( 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.

Yeah, and I didn't really *get* FF till I saw it in a bunch together.

That was the most awesome Jayne voice. And pairing him with Delirium is genius.

One thing I love is how the expected Endless matchups for Jayne and River were reversed. Reversed, but so very, very fitting, and far more satisfying than the other way 'round would have been.

Thank you! Glad it worked! It's funny - hardly anyone reads the Sandman crossover fics, and there are precious few comms (although I there really REALLY should be an archive called Matthew's Library, or The Library of Dream or something, where all the various Sandman Crossover Fics could be posted. If I were an archive-making sort, I'd so do that) - but, honestly, this is one of my very favourite kinds of fic. Sandman crossovers for the win! Such a fun way of having two great tastes that taste great together - it's the Little Black Dress of fandoms.

(I kind of wish I'd paired up Desire and Zoe, now, which was my first thought, because I'm sad there isn't a Zoe one. BUT it has been pointed out to me that there are other people in the Endless 'verse with whom one could pair up characters, so now I do have a Cunning Plan for Zoe, and a Cunning Plan for Simon too.)

Aaaand now for something completely different. I'm doing the Cliche_Bingo Challenge on LJ, and I'm counting the Sandman/Firefly sequence as one square ("Fusion with another fandom"). This is my entry for "Kidfic":

ROLE MODEL

cliché bingo #2: Kidfic

“Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a nanny!”

Jim's smile is ingratiating, and he's wrapped McCoy around his little finger enough times before now – but apparently the good doctor is still kind of pissy about that business with Nurse Chapel in the transporter room last week, because his glower doesn't let up one jot, even when Jim breaks out the dimples and the puppydog eyes.

“Aw, c'mon, Bones,” he says, keeping his voice low and glancing over at the slumbering little lump on the bed behind them. “What do I know about kids?”

McCoy looks completely unsympathetic. “Then you shouldn't have offered. Don't look at me like that – this job is all yours, Captain. You made the offer, you get to do the deed.”

Jim's shoulders slump. “But – it's shore leave,” he says, miserably, not quite believing that this is how his evening is going to pan out. They're in orbit around a pleasure planet, for crying out loud. Clubs and bars and pickup joints and race courses and casinos and underwater hovercoasters and all kinds of theme parks – and museums and galleries and concerts and libraries and swanky restaurants and blah blah blah boring things, and did he mention the clubs and bars and pickup joints? And the jacuzzis and steam rooms and masseuses with four sets of hands? Nubile lovelies of every conceivable species and gender are flexing their muscles and thrusting their hips down there on glittering dance floors and in luxuriously appointed suites right now, and Jim had pretty much assumed that he was going to get to do some flexing and thrusting of his own, damn it.

McCoy's brow arches up towards his hairline. “Precisely,” he hisses, when Jim doesn't seem capable of joining the dots. “It's my shore leave too, a shore leave I have well and truly earned, might I add, but you're still expecting me to sacrifice it just so you can go off and get some tail?” He snorts so loudly that Jim glances back into the darkened room, breathing a sigh of relief when the sleeper shows no sign of stirring. “I don't think so, Jim.”

“But it's a good deed!”

“Yeah.” McCoy grins, and pats Jim on the shoulder. “You can feel real good about yourself. I'll raise a glass to you while I'm winning at Betazoid poker. Bye now.” And with that, Jim finds himself looking at McCoy's back, and then at the doors hissing softly shut.

“Aaaw, nuts,” he mutters, and looks around to find Amanda sitting up in bed and looking at him with Uhura's eyes, her expression far too penetrating for a five-year-old. He blinks, feeling for all the world like his momma has just caught him about to steal his stepfather's second best car. “Um,” he says. “Sorry, kiddo. Didn't mean to wake you up, there.”

“I take it that you do not welcome this duty, Captain?” she says, her grave little voice echoing Spock's intonations almost perfectly. Jim swallows. Crap. Busted. He hits her with his most disarming smile, the one that no female aged two to two hundred can resist. She just looks back at him, solemn and wide-eyed and unimpressed.

Jim swallows. “No, honey, you've got that all wrong. It's just that I'm not sure I'm the most, ah, experienced crewmember for this particular mission, you know?”

“Father said that you offered to stay here while he took Mama out for dinner. It is their wedding anniversary, Captain Kirk; I believe that you were in attendance at the ceremony, in the capacity of best man, so you must be familiar with the date. He always takes her out to mark the occasion, and it is my grandfather's custom to watch over me in their absence. Grandfather is not aboard The Enterprise, but Father trusts you implicitly in his place.” She sounds like she isn't too sure about Spock's judgment on that one, but is too polite to say anything disrespectful about her father.

Jim stares at (continued...)