The Endless 'Verse
Zoe could never really imagine growing old with Wash. Zoe could never really imagine either of them living to grow old. But now, as she sits in the room that is no longer theirs and folds his clothes into boxes, she can imagine with perfect clarity what it will be like to grow old without him.
On jobs, she is focused; more focused than ever. Each fight opens crystal clear before her, revealing opportunities that no one else can see. She takes them all. She risks and moves and wins.
"You're going to get yourself killed," Mal says, but he's wrong. She can't be killed. It would be too easy.
She looks in the mirror and sees the lines growing at the corners of her eyes, and nobody comes up behind to kiss her. The pain in her heart is like a hook, pulling, stabbing. She waits for the years to go by.
*
There is blood on his hands, and he does not know whose blood it is. A girl, twenty-five at most. He does not know why it was necessary for her to die. It is not his job to know.
She looked at him, as she died. She was very beautiful. Her eyes were dark and her mouth was sweet and her blood was red as red. Her blood is on his hands.
He does not ask questions. He does not ask questions about his job. He killed her because he was ordered to kill her and he does not know why, but her blood is on his hands.
He has blood on his hands, and she looked at him as she died. She looked at him with her big dark eyes, and she said "Daddy?"
He does not know why. He does not know anything, but he knows this: if he starts asking questions, he may die. Someone will have his blood on their hands, and they will not know why.
He leaves. He does it legitimately, and is under no suspicion.
"He cracked," they say. "Couldn't take the pressure."
They're right. And he has blood on his hands, and he does not know whose blood it is. He does not know why she died, but she was beautiful. She was beautiful, and she looked at him with her dark, dark eyes, and she said a word with her sweet mouth. She said, "Daddy." He does not know why.
He leaves. He runs away. He finds a garden, and in the garden is a maze of hedges. He walks through the maze. It begins to get dark, and he cannot see the way out.
"What now?" he says aloud.
"Now you leave this place," says the man. The man is old, and tall. He is wearing a brown robe, with a hood that covers his face and shadows his blind eyes. He carries a book.
"I don't know the way out."
"You will leave this place," the man says, "and you will find a different life for yourself. You will do this now."
The maze is no longer a maze, but a straight path stretching behind him. Before him is a doorway. He steps through. There are robes waiting for him, and a garden, and a big book.
*
Simon slept through his first specific memory. He was three, and something important was happening. Nobody had told him anything, but it was obvious. The pride and worry that whispered through the house caught at him, made him know.
The memory begins here: it was a summer night, hot and sticky, but the temperature control in the house cooled and comforted him. When he lay on the very edge of his bed, he could see the light from the hallway seeping under his door. In the next room, his parents were talking. He did not know what they were saying, but it was important. He could tell. He thought if he got out of bed very quietly, he could listen at the door, but his eyes began to close. His bed was soft, and the voices were a soothing murmur, and the darkness behind his eyelids went on forever.
Somewhere in that darkness was a staircase. He could never remember, afterwards, if it had a beginning. He remembered only climbing it for what seemed an age. He remembered the curve of it, and its bright white glow. He remembered how the vast space around it had not terrified him, but had held him close and safe.
He remembered most clearly of all the moment when he reached the top.
The staircase opened onto a field of soft blue grass that hummed gently as he began to make his way across it. In the middle of the field was a pale green tent, with a banner flying from the ridgepole. It was a small banner with a strange, dark helmet on it. Simon thought it looked like a diver's helmet. Simon liked the idea of divers. He thought it would be really neat to go underwater and see all the fish and blow bubbles. But his mother said no, he was too little, but next year he could take swimming lessons.
Maybe there would be a diver in the tent. Maybe he'd be a nice diver and he'd answer questions about fish and diving and giant clams. Simon went into the tent.
There was a man sitting in the tent. He was very pale, and he had white hair and white robes and very dark eyes. When the man looked up, Simon thought he could see stars glinting in the darkness of those eyes.
"Hullo," said Simon, shuffling his feet a bit. "Are you a diver?"
The man smiled slightly. "No. I am Dream."
"Oh," said Simon. He thought about it for a minute. "I knew that," he said.
"Did you?"
"Well, I kind of knew. I thought maybe you were a diver though because there was a diving helmet on your flag and I like divers because they go really deep underwater and see fishes and it's really interesting."
"Ah. But you knew I was Dream."
"You sort of feel like you should be."
The man got up, and walked over to Simon. He crouched so that their eyes were almost level and placed a hand on Simon's shoulder.
"I see," he said after a moment.
"You're a really important person, aren't you?" Simon asked him.
"You could say that," said the man.
"Then you know really important things, right?"
The man looked at him solemnly. "Is there something that you want to know, Simon Tam?"
"I want to know lots of things," said Simon. "But mostly I want to know one thing and that's what's happening at my house."
And Dream showed him.
Simon woke up with the dream still fresh in his mind. It never really faded, the way dreams tend to. It stayed with him and kept him company and helped him make sense of the things he couldn't know.
"Mum," he said at the breakfast table a few days later, "Mum, I'm going to have a little sister and her name is River."
*
The shuttle is warm, and dimly lit. The cold metal of the walls has been covered by rich screens and bolts of silk. The furnishings are mostly dark, polished wood. It is a peaceful, sensual place, Inara's home. It is designed to hint at mystery, to call up desire.
It does its job.
"Go away," Inara says as she brushes her hair in slow, patient strokes. She winces almost imperceptibly, perhaps realizing it would have been wiser not to acknowledge her visitor. Or perhaps a tangle merely snagged on the brush.
Desire smiles its sharp, soft smile and looks at her out of golden eyes. "No."
"I want nothing to do with you." She looks only at the mirror, and at the reflection of her hand. Still, she can see Desire's eyes.
"That's a lie. What would you ever do for a living without me?"
"I'd manage." She says it though gritted teeth.
"He wants you too, you know."
Inara freezes with the brush half-way to her hair. Her hand hardly shakes at all.
Desire continues. "He wants you so much. And he wants not to want you. And he wants you to want him. He wants you to acknowledge him as your superior, and he wants to bow down to you, and he wants you to change and never to change. He's such a contradiction, Mal. And he'll never ask for what he wants."
She begins to move again. "Good," she says shortly, tugging the brush through her hair.
"You got someone in there?" comes Mal's voice through the curtain.
"No," she says firmly.
Mal comes in. Desire stays, and laughs a little. Inara ignores it.
She ignores it so hard she thinks her heart will break.
*
The girl. The girl was there again today. She wasn't meant to be there, the girl. The girl was not meant to be here, not meant to be here with the needles in the eyes. Stick a needle in your eye. Cross your heart and hope to die, oh God, oh God. Hope to die. Just let it all go but they bring her back and back and she can't slip away because she still hopes.
The girl. There was another girl today, another girl who stayed with her and said things in her ears that she could hear. Pretty things. She said such pretty things. And for a moment there was sunshine and dancing and music bright and flying. Only when the music stopped the man was in pieces, knife in her hand and she was trying to pick up the pieces because a doctor maybe a doctor can put him back together again. Eggshell pieces of him and she felt herself going to pieces too, pieces flung into a river and floating away.
River. That was her name. She cut the man to pieces. She thought she was dancing and then they were holding her arms they held her down and put needles in her arms so she went all jelly all over and the man said not the one in pieces the other one he said, "Well, so much for combat readiness," and in his head was a picture of her all tied up and made of jelly and he was fucking her and she couldn't even scream. . .
The girl came back. The girl came back and chased the man away and instead they went swimming in a lake where the fishes live.
"Simon?" River asked when she remembered where she'd kept her tongue. It was in her back pocket.
"He's looking," said the other girl, the girl with rainbow hair. "I. . . I think he'll come soon. I think he's closer."
". . . getting closer," said the man as she surfaced to blue and glaring lights. "I think we'll have no problem with unpredictable attacks in the future."
She dove back under. To the girl, to the flowers and colours and fish.
"I'm forgetting to be people," River told her, shivering. The girl took her hand.
"No," she said. "You're still you. Changing hurts. I know."
River picked a piece of fireworks out of her hair. "Yes," she said.
"Keep going. Um. Breathing, and everything. He's coming."
Simon. Finally, River could feel him. "Yes," she said. A whisper.
She opened her eyes and continued to live.
*
Mal liked the big guy. Never knew his name. Red hair, kept it in a pony-tail and damn regulation haircuts to Hell. Nobody ever complained anyway. People never really stood up to him about anything. He had a booming laugh and a voice that you couldn't help but listen to.
Mal respected the big guy. Never knew what happened to him. He cooked for the whole platoon. Nothing fancy, and not always remotely edible, but they ate it anyway. Army chow, what do you expect? He sang as he cooked, tunelessly and cheerfully.
Mal didn't trust the big guy. Saw him handle a gun only twice, and a grenade once, too easy. He didn't use weapons, not like normal people. He touched them, looked at them, and things exploded. It wasn't right. And after, the look on his face. Serious, almost sad, like after you meet someone you haven't seen in a long time and realize they're the same as ever. Haven't grown none, haven't even got tired of screwing their life up. The look you get when you can't do anything about it.
The big guy, he disappeared in the midst of things getting bad. Probably dead with the rest. He hadn't talked to Mal more than a couple of times, but Mal liked him and respected him. And he didn't trust him.
"You always have a choice," the big guy had said once, as he peeled a carrot. "You can always walk away."
No, Mal didn't trust him. Mal could never walk away.
*
"-soar," he finishes, but then he looks down and sees the big spike sticking out of his chest and stops talking.
Zoe's behind him, he can hear her pleading. He can hear the rasping, wet sound his body makes as she shakes his shoulder. She's shaking his shoulder. He can't feel it. He wonders if it's spinal damage, but then there are more spikes bursting through the hull, and Wash jumps. Oh.
"Huh," he says, squeaking a bit. He steps the rest of the way out of his body.
"Hi Hoban," says a voice behind him.
He turns around and almost loses his balance. There's a girl sitting in the co-pilot chair. Mal and Zoe have gone. Gone to save the day. And there's a strange girl, all dressed in black, sitting in the co-pilot seat.
"Hi?" he says.
"Time to go," says the girl.
The ankh around her neck shines. He tries not to realize who she is, but it's too late.
"Death?"
"That's right. Come on. Take my hand."
He looks at his body, and he looks at her, and he takes her hand. They step into a dark tunnel. He blinks.
"Wasn't that it?"
"Not for you," says Death. "You get a choice."
"I do?"
"Yep. Stay here or move on. Look, I've got to get going. It was good to see you, Hoban. I always liked your dinosaurs."
She leaves, then. She's simply gone. And Wash is left alone, bewildered, in the darkness of his death. He begins to walk. It isn't long before he comes to a swamp.