Firefly fic: Miles from where you are (Mal, Inara, Crew, PG-13)
Title: Miles from where you are
Characters: Inara, Mal, crew
Rating: PG-13
Words: About 2400
Summary: "She's late," Mal finally says.
Notes: Title from a line in the Snow Patrol song 'Set The Fire to the Third Bar'. Thank god for ozsaur for steering me along when I got lost with this. And for excellent suggestions and hand-holding.
Inara wanders through Serenity. Everything is grey; when she passes the others - first Kaylee, then Wash - they flicker, black and white, grainy. Mal and Zoe walk by, speaking words Inara can't quite hear. They don't look up.
She looks down at her hand, nails carefully painted, skin smooth. Pressing her hand to Serenity's hull, she sees the truth - she's the coloured glass mosaic against the white plaster.
The realisation shouldn't scare her, but it does. Quickly, she pulls her hand away, turning.
Jayne runs by, mouth open, as though yelling something. His edges are blurred.
She turns again, and gasps, startled and dizzy. River is there - grainy, like the others, but not quite grey. Colours flow from the outside in, washed out and indistinct.
"You're bleeding." River's voice is a ghost, a whisper. "Wake up."
Inara's eyes flicker open. Everything is grey, no bright lights or black lines. She licks her lips; they're cracked - she tastes blood.
*
Laughter - Mal stands and listens. Kaylee and Wash's voices blending with the muted sounds Zoe makes when she's truly amused. He wonders if they've been winding the doctor up. If that's so, Mal figures he's got the right to feel a little pissed they didn't invite him to join in. Ain't like he gets much in the of entertainment some days.
Man's got to have hobbies, and riling Simon Tam seems like an awful good one. Least, it does when Mal's feeling particularly contrary.
Light spills from the kitchen, yellow and warm and inviting. Mal wanders in. "You three been messing with the doctor's head again without telling me?"
Kaylee pretends to look shocked, and Wash just laughs some more. Zoe smiles, relaxed and contented.
"Ain't that." Kaylee kicks out a chair for him. "Wash is just telling more stories from back when he was loose and unprincipled."
She smiles something Mal would call a smirk, except that she's Kaylee and Kaylee don't smirk.
Funny Wash stories are almost as good as messing with Simon's head. Mal sits down. Hobbies shared with the like-minded are the best kind.
*
She's dancing. The hall is immaculate, tasteful; the music is perfect. There's a faint scent in the air, something she can't quite pinpoint. It's almost unsettling, but before she can identify it, she's dancing.
Her first partner is Kaylee, smiling and sturdy, slightly clumsy. It doesn't matter - Inara knows the dance, and Kaylee is just learning.
Kaylee passes her off to Jayne - large and awkward, the cloth of his shirt scraping against her bare arms. He doesn't look at her, staring at some point above her head, concentrating. He's a terrible dancer, and he holds her too close, too tight. Inara stumbles, losing her rhythm.
Jayne turns her away from him, and then Zoe's holding her - strong hands, hair loose and tickling Inara's shoulders. "Keep up," Zoe says, and elegantly dips Inara, before handing her to Simon.
Inara is unbalanced. Simon smiles gravely, and tries to lead her. Inara can't follow.
Wash. He's grinning at her, laughing. She wants to laugh too, share his joy in the dance, but he's moving too fast. Her feet feel heavy, and she can't catch her breath.
The room spins; she shakes her head, too dizzy to focus. Momentarily, she closes her eyes, tries to feel the music, catch the steps.
She opens her eyes to Book's face, silent and blank. His hands on her waist are rigid, gripping, squeezing far too hard. They're spinning faster now, out of control and almost terrifying. "Stop -" she starts to say. She needs a moment, time to remember the steps, to feel the music, to breathe. She needs to remember that she likes dancing, that she can do this, that regulating her breathing is as natural as elegant conversation.
But Book's expression twists, becomes something hard and cruel, and he twirls her once, roughly, before shoving her away. She stumbles, tries to catch herself, and falls against something hard, unyielding.
It hurts, knocking the air out of her. Hands curl around her arms, and she looks up. Mal.
She wakes up, gasping, struggling to breathe through the pain.
*
"Stop," Mal says, breathless. "It hurts." And it really gorram does. He ain't laughed like this for weeks. Months maybe. "Stop. This is a captainly order."
Wash just finishes the story, though Mal ain't sure how he can do it with such a straight face.
"Zoe. Husband goes in brig." He clutches his side. "Conspiracy to injure the captain."
"We don't have a brig, sir."
Zoe. Always good with the details. "Put him in a gorram crate then."
"I don't think so, sir."
Mutiny. That's what this is.
"I will get him out of here, though." She stands, hauling Wash up with her. "Husband. I think there's something in our bunk you need to take care of."
"Is it the plumbing? Because Kaylee -"
"Husband."
Wash grins. "Right. Right. I'll. Go do that now. Bye, Mal. Enjoying breathing normally until tomorrow, when we'll do this again."
Mal watches them leave, then turns to Kaylee. "They ain't fooling me. About the plumbing."
"You're a real smart captain, though. Ain't everyone who wouldn't be fooled." She's grinning again, wide and too happy to be normal. People maybe think Zoe's hard to understand, but Mal will never figure out Kaylee. Not in a hundred years.
"When's Inara coming back?"
The rendezvous is soon. "Couple of hours."
*
It's cold. Serenity is always cool, but today it's cold, and she can't stop shivering. "Have we lost engine power?" she asks. No one answers. "Are we leaking atmosphere?"
They just look at her, mute, unyielding.
She turns and walks away, back to her shuttle. Her bed is spread with furs, thick and warm. She burrows inside, hoping Kaylee fixes the heat soon.
She has many memories of furs - tucked around her during winter, as she sat inside a beautiful sledge. Or wrapped around her shoulders, a gift from a patron who enjoyed hunting during his leisure time.
Furs have always meant warmth; furs are successful jobs and satisfied clients.
But now, in her bed and under the layers, she still shivers.
She comes to curled on her side. The floor is cold, sucking away any body heat.
*
Heat regulators are acting up again; Serenity's temperature is fluctuating, up and down and back again. Wandering into the cockpit, Mal can't decide if he should be wearing a sweater or stealing one of Jayne's t-shirts.
"Keep your gorram hands off my clothes," Jayne says, like it's a reflex. He hates sitting watch up here, Mal knows that. But they all take shifts.
Mal smirks. "Most likely I'd get some kind of disease, anyway. Ain't sure where them things have been."
Jayne looks up from his knife. His grin is wide and dirty. "I kin tell you. Hell this one here," he points at the shirt, a washed-out orange, thin along the edges, "got me in a mite of trouble with a couple of girls down on Paquin. 'Trouble' meanin' no pants, and walkin' crooked for the rest of the week, if you get my drift."
This is a story that Mal in no way needs to hear. He settles himself in the free chair. "I'm gonna be scrubbing my ears out for the next couple of days, ain't I?"
"More like you'll be jerking off for months with a real specific image in yer head."
"Thinking about you ain't exactly fantasy material, Jayne. Heard any updates from Inara?"
Jayne shrugs. "Nope. Silent as the dead, out there."
*
The bar is rough edges and stained walls; it smells of anger, alcohol, despair, sweat. She has no idea why she's here - is there a job? Is she looking for someone? She doesn't know, she only knows there's a party here, a celebration. The revellers press around her, surrounding her, and the scents are overwhelming.
She catches glimpses of familiar faces - Nandi's curls glinting between two mercenaries, Kaylee's smile flashing, Jayne's brow, furrowed with anger as he yells at someone.
She can't get to them, no matter how many times she pushes between others.
"Drink?" Mal asks, appearing at her side. He holds a glass, and Inara's thirsty, so thirsty.
"Thank you," she says, taking the glass. But it's covered in something clear and slick, and the glass slips from her fingers, shattering on the floor. Liquid flows, adding to the stains already there.
"Now you've done it." Mal shakes his head, disgusted.
Inara surprises herself by caring, by wanting to ask for another chance, another opportunity to prove herself.
"Best get out of here," he says, pushing at her shoulder.
"Wait -" and she's back in the shuttle, her mouth dry. The shuttle smells wrong, chemical and toxic. But there's a cool breeze coming from somewhere, from some crack, or a broken door.
Clenching her jaw, pushing the pain away, Inara pulls herself along the floor. Outside, there might be trees, sunlight, water.
*
Inara is never late coming home. Never. Usually it's the other gorram way around, them coming in after her, meeting her shuttle and her questions about what went wrong this time.
She's late now, twenty minutes late, and Mal doesn't know what to think. One hand, maybe she's taking extra long with the client, breaking her own rules. Ain't like it'd be the first time she said one thing and did the other. And one thing Mal doesn't need right now - never did - is more tension between them. He doesn't need her telling him he's hasty, petty, that he acts without thinking first. "I can take care of myself, Captain," he imagines her saying, precise and sure.
Except late ain't Inara. She always takes care to be on time.
"She's late," he finally says. If it turns out it's her own doing, they can fight about it the way they fight about everything else.
"Ain't like you've never been late for a meet-up -" Jayne starts up, and suddenly Mal wants to punch him in the mouth.
Instead he says, "She ain't been ever late. Not once." He hits the comm. "Wash, Kaylee, get up here. Hell, Zoe you too."
When they all arrive, Wash and Zoe look pissed, Kaylee tired, and Mal doesn't care one bit, not about any of it. Doesn't take long to get them working on what needs to be done - Wash checking the flightpath, Kaylee working out tracking her pulse beacon.
"Think she's gonna be okay, Cap?"
"Guess it depends on why exactly she ain't here." Kaylee's face crumples up a little, like he's crushing any hope she's got, but he still doesn't care.
"I'll wake the doctor," Zoe says, calm and even.
"You do that."
*
There's a persistent sound of dripping. Inara keeps her eyes closed, and presses her face to the wall.
It's solid, familiar.
*
Pulse beacons. Mal's ripped out a handful of them things in his lifetime, cursing the Alliance, or job contracts that went wrong. He can't remember one gorram time he was happy to have them - it ain't like he makes a habit of losing his own ship.
But when Kaylee says, "Found Inara's shuttle. Beacon's working, pulse is nice and strong," Mal figures a pulse beacon might be the gorram hero of this story. He doesn't even have to tell Wash to follow the path.
"ETA half an hour," Wash says.
"Make it faster."
"Can't."
Mal wants to push it, push Wash, but one look at Wash's fingers clenched tight, and the set of his jaw, and he knows Wash is already pushing Serenity as fast as she can go.
Half an hour ain't that long. He tells himself that Inara's probably sitting nice and cosy in her shuttle, counting her money and waiting for them to come and pick her up.
*
Perhaps the dripping is a coolant leak.
Or it could be raining.
"Does it really matter?" Zoe asks.
Inara shakes her head, slowly. The exertion leaves her breathless.
*
"No," Kaylee whispers, when they find the shuttle.
Mal can see what happened. Shuttle veered down, hit a rocky cliff, and dropped.
"Least it ain't Reavers," Jayne mutters, and maybe that's his version of comforting.
"Doctor better be ready."
It ain't like he has to worry. Simon's already down in the cargo hold, medical bag in one hand. He looks up when Mal comes down the stairs. "I'm presuming this is a crash?"
Mal nods.
Simon gestures to the side, where he's got a stretcher laid out. "Ask Jayne to come down here too."
Simon Tam, giving orders and not getting his hands dirty, even at a time like this. But Mal calls Jayne down anyway.
*
Inara wakes up. Mal is manhandling her body, and Jayne is staring down at her, leering. Animals.
Inara wakes up. Something is pressing against her arm, through her skin, a sharp point of pain mixing in with everything else, with the heaviness in her chest, and numbness in her legs.
Inara wakes up, and Simon says, "Exposure to coolant toxins," and "Physical trauma from the crash," while River whispers words of blood and emptiness and home in her ear.
*
Mal watches Simon fuss, watches him inject Inara, and put an oxygen mask over her face, and look for broken bones, internal bleeding.
"She's lucky," Simon says. "The physical trauma is largely superficial. One leg is broken, and she lost a lot of blood, but there's no internal bleeding. It's the toxin exposure from the coolant leak that would have killed her if we'd arrived much later." Something in his expression shifts, going from professional to kind. Mal doesn't need that, he doesn't want to see it. He doesn't want Simon's almost gentle tone when he adds, "She'll be fine."
But Mal nods, and waits. He waits until she wakes up, eyelids fluttering, head turning. Carefully, he reaches out and removes the oxygen mask.
Her lips work, slowly and awkwardly. They're pale, cracked. "You found me."
Fitting the mask back on, he says, "You were late."
End.
Characters: Inara, Mal, crew
Rating: PG-13
Words: About 2400
Summary: "She's late," Mal finally says.
Notes: Title from a line in the Snow Patrol song 'Set The Fire to the Third Bar'. Thank god for ozsaur for steering me along when I got lost with this. And for excellent suggestions and hand-holding.
Inara wanders through Serenity. Everything is grey; when she passes the others - first Kaylee, then Wash - they flicker, black and white, grainy. Mal and Zoe walk by, speaking words Inara can't quite hear. They don't look up.
She looks down at her hand, nails carefully painted, skin smooth. Pressing her hand to Serenity's hull, she sees the truth - she's the coloured glass mosaic against the white plaster.
The realisation shouldn't scare her, but it does. Quickly, she pulls her hand away, turning.
Jayne runs by, mouth open, as though yelling something. His edges are blurred.
She turns again, and gasps, startled and dizzy. River is there - grainy, like the others, but not quite grey. Colours flow from the outside in, washed out and indistinct.
"You're bleeding." River's voice is a ghost, a whisper. "Wake up."
Inara's eyes flicker open. Everything is grey, no bright lights or black lines. She licks her lips; they're cracked - she tastes blood.
*
Laughter - Mal stands and listens. Kaylee and Wash's voices blending with the muted sounds Zoe makes when she's truly amused. He wonders if they've been winding the doctor up. If that's so, Mal figures he's got the right to feel a little pissed they didn't invite him to join in. Ain't like he gets much in the of entertainment some days.
Man's got to have hobbies, and riling Simon Tam seems like an awful good one. Least, it does when Mal's feeling particularly contrary.
Light spills from the kitchen, yellow and warm and inviting. Mal wanders in. "You three been messing with the doctor's head again without telling me?"
Kaylee pretends to look shocked, and Wash just laughs some more. Zoe smiles, relaxed and contented.
"Ain't that." Kaylee kicks out a chair for him. "Wash is just telling more stories from back when he was loose and unprincipled."
She smiles something Mal would call a smirk, except that she's Kaylee and Kaylee don't smirk.
Funny Wash stories are almost as good as messing with Simon's head. Mal sits down. Hobbies shared with the like-minded are the best kind.
*
She's dancing. The hall is immaculate, tasteful; the music is perfect. There's a faint scent in the air, something she can't quite pinpoint. It's almost unsettling, but before she can identify it, she's dancing.
Her first partner is Kaylee, smiling and sturdy, slightly clumsy. It doesn't matter - Inara knows the dance, and Kaylee is just learning.
Kaylee passes her off to Jayne - large and awkward, the cloth of his shirt scraping against her bare arms. He doesn't look at her, staring at some point above her head, concentrating. He's a terrible dancer, and he holds her too close, too tight. Inara stumbles, losing her rhythm.
Jayne turns her away from him, and then Zoe's holding her - strong hands, hair loose and tickling Inara's shoulders. "Keep up," Zoe says, and elegantly dips Inara, before handing her to Simon.
Inara is unbalanced. Simon smiles gravely, and tries to lead her. Inara can't follow.
Wash. He's grinning at her, laughing. She wants to laugh too, share his joy in the dance, but he's moving too fast. Her feet feel heavy, and she can't catch her breath.
The room spins; she shakes her head, too dizzy to focus. Momentarily, she closes her eyes, tries to feel the music, catch the steps.
She opens her eyes to Book's face, silent and blank. His hands on her waist are rigid, gripping, squeezing far too hard. They're spinning faster now, out of control and almost terrifying. "Stop -" she starts to say. She needs a moment, time to remember the steps, to feel the music, to breathe. She needs to remember that she likes dancing, that she can do this, that regulating her breathing is as natural as elegant conversation.
But Book's expression twists, becomes something hard and cruel, and he twirls her once, roughly, before shoving her away. She stumbles, tries to catch herself, and falls against something hard, unyielding.
It hurts, knocking the air out of her. Hands curl around her arms, and she looks up. Mal.
She wakes up, gasping, struggling to breathe through the pain.
*
"Stop," Mal says, breathless. "It hurts." And it really gorram does. He ain't laughed like this for weeks. Months maybe. "Stop. This is a captainly order."
Wash just finishes the story, though Mal ain't sure how he can do it with such a straight face.
"Zoe. Husband goes in brig." He clutches his side. "Conspiracy to injure the captain."
"We don't have a brig, sir."
Zoe. Always good with the details. "Put him in a gorram crate then."
"I don't think so, sir."
Mutiny. That's what this is.
"I will get him out of here, though." She stands, hauling Wash up with her. "Husband. I think there's something in our bunk you need to take care of."
"Is it the plumbing? Because Kaylee -"
"Husband."
Wash grins. "Right. Right. I'll. Go do that now. Bye, Mal. Enjoying breathing normally until tomorrow, when we'll do this again."
Mal watches them leave, then turns to Kaylee. "They ain't fooling me. About the plumbing."
"You're a real smart captain, though. Ain't everyone who wouldn't be fooled." She's grinning again, wide and too happy to be normal. People maybe think Zoe's hard to understand, but Mal will never figure out Kaylee. Not in a hundred years.
"When's Inara coming back?"
The rendezvous is soon. "Couple of hours."
*
It's cold. Serenity is always cool, but today it's cold, and she can't stop shivering. "Have we lost engine power?" she asks. No one answers. "Are we leaking atmosphere?"
They just look at her, mute, unyielding.
She turns and walks away, back to her shuttle. Her bed is spread with furs, thick and warm. She burrows inside, hoping Kaylee fixes the heat soon.
She has many memories of furs - tucked around her during winter, as she sat inside a beautiful sledge. Or wrapped around her shoulders, a gift from a patron who enjoyed hunting during his leisure time.
Furs have always meant warmth; furs are successful jobs and satisfied clients.
But now, in her bed and under the layers, she still shivers.
She comes to curled on her side. The floor is cold, sucking away any body heat.
*
Heat regulators are acting up again; Serenity's temperature is fluctuating, up and down and back again. Wandering into the cockpit, Mal can't decide if he should be wearing a sweater or stealing one of Jayne's t-shirts.
"Keep your gorram hands off my clothes," Jayne says, like it's a reflex. He hates sitting watch up here, Mal knows that. But they all take shifts.
Mal smirks. "Most likely I'd get some kind of disease, anyway. Ain't sure where them things have been."
Jayne looks up from his knife. His grin is wide and dirty. "I kin tell you. Hell this one here," he points at the shirt, a washed-out orange, thin along the edges, "got me in a mite of trouble with a couple of girls down on Paquin. 'Trouble' meanin' no pants, and walkin' crooked for the rest of the week, if you get my drift."
This is a story that Mal in no way needs to hear. He settles himself in the free chair. "I'm gonna be scrubbing my ears out for the next couple of days, ain't I?"
"More like you'll be jerking off for months with a real specific image in yer head."
"Thinking about you ain't exactly fantasy material, Jayne. Heard any updates from Inara?"
Jayne shrugs. "Nope. Silent as the dead, out there."
*
The bar is rough edges and stained walls; it smells of anger, alcohol, despair, sweat. She has no idea why she's here - is there a job? Is she looking for someone? She doesn't know, she only knows there's a party here, a celebration. The revellers press around her, surrounding her, and the scents are overwhelming.
She catches glimpses of familiar faces - Nandi's curls glinting between two mercenaries, Kaylee's smile flashing, Jayne's brow, furrowed with anger as he yells at someone.
She can't get to them, no matter how many times she pushes between others.
"Drink?" Mal asks, appearing at her side. He holds a glass, and Inara's thirsty, so thirsty.
"Thank you," she says, taking the glass. But it's covered in something clear and slick, and the glass slips from her fingers, shattering on the floor. Liquid flows, adding to the stains already there.
"Now you've done it." Mal shakes his head, disgusted.
Inara surprises herself by caring, by wanting to ask for another chance, another opportunity to prove herself.
"Best get out of here," he says, pushing at her shoulder.
"Wait -" and she's back in the shuttle, her mouth dry. The shuttle smells wrong, chemical and toxic. But there's a cool breeze coming from somewhere, from some crack, or a broken door.
Clenching her jaw, pushing the pain away, Inara pulls herself along the floor. Outside, there might be trees, sunlight, water.
*
Inara is never late coming home. Never. Usually it's the other gorram way around, them coming in after her, meeting her shuttle and her questions about what went wrong this time.
She's late now, twenty minutes late, and Mal doesn't know what to think. One hand, maybe she's taking extra long with the client, breaking her own rules. Ain't like it'd be the first time she said one thing and did the other. And one thing Mal doesn't need right now - never did - is more tension between them. He doesn't need her telling him he's hasty, petty, that he acts without thinking first. "I can take care of myself, Captain," he imagines her saying, precise and sure.
Except late ain't Inara. She always takes care to be on time.
"She's late," he finally says. If it turns out it's her own doing, they can fight about it the way they fight about everything else.
"Ain't like you've never been late for a meet-up -" Jayne starts up, and suddenly Mal wants to punch him in the mouth.
Instead he says, "She ain't been ever late. Not once." He hits the comm. "Wash, Kaylee, get up here. Hell, Zoe you too."
When they all arrive, Wash and Zoe look pissed, Kaylee tired, and Mal doesn't care one bit, not about any of it. Doesn't take long to get them working on what needs to be done - Wash checking the flightpath, Kaylee working out tracking her pulse beacon.
"Think she's gonna be okay, Cap?"
"Guess it depends on why exactly she ain't here." Kaylee's face crumples up a little, like he's crushing any hope she's got, but he still doesn't care.
"I'll wake the doctor," Zoe says, calm and even.
"You do that."
*
There's a persistent sound of dripping. Inara keeps her eyes closed, and presses her face to the wall.
It's solid, familiar.
*
Pulse beacons. Mal's ripped out a handful of them things in his lifetime, cursing the Alliance, or job contracts that went wrong. He can't remember one gorram time he was happy to have them - it ain't like he makes a habit of losing his own ship.
But when Kaylee says, "Found Inara's shuttle. Beacon's working, pulse is nice and strong," Mal figures a pulse beacon might be the gorram hero of this story. He doesn't even have to tell Wash to follow the path.
"ETA half an hour," Wash says.
"Make it faster."
"Can't."
Mal wants to push it, push Wash, but one look at Wash's fingers clenched tight, and the set of his jaw, and he knows Wash is already pushing Serenity as fast as she can go.
Half an hour ain't that long. He tells himself that Inara's probably sitting nice and cosy in her shuttle, counting her money and waiting for them to come and pick her up.
*
Perhaps the dripping is a coolant leak.
Or it could be raining.
"Does it really matter?" Zoe asks.
Inara shakes her head, slowly. The exertion leaves her breathless.
*
"No," Kaylee whispers, when they find the shuttle.
Mal can see what happened. Shuttle veered down, hit a rocky cliff, and dropped.
"Least it ain't Reavers," Jayne mutters, and maybe that's his version of comforting.
"Doctor better be ready."
It ain't like he has to worry. Simon's already down in the cargo hold, medical bag in one hand. He looks up when Mal comes down the stairs. "I'm presuming this is a crash?"
Mal nods.
Simon gestures to the side, where he's got a stretcher laid out. "Ask Jayne to come down here too."
Simon Tam, giving orders and not getting his hands dirty, even at a time like this. But Mal calls Jayne down anyway.
*
Inara wakes up. Mal is manhandling her body, and Jayne is staring down at her, leering. Animals.
Inara wakes up. Something is pressing against her arm, through her skin, a sharp point of pain mixing in with everything else, with the heaviness in her chest, and numbness in her legs.
Inara wakes up, and Simon says, "Exposure to coolant toxins," and "Physical trauma from the crash," while River whispers words of blood and emptiness and home in her ear.
*
Mal watches Simon fuss, watches him inject Inara, and put an oxygen mask over her face, and look for broken bones, internal bleeding.
"She's lucky," Simon says. "The physical trauma is largely superficial. One leg is broken, and she lost a lot of blood, but there's no internal bleeding. It's the toxin exposure from the coolant leak that would have killed her if we'd arrived much later." Something in his expression shifts, going from professional to kind. Mal doesn't need that, he doesn't want to see it. He doesn't want Simon's almost gentle tone when he adds, "She'll be fine."
But Mal nods, and waits. He waits until she wakes up, eyelids fluttering, head turning. Carefully, he reaches out and removes the oxygen mask.
Her lips work, slowly and awkwardly. They're pale, cracked. "You found me."
Fitting the mask back on, he says, "You were late."
End.