Fic: Down this Chain of Days, Chapter 7 (Firefly, River/Mal, PG-13)
Title: Down this Chain of Days: VII. The Only Solution
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2100
Pairing: River/Mal
Summary: For Mal and River, 'happily ever after' takes some work - especially when people from their past keep turning up.
Notes: Title and cut text from Only If For a Night, by Florence + the Machine.
VII. The Only Solution
Ten men. Strike force, well trained. Simon just behind, fingers still in her grip. Two lefts, a quick right down a blind alley, in and out through an unlocked warehouse.
No use, River knows, feeling the cold metallic chill of adrenaline creeping along, up her spine, across her brain. These fighters are good - not Alliance in the strictest sense.
They're better than Alliance. And they're still on the trail.
One among the hundred calculations in her brain speaks out, regarding the inefficiency of her father's breathing - a well-kept man, fit and true, but unused to exertion, slowing. A liability.
The men are closing now - closer, closer, soon - and it's not the perfect spot, this old scrapyard on the edge of town, but it will do. She can make it suffice, assets apparent and categorized in an instant. Sufficient cover, strong reflections of sunlight to throw off perceptions, jagged metal available for improvised weapons, unfenced.
Dropping to the ground behind a curved bit of hull (a former taxi, in a long ago life), she waves in Simon and their father, draws her gun from under her skirt, and breathes, for one last free, blissful second.
“River?” Simon asks, and she's pleased to note his voice is firm, firm as the grip he's got on his own weapon, the steady hands a surgeon serving him as well spilling blood as containing it.
“Ten men,” she says, tense and poised, full of coiled menace, curled along her arms, bitter in the back of her throat. “Try not to shoot me.”
“River-” he says again, his hand on her arm questioning rather than restraining.
“No time.” Gunfire echoes, sounding from a high source, and she risks, peeks, spotting a muzzle flash from the warehouse roof. Raise, aim, squeeze - no sense in wishing for one of Jayne's rifles - and duck. “Nine,” she says briefly, eyes wide, mind already weapon-gone, already four steps in the future. “I won't die, Simon. Didn't say goodbye. Wouldn't be right.”
The rest pour into the yard then, and she darts from cover, drawing them down, away from those in her care.
Another shot - fired as she ducks into a new metal sanctuary - and they're all armored, of course, but all armor has its weak points. Another set of factors in her calculations, makes no difference to her brain, buzzing and humming and alive, making her feel sick, drained away and empty of everything but now, everything down to one deadly purpose. Eight.
Thirty seconds gone now, and one man creeps too close; she springs, catching him by the arm, forcing a quick pivot so he catches friendly fire, down, out, Seven.
The armor slows them, dampens agility, and Six is on the ground before he can react, knee bending backwards, his sharp scream cut short.
Five gets close, bullet a wasp-whine past her ear before she recovers, moving in point-blank range now; fires neat and clean, avoiding the resulting red mist like the bullets raining in her wake without thinking, brain stripped to a core of practical motion and motivation, no feeling, no personality.
Simon's fire distracts Four, letting her slide in behind - a simple matter to slip the strap of his weapon around his neck, twist, snap.
Down to three now - even odds, solid and predictable, gamble turning to surety as something familiar hums along the bare edge of her consciousness, the little silver shuttle flying low overhead.
As she breaks the wrist of Three, feels the crack of vertebrae against the force of her kick, Vera's voice roars out. It's messy but effective on Two, and then there is just One, and River, blank, cold, spotless and perfect as her boot meets his face.
Slightly over a minute, all told, and now there are none, zero, nothing. The adrenaline clears, like mist from her eyes, letting her focus widen, letting her see through the others, see herself as weapon-warrior-defender-destroyer.
From Jayne, busily looting, admiration, never gained from him by anything but force. From Zoë, making a sweep of the area, tactical, regimented, there's respect, clean and simple.
Simon, reaching out to her, taking the gun from her limp hand, running careful eyes and hands over her, gives quiet thanks, with his thoughts and his hands, tearing a strip of shirt to bind a scrape she'd failed to notice.
All this is nothing though, meaningless as the sunlight pouring down - bright and innocent even shining on bloody ground - when her father looks at her, his thoughts an outpouring of fear, of horror, of uncomprehending dread.
Without a word, she turns, brushing aside Simon's hands, avoiding Zoë's careful glance, seeking solace in the shuttle, in the small space of home.
***
She doesn't listen on the way back, doesn't want to hear, even for the flight's short span. She knows, peripherally, when Zoë takes one look at her, crumpled and quiet, sitting sightless on the floor, and takes to the controls herself; knows too, in the same absent way, when Jayne's voice grumbles into the com; knows it's Mal on the other end, even when all she hears of his voice is relief, and love, and a bit of bring-her-back-so-I-can-kill-her-myself, rather than the simple frame of his words, terse and quick.
She's existed here before, in the empty space between person and tool; their jobs, their lives, never do run smooth, try as they might, and she learned anew, first time one of her crew got injured on a job (Zoë's thigh, turning red as her skin went grey and River snapped), that pushing herself into action, into use, was better by far than watching helpless.
Before there's always been Mal; Mal who knows and understands, lets her hide for a time in his mind, as much as he's able, bringing up memories of horses and cattle, of ranch dogs running in close-clipped fields, a boy on a pony at their heels.
Here no one understands, because she can't explain the need to hide, to flee the empty feeling, to run from the schism built between the parts of her, the fear that a time will come when she'll call the weapon up, and not be able to turn it off.
She tries, for a time, to dig through Simon's mind, Simon who never minds her invasions into what should be his alone, who would give her all he had. Buried deep there's a dance recital, and she watches her smaller self spinning on stage, pirouettes and jetés and the sense of freedom in the regimented forms of the dance. This, this is adequate, and more; it pushes the right spot in her own memory, until she sees it with two sets of eyes, performing and watching both, her muscles relaxing, soothed, a smile on her face.
It's a voice that shatters her peaceful image, a voice not in her own head but in Simon's, as he listens to their father speak; their father who is still bewildered, still horrified, now more out of place than ever.
“She's smiling,” he says, voice cold and flat as the metal under her fingers. “Wo de tian, she just killed people and she's smiling.”
“Well, she was smiling,” Simon offers, eyes all for her, moving across the shuttle to sit next to her, taking her hand in his, heedless of the blood darkening over her knuckles.
“Can't cry for every soul,” she says, leaning her head back, feeling the cold of the wall seep into her skull, wishing it could freeze her brain, shut down her thoughts one by one, leave her mind in hibernation. “Just doing a job, to them. Would have killed you all and not cared for the slaughter.”
“I had no idea,” their father whispers. “No idea how dangerous they'd made you. What you've become...”
“Will you shut up, please?” Simon says, trying to block the tide, to keep out the bad seeping in to her mind from his thoughts, but it's too far gone, too late, because his mouth may have shut down from shock, but her father's thoughts run on.
A strange and wild creature, too sharp, too dangerous to have a place in his world. Too dangerous to be kept safe anywhere, a risk. One he's unwilling to take.
“Make it stop,” she says, quietly, not certain now if her voice speaks through her throat or only in her thoughts. The dreams and dark places in her head are swimming again, rising up from the deeps where they'd hid themselves, drawing back under rocks, secreting themselves in scars while love and trust rebuilt reality around her. There are faces here, and voices, all those who'd used and betrayed her peering in from the shadows, and all those she'd killed, all those she'd watched die, in front of her, behind her, through their own eyes - all gathered around, whispering, reaching out with hands pale and stained, blood on the outside.
When she hears Mal's voice among them, she categorizes it as another cruel trick of her mind, just another thing one part of her uses in trying to break the rest. Then she's aware, dimly, of Simon's head turning towards the sound, of the fuzzy quality overlaid on Mal's voice, of Zoë's short answers, flicking back over the com.
“One of you take our guest down to the passenger dorms, make sure he stays there,” his voice says, and Zoë looks at Jayne, talking with her eyes loud enough for even Jayne to hear, because he nods and gets up, ignoring the slight jar of the shuttle docking, to leer at their father, Vera still in hand.
They're close enough now that River hears Mal twice over, his thoughts calling out to her, loud and direct on purpose, overlaid and underpinning the radio-voice. Concentrate, they say, and Why'd you go and do that, and immediately, Yes, I know why, I'm sorry.
His speaking-voice, sounding wound tight even at this distance, says, “Simon, you go on down with your father, see that he don't have cause to complain. River -” Serenity hums and hovers under them, Mal lifting her off too quick as always, rough around the edges; maybe that's the cause of his hesitation, but River doesn't believe it, leaning more towards reticence, a consciousness of his audience. “You just stay there, I'll come for you.”
You wait for me this time, darlin', I mean it, his thoughts admonish, and she curls in on herself, tucking her body firmly into the wall, so that Serenity, at least, knows she means to stay still. Even from here, she knows the moment the ship takes hold of her own flight, the little stretch and kick she gives, a cat waking from a long nap.
It seems a long age, an eon where surely the ship must have rusted away into brown-red dust, old metal blood blowing away on the wind, before Mal comes; Jayne and Simon moving in slow motion, leading her father away, the floor beneath her and Zoë's hand resting on her shoulder the only points of reality.
When Mal comes, finally (it seems like finally, but his steps tell her, hurried and slightly off rhythm, that it's been as quick as he'd allow himself to be), she remembers that this is everything she didn't want him to see, everything fragile and broken, a helpless anchor-weight waiting to bring him down. Zoë's hand is there, then, a lever to pull herself up with, and River thinks Zoë understands the need to appear strong perfectly well, Zoë who is the rock they're all founded on.
He looks to Zoë first, when he comes in; checking in out of old habit, messages passing between them at a glance. His eyes, when they turn then to River, are burning, and his mouth is tight; still, he does his best, trying to smile even as he glances over her, military precision assessing her condition for himself.
“Hate to say it, darlin', but you look terrible.”
The words are nothing, a deflection, a screen for what's behind them; still, it's what breaks her, and she finds herself in his arms, burying her face against his neck, breathing him in.
“Take me home,” she whispers, muffled to the point of being inaudible, she suspects; but he hears, he knows nonetheless, leading her off through the ship, images of Shadow under sun filling her mind, supporting her with his entire world.
Chapter 6 - Master Post - Chapter 8
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2100
Pairing: River/Mal
Summary: For Mal and River, 'happily ever after' takes some work - especially when people from their past keep turning up.
Notes: Title and cut text from Only If For a Night, by Florence + the Machine.
VII. The Only Solution
Ten men. Strike force, well trained. Simon just behind, fingers still in her grip. Two lefts, a quick right down a blind alley, in and out through an unlocked warehouse.
No use, River knows, feeling the cold metallic chill of adrenaline creeping along, up her spine, across her brain. These fighters are good - not Alliance in the strictest sense.
They're better than Alliance. And they're still on the trail.
One among the hundred calculations in her brain speaks out, regarding the inefficiency of her father's breathing - a well-kept man, fit and true, but unused to exertion, slowing. A liability.
The men are closing now - closer, closer, soon - and it's not the perfect spot, this old scrapyard on the edge of town, but it will do. She can make it suffice, assets apparent and categorized in an instant. Sufficient cover, strong reflections of sunlight to throw off perceptions, jagged metal available for improvised weapons, unfenced.
Dropping to the ground behind a curved bit of hull (a former taxi, in a long ago life), she waves in Simon and their father, draws her gun from under her skirt, and breathes, for one last free, blissful second.
“River?” Simon asks, and she's pleased to note his voice is firm, firm as the grip he's got on his own weapon, the steady hands a surgeon serving him as well spilling blood as containing it.
“Ten men,” she says, tense and poised, full of coiled menace, curled along her arms, bitter in the back of her throat. “Try not to shoot me.”
“River-” he says again, his hand on her arm questioning rather than restraining.
“No time.” Gunfire echoes, sounding from a high source, and she risks, peeks, spotting a muzzle flash from the warehouse roof. Raise, aim, squeeze - no sense in wishing for one of Jayne's rifles - and duck. “Nine,” she says briefly, eyes wide, mind already weapon-gone, already four steps in the future. “I won't die, Simon. Didn't say goodbye. Wouldn't be right.”
The rest pour into the yard then, and she darts from cover, drawing them down, away from those in her care.
Another shot - fired as she ducks into a new metal sanctuary - and they're all armored, of course, but all armor has its weak points. Another set of factors in her calculations, makes no difference to her brain, buzzing and humming and alive, making her feel sick, drained away and empty of everything but now, everything down to one deadly purpose. Eight.
Thirty seconds gone now, and one man creeps too close; she springs, catching him by the arm, forcing a quick pivot so he catches friendly fire, down, out, Seven.
The armor slows them, dampens agility, and Six is on the ground before he can react, knee bending backwards, his sharp scream cut short.
Five gets close, bullet a wasp-whine past her ear before she recovers, moving in point-blank range now; fires neat and clean, avoiding the resulting red mist like the bullets raining in her wake without thinking, brain stripped to a core of practical motion and motivation, no feeling, no personality.
Simon's fire distracts Four, letting her slide in behind - a simple matter to slip the strap of his weapon around his neck, twist, snap.
Down to three now - even odds, solid and predictable, gamble turning to surety as something familiar hums along the bare edge of her consciousness, the little silver shuttle flying low overhead.
As she breaks the wrist of Three, feels the crack of vertebrae against the force of her kick, Vera's voice roars out. It's messy but effective on Two, and then there is just One, and River, blank, cold, spotless and perfect as her boot meets his face.
Slightly over a minute, all told, and now there are none, zero, nothing. The adrenaline clears, like mist from her eyes, letting her focus widen, letting her see through the others, see herself as weapon-warrior-defender-destroyer.
From Jayne, busily looting, admiration, never gained from him by anything but force. From Zoë, making a sweep of the area, tactical, regimented, there's respect, clean and simple.
Simon, reaching out to her, taking the gun from her limp hand, running careful eyes and hands over her, gives quiet thanks, with his thoughts and his hands, tearing a strip of shirt to bind a scrape she'd failed to notice.
All this is nothing though, meaningless as the sunlight pouring down - bright and innocent even shining on bloody ground - when her father looks at her, his thoughts an outpouring of fear, of horror, of uncomprehending dread.
Without a word, she turns, brushing aside Simon's hands, avoiding Zoë's careful glance, seeking solace in the shuttle, in the small space of home.
***
She doesn't listen on the way back, doesn't want to hear, even for the flight's short span. She knows, peripherally, when Zoë takes one look at her, crumpled and quiet, sitting sightless on the floor, and takes to the controls herself; knows too, in the same absent way, when Jayne's voice grumbles into the com; knows it's Mal on the other end, even when all she hears of his voice is relief, and love, and a bit of bring-her-back-so-I-can-kill-her-myself, rather than the simple frame of his words, terse and quick.
She's existed here before, in the empty space between person and tool; their jobs, their lives, never do run smooth, try as they might, and she learned anew, first time one of her crew got injured on a job (Zoë's thigh, turning red as her skin went grey and River snapped), that pushing herself into action, into use, was better by far than watching helpless.
Before there's always been Mal; Mal who knows and understands, lets her hide for a time in his mind, as much as he's able, bringing up memories of horses and cattle, of ranch dogs running in close-clipped fields, a boy on a pony at their heels.
Here no one understands, because she can't explain the need to hide, to flee the empty feeling, to run from the schism built between the parts of her, the fear that a time will come when she'll call the weapon up, and not be able to turn it off.
She tries, for a time, to dig through Simon's mind, Simon who never minds her invasions into what should be his alone, who would give her all he had. Buried deep there's a dance recital, and she watches her smaller self spinning on stage, pirouettes and jetés and the sense of freedom in the regimented forms of the dance. This, this is adequate, and more; it pushes the right spot in her own memory, until she sees it with two sets of eyes, performing and watching both, her muscles relaxing, soothed, a smile on her face.
It's a voice that shatters her peaceful image, a voice not in her own head but in Simon's, as he listens to their father speak; their father who is still bewildered, still horrified, now more out of place than ever.
“She's smiling,” he says, voice cold and flat as the metal under her fingers. “Wo de tian, she just killed people and she's smiling.”
“Well, she was smiling,” Simon offers, eyes all for her, moving across the shuttle to sit next to her, taking her hand in his, heedless of the blood darkening over her knuckles.
“Can't cry for every soul,” she says, leaning her head back, feeling the cold of the wall seep into her skull, wishing it could freeze her brain, shut down her thoughts one by one, leave her mind in hibernation. “Just doing a job, to them. Would have killed you all and not cared for the slaughter.”
“I had no idea,” their father whispers. “No idea how dangerous they'd made you. What you've become...”
“Will you shut up, please?” Simon says, trying to block the tide, to keep out the bad seeping in to her mind from his thoughts, but it's too far gone, too late, because his mouth may have shut down from shock, but her father's thoughts run on.
A strange and wild creature, too sharp, too dangerous to have a place in his world. Too dangerous to be kept safe anywhere, a risk. One he's unwilling to take.
“Make it stop,” she says, quietly, not certain now if her voice speaks through her throat or only in her thoughts. The dreams and dark places in her head are swimming again, rising up from the deeps where they'd hid themselves, drawing back under rocks, secreting themselves in scars while love and trust rebuilt reality around her. There are faces here, and voices, all those who'd used and betrayed her peering in from the shadows, and all those she'd killed, all those she'd watched die, in front of her, behind her, through their own eyes - all gathered around, whispering, reaching out with hands pale and stained, blood on the outside.
When she hears Mal's voice among them, she categorizes it as another cruel trick of her mind, just another thing one part of her uses in trying to break the rest. Then she's aware, dimly, of Simon's head turning towards the sound, of the fuzzy quality overlaid on Mal's voice, of Zoë's short answers, flicking back over the com.
“One of you take our guest down to the passenger dorms, make sure he stays there,” his voice says, and Zoë looks at Jayne, talking with her eyes loud enough for even Jayne to hear, because he nods and gets up, ignoring the slight jar of the shuttle docking, to leer at their father, Vera still in hand.
They're close enough now that River hears Mal twice over, his thoughts calling out to her, loud and direct on purpose, overlaid and underpinning the radio-voice. Concentrate, they say, and Why'd you go and do that, and immediately, Yes, I know why, I'm sorry.
His speaking-voice, sounding wound tight even at this distance, says, “Simon, you go on down with your father, see that he don't have cause to complain. River -” Serenity hums and hovers under them, Mal lifting her off too quick as always, rough around the edges; maybe that's the cause of his hesitation, but River doesn't believe it, leaning more towards reticence, a consciousness of his audience. “You just stay there, I'll come for you.”
You wait for me this time, darlin', I mean it, his thoughts admonish, and she curls in on herself, tucking her body firmly into the wall, so that Serenity, at least, knows she means to stay still. Even from here, she knows the moment the ship takes hold of her own flight, the little stretch and kick she gives, a cat waking from a long nap.
It seems a long age, an eon where surely the ship must have rusted away into brown-red dust, old metal blood blowing away on the wind, before Mal comes; Jayne and Simon moving in slow motion, leading her father away, the floor beneath her and Zoë's hand resting on her shoulder the only points of reality.
When Mal comes, finally (it seems like finally, but his steps tell her, hurried and slightly off rhythm, that it's been as quick as he'd allow himself to be), she remembers that this is everything she didn't want him to see, everything fragile and broken, a helpless anchor-weight waiting to bring him down. Zoë's hand is there, then, a lever to pull herself up with, and River thinks Zoë understands the need to appear strong perfectly well, Zoë who is the rock they're all founded on.
He looks to Zoë first, when he comes in; checking in out of old habit, messages passing between them at a glance. His eyes, when they turn then to River, are burning, and his mouth is tight; still, he does his best, trying to smile even as he glances over her, military precision assessing her condition for himself.
“Hate to say it, darlin', but you look terrible.”
The words are nothing, a deflection, a screen for what's behind them; still, it's what breaks her, and she finds herself in his arms, burying her face against his neck, breathing him in.
“Take me home,” she whispers, muffled to the point of being inaudible, she suspects; but he hears, he knows nonetheless, leading her off through the ship, images of Shadow under sun filling her mind, supporting her with his entire world.
Chapter 6 - Master Post - Chapter 8