jossverse_bb Big Bang ... One In a Million (Chapter 4-7)
The continuing saga of Mal and Faith...
Chapters 1-3
Chapter 4: Rectify
Waking up after a night of partying was always difficult. There was the whole “hand-eye coordination” that had to be slowly relearned and then there was the remembering of the bits that the drinking had rubbed out. Throw in a body that ached like it had been run over by a trash truck after it had been loaded down with all the goodies that Californians found to throw away and it was a recipe for a bad day.
This particular morning, when Faith woke up, she couldn’t tell what was wrong. There were the usual warning signs that she’d had too much to drink last night. It happened so often, she didn’t worry too much about the particulars but there was something different about the way this morning felt. She opened one eye just enough to see that the ceiling above her was… metal. The bed she was laying on was narrow and hard. There was no one beside her so she hadn’t gone home with a wino bunked out in a warehouse. Wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something stupid like that. This place didn’t have the open sound like the last warehouse she’d found herself in.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she opened her second eye. When her vision straightened out, she looked to the left. Another metal wall. Then to the right. In a chair across from the room, she saw the very top of a fuzzy head. Someone else was in the room with her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Or how she felt about any of this. Her head hurt and there was a frightful taste in her mouth, as if she’d eaten a hairy rodent who had crawled into a hole twelve years ago and she’d pulled out the carcass to snack on it last night. With ketchup. She hated ketchup.
“Hey! Mister! Tell me what day it is.” Her own voice made her teeth set on edge as she struggled to push the pain back to a manageable level. “I’m supposed to be patrolling on Wednesday. Is it Wednesday?”
“What are you yammering on about, woman?” The man unfolded from his cramped position in the uncomfortable looking chair. He was rumpled in just the sort of way that woman found attractive even if his glare was enough to make her want to beat at him. Something about him looked familiar but she didn’t have time to try to put a name and history with his face.
“Is it Wednesday?” she asked again, trying to figure out the mystery of her location with a muzzy head that protested every thought. Drinking at the Bronze didn’t hurt quite this much the next day. There was that biker bar on the edge of town that she’d been meaning to visit. Maybe she went there. Had it been that much of a dud that she’d forgotten her time there completely?
“No.”
His back was to her as he stood in front of a small closet, making her feel like an idiot staring at the muscles rippling under his skin. This was obviously his room but he hadn’t been in the bed with her. Granted, it was a very small bed but she would have gladly shared with the likes of him.
So what had she done that had brought out the mother-hen instinct instead of the drooling lech? Had he copped a feel once to often and she’d made him back off? So then why hadn’t she just walked away from him instead of bunking down in his digs.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“You can say that again.”
He pulled on a pair of pants before turning to look at her again. When his attention was completely on her, she grinned. “Damn.” When he laughed, she knew she was on the right track. “So, I’ll tell you my name if you tell me yours.”
“You still know your name? You didn’t drink as much as I thought then. My head aches and I barely had any.”
Her name was Faith. Since it wasn’t hard to find that information in her scarred memory banks, she didn’t start worrying. She’d drunk herself into worse stupors. “I know mine. Just not yours. Or maybe we didn’t exchange that information?”
“Or maybe Kaylee’s machine left you addled. I’ll have to have a talk with that girl. She can’t go around zapping people from one place to another if it’s going to mess with their memories. Not good for business. Not good, at all.”
“Kaylee.” The name on her tongue sounded like she’d said it before. The name itself brought back memories of a smiling girl with fuzzy hair and grease stains on her face. “Last I saw her she was changing light bulbs. She’s the ship’s mechanic, right? Seems I remember someone telling me that.”
“Jayne mentioned it a time or two.”
“Who’s she?”
That got a belly laugh from the man. Personally, she couldn’t see what was so funny but it seemed to strike his funny bone. She would have liked his laugh if each hearty chuckle hadn’t gouged its way into her skull in agonizing shards of pain.
“If you promise to stop laughing, I will do whatever you want. Let me tell you, I’m up for anything so that’s not an idle promise.” Faith lay back down on the bed, pulling the thin covers up over her ears. The scratchy gloom was just dark enough to give her a sense that she may survive this morning. Considering she felt it might be important to, at the very least, know the name of the man who had let her sleep in his bed last night, there was no way she could stay in her comforting cave much longer. The time for action was upon her.
She peaked out after the noise of his laughter had died down. “I still need to know your name. It’s not my style to bed down with a man that I don’t know anything about.”
“You really don’t remember anything else about the last eighteen hours?”
The man was standing now, his bare chest every bit as nice as other bare chests she’d encountered in her time. It was still strange to her that he was over there instead of with her on the bed. The way things normally worked, she would have had to pry herself out from under some sweating lump who’d enjoyed the party the night before more than she had. Or sometimes, but not often, she was kicked out of bed by the original occupant. Those were mornings she didn’t like to think about. It meant she’d picked a doozy of a companion, just another in a long line of mistakes her mother had told her she was destined to make. Damn, but she was glad that woman wasn’t around anymore.
“Missing something good, am I? Sorry, sugar. That’s what I get for drinking too much. Normally I’m a girl who can hold her liquor but obviously last night was special. Care to tell me how good it was?”
A shirt quickly covered the bare chest and the hair was smoothed down. “My name is Mal. Malcolm Reynolds. Does that bring back any memories? No? You’re on my ship. Serenity.”
“Maybe that’s why I feel sort of woozy. I don’t have my sea legs quite yet. I agreed to come on board, right? I wasn’t forced?”
He was shaking his head, seemingly in disgust. “I’ve never forced anyone to come on board. I always ask nicely. And we’re not at sea. Like I told you before, this is a spaceship. This is my Serenity.”
“Firefly,” she replied slowly, trying out the word that had suddenly sprung to mind. It was hard to think what tiny little insects that sparkled out their butt had to do with what she hoped was a quality-built ship. “Firefly class.”
She looked up to see him smiling at her as if she was a small child who had just taken her first step. Instead of irritating her so much that she wanted to punch his face until he couldn’t possibly smile like that any longer, she found that she liked it. When she looked at him, she felt at ease even in a situation like this. Trust in her fellow man was never easy when she wasn’t fully dressed.
But now that she thought about it… she was fully dressed. Except for her boots, which, when she looked, were beside the bed.
“Who are you, Malcolm Reynolds? What is it that I’m missing here?” she asked in wonder. The only aches and pains she had were from excessive drinking. From what her body was telling her, there had been no fighting and definitely no sex. She’d spent all night with the man without sleeping with him, in either sense of the word. That meant there was either something wrong with her… or him. She preferred it would be the second one because she didn’t like the thought of being wrong. That had happened too often for her liking.
“I’d say you’re missing breakfast. We’ve been yammering on for so long that we might have missed all the eggs.”
“Eggs?” Her stomach growled. “I could go for some eggs.”
“Good.” Mal threw her a clean shirt, one nearly identical to the one he was wearing. “Change into this first. You’re starting to smell.”
She let the insult go as she pushed herself out of bed and took his advice. Who was this Faith, she wondered as she buttoned the shirt. And why was she letting any man… any person tell her what to do? I let the Mayor do that once and look where that got me. A coma long enough to almost complete miss out on the end of the 90s. He said he loved me but I can’t help but shake the idea that he did it all to get something for himself.
That boiled down her whole way of looking at the world - who wanted to use her and how could she use them first. It felt like she’d always felt like that but it wasn’t until this moment that she’d even thought about it in quite those terms. Right now, she wasn’t on the lookout for any way she might use Mal. He made her feel… calm. It was something to take into consideration. Right after breakfast, that was. She didn’t think she could do much more of this deep thinking before she’d had anything to eat. Not after the night she was sure she had.
As Faith walked out the door, all she had to do follow her nose to find the kitchen. It wasn’t like anything she’d imagined a spaceship would have inside but nothing on this ship really was like anything she could have imagined. It was all very plain and ordinary. Nothing with flashing lights and robotic voices. There was no shiny metal anywhere and nothing wooshed when she walked toward it.
This ship was nothing like anything she’d ever seen on television. She could have been anywhere but on a spaceship. As long as she didn’t look out any windows (and she really didn’t want to see that there was no ground under her because that would be a little weird), she could imagine that she was hanging out in a large warehouse down by the docks.
“What smells so great?” Faith walked into the room, her hands in her pockets as she surveyed what she could only assume was the kitchen. Mal stood behind the girl at the stove, his hands on her shoulders as they laughed together over something she had nothing to do with. Familiar jealousy reared its ugly head. She only wanted him to laugh with her. Not with some girl who… but she recognized this girl. The name wouldn’t land where she could say it out loud.
“Mal says you didn’t remember him this morning.” The cook wiped her hands off on a towel before offering one toward her to shake. It seemed the right thing to do so Faith took it. “I think that might be a side effect of the box. I was up all night working on it but I still don’t have much in the way of news. Sorry ‘bout that. You’ll be with us for a little bit longer.”
“The box?” Oh, yes. This was Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic.
“Yeah.” The girl flushed a deep red. “I was trying out a new contraption that I found and it seems that it wasn’t as harmless as I thought it was. Turns out, it’s harmfull. That means I can’t play around with it like I would have preferred to. A bit of tinkering, that was all I was after. Didn’t mean to cause,” she shrugged and swept out her arm to indicate Faith, “you.”
“You caused me?”
“Wo hen baoqian (I’m so sorry),” Kaylee whispered, not offering much in the way of explanation.
Mal took up the cause from the stricken girl. “She means, the box that she’s talking about is what brought you here. From wherever it was that you’re from. Something about hell?”
“The Hellmouth. Sunnydale. California. I remember all that. Why is that I don’t remember you lot again?” She was starting to feel antsy about all this, a moment of panic beginning to worm its way into the back of her mind. It had seemed sort of normal to be on a spaceship even if she didn’t remember how she’d gotten there. Didn’t everyone know where California was? Even up in space? “Why should I trust anything you’re saying?”
Mal stood in the middle of the room, his hands on his hips. “Ho there. None of that kind of talk. You know me. Even if you don’t remember my name, I can tell you remember me. We haven’t known each other long but you should know, down deep in your soul, that I’m not going to hurt you. Kaylee didn’t mean what she did. It just sort of happened. But she’ll make it right. If I know my mechanic, she won’t sleep until she’s got the problem solved. You’ll be back in California before you know it.”
“Kaylee.” She tried out the name to see how it felt to have her lips form the words. “And River, Jayne and Simon.”
“Right. You met them yesterday. I guess you haven’t completely lost your memory. Maybe it’s just covered up somehow. The reality you knew is trying to force itself back on you, erasing us to make room for the things that you know more about. You’re trying to come up with what you know to be normal and your brain is trying to help out.”
Mal winced as he heard Kaylee’s explanation. “Guess that would make sense. It’s times like this that I miss Wash the most. He would understand what’s going on here and give us a laugh while he was at it.”
That wasn’t a name she recognized. “Where’s he, then?”
“He’s a star.”
Faith whipped around to face the newest person in the room. She was a Slayer and nothing snuck up on her but this small girl with the blackest of hair was quiet. Freakishly quiet, really. “A star?” she stammered. Did they have TV stars out here in space or did she actually mean one of the shiny things they were flying by? Either way, she felt queasy.
Mal was suddenly behind her, lending his quiet strength. In any other situation, she would have turned and planted her fist alongside his jaw but she found herself leaning back against him, relaxing instead of becoming keyed up. “River only means that he’s gone. Died a couple months back. He was our pilot.”
“So no one’s flying this thing?” She jumped away, her whole body tense at the thought that they might, at this moment, be flying straight into something that would make them very flat and very dead. She liked her curves and aliveness intact.
“I’m flying it,” the dark haired girl answered with a smugness that was quite like her own.
“Right this moment? Do you use your brain or something?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I do.”
Kaylee banged a pan down on the stove, diverting everyone’s attention. Faith was happy to be able to have an excuse to look away from the strange girl. She knew plenty about strange girls to last a lifetime. No way did she need more of them to worry about. “Stop talking nonsense, River. It’s time to eat.”
“Good idea.” Mal’s hands gripped both of her shoulders, turning her toward the table. “Let’s eat. I’ll reintroduce you to everyone. But no Mudder’s Milk today. We can’t addle your brain cells any more than they’ve already been addled. It would be so depressing if we had to go through all of this again tomorrow.”
“We will,” the dark-haired girl whispered behind Faith. “The slayers won’t let go of their grip on her so easily.”
Faith shivered, not sure if she wanted the slayers to have their grip on her. But she should want to go home, shouldn’t she? It should be easy to turn her back on Malcom Reynolds and his crew. She should want to head back to the life she’d left. So why didn’t she?
With a mental shrug, Faith sat down to the plate of eggs and tried not to think about slayers or laughing girls who could power spaceships with their minds. It was all beginning to unsettle her and the last thing she wanted to be was unsettled.
Chapter 5: Reality
It was very easy to imagine Faith being a part of Serenity’s crew. After the second round of introductions, she sank seamlessly into the group as if she’d never been an outsider. Even more strange was that the group let her in without complaint. No one questioned her existence. At the very least, he would have expected Jayne to raise a fuss but he was as mesmerized by the girl’s attributes as Mal.
Before the dishes were even moved off the table, Jayne was already starting to figure out how all their lives would change now that Faith was on board. No one, not even River, seemed to want to stop him. He worked her into the cleaning schedule (which was strange as no one really used the cleaning schedule unless Mal made a stink about it) and decided where she would sleep. This took some conversation, most of it between River and Jayne. Kaylee had given up trying to give her thoughts on the issue and drifted away to other areas of the ship and Simon began washing the dishes without being asked, something which surprised Mal more than it probably should have, seeing how the young doctor liked things on the clean side of the spectrum.
“Are they always like this?” Faith asked quietly as she moved for the first time since Jayne started talking. He’d noticed that she’d gotten very quiet, almost as if she was trying to keep from being noticed. The smirk had never left her lips, though. She could handle her own, this girl could. It was as if she was… waiting for her moment to talk. Like she wasn’t ready to chime in just yet.
“Like what?”
“So… excited? I’m not used to it.”
“This is actually something new,” Mal replied. “Don’t worry. If I was concerned about your well being, I would have told Jayne to stop. He would have hit me but he would have left you alone.”
“Are you always like this? It’s like having my own knight in shining armor.”
Mal physically recoiled at her words. Well, not her words so much as her tone of voice. That wasn’t what he’d expected from her. A little thanks. Some gratitude. Not this cold snarkiness. He wanted to say it was a cover for what the girl was really feeling but he would lay odds that her real feelings were probably more harsh than this. If she was hiding anything, it was pure, raw anger.
“Jayne’s just excited to have a new member of the team.”
“Team? What team? I’ve seen teams in my day and you all don’t look like a team. Maybe you have a rousing game of volleyball before you go off to clean toilets? Or was there something I missed?”
Mal shrugged, trying to see his crew from her point of view. They’d always been like this, though. He’d accepted them because they were… family. “We’re usually much busier.”
“Once again I’m going to point out that I don’t think your busy is all that exciting. Where I came from, we went out and killed vampires every day. Or demons. Or whatever other kind of undead or evil creatures we could get our hands on. Every day. That was real work. You guys are worried about a clean toilet.”
“Ho there, missy. Just because Jayne gave you a spot on the cleanin roster don’t mean that all we do is-“
“Did you just call me Missy?”
She was closer to him now but not in a good way. While he hadn’t seen her hand move, he was aware that there was a knife in her hand and it was pointed at his gut. One twist of her arm and he’d be looking at his innards in a way that wouldn’t be pleasant. He’d have to watch his words with this one. She was beginning to unsettle him in a whole new, completely unpleasant type of way.
“It’s just a saying. Not meant as an insult. I wasn’t thinking or I never would have called you that. I do apologize… Faith. I was out of line.”
“Out of line? That was a line you shouldn’t have even started to draw, Mr. I-Have-A-Spaceship-So-I-Can-Do-What-I-Please.”
Just as suddenly as he’d been concerned, Mal was laughing. It was hard not to. The girl was so cute when she was trying to put up a strong façade. The trip in the box must have really done a number on her if she’d spent a day being so pleasant. It was so obvious now that she was more used to acting like this, always making sure to strike first before anyone could strike at her. This was a person with definite issues. He liked her better for it, even if she wanted to gut him. Of course he wasn’t going to let her get away with it even as funny as the situation was quickly becoming.
Before anyone else could react to the intended threat, Mal reached out and grabbed her wrist. Without thinking, he twisted hard enough that he should have felt bones grind together. Instead, Faith just smiled at him with just a hint of sarcasm.
“I do have a spaceship,” was his terse reply as he twisted harder. From his experience, she should have been showing some reaction to the pain he was inflicting. Instead, her eyes only narrowed in irritation, as if he’d been swatting her like she was a flee jumping around in his socks. “And I can do whatever I please.”
“Cause you’re a man?” she hissed at him. Tiny spots of red were highlighting her cheeks. She was really angry at him. The idea that he’d done something to earn her rancor was almost more than he could bear.
Instead of answering back, he leaned forward and kissed her. Not a true kiss. It was nothing she’d write to her friends about, wherever those friends were at this point, but it shut her up. Or it should have.
As soon as he sank back, content that they were away from the danger, her forehead connected with his jaw. As startling maneuvers went, it was enough that he let go of her hand so he could defend himself. The knife glinted from the light cast by the overhead lamps as she lifted it up. Now the secret was out in the open and Jayne would come to his rescue. He wasn’t sure how he thought about that but it was better to be emasculated than well… emasculated. Neither option was exactly what he’d had in mind when he woke up this morning.
But Jayne didn’t come to his rescue. The knife sliced cleanly through his shirt. As he watched it slide into his flesh, he found his voice. “Jayne, you ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng (frog humping son of a b****). Do something besides sitting on your-“
Faith held up the knife, a thin line of blood marring the blade. “You’re such a baby. I barely nicked you.”
Across the table, Jayne was doubled over as he tried to laugh and breath at the same time. Not surprisingly, he couldn’t seem to be doing either properly. “She… she… cut you.” He dissolved into helpless spasms of amusement.
“He’s right, you know.” Mal held up a hand sticky with his own blood. It was hard not to feel nauseous even though he’d seen more of his insides during his lifetime than he cared to remember. This was his ship, though. He wasn’t supposed to be gutted by small females on his ship. It was in the rules somewhere. “You cut me.”
She shrugged as she swiped the blade against the denim on her thigh. If it hadn’t been his blood she was cleaning off, he might have chided her about the improper cleaning she was giving her weapon. Instead, he took it personally.
“And before that, you hit me. With your head.”
“I don’t blame her.” River had certainly waited long enough to chime in. Now was not the time he wanted to hear from her. “You kissed her. And it’s not a real cut. Just a knick. You just bleed more than most.”
“Why are you taking her side in all this?”
River tilted her head. It was a gesture they were all familiar with but it still gave Mal the impression that she was trying to reach into the deeper parts of his brain that he was hoping were hidden from her scary little mind games. He liked having her in his head even less than he did with her taking sides against him. Surely River didn’t find Faith likable enough that she thought her actions were anything but reprehensible.
Instead of answering Mal, River turned to Faith. “I’ve never seen a blade quite like that before. Where did you find it?”
“It was a gift.” All anger seemed to have evaporated with those four words. Faith looked up at him, her eyes deep pools of sadness. “Reflexes. They’re hard to control. I thought I was doing better and then… I’m sorry.”
Those were two words that he hadn’t expected to come out of her mouth. “Just a flesh wound,” he replied in a gruff voice as he tried to find his anger. It seemed to have fled along with hers. “I guess I should apologize for kissing you. Just wanted to ease some of the tension and you were looking up at me all pretty-like and-“
This time, she kissed him and it was definitely a kiss this time. Where had this girl learned how to kiss? He wanted to know because she was very good at it. No two ways about it, she was putting her heart and soul into the kiss. It was so much like those they’d shared last night that he was tempted to forget all that had happened since they’d woken up.
She pulled back but only enough that she could look him straight in the eyes, her attention focused on his expression in a way that unnerved him. How did one girl get to be such a contradiction?
“Have we done that before?”
“Just last night. I’m starting to feel downright put out that you don’t remember me. After all, you at least remembered Jayne’s name.”
“That’s cause it’s a girl’s name,” River interrupted, as if she’d suddenly remembered that he was her captain and so that might mean she should side with him in arguments.
“I’m not a nice girl,” Faith responded as if she hadn’t heard River at all. “There are things you don’t know about me. That must be why you’re being so nice. You think you know me but you don’t. You can’t possibly understand.”
Mal didn’t even have to consider his answer. The last thing he wanted her to think was that he picked up just anyone out in the middle of space and treated them to a complete tour of his ship as if they were royalty. He wasn’t even sure why he’d done it for her.
“I understand this.” It was his turn to kiss her, seeing as they were taking turns. She resisted his efforts at first but he didn’t let her move away from him. His hands, still wet with his blood, clutched at her arms so that she couldn’t move back even if she really wanted to. He was ready for her. The girl was tough. Not just physically even though she was the strongest woman he’d ever met. There was enough pain in her eyes that he could tell she was tough on the inside, too. Yesterday had been a different side of her, probably one she didn’t show many people. Her defenses had been down and now he was paying for the lapse.
He felt the moment she let go of the mistrust she had for him. It was like the oxygen in the room had suddenly bled through the walls and they were only left with atmosphere that kept them from crumpling into a piece of space trash. It surprised him to suddenly see the Faith that was the pliant girl from before, only without the reek of alcohol.
“I’ve done it!”
Both of them jumped apart, reminded by Kaylee’s sudden exclamation that they weren’t alone. Funny how they only wanted to kiss each other when they were surrounded by the rest of the crew. It was demented, the more he thought about it.
“Do what?” Mal asked after he cleared his throat a couple of times. Everyone was looking at him save for the one person he wouldn’t have minded staring at for much longer.
“I’ve fixed the transporter.”
“Transporter?” He furrowed his brow, trying to remember what part of Serenity they called the transporter. He was pretty sure he hadn’t heard of that part before but then Kaylee was always renaming things at her whim.
“The,” she began to frantically gesture over her shoulder, “thing. The box. You know, the box that brought Faith here.”
This time the air left the room for good. Mal tried to figure out how to breathe without any oxygen but he got lightheaded. Everyone around him was talking but he couldn’t concentrate on the words. The box worked. That was very good… and very bad.
Chapter 6: Reimaging
Faith woke up, huddled in the corner of one of the dirtier alleys in Sunnydale. She’d been in enough of them to know exactly where she was. The when and why were a bit blurry. With a sigh, she got up and began the long walk back to the only home she had. The thought depressed her more than it normally did.
When Faith walked in the door, she discovered she’d been gone for more than forty-eight hours and no one knew where she’d been. Even though she tried to act like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, everyone suddenly wanted to know where she’d been. They’d been worried about her. Well, bully for them. No one had cared where she’d gone before. Why now?
The worst was Buffy’s dark looks. It was like the girl knew when she was hiding something. Well, she was always hiding something. This time, she wasn’t really hiding anything so much as trying to piece together her past two days. There were a lot of fuzzy bits but she remembered kissing someone and there was... but it hurt her head to try to remember.
What she needed was someone to talk it over with but Buffy’s glares were definitely cutting off that direction. The other Slayers were a little too Oh-My-God-You’re-Our-Hero to be much good as decent sounding boards for her adventure. Besides, she didn’t want to start any rumors and talking to them would definitely start the gossip mill cranking out asinine ideas about what this all could mean.
There was always Xander but he was still paranoid about being alone with her. She didn’t blame him but it would have been nice to get a male perspective about this situation. No matter how blurry things were in her head, she had a definite sense that there was a guy involved. Not in a bad way, even. The thoughts in her head were pleasant enough, if they were hard to hold onto.
Giles was in and out of the house but Faith didn’t like dealing with the Englishman. He was stuffy and he made her feel stupid. Nothing she said was smart enough. Just thinking about asking him to help her out made her feel self-conscious. The last thing she needed was a complex because she didn’t have the right inflection to the words of her story.
So, for better or for worse, that left Willow. Faith wasn’t sure how she felt about the red-headed witch. She wasn’t the wallflower she’d been but still she remained an enigma. Kennedy had certainly brought her out of the shell she’d put around herself lately. Was it broken enough that Faith could hope to talk to her and get any response that might be helpful? How exactly should she start the conversation?
These were exactly the same questions that were hurting her head just as much as thoughts of the last few days. It was so much nicer when she didn’t have to think so hard. So much nicer when she just reacted and went along with wherever those reactions took her. It didn’t matter if she’d been gone for days at a time. There was no one who cared.
Now there were the Slayers. And Buffy. They all seemed to care about her but not the way she wanted them to care. Never in the way she wanted them to care. It was always what they could get from her. Her fists and weapon skills and… her knife.
She took it out to look at it. The blade was as smooth as ever, not a scratch or mar on the shiny surface. It was perfect. Even though she didn’t need to, she cleaned it against the denim of her thigh. It was a familiar gesture, one that brought her some peace. No matter what, she had her knife and she knew how to use it.
When Faith looked down, there was something on her jeans where she’d brushed the knife. The fabric was stiff when she placed her finger over it, pressing down to see if she could determine what the stain was purely by the way the texture felt. While it could be dirt, she doubted it. Cleaning dirt off a knife was done differently than cleaning blood. She did this very same thing every time she used the weapon to draw blood.
Had she killed someone? No, not enough blood. This was just a single stripe. She hurried to a mirror, something she didn’t bother looking in much. If she’d cleaned her knife on these jeans, the odds were that she had them on when she used it in the first place. From the little she could see of herself in the mirror, there was no evidence of spatter.
With a sigh of relief, she turned away from her reflection and holstered the knife back where it belonged. Blood meant innocence. Those who had it rarely knew about the vampires that didn’t have it. She killed the vampires so that the innocent stayed that way. It was a win/win sort of situation. She doubted many of the normal people walking outside knew how lucky they had it. Besides, she doubted very much that they had their own knife with which to do the dusting.
Something niggled at her brain. Something important. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was but something….
“Jayne,” she whispered. The name was triggered by the thoughts of her knife. Not a girl’s name. From her memory, she could hear someone saying those words to her over and over. Not a girl’s name. She waited, hoping that it would trigger something else but everything else in her head was quiet.
Maybe I’m going insane.
“Are you insane?” For a moment, she thought her subconscious had become an entity all its own and was standing in the doorway but it was only Buffy, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Hey, B. Last time I checked, I wasn’t insane but that doesn’t mean much these days.” She tried for breezy but she felt it came out sounding like she was hiding something. Strange how she couldn’t hide things these days, even if they were hidden from her.
When she smiled at Buffy, the other girl didn’t smile back. That wasn’t a surprise. Buffy only had a few smiles she was allowed to use in a given day and none of them were reserved for the screw-up that Faith Lehane was. She was lucky if she got three civil words strung together.
“Got a better explanation than I was out for awhile yet?”
“Not much more.” Seeing as Buffy was standing in the doorway, there was little chance that Faith could just push on past her. Well, at least without starting a fight. It was the very thing that would upset the already edgy household. She would have to talk her way out of this one. “Listen, do you know where Willow is at the moment? I need to talk to her for a sec.”
“You want to talk to Willow?”
Faith shrugged. “Unless you want to listen to what I know of my pathetic story and see if you can help piece everything together.” When Buffy didn’t answer right away, Faith sat on the bed, her arms out behind her in a classic bored pose in the hopes that Buffy would think her insane words meant she was kidding and would just leave.
Unfortunately, Buffy actually listened to her for once. It would have to be the one time she didn’t really want to the attention. “Tell me what you know and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Better settle in. It’s all muddled. I’m pretty sure you’re going to think I’m crazy before this is all over.” When Buffy didn’t move from her path to the doorway, Faith had no other choice than to start in on what she knew. “This morning, I woke up under a bag of garbage down along Seymour Street.”
“Hanging out in the good section of town these days, are you?”
“That isn’t all the story, B. Do you want me to tell you the rest?”
“Does it get better than this?”
Faith glared at her from the corner of her eye. “I’m going to pretend we didn’t start down this rabbit trail. I woke up this morning in a alley and I’ve been gone two days. I haven’t showered since I got home. Do I smell like garbage to you?”
Buffy took a tentative sniff of the air before getting closer to get a good whiff. She screwed up her nose but not because the smell was bad. “You smell like… metal.”
“I know. Right? And I’ve never seen this shirt before.”
“It’s a man’s shirt. Buttons on the other side. So you were with a man. Color me surprised,” Buffy drawled, a glint of laughter tweaking with the angry look. “But you also don’t smell like him. I would have noticed that on you. That isn’t like you.”
Like you know what I’m like, Faith thought but she kept the words to herself. Better not to travel down that rabbit trail either. It took everything in her to keep her hands from clutching into fists and driving them into the sanctimonious grimace that Buffy always seemed to wear. Now was not the time for child’s play.
“There’s a line of blood on my jeans. It’s right where I clean my knife.” She pointed out the stain but Buffy declined touching it even though she did move closer. Faith found that she couldn’t stop touching it. The texture reminded her that she hadn’t just slept off a bottle of scotch. Whatever she had done, she hoped she’d enjoyed it. “But I don’t have blood spatter. That’s what I was checking when you barged in. Whatever I did, I only nicked someone.”
“So you weren’t out hunting vamps?”
“No dust.” She held up a hand to show off how clean it was. “Do you know anyone named Jayne?”
“Is she one of the Slayers? I forget their names now that there are so many.”
“Not a girl. It’s not a girl’s name. It’s a name I remember, though.”
Buffy took another step forward but stopped herself. “Have you checked your pockets?”
“Huh?”
With an eye roll and a gesture that told Faith just what she thought of her, Buffy pulled her own pockets out. “If you were out and about with someone named Jayne in something with metal enough to make you smell like you do, you probably have at least one receipt. It’s better than this nothing we’re trying to work with.”
She hadn’t thought of that and the idea that something so simple could be the answer to everything lifted her spirits considerably… only to have them plunge again when she didn’t discover anything of use. The lint certainly didn’t have a tale to tell other than something pink had been in her pocket before her jeans were washed last time.
“This isn’t normal, my forgetfulness.” Faith shook her in frustration, pulling off the looser shirt as it constricted her arms too much for her to be comfortable. She felt the need to be ready at a moment’s notice for anything that might come her way. It wasn’t going to help in this situation but it made her feel better. Maybe then she could think better. “It’s like whole sections of my memories were erased. This was done on purpose.”
“Faith…”
“What?” she asked, turning toward Buffy. The girl’s eyes were round with shock.
Buffy reached out a shaking hand. “Turn around and look at your back in the mirror. I think you found your answers.”
There were grease stains all along her fitted tank, none of them noticeable as written words until she concentrated on looking at them individually. Sure enough, she’d found everything she needed to know about this mystery.
You won’t remember anything when you get back. If you get back. Kaylee isn’t sure if this is going to work but you have to try, don’t you? You can’t just stay here, forgetting everything when you wake up each morning. The box has scrambled you.
But you know things now. Things you didn’t know before. You’ll have this information and you know where you can find more. You don’t need to be reminded of everything and odds are you won’t be able to process it all anyway. But you need to remember one word. It should unlock as much as you need to get back here. To get back to him.
“What the one word?” Buffy asked as Faith paused in her reading. She sounded almost excited to be at the end of the mystery as Faith was. Or should have been.
But what was Faith supposed to remember that would help her get back? Back where? And why did she want to remember so badly? It would be so much easier to throw the shirt in the wash and be done with it. She wouldn’t have to think about it again. But every time she thought about the idea of turning away without seeing this through, she felt sick. Whatever was waiting for her must be pretty great for her to want it this badly. It had been a long time since she’d wanted anything with this kind of gut-wrenching need.
Buffy was shaking Faith now, her fingernails digging into the flesh of her shoulder hard enough to draw blood. It brought Faith out of the trance she found herself in. “What is the word, Faith?”
“Serenity.”
“You’re supposed to be calm.”
“Metal,” Faith whispered. “All metal. Firefly class. Serenity.” She looked into Buffy’s wide eyes with a gaze just as surprised. “It’s a spaceship. I remember.”
“What?”
“I’m completely serious. This girl, Kaylee,” she pointed to the name on the shirt laid out on the bed in front of them, “she brought me there in this contraption that she found but didn’t know what it did. Pulled me from the alley where I was hunting vamps. And I forgot nearly everything when I slept so that I woke up every morning not knowing anything. It had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be pulled away from my reality into theirs. All that travel through dimensions was screwing with my memory. That, and my body was fighting off what it saw as a threat to my sanity. Well, that’s just my idea.”
“You forgot all of us?”
“No, nothing that was in my head before I arrived on the ship. I always forgot where I was and who they were. It was… strange. Like my brain was keeping me from remembering where I was because it knew it was wrong.”
“But you remember them now?”
She shook her head. “Not really. It’s still really fuzzy. Mostly I can remember conversations. Not their faces. But I think I know what I need to do.”
Buffy nodded as if she was tracking with the other Slayer. “You need Willow.”
Faith nodded. “I need that mojo magic she can do now. If anyone can get me back there, it’s Willow. One spell and POOF! Back there without the faulty wiring.”
“You really want to go back? Even though you don’t remember everything.”
A warm glow filled Faith when she thought of the word Serenity. “I don’t remember everything but I remember enough. You don’t need me, B. Not really. Not the way I need you. Not the way I need someone to want me. I’ve tried before to find a family and… I did it all wrong that time. This is my chance to do it differently. You see that, right?”
“But we do need you.” Buffy tried to make it sound legit but Faith could hear the insincerity in her words. She was thankful that her friend was trying. For that, Faith was willing to give out huge kudos points. “We need all the warm bodies we can get.”
“Exactly. I’m just a warm body. I need to belong, though. I need a family of my own. Serenity is where I belong. I feel good there. Like I might be a good person for the first time in my life. There’s no baggage holding me back. This is my clean slate. My fresh start.”
Buffy nodded, understanding filling her eyes. If there was anyone who understood about fresh starts, it was Buffy. “Then let’s get you there.”
It surprised her when Buffy reached out and hugged her, the kind of bone-crunching clasp that Faith had always wanted but had always turned down. Now she hugged Buffy back, basking in the emotions that flowed between them. She would be sad to leave Buffy and the other girls behind but they would take care of each other. Soon the hole that she would make with her departing with fill up with another slayer just as wacked-out and strange as Faith.
“Thanks, B.”
“No problem. Come on. Let’s go get this done so you can get back to your spaceship. I’ll never be able to watch Aliens again without wondering if you’re going to get your stomach eaten out by a huge worm.”
“Thanks for the visual.” But Faith smiled widely. Space worms sounded almost tame after a lifetime of blood-sucking vampires and red-eyed demons. She almost looked forward to being able to kill something that Buffy would never get a chance to touch. That was just the sort of thing to start this trip off on the right foot.
Chapter 7: Rarity
A blast of energy burned into the metal only a few scant inches above Mal’s head. “Who’s bright idea was this?” he yelled toward the hatch across from him.
“Yours,” River called back from her hiding place. “The bad ideas are always yours.”
“Don’t remind me.” Another blast singed the hair on his arm as it barely missed him. The enemy was too close. This position wasn’t the best and he was bound to find himself with a hole in his chest if he stayed here much longer. There weren’t many places he could see that would afford him protection in this firefight. The odds were definitely not in his favor right now. Of course, the odds weren’t often in his favor no matter what he did. That’s what his life was like. Always on the edge with nowhere to go but plummeting down.
He wondered, not for the first time and most likely not for the last, how Faith would have changed his life if she’d stuck around. Maybe he would he have gotten off this ledge. Or maybe they would have balanced on it together. With a laugh, he realized the adrenaline rush was worth the possibility that he might lose his life. She had been the sort of girl that could appreciate his mindset. God, he missed her.
“What’re you laughing at?” River asked, her voice nearly fading into the background now, making it hard to pinpoint her location.
“My own stupidity. Nothing else, darlin’. You have any information for me yet?”
There was a rattle and River’s voice echoed this time. She’d found her way into the secret compartment she was sure would be in this area. Good girl. “We’re not going to die today.”
“That’s good.” He checked his weapons once again, making sure they still looked as if they were functioning. There was nothing he hated more than a gun that stopped working at just the wrong moment. “Anything else?”
Jayne came running down the hall, diving behind the tiny blockade with Mal. There was very little room but he wasn’t about to shove Jayne away. He needed every person he could get on this job. It had been stupid to pull this off without a full crew. Using River for these missions was like begging to get them stranded without a pilot.
“They aren’t going to die either,” River called out, her voice so faint that he could hardly make out the words between gun blasts.
“What’s she talking about?” Jayne asked, frantically looking back over his shoulder to see how close he was being followed. He fired a couple of rounds before hunkering down away from the answering fire. “I’d like them to die very much. It’ll make our job of getting back to Serenity much easier.”
“We’ll just have to hope that Kaylee’s idea is going to work because I don’t think we’re going to find a way back through this ship.” Mal didn’t like stating the obvious when it was so depressing but there was no way he was going to lie to himself or his crew. This was, in fact, a suicide mission. No two ways about it.
Jayne fired a couple more times without looking. There was an accompanying scream from down the hallway. “I don’t like Kaylee’s idea, Mal. I thought I was very clear about that.”
“Don’t be a baby,” River called out, her voice muffled but louder now. “Besides, we can’t kill them. If this ship loses power, it’ll crash into the next available surface and that’s sure to kill a lot of people. This thing is full of a lot of things that will go boom if not handled carefully.”
“They’re packing explosives?” Jayne and Mal asked the question at the same time, their eyes wide at the thought they might still be onboard if this thing decided to go up in a ball of flame.
“Not exactly sure what it is. There’s the definite flavor of something that will make the explosion felt for miles.”
“And this airspace is too close to a well-populated planet for us to do anything rash,” Mal agreed. “So we’re back to getting what we came for and getting out without injuring too many of the crew or the ship itself.”
Jayne muttered something under his breath that Mal chose to ignore. Sometimes Jayne just needed to be Jayne and, as long as he wasn’t fighting him outright, Mal didn’t care how he chose to express himself.
“Agreed?” Mal asked.
“Agreed.” Jayne frowned but didn’t say anything more.
“Tell me happy things, River.” There was a scuffling of flesh against metal and he prayed that River hadn’t gotten herself wedged in too securely. “Tell me you have the parts we came for and we can leave.”
There wasn’t an answer for several tense moments. Just when he’d given up on hearing her again, there was a scuffle and a clang. “Got it.”
“Push the button and get out of here. We’ll be right-“ A blast nearly took his head off. If Jayne hadn’t pushed him down, he would have had to deal with more than just singed hair. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“You sure this things going to work, Mal. What if she ends up in the middle of space or on a planet we’ve never heard of? Maybe we should go with her.”
“If Kaylee’s done her job right, we’ll end up in her box.”
“But-“
Mal shoved Jayne across the four feet of space toward where River was waiting. “Fine. Go with her. Then at least you’ll be on a deserted planet with each other.”
“What about-“
There was a round of intense gun fire that had Mal covering his head, hoping he would live to see his ship again. “Go!” he bellowed. “Get River to safety. I’ll find my own way back.”
He shouldn’t have expected any argument but still the silence taunted him. He was his own way now. The plan really had always been to get back to Serenity using the buttons Kaylee had given them because there had been no way they were going to sneak onboard this ship and get what they needed without being detected. Each little gadget they carried was good for one trip back.
The only problem was that his ship’s mechanic had cautioned them that the buttons shouldn’t be pressed altogether. They could come as a group using one of the buttons but if they had to come separately, they needed to come in five minute intervals. It was safer that way, she’d assured them. The use of the word safe bothered him a bit. While he didn’t like depending on a small hunk of metal for his safety, he would because Kaylee had told him it was safe. But why should five minutes matter? Kaylee had refused to answer his first question and he’d been too concerned about her silence to ask it again.
He began to count down the three hundred heartbeats he would need before seeking his own safety. If he could wait that long, he was going for six minutes instead of just five. The last thing he wanted to happen was to find himself running from the gunfire here only to be spliced into River or, worse, Jayne. He would rather take a shot to the chest than risk that.
In a strange syncopation with his countdown, the gunshots were coming fast and furious all around him. The men whose ship he’d boarded today with the intention to steal away a bit of their cargo were angry and rightly so. It had been a suicide mission, something he would have normally turned down but the money was good. In the end, Jayne’s enthusiasm had swayed him from his usual reticense toward such nonsense as this. He’d been a fool. Granted, a rich fool if he got out of here alive.
At the three minute mark, the shooting stopped. The silence was unnerving because, as Mal suddenly realized, he had no idea what was going on. There was not a breath of sound to give an indication where his persuers might be.
He looked around the corner, hoping he didn’t lose his nose for his curiousity. There was no one there anymore. There had once been at least three faces peering at him from their hiding spots. It was strange to see an empty cooridor.
Another minute passed. He began to think of all the things that could have gone wrong with Jayne and River. His imagination was taking him to places he didn’t want to contemplate. It wasn’t just his crew’s fate that haunted him, but his own. Would he be missed if he were to be stranded on a deserted planet? Kaylee might try to look for him but it would only be so long before she gave up and found a new ship to love the way she loved Serenity.
For the first time since he purchased Serenity, he wanted more than the cold metal of his ship to warm him. More people around him that would mourn his passing. More people to give his life meaning. He wanted more than just a bunch of crew members that he might also call friends. He wanted….
“Faith.”
She was lost to him. The odds of Kaylee being able to call her back to the ship with her box were slim indeed. He’d been down this path already and it had led to a night of drinking and throwing things at the wall in an attempt to make himself feel better. It hadn’t worked and had, for the most part, led to this situation he was in right now.
“Time to die, wang bao dahn shiong mao niao (dirty bastard son of panda urine).”
There was just enough time for Mal to roll to the left toward where Jayne and River had disappeared moments ago before the shot was fired from the large gun pointed at him nearly point blank by a wrinkled, old man. The momentum took him away from the main blast but an intense heat radiated from his right hip, not to mention the pain in his left one when he landed heavily.
It wasn’t exactly five minutes and definitely no the six he had hoped to stretch this out to but it didn’t matter anymore. His fight or flight response was working overtime. There was no room to fight this out adequately, especially since the gun pointed at him was definitely bigger than his own.
“This better work,” he yelled as he found the button and pushed it. At first nothing happened, except for the cackling of the man with the gun which was pointed at him once again. There was no rolling out of the way this time. With the realization gnawing at him that he had truly come down to his final moment, he pushed the button again and again. Each time, it was with greater force.
Still nothing happened.
“Runtse de shang-dee, ching daiwuhtzo (Merciful God please take me away)."
Time slowed down as he watched the man’s fingers begin to tighten around the trigger. Each of his ragged breaths sounded like shouts in this strange frozen time. As he pushed down on the button once again in desperation, Mal closed his eyes.
“Today is a good day to die,” he whispered, remembering one of the phrases his father often said each morning as he pushed away from the breakfast table to begin his long day of back-breaking work.
There was a sudden lack of oxygen. When Mal opened his eyes to see what his death looked like, it was as if he’d kept his eyes tightly shut. Utter darkness surrounded him.
“This is new.” He put a hand out to see what might be in front of him. A smooth wall of metal. Not a death. Not today. He was home.
The door opened, spilling light into his tiny room of salvation. An angel began to yell at him. “God damn you, Malcolm Reynolds! I go through all the trouble to find you again only to find that you’ve gone on a suicide mission.”
His angel had curling dark hair and a familiar scent of new leather and old death. It was impossible to see her dark eyes but he could imagine what they looked like, his memory filling in much of what he couldn’t see because of the light shining behind her.
“I-“
“You what?” She hauled him up by his shirt, pulling him out of the box before pushing him against the side of the ship. “You tried to kill yourself, Mal. And for what? A piece of machinery?”
“A Hessian Block,” River answered for him before being shushed by Jayne. Mal couldn’t see them nor did he care to look away from Faith to check on them. It was enough that they were safe and home. As far as he was concerned, they could do what they wanted. He had something better to concentrate on.
Faith didn’t appreciate their presence. “Could we get a minute alone?” she asked over her shoulder before turning toward him again. With each of her words, she shoved him roughly against the metal walls over and over. “What were you thinking, Mal? What were you thinking?”
“Give me a minute to get my legs underneath me again and I’ll answer you.” Instead of trying to get away, he smoothed the back of his hand over her cheek. “You remember my name.”
“Of course I remember your name.” She said it like there had never been any trouble with her memory but her cheeks colored as if she’d been caught in the smallest of lies. “Malcolm Reynolds. Captain of Serenity. Not hard to forget.”
“Really?”
Something softened in her gaze. “I left myself a note, reminding me what I was leaving behind.”
“I would have come for you, Faith Lehane. There is nowhere in this ‘verse that you can hide from me.”
This time, he didn’t give her a chance to even think about being the one to initiate the kiss. It was everything he’d imagined it would be, not to mention a new flavor of desperation. From across the universe, she had come back to him. No matter the cost, he was going to keep hold of this million in a one chance at happiness.
Chapters 1-3
Chapter 4: Rectify
Waking up after a night of partying was always difficult. There was the whole “hand-eye coordination” that had to be slowly relearned and then there was the remembering of the bits that the drinking had rubbed out. Throw in a body that ached like it had been run over by a trash truck after it had been loaded down with all the goodies that Californians found to throw away and it was a recipe for a bad day.
This particular morning, when Faith woke up, she couldn’t tell what was wrong. There were the usual warning signs that she’d had too much to drink last night. It happened so often, she didn’t worry too much about the particulars but there was something different about the way this morning felt. She opened one eye just enough to see that the ceiling above her was… metal. The bed she was laying on was narrow and hard. There was no one beside her so she hadn’t gone home with a wino bunked out in a warehouse. Wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something stupid like that. This place didn’t have the open sound like the last warehouse she’d found herself in.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she opened her second eye. When her vision straightened out, she looked to the left. Another metal wall. Then to the right. In a chair across from the room, she saw the very top of a fuzzy head. Someone else was in the room with her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Or how she felt about any of this. Her head hurt and there was a frightful taste in her mouth, as if she’d eaten a hairy rodent who had crawled into a hole twelve years ago and she’d pulled out the carcass to snack on it last night. With ketchup. She hated ketchup.
“Hey! Mister! Tell me what day it is.” Her own voice made her teeth set on edge as she struggled to push the pain back to a manageable level. “I’m supposed to be patrolling on Wednesday. Is it Wednesday?”
“What are you yammering on about, woman?” The man unfolded from his cramped position in the uncomfortable looking chair. He was rumpled in just the sort of way that woman found attractive even if his glare was enough to make her want to beat at him. Something about him looked familiar but she didn’t have time to try to put a name and history with his face.
“Is it Wednesday?” she asked again, trying to figure out the mystery of her location with a muzzy head that protested every thought. Drinking at the Bronze didn’t hurt quite this much the next day. There was that biker bar on the edge of town that she’d been meaning to visit. Maybe she went there. Had it been that much of a dud that she’d forgotten her time there completely?
“No.”
His back was to her as he stood in front of a small closet, making her feel like an idiot staring at the muscles rippling under his skin. This was obviously his room but he hadn’t been in the bed with her. Granted, it was a very small bed but she would have gladly shared with the likes of him.
So what had she done that had brought out the mother-hen instinct instead of the drooling lech? Had he copped a feel once to often and she’d made him back off? So then why hadn’t she just walked away from him instead of bunking down in his digs.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“You can say that again.”
He pulled on a pair of pants before turning to look at her again. When his attention was completely on her, she grinned. “Damn.” When he laughed, she knew she was on the right track. “So, I’ll tell you my name if you tell me yours.”
“You still know your name? You didn’t drink as much as I thought then. My head aches and I barely had any.”
Her name was Faith. Since it wasn’t hard to find that information in her scarred memory banks, she didn’t start worrying. She’d drunk herself into worse stupors. “I know mine. Just not yours. Or maybe we didn’t exchange that information?”
“Or maybe Kaylee’s machine left you addled. I’ll have to have a talk with that girl. She can’t go around zapping people from one place to another if it’s going to mess with their memories. Not good for business. Not good, at all.”
“Kaylee.” The name on her tongue sounded like she’d said it before. The name itself brought back memories of a smiling girl with fuzzy hair and grease stains on her face. “Last I saw her she was changing light bulbs. She’s the ship’s mechanic, right? Seems I remember someone telling me that.”
“Jayne mentioned it a time or two.”
“Who’s she?”
That got a belly laugh from the man. Personally, she couldn’t see what was so funny but it seemed to strike his funny bone. She would have liked his laugh if each hearty chuckle hadn’t gouged its way into her skull in agonizing shards of pain.
“If you promise to stop laughing, I will do whatever you want. Let me tell you, I’m up for anything so that’s not an idle promise.” Faith lay back down on the bed, pulling the thin covers up over her ears. The scratchy gloom was just dark enough to give her a sense that she may survive this morning. Considering she felt it might be important to, at the very least, know the name of the man who had let her sleep in his bed last night, there was no way she could stay in her comforting cave much longer. The time for action was upon her.
She peaked out after the noise of his laughter had died down. “I still need to know your name. It’s not my style to bed down with a man that I don’t know anything about.”
“You really don’t remember anything else about the last eighteen hours?”
The man was standing now, his bare chest every bit as nice as other bare chests she’d encountered in her time. It was still strange to her that he was over there instead of with her on the bed. The way things normally worked, she would have had to pry herself out from under some sweating lump who’d enjoyed the party the night before more than she had. Or sometimes, but not often, she was kicked out of bed by the original occupant. Those were mornings she didn’t like to think about. It meant she’d picked a doozy of a companion, just another in a long line of mistakes her mother had told her she was destined to make. Damn, but she was glad that woman wasn’t around anymore.
“Missing something good, am I? Sorry, sugar. That’s what I get for drinking too much. Normally I’m a girl who can hold her liquor but obviously last night was special. Care to tell me how good it was?”
A shirt quickly covered the bare chest and the hair was smoothed down. “My name is Mal. Malcolm Reynolds. Does that bring back any memories? No? You’re on my ship. Serenity.”
“Maybe that’s why I feel sort of woozy. I don’t have my sea legs quite yet. I agreed to come on board, right? I wasn’t forced?”
He was shaking his head, seemingly in disgust. “I’ve never forced anyone to come on board. I always ask nicely. And we’re not at sea. Like I told you before, this is a spaceship. This is my Serenity.”
“Firefly,” she replied slowly, trying out the word that had suddenly sprung to mind. It was hard to think what tiny little insects that sparkled out their butt had to do with what she hoped was a quality-built ship. “Firefly class.”
She looked up to see him smiling at her as if she was a small child who had just taken her first step. Instead of irritating her so much that she wanted to punch his face until he couldn’t possibly smile like that any longer, she found that she liked it. When she looked at him, she felt at ease even in a situation like this. Trust in her fellow man was never easy when she wasn’t fully dressed.
But now that she thought about it… she was fully dressed. Except for her boots, which, when she looked, were beside the bed.
“Who are you, Malcolm Reynolds? What is it that I’m missing here?” she asked in wonder. The only aches and pains she had were from excessive drinking. From what her body was telling her, there had been no fighting and definitely no sex. She’d spent all night with the man without sleeping with him, in either sense of the word. That meant there was either something wrong with her… or him. She preferred it would be the second one because she didn’t like the thought of being wrong. That had happened too often for her liking.
“I’d say you’re missing breakfast. We’ve been yammering on for so long that we might have missed all the eggs.”
“Eggs?” Her stomach growled. “I could go for some eggs.”
“Good.” Mal threw her a clean shirt, one nearly identical to the one he was wearing. “Change into this first. You’re starting to smell.”
She let the insult go as she pushed herself out of bed and took his advice. Who was this Faith, she wondered as she buttoned the shirt. And why was she letting any man… any person tell her what to do? I let the Mayor do that once and look where that got me. A coma long enough to almost complete miss out on the end of the 90s. He said he loved me but I can’t help but shake the idea that he did it all to get something for himself.
That boiled down her whole way of looking at the world - who wanted to use her and how could she use them first. It felt like she’d always felt like that but it wasn’t until this moment that she’d even thought about it in quite those terms. Right now, she wasn’t on the lookout for any way she might use Mal. He made her feel… calm. It was something to take into consideration. Right after breakfast, that was. She didn’t think she could do much more of this deep thinking before she’d had anything to eat. Not after the night she was sure she had.
As Faith walked out the door, all she had to do follow her nose to find the kitchen. It wasn’t like anything she’d imagined a spaceship would have inside but nothing on this ship really was like anything she could have imagined. It was all very plain and ordinary. Nothing with flashing lights and robotic voices. There was no shiny metal anywhere and nothing wooshed when she walked toward it.
This ship was nothing like anything she’d ever seen on television. She could have been anywhere but on a spaceship. As long as she didn’t look out any windows (and she really didn’t want to see that there was no ground under her because that would be a little weird), she could imagine that she was hanging out in a large warehouse down by the docks.
“What smells so great?” Faith walked into the room, her hands in her pockets as she surveyed what she could only assume was the kitchen. Mal stood behind the girl at the stove, his hands on her shoulders as they laughed together over something she had nothing to do with. Familiar jealousy reared its ugly head. She only wanted him to laugh with her. Not with some girl who… but she recognized this girl. The name wouldn’t land where she could say it out loud.
“Mal says you didn’t remember him this morning.” The cook wiped her hands off on a towel before offering one toward her to shake. It seemed the right thing to do so Faith took it. “I think that might be a side effect of the box. I was up all night working on it but I still don’t have much in the way of news. Sorry ‘bout that. You’ll be with us for a little bit longer.”
“The box?” Oh, yes. This was Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic.
“Yeah.” The girl flushed a deep red. “I was trying out a new contraption that I found and it seems that it wasn’t as harmless as I thought it was. Turns out, it’s harmfull. That means I can’t play around with it like I would have preferred to. A bit of tinkering, that was all I was after. Didn’t mean to cause,” she shrugged and swept out her arm to indicate Faith, “you.”
“You caused me?”
“Wo hen baoqian (I’m so sorry),” Kaylee whispered, not offering much in the way of explanation.
Mal took up the cause from the stricken girl. “She means, the box that she’s talking about is what brought you here. From wherever it was that you’re from. Something about hell?”
“The Hellmouth. Sunnydale. California. I remember all that. Why is that I don’t remember you lot again?” She was starting to feel antsy about all this, a moment of panic beginning to worm its way into the back of her mind. It had seemed sort of normal to be on a spaceship even if she didn’t remember how she’d gotten there. Didn’t everyone know where California was? Even up in space? “Why should I trust anything you’re saying?”
Mal stood in the middle of the room, his hands on his hips. “Ho there. None of that kind of talk. You know me. Even if you don’t remember my name, I can tell you remember me. We haven’t known each other long but you should know, down deep in your soul, that I’m not going to hurt you. Kaylee didn’t mean what she did. It just sort of happened. But she’ll make it right. If I know my mechanic, she won’t sleep until she’s got the problem solved. You’ll be back in California before you know it.”
“Kaylee.” She tried out the name to see how it felt to have her lips form the words. “And River, Jayne and Simon.”
“Right. You met them yesterday. I guess you haven’t completely lost your memory. Maybe it’s just covered up somehow. The reality you knew is trying to force itself back on you, erasing us to make room for the things that you know more about. You’re trying to come up with what you know to be normal and your brain is trying to help out.”
Mal winced as he heard Kaylee’s explanation. “Guess that would make sense. It’s times like this that I miss Wash the most. He would understand what’s going on here and give us a laugh while he was at it.”
That wasn’t a name she recognized. “Where’s he, then?”
“He’s a star.”
Faith whipped around to face the newest person in the room. She was a Slayer and nothing snuck up on her but this small girl with the blackest of hair was quiet. Freakishly quiet, really. “A star?” she stammered. Did they have TV stars out here in space or did she actually mean one of the shiny things they were flying by? Either way, she felt queasy.
Mal was suddenly behind her, lending his quiet strength. In any other situation, she would have turned and planted her fist alongside his jaw but she found herself leaning back against him, relaxing instead of becoming keyed up. “River only means that he’s gone. Died a couple months back. He was our pilot.”
“So no one’s flying this thing?” She jumped away, her whole body tense at the thought that they might, at this moment, be flying straight into something that would make them very flat and very dead. She liked her curves and aliveness intact.
“I’m flying it,” the dark haired girl answered with a smugness that was quite like her own.
“Right this moment? Do you use your brain or something?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I do.”
Kaylee banged a pan down on the stove, diverting everyone’s attention. Faith was happy to be able to have an excuse to look away from the strange girl. She knew plenty about strange girls to last a lifetime. No way did she need more of them to worry about. “Stop talking nonsense, River. It’s time to eat.”
“Good idea.” Mal’s hands gripped both of her shoulders, turning her toward the table. “Let’s eat. I’ll reintroduce you to everyone. But no Mudder’s Milk today. We can’t addle your brain cells any more than they’ve already been addled. It would be so depressing if we had to go through all of this again tomorrow.”
“We will,” the dark-haired girl whispered behind Faith. “The slayers won’t let go of their grip on her so easily.”
Faith shivered, not sure if she wanted the slayers to have their grip on her. But she should want to go home, shouldn’t she? It should be easy to turn her back on Malcom Reynolds and his crew. She should want to head back to the life she’d left. So why didn’t she?
With a mental shrug, Faith sat down to the plate of eggs and tried not to think about slayers or laughing girls who could power spaceships with their minds. It was all beginning to unsettle her and the last thing she wanted to be was unsettled.
Chapter 5: Reality
It was very easy to imagine Faith being a part of Serenity’s crew. After the second round of introductions, she sank seamlessly into the group as if she’d never been an outsider. Even more strange was that the group let her in without complaint. No one questioned her existence. At the very least, he would have expected Jayne to raise a fuss but he was as mesmerized by the girl’s attributes as Mal.
Before the dishes were even moved off the table, Jayne was already starting to figure out how all their lives would change now that Faith was on board. No one, not even River, seemed to want to stop him. He worked her into the cleaning schedule (which was strange as no one really used the cleaning schedule unless Mal made a stink about it) and decided where she would sleep. This took some conversation, most of it between River and Jayne. Kaylee had given up trying to give her thoughts on the issue and drifted away to other areas of the ship and Simon began washing the dishes without being asked, something which surprised Mal more than it probably should have, seeing how the young doctor liked things on the clean side of the spectrum.
“Are they always like this?” Faith asked quietly as she moved for the first time since Jayne started talking. He’d noticed that she’d gotten very quiet, almost as if she was trying to keep from being noticed. The smirk had never left her lips, though. She could handle her own, this girl could. It was as if she was… waiting for her moment to talk. Like she wasn’t ready to chime in just yet.
“Like what?”
“So… excited? I’m not used to it.”
“This is actually something new,” Mal replied. “Don’t worry. If I was concerned about your well being, I would have told Jayne to stop. He would have hit me but he would have left you alone.”
“Are you always like this? It’s like having my own knight in shining armor.”
Mal physically recoiled at her words. Well, not her words so much as her tone of voice. That wasn’t what he’d expected from her. A little thanks. Some gratitude. Not this cold snarkiness. He wanted to say it was a cover for what the girl was really feeling but he would lay odds that her real feelings were probably more harsh than this. If she was hiding anything, it was pure, raw anger.
“Jayne’s just excited to have a new member of the team.”
“Team? What team? I’ve seen teams in my day and you all don’t look like a team. Maybe you have a rousing game of volleyball before you go off to clean toilets? Or was there something I missed?”
Mal shrugged, trying to see his crew from her point of view. They’d always been like this, though. He’d accepted them because they were… family. “We’re usually much busier.”
“Once again I’m going to point out that I don’t think your busy is all that exciting. Where I came from, we went out and killed vampires every day. Or demons. Or whatever other kind of undead or evil creatures we could get our hands on. Every day. That was real work. You guys are worried about a clean toilet.”
“Ho there, missy. Just because Jayne gave you a spot on the cleanin roster don’t mean that all we do is-“
“Did you just call me Missy?”
She was closer to him now but not in a good way. While he hadn’t seen her hand move, he was aware that there was a knife in her hand and it was pointed at his gut. One twist of her arm and he’d be looking at his innards in a way that wouldn’t be pleasant. He’d have to watch his words with this one. She was beginning to unsettle him in a whole new, completely unpleasant type of way.
“It’s just a saying. Not meant as an insult. I wasn’t thinking or I never would have called you that. I do apologize… Faith. I was out of line.”
“Out of line? That was a line you shouldn’t have even started to draw, Mr. I-Have-A-Spaceship-So-I-Can-Do-What-I-Please.”
Just as suddenly as he’d been concerned, Mal was laughing. It was hard not to. The girl was so cute when she was trying to put up a strong façade. The trip in the box must have really done a number on her if she’d spent a day being so pleasant. It was so obvious now that she was more used to acting like this, always making sure to strike first before anyone could strike at her. This was a person with definite issues. He liked her better for it, even if she wanted to gut him. Of course he wasn’t going to let her get away with it even as funny as the situation was quickly becoming.
Before anyone else could react to the intended threat, Mal reached out and grabbed her wrist. Without thinking, he twisted hard enough that he should have felt bones grind together. Instead, Faith just smiled at him with just a hint of sarcasm.
“I do have a spaceship,” was his terse reply as he twisted harder. From his experience, she should have been showing some reaction to the pain he was inflicting. Instead, her eyes only narrowed in irritation, as if he’d been swatting her like she was a flee jumping around in his socks. “And I can do whatever I please.”
“Cause you’re a man?” she hissed at him. Tiny spots of red were highlighting her cheeks. She was really angry at him. The idea that he’d done something to earn her rancor was almost more than he could bear.
Instead of answering back, he leaned forward and kissed her. Not a true kiss. It was nothing she’d write to her friends about, wherever those friends were at this point, but it shut her up. Or it should have.
As soon as he sank back, content that they were away from the danger, her forehead connected with his jaw. As startling maneuvers went, it was enough that he let go of her hand so he could defend himself. The knife glinted from the light cast by the overhead lamps as she lifted it up. Now the secret was out in the open and Jayne would come to his rescue. He wasn’t sure how he thought about that but it was better to be emasculated than well… emasculated. Neither option was exactly what he’d had in mind when he woke up this morning.
But Jayne didn’t come to his rescue. The knife sliced cleanly through his shirt. As he watched it slide into his flesh, he found his voice. “Jayne, you ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng (frog humping son of a b****). Do something besides sitting on your-“
Faith held up the knife, a thin line of blood marring the blade. “You’re such a baby. I barely nicked you.”
Across the table, Jayne was doubled over as he tried to laugh and breath at the same time. Not surprisingly, he couldn’t seem to be doing either properly. “She… she… cut you.” He dissolved into helpless spasms of amusement.
“He’s right, you know.” Mal held up a hand sticky with his own blood. It was hard not to feel nauseous even though he’d seen more of his insides during his lifetime than he cared to remember. This was his ship, though. He wasn’t supposed to be gutted by small females on his ship. It was in the rules somewhere. “You cut me.”
She shrugged as she swiped the blade against the denim on her thigh. If it hadn’t been his blood she was cleaning off, he might have chided her about the improper cleaning she was giving her weapon. Instead, he took it personally.
“And before that, you hit me. With your head.”
“I don’t blame her.” River had certainly waited long enough to chime in. Now was not the time he wanted to hear from her. “You kissed her. And it’s not a real cut. Just a knick. You just bleed more than most.”
“Why are you taking her side in all this?”
River tilted her head. It was a gesture they were all familiar with but it still gave Mal the impression that she was trying to reach into the deeper parts of his brain that he was hoping were hidden from her scary little mind games. He liked having her in his head even less than he did with her taking sides against him. Surely River didn’t find Faith likable enough that she thought her actions were anything but reprehensible.
Instead of answering Mal, River turned to Faith. “I’ve never seen a blade quite like that before. Where did you find it?”
“It was a gift.” All anger seemed to have evaporated with those four words. Faith looked up at him, her eyes deep pools of sadness. “Reflexes. They’re hard to control. I thought I was doing better and then… I’m sorry.”
Those were two words that he hadn’t expected to come out of her mouth. “Just a flesh wound,” he replied in a gruff voice as he tried to find his anger. It seemed to have fled along with hers. “I guess I should apologize for kissing you. Just wanted to ease some of the tension and you were looking up at me all pretty-like and-“
This time, she kissed him and it was definitely a kiss this time. Where had this girl learned how to kiss? He wanted to know because she was very good at it. No two ways about it, she was putting her heart and soul into the kiss. It was so much like those they’d shared last night that he was tempted to forget all that had happened since they’d woken up.
She pulled back but only enough that she could look him straight in the eyes, her attention focused on his expression in a way that unnerved him. How did one girl get to be such a contradiction?
“Have we done that before?”
“Just last night. I’m starting to feel downright put out that you don’t remember me. After all, you at least remembered Jayne’s name.”
“That’s cause it’s a girl’s name,” River interrupted, as if she’d suddenly remembered that he was her captain and so that might mean she should side with him in arguments.
“I’m not a nice girl,” Faith responded as if she hadn’t heard River at all. “There are things you don’t know about me. That must be why you’re being so nice. You think you know me but you don’t. You can’t possibly understand.”
Mal didn’t even have to consider his answer. The last thing he wanted her to think was that he picked up just anyone out in the middle of space and treated them to a complete tour of his ship as if they were royalty. He wasn’t even sure why he’d done it for her.
“I understand this.” It was his turn to kiss her, seeing as they were taking turns. She resisted his efforts at first but he didn’t let her move away from him. His hands, still wet with his blood, clutched at her arms so that she couldn’t move back even if she really wanted to. He was ready for her. The girl was tough. Not just physically even though she was the strongest woman he’d ever met. There was enough pain in her eyes that he could tell she was tough on the inside, too. Yesterday had been a different side of her, probably one she didn’t show many people. Her defenses had been down and now he was paying for the lapse.
He felt the moment she let go of the mistrust she had for him. It was like the oxygen in the room had suddenly bled through the walls and they were only left with atmosphere that kept them from crumpling into a piece of space trash. It surprised him to suddenly see the Faith that was the pliant girl from before, only without the reek of alcohol.
“I’ve done it!”
Both of them jumped apart, reminded by Kaylee’s sudden exclamation that they weren’t alone. Funny how they only wanted to kiss each other when they were surrounded by the rest of the crew. It was demented, the more he thought about it.
“Do what?” Mal asked after he cleared his throat a couple of times. Everyone was looking at him save for the one person he wouldn’t have minded staring at for much longer.
“I’ve fixed the transporter.”
“Transporter?” He furrowed his brow, trying to remember what part of Serenity they called the transporter. He was pretty sure he hadn’t heard of that part before but then Kaylee was always renaming things at her whim.
“The,” she began to frantically gesture over her shoulder, “thing. The box. You know, the box that brought Faith here.”
This time the air left the room for good. Mal tried to figure out how to breathe without any oxygen but he got lightheaded. Everyone around him was talking but he couldn’t concentrate on the words. The box worked. That was very good… and very bad.
Chapter 6: Reimaging
Faith woke up, huddled in the corner of one of the dirtier alleys in Sunnydale. She’d been in enough of them to know exactly where she was. The when and why were a bit blurry. With a sigh, she got up and began the long walk back to the only home she had. The thought depressed her more than it normally did.
When Faith walked in the door, she discovered she’d been gone for more than forty-eight hours and no one knew where she’d been. Even though she tried to act like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, everyone suddenly wanted to know where she’d been. They’d been worried about her. Well, bully for them. No one had cared where she’d gone before. Why now?
The worst was Buffy’s dark looks. It was like the girl knew when she was hiding something. Well, she was always hiding something. This time, she wasn’t really hiding anything so much as trying to piece together her past two days. There were a lot of fuzzy bits but she remembered kissing someone and there was... but it hurt her head to try to remember.
What she needed was someone to talk it over with but Buffy’s glares were definitely cutting off that direction. The other Slayers were a little too Oh-My-God-You’re-Our-Hero to be much good as decent sounding boards for her adventure. Besides, she didn’t want to start any rumors and talking to them would definitely start the gossip mill cranking out asinine ideas about what this all could mean.
There was always Xander but he was still paranoid about being alone with her. She didn’t blame him but it would have been nice to get a male perspective about this situation. No matter how blurry things were in her head, she had a definite sense that there was a guy involved. Not in a bad way, even. The thoughts in her head were pleasant enough, if they were hard to hold onto.
Giles was in and out of the house but Faith didn’t like dealing with the Englishman. He was stuffy and he made her feel stupid. Nothing she said was smart enough. Just thinking about asking him to help her out made her feel self-conscious. The last thing she needed was a complex because she didn’t have the right inflection to the words of her story.
So, for better or for worse, that left Willow. Faith wasn’t sure how she felt about the red-headed witch. She wasn’t the wallflower she’d been but still she remained an enigma. Kennedy had certainly brought her out of the shell she’d put around herself lately. Was it broken enough that Faith could hope to talk to her and get any response that might be helpful? How exactly should she start the conversation?
These were exactly the same questions that were hurting her head just as much as thoughts of the last few days. It was so much nicer when she didn’t have to think so hard. So much nicer when she just reacted and went along with wherever those reactions took her. It didn’t matter if she’d been gone for days at a time. There was no one who cared.
Now there were the Slayers. And Buffy. They all seemed to care about her but not the way she wanted them to care. Never in the way she wanted them to care. It was always what they could get from her. Her fists and weapon skills and… her knife.
She took it out to look at it. The blade was as smooth as ever, not a scratch or mar on the shiny surface. It was perfect. Even though she didn’t need to, she cleaned it against the denim of her thigh. It was a familiar gesture, one that brought her some peace. No matter what, she had her knife and she knew how to use it.
When Faith looked down, there was something on her jeans where she’d brushed the knife. The fabric was stiff when she placed her finger over it, pressing down to see if she could determine what the stain was purely by the way the texture felt. While it could be dirt, she doubted it. Cleaning dirt off a knife was done differently than cleaning blood. She did this very same thing every time she used the weapon to draw blood.
Had she killed someone? No, not enough blood. This was just a single stripe. She hurried to a mirror, something she didn’t bother looking in much. If she’d cleaned her knife on these jeans, the odds were that she had them on when she used it in the first place. From the little she could see of herself in the mirror, there was no evidence of spatter.
With a sigh of relief, she turned away from her reflection and holstered the knife back where it belonged. Blood meant innocence. Those who had it rarely knew about the vampires that didn’t have it. She killed the vampires so that the innocent stayed that way. It was a win/win sort of situation. She doubted many of the normal people walking outside knew how lucky they had it. Besides, she doubted very much that they had their own knife with which to do the dusting.
Something niggled at her brain. Something important. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was but something….
“Jayne,” she whispered. The name was triggered by the thoughts of her knife. Not a girl’s name. From her memory, she could hear someone saying those words to her over and over. Not a girl’s name. She waited, hoping that it would trigger something else but everything else in her head was quiet.
Maybe I’m going insane.
“Are you insane?” For a moment, she thought her subconscious had become an entity all its own and was standing in the doorway but it was only Buffy, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Hey, B. Last time I checked, I wasn’t insane but that doesn’t mean much these days.” She tried for breezy but she felt it came out sounding like she was hiding something. Strange how she couldn’t hide things these days, even if they were hidden from her.
When she smiled at Buffy, the other girl didn’t smile back. That wasn’t a surprise. Buffy only had a few smiles she was allowed to use in a given day and none of them were reserved for the screw-up that Faith Lehane was. She was lucky if she got three civil words strung together.
“Got a better explanation than I was out for awhile yet?”
“Not much more.” Seeing as Buffy was standing in the doorway, there was little chance that Faith could just push on past her. Well, at least without starting a fight. It was the very thing that would upset the already edgy household. She would have to talk her way out of this one. “Listen, do you know where Willow is at the moment? I need to talk to her for a sec.”
“You want to talk to Willow?”
Faith shrugged. “Unless you want to listen to what I know of my pathetic story and see if you can help piece everything together.” When Buffy didn’t answer right away, Faith sat on the bed, her arms out behind her in a classic bored pose in the hopes that Buffy would think her insane words meant she was kidding and would just leave.
Unfortunately, Buffy actually listened to her for once. It would have to be the one time she didn’t really want to the attention. “Tell me what you know and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Better settle in. It’s all muddled. I’m pretty sure you’re going to think I’m crazy before this is all over.” When Buffy didn’t move from her path to the doorway, Faith had no other choice than to start in on what she knew. “This morning, I woke up under a bag of garbage down along Seymour Street.”
“Hanging out in the good section of town these days, are you?”
“That isn’t all the story, B. Do you want me to tell you the rest?”
“Does it get better than this?”
Faith glared at her from the corner of her eye. “I’m going to pretend we didn’t start down this rabbit trail. I woke up this morning in a alley and I’ve been gone two days. I haven’t showered since I got home. Do I smell like garbage to you?”
Buffy took a tentative sniff of the air before getting closer to get a good whiff. She screwed up her nose but not because the smell was bad. “You smell like… metal.”
“I know. Right? And I’ve never seen this shirt before.”
“It’s a man’s shirt. Buttons on the other side. So you were with a man. Color me surprised,” Buffy drawled, a glint of laughter tweaking with the angry look. “But you also don’t smell like him. I would have noticed that on you. That isn’t like you.”
Like you know what I’m like, Faith thought but she kept the words to herself. Better not to travel down that rabbit trail either. It took everything in her to keep her hands from clutching into fists and driving them into the sanctimonious grimace that Buffy always seemed to wear. Now was not the time for child’s play.
“There’s a line of blood on my jeans. It’s right where I clean my knife.” She pointed out the stain but Buffy declined touching it even though she did move closer. Faith found that she couldn’t stop touching it. The texture reminded her that she hadn’t just slept off a bottle of scotch. Whatever she had done, she hoped she’d enjoyed it. “But I don’t have blood spatter. That’s what I was checking when you barged in. Whatever I did, I only nicked someone.”
“So you weren’t out hunting vamps?”
“No dust.” She held up a hand to show off how clean it was. “Do you know anyone named Jayne?”
“Is she one of the Slayers? I forget their names now that there are so many.”
“Not a girl. It’s not a girl’s name. It’s a name I remember, though.”
Buffy took another step forward but stopped herself. “Have you checked your pockets?”
“Huh?”
With an eye roll and a gesture that told Faith just what she thought of her, Buffy pulled her own pockets out. “If you were out and about with someone named Jayne in something with metal enough to make you smell like you do, you probably have at least one receipt. It’s better than this nothing we’re trying to work with.”
She hadn’t thought of that and the idea that something so simple could be the answer to everything lifted her spirits considerably… only to have them plunge again when she didn’t discover anything of use. The lint certainly didn’t have a tale to tell other than something pink had been in her pocket before her jeans were washed last time.
“This isn’t normal, my forgetfulness.” Faith shook her in frustration, pulling off the looser shirt as it constricted her arms too much for her to be comfortable. She felt the need to be ready at a moment’s notice for anything that might come her way. It wasn’t going to help in this situation but it made her feel better. Maybe then she could think better. “It’s like whole sections of my memories were erased. This was done on purpose.”
“Faith…”
“What?” she asked, turning toward Buffy. The girl’s eyes were round with shock.
Buffy reached out a shaking hand. “Turn around and look at your back in the mirror. I think you found your answers.”
There were grease stains all along her fitted tank, none of them noticeable as written words until she concentrated on looking at them individually. Sure enough, she’d found everything she needed to know about this mystery.
You won’t remember anything when you get back. If you get back. Kaylee isn’t sure if this is going to work but you have to try, don’t you? You can’t just stay here, forgetting everything when you wake up each morning. The box has scrambled you.
But you know things now. Things you didn’t know before. You’ll have this information and you know where you can find more. You don’t need to be reminded of everything and odds are you won’t be able to process it all anyway. But you need to remember one word. It should unlock as much as you need to get back here. To get back to him.
“What the one word?” Buffy asked as Faith paused in her reading. She sounded almost excited to be at the end of the mystery as Faith was. Or should have been.
But what was Faith supposed to remember that would help her get back? Back where? And why did she want to remember so badly? It would be so much easier to throw the shirt in the wash and be done with it. She wouldn’t have to think about it again. But every time she thought about the idea of turning away without seeing this through, she felt sick. Whatever was waiting for her must be pretty great for her to want it this badly. It had been a long time since she’d wanted anything with this kind of gut-wrenching need.
Buffy was shaking Faith now, her fingernails digging into the flesh of her shoulder hard enough to draw blood. It brought Faith out of the trance she found herself in. “What is the word, Faith?”
“Serenity.”
“You’re supposed to be calm.”
“Metal,” Faith whispered. “All metal. Firefly class. Serenity.” She looked into Buffy’s wide eyes with a gaze just as surprised. “It’s a spaceship. I remember.”
“What?”
“I’m completely serious. This girl, Kaylee,” she pointed to the name on the shirt laid out on the bed in front of them, “she brought me there in this contraption that she found but didn’t know what it did. Pulled me from the alley where I was hunting vamps. And I forgot nearly everything when I slept so that I woke up every morning not knowing anything. It had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be pulled away from my reality into theirs. All that travel through dimensions was screwing with my memory. That, and my body was fighting off what it saw as a threat to my sanity. Well, that’s just my idea.”
“You forgot all of us?”
“No, nothing that was in my head before I arrived on the ship. I always forgot where I was and who they were. It was… strange. Like my brain was keeping me from remembering where I was because it knew it was wrong.”
“But you remember them now?”
She shook her head. “Not really. It’s still really fuzzy. Mostly I can remember conversations. Not their faces. But I think I know what I need to do.”
Buffy nodded as if she was tracking with the other Slayer. “You need Willow.”
Faith nodded. “I need that mojo magic she can do now. If anyone can get me back there, it’s Willow. One spell and POOF! Back there without the faulty wiring.”
“You really want to go back? Even though you don’t remember everything.”
A warm glow filled Faith when she thought of the word Serenity. “I don’t remember everything but I remember enough. You don’t need me, B. Not really. Not the way I need you. Not the way I need someone to want me. I’ve tried before to find a family and… I did it all wrong that time. This is my chance to do it differently. You see that, right?”
“But we do need you.” Buffy tried to make it sound legit but Faith could hear the insincerity in her words. She was thankful that her friend was trying. For that, Faith was willing to give out huge kudos points. “We need all the warm bodies we can get.”
“Exactly. I’m just a warm body. I need to belong, though. I need a family of my own. Serenity is where I belong. I feel good there. Like I might be a good person for the first time in my life. There’s no baggage holding me back. This is my clean slate. My fresh start.”
Buffy nodded, understanding filling her eyes. If there was anyone who understood about fresh starts, it was Buffy. “Then let’s get you there.”
It surprised her when Buffy reached out and hugged her, the kind of bone-crunching clasp that Faith had always wanted but had always turned down. Now she hugged Buffy back, basking in the emotions that flowed between them. She would be sad to leave Buffy and the other girls behind but they would take care of each other. Soon the hole that she would make with her departing with fill up with another slayer just as wacked-out and strange as Faith.
“Thanks, B.”
“No problem. Come on. Let’s go get this done so you can get back to your spaceship. I’ll never be able to watch Aliens again without wondering if you’re going to get your stomach eaten out by a huge worm.”
“Thanks for the visual.” But Faith smiled widely. Space worms sounded almost tame after a lifetime of blood-sucking vampires and red-eyed demons. She almost looked forward to being able to kill something that Buffy would never get a chance to touch. That was just the sort of thing to start this trip off on the right foot.
Chapter 7: Rarity
A blast of energy burned into the metal only a few scant inches above Mal’s head. “Who’s bright idea was this?” he yelled toward the hatch across from him.
“Yours,” River called back from her hiding place. “The bad ideas are always yours.”
“Don’t remind me.” Another blast singed the hair on his arm as it barely missed him. The enemy was too close. This position wasn’t the best and he was bound to find himself with a hole in his chest if he stayed here much longer. There weren’t many places he could see that would afford him protection in this firefight. The odds were definitely not in his favor right now. Of course, the odds weren’t often in his favor no matter what he did. That’s what his life was like. Always on the edge with nowhere to go but plummeting down.
He wondered, not for the first time and most likely not for the last, how Faith would have changed his life if she’d stuck around. Maybe he would he have gotten off this ledge. Or maybe they would have balanced on it together. With a laugh, he realized the adrenaline rush was worth the possibility that he might lose his life. She had been the sort of girl that could appreciate his mindset. God, he missed her.
“What’re you laughing at?” River asked, her voice nearly fading into the background now, making it hard to pinpoint her location.
“My own stupidity. Nothing else, darlin’. You have any information for me yet?”
There was a rattle and River’s voice echoed this time. She’d found her way into the secret compartment she was sure would be in this area. Good girl. “We’re not going to die today.”
“That’s good.” He checked his weapons once again, making sure they still looked as if they were functioning. There was nothing he hated more than a gun that stopped working at just the wrong moment. “Anything else?”
Jayne came running down the hall, diving behind the tiny blockade with Mal. There was very little room but he wasn’t about to shove Jayne away. He needed every person he could get on this job. It had been stupid to pull this off without a full crew. Using River for these missions was like begging to get them stranded without a pilot.
“They aren’t going to die either,” River called out, her voice so faint that he could hardly make out the words between gun blasts.
“What’s she talking about?” Jayne asked, frantically looking back over his shoulder to see how close he was being followed. He fired a couple of rounds before hunkering down away from the answering fire. “I’d like them to die very much. It’ll make our job of getting back to Serenity much easier.”
“We’ll just have to hope that Kaylee’s idea is going to work because I don’t think we’re going to find a way back through this ship.” Mal didn’t like stating the obvious when it was so depressing but there was no way he was going to lie to himself or his crew. This was, in fact, a suicide mission. No two ways about it.
Jayne fired a couple more times without looking. There was an accompanying scream from down the hallway. “I don’t like Kaylee’s idea, Mal. I thought I was very clear about that.”
“Don’t be a baby,” River called out, her voice muffled but louder now. “Besides, we can’t kill them. If this ship loses power, it’ll crash into the next available surface and that’s sure to kill a lot of people. This thing is full of a lot of things that will go boom if not handled carefully.”
“They’re packing explosives?” Jayne and Mal asked the question at the same time, their eyes wide at the thought they might still be onboard if this thing decided to go up in a ball of flame.
“Not exactly sure what it is. There’s the definite flavor of something that will make the explosion felt for miles.”
“And this airspace is too close to a well-populated planet for us to do anything rash,” Mal agreed. “So we’re back to getting what we came for and getting out without injuring too many of the crew or the ship itself.”
Jayne muttered something under his breath that Mal chose to ignore. Sometimes Jayne just needed to be Jayne and, as long as he wasn’t fighting him outright, Mal didn’t care how he chose to express himself.
“Agreed?” Mal asked.
“Agreed.” Jayne frowned but didn’t say anything more.
“Tell me happy things, River.” There was a scuffling of flesh against metal and he prayed that River hadn’t gotten herself wedged in too securely. “Tell me you have the parts we came for and we can leave.”
There wasn’t an answer for several tense moments. Just when he’d given up on hearing her again, there was a scuffle and a clang. “Got it.”
“Push the button and get out of here. We’ll be right-“ A blast nearly took his head off. If Jayne hadn’t pushed him down, he would have had to deal with more than just singed hair. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“You sure this things going to work, Mal. What if she ends up in the middle of space or on a planet we’ve never heard of? Maybe we should go with her.”
“If Kaylee’s done her job right, we’ll end up in her box.”
“But-“
Mal shoved Jayne across the four feet of space toward where River was waiting. “Fine. Go with her. Then at least you’ll be on a deserted planet with each other.”
“What about-“
There was a round of intense gun fire that had Mal covering his head, hoping he would live to see his ship again. “Go!” he bellowed. “Get River to safety. I’ll find my own way back.”
He shouldn’t have expected any argument but still the silence taunted him. He was his own way now. The plan really had always been to get back to Serenity using the buttons Kaylee had given them because there had been no way they were going to sneak onboard this ship and get what they needed without being detected. Each little gadget they carried was good for one trip back.
The only problem was that his ship’s mechanic had cautioned them that the buttons shouldn’t be pressed altogether. They could come as a group using one of the buttons but if they had to come separately, they needed to come in five minute intervals. It was safer that way, she’d assured them. The use of the word safe bothered him a bit. While he didn’t like depending on a small hunk of metal for his safety, he would because Kaylee had told him it was safe. But why should five minutes matter? Kaylee had refused to answer his first question and he’d been too concerned about her silence to ask it again.
He began to count down the three hundred heartbeats he would need before seeking his own safety. If he could wait that long, he was going for six minutes instead of just five. The last thing he wanted to happen was to find himself running from the gunfire here only to be spliced into River or, worse, Jayne. He would rather take a shot to the chest than risk that.
In a strange syncopation with his countdown, the gunshots were coming fast and furious all around him. The men whose ship he’d boarded today with the intention to steal away a bit of their cargo were angry and rightly so. It had been a suicide mission, something he would have normally turned down but the money was good. In the end, Jayne’s enthusiasm had swayed him from his usual reticense toward such nonsense as this. He’d been a fool. Granted, a rich fool if he got out of here alive.
At the three minute mark, the shooting stopped. The silence was unnerving because, as Mal suddenly realized, he had no idea what was going on. There was not a breath of sound to give an indication where his persuers might be.
He looked around the corner, hoping he didn’t lose his nose for his curiousity. There was no one there anymore. There had once been at least three faces peering at him from their hiding spots. It was strange to see an empty cooridor.
Another minute passed. He began to think of all the things that could have gone wrong with Jayne and River. His imagination was taking him to places he didn’t want to contemplate. It wasn’t just his crew’s fate that haunted him, but his own. Would he be missed if he were to be stranded on a deserted planet? Kaylee might try to look for him but it would only be so long before she gave up and found a new ship to love the way she loved Serenity.
For the first time since he purchased Serenity, he wanted more than the cold metal of his ship to warm him. More people around him that would mourn his passing. More people to give his life meaning. He wanted more than just a bunch of crew members that he might also call friends. He wanted….
“Faith.”
She was lost to him. The odds of Kaylee being able to call her back to the ship with her box were slim indeed. He’d been down this path already and it had led to a night of drinking and throwing things at the wall in an attempt to make himself feel better. It hadn’t worked and had, for the most part, led to this situation he was in right now.
“Time to die, wang bao dahn shiong mao niao (dirty bastard son of panda urine).”
There was just enough time for Mal to roll to the left toward where Jayne and River had disappeared moments ago before the shot was fired from the large gun pointed at him nearly point blank by a wrinkled, old man. The momentum took him away from the main blast but an intense heat radiated from his right hip, not to mention the pain in his left one when he landed heavily.
It wasn’t exactly five minutes and definitely no the six he had hoped to stretch this out to but it didn’t matter anymore. His fight or flight response was working overtime. There was no room to fight this out adequately, especially since the gun pointed at him was definitely bigger than his own.
“This better work,” he yelled as he found the button and pushed it. At first nothing happened, except for the cackling of the man with the gun which was pointed at him once again. There was no rolling out of the way this time. With the realization gnawing at him that he had truly come down to his final moment, he pushed the button again and again. Each time, it was with greater force.
Still nothing happened.
“Runtse de shang-dee, ching daiwuhtzo (Merciful God please take me away)."
Time slowed down as he watched the man’s fingers begin to tighten around the trigger. Each of his ragged breaths sounded like shouts in this strange frozen time. As he pushed down on the button once again in desperation, Mal closed his eyes.
“Today is a good day to die,” he whispered, remembering one of the phrases his father often said each morning as he pushed away from the breakfast table to begin his long day of back-breaking work.
There was a sudden lack of oxygen. When Mal opened his eyes to see what his death looked like, it was as if he’d kept his eyes tightly shut. Utter darkness surrounded him.
“This is new.” He put a hand out to see what might be in front of him. A smooth wall of metal. Not a death. Not today. He was home.
The door opened, spilling light into his tiny room of salvation. An angel began to yell at him. “God damn you, Malcolm Reynolds! I go through all the trouble to find you again only to find that you’ve gone on a suicide mission.”
His angel had curling dark hair and a familiar scent of new leather and old death. It was impossible to see her dark eyes but he could imagine what they looked like, his memory filling in much of what he couldn’t see because of the light shining behind her.
“I-“
“You what?” She hauled him up by his shirt, pulling him out of the box before pushing him against the side of the ship. “You tried to kill yourself, Mal. And for what? A piece of machinery?”
“A Hessian Block,” River answered for him before being shushed by Jayne. Mal couldn’t see them nor did he care to look away from Faith to check on them. It was enough that they were safe and home. As far as he was concerned, they could do what they wanted. He had something better to concentrate on.
Faith didn’t appreciate their presence. “Could we get a minute alone?” she asked over her shoulder before turning toward him again. With each of her words, she shoved him roughly against the metal walls over and over. “What were you thinking, Mal? What were you thinking?”
“Give me a minute to get my legs underneath me again and I’ll answer you.” Instead of trying to get away, he smoothed the back of his hand over her cheek. “You remember my name.”
“Of course I remember your name.” She said it like there had never been any trouble with her memory but her cheeks colored as if she’d been caught in the smallest of lies. “Malcolm Reynolds. Captain of Serenity. Not hard to forget.”
“Really?”
Something softened in her gaze. “I left myself a note, reminding me what I was leaving behind.”
“I would have come for you, Faith Lehane. There is nowhere in this ‘verse that you can hide from me.”
This time, he didn’t give her a chance to even think about being the one to initiate the kiss. It was everything he’d imagined it would be, not to mention a new flavor of desperation. From across the universe, she had come back to him. No matter the cost, he was going to keep hold of this million in a one chance at happiness.