Stars and Dreams and Fire
This story was inspired by a dream that was just plain crazy. It was a combination of Star Wars and Firefly, and then Xander Harris was there and we were traversing a cave with a river running through it, and a cave frog told Xander and I to answer three riddles or he’d drown us. Xander asked the cave frog if he could give us a pass, because we were friends of Moo, and the evil cave frog said that the other cave frogs don’t like Moo because he’s “honest” and doesn’t like to drown people. And I woke up because the evil cave frog was trying to drown me.
So, this story has almost absolutely nothing in common with that dream. Which is really for the best.
Stars and Dreams and Fire
When Mal Reynolds fell in love, he chose a girl as unlike Ina-… He chose a girl who liked the simple things. The feel of dirt underneath her feet, to cook for friends, wildflowers scooped up in large bunches and shoved in Mason jars. Chrissie loved those things, but was terrified of space, and was terrified of Mal going out into it. She wanted to stay on her own planet, and know that she wouldn’t be made a widow before her time by her adventuring husband.
Because Mal loved her, he contented himself to staying on Truth and looking up at the stars and dreaming and remembering.
And Mal did dream.
When he made up his minds to leave Serenity and settle on Truth, Zoe had gone back home months before, when she’d discovered she was pregnant with Wash’s baby. Since she hadn’t supposed to have been able to get pregnant in the first place, she wanted to stay on a planet with good medicine. She didn’t want nothing to happen to the baby she and Wash had made together. So there was only one logical choice of whom to give Serenity to. He gave her to Kaylee, because only Kaylee loved his ship as much as he did, and Kaylee promised to take good care of her.
So he gave away his ship and stayed on Truth with Chrissie, and did his best to be happy, while he looked up at the stars he used to traverse, and dreamed.
***
Kaylee knew what love was supposed to be like, and she thought she’d found it with Simon.
No. Wait. Rephrase. Kaylee knew what being in love was supposed to be like, and she’d thought she’d found it with Simon. But in the six months since they’d started sharing a bed, she’d come to the conclusion that they were simply friends, sharing a bed.
Which wasn’t a bad thing!
After all, you’re supposed to be friends with your lover/spouse/mate, or things tend to implode on each other.
But she couldn’t help but feel that there was something missing. Something important.
Simon and she, they come from different worlds, and he would always be wishing he could be back in his. She loved him, and he loved her, but in love, they were not. But she knew that Simon would never leave Serenity, not while River was safe, and River needed her. She knew that Simon would never leave Kaylee, because he needed her, too. He needed her to keep River’s needs from consuming him. He needed her so that he wouldn’t get bogged down. He needed someone to keep him sane.
And because he and River needed her, Kaylee would never leave them, either.
But sometimes, she’d look out into the stars she was among, and dream.
***
It started with a visit to the Captain. Sure, he wasn’t still Captain of Serenity - she herself was - but to Kaylee, Mal would always be Captain.
It was supposed to be a simple visit.
It ended in flames. A stupid wildfire that should have been put out early had raged too far, too hot, and too fast, leaving destruction and death in its path. The land burned, and Chrissie, who’d been so terrified of becoming a widow, burned with it, leaving Mall a widower, and the loss of her left clear tracks on Mal’s cheeks cutting through the black soot.
There were no more dreams. They’d come crashing down, destroyed in a moment. There was only the stars for solace.
***
His crew was pussyfooting around him.
His crew. Heh. His crew wasn’t a complete crew anymore, and the ones left were more Kaylee’s than his, and he knew it. Even now, he’d give an order and Jayne or Simon would look to Kaylee for verification. Not that he could really blame them; he’d been gone for two years, after all, and Kaylee had been there for them, telling them what to do and keeping the ship running and keeping the people fed. Mal was a leader, and people would instinctively look to him for directions in a crisis. Kaylee was a nurturer, and people instinctively liked her and gave them their loyalty.
Jayne, Simon, River, and Inara had been giving their loyalty for two years now, and she’d been repaying them with love and taking care of them.
So, yeah, Mal was feeling like an intruder on his own ship - his own ship that Kaylee hadn’t had to give back to him and he knew it and was all grateful-like to her for it - and it was more than mildly irritating, but he could get over it.
Mostly, it was the crew tiptoeing around him that was agrifying to him and Mal was about ready to punch someone or something. Which was what he did.
He didn’t want to go to the infirmary and deal with the doc and his hovering, so instead, he knocked on Kaylee’s door and asked her to do a bit of fixin’ for him. He didn’t have to worry about the doc being in Kaylee’s bunk, or vice-versa; the two had taken to sleeping in their own bunks again after Mal came back, supposedly in deference to Mal’s captaincy. Mal thought was a big load of manure, but nobody asked him what he thought about things like that.
Kaylee seemed to pick up on his mood and instead of gushing over him as she might have done, she simply sat him down and started doctoring the way Zoe used to do for him.
“You gonna tell me how you managed to hurt your hand like this out here in the black?” Kaylee looked him in the eyes, before looking back down at his hand.
“Turns out, my hand is allergic to hitting walls.” Mal was relieved that the only response was an accepting nod.
“You ain’t gonna do that again, are ya?” Kaylee smirked at him, and Mal wondered who’d taught Kaylee to smirk.
How much had he missed if Kaylee could now lie and smirk and be sarcastic? Well, duh. He’d missed two years of Kaylee’s life, and she’d lost more innocence and become a little more jaded during that time.
And that just wasn’t supposed to be able to happen.
Part of Mal was disappointed that the universe had broken in such a fundamental way. Another part of him was satisfied that the universe was as broken as he was.
***
Inara had returned to Serenity when Kaylee had contacted her via wave, gushing about how Serenity was now hers. Inara had left in the first place not because she didn’t love Serenity or the people on it. She left because, even as she was the moth transfixed to Mal’s flame, all she and Mal had was fire. Their fire would burn bright and hot and brilliant, but it would also burn fast, leaving nothing behind but ashes and devastation. And Inara had too much respect for herself and for Mal to allow that to happen.
But she could feel herself wanting it, damn the consequences. She could feel herself getting closer and closer to giving in.
So Inara left, even if it were an act of cowardice. She left, because she wouldn’t see Mal destroyed.
And now, two years later, he’d been decimated, and there was nothing Inara could do to fix it. He wouldn’t let her, and she knew it.
But he would let Kaylee help.
Inara didn’t believe in romantic love. Some people had it - Zoe and Wash, for instance - but she didn’t believe it could (or would even if it could) happen to her. Kaylee did. And Inara knew that Kaylee deserved it more than anyone.
Inara didn’t believe in romantic love. Not for her. So it only made sense that, if Simon needed someone, Inara fill that need for him, so that Kaylee could look for her love. So that Kaylee could be free. So that Kaylee could help Mal.
Inara didn’t believe in romantic love, but she did love Kaylee as her sister. And for Kaylee, Inara would do anything, including seduce a man that she had no interest in.
As a little girl, Inara had looked up at the stars and dreamed of being among them. Now she was, but dreams had long since been broken and shattered. She could dream no longer, and even the stars were a cold, sharp comfort that was no comfort at all and only cut deeply.
***
Kaylee sat next to Mal in the cockpit. While Mal had been gone, Jayne and River had been the pilots of the ship, and even Kaylee had taken her turns often enough, but it was nice to have Jayne be able to focus on weapons and fighting again, to have Kaylee in the engine room where she belonged, and to not be worried that River might get it into her head that chasing leaves or meteors would be a fun pastime.
Kaylee watched Mal watch the viewshield, allowing him to sit in silence until he was willing to break it.
“Ain’t got nothin’ to say, Little Kaylee? Where’s your doctor-type shadow?” Mal’s voice was harsh and a little bit mocking. Jayne used that tone with her sometimes, but Mal never had before. He did it purposefully, then, in hopes that it would scare Kaylee off and he wouldn’t have to deal with whatever she wanted him to deal with. If Mal had room for any more self-loathing, he would have hated himself for speaking to Kaylee like that, because nobody got to speak to Kaylee like that, especially not him.
Kaylee shrugged easily. “Figured you didn’t want me to be prattling on about nothin’. Also figured you could use someone to just be with you, no pressure, no expectations, and as little awkwardness as possible. Simon’s having tea with Inara, says that it’s soothing.”
Most likely, it wasn’t the tea that the doc found soothing, but the other activities Mal knew was going on in that shuttle. But Kaylee and the doc had been on the outs for a while, and it wasn’t his business to point out to Kaylee what was going on. Still, she had him on the first part of what she’d said. He couldn’t exactly argue with her on that one, now could he? “What do you want me to say, Kaylee?”
Kaylee flicked her eyes to meet his gaze again, but this time, she held it. “Whatever you want to say. And if’n you don’t want to say anything, that’s shiny, too. That’s the whole point, silly.”
Mal stretched, the silence stretching as well, before he snapped it like a rubber band. “I blame myself. If only I’d been there, I could have saved her. I blame her. If she hadn’t been so gorram scared, we could have been in the Black, and I could have protected her. I blame the people that should have put the fire out when it first started. I have all this anger in me, jittering about, and I can’t let it out, because there’s always going to be more to replace it.”
Kaylee sat there for a moment, before landing on what she could say. “Ain’t gonna lie, Captain Tightpants. It’s gonna be tough and it’s gonna suck and it’s gonna hurt. And it’s gonna be that way for a while, ain’t no two-ways about it. But sometime, it’s gonna suck a little bit less, and hurt a little bit less, and be a little bit easier to breathe. And someday, don’t know when, you’re gonna wake up and think of something else first thin in the morning, and when you think about Chrissie, you’ll miss her, but it won’t have that sharp bite of pain anymore. It’ll get better. Don’t know when, but it will. Don’t rush yourself through whatever you need to feel.”
Mal sat in his own silence. “Sounds like you’re talking from experience here, Little Kaylee.”
Kaylee shrugged again, a whole lot less easier this time than last. “Wash and Book, of course. We all went through that. Before that, though, there was my Ma. My dad never got over her, and last time I saw him, his mind was so far gone that he kept calling me Caroline. I know you think I’m innocent and no badness never touched me, but you’re wrong on that. I grown up with all kinds of badness. I just do my best to not dwell on it. ’Verse already has so much badness in it that to focus on it blocks out the good. And much bad as there is, and there’s a lot, there’s just as much good there, too.”
Mal looked at Kaylee, really looked at her. “Tell me about your mom.”
So Kaylee told him about her momma, who’d always had a bright cheerful smile, and an encompassing hug when Kaylee needed it. Sometimes, Kaylee felt like she’d been a disappointment to her momma, because Caroline had been a dainty-type lad, who’d always smelled of lilacs, while Kaylee might be small, but she wasn’t dainty, and Kaylee smelled of engine grease. Caroline had been able to knit and crochet and sew, and every time Kaylee tried, for her momma’s sake, the yarn wound up in a hopeless snarl and the string would knot up on her. But in spite of that, Kaylee also knew that Caroline had loved her Kaylee-girl. But cancer had stolen the yellow sunshine hair from Caroline, and the equally sunshiny smile and laugh also disappeared.
Then Kaylee turned it back on Mal. “Tell me about Chrissie.”
So Mal told Kaylee about his wife. Chrissie had been born Chrysanthemum, to a mother who’d wanted better things for her daughter than a rancher’s life on Truth. But Chrissie loved her home, and she wanted nothing more than to stay there and make the land work for her. Chrissie had been strong and hardy, but small enough that Mal would still be able to protect her. Chrissie had been able to cook anything (though Mal had never told her that Kaylee’s ability in a kitchen eclipsed Chrissie’s), and fix anything not mechanical that she put her mind to. Her laugh was loud and contagious, her smile bright and shiny.
It wasn’t until Mal was telling Kaylee about her that he realized that in his effort to find someone unlike Inara, he’d found someone that was a lot like Kaylee.
Mal wasn’t sure exactly what to do with that realization, so he lapsed back into silence. Together he and Kaylee stared out the viewshield and watched the stars go by.
And Mal began to dream again, just a little bit.
***
Kaylee was in the engine room, talking to her best girl. The engine room was where things made sense again. Kaylee liked and enjoyed people, but she wasn’t gonna lie and say they made sense to her. Because they didn’t. People didn’t make a lick of sense. Machines did. Machines were easy to understand and talk to, once you learned how. Kaylee was amazed at how few people wanted to learn. Mal tried, and made an able assistant, but he needed someone to translate Serenity in her more finicky moods to him - and she did have those moods. Kaylee had made the mistake of leaving Mal in charge of Serenity’s engine once and had sworn to never do so again. Momma didn’t raise no fools.
Serenity made sense to her. She let Kaylee know how she was doing, if anything was winding down, if anything needed fixing.
There wasn’t really anything that needed fixing right then, but Kaylee still liked just visiting with her girl.
Mal poked his head in and, seeing that Kaylee wasn’t doing anything important-like, sat next to her, his long legs stretching out in front of him. The doc and Inara had been officially hooked up for a while, now, and Mal assumed that Kaylee was well over it.
“Whatcha up to, Captain Tightpants?” Kaylee grinned widely at him, obviously in a grand ol’ mood.
Mal couldn’t help but smile back at her. Ain’t no power in the ’verse could stop Kaylee from being cheerful, and sometimes it made one want to duct-tape her and leave her in the hold, but for the most part, her cheer was mighty contagious. “Just wanted to check on my best girl.”
“Serenity’s shiny, Captain. She likes the new oil; it’s flushing out the crunk that’s built up.” Kaylee brushed some hair out of her face, leaving a smudge of grease behind.
Mal swallowed hard, before speaking without looking at Kaylee. “Wasn’t talking ’bout Serenity.”
Mal didn’t even have to be looking at Kaylee to know her eyes had widened when he heard the hiss of breath. “Oh.” Neither did he have to be looking at her to know that she was blushing a cute Kaylee blush. “Well, I’m doing fantastical myself. After all, I got my best girl here in fine shape, and now I got my Captain right next to me. What more’d a girl want?”
Mal risked glancing over at her, and found she was avoiding looking at him as studiously as he’d been avoiding looking at her. Inwardly cursing himself for being all kinds of idiot, he was trying to decide whether or not top the idiocy off with cowardice and run, or go for more idiocy and kiss her, when the decision was taken from him. Kaylee grabbed him by the shirt, her tiny fist wrapping itself in cotton cloth, and pulled him towards her, and planted one on him.
Far as first kisses go, the first few seconds were … well, it was a messy first kiss. He hadn’t been expecting it, and she hadn’t quite closed her mouth from her grin, so their teeth banged against each other kinda hard-like. But they both got into it quickly, and the mess turned into … well, still messy, but a very enjoyable mess.
And an even better beginning.
When Malcolm Reynolds fell in love again, he fell for his best friend. The only person in the ’verse who understood how much Serenity meant to him, and would never ask him to leave it, because Serenity meant the same to her. He fell in love with the only person besides Zoe who had stuck by him from the moment she met him. He fell for a person that painted flowers in the dining room, just to make it cheerful and home.
He fell for the person that had actually made Serenity a home, instead of a wish and a dream.
Ain’t no power in the ’verse could make his Kaylee not be cheerful, and she was spreading that cheer to him, with her bright sunshine smile and equally bright and contagious laugh.
Now, Mal didn’t have to look out at the stars and dream. He was among the stars like he’d always wanted, and he had his dreams on the ship with him.
End
So, this story has almost absolutely nothing in common with that dream. Which is really for the best.
Stars and Dreams and Fire
When Mal Reynolds fell in love, he chose a girl as unlike Ina-… He chose a girl who liked the simple things. The feel of dirt underneath her feet, to cook for friends, wildflowers scooped up in large bunches and shoved in Mason jars. Chrissie loved those things, but was terrified of space, and was terrified of Mal going out into it. She wanted to stay on her own planet, and know that she wouldn’t be made a widow before her time by her adventuring husband.
Because Mal loved her, he contented himself to staying on Truth and looking up at the stars and dreaming and remembering.
And Mal did dream.
When he made up his minds to leave Serenity and settle on Truth, Zoe had gone back home months before, when she’d discovered she was pregnant with Wash’s baby. Since she hadn’t supposed to have been able to get pregnant in the first place, she wanted to stay on a planet with good medicine. She didn’t want nothing to happen to the baby she and Wash had made together. So there was only one logical choice of whom to give Serenity to. He gave her to Kaylee, because only Kaylee loved his ship as much as he did, and Kaylee promised to take good care of her.
So he gave away his ship and stayed on Truth with Chrissie, and did his best to be happy, while he looked up at the stars he used to traverse, and dreamed.
***
Kaylee knew what love was supposed to be like, and she thought she’d found it with Simon.
No. Wait. Rephrase. Kaylee knew what being in love was supposed to be like, and she’d thought she’d found it with Simon. But in the six months since they’d started sharing a bed, she’d come to the conclusion that they were simply friends, sharing a bed.
Which wasn’t a bad thing!
After all, you’re supposed to be friends with your lover/spouse/mate, or things tend to implode on each other.
But she couldn’t help but feel that there was something missing. Something important.
Simon and she, they come from different worlds, and he would always be wishing he could be back in his. She loved him, and he loved her, but in love, they were not. But she knew that Simon would never leave Serenity, not while River was safe, and River needed her. She knew that Simon would never leave Kaylee, because he needed her, too. He needed her to keep River’s needs from consuming him. He needed her so that he wouldn’t get bogged down. He needed someone to keep him sane.
And because he and River needed her, Kaylee would never leave them, either.
But sometimes, she’d look out into the stars she was among, and dream.
***
It started with a visit to the Captain. Sure, he wasn’t still Captain of Serenity - she herself was - but to Kaylee, Mal would always be Captain.
It was supposed to be a simple visit.
It ended in flames. A stupid wildfire that should have been put out early had raged too far, too hot, and too fast, leaving destruction and death in its path. The land burned, and Chrissie, who’d been so terrified of becoming a widow, burned with it, leaving Mall a widower, and the loss of her left clear tracks on Mal’s cheeks cutting through the black soot.
There were no more dreams. They’d come crashing down, destroyed in a moment. There was only the stars for solace.
***
His crew was pussyfooting around him.
His crew. Heh. His crew wasn’t a complete crew anymore, and the ones left were more Kaylee’s than his, and he knew it. Even now, he’d give an order and Jayne or Simon would look to Kaylee for verification. Not that he could really blame them; he’d been gone for two years, after all, and Kaylee had been there for them, telling them what to do and keeping the ship running and keeping the people fed. Mal was a leader, and people would instinctively look to him for directions in a crisis. Kaylee was a nurturer, and people instinctively liked her and gave them their loyalty.
Jayne, Simon, River, and Inara had been giving their loyalty for two years now, and she’d been repaying them with love and taking care of them.
So, yeah, Mal was feeling like an intruder on his own ship - his own ship that Kaylee hadn’t had to give back to him and he knew it and was all grateful-like to her for it - and it was more than mildly irritating, but he could get over it.
Mostly, it was the crew tiptoeing around him that was agrifying to him and Mal was about ready to punch someone or something. Which was what he did.
He didn’t want to go to the infirmary and deal with the doc and his hovering, so instead, he knocked on Kaylee’s door and asked her to do a bit of fixin’ for him. He didn’t have to worry about the doc being in Kaylee’s bunk, or vice-versa; the two had taken to sleeping in their own bunks again after Mal came back, supposedly in deference to Mal’s captaincy. Mal thought was a big load of manure, but nobody asked him what he thought about things like that.
Kaylee seemed to pick up on his mood and instead of gushing over him as she might have done, she simply sat him down and started doctoring the way Zoe used to do for him.
“You gonna tell me how you managed to hurt your hand like this out here in the black?” Kaylee looked him in the eyes, before looking back down at his hand.
“Turns out, my hand is allergic to hitting walls.” Mal was relieved that the only response was an accepting nod.
“You ain’t gonna do that again, are ya?” Kaylee smirked at him, and Mal wondered who’d taught Kaylee to smirk.
How much had he missed if Kaylee could now lie and smirk and be sarcastic? Well, duh. He’d missed two years of Kaylee’s life, and she’d lost more innocence and become a little more jaded during that time.
And that just wasn’t supposed to be able to happen.
Part of Mal was disappointed that the universe had broken in such a fundamental way. Another part of him was satisfied that the universe was as broken as he was.
***
Inara had returned to Serenity when Kaylee had contacted her via wave, gushing about how Serenity was now hers. Inara had left in the first place not because she didn’t love Serenity or the people on it. She left because, even as she was the moth transfixed to Mal’s flame, all she and Mal had was fire. Their fire would burn bright and hot and brilliant, but it would also burn fast, leaving nothing behind but ashes and devastation. And Inara had too much respect for herself and for Mal to allow that to happen.
But she could feel herself wanting it, damn the consequences. She could feel herself getting closer and closer to giving in.
So Inara left, even if it were an act of cowardice. She left, because she wouldn’t see Mal destroyed.
And now, two years later, he’d been decimated, and there was nothing Inara could do to fix it. He wouldn’t let her, and she knew it.
But he would let Kaylee help.
Inara didn’t believe in romantic love. Some people had it - Zoe and Wash, for instance - but she didn’t believe it could (or would even if it could) happen to her. Kaylee did. And Inara knew that Kaylee deserved it more than anyone.
Inara didn’t believe in romantic love. Not for her. So it only made sense that, if Simon needed someone, Inara fill that need for him, so that Kaylee could look for her love. So that Kaylee could be free. So that Kaylee could help Mal.
Inara didn’t believe in romantic love, but she did love Kaylee as her sister. And for Kaylee, Inara would do anything, including seduce a man that she had no interest in.
As a little girl, Inara had looked up at the stars and dreamed of being among them. Now she was, but dreams had long since been broken and shattered. She could dream no longer, and even the stars were a cold, sharp comfort that was no comfort at all and only cut deeply.
***
Kaylee sat next to Mal in the cockpit. While Mal had been gone, Jayne and River had been the pilots of the ship, and even Kaylee had taken her turns often enough, but it was nice to have Jayne be able to focus on weapons and fighting again, to have Kaylee in the engine room where she belonged, and to not be worried that River might get it into her head that chasing leaves or meteors would be a fun pastime.
Kaylee watched Mal watch the viewshield, allowing him to sit in silence until he was willing to break it.
“Ain’t got nothin’ to say, Little Kaylee? Where’s your doctor-type shadow?” Mal’s voice was harsh and a little bit mocking. Jayne used that tone with her sometimes, but Mal never had before. He did it purposefully, then, in hopes that it would scare Kaylee off and he wouldn’t have to deal with whatever she wanted him to deal with. If Mal had room for any more self-loathing, he would have hated himself for speaking to Kaylee like that, because nobody got to speak to Kaylee like that, especially not him.
Kaylee shrugged easily. “Figured you didn’t want me to be prattling on about nothin’. Also figured you could use someone to just be with you, no pressure, no expectations, and as little awkwardness as possible. Simon’s having tea with Inara, says that it’s soothing.”
Most likely, it wasn’t the tea that the doc found soothing, but the other activities Mal knew was going on in that shuttle. But Kaylee and the doc had been on the outs for a while, and it wasn’t his business to point out to Kaylee what was going on. Still, she had him on the first part of what she’d said. He couldn’t exactly argue with her on that one, now could he? “What do you want me to say, Kaylee?”
Kaylee flicked her eyes to meet his gaze again, but this time, she held it. “Whatever you want to say. And if’n you don’t want to say anything, that’s shiny, too. That’s the whole point, silly.”
Mal stretched, the silence stretching as well, before he snapped it like a rubber band. “I blame myself. If only I’d been there, I could have saved her. I blame her. If she hadn’t been so gorram scared, we could have been in the Black, and I could have protected her. I blame the people that should have put the fire out when it first started. I have all this anger in me, jittering about, and I can’t let it out, because there’s always going to be more to replace it.”
Kaylee sat there for a moment, before landing on what she could say. “Ain’t gonna lie, Captain Tightpants. It’s gonna be tough and it’s gonna suck and it’s gonna hurt. And it’s gonna be that way for a while, ain’t no two-ways about it. But sometime, it’s gonna suck a little bit less, and hurt a little bit less, and be a little bit easier to breathe. And someday, don’t know when, you’re gonna wake up and think of something else first thin in the morning, and when you think about Chrissie, you’ll miss her, but it won’t have that sharp bite of pain anymore. It’ll get better. Don’t know when, but it will. Don’t rush yourself through whatever you need to feel.”
Mal sat in his own silence. “Sounds like you’re talking from experience here, Little Kaylee.”
Kaylee shrugged again, a whole lot less easier this time than last. “Wash and Book, of course. We all went through that. Before that, though, there was my Ma. My dad never got over her, and last time I saw him, his mind was so far gone that he kept calling me Caroline. I know you think I’m innocent and no badness never touched me, but you’re wrong on that. I grown up with all kinds of badness. I just do my best to not dwell on it. ’Verse already has so much badness in it that to focus on it blocks out the good. And much bad as there is, and there’s a lot, there’s just as much good there, too.”
Mal looked at Kaylee, really looked at her. “Tell me about your mom.”
So Kaylee told him about her momma, who’d always had a bright cheerful smile, and an encompassing hug when Kaylee needed it. Sometimes, Kaylee felt like she’d been a disappointment to her momma, because Caroline had been a dainty-type lad, who’d always smelled of lilacs, while Kaylee might be small, but she wasn’t dainty, and Kaylee smelled of engine grease. Caroline had been able to knit and crochet and sew, and every time Kaylee tried, for her momma’s sake, the yarn wound up in a hopeless snarl and the string would knot up on her. But in spite of that, Kaylee also knew that Caroline had loved her Kaylee-girl. But cancer had stolen the yellow sunshine hair from Caroline, and the equally sunshiny smile and laugh also disappeared.
Then Kaylee turned it back on Mal. “Tell me about Chrissie.”
So Mal told Kaylee about his wife. Chrissie had been born Chrysanthemum, to a mother who’d wanted better things for her daughter than a rancher’s life on Truth. But Chrissie loved her home, and she wanted nothing more than to stay there and make the land work for her. Chrissie had been strong and hardy, but small enough that Mal would still be able to protect her. Chrissie had been able to cook anything (though Mal had never told her that Kaylee’s ability in a kitchen eclipsed Chrissie’s), and fix anything not mechanical that she put her mind to. Her laugh was loud and contagious, her smile bright and shiny.
It wasn’t until Mal was telling Kaylee about her that he realized that in his effort to find someone unlike Inara, he’d found someone that was a lot like Kaylee.
Mal wasn’t sure exactly what to do with that realization, so he lapsed back into silence. Together he and Kaylee stared out the viewshield and watched the stars go by.
And Mal began to dream again, just a little bit.
***
Kaylee was in the engine room, talking to her best girl. The engine room was where things made sense again. Kaylee liked and enjoyed people, but she wasn’t gonna lie and say they made sense to her. Because they didn’t. People didn’t make a lick of sense. Machines did. Machines were easy to understand and talk to, once you learned how. Kaylee was amazed at how few people wanted to learn. Mal tried, and made an able assistant, but he needed someone to translate Serenity in her more finicky moods to him - and she did have those moods. Kaylee had made the mistake of leaving Mal in charge of Serenity’s engine once and had sworn to never do so again. Momma didn’t raise no fools.
Serenity made sense to her. She let Kaylee know how she was doing, if anything was winding down, if anything needed fixing.
There wasn’t really anything that needed fixing right then, but Kaylee still liked just visiting with her girl.
Mal poked his head in and, seeing that Kaylee wasn’t doing anything important-like, sat next to her, his long legs stretching out in front of him. The doc and Inara had been officially hooked up for a while, now, and Mal assumed that Kaylee was well over it.
“Whatcha up to, Captain Tightpants?” Kaylee grinned widely at him, obviously in a grand ol’ mood.
Mal couldn’t help but smile back at her. Ain’t no power in the ’verse could stop Kaylee from being cheerful, and sometimes it made one want to duct-tape her and leave her in the hold, but for the most part, her cheer was mighty contagious. “Just wanted to check on my best girl.”
“Serenity’s shiny, Captain. She likes the new oil; it’s flushing out the crunk that’s built up.” Kaylee brushed some hair out of her face, leaving a smudge of grease behind.
Mal swallowed hard, before speaking without looking at Kaylee. “Wasn’t talking ’bout Serenity.”
Mal didn’t even have to be looking at Kaylee to know her eyes had widened when he heard the hiss of breath. “Oh.” Neither did he have to be looking at her to know that she was blushing a cute Kaylee blush. “Well, I’m doing fantastical myself. After all, I got my best girl here in fine shape, and now I got my Captain right next to me. What more’d a girl want?”
Mal risked glancing over at her, and found she was avoiding looking at him as studiously as he’d been avoiding looking at her. Inwardly cursing himself for being all kinds of idiot, he was trying to decide whether or not top the idiocy off with cowardice and run, or go for more idiocy and kiss her, when the decision was taken from him. Kaylee grabbed him by the shirt, her tiny fist wrapping itself in cotton cloth, and pulled him towards her, and planted one on him.
Far as first kisses go, the first few seconds were … well, it was a messy first kiss. He hadn’t been expecting it, and she hadn’t quite closed her mouth from her grin, so their teeth banged against each other kinda hard-like. But they both got into it quickly, and the mess turned into … well, still messy, but a very enjoyable mess.
And an even better beginning.
When Malcolm Reynolds fell in love again, he fell for his best friend. The only person in the ’verse who understood how much Serenity meant to him, and would never ask him to leave it, because Serenity meant the same to her. He fell in love with the only person besides Zoe who had stuck by him from the moment she met him. He fell for a person that painted flowers in the dining room, just to make it cheerful and home.
He fell for the person that had actually made Serenity a home, instead of a wish and a dream.
Ain’t no power in the ’verse could make his Kaylee not be cheerful, and she was spreading that cheer to him, with her bright sunshine smile and equally bright and contagious laugh.
Now, Mal didn’t have to look out at the stars and dream. He was among the stars like he’d always wanted, and he had his dreams on the ship with him.
End