flails

Oh, Jesus, Erika - this is just SO awesome! You killed me with E looking up the cutlery, and the little flashes of self-knowledge. Honest to God, you nail them!

Meanwhile - oh, lord, I'm glad you thought the Mal one worked.

Part VI:

She doesn't do it for fun – although it is fun, in its way. It's thrilling, exhilarating, makes her heart race fast faster fastest (stimulates the adrenal gland) and it's a challenge, that's the thing, because although they are stupid, they are many, so many, coming for her in ravenous waves. It's like grappling with numbers computer-fast; like pulling together pieces of a puzzle made from shards of broken glass and building something beautiful. It's a dance with too many partners, and none of them know the moves – but she knows. She can see the patterns that govern each blow, each lunge. She's smiling inside, light-hearted and joyous and free; potent now, not just potential. Unrestrained. Perfect. And the reavers keep coming, furious and frenzied and unreasoning, scrambling over their fallen kin, and so River need not hold anything back.

It's ironic, in its way, because it is only here, with these unpeople, that she can be unapologetically herself. As she darts and ducks and swerves and turns, as she punches and slices and severs and kicks, her movements precise and pure and lovely, calculated and efficient, she reflects upon how strange it is that she should be unable to share her bliss with the ones who love her. That it's only here, with these poor, wretched creatures of pure craving, that she can let her mind and body do what they have been built for. Only here, amongst people too damaged to recognise her own strangeness, that she can be as strong and as whole and as human as she knows she is.

She hates the ones who did this to her, of course, because she knows that in important ways she's broken. They gave her a new edge, honed away the corners and the layers that should be there, and now she doesn't fit properly in the place that should be hers. A broken puzzle piece. Now she doesn't say the right things, doesn't quite speak the same language as her brother or his friends. She upsets him. She embarrasses him. Day by day, as he scrabbles around desperate to undo what was done, she breaks his heart. And River hates that so badly that she is sometimes racked with storms of helpless weeping, but she can't unknow the things she knows, can't remember how to be small and constrained, can't go back in time to become the little sister he remembers. She tries, though, for Simon's sake. She's always trying, always conscious of the weight of his fears and hopes. She tries to make herself small and unthreatening, and to pretend she is a normal girl.

No pretending here and now.

And although she is broken in those small, stupid ways, although she does not often remember how to play the social games, how to say unimportant things – this is what they gave her in exchange. She hates them, will probably always hate them, but she does not hate herself. She does not hate being able to keep her brother safe. She does not hate being able to hear and see and feel and move the way they have helped her to hear and see and feel and move. She does not hate becoming big. Powerful. And she has her freedom now – Simon bought her that - so she is not their tool. And she is strong in a way that she should never have been strong; she is something terrible, something glorious, something like a god, almost. An avatar, perhaps – although whose avatar, she does not want to know.

(But she thinks she knows, in spite of herself. Has seen his smile reflected, sometimes, in mirrors, has caught a glimpse of a man taller than Mal Reynolds, a man with red hair and a laugh that shakes the world. She thinks she shouldn't like him, but – he is honest, she knows. She likes that about him.)

Time passes. River Tam feels her limbs grow heavy, her muscles begin to ache, and her clothes are plastered tight against her skin with her own sweat and other (continued...)

( continues...) people's blood, but she does not slow her pace, does not hesitate, does not flinch. She is spinning like a Sufi, her flesh an extension of her will, perfectly calm and lost in something like worship as she hacks order out of chaos, and keeps her brother safe. Keeps Kaylee and Mal and Zoe and even Jayne safe, because they have been protecting her all this time, and they are the only friends she has.

When the last one falls, River is shocked out of her trance by the sudden absence and she stands there for a long moment, statue-still, coming back to herself.

No more names on her dance card. Midnight. Time to turn back into a pumpkin.

“That's my girl,” murmurs a voice she knows, and she blinks up unsmiling at the red-haired man. He looks like a pirate on Earth-that-was. A storybook figure, larger than life and slightly sad. He looks nothing like the girl with the fish and the changeable hair, but River can still see the family resemblance. She knows about protective older brothers.

He reaches out to ruffle her sticky hair, and she lets him. “Give Del a kiss, when you see her next?” he says, and then he is gone, and River is left panting softly in the stillness while the dust settles and blood drips slowly down her blade.

Oh, Fay. That's visceral, you feel it as she's doing it, as you read.

erika, I'm sorry I don't follow your fandoms. Your talent is obvious, and I wish I had a better grasp on the worlds you move in.

Thank you...I'm glad you think that. Because it's not often that America admits we have classes, let alone a class issue. But my people are so much more like Vince and Eric than most of TV's people, it makes me really conscious of that kind of thing. Although my mother did teach me which fork to use, but I get the feeling that neither of those guys had parents that had space to care whether either guy ever fit in outside the neighborhood, whether or not they really used to get beat up and stuff like some of us tend to think. Which is weird. Ellin never intended to make a social document, but that stuff's in there anyway, mixed in with all the slashy stuff, wisecracks, and famous cameos. ETA: Beverly, thank you. It's okay; I never expected to fall so hard for this one anyway...I did not like the first one I watched. I don't know why this is so often true of my fandoms...trying to prove I can have unemotional television I suppose. But I can't. ETA: And we never see what's in "Head On," but judging from Ari's actor vs. movie star thing, and Vince's early work with Mentos, I'm guessing it wasn't Shakespeare. Or William Goldman, either.

Thanks, Beverly!

Final Part:

VII

It's on the third day, when he's resigned himself to using the useless gorram rifle as a crutch, and when he's really starting to regret not carrying any water on him just in case of emergencies, that he first sees the kid with the technicolor hair. Gets so excited that he tries shouting with his parched mouth and hears himself croak out something in a voice that don't sound much like his. Tries to break into a run before he remembers about his busted-up leg, and so then there's a long, painful while with him lying face down in the dust making noises like a little girl and trying not to snivel.

When he looks up, she's gone. Must've imagined her, is all. Not surprising, with the sun beating down on his head so hot, and no water for too damn long. Anybody might start seeing things. Creeps him out, somewhat, but there ain't no helping that. Jayne scowls, and keeps on hobbling towards civilization (not that he has much of an idea whether civilization is in this direction or the other one, but a man can't just sit on his ass in the middle of nowhere expecting help to come find him), and cusses out his no good crewmates under his breath. Last time he signs on with a woman captain, that's for sure. Damn woman had no sense of gorram humour, none at all. T'ain't even like she's all that good looking in the first place – he was practically doing her a favour, making the offer. Maybe he should've prettified it up some – his Momma always told him it weren't polite to mention a woman's age, specially when you're fixing to get up close and personal with her, and maybe mentioning that even though he's a handsome studd of eighteen, and she's got to be, what, oh, forty at least, he'd still be willing to give her a good seeing to, if she were mindful – well, maybe that weren't the best way to get her all buttery after all. But it's been a long while between ports, and Jayne'd had a powerful urge to have himself a little fun, and maybe he'd had just a little bit too much of the engineer's moonshine. He'd thought she liked him. Thought she'd be flattered to have a young fella like him willing to show her a good time. Turns out he ain't quite as good at reading a woman's intentions as he'd kind of flattered himself he was. No need for her to black his eye for him, though. Jayne can take a hint. Well, eventually. When it's made real clear, and short words are employed. Ah, well, maybe he's not great at hints, actually, come to think of it – but, even so, he holds that there's no call to go blacking a fella's eye and leaving him on some dusty little two-bit excuse for a moon like she gone done. And with no water, at that. That just ain't friendly.

He really needs a drink. And not a beer, nor a stoup of liquor. He really, really needs water. It's starting to kind of not be funny.

* * *

He's going to get up again real soon. Just resting a little while. Anybody would need a rest, if'n they'd been walking across a dustbowl like this with no damn food an' no damn water for longer'n it takes to ransack three towns and get elected mayor of a fourth. And the boulder's real comfy. He's not giving up, or nothing. Just resting, until the sky decides which colour it's supposed to be, and the rocks stop dancing like they're pretty girls at some fancy shindig. Just resting.

• * *

“That's a very nice crutch,” says the girl, eyeing Jayne's rifle judiciously. He sits up straighter, and glowers at her.

“It's a gun, not a crutch,” he says, because he's not leaning on it right now, and the way she said it made him feel kind of unmanly. “It's a very dangerous weapon, for blowing the heads off of people who go poking around where they don't belong.”

“No, it's just shaped like a gun,” she says, firmly. Her eyes are wrong, Jayne notices after a moment, and it makes him stare. He wonders whether it's lenses, or a cheap-ass piece of backstreet surgery. “They come in all shapes,” she adds, planting a tulip in the barrel of his rifle. Jayne stares at the (continued...)

( continues...) tulip. He's pretty sure she didn't have a tulip in her hand a moment ago, but there it is, sticking out of his gun like a flag. He's never had occasion to learn a whole lot about flowers, but he has a feeling they don't normally come covered in black and orange polka dots. “You can get crutches shaped like people, or books, or bottles, or icecream. Or ones that blow away in a good gust of wind, like dust. I like those ones best.” She looks thoughtful. “Of course, that kind don't work so well if you want to strap them on your leg, like a parrot. Pirate. One or the other.” She eyes his damaged leg dubiously. “That's after they saw it off,” she adds. “The leg, not the parrot.”

Jayne winces at this disturbing talk of leg removal. “You got any water?” he asks, suddenly recognising this for the opportunity it is.

The girl frown, and pats her way down her body. She's wearing a fancy looking embroidered silk vest that's too big for her, with nothing underneath, and a pair of drawstring fisherman's pants. Realistically there can't be that many places where a flask could be hiding, but Jayne is an optimistic soul.

“No,” she says. “No. I've got some absinthe, and a sterling silver flask of bitter tears, and I think there's an old bottle of petroleum-mango smoothie somewhere. But no water.”

Jayne considers these options in silence for a little while, and notes, as he does so, that her long, snakey, pink-turquoise-yellow-orange hair seems to have shrunk down into a buzzcut while he wasn't paying attention. He scowls, and leans forward, and tries to look threatening, because he gets the sneaking feeling that this little girl isn't treating him with the wary deference due to a very large man with a very large gun. “Am I dreaming?”

She cocks her head and studies him closely, as if this merits serious consideration. She doesn't look even a little bit intimidated. “I shouldn't think so,” she says at last. “No. No, I don't think I'd be here if you were dreaming, would I? Silly.”

Jayne blinks. He isn't too sure about that logic, but it does seem, on some puzzlingly primal level, to make sense. He subsides back against the boulder, and pats his gun like it's a small dog.

“You should have brought water,” his new-found friend tells him, and Jayne bares his teeth. “And maybe some bullets for the gun.”

“I thought you said it was a crutch, not a gun,” says Jayne, feeling triumphant.

She looks at him with an expression of profound pity. “You weren't listening very well. All crutches are guns too. It just depends how you hold them.”

“Missy, you make about as much sense as a chimpanzee in a convent,” Jayne snaps.

“Most monkeys aren't very religious,” she says, seriously. Then her brow furrows. “Although chimps aren't monkeys. They're privates. Or is that soldiers?” She scratches her head, and looks a little embarrassed at this lapse. “I think it might be bishops that are primates. Or that might be cappucinos.”

Jayne makes a little mouth-yapping-on gesture with the hand not currently stroking his rifle. “You sure do talk a lot, for a hallucination.”

She nods. She doesn't seem offended, which is probably a good thing. “Sometimes I'm VERY VERY QUIET , like a teeny-tiny mouse, and other times I'm so loud it bursts your eardrums and sends blood snaking down your neck. It depends on the moon. And the season. And what colour mercury is that day.” She stares up at the sky. “And sometimes I just scream. I can scream for days and days and days.”

Jayne swallows dryly. “I'd take it as a real kindness if this wasn't one of those days,” he says.

She winks at him, and then digs her hand into her pocket and looks fascinated by the little bag that she finds there. “Oooh!” Jayne watches her, because there's nothing else to do. The writing on the bag looks like Chinese, but it don't make no sense to Jayne, and he thinks maybe it's older nor that, maybe one of those other languages that died out when they fled Earth-that-was. Although what the hell anyone would be thinking of, to put old (continued...)

( continues...) dead languages on a snackfood wrapper is anyone's guess. She opens it up, and inside there are tiny brown cookies shaped like little bears, with pictures of pandas stamped onto them. She beams, and offers him one. “Biscuit?” she says – and it might just be a statement of fact, coming from her, but he decides to take it as an offer.

Jayne looks from the girl to the cookie, and his stomach rumbles. “Yeah,” he says, and accepts one - although the cookie is the size of his thumbnail, pretty much, and now that he's started thinking about food his body has remembered that it's ravenous. Can't help that, though. But he remembers what she said before, about the petroleum-mango smoothie, and feels a sudden moment of doubt.

“What kinda cookies are these, anyway?” he asks, as she bites into one.

“Surprise flavour!” she announces, gleefully. “Like Mary Poppins' Every Flavour Beans!”

Jayne blinks. “Can you maybe be a little more specific?” he asks, ignoring the way his stomach rumbles, because he has the feeling that this girl is just crazy enough to be eating poison her own self.

She nods, her expression grave. “Well, that one was chocolate,” she says, and plucks another one from the bag. She pops it into her mouth and bites down thoughtfully. “And that one was chocolate.” Jayne raises an eyebrow as she repeats the movement. “And that one was chocolate!” she exclaims, with every evidence of astonishment. Jayne rolls his eyes, and bites down on his own cookie. A moment later he's spitting it out with an expression of pure disgust – which, coming from Jayne Cobb, who will eat most anything, is pretty eloquent testimony to the sheer level of unpalatability involved.

“Engine oil and, and, sweet baby Jesus, was that manure?” He tries to spit out the last traces of the cookie, but his mouth is dry. “That was manure. That was a horse-shit flavoured cookie.” He looks up, outraged, into mismatched eyes. She nods sympathetically, and then tries another cookie herself with undiminished enthusiasm.

“Caramelised frogs' legs,” she says solemnly, after a moment, and keeps on chewing with every appearance of enjoyment.

“Caramelised frog?” repeats Jayne, wondering whether this is better or worse than engine oil and manure. Better, he thinks – but he's not entirely sure. He's never eaten frog. Doesn't reckon it can be worse than rat, though, and he's eaten rat a time or two. It wasn't so bad.

She gives a brisk bob of her head, and he watches her hair getting longer along with the movement. It's blue now, all blue and curly, with daisies and starfish and little brass cogs scattered in its tangled depths. “I like caramel, and I like frogs' legs. Although I always feel bad about the frogs, because nobody makes them tiny crutches. They really should, don't you think? It's only fair.” Jayne watches her, almost too bemused to be really pissy. She pops another cookie into her mouth and her eyes grow big. She chews slowly, with every evidence of fascinated delight. “My own words,” she says, when she's finally finished chewing and swallowed the cookie down. She nods to herself. “They taste like rainbows and broken glass. And a little bit like last Tuesday.”

“Oookay,” says Jayne. He leans back and looks up at the sky, and wonders when it got so dark. He didn't notice the sun setting. He has an uneasy feeling that he's maybe not noticing much of anything right now. Or at least – not real things. Because little Miss Perky here sure as shit ain't real. He tries to map out the stars, but hasn't a hope in hell. Nothing familiar here, nothing like the way the sky looked back home, with Ma and the little 'uns. He wonders how they'll make ends meet, if he isn't sending back money. “I'm dying, ain't I? This is it. What a gorram stupid way to die. Kicked off my own ship for trying to do my cap'n a kindness, and busting up my leg just walking down a hill. Always figured I'd go out fighting. This – this is just undignified. Ain't no glory dying of thirst and sunstroke and a busted leg on some spit'n'sawdust moon in the armpit of (continued...)

( continues...) beyond.”

“There's never any glory in dying,” says the girl, and she sounds surprisingly sober. “People get that wrong. Glory's more my jurisdiction.” She shrugs, and snuggles up next to him with her back to the boulder and her arm looped through his. “Well – and my brother's. Mostly his.”

They look up at the sky. Sometimes he can feel her warm little arm against him, and sometimes he feels like he's sitting there all alone. But he asks anyway: “You've got a brother?”

“Lots. And sisters too.”

“Family's good,” says Jayne. His voice is kind of hoarse. He misses his momma and the kids something awful, some days. The universe is real big, and there ain't nobody looking out for him but his own self. Times are, he thinks maybe he should just go back home and get some kind of landlubber job. Do some honest work. Only – Jayne's never been real good at settling down, or at sticking to things. He's been falling in and out of trouble pretty much since he could walk. Best things Jayne can do are shooting, and busting heads. Well, and drinking and whoring. And there's plenty of work out here for a big man who excels at shooting and busting heads, and that work leads to coin, which enables said drinking and whoring - so clearly this is where he ought to be.

Only – not right here. Not dying on some godforsaken rock.

She's looking at him sidelong. He can't see her, but he knows she is. “You belong to my brother,” she says, in a hushed voice, as if she's telling him a secret.

Jayne stares out at the stars, and considers this statement for a good long while. “Pretty sure that ain't the case, Titch. I belong to me. Just me.”

“Nobody belongs just to themselves,” she says, fondly. “That's silly. You belong to lots of people. But mostly, you belong to my brother. You even look like him, a little bit. Like a teeny-tiny version of him. Only you're not so funny. He's funny, my brother.” All of a sudden her voice is so sad, so small and lost and heartbroken that Jayne forgets to feel affronted, the way he was just starting to do, and instead finds that he wants to pick her up and cuddle her like she's his own little sister. He looks down at her woebegone little face, and wonders how come he's hallucinating somebody like this, instead of some buxom barwench, and he pats her shoulder awkwardly. “I miss him,” she says, and her voice is so soft that he only hears it because he's straining to. “He went away, and then we looked and looked in all the places. Timbuktoo, and Lyonesse, and the World Without Shrimp. And down the back of the sofa, with the lost change. But he wasn't there. And then there were cherries, and we found him, and he gave me his doggy, and he went away again.” She looks around, as if suddenly noticing something, and a guilty expression creeps over her face. “Oops,” she says. Jayne lifts an eyebrow in friendly inquiry, and she blushes. “I think I lost my doggy. Again.” She chews her bottom lip. “I kind of do that a lot. But I don't mean to! It's just that sometimes I'm fish, or shooting stars, and it's hard to remember about the doggy when you're being fish. Or shooting stars.” She looks decidedly glum. “He's going to be a very grumpy doggy. And I've eaten all the biscuits.”

Jayne doesn't really feel qualified to comment on any of this, so he just wraps his arm companionably around her shoulders. “Worse things happen at sea,” he says, because that's what his momma used to say, even though she'd never seen a sea in her life, and it always used to comfort him.

She looks up at him, wide-eyed. “Do they?”

Jayne considers. He hasn't really thought about it, to be truthful. “Yes?” he ventures.

She nods fervently. “Like oil spills, and pirates, and cruises full of rich old white people wearing lots of pastels?”

“Possibly?” says Jayne, feeling, once again, that he isn't really qualified to comment.

“And leviathans,” continues the girl, sounding quite cheerful now. “And really bad-tempered cuttlefish.”

“Um,” says Jayne.

They sit together quietly for a while then, looking up at the (continued...)

( continues...) stars. One of them seems to be getting bigger. And bigger. “It's a shooting star! Make a wish,” says the girl, her skinny little fingers suddenly digging into his arm and her voice breathless with excitement. “It's important. You have to make a wish!”

“I wish a bunch of hot nurses with gallons of water would come save my sorry ass?” says Jayne, after a moment, and she laughs.

“You are funny,” she says, and she sounds a little sad. “I'm sorry you can't stay.”

“What?” He feels her pulling away from him then, and watches in confusion as she rises to her dirty little feet.

“It's probably for the best. I've still got to find my doggy.” She looks up at the shooting star, and Jayne follows her gaze. It's getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and after an embarrassingly long it occurs to Jayne that it isn't a star after all. It's his ship. He looks down to tell her, excitement surging through him, but as he opens his mouth she starts to crumble away, shockingly, like a girl made out of coloured sand, and as the ship lowers itself down and he lifts one arm to shield himself from the wind of its passage, his peculiar companion is bourne away before his eyes. He reaches out to touch her, to bring her back, to thank her – he doesn't know quite what. And then the ground comes up to meet him, and he's out for the count.

* * *

“You learned your lesson yet, Cobb?” That's the captain's voice. He blinks. He's not seeing real well – looks like there's two of her, and she's distinctly blurry, but she's still the most beautiful sight he's ever seen. He don't tell her that, though. Don't want to get his other eye blacked.

“Yes, ma'am,” he says, with passionate sincerity. His voice shocks him. He hadn't sounded like this when he talked to the crazy girl – but maybe that had never been his outside voice. “Learned my lesson, ma'am.” He blinks past the captain and sees that he's back on board, thank all the gods and goddesses that ever were. He'll jump ship the next time they dock, but it won't do to go telling her that now. Got to get his leg fixed up, got to get himself fit and employable again. And in the future, he's going to try to be a bit more careful, going to try not to piss his captains off. Not unless there's some serious, serious money at stake. This job don't come with no pension plan, nor no kind of guarantees, and it's all too easy to end up dead over something just plain dumb. So Jayne tries real hard to look penitent, and licks his cracked lips, and ignores the way that the walls are still wavering and changing colour along the edges of his vision. “I surely would appreciate some water, ma'am,” he croaks politely, like his momma taught him, and the captain rewards him with a smile and a brimming cup.

Jayne is so hard to get, beyond the surface caricature. He's a puzzle, is Jayne, if you accept there *is* more to him than surface.

I'd buy this version.