Firefly - Ice in Crystal - Part 2
Part 2 of the Firefly fanfic Ice in Crystal ... see Part 1 for for warnings, etc.
Read Part 1 here!
###
Lao tien ye, Simon thought, and froze for a split-second before lurching across the shuttle to Zoe's side. Jayne was right behind him. Not Wash. The captain had Wash up on the flight deck, and he wasn't letting him come. Simon could hear the shouting through the speaker. He hadn't known Wash even knew some of those curses. Some of them he didn't know himself.
"Doc." Mal's unnaturally flat voice, through the speakers. "She alive?"
"Yes," he said, and moved Zoe's limp hand away from the makeshift bandage. "She slowed the bleeding. We'll get her to the surgery."
"Meet you there," Mal said, and cut the comm channel. Simon grabbed rubber tubing from his kit and set to work to tie off the wound properly, then stepped back as Jayne moved in and scooped up Zoe's weight with a grunt of effort.
"No lightweight," he muttered. "Move it, doc, I'm getting blood all over me." What Jayne wasn't saying -- wouldn't, maybe -- was that he was worried. He moved fast, once Simon cleared the path. Zoe might not be a lightweight, but Simon had to hurry to keep up, and by the time he ducked in the doorway of the surgery Jayne was already stretching Zoe out on the cot, straightening her arms and legs.
"Oh my God," Shepherd Book murmured, from the corner, and rose to put aside his Bible. "Is she going to be all right?"
"Yes," Simon said again, with a confidence he didn't quite feel. "But not if everybody crowds me."
"I'll pray from the hallway," Book said, in that low and soothing voice. "What about Inara?"
"What?" Simon was busy rolling trays of instruments within reach, especially the cautery laser.
"Wasn't Inara with her in the shuttle?"
"Wasn't nobody in that shuttle but Zoe," Jayne supplied. "And a whole mess of blood, some of it hers."
"Dear Lord ..."
"Out," Simon ordered tensely, and turned on the power to the cautery laser. It was hard doing this kind of work without a decent surgical team, the last thing he needed was chatter above his head and breath on the back of his neck. Jayne, for once, actually obeyed, but it didn't much matter; his place was taken almost immediately by Mal, who came right up to the edge of the gurney, staring at Zoe. "You too, captain, I need to work, please. Out."
"Wake her up."
"What?"
"Wake her up right now, or I will."
"I'm just about to operate!"
"Then I'm here in good time." Mal bent over and put his hand on Zoe's wound. And squeezed. She woke with a jolt, and Simon yelled and lunged to bat Mal away.
Mal backhanded him hard enough to send him stumbling back and to the floor, blinking back stars.
"Captain," Zoe said. She sounded tense, but only a little dazed. "Sir, Reavers, they took -- "
"I know which way they went. I need to know which ship. Tell me about the ship."
"Not much bigger than a shuttle, sir, blue marks on the port side, red on the other. Spikes -- " Zoe's voice faltered. Simon climbed back to his feet, glaring at Mal, but the captain had given up torturing his patient, at least for the moment. He was holding Zoe's hand. "Spikes all around the nose of the ship. Three -- I think three bodies strapped to one side, not more than half burned up."
Mal nodded, a single military kind of nod, and speared Simon with a bleak look. "Get her up."
"Captain, she's got a hole in an artery, I need to repair the tear, and then she needs to be off her feet for at least two days -- "
Mal reached over the gurney, grabbed Simon by the collar and yanked him forward. "I need her. Zoe?"
"I'll be there, sir."
"See there, Doc? You do what you have to do keep her from being a liar."
He let go. Simon teetered on his toes and caught his balance, and opened his mouth for a furious retort. Didn't matter. Mal was already heading for the door without a second look.
"Sir," Zoe called, and Mal hesitated on his way. "I'm sorry. I should have -- "
"We're going after her," Mal said.
"Yes sir."
Mal turned and looked at her for one silent instant. "Did your best, can't ask more than that."
Zoe said nothing. When Simon turned his attention back to her, she closed her eyes and said, "Seal me up and get me back on my feet. Now."
"Zoe, I don't think -- "
"Now!" There was so much cold authority in her that it was easy to forget she was so badly injured. He shook his head, more in denial than rejection, and reached for a syringe. "No drugs."
"You're going to need something for the pain -- "
"Just something that won't put me out."
He changed ends of the tray, found the local anesthetic, and began working. The cut was ragged and filthy. Plenty of debris he needed to clean out, not to mention an excellent chance for infection, and it was all a waste, a stupid waste of time if she was going to hop off the table and run off to fight Reavers ...
"Simon." Zoe's voice startled him out of his concentration, and he looked up to meet her eyes. "I could have done something. I didn't. I need to make that right. You just get me upright and moving."
His lips parted, and for a second he remembered reading River's letters in the sunlight of his room back home. He'd puzzled over the funny phrases, the odd things she was saying, and he'd assumed for too long that she was playing games, or under too much pressure.
He'd delayed, and all the while the Alliance was ripping apart her brain. Torturing her. Destroying that perfect and precious innocence.
"You could die," he said.
"You went after River, didn't you?"
He sometimes suspected Zoe had a touch of River's mind-reading trick. "I didn't have a six-inch gash in my leg at the time."
"And if you had?"
He bent back to his work, putting on that iron-cold concentration that he'd learned through the years of medical training. " I'd have gone if my leg had been hacked off, and you know it. Shut up and let me work."
###
I'm going to kill him, Wash thought. It pulsed in his temples in time with his fast, angry heartbeats, and his fists opened and closed on the controls as he steered. Kill him slow. Kill him in ways that will make a couple of hours with the Reavers look like --
"There." Mal leaned over his shoulder, pointing at the sensor display, which was -- typically -- a sea of static just when he needed it most. "You see it?"
"What, the big scary ship with all the little scary ships? Yeah, I see it. You want to back off, captain? Because you're breathing my air."
"Just fly the gorram ship."
"Oh, I'll fly the gorram ship. And it's up to you to figure out what we're going to do once we get there, 'cause the only idea I have is throwing you out the airlock in hopes they might slow down to strap your carcass onto the -- "
"Wash. Fly. The. Gorram. Ship."
"I am, sir. And maybe after we do the impossible and defeat a bunch of Reavers that just laid waste to an entire town, let us not forget, we can pull the miraculously unharmed fair maiden from their evil clutches so that she can fall into your manly strong arms -- "
"Bi zui!" Mal roared, loud enough to deafen his right ear.
"Don't you tell me to shut up!" Wash roared, but without turning around because he was too busy seeing the bright glints far in the distance starting to resolve into the shape of ... ships. Lots of ships, moving fast. Pulling away. Oh no you don't, he thought, and poured on the speed. Serenity wasn't a cruiser, but she had legs. He slapped the comm control and lowered his voice to soothing, calm levels. "Kaylee! I need you to kick it up a notch, sweetie."
"On it!" she chirped back.
Wash switched back to full yell. "Don't you dare tell me to shut up when my wife, my wife, got herself carved up by Reavers and you won't even let me see her!"
"She's alive."
"So you say! But I got a mind you could lie about that to get me to keep flying!"
"Well you -- you -- " Mal shifted position, and Wash looked up into his face. "Might could have a point about that. But I didn't. She's alive, and the doc's fixing her up. I give you my word."
"Got that right," said Jayne's voice from over by the door, and a quick click-clack of weapons loading. "Carried her there myself, Wash. Ain't no big thing, 'cept she almost bled to death."
"What?" Wash tried to turn. Mal held him by the shoulders, hard as iron.
"Fly -- "
" -- the gorram ship, yeah, I know, Mal, but -- two minutes. I need two minutes." He twisted his neck at a painful angle to look up into that cold stone face. "We're on course. We're not catching them in two minutes. Unless they slow down, we'll be on their tail for hours. Please."
He almost never asked, and Mal knew it. He watched the muscle flutter along Mal's jawline, and then the man nodded sharply. "Go. But if you hear me squawk, you haul ass back here."
"Gone!"
And he was, plunging past Mal, darting around Jayne, thudding down the steps and sprinting down the corridor at breakneck speed. Ship wasn't that big, but his heart was pounding fair to burst, and he wasn't wasting any of his two minutes on travel.
He burst in the door of the surgery just as Simon put the last careful stitch in Zoe's leg. Without looking up, the doctor said, "I was wondering when the captain would let you off the leash."
"More like I bit his leg, pissed on his shoe, and ran for it," Wash gasped. He reached out, and Zoe's hands met him halfway. "Oh my God, baby ..."
Her luminous eyes opened. "Hush. Wasn't but a scratch. Deep one, though. Gonna leave a mark."
"Oh, very sexy. Maybe I should kiss it and make it all better." Beneath the rattling, bright words he was scared, scared of the pallor of her face, the vagueness in her eyes. Scared that the Reavers they were chasing would turn and finish the job right. He kissed the back of her hand, holding her gaze. "My crazy warrior woman."
Zoe smiled at him, and the fear scurried back around a corner. Not gone, no, but fear just couldn't stand the sight of that radiant, perfect smile. "Shouldn't you be flying the ship?"
He clapped his free hand to his forehead, letting his eyes go wide. "My God! You're right!" He lunged forward to kiss her, letting the kiss say everything that was too private, too perfect to say before witnesses. He pulled back, kissed each lovely eyelid with tender care, and whispered, "Love you, missus."
"Love you, mister. Go make me proud."
The lips were too tempting, and he had to have them again, and midway through the kiss the comm erupted with Mal's annoyed voice yelling, "Wash!"
"He's coming!" She shoved him away, still smiling. "See you soon."
Wash hesitated, memorizing her face, her eyes, her smile, and blew her another kiss.
And blew Simon one because, well, he was there.
And then he ran for the flight deck.
###
It was another gorram suicide run, and Jayne was damn tired of those. Sure, Mal paid him -- not well, but enough. Sure, he could stomach everybody on the ship pretty well, mostly. 'cept Mal, sometimes, when they crossed wires. And that stick-up-his-pi-gu doctor, who oughtn't to be on the boat in the first damn place. And his creeped-up sister. And Book, when he got onto one of his sermonizings. And Zoe, when she stared him down with those cold tombstone eyes. And Wash, always going on like some damn ten year old.
Come to think of it, Jayne didn't have much fondness for any of 'em, 'cept maybe Kaylee, who was so sweet and bright that she'd rub the grouchy off of anybody. But if he had to pick a second choice of favorite, it'd be Inara. Not 'cause he had a chance in shit of having her -- more than Mal, maybe, but that wasn't saying much -- but 'cause Inara was something new in his world. He liked thinking dirty about her, but that was just his way with women; he liked more about her than that. Maybe the way she could put Mal in his place. Or the way she smelled. Or the smile she sometimes gave him, when she forgot who she was smiling at.
Gorram suicide run, going after Reavers, but he guessed he'd do it anyway. Only option was to take a shuttle and run for it, and the only planet close had already been ripped to hell by the bastards. When he went planetside, he was mostly for the drinking and whoring, not the burying.
He was checking Vera over, making sure the action on the gun was smooth as silk, when from the pilot's chair Wash said, "Mal. Look at this."
Wash sounded tense. Hell, he ought. Jayne crowded up unasked to jam himself in a narrow angle, trying to get a look at the readouts Wash was pointing at. Looked like one of the Reavers was falling back, which meant they were gaining on it. Smaller ship, not the bigger one, and the rest of the Reaver pack was moving on at speed.
They weren't much for tending their own, that was sure. If the ship had a burnout, it had likely killed everybody in it anyway, Reavers not having much of a basic respect for radiation and such.
"Which one?" Mal asked. "Which one is it?"
"I can't tell."
"Which gorram one?"
"Hey! Go push your nose against the window and tell me, I don't know! Dots on a screen all look alike!"
Jayne had the best eyes, and without Mal even needing to so much as crook a finger, he moved over to the port, craned his neck, and said, "Maybe the size of a shuttle, or a mite bigger."
"Paint, Jayne. What color is it?"
"Hell, Mal, this distance, it could be pretty and purple and I couldn't see it! Get us closer!"
They were already doing that, and nobody spoke. Nobody said how long it had been since the Reavers had dragged Inara off, but Jayne knew. Coming up on three hours, now. Long enough for her body to get cool, and that was all they were going to do here, get back a body, or add to the pile of corpses themselves.
"Blue," Jayne said, as the Reaver ship slowly pulled closer. Didn't look so much like they were gaining on it as it was getting sucked in toward them, but that was just the way space worked. He didn't get bothered by it, not anymore. "Blue on one side, anyway."
"What about the other side?"
"Can't see through metal. Couple of bodies strapped to the port hull, though. Spikes all over the front of it. You sure they ain't just playing dead? Gonna grab us when we get close?"
"You ever known Reavers to display cunning like that?"
"What if Inara turned -- " He ducked Mal's punch this time, halfway knowing it was coming even though his back was turned, spun, and grabbed the man's arm, yanking him close. "You gorram well listen even if you don't like it. What if we get over there and she's gone Reaver? They'd be cunning then, right?"
"She ain't a Reaver."
"Maybe she is. What then? You gonna try the cure on her?"
Mal's eyes were bleak and black as space. "No cure. You know that."
"Just makin' sure you do." He let go. "I'll do it if you ain't got the stomach."
He looked down. Mal's gun was pressing hard into his muscles, right over his own guts.
"She ain't dead, and she ain't a Reaver," he said. "And I got enough stomach. You want to keep on having yours, you'd best shut your mouth."
Jayne shut up. Mal stared him down for another few seconds, then moved to look out the front viewscreen at the Reaver ship that was growing there like some damn magic trick. Ugly, twisted thing, all rusty blood-red and barbarian blue, more spikes than a gorram hedgehog. No lights showing. No lights at all.
"Mal," Wash said. "That ship's still powered."
"And drifting because ... ?"
"Don't know. Maybe their navigation's out, but the engines are still up. Just not pointed any place in particular right this minute."
The rest of the Reaver pack was distant lights at the limit of Jayne's vision in the window. They weren't coming back. That was something, anyway. Not too damn much, if they were having to fight their way onto a ship full of crazy cannibal madmen, but hell, he'd take whatever the universe wanted to give right now.
"Can you match her and get a seal?"
"Can do, captain," Wash said, and got to it.
There was a minor commotion at the door, and Jayne turned to see Shepherd Book and the doc, with Zoe between them. They weren't exactly supporting her, and she shook off their helping hands as soon as she saw Jayne looking.
"Well," he said. "Thought you might be laid up a while."
"I was," she said, and walked to the console to kiss her husband. "I'm better."
"Three hours isn't exactly what the doctor ordered," Wash said. "Baby -- "
"I'm good to go, husband."
She wasn't anything like, Jayne knew. He was used to the way Zoe moved, like greased ball bearings, and she was stiff and careful now. And pale. Her face had always been the color of milked coffee, but there was a mite too much milk in it. But she was upright, and as long as her eyes were open, Zoe would be shooting straighter than any man he ever ran with.
Mal gave her a once-over look, no doubt spotting the same things, and gave her one of those brisk soldier-type nods. She returned it. "Book, Doc, you better arm yourselves. I want you standing by in case we don't make it and the Reavers do. Be up to you to take as many down as you can. Wash -- "
"Stay with the ship, yeah, Mal, I know. She'll be ready to break seal and run the second you get Inara on board."
Jayne moved to Mal's side as he turned to look at the Reaver ship again. "It occur to you that it's damn lucky, the one ship we want just happens to fall out of the sky into our laps?"
"Don't think it's luck," Mal nodded. "But it might be Inara."
"Two minutes," Wash said. "Better get ready."
Didn't take more than one minute to get to the airlock with Zoe and Mal. They spent the leisure silently checking over weapons. Zoe had a gun in one hand, a knife in the other. Mal had two guns and a knife at his hip, ready for cross-draw.
Jayne had Vera and a belt full of options. Mal didn't sass him about the grenades, not this time. "Ruttin' hell, I can't believe we're doin' this," he muttered, as the outer airlock door opened and they moved inside. It hissed shut behind them. Nothing but one metal door between him and men who ate the flesh off of screaming victims. "Better be worth it."
The outer door opened, and a blast of ice-cold air blew over them, filthy air, sick and sweet and oily with the taste of rot. Jayne coughed, choked, and coughed again. Mal didn't. He plunged right on, into the dark, into the heart of it, and Zoe was right behind him. "Shit," Jayne choked, and moved out. His heart was pumping fit to burst. Lights were down in here, not out but turned real low, and it made nightmare out of corners.
No sound, but for their footsteps and the steady rough thrum of the engines and recyclers. The place stank like a charnel pit. Why the hell Reavers didn't die, all the filth they traveled in ...
He spotted the first body hanging on a hook and near as hell lost it. Lao tien ye ... looked like crows had been at it, but he knew it hadn't been crows pecked the eye sockets clean, nor stripped flesh from that slack, screaming face. Tongue was gone, too. Part of the arm ...
The thing was still dripping blood, and after a second Jayne thought, it's got dark hair. Wasn't a woman, not no more, most of those parts were gone, but --
"It's not her," Zoe said. "Keep moving."
It got worse, after that. Hooks everywhere, or spikes, with bodies swinging off of them. Most were fresh. They had to look at every one of 'em, to be sure. By common consent, they didn't talk. Bad enough, breathing shallow. They just shook heads to show they hadn't found what they'd come for.
Down the corridor, they found their first Reaver.
He was real damn dead.
The thing barely looked more human that the corpses it had eaten -- cut and scarred into something out of an opium nightmare. Fuck. It was soaked in blood, where it still had clothes. When Jayne flipped it over, blood oozed out of every damn hole he could see -- mouth, eyes, ears.
"Ren ci de Fo zu," Zoe whispered, and she wasn't one to invoke the Buddha, not much.
"Not a mark on him, 'cept what he put there himself," Jayne said, and looked up. Zoe had her gun pointed down at the corpse, and her face was twisted into something he didn't hardly want to know. "What the hell happened?"
Mal was already moving on. They counted three more Reavers along the corridor, all dead the same way, bled out. Two more who were still dying, shuddering as the last of their lives vomited red out of their mouths and noses, or what passed for them in those fucked-up faces.
Zoe shot 'em. Single bullets to the head, no expression on her face now. Jayne shrugged. He intended to save his bullets for when it counted.
One chamber at the end. Control room, with boards and lights, half of 'em dark, with wires hanging and still spitting sparks. Two more dead Reavers, apart from the fresh corpses and heaps of body parts around the room.
And Inara.
Jayne froze, staring. Mal took three steps forward, then stopped, and Jayne didn't look at him. Didn't dare look at him. Some things a man shouldn't see, and this was one of 'em.
Inara flinched and crawled away from them for a few wounded feet before she fell on her face on the filthy, blood-slick deck.
Zoe's voice was gentler than he'd have thought she had in her. "Inara. Shhhhh. It's Zoe." She reached in the bag slung over her shoulder and pulled out a plain dark gown, must have been something out of Inara's own closet. It gleamed sleek and silky in the dim light. Zoe knelt down next to the woman and settled the robe on her, talking in whispers until Inara, in slow painful jerks, crawled another few inches to curl up in Zoe's lap.
Jayne wasn't a sentimental man, not by half, but he had to look away from that.
Mal took a step forward, arms outstretched. "I'll take her," he said. His voice didn't sound right.
"No." Zoe didn't look up. "Go get a stretcher."
"No time to -- "
"She doesn't want touching."
Mal's mouth shut with a snap, and Jayne said, quietly, "I'll get one from the doc."
He went along back down that corridor, listening to the drip of bodies and the silence, and wondered what the hell had happened on this ship.
And decided that maybe it was a damn sight better not to know.
###
"It's called bing jing de," Simon said. They were sitting in the passenger lounge, outside of the infirmary. "Ice in crystal. One of the most powerful toxins ever developed by the Alliance. It has medical uses, mostly for use breaking up blood clots. It's a powerful anti-coagulant, but in larger doses it brings on uncontrollable hemorrhaging. Companions take regular doses of it to build up immunities, I understand. That's why she survived it. The drug, anyway."
"Why'd she take it in the first place?"
"I don't know. Maybe because the Reavers had her, and it was the only way she could defend herself. She must have known they were going to rape and kill her. I think it was a form of ... mutually assured destruction." Simon kept his voice low, as low as Mal's. There was something soothing about him right now, though Mal had never been over-partial to the boy. When he was like this, wrapped up in care for a patient, he wasn't half a pain in the ass.
And he'd watched Simon's gentle hands soothing Inara's cuts, healing the bites, repairing things that ought never to have been broken, and that counted. That would buy Brother and Sister Tam a mountain of his goodwill, forever.
"Mal," he said. He was staring at the floor, and that pretty-boy face was tense and a little bit too sick for some hardened surgeon. "I'd like to say she didn't suffer much, but the truth is -- they wouldn't have started dying for at least an hour, given the concentrations in her bloodstream and what we know about the Reavers. She suffered. More than I can imagine." His neat, clever, soft hands scrubbed together, washing away imaginary blood.
The infirmary was near as much of a mess as the Reaver ship had been, and Mal didn't look at the pile of bloody laundry showing through the observation window, or the pail of bloody water where Simon and Zoe had sponged her down to get the Reavers' stink off of her. Not many places he could look just now without wanting to kill, and all the ones he needed to kill were dead twice over. Inara had seen to that. "She going to be all right?" he asked.
Simon sighed. "Is she going to heal? The poison's working its way out of her system, except for the background levels she always has, and I've cleaned up the other wounds as best I can. But if you're asking me about her mental state -- I have no idea. Three hours is a long time, Mal. An eternity, even for a Companion, who's trained in ways to take herself away from it."
Mal felt something tighten up in his throat, hot and hard, and said nothing.
"Not that I can imagine how she'll be able to work as a Companion again," Simon murmured. "Not without first-rate Alliance psychotherapy, anyway. And that doesn't come cheap."
"It'll get paid," Mal said. "Where?"
"Probably ought to set course for one of the Central Planets. She needs to have a real medical facility look her over, and start counseling as soon as possible."
"I'll tell Wash," Mal said, and stood up. He didn't look at Simon. Didn't look away either. "Thanks, doc."
Simon slowly shook his head. "I couldn't do much." He sounded unhappy about it.
Mal squeezed his shoulder, letting the pressure say all the thanks he didn't know how to put voice to. "How's River?"
"Sleeping. Once you got Inara back, she stopped fighting the drugs. She was trying to warn us. If I'd just listened -- "
"Not your fault, Simon."
Mal knew whose fault it was. Inara had been trying to tell him something this morning, during that monkey's-ass-crack of a fight, and he'd walked out. She'd been scared, and alone, and she'd needed him.
He'd left her. At the end, when she'd needed him, he'd left.
He walked down the empty corridors, boots thumping on grating. Kaylee was weeping in the engine room, but that was just Kaylee's way; somebody would come by and comfort her, probably Simon. Jayne was in his quarters, cleaning Vera, though he hadn't fired her. Jayne always did find comfort in deadly things.
Shepherd Book was on his knees in the hold, praying, grizzled gray head bent to forces Mal didn't understand or respect much. But he figured praying wouldn't do harm right now, and he left him to it.
Wash accepted the course change silently, asking questions with his eyes but not his mouth.
Nothing left but the last stop, and Mal went up the steps to Inara's shuttle.
Zoe was outside, sitting against the closed door with her knees drawn up. Her eyes were closed, but they opened as Mal clumped to a stop at the top of the stairs. They stared at each other for a few long seconds, and he remembered all the times he'd seen her bloody and wounded, near to dying.
She looked worse than that.
"Can't let you in, captain," she said. "Last thing she needs right now is to be reminded who she was yesterday. Or what she's lost."
"Move, Zoe."
"No, sir." She swallowed convulsively, and shuddered. "Simon tell you what it was? The poison? How it worked?"
"Move."
"I told her I'd shoot her before I let them take her, and I didn't. I aimed at her, but -- " He reached down, lifted her up, and held her for a second. Felt her shudder again. No tears. Zoe didn't go in for tears. "I broke my word to her," she said. "That ain't right, sir. Least I can do is protect her now."
"Not from me," he said, and hit the control panel. The door hissed open, and that ridiculous smell puffed out, fine perfume and warm wax and all the pretty silky things that made up Inara ...
He went inside, aware that Zoe was trying to talk to him but not listening, not listening at all.
Inara lay in her bed, huddled in a ball. Drugged into insensibility, covered up warm. One hand flung over the edge, fingers upturned like she was begging for something. She was shivering. He got another silk cover and draped it over her, reached across and smoothed her fine dark hair, and remembered the fury and panic in her eyes the last time he'd seen her, when he'd flung those bitter words at her.
You want to play the fine lah-de-dah lady on Serenity, have all us on our knees and kissing your hand ...
She'd never asked for that. Never.
He got on his knees beside her bed, took that scraped and bruised hand in his, and kissed it with all the pure love and anguish he had, and held it to his forehead.
She murmured a name.
It wasn't his.
in a place my hearing cannot reach
a voice calls softly to me
in a place my seeing cannot reach
a pair of eyes watches me
in a place my skin cannot feel
gently a hand touches me
in a place I cannot imagine
someone is missing me
God, by Song Xiaoxian
- end -
This is my first attempt at Firefly, so apologies to the Divine Whedon for mangling language and/or character ... but I had to give it a shot.
Cheers for a happy 2006 -- Julie
Read Part 1 here!
###
Lao tien ye, Simon thought, and froze for a split-second before lurching across the shuttle to Zoe's side. Jayne was right behind him. Not Wash. The captain had Wash up on the flight deck, and he wasn't letting him come. Simon could hear the shouting through the speaker. He hadn't known Wash even knew some of those curses. Some of them he didn't know himself.
"Doc." Mal's unnaturally flat voice, through the speakers. "She alive?"
"Yes," he said, and moved Zoe's limp hand away from the makeshift bandage. "She slowed the bleeding. We'll get her to the surgery."
"Meet you there," Mal said, and cut the comm channel. Simon grabbed rubber tubing from his kit and set to work to tie off the wound properly, then stepped back as Jayne moved in and scooped up Zoe's weight with a grunt of effort.
"No lightweight," he muttered. "Move it, doc, I'm getting blood all over me." What Jayne wasn't saying -- wouldn't, maybe -- was that he was worried. He moved fast, once Simon cleared the path. Zoe might not be a lightweight, but Simon had to hurry to keep up, and by the time he ducked in the doorway of the surgery Jayne was already stretching Zoe out on the cot, straightening her arms and legs.
"Oh my God," Shepherd Book murmured, from the corner, and rose to put aside his Bible. "Is she going to be all right?"
"Yes," Simon said again, with a confidence he didn't quite feel. "But not if everybody crowds me."
"I'll pray from the hallway," Book said, in that low and soothing voice. "What about Inara?"
"What?" Simon was busy rolling trays of instruments within reach, especially the cautery laser.
"Wasn't Inara with her in the shuttle?"
"Wasn't nobody in that shuttle but Zoe," Jayne supplied. "And a whole mess of blood, some of it hers."
"Dear Lord ..."
"Out," Simon ordered tensely, and turned on the power to the cautery laser. It was hard doing this kind of work without a decent surgical team, the last thing he needed was chatter above his head and breath on the back of his neck. Jayne, for once, actually obeyed, but it didn't much matter; his place was taken almost immediately by Mal, who came right up to the edge of the gurney, staring at Zoe. "You too, captain, I need to work, please. Out."
"Wake her up."
"What?"
"Wake her up right now, or I will."
"I'm just about to operate!"
"Then I'm here in good time." Mal bent over and put his hand on Zoe's wound. And squeezed. She woke with a jolt, and Simon yelled and lunged to bat Mal away.
Mal backhanded him hard enough to send him stumbling back and to the floor, blinking back stars.
"Captain," Zoe said. She sounded tense, but only a little dazed. "Sir, Reavers, they took -- "
"I know which way they went. I need to know which ship. Tell me about the ship."
"Not much bigger than a shuttle, sir, blue marks on the port side, red on the other. Spikes -- " Zoe's voice faltered. Simon climbed back to his feet, glaring at Mal, but the captain had given up torturing his patient, at least for the moment. He was holding Zoe's hand. "Spikes all around the nose of the ship. Three -- I think three bodies strapped to one side, not more than half burned up."
Mal nodded, a single military kind of nod, and speared Simon with a bleak look. "Get her up."
"Captain, she's got a hole in an artery, I need to repair the tear, and then she needs to be off her feet for at least two days -- "
Mal reached over the gurney, grabbed Simon by the collar and yanked him forward. "I need her. Zoe?"
"I'll be there, sir."
"See there, Doc? You do what you have to do keep her from being a liar."
He let go. Simon teetered on his toes and caught his balance, and opened his mouth for a furious retort. Didn't matter. Mal was already heading for the door without a second look.
"Sir," Zoe called, and Mal hesitated on his way. "I'm sorry. I should have -- "
"We're going after her," Mal said.
"Yes sir."
Mal turned and looked at her for one silent instant. "Did your best, can't ask more than that."
Zoe said nothing. When Simon turned his attention back to her, she closed her eyes and said, "Seal me up and get me back on my feet. Now."
"Zoe, I don't think -- "
"Now!" There was so much cold authority in her that it was easy to forget she was so badly injured. He shook his head, more in denial than rejection, and reached for a syringe. "No drugs."
"You're going to need something for the pain -- "
"Just something that won't put me out."
He changed ends of the tray, found the local anesthetic, and began working. The cut was ragged and filthy. Plenty of debris he needed to clean out, not to mention an excellent chance for infection, and it was all a waste, a stupid waste of time if she was going to hop off the table and run off to fight Reavers ...
"Simon." Zoe's voice startled him out of his concentration, and he looked up to meet her eyes. "I could have done something. I didn't. I need to make that right. You just get me upright and moving."
His lips parted, and for a second he remembered reading River's letters in the sunlight of his room back home. He'd puzzled over the funny phrases, the odd things she was saying, and he'd assumed for too long that she was playing games, or under too much pressure.
He'd delayed, and all the while the Alliance was ripping apart her brain. Torturing her. Destroying that perfect and precious innocence.
"You could die," he said.
"You went after River, didn't you?"
He sometimes suspected Zoe had a touch of River's mind-reading trick. "I didn't have a six-inch gash in my leg at the time."
"And if you had?"
He bent back to his work, putting on that iron-cold concentration that he'd learned through the years of medical training. " I'd have gone if my leg had been hacked off, and you know it. Shut up and let me work."
###
I'm going to kill him, Wash thought. It pulsed in his temples in time with his fast, angry heartbeats, and his fists opened and closed on the controls as he steered. Kill him slow. Kill him in ways that will make a couple of hours with the Reavers look like --
"There." Mal leaned over his shoulder, pointing at the sensor display, which was -- typically -- a sea of static just when he needed it most. "You see it?"
"What, the big scary ship with all the little scary ships? Yeah, I see it. You want to back off, captain? Because you're breathing my air."
"Just fly the gorram ship."
"Oh, I'll fly the gorram ship. And it's up to you to figure out what we're going to do once we get there, 'cause the only idea I have is throwing you out the airlock in hopes they might slow down to strap your carcass onto the -- "
"Wash. Fly. The. Gorram. Ship."
"I am, sir. And maybe after we do the impossible and defeat a bunch of Reavers that just laid waste to an entire town, let us not forget, we can pull the miraculously unharmed fair maiden from their evil clutches so that she can fall into your manly strong arms -- "
"Bi zui!" Mal roared, loud enough to deafen his right ear.
"Don't you tell me to shut up!" Wash roared, but without turning around because he was too busy seeing the bright glints far in the distance starting to resolve into the shape of ... ships. Lots of ships, moving fast. Pulling away. Oh no you don't, he thought, and poured on the speed. Serenity wasn't a cruiser, but she had legs. He slapped the comm control and lowered his voice to soothing, calm levels. "Kaylee! I need you to kick it up a notch, sweetie."
"On it!" she chirped back.
Wash switched back to full yell. "Don't you dare tell me to shut up when my wife, my wife, got herself carved up by Reavers and you won't even let me see her!"
"She's alive."
"So you say! But I got a mind you could lie about that to get me to keep flying!"
"Well you -- you -- " Mal shifted position, and Wash looked up into his face. "Might could have a point about that. But I didn't. She's alive, and the doc's fixing her up. I give you my word."
"Got that right," said Jayne's voice from over by the door, and a quick click-clack of weapons loading. "Carried her there myself, Wash. Ain't no big thing, 'cept she almost bled to death."
"What?" Wash tried to turn. Mal held him by the shoulders, hard as iron.
"Fly -- "
" -- the gorram ship, yeah, I know, Mal, but -- two minutes. I need two minutes." He twisted his neck at a painful angle to look up into that cold stone face. "We're on course. We're not catching them in two minutes. Unless they slow down, we'll be on their tail for hours. Please."
He almost never asked, and Mal knew it. He watched the muscle flutter along Mal's jawline, and then the man nodded sharply. "Go. But if you hear me squawk, you haul ass back here."
"Gone!"
And he was, plunging past Mal, darting around Jayne, thudding down the steps and sprinting down the corridor at breakneck speed. Ship wasn't that big, but his heart was pounding fair to burst, and he wasn't wasting any of his two minutes on travel.
He burst in the door of the surgery just as Simon put the last careful stitch in Zoe's leg. Without looking up, the doctor said, "I was wondering when the captain would let you off the leash."
"More like I bit his leg, pissed on his shoe, and ran for it," Wash gasped. He reached out, and Zoe's hands met him halfway. "Oh my God, baby ..."
Her luminous eyes opened. "Hush. Wasn't but a scratch. Deep one, though. Gonna leave a mark."
"Oh, very sexy. Maybe I should kiss it and make it all better." Beneath the rattling, bright words he was scared, scared of the pallor of her face, the vagueness in her eyes. Scared that the Reavers they were chasing would turn and finish the job right. He kissed the back of her hand, holding her gaze. "My crazy warrior woman."
Zoe smiled at him, and the fear scurried back around a corner. Not gone, no, but fear just couldn't stand the sight of that radiant, perfect smile. "Shouldn't you be flying the ship?"
He clapped his free hand to his forehead, letting his eyes go wide. "My God! You're right!" He lunged forward to kiss her, letting the kiss say everything that was too private, too perfect to say before witnesses. He pulled back, kissed each lovely eyelid with tender care, and whispered, "Love you, missus."
"Love you, mister. Go make me proud."
The lips were too tempting, and he had to have them again, and midway through the kiss the comm erupted with Mal's annoyed voice yelling, "Wash!"
"He's coming!" She shoved him away, still smiling. "See you soon."
Wash hesitated, memorizing her face, her eyes, her smile, and blew her another kiss.
And blew Simon one because, well, he was there.
And then he ran for the flight deck.
###
It was another gorram suicide run, and Jayne was damn tired of those. Sure, Mal paid him -- not well, but enough. Sure, he could stomach everybody on the ship pretty well, mostly. 'cept Mal, sometimes, when they crossed wires. And that stick-up-his-pi-gu doctor, who oughtn't to be on the boat in the first damn place. And his creeped-up sister. And Book, when he got onto one of his sermonizings. And Zoe, when she stared him down with those cold tombstone eyes. And Wash, always going on like some damn ten year old.
Come to think of it, Jayne didn't have much fondness for any of 'em, 'cept maybe Kaylee, who was so sweet and bright that she'd rub the grouchy off of anybody. But if he had to pick a second choice of favorite, it'd be Inara. Not 'cause he had a chance in shit of having her -- more than Mal, maybe, but that wasn't saying much -- but 'cause Inara was something new in his world. He liked thinking dirty about her, but that was just his way with women; he liked more about her than that. Maybe the way she could put Mal in his place. Or the way she smelled. Or the smile she sometimes gave him, when she forgot who she was smiling at.
Gorram suicide run, going after Reavers, but he guessed he'd do it anyway. Only option was to take a shuttle and run for it, and the only planet close had already been ripped to hell by the bastards. When he went planetside, he was mostly for the drinking and whoring, not the burying.
He was checking Vera over, making sure the action on the gun was smooth as silk, when from the pilot's chair Wash said, "Mal. Look at this."
Wash sounded tense. Hell, he ought. Jayne crowded up unasked to jam himself in a narrow angle, trying to get a look at the readouts Wash was pointing at. Looked like one of the Reavers was falling back, which meant they were gaining on it. Smaller ship, not the bigger one, and the rest of the Reaver pack was moving on at speed.
They weren't much for tending their own, that was sure. If the ship had a burnout, it had likely killed everybody in it anyway, Reavers not having much of a basic respect for radiation and such.
"Which one?" Mal asked. "Which one is it?"
"I can't tell."
"Which gorram one?"
"Hey! Go push your nose against the window and tell me, I don't know! Dots on a screen all look alike!"
Jayne had the best eyes, and without Mal even needing to so much as crook a finger, he moved over to the port, craned his neck, and said, "Maybe the size of a shuttle, or a mite bigger."
"Paint, Jayne. What color is it?"
"Hell, Mal, this distance, it could be pretty and purple and I couldn't see it! Get us closer!"
They were already doing that, and nobody spoke. Nobody said how long it had been since the Reavers had dragged Inara off, but Jayne knew. Coming up on three hours, now. Long enough for her body to get cool, and that was all they were going to do here, get back a body, or add to the pile of corpses themselves.
"Blue," Jayne said, as the Reaver ship slowly pulled closer. Didn't look so much like they were gaining on it as it was getting sucked in toward them, but that was just the way space worked. He didn't get bothered by it, not anymore. "Blue on one side, anyway."
"What about the other side?"
"Can't see through metal. Couple of bodies strapped to the port hull, though. Spikes all over the front of it. You sure they ain't just playing dead? Gonna grab us when we get close?"
"You ever known Reavers to display cunning like that?"
"What if Inara turned -- " He ducked Mal's punch this time, halfway knowing it was coming even though his back was turned, spun, and grabbed the man's arm, yanking him close. "You gorram well listen even if you don't like it. What if we get over there and she's gone Reaver? They'd be cunning then, right?"
"She ain't a Reaver."
"Maybe she is. What then? You gonna try the cure on her?"
Mal's eyes were bleak and black as space. "No cure. You know that."
"Just makin' sure you do." He let go. "I'll do it if you ain't got the stomach."
He looked down. Mal's gun was pressing hard into his muscles, right over his own guts.
"She ain't dead, and she ain't a Reaver," he said. "And I got enough stomach. You want to keep on having yours, you'd best shut your mouth."
Jayne shut up. Mal stared him down for another few seconds, then moved to look out the front viewscreen at the Reaver ship that was growing there like some damn magic trick. Ugly, twisted thing, all rusty blood-red and barbarian blue, more spikes than a gorram hedgehog. No lights showing. No lights at all.
"Mal," Wash said. "That ship's still powered."
"And drifting because ... ?"
"Don't know. Maybe their navigation's out, but the engines are still up. Just not pointed any place in particular right this minute."
The rest of the Reaver pack was distant lights at the limit of Jayne's vision in the window. They weren't coming back. That was something, anyway. Not too damn much, if they were having to fight their way onto a ship full of crazy cannibal madmen, but hell, he'd take whatever the universe wanted to give right now.
"Can you match her and get a seal?"
"Can do, captain," Wash said, and got to it.
There was a minor commotion at the door, and Jayne turned to see Shepherd Book and the doc, with Zoe between them. They weren't exactly supporting her, and she shook off their helping hands as soon as she saw Jayne looking.
"Well," he said. "Thought you might be laid up a while."
"I was," she said, and walked to the console to kiss her husband. "I'm better."
"Three hours isn't exactly what the doctor ordered," Wash said. "Baby -- "
"I'm good to go, husband."
She wasn't anything like, Jayne knew. He was used to the way Zoe moved, like greased ball bearings, and she was stiff and careful now. And pale. Her face had always been the color of milked coffee, but there was a mite too much milk in it. But she was upright, and as long as her eyes were open, Zoe would be shooting straighter than any man he ever ran with.
Mal gave her a once-over look, no doubt spotting the same things, and gave her one of those brisk soldier-type nods. She returned it. "Book, Doc, you better arm yourselves. I want you standing by in case we don't make it and the Reavers do. Be up to you to take as many down as you can. Wash -- "
"Stay with the ship, yeah, Mal, I know. She'll be ready to break seal and run the second you get Inara on board."
Jayne moved to Mal's side as he turned to look at the Reaver ship again. "It occur to you that it's damn lucky, the one ship we want just happens to fall out of the sky into our laps?"
"Don't think it's luck," Mal nodded. "But it might be Inara."
"Two minutes," Wash said. "Better get ready."
Didn't take more than one minute to get to the airlock with Zoe and Mal. They spent the leisure silently checking over weapons. Zoe had a gun in one hand, a knife in the other. Mal had two guns and a knife at his hip, ready for cross-draw.
Jayne had Vera and a belt full of options. Mal didn't sass him about the grenades, not this time. "Ruttin' hell, I can't believe we're doin' this," he muttered, as the outer airlock door opened and they moved inside. It hissed shut behind them. Nothing but one metal door between him and men who ate the flesh off of screaming victims. "Better be worth it."
The outer door opened, and a blast of ice-cold air blew over them, filthy air, sick and sweet and oily with the taste of rot. Jayne coughed, choked, and coughed again. Mal didn't. He plunged right on, into the dark, into the heart of it, and Zoe was right behind him. "Shit," Jayne choked, and moved out. His heart was pumping fit to burst. Lights were down in here, not out but turned real low, and it made nightmare out of corners.
No sound, but for their footsteps and the steady rough thrum of the engines and recyclers. The place stank like a charnel pit. Why the hell Reavers didn't die, all the filth they traveled in ...
He spotted the first body hanging on a hook and near as hell lost it. Lao tien ye ... looked like crows had been at it, but he knew it hadn't been crows pecked the eye sockets clean, nor stripped flesh from that slack, screaming face. Tongue was gone, too. Part of the arm ...
The thing was still dripping blood, and after a second Jayne thought, it's got dark hair. Wasn't a woman, not no more, most of those parts were gone, but --
"It's not her," Zoe said. "Keep moving."
It got worse, after that. Hooks everywhere, or spikes, with bodies swinging off of them. Most were fresh. They had to look at every one of 'em, to be sure. By common consent, they didn't talk. Bad enough, breathing shallow. They just shook heads to show they hadn't found what they'd come for.
Down the corridor, they found their first Reaver.
He was real damn dead.
The thing barely looked more human that the corpses it had eaten -- cut and scarred into something out of an opium nightmare. Fuck. It was soaked in blood, where it still had clothes. When Jayne flipped it over, blood oozed out of every damn hole he could see -- mouth, eyes, ears.
"Ren ci de Fo zu," Zoe whispered, and she wasn't one to invoke the Buddha, not much.
"Not a mark on him, 'cept what he put there himself," Jayne said, and looked up. Zoe had her gun pointed down at the corpse, and her face was twisted into something he didn't hardly want to know. "What the hell happened?"
Mal was already moving on. They counted three more Reavers along the corridor, all dead the same way, bled out. Two more who were still dying, shuddering as the last of their lives vomited red out of their mouths and noses, or what passed for them in those fucked-up faces.
Zoe shot 'em. Single bullets to the head, no expression on her face now. Jayne shrugged. He intended to save his bullets for when it counted.
One chamber at the end. Control room, with boards and lights, half of 'em dark, with wires hanging and still spitting sparks. Two more dead Reavers, apart from the fresh corpses and heaps of body parts around the room.
And Inara.
Jayne froze, staring. Mal took three steps forward, then stopped, and Jayne didn't look at him. Didn't dare look at him. Some things a man shouldn't see, and this was one of 'em.
Inara flinched and crawled away from them for a few wounded feet before she fell on her face on the filthy, blood-slick deck.
Zoe's voice was gentler than he'd have thought she had in her. "Inara. Shhhhh. It's Zoe." She reached in the bag slung over her shoulder and pulled out a plain dark gown, must have been something out of Inara's own closet. It gleamed sleek and silky in the dim light. Zoe knelt down next to the woman and settled the robe on her, talking in whispers until Inara, in slow painful jerks, crawled another few inches to curl up in Zoe's lap.
Jayne wasn't a sentimental man, not by half, but he had to look away from that.
Mal took a step forward, arms outstretched. "I'll take her," he said. His voice didn't sound right.
"No." Zoe didn't look up. "Go get a stretcher."
"No time to -- "
"She doesn't want touching."
Mal's mouth shut with a snap, and Jayne said, quietly, "I'll get one from the doc."
He went along back down that corridor, listening to the drip of bodies and the silence, and wondered what the hell had happened on this ship.
And decided that maybe it was a damn sight better not to know.
###
"It's called bing jing de," Simon said. They were sitting in the passenger lounge, outside of the infirmary. "Ice in crystal. One of the most powerful toxins ever developed by the Alliance. It has medical uses, mostly for use breaking up blood clots. It's a powerful anti-coagulant, but in larger doses it brings on uncontrollable hemorrhaging. Companions take regular doses of it to build up immunities, I understand. That's why she survived it. The drug, anyway."
"Why'd she take it in the first place?"
"I don't know. Maybe because the Reavers had her, and it was the only way she could defend herself. She must have known they were going to rape and kill her. I think it was a form of ... mutually assured destruction." Simon kept his voice low, as low as Mal's. There was something soothing about him right now, though Mal had never been over-partial to the boy. When he was like this, wrapped up in care for a patient, he wasn't half a pain in the ass.
And he'd watched Simon's gentle hands soothing Inara's cuts, healing the bites, repairing things that ought never to have been broken, and that counted. That would buy Brother and Sister Tam a mountain of his goodwill, forever.
"Mal," he said. He was staring at the floor, and that pretty-boy face was tense and a little bit too sick for some hardened surgeon. "I'd like to say she didn't suffer much, but the truth is -- they wouldn't have started dying for at least an hour, given the concentrations in her bloodstream and what we know about the Reavers. She suffered. More than I can imagine." His neat, clever, soft hands scrubbed together, washing away imaginary blood.
The infirmary was near as much of a mess as the Reaver ship had been, and Mal didn't look at the pile of bloody laundry showing through the observation window, or the pail of bloody water where Simon and Zoe had sponged her down to get the Reavers' stink off of her. Not many places he could look just now without wanting to kill, and all the ones he needed to kill were dead twice over. Inara had seen to that. "She going to be all right?" he asked.
Simon sighed. "Is she going to heal? The poison's working its way out of her system, except for the background levels she always has, and I've cleaned up the other wounds as best I can. But if you're asking me about her mental state -- I have no idea. Three hours is a long time, Mal. An eternity, even for a Companion, who's trained in ways to take herself away from it."
Mal felt something tighten up in his throat, hot and hard, and said nothing.
"Not that I can imagine how she'll be able to work as a Companion again," Simon murmured. "Not without first-rate Alliance psychotherapy, anyway. And that doesn't come cheap."
"It'll get paid," Mal said. "Where?"
"Probably ought to set course for one of the Central Planets. She needs to have a real medical facility look her over, and start counseling as soon as possible."
"I'll tell Wash," Mal said, and stood up. He didn't look at Simon. Didn't look away either. "Thanks, doc."
Simon slowly shook his head. "I couldn't do much." He sounded unhappy about it.
Mal squeezed his shoulder, letting the pressure say all the thanks he didn't know how to put voice to. "How's River?"
"Sleeping. Once you got Inara back, she stopped fighting the drugs. She was trying to warn us. If I'd just listened -- "
"Not your fault, Simon."
Mal knew whose fault it was. Inara had been trying to tell him something this morning, during that monkey's-ass-crack of a fight, and he'd walked out. She'd been scared, and alone, and she'd needed him.
He'd left her. At the end, when she'd needed him, he'd left.
He walked down the empty corridors, boots thumping on grating. Kaylee was weeping in the engine room, but that was just Kaylee's way; somebody would come by and comfort her, probably Simon. Jayne was in his quarters, cleaning Vera, though he hadn't fired her. Jayne always did find comfort in deadly things.
Shepherd Book was on his knees in the hold, praying, grizzled gray head bent to forces Mal didn't understand or respect much. But he figured praying wouldn't do harm right now, and he left him to it.
Wash accepted the course change silently, asking questions with his eyes but not his mouth.
Nothing left but the last stop, and Mal went up the steps to Inara's shuttle.
Zoe was outside, sitting against the closed door with her knees drawn up. Her eyes were closed, but they opened as Mal clumped to a stop at the top of the stairs. They stared at each other for a few long seconds, and he remembered all the times he'd seen her bloody and wounded, near to dying.
She looked worse than that.
"Can't let you in, captain," she said. "Last thing she needs right now is to be reminded who she was yesterday. Or what she's lost."
"Move, Zoe."
"No, sir." She swallowed convulsively, and shuddered. "Simon tell you what it was? The poison? How it worked?"
"Move."
"I told her I'd shoot her before I let them take her, and I didn't. I aimed at her, but -- " He reached down, lifted her up, and held her for a second. Felt her shudder again. No tears. Zoe didn't go in for tears. "I broke my word to her," she said. "That ain't right, sir. Least I can do is protect her now."
"Not from me," he said, and hit the control panel. The door hissed open, and that ridiculous smell puffed out, fine perfume and warm wax and all the pretty silky things that made up Inara ...
He went inside, aware that Zoe was trying to talk to him but not listening, not listening at all.
Inara lay in her bed, huddled in a ball. Drugged into insensibility, covered up warm. One hand flung over the edge, fingers upturned like she was begging for something. She was shivering. He got another silk cover and draped it over her, reached across and smoothed her fine dark hair, and remembered the fury and panic in her eyes the last time he'd seen her, when he'd flung those bitter words at her.
You want to play the fine lah-de-dah lady on Serenity, have all us on our knees and kissing your hand ...
She'd never asked for that. Never.
He got on his knees beside her bed, took that scraped and bruised hand in his, and kissed it with all the pure love and anguish he had, and held it to his forehead.
She murmured a name.
It wasn't his.
in a place my hearing cannot reach
a voice calls softly to me
in a place my seeing cannot reach
a pair of eyes watches me
in a place my skin cannot feel
gently a hand touches me
in a place I cannot imagine
someone is missing me
God, by Song Xiaoxian
- end -
This is my first attempt at Firefly, so apologies to the Divine Whedon for mangling language and/or character ... but I had to give it a shot.
Cheers for a happy 2006 -- Julie