can't look anymore - she can't look at the scared faces of the conscripts, at the stubborn set of the career soldiers' jaws. Instead, she lowers her gaze to her hands, focuses on the patterns of the blood. Her scalp itches, and she lets her eyelids close.
When she opens her eyes, when she looks in the mirror on the wall of her room, her hair is clean. The ship is quiet. Her skin is soft and dry, her nails are curved and uncracked.
She walks to Serenity's kitchen - not homey any more, just another place to lay out plans, to discuss strategy - passing by people she should know; some of them nod at her, but most look away quickly.
She knows the stories they tell about her. By now, some of them have seen her fight, but that isn't what worries them. River isn't here to go out and fight; the only time that happens is when something unexpected comes along.
The others know her real role in this war. They know what she can see, what she hears.
Arriving at the kitchen, she stands by the doorway until Mal glances up from his plans, from his notations. He's not in charge, but he has weight in the rebellion. He has resources that the Independent commanders value and acknowledge. "What? What is it?"
"Ariel. Their troops aren't doing well; the tide is turning."
He grins, and for a moment, it's like it used to be.
The moment passes. "I know what they're planning to do next."
He pats the seat next to her. "Wanna share?"
Carefully, she sits. He doesn't notice the way she moves. He doesn't notice how hard it is to hold herself together these days. Instead, he listens to her words, the orders and strategies that she parrots.
Under the table, River's right thumb strokes along her left wrist, repetitive. The skin begins to feel raw.
He doesn't notice, and she keeps talking.
Simon would have seen the changes. He would have known.
*
The war goes badly for the Alliance. Simon has his thoughts on exactly why - the Independents have a rallying cause far greater than in the past; they have support in new places, unexpected strongholds; they have River. He's under no illusions on what her role likely is.
People flock to the Independent army, either to fight or to offer material support. Some of the Alliance troops are deserting, switching sides.
The Parliament is desperate enough to start conscription, particularly on smaller moons and planets, places that aren't key to Independent actions.
They've seen the captures on the Cortex - farmers, miners, shopkeepers being forcibly rounded up. Rumour is that they're being used as cannon fodder at the bloodiest battles. That they're being put on the front lines, as a way to make the Independents alter their tactics to avoid killing innocents.
"Gorram under-handed tactics," Jayne says after coming in with new rumours, new updates.
"Did you expect anything less?" It's logical. Foolish, but logical.
Jayne shrugs. "Don't much matter what I expect. Folk know what's comin'. Also know they can't do a gorram thing about it. They're farmers. Hell, they don't even slaughter their own livestock. Send 'em out for it." His tone is derisive. "They ain't got no fight in 'em."
Simon leans against the headboard of the bed, and thinks of the pastures and farmsteads that have been carved out of the rock of this moon. He thinks about the way people struggle with the harsh conditions, and how they somehow manage to make a living.
This place isn't luxurious. It isn't pretty. But people have enough money to hire extra farmhands, and to pay for the services of a doctor.
He's seen them deal with the pain of broken limbs, the horrors of burns and severed limbs. They're stoic. They clamp down on the urge to scream or cry. Even the children have an air of determination around them.
"You're wrong," he says. "They'll fight."
Jayne stares at him for a moment, then focuses down on the knife he's sharpening. "Maybe. But it won't do no good."
Later, much later, Jayne asks, "What about you? You gonna fight when they come?"
He's already thought about it. Thought about going when they come. He's thought about suiting up in the armour that they hand out, hefting an unfamiliar gun, and walking out to the frontlines.
Maybe he'll come face to face with River. He imagines how it might be - the ground slick with blood, rich with bodies. Behind there would be explosions, screams, gunfire. And she'd be there, not even wearing a uniform. He imagines her in one of her old dresses - the edges frayed with new tears, the body blackened by mud, blood, sweat.
"I've found you," he'd say.
He wonders if she would recognize him, before she cut him down.
He has no answer for Jayne.
*
Time passes, slow day after slow day. It seems endless, until one day minutes start seeming shorter and hours pass without thought.
The moon is small, but towns are far between. Still, news travels fast, when it needs to. When Jayne barges into Simon's office one afternoon, holding a large bag, it can only mean one thing. Still, Simon asks, "What?"
"Conscription, three towns over. Came in yesterday, took thirty, and took off."
"They'll come back, won't they." It isn't a question.
"Yeah."
"Any idea when?"
"Nope. Seems maybe they ain't doing it regular. Throws folk off better that way."
Simon nods. "They're desperate."
"They're losin'."
It's true. The Parliament will lose the war, there's no doubt of that now. The only uncertainty is how many they'll kill in the process.
Jayne pulls a gun out of a bag, and puts it down on the table. "Just in case. Know you can't shoot worth beans, but -"
Simon nods. And they both know he's a decent shot, these days.
Jayne always goes to work with a gun - the town might be small, but there are still people who sometimes try to steal livestock. So he always takes a gun, a smallish one, but one that gets the job done.
After the news comes, he heads off each day more heavily armed.
*
After their first time, surrounded by falling water, the sex is frequent. Jayne comes back from work at the end of the day, and Simon is almost always waiting. If he isn't, if there's some emergency or too many patients, Jayne showers, eats, and shows up at the clinic. At first, he'd sit silently, but it didn't take long before Simon would call in the next patient and find Jayne trading stories or boasting with someone's husband, brother, father.
It's irresponsible to rush through patients, so Simon takes his time, listens, thinks. And after the last one leaves, he locks the door to the clinic and lets Jayne back him against the wall, or push him down onto the bench.
Simon always wears gloves when he's examining patients. His hands are clean and sterile and careful when he's working. With Jayne, his fingers are insistent and sometimes rough; they become streaked with come and saliva and sweat; Simon's fingers sometimes curve too tightly into Jayne's skin, leaving pale curves and minor scratches.
On those nights in the clinic, after they've finished and dressed, Jayne always slouches against a wall and smirks at Simon as he puts away equipment and sterilizes surfaces.
Eventually, Jayne will shift, impatient, and say something like "Come on, let's go eat," or bitch about wanting a second round before the sun comes up.
Sometimes, Simon laughs. Sometimes, he thinks about things he doesn't want to lose.
*
When it gets too much, when there are too many people, River searches out quiet spots on the ship. Places people avoid, or aren't interested in, or are too busy to care about for a while. She might settle in the engine room, quiet and impersonal now that Kaylee is gone; more often, she finds an empty storage room, or a corner walled off by boxes of guns, ammunition, food.
Wherever it is, she settles herself to the floor, and pulls her knees up to her chest.
"They can use me," she remembers saying to Simon. "I can help." Let me go, she'd thought, even as she spoke. The feel of his face in her hands is still fresh, burned into the smooth skin of her palms. The curve of his jaw; his skin, already heating under the hot sun, already slightly damp.
His anger and despair were so sharp that even now she jerks away slightly, hisses in anticipated pain as she pokes at the edges of the memory.
Almost daily, River reaches out to one Alliance contingent or another. She stretches the boundaries of her awareness. She shouldn't be able to do this, but she can. When she comes back to herself, grounded in Serenity, she always brings news, tactics, impressions, images.
Mal takes them, uses them to fuel his certainty. Small tidbits, or crucial details, all eagerly awaited, transmitted, and acted upon. They leave her exhausted, ragged, and afterwards, she always needs time alone, away.
River never looks in on Simon. She never intrudes. Alone, she remembers the way he looked after her as she left him.
*
When it happens, it doesn't happen quietly. The war might have started as rumblings and protests, but by now it's always loud, violent, messy. Even so far away from the fighting, Simon has seen how it leaves things broken.
Now, the fighting is around him, in front of him.
"Ah, hell," Jayne yells, as the butt of the rifle comes down towards his forehead, "I didn't fight in the last gorram war, and I ain't fightin' in this one neither!"
Then he falls, hitting the ground hard, and Simon finds he has a clear shot. There's a Jayne-shaped space, and the Conscription Officers move to fill it. Crouching down behind an upturned barrel, he aims carefully, pulls the trigger, and watches as the Conscription Officer's head explodes.
The blood spatters against the dirty wall of the building behind him.
Simon turns, and shoots again. This one is closer to him; the blood makes graceless patterns on the ground.
After the fifth shot, after the fifth kill, something feels wrong on his face. He aims with one hand, and reaches the other to stroke across his cheek. His fingers come away wet, red. Looking down, he sees the stippling on his shirt.
He looks up in time to see the last soldier running at him. Simon fires before he thinks, and his aim is lucky. The soldier goes down, and things are suddenly quiet, still.
Slowly, he looks around him. Some of the townsfolk are standing, stunned. Others are holding makeshift weapons, bloodied and battered. Some have guns.
Rumour has it that the Alliance sends out a minimum of fifteen soldiers per conscription squad. Simon had never expected to be left standing when they came. Carefully, he sets his gun on the ground, and says to the nearest person - Clarissa Brown, daughter of Jayne's employer - "Please go to my office and get anything you can carry." He wipes at his face, clearing gore away from his eyes.
He ignores the horrified look on her face, and starts to examine survivors.
*
In her nightmares, Simon rots under a hot sun.
In her dreams, she goes back to the moon, and she finds him changed. "You were safe," she says, when he stares at her accusingly. "I needed you to be safe."
"It isn't safe anywhere," he replies.
Jayne walks up behind her, and when she turns, he grins down at her. It isn't a nice grin.
In her nightmares, she stands on the edge of a battlefield. It doesn't matter what kinds of new technologies humans develop. War is still played out between individuals, in a wider arena.
When Simon finds her, he's wearing Alliance armour. He's carrying an Alliance gun, and she stabs him in the chest before she sees who he really is.
At first, she would wake from these dreams gasping, terrified.
Now, she just wakes and stares at the ceiling of her room.
It never changes.
*
It doesn't take long to distinguish the injured from the dead; the ones he'll be able to save, and the ones who are too far gone.
Afterwards, his body exhausted from the repetitive motions of binding wounds, and tying off sutures, he takes a moment to look around him. The worst of the injured are in a makeshift infirmary in the primary school. Others have been taken home by family.
The Conscription Officers - all dead - were carted off by silent men. Simon didn't ask about the plans for the bodies.
Jayne sits against one wall, his head bandaged and his eyes unfocussed. He isn't wounded badly enough to warrant being here, but Simon can't send him back to their rooms with no one there to watch for any complications.
When Simon crouches down in front of him, Jayne focuses briefly on him. "They'll come back," he says, slowly.
Simon shines a light into each of Jayne's eyes, making him wince. Pupils dilate nicely, and Simon half-smiles with relief. "Maybe."
As he's standing, ready to check on a stomach wound, an explosion rocks the building. He runs outside without thinking, but there aren't any soldiers, there aren't any missing buildings. He just sees Clarissa walking towards him, her arms laden with boxes and bags.
"Blew up the ship," she says, when she sees him watching at her. "Next, they'll start taking the scraps away."
It makes sense - hide the evidence, protect the townsfolk - but part of him is horrified by the waste.
"Took everything we could from it first, though. Got told to bring you these." She holds out her arms, and Simon sees she's holding medical supplies.
"Thank you," he says, slowly, precisely.
*
The end is close, River knows. All around her, the Independents swell with anticipation, with triumph. This time, they'll win.
Some of them wonder what will happen next. Sometimes, River catches Zoe watching her quietly, thoughtfully. She always nods her head, and Zoe nods back.
"You helped bring us this far," Zoe says one night. River understands what she means. It's River who helped Mal into the position he's in now - a commander, someone in charge of making plans, and following through. River isn't the only advantage that Mal has, but she's played a role. A part.
"I know," she replies.
The others think of her as someone to be avoided, because she knows their thoughts, and she could kill them without blinking.
Some - more than she wants to admit - look at her and think that if there were more like her, the war would have ended more quickly. Fewer lives would have been lost. If there were more like River, the old powerholders of the Alliance and the Parliament would never, ever, return to power again.
Mal doesn't know some of his people think this way. But River knows, and so does Zoe.
"They'll want to thank you," Zoe says, her expression impassive. "Publicly."
Of course they will. She will be held up as a war hero, key to the Independents' efforts. Her skills will be extolled, her virtues written large.
The idea of River - of people like her - will spread, slowly.
Mal doesn't see that what he fights for has always had the potential to turn into what he's fighting against. Once, River knows, Zoe might not have seen it either. But Zoe has changed, and she sees the shadows around her.
"Don't worry." Zoe steps close, one hand falling on River's shoulder.
And River nods, like she believes everything will end well. Like she believes that after the war ends, she'll find Simon, and they'll find a home. She closes her eyes, and smiles at Zoe, brittle and whole. "I don't."
End.