(Firefly/SG-1) We Go On for bluflamingo
Title: We Go On
Author: SentientCitizen
Fandoms: Firefly/Stargate SG-1
Characters Colonel Cameron Mitchell, Colonel Samantha Carter; Mal, Inara, Zoe, Wash, Kaylee, Simon, River, Book, Jayne
Pairings: Mal/Inara, Zoe/Wash
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~4,100
Spoilers: Up to the end of Stargate SG-1, but before the Ark of Truth; up to the end of Firefly, but before Serenity.
Warnings: Some swearing, but not much else to worry about.
Disclaimer: Firefly and Stargate belong to their respective creators.
A/N: Thank-you to my betas robinyj and nowcarpediem, who excised my many typos with delightful efficiency.
Summary: Serenity’s crew finds themselves in a strange place, with strange people - people who think some of them look awfully familiar...
Mal stumbled through the ring and found himself in the midst of chaos. “-iris malfunction!” blared a panicked voice over the loudspeakers, as soldiers were poured into the room like gas from a bust-up pipe. Behind Mal, the crew stumbled out of the blue pool to cluster wide-eyed around him.
“Son of a bitch!” one of the soldiers exclaimed. “Adria!”
Guns snapped around to point at a wide-eyed Inara, who gasped. Cursing a blue streak, Mal shoved forward on the narrow ramp to put himself between her and the weapons.
“What the gorram hell is going on here?” he bellowed, waving his ineffectively tiny pistol at the soldiers. Jayne cocked Vera, looking a little wild about the eyes - another squad of soldiers brought their weapons to bear on him. “Mother-humping...!”
A piercing shriek rose above the din. “REAVER!” River screamed, toppling backwards off the ramp in her terror.
“Down!” Mal bellowed, trying to turn around and accidently elbowing Wash in the gut as he turned. “Down, everyone down!” He tried to shove Inara down, and accidently sent her tumbling off the ramp to land hard beside little River - half the soldiers in the room started panicking, apparently convinced his actions were part of some cunning plot to do who-in-the-hot-hell-knows-what. Zoe leapt forward, tried to shove Wash behind her and there just wasn’t any room on the gorram ramp!
Simon leapt off, trying to reach his sister - and apparently that made him the smart one, because a split-second latter the rest of the crew went tumbling off after him, a flailing mass of panic and weaponry and a whole lot of not-good just waiting to happen, with soldiers shouting frantically all around them and snarling its rage, a Reaver bounded through the blue pool, a nightmare walking through the waking world.
And now the soldiers started firing their guns, because there ain’t a man in the verse don’t know a Reaver’s bad business when he sees it. Jayne bellowed as a stray round grazed his shoulder, and the Reaver let out a scream of rage as it died, rolling down the ramp to land sprawl-limbed at the feet of the startled soldiers.
The blue puddle vanished with a soft woosh that rang loud in the sudden silence.
“WUH DE ME! (1)” bellowed Jayne, destroying the momentary peace. He slapped frantically at his shoulder, trying to stem the flow of blood. “What in the tyen shiao duh (2) is going on here? Where the hell are we?”
River’s muffled voice cut him off. “No touching guns!” she shouted, head almost touching her stomach as she curled even tighter into a little ball. “We’re guests here, Captain! Guns down.”
Mal hesitated. Then, “You heard her. Guns down, people.” He bent down to place his own pistol on the floor, kicked it away from himself with a brief pang of regret. That pistol’d travelled a good long way on his hip, and he was loathe to give it up now.
“Cap’n!” Jayne protested. “You’re not really - ”
“Jayne!” he snapped right back. “These are not good odds I’m seeing here. Put it down.”
With an angry hiss, Jayne did as he was told - Zoe followed suit a moment later, pausing only to shoot Mal a sidelong glance that promised a good long talk about this at a later date.
“What?” Jayne snapped, glaring down a soldier who was staring at him, gape-jawed.
“...Colonel Dixon?” the solider ventured, clearly confused.
“Huh?” was Jayne’s response.
Another solider spoke up, tentative. “...Keller? Aren’t you supposed to be on Atlantis?”
He was looking right at Kaylee, where she hunched awkwardly on the floor, half propped up against the ramp. “I... what?” she replied, bewildered.
Mal glared out at the room. “Not to rush you fine folk or any such thing, but I’d greatly appreciate it someone could answer one simple little question: tzuh muh luh? (3)”
A long pause. Then one of the soldiers asked, “What language was that?”
And Mal felt his heart sink in his chest.
(1) Mother of god!
(2) Name of all that’s sacred
(3) What’s going on?
* * *
At first, the soldier types had tried to split his crew up into individual holding cells - which hadn’t gone over too well. Mal’d insisted there was no way he was letting Inara off alone after the scene in the Gateroom, and he wasn’t letting anyone in this gorram crazy place take little Kaylee off on her own, and the Doc’d looked like he’d rather take a bullet than let government men lay a hand on his sister, and Zoe’d just quietly narrowed her eyes and planted herself in front of Wash. Some high-ranker had finally rolled his eyes and told the soldiers to put them all together into one of the “medical isolation rooms on level 21”, with an “anti-prior device” right outside the door and triple the normal number of guards.
All in all, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise when River pitched a fit. In the end, he’d agreed to let them take her to their infirmary, along with Simon and Jayne, though it rankled him, to have his crew divided like that.
“I’m told there’s a Mister Reynolds in charge here?”
Mal looked up from where he sat, positioned protectively between his crew and the door. A clean-cut young man in an angry uniform was smiling placating at him. “I’m Colonel Mitchell. I was wondering if you’d be willing to come answer a few questions for me?
Mal hesitated and eyed the guards and their guns. “That wasn’t so much a request, was it, Colonel.”
To the man’s credit, his smile seemed mildly sympathetic. “No, Mister Reynolds, it wasn’t.”
Mal nodded. “Right. Zoe - you’re in charge while I’m gone. Keep them safe.” And he knew in his heart of hearts it was s a useless order, that there weren’t much of anything he or Zoe could do now to protect his crew, but it made him feel better to give it.
“Yessir,” she answered, eyeing the guards suspiciously.
And away he went.
* * *
The room the Colonel took him to was small and drab and private, with a little table and two chairs and a file folder sitting open in front of the Colonel, and it was all just a little too familiar for Mal’s comfort. These people said they weren’t Alliance, but they acted like the gorram alliance, and it made his skin crawl.
“So,” said the Colonel, settling into his seat with a friendly smile that set Mal’s teeth on edge. “Care to explain exactly how it was you folks managed to get here?”
* * *
Serenity shudders beneath Mal, and a sharp jerk throws him cursing to his knees, his words drowned out by the scream of twisting metal. Somewhere in his gut he realizes there ain’t nothing on his girl as could make a noise like that and then keep on going - but he pulls himself upright, keeps staggering toward the engine room.
Her engine groans as he reaches the door, and before he can speak the floor bucks up under him, throws him right inside. Kaylee tumbles down beside him, gives a little wail - a thin, almost despairing noise, the like of which he’s never heard from her.
“Cap’n!” Her eyes are wide and wild, the whites showing all around them like as on a spooked horse. “Cap’n, we’re humped. Fuel cell’s cracked - we’re runnin’ hot, and none too stable. Could go up any second now.”
“Kaylee, you tryin’ t’tell me my girl’s gonna explode?” he demands, heart pounding.
“I surely am, Cap’n.”
Tah mah duh hwoon dahn. (4) He wants to ask, are you sure? But it weren’t like to be the sort of think she’d joke about. Not at a time like this. “You’re gonna have to buy us some time.”
Her face is pale. “I been buying time, Cap’n. Ain’t no more left to buy.”
The ship shudders again, and the intercom crackles to life. “Mal, we are running out of options!” Wash’s voice rings through Serenity, a little hysterical. “If anyone has any brilliant ideas, now would be the time to speak up!”
“Kaylee,” Mal grinds out. “We got gorram Reavers on our tail. We can’t exactly set down for repairs. What in the hot hell do you expect me to do, here?”
Kaylee’s crying, now, but her voice is steady and he’s proud of her, for that. “Abandon ship,” she says, grimly determined. “Put her down, and run fast as we can.”
(4) Mother-humping son of a bitch.
* * *
Mal took a deep breath. “To be truthful, officer, I don’t quite understand that part my own self. There were Reavers on our tail...”
“Reavers?” asked the Colonel. He sounded curious, not scornful.
“Like what your men shot, back there,” Mal said. “Men who looked into the vasty black nothingness of space and lost what wits they might’ve had. They ain’t just campfire tales, Colonel.”
“Is that so,” was all the Colonel said.
The silence stretched on for a few long moments, and Mal had to squash the urge to punch that polite, core-worlds smile off the officer’s face. Instead, after a moment, he continued. “My ship broke. We set down on this backwater moon...
* * *
They’re still alive, so that’s good, but the gorram Reavers are catching up and this was a crazy plan to begin with. It would’ve been better of him to just pull out his pistol and shoot Kaylee in the head, then start ripping wires off the engine until it stalled, let Serenity crash on this rock in the ass-end of nowhere. He did no kindness to his crew, letting them survive this long. There’re monsters at the end of this road.
The landscape is barren as far as the eye can see, except for a ring of stone, rising up ahead of them. Mal doesn’t have a clue what the gorram thing might be, but it’s something to aim for, so he leads the crew in a headlong dash straight for it. Little River flits out ahead of him, faster than any of them, running light on dancer’s feet. Maybe if the Reaver’s catch them, it’ll give the girl a chance to get away, he thinks.
River skids to a stop in front of the stone - no, in front of a little raised device just in front of the stone.
“Gorrammit, girl, keep running!” he shouts, or tried to. His voice wheezes, lungs too busy sucking down atmo to get the words out. The girl ignores him. She slams her hands down on the top of the device, one, two, three - seven times.
She pauses.
A reaver ship screams overhead, and Mal’s eyes widen. He doesn’t have the air to shout a warning - they’re heading straight for her -
River’s eyes narrow, and she slams her hand down one more time.
KA-WOOSH.
Mal stumbles, almost falls, but keeps running. Out of the ring a waterfall of blue energy explods. It crashes into the side of the Reaver ship, knocks it away and eats at the metal sides like acid. He can see River laughing as the ship slams into the ground and crumples there, in two separate pieces. The waterfall slips back, settling into a calm pond, gently rippling.
River looks up at him. There’s a sort of terrified madness in her eyes, and she’s grinning the rictus grin of a psychotic. Turning, she leaps into the pool of energy, and vanishes.
And he doesn’t know where she’s gone, and there are Reaver ships bearing down on them, and he doesn’t know what’s happening and this is impossible!
But, because he’s always been the sort of crazy that clings at hope where there’s none to be found, because he’s got no other options, because whatever fresh new hell this thing represents has still got to be better than death by Reaver, he shouts, “Follow River! That’s an order!”
And he pelts headlong through the ring.
Mal hesitated a moment. “We were running, and then there was this... ring... and then we were here, staring down the barrels of your guns.”
“Hmm.” The Colonel shuffled some papers. “We’re all very curious to know, of course, how you managed to bypass our iris.”
“You’re what now?”
“The shield which prevents unauthorised individuals from entering through our stargate - that is, the ring that you arrived through.”
All Mal could do was shrug. “I don’t even know where ‘here’ is, Colonel, much less what all we did to get here, and that’s the honest truth. Running, blue pool, men with guns. That’s all I know.”
The Colonel gave him a sceptical look, but didn’t push the point. “Alright, then. So, some questions about your crew, if you don’t mind.” He shuffled through his file again, and withdrew a little still-frame capture, sliding it across the table to Mal. “This woman, she’s your medic?”
And that was little Kaylee there in the still-capture, clear as day, but he didn’t recognise where she was or what she was wearing, and he knew sure as hell that there weren’t nothing like that crisp blue-and-yellow uniform back on her home world, nor anything like those cold blue walls that just screamed “Alliance”.
He was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
“Kaylee,” Mal said, staring down at the image. “Our mechanic. Simon’s the medic.”
The Colonel took the capture back, pulled out another one. “Then I’m guessing you’re going to tell me this man’s not a soldier.”
And there was Jayne, clear as day, in a uniform just like the Colonel’s. And now Mal sort of wished he was a praying kind of man, ‘cause he’d ave very much liked to pray that those images were fakes. Else wise there were a whole lot of things gone terrible wrong somewhere along the line. The implications made him feel a bit sick.
“We-ell”, he drawled, trying to act casual despite his churning gut, “I suppose that depends on how you reckon things. Jayne’s our merc.”
“I see,” the Colonel drawled right back, as he retrieved the photo and produced another. “And, of course we’re all eager to hear why you’re travelling with the Orici.” He placed a photo “...what?” Mal stared down at the capture. It was Inara, clear as day. He didn’t recognise the outfit she was wearing, but at least that was no surprise - the woman owned more clothes than Jayne owned weapons. The look on her face, though, twisted in rage... that was new. “Her name’s Inara,” he said, slowly. “She’s a whore.”
The Colonel blinked. “Well, I won’t say you’re the only one to feel that way,” he ventured.
“No.” Mal shook his head. “I mean as to say she’s a whore. A Companion. Men pay her for sex - womenfolk, too, now and again.”
The Colonel blinked again, and Mal took no small amount of perverse pride in having stymied the man. “Right,” he said, after a moment. “Well. The thing is, Mr. Reynolds, these aren’t photos of your crew.”
“Is that so?” And now Mal’s relieved, a bit, but no less suspicious and more than a little confused. Because if those ain’t captures of his folk, what in the hot hell’s going on here?
“It is. This here’s a medical officer on one of our off-world bases. This here’s the head of one of our gate-teams; command is recalling him back to base as we speak.” The Colonel tapped each of the captures as he spoke. “And this here is Adria, the Orici, and our most dangerous enemy.”
“The what?”
“The Orici. You know, Orici. Leader of the Ori army. Wreaking havoc and forcibly converting the masses wherever she goes. And, apparently, a member of your crew.”
“Huh,” was all Mal could say.
* * *
The questioning went on for near an hour, the Colonel had been all core-world manners, while Mal grew angrier and angrier with each passing moment. When he clenched his jaw and refused to speak any more, they’d left him alone for a while, ostensibly to let him calm down. More like to let him stew in his thoughts, Mal figured.
“Take me back to my crew,” he’d said when the Colonel returned, tone brooking no argument. “I need to see that they’re safe, and there ain’t nothin’ I have to say to you what I ain’t already said.” He’d done the rage thing, done the thinking thing, and now he was ready to have some questions answered.
The Colonel hesitated only a moment before calling the guards to lead him back to the isolation room.
There was still no sign of River, Jayne and Simon, he realised, as the door closed behind him. Zoe stood, leaning against one of the stark white walls, eyes alert. She gave Mal a nod when he came in. Wash sat near her feet, eyes closed and one hand resting reassuringly against her ankle. Near the back of the room, the Sheppard stood on his lonesome, praying quietly, the words a soft background murmur. He glanced up as Mal came in, an expression of relief on his feature. Tucked in one corner sat Kaylee, curled up beside Inara, who was rubbing her back and muttering quiet comfortings.
“Hey, little Kaylee,” he said softly, walking up to them. “Can you give us a moment?”
She looked up, puffy-faced but tearless, and nodded. Mal gave her a hand up, then slid down to take her place as Kaylee made her way across the room to join the Sheppard.
“So,” he started. “These people here, they’ve been telling me this crazy idea that you’re this oree-sigh thingy. Some kind of super powered cult leader, sort of eats worship energy. I can’t wait ‘till they tell the Sheppard - he’ll have something to say about that, I reckon.”
“Orici,” Inara said. “I see.” There was a funny sort of tone to her voice - some emotion that Mal couldn’t name.
He nodded. “A terrible dangerous woman, or so they say. Killed a lot of people with her fancy powers.”
“A strange story,” she said quietly, avoiding his eyes.
“Gotta say,” he said, leaning back, “sounds to me like they’ve been sniffing stardust a bit too long. But then, I ain’t had quite the same view on ‘crazy’ since little River came aboard. Could be as what they’re saying had some truth to it.”
And then she was all haughty dignity, all cool-and-composed Companion. “My name is Inara Serra, Captain Reynolds. I’m a Companion, from Shinon. And that is the truth. What more do you want from me?”
“The truth, sure.” Mal shifted slightly, trying to find a comfortable seat on the hard floor. “But was it always true?”
Inara rolled her eyes, and for a minute she seemed like herself again. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mal, of course not. We aren’t born Companions.”
“I mean as to say,” Mal drawled, “were you always from Shinon? And was your name always Inara?”
And her face gave nothing away, but just like that she was all formal-stiff again, and she still wouldn’t meet his eyes. She took a deep breath. “I’m not the Orici, Captain Reynolds. They could turn that silly little machine off, or take it right away, and I’d still just be Inara Serra, Companion from Shinon. Passenger of Serenity. I’m me, Captain. Mal. I’m human.”
“And were you always?”
“What?”
And the look on her face was answer enough. Mal sighed. “You know what I like about the Doc?” he asked, apropos of nothing.
Inara turned her head slightly, a delicate expression of puzzlement on her face. “Mal, what are you...”
He ignored her, kept talking. “Born with everything, our Simon was. With a future like that laid out all pretty before him, you couldn’t hardly have faulted the boy iffen he’d chose to stay there, all wrapped up in cotton-wool, never takin’ a closer look at the ‘verse. ‘Stead, he rescues his darling sister, leaves it all behind. Doc made himself into a whole new man - didn’t let the way he was born stop him none. You kinda gotta admire a man like that, though I’d take it as a kindness if you never told him I’d said as much.”
He could almost feel the tension seeping out of Inara, which spoke to just how tense she’d been, if he could see it beneath her layers of masks and acting. “We’re defined by how we choose to go on,” she said, softly, “not by where we began.”
Mal shrugged - but the faintest hints of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Ain’t that the truth,” he replied. “Ain’t that the very truth.”
* * *
The problem with the science-types in this place, Mal thought wearily, was that they couldn’t just talk plain-like. It was all fancy words, quantum-this and quantum-that. Rubbing his hand absentmindedly over nearly a week’s worth of stubble, he looked the scientist square in the eye. “Pretend like I’m stupid, then try that again,” he suggested.
Colonel Carter sighed. “Your wormhole passed through a black hole at the exact same time that a nearby star went supernova. We’ve seen that sort of phenomenon before. Frankly, it’s a stroke of luck that the black hole you travelled through was outside our solar system - otherwise this place would be full of alternate dimension versions of our own gate teams.” She rolled her eyes, and Mal thought he heard her mutter, ‘again’. “But this time there was an added variable that we couldn’t initially identify - when you came here, you didn’t just travel to another dimension, as we originally thought. You also travelled back in time. Or rather, to be more accurate, the dimension you came from was accelerated such that - ah.” She paused, catching the look on his face. “You travelled back in time,” she repeated.
“See, now, if you’d just said that in the first place, ‘stead of going on about singularities, and all that ‘temporal displacement’ nonsense...”
Mal thought the Colonel looked like she wanted to laugh - instead, she said, “The point is, now that we’ve figured out that you travelled through both time and dimensional barriers, we can tweak our equations to compensate.”
She looked at him expectantly, and Mal stared back, somewhat confused. “So, what’re you saying, Colonel?”
She beamed. “I’m saying, Mister Reynolds, that we’ve found a way to get you and your crew home.”
Mal’s heart gave a jolt. “You’re letting us go?”
“What?” The Colonel looked startled. “Oh - yes, of course! Your dimension is several hundred years ahead of ours. Nothing you’ve learned here could possibly hurt us. The... disputed identities of your crew are still somewhat concerning, but, well. What can it matter? No, I just meant, we fixed the equations, and we know how to make it work now. We had to get the Asgard involved, of course-”
“The who?,” Mal interrupted.
The Colonel hesitated, then shook her head. “It... really doesn’t matter. All we need now is the address of the gate you dialled from, and you’ll arrive right back home within a few days of when you left.”
She was giving him another one of those eager beaming looks, that made her look like an enthusiastic puppy -a tien tsai (5) puppy, maybe, but a puppy all the same. He eyed her warily. “Gate address?”
Her face fell. “If you don’t know the address...”
“The Chained Lady.” Heads turned all over the room, to where River was standing, staring intently at the Colonel. “The Horned Horse,” she continued, her voice sing-song. “The Seeing Lens. The Rock-Worker. The Arrow Horse. The Little Lion. The Dancing Triangles. The Shy Foal.” River paused, tilted her head. “I know the way,” she clarified.
The Colonel looked bemused. “You know the gate address?”
River nodded.
Mal looked from one to the other. “Then we can go home?”
The Colonel smiled. “You can go home.”
(5) Genius
* * *
And when they staggered out of the ring they were standing on that same crappy little planet they’d come from. No sign of the gorram Reavers. Nothing so far as the eye can see, except for his poor girl, his poor old Serenity, sitting crumpled in a heap. She was torn up good - it made Mal’s heart ache to see her like that. Inara reached up to rest a gentle hand on his shoulder; behind them, Kaylee made a small noise of dismay.
“Oh, Cap’n. Look at her.”
The wormhole blinked out. Mal hadn’t got eyes for that, though. He took a deep breath. “Chin up, little Kaylee. We’ll find a way to keep her flying.” He half-turned, smiled at Inara, then set off across the sand, trusting in his crew to follow. Each step he took was a step towards home. “We always do.”
-END-
Prompt:
A time-travel wormhole brings some or all of the Firefly cast back from the future, rather than sending someone from Atlantis into the future. (A/N: I subbed SG1 for SGA to take better advantage of the Adria thing, and made it a dimension-travel wormhole; hope that’s alright!)
Author: SentientCitizen
Fandoms: Firefly/Stargate SG-1
Characters Colonel Cameron Mitchell, Colonel Samantha Carter; Mal, Inara, Zoe, Wash, Kaylee, Simon, River, Book, Jayne
Pairings: Mal/Inara, Zoe/Wash
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~4,100
Spoilers: Up to the end of Stargate SG-1, but before the Ark of Truth; up to the end of Firefly, but before Serenity.
Warnings: Some swearing, but not much else to worry about.
Disclaimer: Firefly and Stargate belong to their respective creators.
A/N: Thank-you to my betas robinyj and nowcarpediem, who excised my many typos with delightful efficiency.
Summary: Serenity’s crew finds themselves in a strange place, with strange people - people who think some of them look awfully familiar...
Mal stumbled through the ring and found himself in the midst of chaos. “-iris malfunction!” blared a panicked voice over the loudspeakers, as soldiers were poured into the room like gas from a bust-up pipe. Behind Mal, the crew stumbled out of the blue pool to cluster wide-eyed around him.
“Son of a bitch!” one of the soldiers exclaimed. “Adria!”
Guns snapped around to point at a wide-eyed Inara, who gasped. Cursing a blue streak, Mal shoved forward on the narrow ramp to put himself between her and the weapons.
“What the gorram hell is going on here?” he bellowed, waving his ineffectively tiny pistol at the soldiers. Jayne cocked Vera, looking a little wild about the eyes - another squad of soldiers brought their weapons to bear on him. “Mother-humping...!”
A piercing shriek rose above the din. “REAVER!” River screamed, toppling backwards off the ramp in her terror.
“Down!” Mal bellowed, trying to turn around and accidently elbowing Wash in the gut as he turned. “Down, everyone down!” He tried to shove Inara down, and accidently sent her tumbling off the ramp to land hard beside little River - half the soldiers in the room started panicking, apparently convinced his actions were part of some cunning plot to do who-in-the-hot-hell-knows-what. Zoe leapt forward, tried to shove Wash behind her and there just wasn’t any room on the gorram ramp!
Simon leapt off, trying to reach his sister - and apparently that made him the smart one, because a split-second latter the rest of the crew went tumbling off after him, a flailing mass of panic and weaponry and a whole lot of not-good just waiting to happen, with soldiers shouting frantically all around them and snarling its rage, a Reaver bounded through the blue pool, a nightmare walking through the waking world.
And now the soldiers started firing their guns, because there ain’t a man in the verse don’t know a Reaver’s bad business when he sees it. Jayne bellowed as a stray round grazed his shoulder, and the Reaver let out a scream of rage as it died, rolling down the ramp to land sprawl-limbed at the feet of the startled soldiers.
The blue puddle vanished with a soft woosh that rang loud in the sudden silence.
“WUH DE ME! (1)” bellowed Jayne, destroying the momentary peace. He slapped frantically at his shoulder, trying to stem the flow of blood. “What in the tyen shiao duh (2) is going on here? Where the hell are we?”
River’s muffled voice cut him off. “No touching guns!” she shouted, head almost touching her stomach as she curled even tighter into a little ball. “We’re guests here, Captain! Guns down.”
Mal hesitated. Then, “You heard her. Guns down, people.” He bent down to place his own pistol on the floor, kicked it away from himself with a brief pang of regret. That pistol’d travelled a good long way on his hip, and he was loathe to give it up now.
“Cap’n!” Jayne protested. “You’re not really - ”
“Jayne!” he snapped right back. “These are not good odds I’m seeing here. Put it down.”
With an angry hiss, Jayne did as he was told - Zoe followed suit a moment later, pausing only to shoot Mal a sidelong glance that promised a good long talk about this at a later date.
“What?” Jayne snapped, glaring down a soldier who was staring at him, gape-jawed.
“...Colonel Dixon?” the solider ventured, clearly confused.
“Huh?” was Jayne’s response.
Another solider spoke up, tentative. “...Keller? Aren’t you supposed to be on Atlantis?”
He was looking right at Kaylee, where she hunched awkwardly on the floor, half propped up against the ramp. “I... what?” she replied, bewildered.
Mal glared out at the room. “Not to rush you fine folk or any such thing, but I’d greatly appreciate it someone could answer one simple little question: tzuh muh luh? (3)”
A long pause. Then one of the soldiers asked, “What language was that?”
And Mal felt his heart sink in his chest.
(1) Mother of god!
(2) Name of all that’s sacred
(3) What’s going on?
* * *
At first, the soldier types had tried to split his crew up into individual holding cells - which hadn’t gone over too well. Mal’d insisted there was no way he was letting Inara off alone after the scene in the Gateroom, and he wasn’t letting anyone in this gorram crazy place take little Kaylee off on her own, and the Doc’d looked like he’d rather take a bullet than let government men lay a hand on his sister, and Zoe’d just quietly narrowed her eyes and planted herself in front of Wash. Some high-ranker had finally rolled his eyes and told the soldiers to put them all together into one of the “medical isolation rooms on level 21”, with an “anti-prior device” right outside the door and triple the normal number of guards.
All in all, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise when River pitched a fit. In the end, he’d agreed to let them take her to their infirmary, along with Simon and Jayne, though it rankled him, to have his crew divided like that.
“I’m told there’s a Mister Reynolds in charge here?”
Mal looked up from where he sat, positioned protectively between his crew and the door. A clean-cut young man in an angry uniform was smiling placating at him. “I’m Colonel Mitchell. I was wondering if you’d be willing to come answer a few questions for me?
Mal hesitated and eyed the guards and their guns. “That wasn’t so much a request, was it, Colonel.”
To the man’s credit, his smile seemed mildly sympathetic. “No, Mister Reynolds, it wasn’t.”
Mal nodded. “Right. Zoe - you’re in charge while I’m gone. Keep them safe.” And he knew in his heart of hearts it was s a useless order, that there weren’t much of anything he or Zoe could do now to protect his crew, but it made him feel better to give it.
“Yessir,” she answered, eyeing the guards suspiciously.
And away he went.
* * *
The room the Colonel took him to was small and drab and private, with a little table and two chairs and a file folder sitting open in front of the Colonel, and it was all just a little too familiar for Mal’s comfort. These people said they weren’t Alliance, but they acted like the gorram alliance, and it made his skin crawl.
“So,” said the Colonel, settling into his seat with a friendly smile that set Mal’s teeth on edge. “Care to explain exactly how it was you folks managed to get here?”
* * *
Serenity shudders beneath Mal, and a sharp jerk throws him cursing to his knees, his words drowned out by the scream of twisting metal. Somewhere in his gut he realizes there ain’t nothing on his girl as could make a noise like that and then keep on going - but he pulls himself upright, keeps staggering toward the engine room.
Her engine groans as he reaches the door, and before he can speak the floor bucks up under him, throws him right inside. Kaylee tumbles down beside him, gives a little wail - a thin, almost despairing noise, the like of which he’s never heard from her.
“Cap’n!” Her eyes are wide and wild, the whites showing all around them like as on a spooked horse. “Cap’n, we’re humped. Fuel cell’s cracked - we’re runnin’ hot, and none too stable. Could go up any second now.”
“Kaylee, you tryin’ t’tell me my girl’s gonna explode?” he demands, heart pounding.
“I surely am, Cap’n.”
Tah mah duh hwoon dahn. (4) He wants to ask, are you sure? But it weren’t like to be the sort of think she’d joke about. Not at a time like this. “You’re gonna have to buy us some time.”
Her face is pale. “I been buying time, Cap’n. Ain’t no more left to buy.”
The ship shudders again, and the intercom crackles to life. “Mal, we are running out of options!” Wash’s voice rings through Serenity, a little hysterical. “If anyone has any brilliant ideas, now would be the time to speak up!”
“Kaylee,” Mal grinds out. “We got gorram Reavers on our tail. We can’t exactly set down for repairs. What in the hot hell do you expect me to do, here?”
Kaylee’s crying, now, but her voice is steady and he’s proud of her, for that. “Abandon ship,” she says, grimly determined. “Put her down, and run fast as we can.”
(4) Mother-humping son of a bitch.
* * *
Mal took a deep breath. “To be truthful, officer, I don’t quite understand that part my own self. There were Reavers on our tail...”
“Reavers?” asked the Colonel. He sounded curious, not scornful.
“Like what your men shot, back there,” Mal said. “Men who looked into the vasty black nothingness of space and lost what wits they might’ve had. They ain’t just campfire tales, Colonel.”
“Is that so,” was all the Colonel said.
The silence stretched on for a few long moments, and Mal had to squash the urge to punch that polite, core-worlds smile off the officer’s face. Instead, after a moment, he continued. “My ship broke. We set down on this backwater moon...
* * *
They’re still alive, so that’s good, but the gorram Reavers are catching up and this was a crazy plan to begin with. It would’ve been better of him to just pull out his pistol and shoot Kaylee in the head, then start ripping wires off the engine until it stalled, let Serenity crash on this rock in the ass-end of nowhere. He did no kindness to his crew, letting them survive this long. There’re monsters at the end of this road.
The landscape is barren as far as the eye can see, except for a ring of stone, rising up ahead of them. Mal doesn’t have a clue what the gorram thing might be, but it’s something to aim for, so he leads the crew in a headlong dash straight for it. Little River flits out ahead of him, faster than any of them, running light on dancer’s feet. Maybe if the Reaver’s catch them, it’ll give the girl a chance to get away, he thinks.
River skids to a stop in front of the stone - no, in front of a little raised device just in front of the stone.
“Gorrammit, girl, keep running!” he shouts, or tried to. His voice wheezes, lungs too busy sucking down atmo to get the words out. The girl ignores him. She slams her hands down on the top of the device, one, two, three - seven times.
She pauses.
A reaver ship screams overhead, and Mal’s eyes widen. He doesn’t have the air to shout a warning - they’re heading straight for her -
River’s eyes narrow, and she slams her hand down one more time.
KA-WOOSH.
Mal stumbles, almost falls, but keeps running. Out of the ring a waterfall of blue energy explods. It crashes into the side of the Reaver ship, knocks it away and eats at the metal sides like acid. He can see River laughing as the ship slams into the ground and crumples there, in two separate pieces. The waterfall slips back, settling into a calm pond, gently rippling.
River looks up at him. There’s a sort of terrified madness in her eyes, and she’s grinning the rictus grin of a psychotic. Turning, she leaps into the pool of energy, and vanishes.
And he doesn’t know where she’s gone, and there are Reaver ships bearing down on them, and he doesn’t know what’s happening and this is impossible!
But, because he’s always been the sort of crazy that clings at hope where there’s none to be found, because he’s got no other options, because whatever fresh new hell this thing represents has still got to be better than death by Reaver, he shouts, “Follow River! That’s an order!”
And he pelts headlong through the ring.
Mal hesitated a moment. “We were running, and then there was this... ring... and then we were here, staring down the barrels of your guns.”
“Hmm.” The Colonel shuffled some papers. “We’re all very curious to know, of course, how you managed to bypass our iris.”
“You’re what now?”
“The shield which prevents unauthorised individuals from entering through our stargate - that is, the ring that you arrived through.”
All Mal could do was shrug. “I don’t even know where ‘here’ is, Colonel, much less what all we did to get here, and that’s the honest truth. Running, blue pool, men with guns. That’s all I know.”
The Colonel gave him a sceptical look, but didn’t push the point. “Alright, then. So, some questions about your crew, if you don’t mind.” He shuffled through his file again, and withdrew a little still-frame capture, sliding it across the table to Mal. “This woman, she’s your medic?”
And that was little Kaylee there in the still-capture, clear as day, but he didn’t recognise where she was or what she was wearing, and he knew sure as hell that there weren’t nothing like that crisp blue-and-yellow uniform back on her home world, nor anything like those cold blue walls that just screamed “Alliance”.
He was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
“Kaylee,” Mal said, staring down at the image. “Our mechanic. Simon’s the medic.”
The Colonel took the capture back, pulled out another one. “Then I’m guessing you’re going to tell me this man’s not a soldier.”
And there was Jayne, clear as day, in a uniform just like the Colonel’s. And now Mal sort of wished he was a praying kind of man, ‘cause he’d ave very much liked to pray that those images were fakes. Else wise there were a whole lot of things gone terrible wrong somewhere along the line. The implications made him feel a bit sick.
“We-ell”, he drawled, trying to act casual despite his churning gut, “I suppose that depends on how you reckon things. Jayne’s our merc.”
“I see,” the Colonel drawled right back, as he retrieved the photo and produced another. “And, of course we’re all eager to hear why you’re travelling with the Orici.” He placed a photo “...what?” Mal stared down at the capture. It was Inara, clear as day. He didn’t recognise the outfit she was wearing, but at least that was no surprise - the woman owned more clothes than Jayne owned weapons. The look on her face, though, twisted in rage... that was new. “Her name’s Inara,” he said, slowly. “She’s a whore.”
The Colonel blinked. “Well, I won’t say you’re the only one to feel that way,” he ventured.
“No.” Mal shook his head. “I mean as to say she’s a whore. A Companion. Men pay her for sex - womenfolk, too, now and again.”
The Colonel blinked again, and Mal took no small amount of perverse pride in having stymied the man. “Right,” he said, after a moment. “Well. The thing is, Mr. Reynolds, these aren’t photos of your crew.”
“Is that so?” And now Mal’s relieved, a bit, but no less suspicious and more than a little confused. Because if those ain’t captures of his folk, what in the hot hell’s going on here?
“It is. This here’s a medical officer on one of our off-world bases. This here’s the head of one of our gate-teams; command is recalling him back to base as we speak.” The Colonel tapped each of the captures as he spoke. “And this here is Adria, the Orici, and our most dangerous enemy.”
“The what?”
“The Orici. You know, Orici. Leader of the Ori army. Wreaking havoc and forcibly converting the masses wherever she goes. And, apparently, a member of your crew.”
“Huh,” was all Mal could say.
* * *
The questioning went on for near an hour, the Colonel had been all core-world manners, while Mal grew angrier and angrier with each passing moment. When he clenched his jaw and refused to speak any more, they’d left him alone for a while, ostensibly to let him calm down. More like to let him stew in his thoughts, Mal figured.
“Take me back to my crew,” he’d said when the Colonel returned, tone brooking no argument. “I need to see that they’re safe, and there ain’t nothin’ I have to say to you what I ain’t already said.” He’d done the rage thing, done the thinking thing, and now he was ready to have some questions answered.
The Colonel hesitated only a moment before calling the guards to lead him back to the isolation room.
There was still no sign of River, Jayne and Simon, he realised, as the door closed behind him. Zoe stood, leaning against one of the stark white walls, eyes alert. She gave Mal a nod when he came in. Wash sat near her feet, eyes closed and one hand resting reassuringly against her ankle. Near the back of the room, the Sheppard stood on his lonesome, praying quietly, the words a soft background murmur. He glanced up as Mal came in, an expression of relief on his feature. Tucked in one corner sat Kaylee, curled up beside Inara, who was rubbing her back and muttering quiet comfortings.
“Hey, little Kaylee,” he said softly, walking up to them. “Can you give us a moment?”
She looked up, puffy-faced but tearless, and nodded. Mal gave her a hand up, then slid down to take her place as Kaylee made her way across the room to join the Sheppard.
“So,” he started. “These people here, they’ve been telling me this crazy idea that you’re this oree-sigh thingy. Some kind of super powered cult leader, sort of eats worship energy. I can’t wait ‘till they tell the Sheppard - he’ll have something to say about that, I reckon.”
“Orici,” Inara said. “I see.” There was a funny sort of tone to her voice - some emotion that Mal couldn’t name.
He nodded. “A terrible dangerous woman, or so they say. Killed a lot of people with her fancy powers.”
“A strange story,” she said quietly, avoiding his eyes.
“Gotta say,” he said, leaning back, “sounds to me like they’ve been sniffing stardust a bit too long. But then, I ain’t had quite the same view on ‘crazy’ since little River came aboard. Could be as what they’re saying had some truth to it.”
And then she was all haughty dignity, all cool-and-composed Companion. “My name is Inara Serra, Captain Reynolds. I’m a Companion, from Shinon. And that is the truth. What more do you want from me?”
“The truth, sure.” Mal shifted slightly, trying to find a comfortable seat on the hard floor. “But was it always true?”
Inara rolled her eyes, and for a minute she seemed like herself again. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mal, of course not. We aren’t born Companions.”
“I mean as to say,” Mal drawled, “were you always from Shinon? And was your name always Inara?”
And her face gave nothing away, but just like that she was all formal-stiff again, and she still wouldn’t meet his eyes. She took a deep breath. “I’m not the Orici, Captain Reynolds. They could turn that silly little machine off, or take it right away, and I’d still just be Inara Serra, Companion from Shinon. Passenger of Serenity. I’m me, Captain. Mal. I’m human.”
“And were you always?”
“What?”
And the look on her face was answer enough. Mal sighed. “You know what I like about the Doc?” he asked, apropos of nothing.
Inara turned her head slightly, a delicate expression of puzzlement on her face. “Mal, what are you...”
He ignored her, kept talking. “Born with everything, our Simon was. With a future like that laid out all pretty before him, you couldn’t hardly have faulted the boy iffen he’d chose to stay there, all wrapped up in cotton-wool, never takin’ a closer look at the ‘verse. ‘Stead, he rescues his darling sister, leaves it all behind. Doc made himself into a whole new man - didn’t let the way he was born stop him none. You kinda gotta admire a man like that, though I’d take it as a kindness if you never told him I’d said as much.”
He could almost feel the tension seeping out of Inara, which spoke to just how tense she’d been, if he could see it beneath her layers of masks and acting. “We’re defined by how we choose to go on,” she said, softly, “not by where we began.”
Mal shrugged - but the faintest hints of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Ain’t that the truth,” he replied. “Ain’t that the very truth.”
* * *
The problem with the science-types in this place, Mal thought wearily, was that they couldn’t just talk plain-like. It was all fancy words, quantum-this and quantum-that. Rubbing his hand absentmindedly over nearly a week’s worth of stubble, he looked the scientist square in the eye. “Pretend like I’m stupid, then try that again,” he suggested.
Colonel Carter sighed. “Your wormhole passed through a black hole at the exact same time that a nearby star went supernova. We’ve seen that sort of phenomenon before. Frankly, it’s a stroke of luck that the black hole you travelled through was outside our solar system - otherwise this place would be full of alternate dimension versions of our own gate teams.” She rolled her eyes, and Mal thought he heard her mutter, ‘again’. “But this time there was an added variable that we couldn’t initially identify - when you came here, you didn’t just travel to another dimension, as we originally thought. You also travelled back in time. Or rather, to be more accurate, the dimension you came from was accelerated such that - ah.” She paused, catching the look on his face. “You travelled back in time,” she repeated.
“See, now, if you’d just said that in the first place, ‘stead of going on about singularities, and all that ‘temporal displacement’ nonsense...”
Mal thought the Colonel looked like she wanted to laugh - instead, she said, “The point is, now that we’ve figured out that you travelled through both time and dimensional barriers, we can tweak our equations to compensate.”
She looked at him expectantly, and Mal stared back, somewhat confused. “So, what’re you saying, Colonel?”
She beamed. “I’m saying, Mister Reynolds, that we’ve found a way to get you and your crew home.”
Mal’s heart gave a jolt. “You’re letting us go?”
“What?” The Colonel looked startled. “Oh - yes, of course! Your dimension is several hundred years ahead of ours. Nothing you’ve learned here could possibly hurt us. The... disputed identities of your crew are still somewhat concerning, but, well. What can it matter? No, I just meant, we fixed the equations, and we know how to make it work now. We had to get the Asgard involved, of course-”
“The who?,” Mal interrupted.
The Colonel hesitated, then shook her head. “It... really doesn’t matter. All we need now is the address of the gate you dialled from, and you’ll arrive right back home within a few days of when you left.”
She was giving him another one of those eager beaming looks, that made her look like an enthusiastic puppy -a tien tsai (5) puppy, maybe, but a puppy all the same. He eyed her warily. “Gate address?”
Her face fell. “If you don’t know the address...”
“The Chained Lady.” Heads turned all over the room, to where River was standing, staring intently at the Colonel. “The Horned Horse,” she continued, her voice sing-song. “The Seeing Lens. The Rock-Worker. The Arrow Horse. The Little Lion. The Dancing Triangles. The Shy Foal.” River paused, tilted her head. “I know the way,” she clarified.
The Colonel looked bemused. “You know the gate address?”
River nodded.
Mal looked from one to the other. “Then we can go home?”
The Colonel smiled. “You can go home.”
(5) Genius
* * *
And when they staggered out of the ring they were standing on that same crappy little planet they’d come from. No sign of the gorram Reavers. Nothing so far as the eye can see, except for his poor girl, his poor old Serenity, sitting crumpled in a heap. She was torn up good - it made Mal’s heart ache to see her like that. Inara reached up to rest a gentle hand on his shoulder; behind them, Kaylee made a small noise of dismay.
“Oh, Cap’n. Look at her.”
The wormhole blinked out. Mal hadn’t got eyes for that, though. He took a deep breath. “Chin up, little Kaylee. We’ll find a way to keep her flying.” He half-turned, smiled at Inara, then set off across the sand, trusting in his crew to follow. Each step he took was a step towards home. “We always do.”
-END-
Prompt:
A time-travel wormhole brings some or all of the Firefly cast back from the future, rather than sending someone from Atlantis into the future. (A/N: I subbed SG1 for SGA to take better advantage of the Adria thing, and made it a dimension-travel wormhole; hope that’s alright!)