More Drabbles
This set is for wily_one24 who requested the song Angry Johnny. One more set on the way...
Listening
I can do it with instruments
I can do it with my own bare hands
Serenity was hurtin’.
That much was certain. Just what parts were in pain though, that was somethin’ else entirely.
Tools and diagnostic instruments were spread out around her like confetti as she sat cross legged on the floor, her hands empty as she surveyed her choices. She had no way of knowing what one to use. There were even some tools here that she ain’t never seen before, let alone knew how to use.
The Cap’n was gonna throw her off soon as they landed for sure.
She dug her nails into the fabric on her coveralls. She liked it here. Flyin’ out in the black, goin’ on adventures the likes she couldn’t o’ imagined back home. And she liked the crew, the pilot with his smart mouth and friendly smile. Zoe who was so strong and serious, but would sneak her a smile when no one was looking’. An’ the Captain, he was the one who took her away from a borin’ future of poppin’ out babies an’ scraping by with next to nothing.
Well, she weren’t gonna let that happen. She closed her eyes tryin’ to focus on the engine and all it’s parts. Pictured the way they moved and the way they sounded.
If she listened really hard…
Her eyes flew open and she grinned, leaping to her feet, throwing back the casing on the engine and peering inside.
“Yes!”
Jezebel
this is jezebel in hell
She still looked the same.
The moment Saffron heard the name Serenity, she’d felt an excitement suffuse her blood. She’d waited in the parlor only long enough to find which berth the ship was in before venturing out into the busy streets to investigate.
Serenity looked exactly the same since she saw it last, on Verbena. And before that on the moon outside of Glasgany. The boat was forever consistent, even as she searched the vessel for some insignificant detail to prove otherwise. The consistency of both ship and captain ground on her nerves and secretly pleased her. She watched as the ramp was lowered and the crew emerged.
Kaylee and Jayne were first, the latter checking his weapons as they left together. Zoe and Wash lingered behind with the Captain before leaving the ship. She could only assume that Simon and River were secreted away somewhere aboard.
That left Mal, standing on the ramp, one thumb tucked negligently in his gun belt, scanning the crowd flowing upstream and down. She wondered if he somehow knew she was there.
His eyes passed right over where she stood in the shadow of the post office and she released a pent up breath. It was better he didn’t know of her presence, even if it took away some of the challenge.
Smiling, she melted into the shadows before slipping off in the direction Jayne and Kaylee had gone. If she was careful, she might learn something of their plans while in port. Any luck, she would learn enough to throw a wrench into their plot, and if not, at least discover their next destination.
Hard for her to believe that her first encounter with Malcolm Reynolds was over three years ago. Since that first time they’d tangled more than a dozen others. The last of which left her with a concussion and a rather prettily shaped scar just below her breast. She smiled to think of it. Getting the best of Mal Reynolds had become a game to her a long while back. But she’d long since stopped keeping score.
Saffron didn’t bother to analyze her fixation on Serenity and it’s Captain. She knew herself well enough to know the obsession for what it was.
Her own special brand of love.
Like an Angel
I can do it like an angel
To quiet down your rage
Sanity was a sea aboard Serenity. It ebbed and flowed between the people inside her, the tide pulling River this way and that, so that when insanity reigned among the crew, her mind was pristine and clear.
And she hated it.
Hated that her sanity had a price. Hated herself for loving those precious times when her mind wasn’t a prison of visions and voices and emotions that weren’t her own. It hadn’t always been that way. Before Miranda, she was overwhelmed by the oceans aboard Serenity, they drowned her in their turmoil. She only existed to surface now and then, clinging to the buoy that was her brother for a few precious moments before sinking beneath.
Miranda taught her to swim.
When the oceans were quiet, she floated along with only her mind to keep her occupied. And it was a scary place, the vestiges of voices and thoughts still clung like veils, and she couldn’t ever know if she was truly her own self.
When the oceans were fraught with waves and rain and wind so loud it wailed, she swam. Lifted her head above water and slipped from her mind, into the seas around her. And she was herself, once again.
The Captain had taught her that love kept them flying. But what he didn’t know was that love too, kept her sane. The Captain didn’t believe in faith, but River did. Book had taught her that. And River had learned that the tides of sanity moved between them for a reason.
When she was sane, it was because her family was needful of her.
Jayne was needful of her.
She found him in the cargo bay, dismantling the weight bench with his bare hands. His fingers were torn and bloody from trying to twist the screws loose without a wrench, the task made more difficult now that the metal was slick with his blood. A bottle of whiskey lay overturned beside him, a few drops splashed across the floor.
His thoughts were slow, more sluggish than normal, but they weren’t of interest to her. The rage burning beneath, white hot and vicious held her captive.
She descended slowly, the edges of her dress fluttering around her legs. Her voice was soft, but it swept through the cargo bay and into Jayne’s misery, “What are you doing?”
“Wha’s it look like I’m doin’?” He growled, his eyes flashing fury that found a home on her.
“Breaking your heart.”
“Don’t gotta heart.” He sneered at her, his fingers digging into the padding of the bench and ripping it off, leaving bloody fingerprints across the metal.
She approached, her smile angel soft and delicate, “It’s drowning in alcohol, trying to fight it’s way for air. But you keep flooding it. Flooding Jayne.”
His glower was menacing, even through the haze of drunkenness, but it was directed at the weight bench and not at her.
“What use ‘re muscles if they can’t…”
“They can.”
“They can’t!” He roared at her, his eyes screaming. “They didn’t!”
She should have been scared. Any other human faced with Jayne in such a state would have been, but River understood his pain and she reached out instead of running.
Her fingers slipping lightly over his shoulders, feeling the heat and the anger burning his skin. Tracing the muscles along his arms, she exerted light pressure, pushing him gently back. “These muscles did.”
He moved back, shocked that she’d dare lay a hand on him, and she pressed further, sending him onto his back. She followed the path of her hands, smoothing over his chest, feeling the muscles flex beneath. “And these muscles did.”
Like cool water, she covered his body with her own, dampening the flames of anger and agony licking at his soul, leaving only coals to smolder in memory of those lost.
Tucking her ear to rest over his heart, she sighed as her eyes drifted closed, “This body did.”