"There isn't any music." One-shot, Mal's POV, pre-Rayne
A/N: I just found this sitting on my hard drive, and I thought someone out there might like it. Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: Ain't mine.
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It's so much like last time that you can't decide whether to be sick or break down and weep or laugh bitterly at the twisted irony of it all. Of course, last time you hadn't seen the whole thing. Last time you'd seen the beginning, and the end, but it was the in between that haunted your dreams: the middle, which you had no part of because you were off trying to make the sacrifices worth something (in your darkest hours you aren't sure whether you succeeded).
You didn't see Zoë's spine split open, didn't see the darts bury themselves in Kaylee's throat, didn't see the bullet rip its way into Simon's stomach, didn't see Jayne bleeding from numerous cuts and scrapes. You didn't see Inara, helpless and facing a situation beyond her control for the first time in her life, try to patch them up. You didn't see the little girl who sometimes calls you Daddy race out and face hundreds of nightmares alone.
You didn't see all of that, but you've imagined it over and over, lived it with them in your nightmares. At night, you never see the Operative chasing you, never feel the punches and the jabs and the chains twisting around your arms, never collapse to the floor. You won that fight. You're not so sure that, even with the little albatross's victory, they won the fight below.
And your dreams are frighteningly like this moment. The wounds are different, of course; you're not sure Simon will be able to help Zoë keep her leg and from the way Kaylee's arm is hanging, it's definitely broken, and that wound on your own right side (you still don't know if it's from a bullet or a club or a knife or a bomb) looks nasty and is bleeding sluggishly—a cloud is rising and you barely feel the pain that just moments before was overwhelming you. Simon's doing the best he can to patch everyone up, but you all know that that door isn't going to hold very long and there are far, far too many on the other side. All you can do is thank whatever God there might be (you strangely find yourself thinking of Shepherd Book) that Inara's not here, that she's waiting with the lights all green on the ship to fly in and pick you all up if you can just make it out of this building and into the open courtyard two floors up.
This was always the way you'd planned on going, if you are honest with yourself, at least since Serenity Valley. You had fully expected to die in that war, but then, you'd expected that you'd win, too. But on all the nights when you have to face the possibility (certainty) of your own death—this life is far too risky to die of old age in a warm bed—you pictured it like this: surrounded by your friends (your family, the people you love and live for and would die for), going down with a fight. It's a good death, an honest one, honorable and worthy.
You just didn't expect it quite so soon.
Zoë's lips are white and her eyes are sort of glazed as she looks over at you from behind the cargo trunk. She tries to smile, but it doesn't work. "Sorry, Captain," she says, and that hurts more than anything.
You try to wrack your mind for the right thing to say, the "Mal thing" as the little albatross calls it: something not too mushy, something just a little bit caustic, but not cruel. Your brain is clouded. Nothing comes. You turn away.
Simon's face is far too white and set as he struggles to patch up Zoë; Kaylee doesn't cry out as he tries to set her arm and then wraps it with tape and a splint he whipped up from a piece of plastic; you yourself barely feel the doctor's hands as they probe your wound. He does what he can and then turns back to Kaylee and wraps an arm around the shoulder of her uninjured arm. You can't let yourself watch as he bends his head to whisper in her ear.
You glance over to where Jayne is crouching, taking inventory of what ammunition he has left. You know it isn't enough. River is kneeling beside him, watching his hands with big dark eyes as he lights his last cigar and brings it to his mouth, and you know that you've failed her.
You meet Zoë's eyes again, and she shifts herself till she is closer to you. "We all do the best we can. Who can ask for more?"
A resounding boom quivers through the air, making the too-thin door that is holding hell at bay quake, and you don't have to answer. You hear the voices outside, and you look up at the ceiling, wishing you could see through it and up into Serenity hovering above; you wish you could have told Inara what you should have long ago.
Too late now.
"Captain Daddy?"
You look over at her and into those Black-deep eyes, and you force yourself to smile. It hurts. "Sorry, little River. I'm sorry."
She stares at you for a moment, as though not truly understanding your words. Everyone else does, though; you can feel their eyes on you, the heaviest weight you've ever felt.
And then River rises gracefully and looks at the door as though she's looking at the stars, vast and uncharted, uncountable and endless. Her voice is strangely lucid, but very, very far away, as far as the stars, when she says, "Dance with me?"
That is so strange and so wrong at this moment that there is only one explanation: the violence outside the door, the violence she's been forced to commit, the violence that has ripped her family's bodies to shreds has driven her out of her mind again, till she is floating in the Black, floating and trying to latch onto something.
There isn't any music.
But though you don't understand, and Simon stares at her in horror, and Kaylee's eyes are scared as she watches her husband, and Zoë presses her eyes closed, someone does understand. Someone has been waiting for those words.
"Hell, yeah, little Crazy-girl. I'll dance with ya."
You look over and see that Jayne, who is bleeding from dozens of tiny wounds all over his enormous body, has thrown away the last of his cigar and shifted Vera back onto his shoulders.
"River—mei mei—what—what are you doing? Jayne—?" The doctor's voice sounds broken and small in the big room, but he's the only one who can even begin to verbalize everyone's questions.
River glances over her shoulder at him, gives him that look that only she can give, the one that makes its receiver feel dumber than a rock. "Simple Simon. Such trouble. Girl always has to take care of him." She sighs, rolls her eyes. "Loves him anyways."
Then she starts out at a dead run across the debris-strewn room, Jayne mere feet behind her, and everyone's shouts do no good; they do not slow or even look back.
The door bursts open just as the strange pair reach it; Simon moans, a sound full of despair, and Kaylee is screaming. Floods of bodies stream through the door; hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, but somehow, you fancy you can hear laughter.
And just when you think you're about to watch the ultimate butchery—this is too many, even for the girl who slaughtered dozens of Reavers two years ago and the best merc you've ever known—River and Jayne start to fight.
You have never seen anything so terrible or so beautiful in all your life.
Her movements, lithe and studied and flowing, lend his grace; his, harsh and heavy and free, lend hers brutality. She spins and ducks and kicks; he bludgeons and grunts and lunges. With the curved-bladed axe she had carried on her back and the length of piping she picked up off the floor, she glides and leaps and slices. With his mace and the butt-end of Vera, he lumbers and hammers and strikes.
With each connection of metal and skin, an enemy falls. With every slice of the axe, blood gushes to the ground. And still your pilot and your mercenary move faster and faster, covered with sweat and the lifeblood of thousands of bodies, never once slipping on the now-soaked ground, never pausing to catch gasping breaths. They move as with one mind, anticipating where the other will be, never coming close enough to hurt each other, but always exactly where the other needs them to be.
Somewhere, far off in the distance, above the noise of battle, you fancy that you can hear music.
Streams of the enemy are pouring into the room now, but you realize that they are more hesitant now, that they trip over the bodies piling up around the little girl and the big man, that the flood falters a little, giving hope that it will one day end. The stench of blood and death that you recognize far too well is nearly suffocating. The sound of battle is so loud and hellish that you wish you could go deaf. Kaylee is sobbing in Simon's arms, and the doctor keeps glancing over at his sister and then away, as though he cannot bear to let himself look, cannot bear not to. Zoë is holding onto a rail so hard that her knuckles are white, and her eyes swing back and forth, her lips moving, as though she is imagining herself out there with them, too. As for you, you cannot tear your gaze away from the most harrowing sight you've ever seen.
And suddenly, it is over. Gory heaps of broken bodies lay strewn all around two silhouettes that are weaving a bit as they stand. Kaylee's cries break off, and Simon tries to stumble to his feet, and Zoë sags back against the wall, eyes falling closed.
It's over. It's done. You've made it, all six of you, and Inara up in Serenity, whose engines you can hear roaring from here. Against impossible odds, you have succeeded, and no one has died. You will not have to bury anyone this night.
But you cannot let yourself celebrate just yet. Not when River and Jayne are still frozen in place in the middle of the mass of dead and dying bodies.
There are strange lights in the depths of their eyes as they meet, blue on brown, an eerie light the like of which you've never seen. They stare at each other from across a pile of moaning, twitching bodies, like they've never seen each other before, like they are recognizing themselves in each other.
Jayne's voice is rough when he speaks, but River smiles, just a little, and that is rare enough that it hurts you and lifts your heart to see it. "Hell, little Moonbrain," he growls. "I'll dance with you anytime."
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