Learning to Fly, Part IV
Title: Learning to Fly
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Chapter: Four. Previous chapters located here.
Word Count: 1790.
Rating/Warnings: PG. Simply because, um, it's not a cartoon. :P
Pairings/Characters: Mal/River. The OTP of Hot.
Spoilers: Large, for both Serenity and the River Tam Sessions.
Summary: Mal pulls an Inara and we once again meet Threatening!Simon. Also, there are creamsicles. (Just kidding. No creamsicles.)
Excerpt: "Well, I can't say it's escaped my notice that every time you, Jayne, and Zoe come back bruised and battered River is completely unharmed," Simon quipped, perfectly deadpan but with a bit of amused pride in his tone.
Author's Note: Featuring the Big Damn Anachronism, wherein physics research in 500 years will be exactly the same as it is now. Work with me here. I don't even understand it now, so I figured I'd better not try to make it up what it would be like in the future. Is it that implausible that people will still remember good ol' Werner, though? Our record-keeping capabilities are certainly much better now. Also, in case anybody's curious, the term "disguised wimp" actually means something (and a relevant something!), but only to me, a friend of mine, and a few math classes at a high school in Washington, D.C. River-speak only makes sense to her anyway, so isn't it appropriate?
River came to visit him when Simon wasn't there. Jayne was already walking, and Mal had healed enough that all he needed was rest. Simon had pointedly advised that he not try to leave the infirmary for another three days. Simon, River thought, was a genius. Simon had brought her to Serenity.
"River?" Mal asked fuzzily. "You learnin' doctorin'? 'Cause I'm not overly willin' to be a test patient."
"Shh, Captain," she giggled. "Simon's with Kaylee. You'll be fine."
He nodded, and she looked down at him for a moment, still smiling.
"Were you dreaming?" she questioned.
"River," he sighed, "there's somethin' you got to understand. You're the only reason we made it out alive in that trade back there."
"You're thinking of Early and the golden retriever," she said, more serious now.
"I'm thinking of everything," he replied firmly.
"It's a disguised wimp, Captain," she answered, shaking her head. "You're forgetting the familiar."
His look was blank and a mite annoyed.
"There wouldn't be an Early or a Lyle without me," she explained. "It's like the room."
Mal's eyes commanded her to believe. "The Earlys and the Lyles," he responded, "make trouble 'cause I don't want to give you up. Now, you endin' that trouble's what makes it worthwhile."
She looked away, unconvinced.
"I'm gonna tell you this straight out, 'cause I've made mistakes before not tellin' a person when she's needed."
River looked back at him, right into his eyes.
"I need you," he told her.
The stare grew harder.
"I need you on my crew," he clarified. "I don't think you're crazy and I do think you're valuable."
River wanted to crawl on top of him and feel his arms wrap around her as they did so many other women -- Kaylee, Nandi, even once Inara. She wanted his companionship, his respect, his love -- but she didn't touch him, and Mal had more to say.
"I know you saw something 'fore we left the ship," he remarked, the color in his face gradually returning. "You knew what was coming."
River looked like she was about to cry. "I didn't --"
"I ain't blamin' you," he reassured her, managing to control the conversation even from a sickbed. "Weren't none of this ugly business your fault and I'd dump a fellow out the airlock for sayin' so.
"I'm sayin' next time you see a thing, you tell me. You don't whisper it to yourself -- you say it out loud. You got more right than anybody to tell me what you're thinking and I need to know it. Dong ma, bâobèi?"
River's face was calm again, and she regarded him with her arms propped up on the wall counter.
"Dong ma, lîng duì," she answered. She stayed with him until he fell asleep.
Mal had thought it was a good idea when he entered the room. Shows what being newly healed and chipper will do to a man.
"Sorry to disturb, Doc," he'd said smoothly. "Wanted to let you know I'm sleepin' fine with all those drugs you gave me, so I'd say we're about done with the healing process."
Simon nodded, smiling in the slight, terse way that was all he knew. Then Mal he segued right into the point: Had a lot of dangerous missions in the past and future, and though he misliked doin' shady odd jobs, as long as they needed to eat he'd have to take 'em --
"Captain." Simon held out a hand to stop him, and Mal looked up from the floor.
"I know all this," continued Simon. "Why exactly do I need to be reminded?"
Interrupted halfway through a good speech, Mal drew his eyebrows together.
"Just thought I needed to make sure we weren't gonna have a problem, what with me takin' your sister along planetside more often than not."
"Well, I can't say it's escaped my notice that every time you, Jayne, and Zoe come back bruised and battered River is completely unharmed," Simon quipped, perfectly deadpan but with a bit of amused pride in his tone. Mal simply shrugged, accepting the dig.
"But I also can't say," Simon began again, "that I enjoy the extra worry." Mal opened his mouth, but Simon ignored him and barreled through. "If it ever becomes something she doesn't want to do, no one on this boat will force her to do it, and I won't have you treating her as your mercenary or secret weapon."
"Might try lettin' her speak for herself," Mal suggested, the corner of his mouth twitching. "She's pretty good at it."
"Right now River wants to protect you --"
"Protect m --"
"She wants to be a pilot and a full crew member of Serenity. But she hasn't signed her soul to you for eternity and her life is not yours."
"Never conjured it was."
"If anything bad happens to her I will kill you."
Simon stood absolutely still for a moment, staring down a man who had previously spurned any such challenge.
"Doc, anything bad happens to her and I'll be glad to let you do it," Mal said finally, surprised to hear himself sound so complacent with fate.
"Good," Simon returned, taking Mal's statement as light but damning humor. "I'll hold you to that."
It was dawning on Mal that what he'd just told Simon was the truth.
"Since Miranda," he said softly, hand on the doorjamb as he turned to go, "I think lookin' after your sister's the only worthwhile thing I do."
The low pound of his soldier's boots followed him for a long time after he left the doctor's quarters.
"Son of a bitch," Simon snapped, as he realized the full meaning of what he'd just agreed to.
Cleaning out the cargo bay was a good way to shove unwanted thoughts from his mind, and that was something Mal sorely needed after his recent chaos. It didn't work too well for the first hour; though seven of the nine hidden compartments were now emptied and properly rigged with ostensible proper-looking luggage, the captain's mind still lingered on his problems. Would there be more coming after River, looking to harness her abilities for their own uses? Would the Alliance ever break their current hiatus on aggression? Was River still convinced he'd fly off the handle and kill her if she said or did the wrong thing?
It rattled him, the way the woman tiptoed around him in conversation, looked crushed every time he showed displeasure. Nearing nineteen, or maybe already there for all Mal knew, with hundreds of kills under her belt, and yet River depended on the approval of a burnt-out, crabby veteran like himself. It was the kind of loyalty that used to make Mal happy, and now just made him sick.
Killing didn't make a woman older; Mal knew that, and the war had taken twenty years of his life only in theory. River was still a girl in little ways, and he had only just ceased to become a boy -- but justifiable though her devotion was, it didn't feel right. When Mal was her age he'd still had dreams of grandeur and honor and joy, but River already saw the world for what it was and had learned to live in it. He didn't deserve her allegiance; it was as he wiped broken geisha doll heads out of the sixth compartment that he formed that revelation.
He had it anyway, though. He was her captain as much as he was Zoe's -- and far more than he was Jayne's. It took him most of the seventh compartment to puzzle that, and he still hadn't made any progress when he discovered a small letter-sized green bag.
Mal looked around guiltily, as though he was being watched. Serenity seemed to mock him for having cargo that Mal didn't recognize or remember. How had something passed onto his ship without his knowledge?
As he turned it over and over in his hands to search for some kind of identification (it wasn't there), a thick sheaf of papers came tumbling out, disturbing themselves all over the grimy floor. They were academic papers, the likes of which had never before been seen this far from the Core -- and here they were stowed away with a man who made his living with a gun and his wits.
Mal's fingers danced silently across the pages in wonder. He was smarter than most who lived on the outer rims, but these snippets of knowledge were beyond him or anyone he'd known. Quantum theory of optical coherence, he read. Observation of a neutrino burst from near-Osiris supernovas. Finite-particle achivement of the Bose-Einstein condensate in alkali atoms. Low-energy phenomena in cosmic rays.
"I know what you're thinking," came Simon's voice from the top of the stairs.
Mal's face hadn't looked like that since Ma Reynolds had caught him in the barn fumbling with the milk girl.
"Whu - I was -"
Simon smiled, and headed down to join him. "What in the name of all that's holy is asymptotic freedom?"
Mal looked down again. "Something like that, yeah."
For effect, Simon stood over him.
"That bag," he revealed, "is mine. It was inside my other box when I brought River on board, but I thought I'd lost it, or someone had stolen it. It's most of what River was working on in her last year at Jian Ed -- the university she studied at before the academy." For good measure, he added, "I don't even understand her thesis."
"Oh," Mal answered. He cast a glance at the flurry of white sheets around him.
"Physicists are a little pretentious," Simon explained. "They insist on working with printers and typesets when a cortex directory would do."
Mal nodded. "Makes sense," he said. "Gives 'em a way to be better'n everyone else."
"River was like an adult," Simon told him, not looking his way or watching his eyes. "Even when she was fourteen. She saw right through it all. She knew graduate students -- mostly students in their 20's -- better than they knew themselves. She could tell right away who was jealous of her, what their plans were for their lives, which professors to avoid. She --" Simon stopped, overcome.
"That girl she was," Simon finished finally, "is still in there."
Mal just listened. He was beginning to see where this was leading.
"I wonder if anyone could tell what she wanted, back then," Simon mused aloud.
Certainly not a poor, grumpy bastard from a planet with more cows than people. Mal got the message. He chose to ignore it anyway, for the moment.
Behind the doorway of Inara's old shuttle, where River had been listening to the conversation all along, the girl-who-was smiled.
"Captain Tightpants is almost as cute as Heisenberg," she whispered. "Maybe cuter."
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Chapter: Four. Previous chapters located here.
Word Count: 1790.
Rating/Warnings: PG. Simply because, um, it's not a cartoon. :P
Pairings/Characters: Mal/River. The OTP of Hot.
Spoilers: Large, for both Serenity and the River Tam Sessions.
Summary: Mal pulls an Inara and we once again meet Threatening!Simon. Also, there are creamsicles. (Just kidding. No creamsicles.)
Excerpt: "Well, I can't say it's escaped my notice that every time you, Jayne, and Zoe come back bruised and battered River is completely unharmed," Simon quipped, perfectly deadpan but with a bit of amused pride in his tone.
Author's Note: Featuring the Big Damn Anachronism, wherein physics research in 500 years will be exactly the same as it is now. Work with me here. I don't even understand it now, so I figured I'd better not try to make it up what it would be like in the future. Is it that implausible that people will still remember good ol' Werner, though? Our record-keeping capabilities are certainly much better now. Also, in case anybody's curious, the term "disguised wimp" actually means something (and a relevant something!), but only to me, a friend of mine, and a few math classes at a high school in Washington, D.C. River-speak only makes sense to her anyway, so isn't it appropriate?
River came to visit him when Simon wasn't there. Jayne was already walking, and Mal had healed enough that all he needed was rest. Simon had pointedly advised that he not try to leave the infirmary for another three days. Simon, River thought, was a genius. Simon had brought her to Serenity.
"River?" Mal asked fuzzily. "You learnin' doctorin'? 'Cause I'm not overly willin' to be a test patient."
"Shh, Captain," she giggled. "Simon's with Kaylee. You'll be fine."
He nodded, and she looked down at him for a moment, still smiling.
"Were you dreaming?" she questioned.
"River," he sighed, "there's somethin' you got to understand. You're the only reason we made it out alive in that trade back there."
"You're thinking of Early and the golden retriever," she said, more serious now.
"I'm thinking of everything," he replied firmly.
"It's a disguised wimp, Captain," she answered, shaking her head. "You're forgetting the familiar."
His look was blank and a mite annoyed.
"There wouldn't be an Early or a Lyle without me," she explained. "It's like the room."
Mal's eyes commanded her to believe. "The Earlys and the Lyles," he responded, "make trouble 'cause I don't want to give you up. Now, you endin' that trouble's what makes it worthwhile."
She looked away, unconvinced.
"I'm gonna tell you this straight out, 'cause I've made mistakes before not tellin' a person when she's needed."
River looked back at him, right into his eyes.
"I need you," he told her.
The stare grew harder.
"I need you on my crew," he clarified. "I don't think you're crazy and I do think you're valuable."
River wanted to crawl on top of him and feel his arms wrap around her as they did so many other women -- Kaylee, Nandi, even once Inara. She wanted his companionship, his respect, his love -- but she didn't touch him, and Mal had more to say.
"I know you saw something 'fore we left the ship," he remarked, the color in his face gradually returning. "You knew what was coming."
River looked like she was about to cry. "I didn't --"
"I ain't blamin' you," he reassured her, managing to control the conversation even from a sickbed. "Weren't none of this ugly business your fault and I'd dump a fellow out the airlock for sayin' so.
"I'm sayin' next time you see a thing, you tell me. You don't whisper it to yourself -- you say it out loud. You got more right than anybody to tell me what you're thinking and I need to know it. Dong ma, bâobèi?"
River's face was calm again, and she regarded him with her arms propped up on the wall counter.
"Dong ma, lîng duì," she answered. She stayed with him until he fell asleep.
Mal had thought it was a good idea when he entered the room. Shows what being newly healed and chipper will do to a man.
"Sorry to disturb, Doc," he'd said smoothly. "Wanted to let you know I'm sleepin' fine with all those drugs you gave me, so I'd say we're about done with the healing process."
Simon nodded, smiling in the slight, terse way that was all he knew. Then Mal he segued right into the point: Had a lot of dangerous missions in the past and future, and though he misliked doin' shady odd jobs, as long as they needed to eat he'd have to take 'em --
"Captain." Simon held out a hand to stop him, and Mal looked up from the floor.
"I know all this," continued Simon. "Why exactly do I need to be reminded?"
Interrupted halfway through a good speech, Mal drew his eyebrows together.
"Just thought I needed to make sure we weren't gonna have a problem, what with me takin' your sister along planetside more often than not."
"Well, I can't say it's escaped my notice that every time you, Jayne, and Zoe come back bruised and battered River is completely unharmed," Simon quipped, perfectly deadpan but with a bit of amused pride in his tone. Mal simply shrugged, accepting the dig.
"But I also can't say," Simon began again, "that I enjoy the extra worry." Mal opened his mouth, but Simon ignored him and barreled through. "If it ever becomes something she doesn't want to do, no one on this boat will force her to do it, and I won't have you treating her as your mercenary or secret weapon."
"Might try lettin' her speak for herself," Mal suggested, the corner of his mouth twitching. "She's pretty good at it."
"Right now River wants to protect you --"
"Protect m --"
"She wants to be a pilot and a full crew member of Serenity. But she hasn't signed her soul to you for eternity and her life is not yours."
"Never conjured it was."
"If anything bad happens to her I will kill you."
Simon stood absolutely still for a moment, staring down a man who had previously spurned any such challenge.
"Doc, anything bad happens to her and I'll be glad to let you do it," Mal said finally, surprised to hear himself sound so complacent with fate.
"Good," Simon returned, taking Mal's statement as light but damning humor. "I'll hold you to that."
It was dawning on Mal that what he'd just told Simon was the truth.
"Since Miranda," he said softly, hand on the doorjamb as he turned to go, "I think lookin' after your sister's the only worthwhile thing I do."
The low pound of his soldier's boots followed him for a long time after he left the doctor's quarters.
"Son of a bitch," Simon snapped, as he realized the full meaning of what he'd just agreed to.
Cleaning out the cargo bay was a good way to shove unwanted thoughts from his mind, and that was something Mal sorely needed after his recent chaos. It didn't work too well for the first hour; though seven of the nine hidden compartments were now emptied and properly rigged with ostensible proper-looking luggage, the captain's mind still lingered on his problems. Would there be more coming after River, looking to harness her abilities for their own uses? Would the Alliance ever break their current hiatus on aggression? Was River still convinced he'd fly off the handle and kill her if she said or did the wrong thing?
It rattled him, the way the woman tiptoed around him in conversation, looked crushed every time he showed displeasure. Nearing nineteen, or maybe already there for all Mal knew, with hundreds of kills under her belt, and yet River depended on the approval of a burnt-out, crabby veteran like himself. It was the kind of loyalty that used to make Mal happy, and now just made him sick.
Killing didn't make a woman older; Mal knew that, and the war had taken twenty years of his life only in theory. River was still a girl in little ways, and he had only just ceased to become a boy -- but justifiable though her devotion was, it didn't feel right. When Mal was her age he'd still had dreams of grandeur and honor and joy, but River already saw the world for what it was and had learned to live in it. He didn't deserve her allegiance; it was as he wiped broken geisha doll heads out of the sixth compartment that he formed that revelation.
He had it anyway, though. He was her captain as much as he was Zoe's -- and far more than he was Jayne's. It took him most of the seventh compartment to puzzle that, and he still hadn't made any progress when he discovered a small letter-sized green bag.
Mal looked around guiltily, as though he was being watched. Serenity seemed to mock him for having cargo that Mal didn't recognize or remember. How had something passed onto his ship without his knowledge?
As he turned it over and over in his hands to search for some kind of identification (it wasn't there), a thick sheaf of papers came tumbling out, disturbing themselves all over the grimy floor. They were academic papers, the likes of which had never before been seen this far from the Core -- and here they were stowed away with a man who made his living with a gun and his wits.
Mal's fingers danced silently across the pages in wonder. He was smarter than most who lived on the outer rims, but these snippets of knowledge were beyond him or anyone he'd known. Quantum theory of optical coherence, he read. Observation of a neutrino burst from near-Osiris supernovas. Finite-particle achivement of the Bose-Einstein condensate in alkali atoms. Low-energy phenomena in cosmic rays.
"I know what you're thinking," came Simon's voice from the top of the stairs.
Mal's face hadn't looked like that since Ma Reynolds had caught him in the barn fumbling with the milk girl.
"Whu - I was -"
Simon smiled, and headed down to join him. "What in the name of all that's holy is asymptotic freedom?"
Mal looked down again. "Something like that, yeah."
For effect, Simon stood over him.
"That bag," he revealed, "is mine. It was inside my other box when I brought River on board, but I thought I'd lost it, or someone had stolen it. It's most of what River was working on in her last year at Jian Ed -- the university she studied at before the academy." For good measure, he added, "I don't even understand her thesis."
"Oh," Mal answered. He cast a glance at the flurry of white sheets around him.
"Physicists are a little pretentious," Simon explained. "They insist on working with printers and typesets when a cortex directory would do."
Mal nodded. "Makes sense," he said. "Gives 'em a way to be better'n everyone else."
"River was like an adult," Simon told him, not looking his way or watching his eyes. "Even when she was fourteen. She saw right through it all. She knew graduate students -- mostly students in their 20's -- better than they knew themselves. She could tell right away who was jealous of her, what their plans were for their lives, which professors to avoid. She --" Simon stopped, overcome.
"That girl she was," Simon finished finally, "is still in there."
Mal just listened. He was beginning to see where this was leading.
"I wonder if anyone could tell what she wanted, back then," Simon mused aloud.
Certainly not a poor, grumpy bastard from a planet with more cows than people. Mal got the message. He chose to ignore it anyway, for the moment.
Behind the doorway of Inara's old shuttle, where River had been listening to the conversation all along, the girl-who-was smiled.
"Captain Tightpants is almost as cute as Heisenberg," she whispered. "Maybe cuter."