These Bloody Hands

It was said that every planet in the 'Verse had its own quirks. Slightly different gravity. Slightly different atmospheric composition. Slightly (or in some cases, extremely) different people. On Earth-That-Was, humanity had organized itself into nations, dividing themselves along borders until the day came where they realized that they'd carved up their homeworld in so many ways other than arbitrary boundaries, that they were all in the same boat together. And human nature being what it was, out here, dozens of light years from home, human nature had remained the same. More 'nations.' More boundaries. More war.

Still, Private Malcolm Reynolds reflected, on Hera, he could forget all of that. Hera felt like Shadow, or at least, Shadow as it had been before the Alliance had bombed it into oblivion. Gravity was the same. Stars were the same. Sun was the same. Moons weren't the same, granted, but the people were the same. Ranchers. Farmers. A few miners. Good folk ready to stand up and be counted. To fight for truth, justice, liberty, and all kinds of fancy words that translated to "I don't want some bigwig on Londinium telling me how to live my life, so if I have to fight for that, so be it." Which was part of why Hera was the hub of the Independents' war effort. Which was why he and the rest of the 57th Overlanders were here. Not among the good people, granted, but out on the plains outside Fort Campbell. Because if you wanted to fight for all those shiny things, you needed to know how to shoot a gun. Or serve on a warship, but he wasn't counting on that happening anytime soon. He'd been born under a black sky, he'd die under one. It would be a cold day in hell before he went gallivanting around like some outlaw out there.

"Alright, form up!"

Or, for all he knew, he could die today, under this blue sky, under the watch of Staff Sergeant Downer. Because the man lived up to his name, in that he could down one's spirit, and Private Ayers still had a broken arm after being "downed" after cracking a joke about his surname. Mal knew enough to keep his mouth shut.

"I said form up!"

Mal looked at Zoë. "We are formed up."

"So? Shut it up as well."

"You're so eloquent. Remind me to buy you a round back at the fort."

"Do that. No matter how drunk you get me, I'm still beating you at darts."

"Yeah? We'll see about-"

"Reynolds!"

"…that."

Was Zoë smiling? He could swear she was smiling. There was a word his ma had imparted to him once under a summer sky, and that was "schadenfreude" – taking joy in others' misery. Given how Downer was marching up to him, given how Zoë had lowered her gaze but was smirking slightly, Mal figured that his fellow private had schadenfreude in buckets.

"I'm sorry Reynolds, am I interrupting something?"

So did Downer. "No sir. Absolutely not sir."

Downer slapped him over the head.

"The hell?" Mal asked.

He got slapped again.

"See these?!" Downer yelled, tapping the chevrons on his uniform (such as it was). "Do I look like I'm a sir?"

"Um…"

"I'm a staff sergeant. So you will call me staff sergeant, or sergeant, or God. But on this world, or any other world, you will not call me sir." He slapped Mal over the head again. "Understand?"

Mal rubbed his head. "Yes s…sergeant."

Downer gave him a glare before shifting his gaze to Zoë. "The heck you smiling at Alleyne?"

Zoë, who'd kept her gaze down to Hera's dirt, looked up at Downer. "Excuse me?"

He slapped her over the head.

"Ow!"

"Right," Downer said. He walked away from Mal and Zoë, both of whom were glaring at his back, and in Mal's case, imagining all kinds of instruments he could stick in it. "Now that I've identified the dregs of the Fifty-Seventh, I can start working with guns and God in the effort to make at least some of you a mite respectable."

Mal clenched his fist, not sure what irritated him worse – being called a dreg, or hearing the Good Lord's name be used like that. Still, his head was pounding, and the cross that dangled alongside his dog tags helped to keep him in line. So, he watched as Downer gestured for four men who'd been standing beside the line to walk over. Two giant crates were carried over, each of them shared between two of the troopers. Looking at them, Mal gathered that they'd been military, or security, or what people might call "professionals" even before the war had started. Second thing he gathered were those crates were a mite heavy.

"What do you think they got in there?"

He looked to his right, at the scrawny boy standing beside him. He was a head shorter than Mal, and the patch on his tattered uniform said SALTER. He reminded Mal of movies he'd seen back on Shadow at the local cinema. The types of people who died quickly to establish the stakes.

"Better uniforms?" the kid asked.

Mal tugged at his clothes. "These ain't too bad."

"Ain't too bad?" The kid looked at Mal. "What, so your coat didn't have holes in it?"

"Watch and learn kid, you'll be making more holes soon."

The crates were opened up. Mal was surprised that Downer hadn't picked up on the conversation, since the man had the ears of an elephant (a long extinct animal) and the eyes of a hawk (not extinct, but over-hunted on many worlds). What he was less surprised to see was the sergeant take out a rifle – they were out on the plains outside Fort Campbell, coming here for target practice was the only logical reason. But seeing the type of rifle, however? That was a surprise.

"This," said Downer, holding the rifle up with one hand, "is the LS-2 automatic rifle. One of hundreds that our contacts at the Core have decided to ship out to help us freedom fighters and…yes?"

One of the Fifty-Seventh had raised a hand. "We accepting gifts from the Alliance now?"

"Not the Alliance, people who have an interest in the status quo of an Alliance that doesn't extend beyond White Sun."

The man shook his head. "No way. I ain't touchin' anything those (he said something that caused even Zoë to raise an eyebrow)."

Downer nodded. "Fair enough. And tell me, Private – when you get home to ma and pa, when you're back to hunting rabbits, or buffalo, or anything else with a single shot, and a bunch of marines turn up, you think that's gonna cut it?"

The man said nothing.

"Didn't think so." Downer reached down into the crate, pulled out a magazine, and quickly and effortlessly inserted it into the rifle, before disengaging the safety. "You wanna fight, you need guns. You want guns, you want some that are effective up to one-thousand metres. Fifteen-hundred if you're a crack shot. And since the Alliance has guns, and tanks, and ships, we need the best we can get." He slung the rifle over his shoulder. "Which means I need to teach you liver bellies how to shoot, and do it quick enough so I get to ship you off to fight and die, so I can teach the next batch of meat to do the same." He got out a remote from his pocket. "Behold your enemy."

He pressed the button. Nothing happened.

"The hell?" He started pressing it again. Nothing was happening.

Schadenfreude, Mal reflected. It was a beautiful word.

As the case was, it took five minutes of button pressing, ball busting, and other things beginning with b before targets flipped up on the plains before them. After that, ten minutes were spent distributing the guns to the Overlanders. Mal, looking around, noticed the unease in the men and women around him. They were Rim and Border folk. You couldn't survive out here without access to a gun. But the weapons out here, the weapons people like he and Zoë had used, were simply functional. Single shot rifles, six-shot revolvers…these were military weapons, designed to kill humans rather than animals, and to have enough firepower to cut through body armour. The war was drawing closer. And being armed as they were, it had become a lot more real.

Or so he guessed. For him, the war had become real when his homeworld was reduced to ashes. He'd fired revolvers, rifles, even repeaters, and now, staring down the sights of this new baby, he was going to fire this too. And firing single shots, then tri shots, and hitting his target, he found he had little problem with it. Even Downer, who was walking up and down the line, had only murmured, "could be worse" as he'd passed by. Not exactly praise, but better than Zoë, who'd got the warm compliment of "keep trying Alleyne, you'll get there eventually."

Mal gave her a look. Zoë was staring down the rifle's sights, and letting out single shots. But even if he couldn't see her mouth, hidden as it was by the rifle's body, he could tell she was bothered.

"Something up?" he asked.

She fired. "Something's up Downer's arse, I can tell you that."

"Yeah, anyone could tell you that. I mean, what's up with you?"

She looked at him. "What's up my arse?"

"What? No!"

"I mean, you shouldn't be choosy Mal. There's at least three Companions at Fort Worth. I'm sure you could-"

"No," he grunted.

He wasn't going there. He had morals. He had standards. Only thing more absurd than him jetting off into the Black rather than settling down on dirt, was settling down on blankets with one of those…whores.

Zoë fired again. "Miss my Winchester," she murmured. "That's what's up."

Mal stared. "That's it?"

She fired. "That's it."

"You grew up vesselside, the heck you need a single-shot rifle for?"

"You'd be surprised."

Mal tried to imagine it. Tried, but failed. But a notion he could entertain was that Zoë was feeling exactly what most people here was. This was it. They were training to use rifles on human-shaped targets, in preparation for the moment where they'd be shooting at fellow human beings themselves. Provided they weren't bombed from above, or vented into space if a transport ship took a hit.

Mal wasn't afraid, or so he told himself. The Independents were doing what was right. God helped the righteous. Even if God had let Shadow be destroyed, he knew that He wouldn't let tyranny take the human race after it had suffered so much to get here. And-

The hell?

Salter nudged against him with his left arm, and it was bloody providence that Mal hadn't been firing at the time. He looked at the private, who looked back at him guiltily.

"Sorry," Salter whispered.

Mal stared at him. Salter had adjusted the rifle so that it was nuzzled against his left shoulder rather than his right.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Excuse me?"

"The gun goes against your right shoulder, not your left."

"Does it matter?"

"Does it matter?" Mal asked. "Course it matters. Weren't you watching Downer?"

"He told us how to use the rifle. Not how to hold it."

That was true, Mal reflected. But then, Downer shouldn't have had a need to. Everyone out here knew how to use a gun. Everyone had enlisted with a gun. Unless…

"Salter," Mal began. "Have you ever used a gun before?"

Salter looked away, staring down the rifle's sights.

"Salter," Mal said, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Have you used a gun before?"

"Um…well, I held a revolver once."

Mal rubbed his forehead. "Jesus Christ."

"Look, I'm fine," Salter said, starting to sound desperate. "I just need to-"

"Salter, stop." Mal got to his feet and tapped his fellow private on the shoulder. "Come with me."

The boy gave him a look. Then Downer a look, who was further down the line, yelling at some unfortunate soul. He gave Zoë a look, who just looked away and went back to firing.

Thanks for the help, Mal reflected bitterly. He led Salter away from the line, a good ten feet back. Both of them held their rifles. Mal, as someone who'd grown up with guns all his life. Salter, who was holding his like he might a dead cat.

"How old are you?" Mal asked.

"Sixteen."

"Bullshit. Try again."

Salter sighed. "Fifteen."

"Right. Fifteen. Fifteen years and you never used a gun."

Salter's anger was rising, as was his rifle. "Look, I never needed to-"

Mal grabbed the rifle's tip. "First of all, keep that pointed down. Second of all, the rifle goes against your right shoulder. Not your left."

"But I'm left-handed."

"Tough shit. Still got to hold it like that."

"Why?"

Mal held his rifle to the side, keeping it pointed away from anyone. "See this?" he said, pointing to a rectangular slot. "This ejects the shell casings. It's on the rifle's right side."

"Um…"

Unable to contain his exasperation, Mal asked, Salter, if the right side is pointed towards your left cheek, what's going to happen?"

Salter said nothing.

"Well?!" Mal asked. "Are you that dumb, or did you have to work on it?"

Salter, to his credit, showed he understood, even if he said nothing. For a moment, his eye's met Mal's. A moment later, they were facing towards the ground.

"Salter?" he asked.

The boy hadn't started crying, but Mal could already see the tears in his eyes.

Oh Christ. He looked back at the line. Everyone was still firing. Downer was still yelling. The targets were still suffering the wrath of 10mm rounds. No-one was looking to help him.

"Look, Salter…" He tried to put a hand on the boy's shoulder, but it got shoved away. "Listen, kid. I know it's-"

"The fuck you know?" Salter looked up at him.

"Quite a bit," Mal murmured.

"Yeah?"

"Well, since the Alliance bombed Shadow to Hell and back, I learnt that there's still a lot of sin in the hearts of Man, and that if your enemy's shooting at you like that, only thing you can do is shoot back."

A darkness flickered in Salter's eyes. "What? You mean…" Mal said nothing. "Holy shit."

"Yeah, ain't so holy. But…" He sighed. "Look, kid. You're here. Unless conscription is a thing somewhere, I'm guessing you volunteered. So, presumably you know the facts of life?"

"Facts of life?"

"Fact is, there's a strong chance you'll die. And just as strong a chance that you'll use this little murder baby (he gestured to Salter's rifle) to take lives. So, one way or another, you end this war in a body bag, or in the knowledge that you've sent the enemy into their own coffins."

Salter looked at Mal. "And you're alright with that?"

"After Shadow? I'm more than…" He trailed off. He clutched the cross under his shirt. "One way or another, I'm gonna meet my maker with blood on my hands. Best I can do is present the case that it was for a good cause. Difference between murder and killing, and whatnot."

"There's a difference?"

Mal went to answer, but didn't have a chance. Because there was a yell of "Reynolds," and as sure as the Devil himself, Downer walked up, accompanied by two of the troopers who'd brought the rifles to the recruits in the first place. They were managing to keep their faces impassive, so if they had schadenfreude, Mal couldn't tell.

"The hell is this?" Downer asked.

But Downer was enjoying it. Because of course the bastard was.

"Did I give you permission to leave the firing line? Downer snapped. "Did I give you time off to take a chat?"

"Sergeant, Private Reynolds was instructing me in the use of this rifle."

Downer glared at Salter. "Was I speaking to you, Private?"

Salter lowered his gaze. "No, Sir."

Downer looked irritated at being called "sir," but the look of irritation increased when he looked at Mal. "This true?" he asked.

Mal didn't see the point in lying. "Yes, Sergeant."

Downer scoffed. "What, you think some limp dick is having problems with his gun, and that you've got what it takes to sort him out?"

Mal nodded towards the targets. "Put Salter back on the firing line, Sergeant. See if it worked out."

Downer looked ready to pop a vein. Nevertheless, he looked at Salter, and after a moment as long as the passing of the universe, nodded towards the line. Following Downer's gaze, Mal saw Zoë looking back at him. She looked ready to do something stupid, but as he shook his head at her, she thankfully restrained herself.

"Eyes here, Reynolds."

Mal looked back at Downer.

"Think this is how you're gonna do things?" Downer asked. "Provide leadership to little shits like Salter? Teach them how to shoot? Give them moral support about fighting the good fight and all that shit?"

Mal shrugged. "Suppose so."

Downer looked back at Salter, who'd started to fire. And, most importantly, do so the right way. He was even hitting his target with some of his shots.

"Am I on latrine duty Sergeant? Or should I go back to the line?"

Downer took a notebook out of his pocket and began writing in it. "Don't test me Reynolds." He finished writing, tore it off, and put the paper in Mal's chest pocket. "Take that to Master Sergeant Lineer once we're done for today."

"Um…"

"He'll give you your corporal bars."

Mal didn't say anything. He just stared. Even more so as Downer gave him a rare smile.

"Don't make me regret this Reynolds."

Mal didn't say anything. He just tightened his grip on his rifle. Feeling apprehensive, and yet, absurdly pleased as well.

Also wondering if there was a fancy word that described "taking joy in one's own joy."

Probably not, but it was a big universe after all.

A/N

So, the idea for this came from a little fact (or I assume is a fact) is that rifles aren't designed for lefties. As in, shell casings always eject to the right, so ergo, you have to press it against your right shoulder. Because if you press it against your left, you're going to get shell casings hitting you. Kinda wondered whether caseless rounds or laser weapons would have the same issue. Probably not.

Anyway, drabbled this up.