Aftermath, Part Five
Series: Finding
Title: Aftermath, Part Five
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Post-BDM
Characters: Jayne/River
Disclaimer: Firefly owns me, I own words
Notes: Follows directly after stand-down order at Mr. Universe's moon. Fills in between the pieces of the Five Times memes... Mal kept bugging Jayne for what happened...Precedes Five Kisses by about 7 months...
All Jayne/River stories are in the same storyline, even if seen out of order...
Organizational Post
Aftermath, Part Five
“Ya let me do all the talkin’, dong ma?” Jayne said as he drove the mule through the crowded alleys around Eavesdown Docks. He grimaced when the mule slung around corners, his leg aching from the bullet he took just a few days past. His skin was hot and burnt out feeling. The temperatures were cool and damp even as he felt like dry flames licked through his veins.
River nodded in compliance careful to not look at people as they made their way out of the poorer part of the port city and into residential neighborhoods with scattered businesses. She could hear all their voices as a murmur and crash of sound. By keeping her eyes cast away, her thoughts could stay her own more easily. Next to her, she could feel the smoky heat that was Jayne emanating outwards. River drew that smoke around herself, trying to shield herself from the worst of the dissonance of the multitude of voices crowding the streets.
The swirls of color and fog around Jayne buffeted her senses, pressed into areas of memory she had partitioned away. She wavered between letting the voices of the strangers on the street and Jayne’s turmoil guide her own reality. The third possibility, finding her own space buttressed on each side was new and unfamiliar. Despite that, River chose the path she had never taken before. Her own self, not dictated to her by family, teachers, doctors with questionable ethics.
Jayne drove swiftly, barely avoiding attracting the attention of Fed officers that patrolled the city. His focus was on getting to Mr. Cairo’s, getting the converters and returning to Serenity without getting shot again. The leg and shoulder wounds he had sustained recently were not nearly enough healed for him to be out and active, but Mal was still being held by the Med personnel after the fighting on Mr. Universe’s and Zoë was in no state to be bargaining with her thoughts still on her deceased husband. That left him to get the deal done. River coming with him was an unexpected complication.
Mood black, the people on the street barely registered except as a blur of scent and color. He catalogued absently the vendors of meats and spices as he swiftly flew by, the unwashed urchins begging for handouts at the edges of prosperity. Uncharacteristically he found no cheer in the freedom from Mal’s orders. The need for the converters drove him to ignore the distractions that usually enticed him. Seeing, scenting, cataloguing dangers and threats; that was what occupied his thoughts. And percolating rage under it all, a crawling sensation under his skin.
“We’re almost there… no goin’ monkeyshit on me now, ya got me?” Jayne said as he slung the mule into a berth outside a row of shops.
“She will not… will keep the other’s out of her head… shall not let their thoughts get in.” River shivered involuntarily, a sense that the one who was not totally in control of their actions was not her. She spared a probing thought and came against roiling greys and blues. Any clarity she had ever had in seeing what happened behind the eyes of the scowling mercenary was totally fogged.
“Right, well, stay close… done ’t want ta be worryin’ on where ya are.” He said gruffly.
“Will be shielded…” River murmured, “Will draw the smokescreen close.”
~~~~~
“Mr. Cobb, did not expect to be seeing you on this side of Persephone again.” The man spoke with an educated accent. Swarthy and slick, Mr. Cairo looked like the diamond merchant his storefront advertised him to be. Genteel, elegantly dressed and with a bearing to be comfortable in the upper reaches of society.
“Ain’t here fer a social visit.” Jayne replied sourly. He hated having to come asking for a deal with Mr. Cairo, hated the smell of the man. He was just wrong to Jayne’s perception. Humans smelled a certain way, even Reavers had some element of it, but Mr. Cairo’s scent was as he remembered, false, hollow humanity with no richness of flavor to it.
“Indeed, I expect not.” Smoothly slipping out from behind the counter separating them, he gestured for Jayne and River to follow him to the back. Jayne kept one hand resting lightly on one of his favorite guns, the LeMat; Jeanie.
River stayed within arms reach as they made their way back. She watched his strong, silent tread unimpaired by the limp he had had earlier. A jolt of hardness shot through the smoke of his emotions at each step; the only display of the pain his leg must be causing him. Jayne went through two swinging metal doors first. He glanced around the room, taking in a beautiful wood roll top desk, Oriental rugs on the floor and a sitting area with a couch and two loungers. The room was warm and comfortable, a sparing attempt at sophistication. Except for them the only other person present was what looked like a young girl. She was clearly related to Mr. Cairo. Same complexion and features, but with blank eyes. She couldn’t see them at all, her head tilted as she listened to the three enter the room.
“Mira, we have visitors.” Mr. Cairo said as an introduction.
“I know them… he who came for me before… and she, she has been in my thoughts.” Mira replied. Voice distant and uninflected. When she spoke her age clearly showed as much older than she looked.
“Yes, he is the one who brought you back to me. I do not know the other.” Her father replied.
Mira turned her sightless eyes towards Jayne, “You should have left me there.” River stifled a small gasp. Mira’s thoughts crashed into her mind with no filters. Anger and hate and repressed desires. Mira wanted what they had done to River to have been done to her. She wanted to be the weapon they had made River into. River swayed back from the vitriol, the waves of naked desire threatening to break through her carefully constructed barriers.
“Mira I have explained to you, you are much more valuable to me here than you would have been to the Alliance.” Mr. Cairo said with tired tone of one who had had to explain something countless times.
“Twenty years I have been your Reader and now you bring the man who made me come back to you here, with a weapon, a complete weapon. Is this supposed to make me feel better? Knowing what I could have become?” Mira shook her head in resentment.
River stayed as close to Jayne as she dared, used his bulk and his smoke to block most of the older woman’s thoughts. His own rages rippled through the veil of darkness that clouded his thoughts. River felt power stalking around her, memories of dreams filled with visions of a massive bruin became near real in the empty air around him. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from gasping; realizing the terrible truth she had suspected; all the while trapped in a bargain she couldn’t influence.
“Ain’t here ta hear ‘bout yer life, just want ta get payment on a job is all.” Jayne said gruffly, not liking the direction Mira was moving the conversation. He could feel River next to him, knew she was nearly vibrating. This was not going well. He hated to be in this kind of environment. He had no bearings amongst comfortable furnishings, fine rugs, and warm rooms. Not to mention another crazy person. He knew there had to be guards somewhere near, but he couldn’t figure where. The air smelled wrong; too filtered, disguising other scents, other people nearby.
“Yes, well dear, we both know you wouldn’t have made it past the third year… required control you would never have mastered.” Her father replied to Mira before turning back to Jayne.
“Now, Mr. Cobb, tell me where my benefit is to pay you for what clearly was an error of action in Mira’s mind?” Mr. Cairo asked smoothly.
“Cursed me to live here, to not staying where I was happy.” Mira added.
Neither sounded emotional at all which made both Jayne and River stiffen.
“Job was done, ya got yer daughter back, way I see it, ya owe me my pay and agreed ta pay it when I came for it. Two converters, that’s all I’m lookin’ for.” Jayne’s voice was barely audible, his control nearly eroded. River shrank inside, waited for the next reaction calmly.
“Two converters! My life is worth only that?” Mira sounded shocked, blind eyes widened involuntarily.
River leaned into Jayne, thoughts assaulted by Mira’s internal visions. Memories of a young man with thick curls and drab green military clothes bursting through a door, guns in each hand, eyes hard and clear. Memories of being pulled down a corridor in a running gunfight, explosions going off behind them as they ran. River gasped as shooting pain arced through her, throwing her into Jayne’s bulk.
“Hey, what…” Jayne grunted and caught the girl before she could move away again.
“Shot, she was shot in the rescue…” River whispered, eyes wide and frightened at the vehemence of Mira’s and Jayne’s moods. Mira’s she could understand as it reminded her of her own memories of the Academy. Jayne held her tight to him, left arm curved around her body, emotions of a much younger man coursing past the years to expand in River’s mind as full and real.
“I know that, I was there…” Jayne replied curtly. He remembered the break-in, the using his position as a security guard to gain access to the lower levels of the facility. He had had entry codes to the whole facility, hadn’t known what they were doing there. Didn’t care overmuch as it was a steady job that paid well. Didn’t care until he saw the first young ‘students’, saw their destruction as humans. It was early in the Academy’s charter.
Jayne had been there when the first failures were let go. Teenage boys and girls, eyes frantic, body language radiating anxiety, were sent home. Jayne had begun to see the damages before most others, his youthful hunting skills were put into use in an unexpected way. The boys and girls that left smelled of fear, walked like victims, prey. He could still recall with clarity the look in their eyes as they passed him at the last checkpoint. It was the look of an animal trapped with no chance of survival, of freedom even as they walked on their own feet back to their families.
He had hunted and trapped for survival on the Rim planet he was born on; knew how an animal waiting to die would writhe, eyes darting, looking for an escape that would never come. Seeing humans with that look; barely grown children already given up on survival while struggling against internal demons that would never ease sent him to seek relief from the days by living fully in the nights. Jayne sectioned off his feelings, never let himself compare the students at the Academy with his siblings at home. He was just a young man himself, life was before him. His Ma would receive letters from her eldest son that talked of the weather, sports, maybe a little of local gossip; he never told her about the job, the drinking and girls he went to to forget. He sent money home but not the ugliness of the life he had followed.
It had been months later when Mr. Cairo had approached him on a cold night when he was trying to drown the vision of the last girl from his eyes. A now nearly empty bottle of whiskey hadn’t been able to do the job. The girl’s haunted eyes, the sheen of fear sweat on her skin, and hair tangled over her shoulders, twined around her long throat had burned themselves into his mind so deeply that he saw her there still, 20 years later. A girl who had looked eerily like River in his remotest memories. River swayed in his grasp, barely able to remain silent. Jayne pressed the vision of that faraway girl back into dark recesses, not wanting to let himself see the similarity. When River had emerged from the cryo-box near a year earlier Jayne had had to tell himself it was a different girl. But still the image haunted him if he let it have space. The passage of time and more empty bottles than could be counted littered the wake of that memory.
Mr. Cairo had offered more money than Jayne had ever conceived of for the rescue of Mira. The whiskey had blurred his reason Jayne decided later; he had accepted the job for a fraction of the payment in advance with the balance to be collected later. When the payment turned out to be a girl in trade for Mira, Jayne had recoiled, seeing only another victim in the young girls expression. It was a defining moment in his own young life. He had turned down the payment of a crime-lord, a man known for his willingness to sacrifice anyone in his organization for his own ends. The intervening years had been shaped by that decision on Jayne’s part. Occasional thoughts of turning to the trade of girls had passed his mind before he remembered the look of loss on that first young girl’s face. He had held her future in his hands.
Now he had another young girl beside him, a girl someone had let into that hell, had opened up and recreated in their own vision. She quivered almost imperceptibly under his touch. He didn’t know his own desires and passions were causing the worst of the shakes.
“I know, I was there.” He repeated, almost gentle as he felt River’s body stiffen and then relax. She looked up at him, saw for a brief flash the sadness of years in his eyes before they clouded dark and angry again as he looked back at Mr. Cairo.
“We just be needin’ those converters, will be leavin’ and ya won’t be seein’ us again.” Jayne said, cool and calm sounding. He was neither inside.
The older man considered the pair facing him, felt the young woman’s mind prying into his thoughts. He had had far to many years of experience with his own daughter to let anyone in past the externals unless he desired it. He grinned wryly, knowing that he could tear a hole so wide through the girl that she would never be able to think again. When he switched his gaze to Jayne’s face, he stepped back inside, recoiled from what looked back at him. It was the same dark he felt from his daughter and when he glanced at the girl, from her. Mr. Cairo frowned, brow furrowed, confused. He knew Jayne had never been a student, but he held in his eyes the same darkness, the impenetrable unknowable. Except with the big man it was unshielded, untamed by blocks.
Mr. Cairo sneered when he saw the naked knowledge in the young girls eye that he had found something new about the mercenary. “Maybe we skip past the insult to my daughter’s value Mr. Cobb and exact a price for that disrespect.” The dark man smiled slowly, thinking very clearly back to when he had seen that same dark emptiness in his daughter’s eyes. Eyes he had taken from her to bind her to him. A twist on a loving father unwilling to let his child go. Mr. Cairo had never felt guilt for the crime he committed on his own flesh and blood.
River straightened, stood tall and separate from Jayne again, “Blinded… blinded by her pater…took her eyes when he knew she could see…”
Mr. Cairo’s expression darkened, his hand strayed towards his desk. He was going to end this charade before it went any further.
Jayne drew the LeMat, “You keep yer hands right there, we got no need ta be getting’ involved with yer doin’s… just want the parts and we’ll be on our way.” He felt River beside him even though she was no longer under his arm.
“Mr. Cobb you are making a grave mistake here. Your life is forfeit the moment your finger twitches, as is your young companion’s. As it stands now you are already engaging in a gamble even coming to me.” Mr. Cairo spoke calmly, unconcerned apparently by the muzzle of the gun pointed unerringly towards his head. Angling his head towards his daughter, “Mira?”
“Cannot penetrate to see intent. He may well decide it is a good day to die.” The woman replied, absently picking at a fingernail.
River leaned against Jayne’s side, keeping her eyes downcast, whispered to him, “She is trying to get in… she is looking for what you will do.”
“I know that,” he responded gruffly, “Not getting’ that it don’t bother me none ta take yer Pa out are ya?” He directed that to Mira while keeping a hard eye on Mr. Cairo.
“And where will you then go to acquire those converters you need Mr. Cobb?” Mr. Cairo responded.
“With you gone, don’t see as how that’ll be a problem since the parts don’t vanish if you do. Got a nice little organization back on the docks, fair sure I can convince ‘em ta let me have ‘em once they find out what I done.” Jayne answered. He felt River still trembling. Was hoping she would be able to control herself long enough to get out of there. “Don’t right cotton ta a man who brings harm on his own… may be what is said is true… say yer a man who’ll give up any man if they ain’t got no value ta ya, and even if they do, just ta fill yer own needs fer pride or credit… I ain’t here ta judge that. Just want what’s owed and then we’ll be on our way.”
Mr. Cairo didn’t move, Mira remained seated, head cocked, concentrating. River stabilized her own center, drew herself away from the anger of Mira. A brief flash of memory, Jayne’s memory, came clearly to her. A young man having a steady job as security guard at the newly built Academy; he had walked the halls and tunnels of the facility before any of the ‘students’ had been brought there. Jayne had been supporting his mother since he was able. She swayed again, buffeted by the new knowledge. She caught the briefest flash of revulsion from his young mind at the horror of witnessing a broken girl, needle marks on her face still fresh, shaved hair revealing scalpel wounds at the back of the her head.
Jayne glanced down at her, his eyes clearly troubled. River knew he was engaged in a battle of wills with himself. A battle she knew would end with violence. She permitted herself a tiny smile, a dance of violence was still a dance.
“There… you were there…” River whispered, new waves of pain and self-recrimination filling the spaces between the impenetrable smoky spaces in Jayne.
“Yeah… and got out when I could…” He answered curtly, continued more sadly, “Weren’t, couldn’t stay and watch what they done ta them… to you…”
“You left solely for a job that paid more coin Mr. Cobb. Don’t credit yourself with virtues that you don’t own.” Mr. Cairo interjected, eyes still calm in the face of a steady gun. The merchant criminal itched inside to wipe from the big man’s eyes the blue-black emptiness that exposed an angry hatred for him. To erase them like he had erased his daughter’s when she had revolted against his tearing her from the school.
Mira had never wanted to leave, had relished the changes wrought by scalpel and drug. Mr. Cairo’s daughter had been made into a creature of desires, a Reader that he had used to become the central figure in the highest echelons of power in not only the criminal underworld, but the Alliance itself. A Reader had allowed him the poison he needed to direct government to his own needs.
And here a man from 20 years ago stood, another Reader at his side, a completed weapon herself. Mr. Cairo was feeling the first inclinations of threat to himself that he could remember.
River reached towards the older man’s mind, felt for his intentions and found only a grinning charade, a construct designed to block views of his deeper self. Her concentration was such that Jayne sensed the change in the air first. The circulation shifted, a new scent entered the mix. Men, slightly frightened, sour sweat under sweet soap smells. Three guards entered the room silently from behind Jayne and River, door opened silently only a soft flow of new air across the back of his neck letting Jayne know they were entering. He curled his lip in disgust. Armed guards exposing fear. He knew the outcome would be flavored by that. Fear of their boss, of him, and of the girl beside him.
“Some of that coin is still owed, ” Jayne continued even as the men ranged out behind them. Sourness followed the men, allowed him to follow their movements without turning from his focus on Mr. Cairo and Mira.
“Today I think is not the day you will be collecting on that debt Mr. Cobb.” Mr. Cairo turned, body language dismissive as his men closed on Jayne and River.
A blur and a crunch of bone on boot followed River’s swirling kick at the man reaching for her, hands grasping empty air. Jayne’s slung his fist heavy with the weight of the LeMat across the oncoming charge of a second, felt the contact of jaw to knuckle with the jaw giving way first. Third man went to draw arms, heavy gun slowing his motion enough for two strikes to connect. Jayne’s fist throwing his head back and River’s flat kick catching him in the solar plexus, propelling him backwards into a wall.
Jayne swayed on his good leg, felt the tear of stitches across his thigh. There was no pain as he pushed himself at the back of the turned merchant. He brought them both down in a crash, burying his hand in the Mr. Cairo’s beautifully cut hair, dragging the man’s face up to look him in the eye.
“I will get paid today, and we will be walkin’ out a’ here with no more trouble.” Jayne snarled, gun muzzle pressed to a smooth, dark temple.
Mr. Cairo’s neck was held in a torque that made swallowing much less talking difficult. The men’s faces were inches apart, he could see the flicker of something wild, inhuman in the big mercenary’s gaze. His face was contorted in a grimace of pain and rage that sent a shiver down Mr. Cairo’s back.
River stood with casual insouciance over the fallen guards, stance prepared and controlled. Mira laughed, glee infused her. River slowly turned her gaze to the blind woman, saw the insanity that had threatened her fully realized in the other woman’s soul. She knew then that she had truly not become what Simon had feared in his worst nights. River still had a piece of herself that was bright and real, a piece she shielded from the pollution of psychosis; that she borrowed strength from Jayne to guard.
Jayne’s eyes moved to take in the laughing woman, heard clearly the last vestiges of sanity wiped clean from her voice. Mira had died many long years ago, only a crazy broken minded woman remained. He knew then that those young girls and boys he had watched drag from the Academy were all broken, lost souls. He felt sweat burn his eyes, tears of salt down his forehead, trailing across his burning skin.
Jayne felt creeping fingers pawing through his thoughts, tearing into his private stores, places he never let anyone see. Mira turned her head to look right at him with unseeing eyes. River stepped over to the stand near the big mercenary still pinning down Mr. Cairo. Jayne spared a glance up at River, saw the girl was contemplating the other woman.
“There is nothing to see, you won’t find him… he hides to well, has been hiding for too many years for one such as you to find… even had you the time…” River spoke sadly, her voice sounding almost defeated.
Jayne heard her, saw the dawning comprehension on Mira’s face, the beginnings of a physical reaction. Still laughing even as her body shifted from lounging to intensity. Had she eyes, he would have guaranteed she was planning on leaping at River. And then she did.
Without hesitating he brought Jeanie to bear, a quick tap and a red flower bloomed across Mira’s brow. The laugh stopped, shocked silence filled the room. Jayne could hear the pounding of his blood in his head, feel the rush of it painfully through his veins. The fingers no longer crawled through his mind.
He turned his eyes down to the upturned face of the man below him. “This ends now.” Jayne spit out, pulling Mr. Cairo’s face closer to his own contorted growl, “Yer done, gave you yer blood back and ya made her a monster… no better than a monster yerself.”
As he talked he had replaced the LeMat with sharpened steel, long blade honed to a scalpel edge. He didn’t want to sully Jeanie’s history with the elimination of a monster. He drew the knife infinitely slow across the exposed dark throat of man he held pinned down.
Mr. Cairo’s eyes widened in fear and then panic when he felt the sharp blade cut into his neck. He could do nothing, could not move, not fight free, his last moment was seeing his daughter slumped dead on a chair before him and then his own blood filled his vision. The time he took to die was quicker than the time it took him to sear his daughter’s eyes out. Jayne had done him some justice by not prolonging a death that was more important for happening than for fairness.
Jayne brought himself painfully back to his feet, felt warm stickiness down his leg and on his hands. Blood of Mr. Cairo and himself staining the rug under his feet. He stood and swayed, looking down on the dead man. Was unmoved by what he had just done, looked over to River, her eyes blank, face passive.
“There was nothing to save, had all been erased, last fragments drawn away when light ceased to fall.” Her voice betrayed sadness, not recrimination for what Mira had become. He was struck by how her stance echoed the posture she had had when the blast doors had opened to reveal her surrounded by dead Reavers.
Jayne had been killing people by his hand for many years, had made a skill out of doing it well. Rarely was bothered by it. But always thought about it as he did it. Mr. Cairo and Mira he just killed, no thought, no feeling. Was surprised at how easily the crime lord had died, three guards swiftly incapacitated, and that was it. Dead, man died like any other. Difference was how he felt about it. Usually had a surge of adrenaline, a rush that tingled to the ends of his fingertips. Instead there was a hole inside, no pulse of urgency.
He bleakly looked at River, “We gotta be getting’ ta the warehouse… it’s down near the docks….” Bending down slowly, Jayne grasped the dead man’s hand and tore a ring off his left ring finger. A large stone was set in the gold band. Light gleamed rainbow shards from its dark depths. Jayne pocketed the ring and nodded to River his intent to leave.
She was still looking at Mira. “Ya aw right there moon…. ya aw right?” Jayne asked gruffly, finishing more softly. He realized he had just done it, no question of how the girl may react. That slowed him some. He hadn’t worried about her response. Brow furrowed, he noted that River hadn’t moved except to drop kick two guards. Jayne had snapped and killed the blind woman and her father with no thought at all for setting her off. Then he half-spun to look at the bodies lying in their own blood and knew that he had been the one to snap.
River looked at Jayne clear eyed and calm, “She was gone, could not be saved. Her wings would never spread again. No one could fix that.”
Jayne looked at the young woman knowing she truly wasn’t a girl any more. Not with what she had seen and done. That slowed his thinking too.
“Was right what you did when you brought her out of there.” River spoke, lucid, clear. “She could not have stayed there, was going to be expelled for lack of control… it was before they knew how to correct that.”
“Control?” He snorted half-derisive, half-scared at his own response. He turned back to the young woman looking at him, eyes wiser than all his years combined. “I done lost my own self… and I’d wager you know why.”
River nodded slightly, “Yes, the fire will burn and ache, try to find egress… would not have chosen that road if there had been a fork available.”
“Yer spoutin’ gos se…” Jayne shook his head, should have known she wouldn’t be makin’ no sense.
“You were dying… needed to refill the red… cardiac function would have been compromised if not done.” River explained briefly. Turning from the dead woman, River walked quietly ahead of Jayne out of the room, not looking back, not questioning what had just transpired.
He swayed, watched her retreating back, dancer’s grace giving her the ethereal lightness of a bird. He shook his head, sweat droplets spilling from his brow. He had lost what he was looking for in his life; lost the simplicity and calm knowledge that he was just a man doing what he could to survive, to make sport of it as long as it lasted.
20 years earlier he had seen what evil was. Now he felt it burn through him. Knew the young woman walking away from him carried the same pain. An anguished cry was trapped in his throat, a sound he wouldn’t let pass his lips. He shut down, blocked himself from roaring out his frustration and confusion.
She knew he had burned a new path in his awareness, that a step into darkness had begun that would end when he found his way back to light. A small tear threatened her eye but she wouldn’t let it fall. She knew Jayne wouldn’t understand. He was going to vanish from all of them as the man they knew. There would be months of nothing but darkness and recrimination for the big man. He would be forced to confront his own anger and hate internally. She only hoped everyone would stay away from asking why. The truth would be too much so soon after Miranda.
Title: Aftermath, Part Five
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Post-BDM
Characters: Jayne/River
Disclaimer: Firefly owns me, I own words
Notes: Follows directly after stand-down order at Mr. Universe's moon. Fills in between the pieces of the Five Times memes... Mal kept bugging Jayne for what happened...Precedes Five Kisses by about 7 months...
All Jayne/River stories are in the same storyline, even if seen out of order...
Organizational Post
Aftermath, Part Five
“Ya let me do all the talkin’, dong ma?” Jayne said as he drove the mule through the crowded alleys around Eavesdown Docks. He grimaced when the mule slung around corners, his leg aching from the bullet he took just a few days past. His skin was hot and burnt out feeling. The temperatures were cool and damp even as he felt like dry flames licked through his veins.
River nodded in compliance careful to not look at people as they made their way out of the poorer part of the port city and into residential neighborhoods with scattered businesses. She could hear all their voices as a murmur and crash of sound. By keeping her eyes cast away, her thoughts could stay her own more easily. Next to her, she could feel the smoky heat that was Jayne emanating outwards. River drew that smoke around herself, trying to shield herself from the worst of the dissonance of the multitude of voices crowding the streets.
The swirls of color and fog around Jayne buffeted her senses, pressed into areas of memory she had partitioned away. She wavered between letting the voices of the strangers on the street and Jayne’s turmoil guide her own reality. The third possibility, finding her own space buttressed on each side was new and unfamiliar. Despite that, River chose the path she had never taken before. Her own self, not dictated to her by family, teachers, doctors with questionable ethics.
Jayne drove swiftly, barely avoiding attracting the attention of Fed officers that patrolled the city. His focus was on getting to Mr. Cairo’s, getting the converters and returning to Serenity without getting shot again. The leg and shoulder wounds he had sustained recently were not nearly enough healed for him to be out and active, but Mal was still being held by the Med personnel after the fighting on Mr. Universe’s and Zoë was in no state to be bargaining with her thoughts still on her deceased husband. That left him to get the deal done. River coming with him was an unexpected complication.
Mood black, the people on the street barely registered except as a blur of scent and color. He catalogued absently the vendors of meats and spices as he swiftly flew by, the unwashed urchins begging for handouts at the edges of prosperity. Uncharacteristically he found no cheer in the freedom from Mal’s orders. The need for the converters drove him to ignore the distractions that usually enticed him. Seeing, scenting, cataloguing dangers and threats; that was what occupied his thoughts. And percolating rage under it all, a crawling sensation under his skin.
“We’re almost there… no goin’ monkeyshit on me now, ya got me?” Jayne said as he slung the mule into a berth outside a row of shops.
“She will not… will keep the other’s out of her head… shall not let their thoughts get in.” River shivered involuntarily, a sense that the one who was not totally in control of their actions was not her. She spared a probing thought and came against roiling greys and blues. Any clarity she had ever had in seeing what happened behind the eyes of the scowling mercenary was totally fogged.
“Right, well, stay close… done ’t want ta be worryin’ on where ya are.” He said gruffly.
“Will be shielded…” River murmured, “Will draw the smokescreen close.”
~~~~~
“Mr. Cobb, did not expect to be seeing you on this side of Persephone again.” The man spoke with an educated accent. Swarthy and slick, Mr. Cairo looked like the diamond merchant his storefront advertised him to be. Genteel, elegantly dressed and with a bearing to be comfortable in the upper reaches of society.
“Ain’t here fer a social visit.” Jayne replied sourly. He hated having to come asking for a deal with Mr. Cairo, hated the smell of the man. He was just wrong to Jayne’s perception. Humans smelled a certain way, even Reavers had some element of it, but Mr. Cairo’s scent was as he remembered, false, hollow humanity with no richness of flavor to it.
“Indeed, I expect not.” Smoothly slipping out from behind the counter separating them, he gestured for Jayne and River to follow him to the back. Jayne kept one hand resting lightly on one of his favorite guns, the LeMat; Jeanie.
River stayed within arms reach as they made their way back. She watched his strong, silent tread unimpaired by the limp he had had earlier. A jolt of hardness shot through the smoke of his emotions at each step; the only display of the pain his leg must be causing him. Jayne went through two swinging metal doors first. He glanced around the room, taking in a beautiful wood roll top desk, Oriental rugs on the floor and a sitting area with a couch and two loungers. The room was warm and comfortable, a sparing attempt at sophistication. Except for them the only other person present was what looked like a young girl. She was clearly related to Mr. Cairo. Same complexion and features, but with blank eyes. She couldn’t see them at all, her head tilted as she listened to the three enter the room.
“Mira, we have visitors.” Mr. Cairo said as an introduction.
“I know them… he who came for me before… and she, she has been in my thoughts.” Mira replied. Voice distant and uninflected. When she spoke her age clearly showed as much older than she looked.
“Yes, he is the one who brought you back to me. I do not know the other.” Her father replied.
Mira turned her sightless eyes towards Jayne, “You should have left me there.” River stifled a small gasp. Mira’s thoughts crashed into her mind with no filters. Anger and hate and repressed desires. Mira wanted what they had done to River to have been done to her. She wanted to be the weapon they had made River into. River swayed back from the vitriol, the waves of naked desire threatening to break through her carefully constructed barriers.
“Mira I have explained to you, you are much more valuable to me here than you would have been to the Alliance.” Mr. Cairo said with tired tone of one who had had to explain something countless times.
“Twenty years I have been your Reader and now you bring the man who made me come back to you here, with a weapon, a complete weapon. Is this supposed to make me feel better? Knowing what I could have become?” Mira shook her head in resentment.
River stayed as close to Jayne as she dared, used his bulk and his smoke to block most of the older woman’s thoughts. His own rages rippled through the veil of darkness that clouded his thoughts. River felt power stalking around her, memories of dreams filled with visions of a massive bruin became near real in the empty air around him. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from gasping; realizing the terrible truth she had suspected; all the while trapped in a bargain she couldn’t influence.
“Ain’t here ta hear ‘bout yer life, just want ta get payment on a job is all.” Jayne said gruffly, not liking the direction Mira was moving the conversation. He could feel River next to him, knew she was nearly vibrating. This was not going well. He hated to be in this kind of environment. He had no bearings amongst comfortable furnishings, fine rugs, and warm rooms. Not to mention another crazy person. He knew there had to be guards somewhere near, but he couldn’t figure where. The air smelled wrong; too filtered, disguising other scents, other people nearby.
“Yes, well dear, we both know you wouldn’t have made it past the third year… required control you would never have mastered.” Her father replied to Mira before turning back to Jayne.
“Now, Mr. Cobb, tell me where my benefit is to pay you for what clearly was an error of action in Mira’s mind?” Mr. Cairo asked smoothly.
“Cursed me to live here, to not staying where I was happy.” Mira added.
Neither sounded emotional at all which made both Jayne and River stiffen.
“Job was done, ya got yer daughter back, way I see it, ya owe me my pay and agreed ta pay it when I came for it. Two converters, that’s all I’m lookin’ for.” Jayne’s voice was barely audible, his control nearly eroded. River shrank inside, waited for the next reaction calmly.
“Two converters! My life is worth only that?” Mira sounded shocked, blind eyes widened involuntarily.
River leaned into Jayne, thoughts assaulted by Mira’s internal visions. Memories of a young man with thick curls and drab green military clothes bursting through a door, guns in each hand, eyes hard and clear. Memories of being pulled down a corridor in a running gunfight, explosions going off behind them as they ran. River gasped as shooting pain arced through her, throwing her into Jayne’s bulk.
“Hey, what…” Jayne grunted and caught the girl before she could move away again.
“Shot, she was shot in the rescue…” River whispered, eyes wide and frightened at the vehemence of Mira’s and Jayne’s moods. Mira’s she could understand as it reminded her of her own memories of the Academy. Jayne held her tight to him, left arm curved around her body, emotions of a much younger man coursing past the years to expand in River’s mind as full and real.
“I know that, I was there…” Jayne replied curtly. He remembered the break-in, the using his position as a security guard to gain access to the lower levels of the facility. He had had entry codes to the whole facility, hadn’t known what they were doing there. Didn’t care overmuch as it was a steady job that paid well. Didn’t care until he saw the first young ‘students’, saw their destruction as humans. It was early in the Academy’s charter.
Jayne had been there when the first failures were let go. Teenage boys and girls, eyes frantic, body language radiating anxiety, were sent home. Jayne had begun to see the damages before most others, his youthful hunting skills were put into use in an unexpected way. The boys and girls that left smelled of fear, walked like victims, prey. He could still recall with clarity the look in their eyes as they passed him at the last checkpoint. It was the look of an animal trapped with no chance of survival, of freedom even as they walked on their own feet back to their families.
He had hunted and trapped for survival on the Rim planet he was born on; knew how an animal waiting to die would writhe, eyes darting, looking for an escape that would never come. Seeing humans with that look; barely grown children already given up on survival while struggling against internal demons that would never ease sent him to seek relief from the days by living fully in the nights. Jayne sectioned off his feelings, never let himself compare the students at the Academy with his siblings at home. He was just a young man himself, life was before him. His Ma would receive letters from her eldest son that talked of the weather, sports, maybe a little of local gossip; he never told her about the job, the drinking and girls he went to to forget. He sent money home but not the ugliness of the life he had followed.
It had been months later when Mr. Cairo had approached him on a cold night when he was trying to drown the vision of the last girl from his eyes. A now nearly empty bottle of whiskey hadn’t been able to do the job. The girl’s haunted eyes, the sheen of fear sweat on her skin, and hair tangled over her shoulders, twined around her long throat had burned themselves into his mind so deeply that he saw her there still, 20 years later. A girl who had looked eerily like River in his remotest memories. River swayed in his grasp, barely able to remain silent. Jayne pressed the vision of that faraway girl back into dark recesses, not wanting to let himself see the similarity. When River had emerged from the cryo-box near a year earlier Jayne had had to tell himself it was a different girl. But still the image haunted him if he let it have space. The passage of time and more empty bottles than could be counted littered the wake of that memory.
Mr. Cairo had offered more money than Jayne had ever conceived of for the rescue of Mira. The whiskey had blurred his reason Jayne decided later; he had accepted the job for a fraction of the payment in advance with the balance to be collected later. When the payment turned out to be a girl in trade for Mira, Jayne had recoiled, seeing only another victim in the young girls expression. It was a defining moment in his own young life. He had turned down the payment of a crime-lord, a man known for his willingness to sacrifice anyone in his organization for his own ends. The intervening years had been shaped by that decision on Jayne’s part. Occasional thoughts of turning to the trade of girls had passed his mind before he remembered the look of loss on that first young girl’s face. He had held her future in his hands.
Now he had another young girl beside him, a girl someone had let into that hell, had opened up and recreated in their own vision. She quivered almost imperceptibly under his touch. He didn’t know his own desires and passions were causing the worst of the shakes.
“I know, I was there.” He repeated, almost gentle as he felt River’s body stiffen and then relax. She looked up at him, saw for a brief flash the sadness of years in his eyes before they clouded dark and angry again as he looked back at Mr. Cairo.
“We just be needin’ those converters, will be leavin’ and ya won’t be seein’ us again.” Jayne said, cool and calm sounding. He was neither inside.
The older man considered the pair facing him, felt the young woman’s mind prying into his thoughts. He had had far to many years of experience with his own daughter to let anyone in past the externals unless he desired it. He grinned wryly, knowing that he could tear a hole so wide through the girl that she would never be able to think again. When he switched his gaze to Jayne’s face, he stepped back inside, recoiled from what looked back at him. It was the same dark he felt from his daughter and when he glanced at the girl, from her. Mr. Cairo frowned, brow furrowed, confused. He knew Jayne had never been a student, but he held in his eyes the same darkness, the impenetrable unknowable. Except with the big man it was unshielded, untamed by blocks.
Mr. Cairo sneered when he saw the naked knowledge in the young girls eye that he had found something new about the mercenary. “Maybe we skip past the insult to my daughter’s value Mr. Cobb and exact a price for that disrespect.” The dark man smiled slowly, thinking very clearly back to when he had seen that same dark emptiness in his daughter’s eyes. Eyes he had taken from her to bind her to him. A twist on a loving father unwilling to let his child go. Mr. Cairo had never felt guilt for the crime he committed on his own flesh and blood.
River straightened, stood tall and separate from Jayne again, “Blinded… blinded by her pater…took her eyes when he knew she could see…”
Mr. Cairo’s expression darkened, his hand strayed towards his desk. He was going to end this charade before it went any further.
Jayne drew the LeMat, “You keep yer hands right there, we got no need ta be getting’ involved with yer doin’s… just want the parts and we’ll be on our way.” He felt River beside him even though she was no longer under his arm.
“Mr. Cobb you are making a grave mistake here. Your life is forfeit the moment your finger twitches, as is your young companion’s. As it stands now you are already engaging in a gamble even coming to me.” Mr. Cairo spoke calmly, unconcerned apparently by the muzzle of the gun pointed unerringly towards his head. Angling his head towards his daughter, “Mira?”
“Cannot penetrate to see intent. He may well decide it is a good day to die.” The woman replied, absently picking at a fingernail.
River leaned against Jayne’s side, keeping her eyes downcast, whispered to him, “She is trying to get in… she is looking for what you will do.”
“I know that,” he responded gruffly, “Not getting’ that it don’t bother me none ta take yer Pa out are ya?” He directed that to Mira while keeping a hard eye on Mr. Cairo.
“And where will you then go to acquire those converters you need Mr. Cobb?” Mr. Cairo responded.
“With you gone, don’t see as how that’ll be a problem since the parts don’t vanish if you do. Got a nice little organization back on the docks, fair sure I can convince ‘em ta let me have ‘em once they find out what I done.” Jayne answered. He felt River still trembling. Was hoping she would be able to control herself long enough to get out of there. “Don’t right cotton ta a man who brings harm on his own… may be what is said is true… say yer a man who’ll give up any man if they ain’t got no value ta ya, and even if they do, just ta fill yer own needs fer pride or credit… I ain’t here ta judge that. Just want what’s owed and then we’ll be on our way.”
Mr. Cairo didn’t move, Mira remained seated, head cocked, concentrating. River stabilized her own center, drew herself away from the anger of Mira. A brief flash of memory, Jayne’s memory, came clearly to her. A young man having a steady job as security guard at the newly built Academy; he had walked the halls and tunnels of the facility before any of the ‘students’ had been brought there. Jayne had been supporting his mother since he was able. She swayed again, buffeted by the new knowledge. She caught the briefest flash of revulsion from his young mind at the horror of witnessing a broken girl, needle marks on her face still fresh, shaved hair revealing scalpel wounds at the back of the her head.
Jayne glanced down at her, his eyes clearly troubled. River knew he was engaged in a battle of wills with himself. A battle she knew would end with violence. She permitted herself a tiny smile, a dance of violence was still a dance.
“There… you were there…” River whispered, new waves of pain and self-recrimination filling the spaces between the impenetrable smoky spaces in Jayne.
“Yeah… and got out when I could…” He answered curtly, continued more sadly, “Weren’t, couldn’t stay and watch what they done ta them… to you…”
“You left solely for a job that paid more coin Mr. Cobb. Don’t credit yourself with virtues that you don’t own.” Mr. Cairo interjected, eyes still calm in the face of a steady gun. The merchant criminal itched inside to wipe from the big man’s eyes the blue-black emptiness that exposed an angry hatred for him. To erase them like he had erased his daughter’s when she had revolted against his tearing her from the school.
Mira had never wanted to leave, had relished the changes wrought by scalpel and drug. Mr. Cairo’s daughter had been made into a creature of desires, a Reader that he had used to become the central figure in the highest echelons of power in not only the criminal underworld, but the Alliance itself. A Reader had allowed him the poison he needed to direct government to his own needs.
And here a man from 20 years ago stood, another Reader at his side, a completed weapon herself. Mr. Cairo was feeling the first inclinations of threat to himself that he could remember.
River reached towards the older man’s mind, felt for his intentions and found only a grinning charade, a construct designed to block views of his deeper self. Her concentration was such that Jayne sensed the change in the air first. The circulation shifted, a new scent entered the mix. Men, slightly frightened, sour sweat under sweet soap smells. Three guards entered the room silently from behind Jayne and River, door opened silently only a soft flow of new air across the back of his neck letting Jayne know they were entering. He curled his lip in disgust. Armed guards exposing fear. He knew the outcome would be flavored by that. Fear of their boss, of him, and of the girl beside him.
“Some of that coin is still owed, ” Jayne continued even as the men ranged out behind them. Sourness followed the men, allowed him to follow their movements without turning from his focus on Mr. Cairo and Mira.
“Today I think is not the day you will be collecting on that debt Mr. Cobb.” Mr. Cairo turned, body language dismissive as his men closed on Jayne and River.
A blur and a crunch of bone on boot followed River’s swirling kick at the man reaching for her, hands grasping empty air. Jayne’s slung his fist heavy with the weight of the LeMat across the oncoming charge of a second, felt the contact of jaw to knuckle with the jaw giving way first. Third man went to draw arms, heavy gun slowing his motion enough for two strikes to connect. Jayne’s fist throwing his head back and River’s flat kick catching him in the solar plexus, propelling him backwards into a wall.
Jayne swayed on his good leg, felt the tear of stitches across his thigh. There was no pain as he pushed himself at the back of the turned merchant. He brought them both down in a crash, burying his hand in the Mr. Cairo’s beautifully cut hair, dragging the man’s face up to look him in the eye.
“I will get paid today, and we will be walkin’ out a’ here with no more trouble.” Jayne snarled, gun muzzle pressed to a smooth, dark temple.
Mr. Cairo’s neck was held in a torque that made swallowing much less talking difficult. The men’s faces were inches apart, he could see the flicker of something wild, inhuman in the big mercenary’s gaze. His face was contorted in a grimace of pain and rage that sent a shiver down Mr. Cairo’s back.
River stood with casual insouciance over the fallen guards, stance prepared and controlled. Mira laughed, glee infused her. River slowly turned her gaze to the blind woman, saw the insanity that had threatened her fully realized in the other woman’s soul. She knew then that she had truly not become what Simon had feared in his worst nights. River still had a piece of herself that was bright and real, a piece she shielded from the pollution of psychosis; that she borrowed strength from Jayne to guard.
Jayne’s eyes moved to take in the laughing woman, heard clearly the last vestiges of sanity wiped clean from her voice. Mira had died many long years ago, only a crazy broken minded woman remained. He knew then that those young girls and boys he had watched drag from the Academy were all broken, lost souls. He felt sweat burn his eyes, tears of salt down his forehead, trailing across his burning skin.
Jayne felt creeping fingers pawing through his thoughts, tearing into his private stores, places he never let anyone see. Mira turned her head to look right at him with unseeing eyes. River stepped over to the stand near the big mercenary still pinning down Mr. Cairo. Jayne spared a glance up at River, saw the girl was contemplating the other woman.
“There is nothing to see, you won’t find him… he hides to well, has been hiding for too many years for one such as you to find… even had you the time…” River spoke sadly, her voice sounding almost defeated.
Jayne heard her, saw the dawning comprehension on Mira’s face, the beginnings of a physical reaction. Still laughing even as her body shifted from lounging to intensity. Had she eyes, he would have guaranteed she was planning on leaping at River. And then she did.
Without hesitating he brought Jeanie to bear, a quick tap and a red flower bloomed across Mira’s brow. The laugh stopped, shocked silence filled the room. Jayne could hear the pounding of his blood in his head, feel the rush of it painfully through his veins. The fingers no longer crawled through his mind.
He turned his eyes down to the upturned face of the man below him. “This ends now.” Jayne spit out, pulling Mr. Cairo’s face closer to his own contorted growl, “Yer done, gave you yer blood back and ya made her a monster… no better than a monster yerself.”
As he talked he had replaced the LeMat with sharpened steel, long blade honed to a scalpel edge. He didn’t want to sully Jeanie’s history with the elimination of a monster. He drew the knife infinitely slow across the exposed dark throat of man he held pinned down.
Mr. Cairo’s eyes widened in fear and then panic when he felt the sharp blade cut into his neck. He could do nothing, could not move, not fight free, his last moment was seeing his daughter slumped dead on a chair before him and then his own blood filled his vision. The time he took to die was quicker than the time it took him to sear his daughter’s eyes out. Jayne had done him some justice by not prolonging a death that was more important for happening than for fairness.
Jayne brought himself painfully back to his feet, felt warm stickiness down his leg and on his hands. Blood of Mr. Cairo and himself staining the rug under his feet. He stood and swayed, looking down on the dead man. Was unmoved by what he had just done, looked over to River, her eyes blank, face passive.
“There was nothing to save, had all been erased, last fragments drawn away when light ceased to fall.” Her voice betrayed sadness, not recrimination for what Mira had become. He was struck by how her stance echoed the posture she had had when the blast doors had opened to reveal her surrounded by dead Reavers.
Jayne had been killing people by his hand for many years, had made a skill out of doing it well. Rarely was bothered by it. But always thought about it as he did it. Mr. Cairo and Mira he just killed, no thought, no feeling. Was surprised at how easily the crime lord had died, three guards swiftly incapacitated, and that was it. Dead, man died like any other. Difference was how he felt about it. Usually had a surge of adrenaline, a rush that tingled to the ends of his fingertips. Instead there was a hole inside, no pulse of urgency.
He bleakly looked at River, “We gotta be getting’ ta the warehouse… it’s down near the docks….” Bending down slowly, Jayne grasped the dead man’s hand and tore a ring off his left ring finger. A large stone was set in the gold band. Light gleamed rainbow shards from its dark depths. Jayne pocketed the ring and nodded to River his intent to leave.
She was still looking at Mira. “Ya aw right there moon…. ya aw right?” Jayne asked gruffly, finishing more softly. He realized he had just done it, no question of how the girl may react. That slowed him some. He hadn’t worried about her response. Brow furrowed, he noted that River hadn’t moved except to drop kick two guards. Jayne had snapped and killed the blind woman and her father with no thought at all for setting her off. Then he half-spun to look at the bodies lying in their own blood and knew that he had been the one to snap.
River looked at Jayne clear eyed and calm, “She was gone, could not be saved. Her wings would never spread again. No one could fix that.”
Jayne looked at the young woman knowing she truly wasn’t a girl any more. Not with what she had seen and done. That slowed his thinking too.
“Was right what you did when you brought her out of there.” River spoke, lucid, clear. “She could not have stayed there, was going to be expelled for lack of control… it was before they knew how to correct that.”
“Control?” He snorted half-derisive, half-scared at his own response. He turned back to the young woman looking at him, eyes wiser than all his years combined. “I done lost my own self… and I’d wager you know why.”
River nodded slightly, “Yes, the fire will burn and ache, try to find egress… would not have chosen that road if there had been a fork available.”
“Yer spoutin’ gos se…” Jayne shook his head, should have known she wouldn’t be makin’ no sense.
“You were dying… needed to refill the red… cardiac function would have been compromised if not done.” River explained briefly. Turning from the dead woman, River walked quietly ahead of Jayne out of the room, not looking back, not questioning what had just transpired.
He swayed, watched her retreating back, dancer’s grace giving her the ethereal lightness of a bird. He shook his head, sweat droplets spilling from his brow. He had lost what he was looking for in his life; lost the simplicity and calm knowledge that he was just a man doing what he could to survive, to make sport of it as long as it lasted.
20 years earlier he had seen what evil was. Now he felt it burn through him. Knew the young woman walking away from him carried the same pain. An anguished cry was trapped in his throat, a sound he wouldn’t let pass his lips. He shut down, blocked himself from roaring out his frustration and confusion.
She knew he had burned a new path in his awareness, that a step into darkness had begun that would end when he found his way back to light. A small tear threatened her eye but she wouldn’t let it fall. She knew Jayne wouldn’t understand. He was going to vanish from all of them as the man they knew. There would be months of nothing but darkness and recrimination for the big man. He would be forced to confront his own anger and hate internally. She only hoped everyone would stay away from asking why. The truth would be too much so soon after Miranda.