fic: the sound of one hand clapping (Firefly/SG-1, 1/1)
So lcsbanana had this genius idea for ascended!Wash a while back, for Certain Reasons. And I joined wtf27. And then this happened.
the sound of one hand clapping
By Gale
SUMMARY: “The first rule of The Daniel Thing is: We don’t talk about The Daniel Thing.” Ascended!Wash, for LC, who had the idea before I stole it. Because I am a bad, rude girl.
NOTES: Crossover with SG-1, though it’s fairly easy to follow even if you don’t watch it. Contains spoilers for S6 of SG-1 and early S7, not to mention a whack of ‘em for Serenity.
Wash doesn’t remember dying, which is a small blessing.
He remembers the dive and the crash. He remembers being a leaf on the wind, because that’s what he was every time he got behind the controls. He remembers letting out a long breath, and starting to say something, and - nothing. Not even pain. Certainly not dying.
Actually, he’s not even entirely sure he’s dead. He’s never been dead before, but he’s seen dead people before, and heard enough stories about the war, and he’s pretty sure no one ever mentioned being walking-around dead. He’s remarkably clean, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt - a new one, no less - and oh, hey, *he’s glowing*.
Which is a shame. The glowing part’s pretty shiny.
*
So apparently he’s Ascended, which means he doesn’t have a physical body anymore. He is spirit and light and thought, mind and soul without the encumbrance of a physical form. He thinks. People have been explaining it to him often enough, anyhow.
He’s just not sure what that *means*, except he’s not supposed to interfere with what happens to people in the corporeal realm - you know, *people* - or use his powers to influence them in any way. Oma’s tried explaining it more than once, but secretly Wash thinks someone known as Mother Nature isn’t really in the business of telling anyone not to interfere in anything.
On the other hand, she wields lightning bolts, so Wash won’t be telling her what he really thinks any time soon.
*
There are other Ascended here. Most of them are stately and officious in a way that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up; if they were corporeal, they’d be all for the Alliance. Maybe not the part where they tried to create an artificial calmative and instead murdered a planetful of people, except for the ones who mutated into worse than murderers, but the basic idea. They keep to themselves, and they seem politely snotty.
Then there are the others - the small boy in the saffron-colored robes, the dark-eyed young man, the Ancient who walks around looking vaguely dissatisfied. They remind him of Simon when he first came onboard, very polite and kind of prissy but not Alliance, not really. People who need to get away from civilization to find out who they are. They keep to themselves a lot, but sometimes he sees them talking to each other, small groups of one or two. He even joins in on a couple of conversations, though he doesn’t have a lot to contribute. Hell, he only just figured out he could stop glowing.
It’s not so bad, really. There’s a lot of boring talk about enlightenment, but no one’s trying to kill him, and it beats a spike in the chest, so boring enlightenment talk it is.
”I just wish I could send them some word,” Wash says one day. “*Something*. A wave, even. ‘Hey, not really dead, so buck up, little campers.’”
”They don’t like that much,” Daniel tells him. He’s a lot like Simon, too, if Simon was a little less fussy and more prone to wearing cream. “Of course, as far as I can tell, They aren’t big on contact with lesser species at all.”
”Humans aren’t a lesser species,” Wash says, feeling affronted.
Daniel snorts. “Try telling *Them* that.”
*
“We are not supposed to interfere,” Oma says. She sounds as serene as ever, but her face is a stormcloud. And when you’re Mother Nature, the stormcloud face is nothing to sneeze at. “You knew that. The rules are clear-“
”I couldn’t just let them die!” Daniel yells back, absolutely furious. He goes from robes to some dull green military uniform and back again, probably unconsciously. “They’re all GONE, Oma! I don’t know how you can be so sanctimonious and still be able to live with yourself-“
“Um,” Wash says.
Daniel and Oma both glare at him.
”I’ll let myself out,” Wash says, and does.
*
“Look,” Wash finally says, after watching the guy mope around for the better part of - God, he doesn’t know. Time passes strange here. He’s not even sure the guy’s from this era, but he looks as hangdog as anyone Wash has ever seen. “I’m not telling you to get involved, okay? Because we’re not supposed to do that. Especially not with…” He trails off, because everyone knows about The Daniel Thing, even though they never talk about it.
“No.” Orlin shakes his head.
”But - you really like this woman, right?”
Orlin just looks at him.
”Okay, dumb question.” Wash waves a hand. “But if I knew I could do *something* to help Zoe - my wife - and my friends, and I didn’t do it, and something happened to them… I couldn’t live with myself. Not even like this.”
Orlin stares at him for a minute, then smiles. “Thank you,” he says, and disappears.
Wash has just enough time to wonder what the hell *that* was about before he senses a presence behind him. He turns.
Oma’s standing behind him, looking at him.
”What?” Wash asks.
*
*
The strangers come into town needing a pilot. That’s what they tell Shepard Connor, anyway, and Shepard Connor goes to the mission and tells Hoban. Shepard and everyone else on Majesdane are still skittish around him - it’s not every day naked strangers show up, let alone in the middle of the gazebo in the heart of town and unable to remember anything other than their own name - but he’s a good pilot, and that’s what these folks need. They haven’t much coin, Shepard says, but they’ve got goods to trade, and this far out in the black that’s much better, and would Hoban mind taking them out?
Hoban nods and says it’s not a problem, because it’s not. He loves flying, though there’s not much call for it except to take some of the elderly folk supplies and whatnot; and anything that gets him out of threshing for a spell isn’t something he’s apt to turn down.
Shepard Connor brings Hoban to the front of the church. “This is our pilot,” he says, speaking to the tall stranger, the man with dark hair and square jaw. There’s something old-fashioned about him, almost regal. “Hoban, this is Captain-“
”Ta ma de,” the stranger says, and just stares at Hoban. His mouth comes open, like he’s trying to speak and failing.
Shepard must see that the sale’s about to fall through, because he says kind of fast, “He’s a good pilot. Not much of a talker, but I’d think you’d appreciate that, Captain--”
”His name is Hoban,” the man says. He sounds sort of strangled, and he’s blinking a lot.
“Near as I can remember,” Hoban says, finding his voice. He’s never been much of a talker, not since he woke up here. He can’t be sure about Before. “I don’t remember much at all before I woke up here a couple months ago.”
“Naked as the day he was born,” Shepard says, shaking his head and smiling a little. “But he took to the controls of that mule we have like he was born to ‘em.”
“That’s not surprising, Shepard,” the man says, still staring at Hoban. Without looking away, he yells, “Kaylee!”
Hoban has a minute to wonder who Kaylee is before a small brunette girl comes out of the machine shop next door, something mechanical in her hands. Her hair’s pulled back, and her cheek has a smear of grease on it, but she’s very pretty. Like your little sister, only not. “Everything looks shiny so far, Cap’n. Though I can’t say as to how good the actual stabilizer’s goin’ to be, but knock wood I think if we can-“ She looks up at the man, then over at the Shepard, then over at Hoban.
She drops whatever she’s holding.
“Sorry,” she says after a minute, still staring. So is the man. Hoban’s kind of getting used to it, though he’s glad that *this* time he’s wearing clothes. “I thought - the resemblance is near uncanny, ain’t it?”
“His name is Hoban,” the man says. He doesn’t sound strangled anymore, but he doesn’t stop staring.
The girl looks at the man, then back at Hoban. “It ain’t possible,” she says, shaking her head. “We - we *buried* him. Between Shepard Book and-“
”I know where we buried him, Kaylee,” the man says, turning his head a little. “And I can’t be sure. Not yet, leastways. Go run and get Simon.”
The girl keeps staring.
”*Now*, Kaylee,” the man says. It snaps the girl out of her reverie, and she takes off at a run.
”You say you don’t remember nothing before you woke up here,” the man asks Hoban, and Hoban shakes his head.
“Not much,” he says. “I must have flown something, because I know how, and my name’s Hoban.” He thinks back, letting his mind sift over the bits and pieces he’s dredged up early in the morning and late at night. It’s not much. “I think I like dinos,” he finally says. “And I was married. Or I had a sister. Something. There’s this woman I see sometimes, in my dreams, and she’s-“ Hoban shakes his head. “Familiar.”
“We think he’s tetched,” Shepard says, touching the side of his head. The man glares at him.
”He’s not tetched,” the man snaps. “Suffered one too many blows to the head, maybe, but that’s not the same thing.”
“Do I know you?” Hoban asks. “I mean. From the way y’all are acting, I think you know me, anyway.”
”You could say that,” the man says, and he smiles. It’s not much, barely more than turning up one side of his mouth, but something in Hoban’s stomach relaxes at the sight of it.
Then the girl’s back, dragging a young man with her. He seems woefully out of place, especially here on Majesdane where no one’s seen fancy collared sweaters except on the Cortex, and he looks a mite cranky. “I can’t see what’s so-“ he starts, and stops when he looks at Hoban.
The staring’s not so bad, but everyone shutting up in the middle of their sentences is sort of irritating, the third time through.
”That’s not possible,” the young man says flatly. Still staring. Another couple of minutes, it won’t even seem weird anymore. “You - you were -“ He looks at the older man. “That’s not *possible*,” he says again. “It’s - it’s just a lookalike. Statistically-“
”He says his name is Hoban,” the girl says, and the young man closes his mouth with a snap.
”I can’t,” he starts, sounding helpless and slightly lost. Hoban wants to reach out and clap him on the shoulder, though he’s not sure why. “I can’t do anything here. I can’t do anything back on the ship, either, but I can run DNA scans, see if it matches.”
”And if it does?” the older man asks, though it’s clear it’s not a question. He’s expecting Hoban’s DNA to match to whatever they’re running it against.
”I have no rutting idea,” the young man says faintly. The girl squeezes his hand tight.
There’s maybe thirty seconds of silence. Hoban scratches the back of his ear.
Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, turning him around. It’s another girl, about the size of the first one, with black hair and pale skin. She’s wearing a dress and a sweater that’s at least three sizes too big for her, and her head’s cocked to one side. She stares at Hoban for a minute, but doesn’t say anything.
Finally, she says, “If you can tell the candle is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.” She wrinkles her nose. “No, that’s not it.”
It’s close, though. Something about the words sounds familiar. “It’s close, though,” he says aloud. “You can use a hammer to build a house, but words are what hold it together.”
She smiles. “Not interfering,” she says, “is for children, not adults.” She grabs his hand and starts dragging him off. “You should come home now.”
“River,” the older man says warningly, but she ignores him.
”Only people who don’t have eyes need tests,” she calls back, looking over her shoulder. “He needs a haircut.”
And then it’s kind of a blur, because there’s a tiny girl who weighs maybe 90 pounds in all her clothes, soaking wet, and she’s dragging him like he weighs even less than she does. Not that Hoban’s putting up a struggle. She’s weird, maybe, but not scary-weird, and he outweighs her by at least sixty pounds. He’ll be fine.
”She took your memories,” the girl - River? - says, coming to a stop. Hoban does, too, if only so he doesn’t plow into her. “It’s the safest way, but it’s the old way, too. Enlightenment means you don’t hear news anymore.”
”Okay,” Hoban says. It’s the safest thing to do when you have no idea what anyone’s talking about.
She half-drags him up the gangplank and into the ship - a real Firefly, too. Shiny. Hoban has the urge to just lean his head against the deck plates for a couple minutes and listen, but River keeps going, pushing him up the stairs and towards-
--the bridge.
“I know this,” he says, and he does, bam! just like that. He knows these controls, *these* controls, like he’s done this a hundred times. Or a million. He brushes his fingers against the controls.
”I am a leaf on the wind,” he hears someone say, as if from a great distance. It takes Hoban a minute to realize he’s the one who said it, just not now.
It’s a memory.
“I’m remembering things,” he tells River, who just smiles at him.
”People don’t forget all at once,” she tells him. “They do it over time, slowly, because that’s what keeps us from going crazy.” Her smile goes a little crooked, like she just told a joke. Hoban doesn’t get it. “You had help. Mother Nature doesn’t want secrets getting out, not after last time.” She leans in and whispers, “I saved your dinos.”
He had dinos. Huh. “Thank you,” he tells her, earning another smile.
He was here, once. Hoban doesn’t question it, because maybe his memory has more holes in it than his sweater but it’s still *there*, buried under things he has no use for. He knows these people - he knows this *ship*, knows it more than he knows his name.
”I don’t think my name’s Hoban,” he says after a second.
River shakes her head. “It’s just the name your parents put on your birth certificate,” she tells him. “We name things to define them, but it doesn’t always work. Things have their own names; we just don’t listen.”
“River,” someone says - a woman - and the voice makes Hoban raise his head and start turning around. “Have you seen the captain? We got this-“
She sees Hoban’s movement out of the corner of her eye and looks at him.
And stops.
She’s tall, though that could just be the boots. Her hair is long and dark, a little curl or wave to it, and her skin’s ten shades darker than Shepard Connor’s.
She’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen; and he’s seen her before.
”I know you,” Hoban says faintly.
”Of course you do,” the woman says, just as faint, and shuts up. Just stares at him.
“You have a scar on the top of your right thigh. You got it during the war, when you got grazed by a stray bullet. You’re allergic to walnuts, you hate meat cooked rare because you don’t want to be able to tell what kind of animal it used to be.” It’s all spilling out of him, every word leaving his mouth as soon as it pops into his head. “You love licorice, even though I think it smells like feet, and you wore white when we got married.”
The woman - her name’s Zoe, and oh how could he have forgotten that? - smiles a little. “I thought Mal was never going to stop laughing.”
”I punched him,” Hoban says somberly. “Not hard, but he shut up.”
“Yeah,” Zoe says, still smiling. “He did.”
They just stare at each other.
He’ll have to learn everyone else’s names, not to mention his own. He knows this woman, knows he loves her, but the details are still fuzzy in places. He remembers the edges of people - their outlines, what they do - but a lot of it’s still a blur. That’s okay, though.
He has a ship, and a wife, and apparently some dinosaurs. He has a family. He has a life. He has time. He didn’t have any of those things when he woke up this morning.
“I am a leaf on the wind,” he says, though he’s not sure why.
“Leaves drift,” River says, perched in the co-pilot’s seat, her knees drawn up to her chest. “But they land, eventually. Even come home, sometimes.”
Hoban looks around - at the ship, at this ship, his home and his life; at the woman across from him, still looking at him like he’ll disappear if she looks away. He knows the feeling.
”Sometimes,” he agrees. “If they’re lucky.”
***
I don’t typically do fix-its, especially not for things involving Joss. But where I come from, we fix things that are broken; we don’t break things that aren’t broken and then REFUSE TO FIX THEM, JOSS, WTF. YOU HOSER.
So clearly, I had to. And if you love us at all, Joss, you’ll fix it in the sequel(s).
This is entirely because of lcsbanana, who had the idea first. Unfortunately, my brain is a giant ball-running-with whore, so. Here we are.
The whitespace is supposed to be there; it’s not a formatting error. Thank you, Pretentiousness Fairy!
the sound of one hand clapping
By Gale
SUMMARY: “The first rule of The Daniel Thing is: We don’t talk about The Daniel Thing.” Ascended!Wash, for LC, who had the idea before I stole it. Because I am a bad, rude girl.
NOTES: Crossover with SG-1, though it’s fairly easy to follow even if you don’t watch it. Contains spoilers for S6 of SG-1 and early S7, not to mention a whack of ‘em for Serenity.
Wash doesn’t remember dying, which is a small blessing.
He remembers the dive and the crash. He remembers being a leaf on the wind, because that’s what he was every time he got behind the controls. He remembers letting out a long breath, and starting to say something, and - nothing. Not even pain. Certainly not dying.
Actually, he’s not even entirely sure he’s dead. He’s never been dead before, but he’s seen dead people before, and heard enough stories about the war, and he’s pretty sure no one ever mentioned being walking-around dead. He’s remarkably clean, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt - a new one, no less - and oh, hey, *he’s glowing*.
Which is a shame. The glowing part’s pretty shiny.
*
So apparently he’s Ascended, which means he doesn’t have a physical body anymore. He is spirit and light and thought, mind and soul without the encumbrance of a physical form. He thinks. People have been explaining it to him often enough, anyhow.
He’s just not sure what that *means*, except he’s not supposed to interfere with what happens to people in the corporeal realm - you know, *people* - or use his powers to influence them in any way. Oma’s tried explaining it more than once, but secretly Wash thinks someone known as Mother Nature isn’t really in the business of telling anyone not to interfere in anything.
On the other hand, she wields lightning bolts, so Wash won’t be telling her what he really thinks any time soon.
*
There are other Ascended here. Most of them are stately and officious in a way that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up; if they were corporeal, they’d be all for the Alliance. Maybe not the part where they tried to create an artificial calmative and instead murdered a planetful of people, except for the ones who mutated into worse than murderers, but the basic idea. They keep to themselves, and they seem politely snotty.
Then there are the others - the small boy in the saffron-colored robes, the dark-eyed young man, the Ancient who walks around looking vaguely dissatisfied. They remind him of Simon when he first came onboard, very polite and kind of prissy but not Alliance, not really. People who need to get away from civilization to find out who they are. They keep to themselves a lot, but sometimes he sees them talking to each other, small groups of one or two. He even joins in on a couple of conversations, though he doesn’t have a lot to contribute. Hell, he only just figured out he could stop glowing.
It’s not so bad, really. There’s a lot of boring talk about enlightenment, but no one’s trying to kill him, and it beats a spike in the chest, so boring enlightenment talk it is.
”I just wish I could send them some word,” Wash says one day. “*Something*. A wave, even. ‘Hey, not really dead, so buck up, little campers.’”
”They don’t like that much,” Daniel tells him. He’s a lot like Simon, too, if Simon was a little less fussy and more prone to wearing cream. “Of course, as far as I can tell, They aren’t big on contact with lesser species at all.”
”Humans aren’t a lesser species,” Wash says, feeling affronted.
Daniel snorts. “Try telling *Them* that.”
*
“We are not supposed to interfere,” Oma says. She sounds as serene as ever, but her face is a stormcloud. And when you’re Mother Nature, the stormcloud face is nothing to sneeze at. “You knew that. The rules are clear-“
”I couldn’t just let them die!” Daniel yells back, absolutely furious. He goes from robes to some dull green military uniform and back again, probably unconsciously. “They’re all GONE, Oma! I don’t know how you can be so sanctimonious and still be able to live with yourself-“
“Um,” Wash says.
Daniel and Oma both glare at him.
”I’ll let myself out,” Wash says, and does.
*
“Look,” Wash finally says, after watching the guy mope around for the better part of - God, he doesn’t know. Time passes strange here. He’s not even sure the guy’s from this era, but he looks as hangdog as anyone Wash has ever seen. “I’m not telling you to get involved, okay? Because we’re not supposed to do that. Especially not with…” He trails off, because everyone knows about The Daniel Thing, even though they never talk about it.
“No.” Orlin shakes his head.
”But - you really like this woman, right?”
Orlin just looks at him.
”Okay, dumb question.” Wash waves a hand. “But if I knew I could do *something* to help Zoe - my wife - and my friends, and I didn’t do it, and something happened to them… I couldn’t live with myself. Not even like this.”
Orlin stares at him for a minute, then smiles. “Thank you,” he says, and disappears.
Wash has just enough time to wonder what the hell *that* was about before he senses a presence behind him. He turns.
Oma’s standing behind him, looking at him.
”What?” Wash asks.
*
*
The strangers come into town needing a pilot. That’s what they tell Shepard Connor, anyway, and Shepard Connor goes to the mission and tells Hoban. Shepard and everyone else on Majesdane are still skittish around him - it’s not every day naked strangers show up, let alone in the middle of the gazebo in the heart of town and unable to remember anything other than their own name - but he’s a good pilot, and that’s what these folks need. They haven’t much coin, Shepard says, but they’ve got goods to trade, and this far out in the black that’s much better, and would Hoban mind taking them out?
Hoban nods and says it’s not a problem, because it’s not. He loves flying, though there’s not much call for it except to take some of the elderly folk supplies and whatnot; and anything that gets him out of threshing for a spell isn’t something he’s apt to turn down.
Shepard Connor brings Hoban to the front of the church. “This is our pilot,” he says, speaking to the tall stranger, the man with dark hair and square jaw. There’s something old-fashioned about him, almost regal. “Hoban, this is Captain-“
”Ta ma de,” the stranger says, and just stares at Hoban. His mouth comes open, like he’s trying to speak and failing.
Shepard must see that the sale’s about to fall through, because he says kind of fast, “He’s a good pilot. Not much of a talker, but I’d think you’d appreciate that, Captain--”
”His name is Hoban,” the man says. He sounds sort of strangled, and he’s blinking a lot.
“Near as I can remember,” Hoban says, finding his voice. He’s never been much of a talker, not since he woke up here. He can’t be sure about Before. “I don’t remember much at all before I woke up here a couple months ago.”
“Naked as the day he was born,” Shepard says, shaking his head and smiling a little. “But he took to the controls of that mule we have like he was born to ‘em.”
“That’s not surprising, Shepard,” the man says, still staring at Hoban. Without looking away, he yells, “Kaylee!”
Hoban has a minute to wonder who Kaylee is before a small brunette girl comes out of the machine shop next door, something mechanical in her hands. Her hair’s pulled back, and her cheek has a smear of grease on it, but she’s very pretty. Like your little sister, only not. “Everything looks shiny so far, Cap’n. Though I can’t say as to how good the actual stabilizer’s goin’ to be, but knock wood I think if we can-“ She looks up at the man, then over at the Shepard, then over at Hoban.
She drops whatever she’s holding.
“Sorry,” she says after a minute, still staring. So is the man. Hoban’s kind of getting used to it, though he’s glad that *this* time he’s wearing clothes. “I thought - the resemblance is near uncanny, ain’t it?”
“His name is Hoban,” the man says. He doesn’t sound strangled anymore, but he doesn’t stop staring.
The girl looks at the man, then back at Hoban. “It ain’t possible,” she says, shaking her head. “We - we *buried* him. Between Shepard Book and-“
”I know where we buried him, Kaylee,” the man says, turning his head a little. “And I can’t be sure. Not yet, leastways. Go run and get Simon.”
The girl keeps staring.
”*Now*, Kaylee,” the man says. It snaps the girl out of her reverie, and she takes off at a run.
”You say you don’t remember nothing before you woke up here,” the man asks Hoban, and Hoban shakes his head.
“Not much,” he says. “I must have flown something, because I know how, and my name’s Hoban.” He thinks back, letting his mind sift over the bits and pieces he’s dredged up early in the morning and late at night. It’s not much. “I think I like dinos,” he finally says. “And I was married. Or I had a sister. Something. There’s this woman I see sometimes, in my dreams, and she’s-“ Hoban shakes his head. “Familiar.”
“We think he’s tetched,” Shepard says, touching the side of his head. The man glares at him.
”He’s not tetched,” the man snaps. “Suffered one too many blows to the head, maybe, but that’s not the same thing.”
“Do I know you?” Hoban asks. “I mean. From the way y’all are acting, I think you know me, anyway.”
”You could say that,” the man says, and he smiles. It’s not much, barely more than turning up one side of his mouth, but something in Hoban’s stomach relaxes at the sight of it.
Then the girl’s back, dragging a young man with her. He seems woefully out of place, especially here on Majesdane where no one’s seen fancy collared sweaters except on the Cortex, and he looks a mite cranky. “I can’t see what’s so-“ he starts, and stops when he looks at Hoban.
The staring’s not so bad, but everyone shutting up in the middle of their sentences is sort of irritating, the third time through.
”That’s not possible,” the young man says flatly. Still staring. Another couple of minutes, it won’t even seem weird anymore. “You - you were -“ He looks at the older man. “That’s not *possible*,” he says again. “It’s - it’s just a lookalike. Statistically-“
”He says his name is Hoban,” the girl says, and the young man closes his mouth with a snap.
”I can’t,” he starts, sounding helpless and slightly lost. Hoban wants to reach out and clap him on the shoulder, though he’s not sure why. “I can’t do anything here. I can’t do anything back on the ship, either, but I can run DNA scans, see if it matches.”
”And if it does?” the older man asks, though it’s clear it’s not a question. He’s expecting Hoban’s DNA to match to whatever they’re running it against.
”I have no rutting idea,” the young man says faintly. The girl squeezes his hand tight.
There’s maybe thirty seconds of silence. Hoban scratches the back of his ear.
Then there’s a hand on his shoulder, turning him around. It’s another girl, about the size of the first one, with black hair and pale skin. She’s wearing a dress and a sweater that’s at least three sizes too big for her, and her head’s cocked to one side. She stares at Hoban for a minute, but doesn’t say anything.
Finally, she says, “If you can tell the candle is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.” She wrinkles her nose. “No, that’s not it.”
It’s close, though. Something about the words sounds familiar. “It’s close, though,” he says aloud. “You can use a hammer to build a house, but words are what hold it together.”
She smiles. “Not interfering,” she says, “is for children, not adults.” She grabs his hand and starts dragging him off. “You should come home now.”
“River,” the older man says warningly, but she ignores him.
”Only people who don’t have eyes need tests,” she calls back, looking over her shoulder. “He needs a haircut.”
And then it’s kind of a blur, because there’s a tiny girl who weighs maybe 90 pounds in all her clothes, soaking wet, and she’s dragging him like he weighs even less than she does. Not that Hoban’s putting up a struggle. She’s weird, maybe, but not scary-weird, and he outweighs her by at least sixty pounds. He’ll be fine.
”She took your memories,” the girl - River? - says, coming to a stop. Hoban does, too, if only so he doesn’t plow into her. “It’s the safest way, but it’s the old way, too. Enlightenment means you don’t hear news anymore.”
”Okay,” Hoban says. It’s the safest thing to do when you have no idea what anyone’s talking about.
She half-drags him up the gangplank and into the ship - a real Firefly, too. Shiny. Hoban has the urge to just lean his head against the deck plates for a couple minutes and listen, but River keeps going, pushing him up the stairs and towards-
--the bridge.
“I know this,” he says, and he does, bam! just like that. He knows these controls, *these* controls, like he’s done this a hundred times. Or a million. He brushes his fingers against the controls.
”I am a leaf on the wind,” he hears someone say, as if from a great distance. It takes Hoban a minute to realize he’s the one who said it, just not now.
It’s a memory.
“I’m remembering things,” he tells River, who just smiles at him.
”People don’t forget all at once,” she tells him. “They do it over time, slowly, because that’s what keeps us from going crazy.” Her smile goes a little crooked, like she just told a joke. Hoban doesn’t get it. “You had help. Mother Nature doesn’t want secrets getting out, not after last time.” She leans in and whispers, “I saved your dinos.”
He had dinos. Huh. “Thank you,” he tells her, earning another smile.
He was here, once. Hoban doesn’t question it, because maybe his memory has more holes in it than his sweater but it’s still *there*, buried under things he has no use for. He knows these people - he knows this *ship*, knows it more than he knows his name.
”I don’t think my name’s Hoban,” he says after a second.
River shakes her head. “It’s just the name your parents put on your birth certificate,” she tells him. “We name things to define them, but it doesn’t always work. Things have their own names; we just don’t listen.”
“River,” someone says - a woman - and the voice makes Hoban raise his head and start turning around. “Have you seen the captain? We got this-“
She sees Hoban’s movement out of the corner of her eye and looks at him.
And stops.
She’s tall, though that could just be the boots. Her hair is long and dark, a little curl or wave to it, and her skin’s ten shades darker than Shepard Connor’s.
She’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen; and he’s seen her before.
”I know you,” Hoban says faintly.
”Of course you do,” the woman says, just as faint, and shuts up. Just stares at him.
“You have a scar on the top of your right thigh. You got it during the war, when you got grazed by a stray bullet. You’re allergic to walnuts, you hate meat cooked rare because you don’t want to be able to tell what kind of animal it used to be.” It’s all spilling out of him, every word leaving his mouth as soon as it pops into his head. “You love licorice, even though I think it smells like feet, and you wore white when we got married.”
The woman - her name’s Zoe, and oh how could he have forgotten that? - smiles a little. “I thought Mal was never going to stop laughing.”
”I punched him,” Hoban says somberly. “Not hard, but he shut up.”
“Yeah,” Zoe says, still smiling. “He did.”
They just stare at each other.
He’ll have to learn everyone else’s names, not to mention his own. He knows this woman, knows he loves her, but the details are still fuzzy in places. He remembers the edges of people - their outlines, what they do - but a lot of it’s still a blur. That’s okay, though.
He has a ship, and a wife, and apparently some dinosaurs. He has a family. He has a life. He has time. He didn’t have any of those things when he woke up this morning.
“I am a leaf on the wind,” he says, though he’s not sure why.
“Leaves drift,” River says, perched in the co-pilot’s seat, her knees drawn up to her chest. “But they land, eventually. Even come home, sometimes.”
Hoban looks around - at the ship, at this ship, his home and his life; at the woman across from him, still looking at him like he’ll disappear if she looks away. He knows the feeling.
”Sometimes,” he agrees. “If they’re lucky.”
***
I don’t typically do fix-its, especially not for things involving Joss. But where I come from, we fix things that are broken; we don’t break things that aren’t broken and then REFUSE TO FIX THEM, JOSS, WTF. YOU HOSER.
So clearly, I had to. And if you love us at all, Joss, you’ll fix it in the sequel(s).
This is entirely because of lcsbanana, who had the idea first. Unfortunately, my brain is a giant ball-running-with whore, so. Here we are.
The whitespace is supposed to be there; it’s not a formatting error. Thank you, Pretentiousness Fairy!