In the Name of a Child
Title: In the Name of a Child
Time: Very, very Post-BDM
Disclaimer: Firefly owns me, I own words
Notes: A prompt writer, taking my prompts off of lines in other works...so, very big thank you to hfleming8 for writing about Mal and Inara's daughter's name. I just wanted their son to have a story as well.
Concrit is love and nourishment.
In the Name of a Child
Matthew Derrial Reynolds was 25 before he saw Serenity Valley. Hera was a planet his father never visited and Matthew didn’t feel the need to go exploring for old ghosts.
Malcolm and Inara Reynolds had raised two children in the Black and later planetside on a small world far from the Core planets. There had been years of running, scraping for money, fuel, food and safety.
Another War had come and gone before a tentative peace fell over the ‘Verse. Treaty for peace was signed on Hera, at the head of Serenity Valley. A memorial had been built there some years earlier and the powers that be had determined that the best way to lay to rest the past was to acknowledge it where the loss had been the ugliest.
Mal walked without seemingly seeing. Matthew stayed a few steps back, watching his father. The man was stiff and his face displayed a rigid stillness. Only his eyes showed anything. Matthew could see that the impotence to do anything save be there was almost more than Mal could bear. Matthew wondered if he should not have asked his father to bring him to this place.
“I…I always wanted you to know…” Mal’s voice was low, cracking as he tried to speak.
They stood on a small rise, looking south, over the beautiful green of the peaceful valley. There was a series of grave markers laid out in long lines, crosses, stars, crowns, a few other symbols Matthew did not recognize in the distance. A memorial to the men and women who fought and died in this place. White symbols of faith and purity.
Mal drew a ragged breath and motioned to Matthew to sit next to him on the little hill. They sat together, identical in form, knees bent, arms draped around their legs, holding left hand in right, back curved in a slouch. Two dark heads, sapphrine blue eyes, broad, handsome features. Were it not for the beginnings of streaks of grey and deeper smile lines etched around his eyes, Mal would have looked like Matthew’s older brother.
“More than thirty years ago I was here…a lifetime by more than one measure. I vowed never to come back.” He turned his head to look Matthew straight in the eye. “But, I had to, I had to show you this place, not as you see it now, but as I remember it. There was no green then…it was dirt and blood and hate. Me and Zoë, we made it through by never looking back. Here. Never looking back here”.
Matthew sat as still as he could, knowing that this was a story he would most like never hear again and not wanting his father to stop.
Mal stopped, looked out over the valley again, his eyes going dark, retreating into memory. “You never knew Shepherd Book, but he told me once to have belief, in something, anything, just believe.” Mal looked back at Matthew, “I chose to believe in love, your mother was the anchor that I drew myself to. “ He stopped again. There was disjointedness to his telling, a not knowing how to say the things he wanted Matthew to know.
“Love, Matthew, love, that is what I lost here in Serenity Valley…and I found it on Serenity. It’s kept that boat and me alive all these years. Your mother knows, Zoë knows…hell; even Jayne knows that that is all we got. Serenity has always been lit by that light…and that is where you and Alley were born.”
Mal’s face took on an unusual expression as he changed his voice and intoned in regal tones “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”
Mal shook his head then, a snorting chuckle on his lips. “You were that light when you were born, you were born in that light, Serenity, and when you came your mother and I knew we had found that. You have never known that. You and Alley…’Nara nearly died having you…The Doc had a his hands full trying to keep you both alive…”
Mal remembered the terror, the blood…he held Inara as she screamed in pain, baby not coming. She pleaded with him to make the pain go away, to hold her safe. He was helpless to do anything but hold her, an arm around behind her, her grasping the other arm in agony, fingernails digging into his muscles. Tearing small gashes in her unknowing grip her body leaning back against his side as her tried to get as close as possible to her, to try and take some of the pain away. Simon worked feverishly to stop her bleeding, guide the baby, and prevent more damage. Hours passed, Inara grew weaker, Mal more desperate.
“Doc…” His voice choked with tears and anger, Mal beseeched Simon to rescue his wife, his son. Simon looked at Mal with sweat in his eyes, usually groomed hair mussed and unkempt “I’m trying…” there was no answer Simon could give.
Mal was dying inside as he held his fading wife and baby, he didn’t know what he could do, he had no answers…Unbidden, words came to his lips, softly in Inara’s ear he spoke “Our Lord which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive our trespassers. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” Inara’s pain soaked eyes looked up at Mal’s anguished face, he kissed her forehead “I don’t know Bao bei…I can’t…” She shushed him as another contraction wracked her body.
He didn’t know why he had the Lord’s Prayer on his lips, didn’t know he even remembered it after so many years. But it was all he had as a prayer to offer, all he had for belief at that moment. He saw Shepherd Book in his memory, knowing he would be apologizing to the deceased preacher for using a prayer he no longer held to…
Matthew saw his father warring with himself, deciding what to tell him. This place was the root of his father’s pain and loss, and here he was trying to explain to his son about everything and nothing at all.
“When you were finally born, healthy and well and the Doc had saved your mother,” Mal paused, Matthew could see the tears almost form in his father’s eyes at the memory, “We talked. Inara and I. Alley had been born some time before and we had decided to call her Alleyne Washburn to honor Zoë and Wash,” he paused, blinking slowly, preventing the threatening tears from coming.
“I ain’t never talked faith with you son, other than the faith we have on Serenity that we are family, always bein’ there for each other. But that night you were born. The Lord’s Prayer…it is from the Book of Matthew…my Ma used to read from the Book when I was a child. The ranch hands and I had evening sermons from the lone woman on the ranch…my Ma, and she didn’t brook no interruptions either. I figure I must of heard the whole of the Bible read through dozens a times by the time I was your age.” He stopped and looked over the valley again.
“This here place had a way of stealing all faith from a man. Men died here from being shot to hell, from starving, from losing faith. They just lay down and died, no bodily injuries, but nothing to hold to anymore. When the Angels failed to appear, I left my faith here, figured I wasn’t gonna be using it no more seein’ as how everything I knew was good and right had been destroyed.
They sat quietly for abit. Just feeling the sun on their faces, the wind rustling the leaves on the ground.
“Your mother became my faith. Her love even through the fights, the leaving and coming back. When I saw her slipping, thought I might lose her, I prayed like I hadn’t since I was a boy. There were no other words; it was all I had to offer.
“Malcolm Reynolds! You stop your grousing right now, ya hear?” Mal’s Ma was drying her hands in a ragged kitchen towel, blood still staining her elbows. The butchered calf in the yard was waiting to be put in storage.
You got a job to do young man, and I don’t want to be hearin’ about some excuse to go and get others to do your work for ya. We all got jobs to do out here, and you as well…” Ma turned and walked into the house, leaving him, all thirteen years old, to bring the meat to the cool storage. He grumbled and muttered about the unfairness of it all, as his friends were all going to town to see the latest capture over at the cinema. The continuing adventures of a cowboy and his posse.
Some time later there was a loud crash, a yell and then a scream right before a riderless horse came galloping into the yard.
“MA!…MA!!!!” Mal yelled for his mother as he saw that the horse belonged to his best friend, Matthew. He ran out of the yard and saw Matthew lying in the dust of the road a hundred yards away, near a broken bit of fence. Mal ran towards his friend as fast as his strong legs could take him. It wouldn’t be fast enough. Matthew was gone before he got there; his head turned the wrong way, neck broken. Mal threw himself to his knees by his friend’s side. “Matt…Matt…what…you were supposed to…” Tears were coursing down his face, rivulet trails through the dust and dried blood of the days work.
He remembered praying with Matthew’s family at his funeral. The Lord’s Prayer was all he could recall later. He recited it over and over through the burial. It didn’t fit, it was the wrong prayer, but he knew it and it came to his lips unbidden.
“When we looked at you son, saw you were perfect and whole. We decided to name you Matthew Derrial. For my friend I lost as a boy, for the only prayer I have ever said since leaving this place.
Shepherd Book, Derrial Book, was man of faith, but he never did get a chance to tell us where he found it. When you were born, and your mother was alive, and Alley was so excited to have a little brother, I remembered the Shepherd exhorting me to have belief. I thought I would honor him with that memory and give his name to you. So I would never forget where belief came from.
It comes from love son. Love.
********************************************************
Notes:
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Matthew 5:14
Our Lord which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive our trespassers. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. Matthew 6:9- 6:13
Time: Very, very Post-BDM
Disclaimer: Firefly owns me, I own words
Notes: A prompt writer, taking my prompts off of lines in other works...so, very big thank you to hfleming8 for writing about Mal and Inara's daughter's name. I just wanted their son to have a story as well.
Concrit is love and nourishment.
In the Name of a Child
Matthew Derrial Reynolds was 25 before he saw Serenity Valley. Hera was a planet his father never visited and Matthew didn’t feel the need to go exploring for old ghosts.
Malcolm and Inara Reynolds had raised two children in the Black and later planetside on a small world far from the Core planets. There had been years of running, scraping for money, fuel, food and safety.
Another War had come and gone before a tentative peace fell over the ‘Verse. Treaty for peace was signed on Hera, at the head of Serenity Valley. A memorial had been built there some years earlier and the powers that be had determined that the best way to lay to rest the past was to acknowledge it where the loss had been the ugliest.
Mal walked without seemingly seeing. Matthew stayed a few steps back, watching his father. The man was stiff and his face displayed a rigid stillness. Only his eyes showed anything. Matthew could see that the impotence to do anything save be there was almost more than Mal could bear. Matthew wondered if he should not have asked his father to bring him to this place.
“I…I always wanted you to know…” Mal’s voice was low, cracking as he tried to speak.
They stood on a small rise, looking south, over the beautiful green of the peaceful valley. There was a series of grave markers laid out in long lines, crosses, stars, crowns, a few other symbols Matthew did not recognize in the distance. A memorial to the men and women who fought and died in this place. White symbols of faith and purity.
Mal drew a ragged breath and motioned to Matthew to sit next to him on the little hill. They sat together, identical in form, knees bent, arms draped around their legs, holding left hand in right, back curved in a slouch. Two dark heads, sapphrine blue eyes, broad, handsome features. Were it not for the beginnings of streaks of grey and deeper smile lines etched around his eyes, Mal would have looked like Matthew’s older brother.
“More than thirty years ago I was here…a lifetime by more than one measure. I vowed never to come back.” He turned his head to look Matthew straight in the eye. “But, I had to, I had to show you this place, not as you see it now, but as I remember it. There was no green then…it was dirt and blood and hate. Me and Zoë, we made it through by never looking back. Here. Never looking back here”.
Matthew sat as still as he could, knowing that this was a story he would most like never hear again and not wanting his father to stop.
Mal stopped, looked out over the valley again, his eyes going dark, retreating into memory. “You never knew Shepherd Book, but he told me once to have belief, in something, anything, just believe.” Mal looked back at Matthew, “I chose to believe in love, your mother was the anchor that I drew myself to. “ He stopped again. There was disjointedness to his telling, a not knowing how to say the things he wanted Matthew to know.
“Love, Matthew, love, that is what I lost here in Serenity Valley…and I found it on Serenity. It’s kept that boat and me alive all these years. Your mother knows, Zoë knows…hell; even Jayne knows that that is all we got. Serenity has always been lit by that light…and that is where you and Alley were born.”
Mal’s face took on an unusual expression as he changed his voice and intoned in regal tones “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”
Mal shook his head then, a snorting chuckle on his lips. “You were that light when you were born, you were born in that light, Serenity, and when you came your mother and I knew we had found that. You have never known that. You and Alley…’Nara nearly died having you…The Doc had a his hands full trying to keep you both alive…”
Mal remembered the terror, the blood…he held Inara as she screamed in pain, baby not coming. She pleaded with him to make the pain go away, to hold her safe. He was helpless to do anything but hold her, an arm around behind her, her grasping the other arm in agony, fingernails digging into his muscles. Tearing small gashes in her unknowing grip her body leaning back against his side as her tried to get as close as possible to her, to try and take some of the pain away. Simon worked feverishly to stop her bleeding, guide the baby, and prevent more damage. Hours passed, Inara grew weaker, Mal more desperate.
“Doc…” His voice choked with tears and anger, Mal beseeched Simon to rescue his wife, his son. Simon looked at Mal with sweat in his eyes, usually groomed hair mussed and unkempt “I’m trying…” there was no answer Simon could give.
Mal was dying inside as he held his fading wife and baby, he didn’t know what he could do, he had no answers…Unbidden, words came to his lips, softly in Inara’s ear he spoke “Our Lord which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive our trespassers. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.” Inara’s pain soaked eyes looked up at Mal’s anguished face, he kissed her forehead “I don’t know Bao bei…I can’t…” She shushed him as another contraction wracked her body.
He didn’t know why he had the Lord’s Prayer on his lips, didn’t know he even remembered it after so many years. But it was all he had as a prayer to offer, all he had for belief at that moment. He saw Shepherd Book in his memory, knowing he would be apologizing to the deceased preacher for using a prayer he no longer held to…
Matthew saw his father warring with himself, deciding what to tell him. This place was the root of his father’s pain and loss, and here he was trying to explain to his son about everything and nothing at all.
“When you were finally born, healthy and well and the Doc had saved your mother,” Mal paused, Matthew could see the tears almost form in his father’s eyes at the memory, “We talked. Inara and I. Alley had been born some time before and we had decided to call her Alleyne Washburn to honor Zoë and Wash,” he paused, blinking slowly, preventing the threatening tears from coming.
“I ain’t never talked faith with you son, other than the faith we have on Serenity that we are family, always bein’ there for each other. But that night you were born. The Lord’s Prayer…it is from the Book of Matthew…my Ma used to read from the Book when I was a child. The ranch hands and I had evening sermons from the lone woman on the ranch…my Ma, and she didn’t brook no interruptions either. I figure I must of heard the whole of the Bible read through dozens a times by the time I was your age.” He stopped and looked over the valley again.
“This here place had a way of stealing all faith from a man. Men died here from being shot to hell, from starving, from losing faith. They just lay down and died, no bodily injuries, but nothing to hold to anymore. When the Angels failed to appear, I left my faith here, figured I wasn’t gonna be using it no more seein’ as how everything I knew was good and right had been destroyed.
They sat quietly for abit. Just feeling the sun on their faces, the wind rustling the leaves on the ground.
“Your mother became my faith. Her love even through the fights, the leaving and coming back. When I saw her slipping, thought I might lose her, I prayed like I hadn’t since I was a boy. There were no other words; it was all I had to offer.
“Malcolm Reynolds! You stop your grousing right now, ya hear?” Mal’s Ma was drying her hands in a ragged kitchen towel, blood still staining her elbows. The butchered calf in the yard was waiting to be put in storage.
You got a job to do young man, and I don’t want to be hearin’ about some excuse to go and get others to do your work for ya. We all got jobs to do out here, and you as well…” Ma turned and walked into the house, leaving him, all thirteen years old, to bring the meat to the cool storage. He grumbled and muttered about the unfairness of it all, as his friends were all going to town to see the latest capture over at the cinema. The continuing adventures of a cowboy and his posse.
Some time later there was a loud crash, a yell and then a scream right before a riderless horse came galloping into the yard.
“MA!…MA!!!!” Mal yelled for his mother as he saw that the horse belonged to his best friend, Matthew. He ran out of the yard and saw Matthew lying in the dust of the road a hundred yards away, near a broken bit of fence. Mal ran towards his friend as fast as his strong legs could take him. It wouldn’t be fast enough. Matthew was gone before he got there; his head turned the wrong way, neck broken. Mal threw himself to his knees by his friend’s side. “Matt…Matt…what…you were supposed to…” Tears were coursing down his face, rivulet trails through the dust and dried blood of the days work.
He remembered praying with Matthew’s family at his funeral. The Lord’s Prayer was all he could recall later. He recited it over and over through the burial. It didn’t fit, it was the wrong prayer, but he knew it and it came to his lips unbidden.
“When we looked at you son, saw you were perfect and whole. We decided to name you Matthew Derrial. For my friend I lost as a boy, for the only prayer I have ever said since leaving this place.
Shepherd Book, Derrial Book, was man of faith, but he never did get a chance to tell us where he found it. When you were born, and your mother was alive, and Alley was so excited to have a little brother, I remembered the Shepherd exhorting me to have belief. I thought I would honor him with that memory and give his name to you. So I would never forget where belief came from.
It comes from love son. Love.
********************************************************
Notes:
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Matthew 5:14
Our Lord which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive our trespassers. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. Matthew 6:9- 6:13