Ratta Tat Tat 3/5
Jan. 16th, 2012 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonchildficTitle: Ratta Tat Tat 3/5
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg-13
Genre: no Pairing
Verse: Firefly PreBDM
Summary: With a scream of "ratta tat tat" River ripped open an old wound, warning of a danger that has stalked Zoe through the years, a nightmare that formed the friendship that carried her and Mal through Serenity Valley and a hell that is finally catching up.
Notes: There is actually a deleted scene for this chapter between Book and Jayne. It messed up the momentum but I liked it too much to completely delete it. Weird Ass Happenings
Chapter one, Chapter Two
Mal lay awake, somewhere between Dusk and Dawn on the fourth night since they lay down arms and the hell of the battle of serenity morphed into something unimaginatively worse. Every second ticked by, anticipating the end and knowing somewhere around them a comrade, a friend, was breathing their last because someone out there didn’t think to send in med ships for the surviving soldiers.
Food had run out more than a day ago. Water wasn’t far behind. Medical supplies had been a myth since before the fighting had ended. Blood and bodies were the only thing in plentiful supply now. On the cold nights some folk had taken to stripping corpses, allies and enemies alike, of their clothing and uniforms to use as fuel for fires to keep warm. He and Zoe had spent the day hunting through corpses for something, anything, to eat only to come up with a couple protein bars that wouldn’t have been enough for even one of them. He’d convinced Zoe to take it, insisting she needed all she could to keep her body strong enough to fight off infection in the half dozen minor wounds she’d gained in the battle. He knew why he’d done it at the time but his stomach cramping to painfully from hunger to let him sleep made him wish he hadn’t.
A long night lay ahead of him, with nothing but hunger, a dozen aches and pains, and the corpses all around him for company. At least he had Zoe with him still, now sleeping shoulder to shoulder beside him.
He never knew exactly when during that long night she started to stir, eyes dancing beneath their lids as a nightmare took hold of her. It took him a moment to register that he should wake her up before some part of his mind argued to let her lie. What could she be dreaming about that was worse than this?
He reached over and shook her gently anyway. “Zoe.” He whispered. “Zoe!”
She came awake with a start. “Sir!” She said eyes jerking open, terror in them as she reached for the pistol she didn’t carry anymore. She reached out and clutched his arm, eyes wider than he could remember. “Mercy shot sir.”
He’d thought he’d been too tired, too drained, too wrung through completely and so unable to feel any more than he already did that nothing could register anymore. The sheer dread and horror that went through him at that moment, when he understood what she meant, took everything to a new level.
“Zoe.” He said, forcing calm he never thought to feel again into his voice as he gripped both her arms. She was shaking. It was weird. He never thought he’d see her shake before. “Zoe it was just a dream.”
“I was so hungry I…”
“Zoe! It was just a dream.” He said again, shaking her a little. Gorramit they had to get out of here. He was loosing more by the second to death but even more were slowly slipping away like this. This valley was breeding madness in them and for someone who’d had the line blurred so badly before ever setting foot here he could see Zoe slipping into it already. “Hold yourself together Zoe. You are not becoming that. You are not going to make me give that shot.”
It was only a moment but it seemed to stretch on for yet another hellish eternity as the Zoe he knew gathered herself together and that broken shell shocked woman disappeared. He knew they were running out of time, for all of them and for Zoe. He wasn’t sure if she’d be able to pull herself together next time. He looked away, not wanting to see this, only to see the corpse of a private who’d blown his own brains out two days ago. Would it all come down to that?
“Are you here Zoe?” He asked, pulling his attention back to her when he thought she’d pulled herself together.
“I am sir.” She said slowly. “Won’t happen again.” She settled back beside him, there wasn’t much else she could do. “Sir?”
“Zoe?” He asked, inviting her to speak.
“There’s something you should know. Case something happens and I’m not around to warn you.” He couldn’t make himself protest. “Back on Du-Khang I saw someone who should have been dead and buried back at Groves End. He came right up to me. I thought I was hallucinating until he shot me.”
Mal turned to look at her, if he hadn’t of wondered if she’d been telling the truth about that time he would have thought she had hallucinated the entire thing. “how’d you know it was him?”
“I remember his face.” She said slowly. “And he killed someone the same way I tried to kill him.” Mal raised an eyebrow, not saying that she killed pretty much the most efficient way more of the time. It wasn’t weird to find imitators of that. “I shot off his di-di sir.”
Mal closed his eyes and winced at the idea. “Remind me never to piss you off Zoe.”
“Yes sir.” She said, the driest of humor that could only be found so far in hell you’re an inch away from madness in her voice. “And sir-”
“We’ll worry about that when we’re out of here Zoe.” Mal said, patting her shoulder and glueing his eyes to the sky. “Just hold yourself together.”
Three days later he’d been considering giving her the mercy shot she’d asked for and then taking one himself when the med ships finally did come.
Wash took a few hesitant steps onto the bridge, not sure how to approach his wife right now. After the Nishka incident he’d started to understand there were some places where their worlds were incomparativly different and him sticking his nose into certain parts of her life before they met would only get someone hurt but still… he was her husband and her knew she was hurting far more than she let on.
It had been four hours since Jayne’s call from the trading post about the “weird ass” occurrence. Three hours since Mal had turned the efforts of cleaning up the wreckage over to the local authorities and he and Zoe had started to help the efforts to track down the one responsible. Wash had thought space had frozen over when Jayne said Mal had said they’d be doing this job for free, though Wash knew Zoe and Mal both felt a weird attachment to this place he didn’t understand.
They’d gotten back a little under an hour ago and Zoe had made an uncharacteristic retreat while Mal had given a loose explanation to the crew. Someone had attacked their contact and was possibly targeting someone on the crew, they were helping the town see if they could track down whoever it was. If the person had already left they’d do the same and try to lose whoever it was in the black. Despite Jayne’s protests about running Mal had insisted that when all you knew was someone was hunting you your first course of action should be to shake them off your trail.
It sounded like the standard run and hide scenario that was a pretty decent way to fly when you were a crew of smugglers on a ship without something more powerful than Jayne’s Vera.
But it didn’t explain what was up with Zoe.
He entered the bridge and sat down on his chair, trying to seem as casual as he could. Wash messed with a plastic T-rex while flicking a switch here and there to check through some random engine readings he didn’t really care about at that moment. It wasn’t until Zoe had turned to leave without even acknowledging his presence that he spoke. “Zoe?”
“She turned, saying nothing.
“remember back after Nishka? When I said I’d try not to get jealous of you and Mal’s war buddyness cause it seemed to lead to electrodes and unpleasantness?” She nodded slowly, a tiny hint of a dry smile on her lips. Wash had to admit it had been that kind of a conversation. “I said you couldn’t blame me if I got paranoid from time to time though. We’ve been married three years Zoe, and you know when you tell me not to ask I don’t. Is this one of those times? Cause it’s starting to feel like you have a secret and if it’s like the dreams and you won’t talk about it cause you can’t I’ll back off. But we’re flying blind. If there’s something hunting us we should know.” He stood slowly, going over to her. He took her hands in his, pulling her close until they were only a breath away. He could see something turning behind her eyes, fear, calculation, love, trust, and pain, more than her understood for sure. “Zoe I’m tired of flying blind. I’m tired of seeing things hurt you and not even knowing why. I’m a semi-muscular man who can’t protect his wide from ghosts even in our own bed. Do you have any idea what kind of a wimp that makes me?”
A small, sad, smile spread across her lips before she lowered her forehead to rest on his shoulder. He held her close, feeling steel tight tension in every line of her body and exhaustion in every little motion she made as she breathed. “It’s all right baby, I’ll still be here.” He whispered.
It was a long time before either of them moved again. It wasn’t until Mal came to the bridge to tell Wash they were heading to Lam’s Crossing on the far side of the world to follow up on a lead that they broke apart.
It was only as Mal was leaving, Wash lifting Serenity up to move already, that Zoe responded to Wash’s questions. She leaned near his ear, whispering to him. “I’ll explain it all soon as I talk to the captain. This is going to get ugly, you have a right to know why.” She stood and was after Mal before Wash could respond.
There were times when Zoe saw signs that she and Mal simply thought alike. The decade they’d known each other seemed to have formed minds that thought along the same courses, measuring logic, honor, and preservation of self and crew in the same mix. So it wasn’t a complete surprise when Mal led her to a more or less private section of the catwalk above the cargo hold and broached the same subject she’d wanted to talk to him about. “you have to tell them Zoe.” He said, his usual subtly not failing him.
“I know sir.”
“I’m the first to say that it’s best kept quiet. Does nothin’ but cause all manner of troubles, especially round here. But You saw back there. It was him. And we can’t fly into battle witho- huh?”
“Glad to see you’ve caught up sir.” Zoe said with a small smirk as the captain’s attempt to reason with her cut off. “I understand. Like Lieutenant Stratson said, ‘personal is only personal until someone else gets hurt.’ He was mad the last time I saw him, six years hasn’t made him any saner judging by the trading post. The entire crew could be at risk.”
Mal nodded once, a quiet almost awkwardness falling between them. Zoe guessed Mal was trying to sort out which instincts to follow, if her own issues were any sign. This was a problem that had existed in a different time, to two soldiers who might as well of been completely different people. If he’d shown up in the days before Serenity Valley Zoe’s instincts would have probably been to glue herself to Mal’s side and put her faith in him and his faith, trusting without a doubt in her mind that he‘d pull her through even if he had to physically carry her to the end.
Now… what would she do now? It had been Wash who’d soothed her nerves and fears, but did she trust the Captain any less? Somehow she wasn’t so content to just lay her entire fate in his hands.
“You don’t need to tell them about that part you know.” Mal said, finally breaking the silence. “Just tell them about Grove’s End and the Ghost, make sure there are no surprises. The rest is just an old fear Zoe, ain’t got no meaning anymore.”
“You really think that sir?” Zoe asked, her voice hard meeting his eyes for the first time since the silence had fallen. “I remember his eyes on Du-Khang, he took that darkness with him. I s-”
She was cut off as the ship lurched and rolled beneath them, all but flinging them from the catwalk as they clung to the railings for dear life. “What the wai po gorram mai le!” Mal shouted over the roar of a minor explosion outside Serenity.
Mal headed off in the direction of the engine room to check with Kaylee. Zoe broke into a run toward the bridge, alerts blaring around them as Wash reported in over the intercom. “Right main turbine blew, backup’s engaging but only at half power.” The ship jolted again and the com unit slammed against the board below it before Serenity jolted again and kept shaking. She crept more than walked forward, fighting to keep her balance with every step.
Zoe crept forward, picking her way through the rubble of Du-Khang Mal’s orders ringing in her ears. “Find somewhere safe for us to bed down for the night. Do not engage unless it’s necessary.” It was a sign of how badly things were going that he hadn’t specified what was necessary. He knew better than to give her a license to kill with her discretion. The hotter war got the closer she was forced to that old dark place and it was his orders that clarified the line she couldn’t cross.
The fighting had dissolved into guerrilla warfare, turning the streets and every building of the city into another battle ground that seemed to have no clear cut line of victory save all the enemies dieing before you do. Zoe hated being sent as a forward scout, her nightmare scenario of coming back to find the entire platoon killed by a seeker while she was away more than overpowering the fear of being alone in this kind of a fight. But she knew she was the only one Mal trusted to come back alive from the attempt.
A block away from where the others of the 57th were holding position Zoe found a burned out two story building still solid enough to provide shelter, cover, and as close to safety as they were likely to find in this gorram city.
There were also two alliance soldiers who’d managed to wander out into the road between her and her platoon. They were blocking her path back to Mal and the others. In her mind that counted as necessary.
Her nostrils flared as soon as that thought prossessed. She turned her body, raising her rifle and taking aim. They’d both be dead before they knew they were being watched. Stealth was the craft of a hunter. For an indefinable moment she felt completely aware of herself, muscels bunching and tensing and senses on high alert as she prepared for that kill, a wild rush or adrenalin and power that came before a kill, familiar dangerous yet irresistible. Like a drug she was relapsing into an addiction for.
One shot. One kill.
She’d shot the second before the first had hit the ground. But she felt something off, something wasn’t right. That scream of pain cut off had been caused by something else. Her senses on high alert she looked around, a hunter realizing something just as deadly was around.
When she finally did see him, a man dressed in an indepent’s brown coat and a rifle like her own, grinning at her from across the way it took a moment to recognize the boy through the muck and years. He walked over to her, as casually as if it was main street of a quiet town not some war zone. His unruly black hair was slicked down by mud and sweat and his eyes held venom rather than shock but Zoe recognized the face that had haunted her for years.
Zoe took a slow calming breath, not letting him being back from the dead shake her cool. She didn’t strike him either, though on some level instincts were screaming that killing him was necessary since if he was more than some mirage conjured by her guilt and the hell around them he was likely to try to kill her. She knew she could, should kill him. Survival instincts had never been something she lacked, but she couldn’t make that move. On some level survival instincts were screaming but the actions were lost along the way somewhere.
She could retain her calm in the face of a nightmare coming back, instinct screaming for her to kill or run…
But she couldn’t move either. Her own control paralyzing her, knowing that movement would break the spell and killing him might just drag her across that line.
“What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He quipped , shouldering his rifle to aim straight at her heart. Zoe didn’t blink, she didn’t flinch or try to run. She knew she’d stumbled into death and had been prepared for this years ago. She barely even begrudged him. If she kept up as she had minutes ago it might end up being the mercy shot Mal wouldn’t be able to deliver.
Maybe it was her cool acceptance that did it. Or maybe it was never his intention to shoot her to begin with but a snarl crossed his face. Rage and pain and a hint of insanity flared across his face as he moved quickly, down and to the right and fired. A white hot pain exploding across her body a breath later told her he’d blown a chuck of her side away, purposefully missing anything vital.
Zoe collapsed to her knees pressing a hand to the injury and trying to recover to return fire. He was gone before she could even regrip her weapon.
Painfully she got to her feet. She needed to get back to the others to get medical aid and then they needed to settle down into the building before the sun set or they’d loose half their platoon during the night. She crossed back over the bodies of the alliance soldiers, freshly killed in a street littered with corpses in various stages of decay. She noted the second one she’d killed, a hole between the eyes and one in the crotch of his pants.
She looked up and stumbled on, forcing everything into the back of her mind. She’d make up a story, she’d break her own rules and lie to Mal. Anything to not live in this moment, in this thought a moment longer. She couldn’t deal.
She’d make up a story sure to get him to yell at her, make him give even stricter outlines on who she was to kill and when. She’d call him sir and take whatever he said. If that didn’t work she’d figure something out.
Her grip on her side tightened, each step shot new fire through her. She wasn’t sentimental, but in a way she preferred that fire. It almost drowned out the pain from the old wounds ripped open.
Mal was somewhere behind her. She could see Wash manually struggling to retain control while trying to activate backups and safety measures to prevent them from crashing.
They’d barely made it onto the bridge when a shudder went through the ship, and the roar of the engines outside went silent. Looking back later, the sudden silence, the sudden drop, and the look on Mal’s face in that breath before Wash flicked the last switches and the backup thrusters roared in to replace them and they were just dropping through air would probably be funny. In that way that near death experiences can be funny mostly because you got away alive. But at that moment, dropping from the sky at a speed only a metal ship could, little could compare to the terror.
The backup thrusters stabilized the ship long enough for them to catch their breath a minute. They had to land as soon as possible, backup thrusters were meant to soften an emergency landing and even someone who knew as little about mechanics as Zoe knew there was something seriously wrong with Serenity.
“There” Mal said, pointing to an empty stretch of land alarmingly close in the vertical sense. Feet were pounding up the hall toward the bridge as everyone of board raced to see the reason for the “turbulence”.
Wash eased her down as gently as he could, not answering the clamor of inquiries as to what was going on. Zoe could read her husband well enough, even in the weird zen calm state he got in when the piloting got tricky like that, to know he didn’t have the answers. She was just glad they hadn’t crashed.
“Nice to see your reputation is well deserved.” A voice said as the cortex blinked to life, a sickly pale man with unruly black hair appearing before them. A jolt of fear nearly greater than the one she was just recovering from ran through her as she recognized the man. “Sit tight, it should take even your genius mechanic a few hours to sort out the mess I left for you. I’ll be by in good time to catch up.” No one said a word. “What? Zoe never told you? Shame on you girl, such good friends as we are. You know they say killing each other is very bonding. Well, I guess we’ll just have to sort through the boring details tonight. Shoot ya later Zoe.”
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg-13
Genre: no Pairing
Verse: Firefly PreBDM
Summary: With a scream of "ratta tat tat" River ripped open an old wound, warning of a danger that has stalked Zoe through the years, a nightmare that formed the friendship that carried her and Mal through Serenity Valley and a hell that is finally catching up.
Notes: There is actually a deleted scene for this chapter between Book and Jayne. It messed up the momentum but I liked it too much to completely delete it. Weird Ass Happenings
Chapter one, Chapter Two
Mal lay awake, somewhere between Dusk and Dawn on the fourth night since they lay down arms and the hell of the battle of serenity morphed into something unimaginatively worse. Every second ticked by, anticipating the end and knowing somewhere around them a comrade, a friend, was breathing their last because someone out there didn’t think to send in med ships for the surviving soldiers.
Food had run out more than a day ago. Water wasn’t far behind. Medical supplies had been a myth since before the fighting had ended. Blood and bodies were the only thing in plentiful supply now. On the cold nights some folk had taken to stripping corpses, allies and enemies alike, of their clothing and uniforms to use as fuel for fires to keep warm. He and Zoe had spent the day hunting through corpses for something, anything, to eat only to come up with a couple protein bars that wouldn’t have been enough for even one of them. He’d convinced Zoe to take it, insisting she needed all she could to keep her body strong enough to fight off infection in the half dozen minor wounds she’d gained in the battle. He knew why he’d done it at the time but his stomach cramping to painfully from hunger to let him sleep made him wish he hadn’t.
A long night lay ahead of him, with nothing but hunger, a dozen aches and pains, and the corpses all around him for company. At least he had Zoe with him still, now sleeping shoulder to shoulder beside him.
He never knew exactly when during that long night she started to stir, eyes dancing beneath their lids as a nightmare took hold of her. It took him a moment to register that he should wake her up before some part of his mind argued to let her lie. What could she be dreaming about that was worse than this?
He reached over and shook her gently anyway. “Zoe.” He whispered. “Zoe!”
She came awake with a start. “Sir!” She said eyes jerking open, terror in them as she reached for the pistol she didn’t carry anymore. She reached out and clutched his arm, eyes wider than he could remember. “Mercy shot sir.”
He’d thought he’d been too tired, too drained, too wrung through completely and so unable to feel any more than he already did that nothing could register anymore. The sheer dread and horror that went through him at that moment, when he understood what she meant, took everything to a new level.
“Zoe.” He said, forcing calm he never thought to feel again into his voice as he gripped both her arms. She was shaking. It was weird. He never thought he’d see her shake before. “Zoe it was just a dream.”
“I was so hungry I…”
“Zoe! It was just a dream.” He said again, shaking her a little. Gorramit they had to get out of here. He was loosing more by the second to death but even more were slowly slipping away like this. This valley was breeding madness in them and for someone who’d had the line blurred so badly before ever setting foot here he could see Zoe slipping into it already. “Hold yourself together Zoe. You are not becoming that. You are not going to make me give that shot.”
It was only a moment but it seemed to stretch on for yet another hellish eternity as the Zoe he knew gathered herself together and that broken shell shocked woman disappeared. He knew they were running out of time, for all of them and for Zoe. He wasn’t sure if she’d be able to pull herself together next time. He looked away, not wanting to see this, only to see the corpse of a private who’d blown his own brains out two days ago. Would it all come down to that?
“Are you here Zoe?” He asked, pulling his attention back to her when he thought she’d pulled herself together.
“I am sir.” She said slowly. “Won’t happen again.” She settled back beside him, there wasn’t much else she could do. “Sir?”
“Zoe?” He asked, inviting her to speak.
“There’s something you should know. Case something happens and I’m not around to warn you.” He couldn’t make himself protest. “Back on Du-Khang I saw someone who should have been dead and buried back at Groves End. He came right up to me. I thought I was hallucinating until he shot me.”
Mal turned to look at her, if he hadn’t of wondered if she’d been telling the truth about that time he would have thought she had hallucinated the entire thing. “how’d you know it was him?”
“I remember his face.” She said slowly. “And he killed someone the same way I tried to kill him.” Mal raised an eyebrow, not saying that she killed pretty much the most efficient way more of the time. It wasn’t weird to find imitators of that. “I shot off his di-di sir.”
Mal closed his eyes and winced at the idea. “Remind me never to piss you off Zoe.”
“Yes sir.” She said, the driest of humor that could only be found so far in hell you’re an inch away from madness in her voice. “And sir-”
“We’ll worry about that when we’re out of here Zoe.” Mal said, patting her shoulder and glueing his eyes to the sky. “Just hold yourself together.”
Three days later he’d been considering giving her the mercy shot she’d asked for and then taking one himself when the med ships finally did come.
Wash took a few hesitant steps onto the bridge, not sure how to approach his wife right now. After the Nishka incident he’d started to understand there were some places where their worlds were incomparativly different and him sticking his nose into certain parts of her life before they met would only get someone hurt but still… he was her husband and her knew she was hurting far more than she let on.
It had been four hours since Jayne’s call from the trading post about the “weird ass” occurrence. Three hours since Mal had turned the efforts of cleaning up the wreckage over to the local authorities and he and Zoe had started to help the efforts to track down the one responsible. Wash had thought space had frozen over when Jayne said Mal had said they’d be doing this job for free, though Wash knew Zoe and Mal both felt a weird attachment to this place he didn’t understand.
They’d gotten back a little under an hour ago and Zoe had made an uncharacteristic retreat while Mal had given a loose explanation to the crew. Someone had attacked their contact and was possibly targeting someone on the crew, they were helping the town see if they could track down whoever it was. If the person had already left they’d do the same and try to lose whoever it was in the black. Despite Jayne’s protests about running Mal had insisted that when all you knew was someone was hunting you your first course of action should be to shake them off your trail.
It sounded like the standard run and hide scenario that was a pretty decent way to fly when you were a crew of smugglers on a ship without something more powerful than Jayne’s Vera.
But it didn’t explain what was up with Zoe.
He entered the bridge and sat down on his chair, trying to seem as casual as he could. Wash messed with a plastic T-rex while flicking a switch here and there to check through some random engine readings he didn’t really care about at that moment. It wasn’t until Zoe had turned to leave without even acknowledging his presence that he spoke. “Zoe?”
“She turned, saying nothing.
“remember back after Nishka? When I said I’d try not to get jealous of you and Mal’s war buddyness cause it seemed to lead to electrodes and unpleasantness?” She nodded slowly, a tiny hint of a dry smile on her lips. Wash had to admit it had been that kind of a conversation. “I said you couldn’t blame me if I got paranoid from time to time though. We’ve been married three years Zoe, and you know when you tell me not to ask I don’t. Is this one of those times? Cause it’s starting to feel like you have a secret and if it’s like the dreams and you won’t talk about it cause you can’t I’ll back off. But we’re flying blind. If there’s something hunting us we should know.” He stood slowly, going over to her. He took her hands in his, pulling her close until they were only a breath away. He could see something turning behind her eyes, fear, calculation, love, trust, and pain, more than her understood for sure. “Zoe I’m tired of flying blind. I’m tired of seeing things hurt you and not even knowing why. I’m a semi-muscular man who can’t protect his wide from ghosts even in our own bed. Do you have any idea what kind of a wimp that makes me?”
A small, sad, smile spread across her lips before she lowered her forehead to rest on his shoulder. He held her close, feeling steel tight tension in every line of her body and exhaustion in every little motion she made as she breathed. “It’s all right baby, I’ll still be here.” He whispered.
It was a long time before either of them moved again. It wasn’t until Mal came to the bridge to tell Wash they were heading to Lam’s Crossing on the far side of the world to follow up on a lead that they broke apart.
It was only as Mal was leaving, Wash lifting Serenity up to move already, that Zoe responded to Wash’s questions. She leaned near his ear, whispering to him. “I’ll explain it all soon as I talk to the captain. This is going to get ugly, you have a right to know why.” She stood and was after Mal before Wash could respond.
There were times when Zoe saw signs that she and Mal simply thought alike. The decade they’d known each other seemed to have formed minds that thought along the same courses, measuring logic, honor, and preservation of self and crew in the same mix. So it wasn’t a complete surprise when Mal led her to a more or less private section of the catwalk above the cargo hold and broached the same subject she’d wanted to talk to him about. “you have to tell them Zoe.” He said, his usual subtly not failing him.
“I know sir.”
“I’m the first to say that it’s best kept quiet. Does nothin’ but cause all manner of troubles, especially round here. But You saw back there. It was him. And we can’t fly into battle witho- huh?”
“Glad to see you’ve caught up sir.” Zoe said with a small smirk as the captain’s attempt to reason with her cut off. “I understand. Like Lieutenant Stratson said, ‘personal is only personal until someone else gets hurt.’ He was mad the last time I saw him, six years hasn’t made him any saner judging by the trading post. The entire crew could be at risk.”
Mal nodded once, a quiet almost awkwardness falling between them. Zoe guessed Mal was trying to sort out which instincts to follow, if her own issues were any sign. This was a problem that had existed in a different time, to two soldiers who might as well of been completely different people. If he’d shown up in the days before Serenity Valley Zoe’s instincts would have probably been to glue herself to Mal’s side and put her faith in him and his faith, trusting without a doubt in her mind that he‘d pull her through even if he had to physically carry her to the end.
Now… what would she do now? It had been Wash who’d soothed her nerves and fears, but did she trust the Captain any less? Somehow she wasn’t so content to just lay her entire fate in his hands.
“You don’t need to tell them about that part you know.” Mal said, finally breaking the silence. “Just tell them about Grove’s End and the Ghost, make sure there are no surprises. The rest is just an old fear Zoe, ain’t got no meaning anymore.”
“You really think that sir?” Zoe asked, her voice hard meeting his eyes for the first time since the silence had fallen. “I remember his eyes on Du-Khang, he took that darkness with him. I s-”
She was cut off as the ship lurched and rolled beneath them, all but flinging them from the catwalk as they clung to the railings for dear life. “What the wai po gorram mai le!” Mal shouted over the roar of a minor explosion outside Serenity.
Mal headed off in the direction of the engine room to check with Kaylee. Zoe broke into a run toward the bridge, alerts blaring around them as Wash reported in over the intercom. “Right main turbine blew, backup’s engaging but only at half power.” The ship jolted again and the com unit slammed against the board below it before Serenity jolted again and kept shaking. She crept more than walked forward, fighting to keep her balance with every step.
Zoe crept forward, picking her way through the rubble of Du-Khang Mal’s orders ringing in her ears. “Find somewhere safe for us to bed down for the night. Do not engage unless it’s necessary.” It was a sign of how badly things were going that he hadn’t specified what was necessary. He knew better than to give her a license to kill with her discretion. The hotter war got the closer she was forced to that old dark place and it was his orders that clarified the line she couldn’t cross.
The fighting had dissolved into guerrilla warfare, turning the streets and every building of the city into another battle ground that seemed to have no clear cut line of victory save all the enemies dieing before you do. Zoe hated being sent as a forward scout, her nightmare scenario of coming back to find the entire platoon killed by a seeker while she was away more than overpowering the fear of being alone in this kind of a fight. But she knew she was the only one Mal trusted to come back alive from the attempt.
A block away from where the others of the 57th were holding position Zoe found a burned out two story building still solid enough to provide shelter, cover, and as close to safety as they were likely to find in this gorram city.
There were also two alliance soldiers who’d managed to wander out into the road between her and her platoon. They were blocking her path back to Mal and the others. In her mind that counted as necessary.
Her nostrils flared as soon as that thought prossessed. She turned her body, raising her rifle and taking aim. They’d both be dead before they knew they were being watched. Stealth was the craft of a hunter. For an indefinable moment she felt completely aware of herself, muscels bunching and tensing and senses on high alert as she prepared for that kill, a wild rush or adrenalin and power that came before a kill, familiar dangerous yet irresistible. Like a drug she was relapsing into an addiction for.
One shot. One kill.
She’d shot the second before the first had hit the ground. But she felt something off, something wasn’t right. That scream of pain cut off had been caused by something else. Her senses on high alert she looked around, a hunter realizing something just as deadly was around.
When she finally did see him, a man dressed in an indepent’s brown coat and a rifle like her own, grinning at her from across the way it took a moment to recognize the boy through the muck and years. He walked over to her, as casually as if it was main street of a quiet town not some war zone. His unruly black hair was slicked down by mud and sweat and his eyes held venom rather than shock but Zoe recognized the face that had haunted her for years.
Zoe took a slow calming breath, not letting him being back from the dead shake her cool. She didn’t strike him either, though on some level instincts were screaming that killing him was necessary since if he was more than some mirage conjured by her guilt and the hell around them he was likely to try to kill her. She knew she could, should kill him. Survival instincts had never been something she lacked, but she couldn’t make that move. On some level survival instincts were screaming but the actions were lost along the way somewhere.
She could retain her calm in the face of a nightmare coming back, instinct screaming for her to kill or run…
But she couldn’t move either. Her own control paralyzing her, knowing that movement would break the spell and killing him might just drag her across that line.
“What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He quipped , shouldering his rifle to aim straight at her heart. Zoe didn’t blink, she didn’t flinch or try to run. She knew she’d stumbled into death and had been prepared for this years ago. She barely even begrudged him. If she kept up as she had minutes ago it might end up being the mercy shot Mal wouldn’t be able to deliver.
Maybe it was her cool acceptance that did it. Or maybe it was never his intention to shoot her to begin with but a snarl crossed his face. Rage and pain and a hint of insanity flared across his face as he moved quickly, down and to the right and fired. A white hot pain exploding across her body a breath later told her he’d blown a chuck of her side away, purposefully missing anything vital.
Zoe collapsed to her knees pressing a hand to the injury and trying to recover to return fire. He was gone before she could even regrip her weapon.
Painfully she got to her feet. She needed to get back to the others to get medical aid and then they needed to settle down into the building before the sun set or they’d loose half their platoon during the night. She crossed back over the bodies of the alliance soldiers, freshly killed in a street littered with corpses in various stages of decay. She noted the second one she’d killed, a hole between the eyes and one in the crotch of his pants.
She looked up and stumbled on, forcing everything into the back of her mind. She’d make up a story, she’d break her own rules and lie to Mal. Anything to not live in this moment, in this thought a moment longer. She couldn’t deal.
She’d make up a story sure to get him to yell at her, make him give even stricter outlines on who she was to kill and when. She’d call him sir and take whatever he said. If that didn’t work she’d figure something out.
Her grip on her side tightened, each step shot new fire through her. She wasn’t sentimental, but in a way she preferred that fire. It almost drowned out the pain from the old wounds ripped open.
Mal was somewhere behind her. She could see Wash manually struggling to retain control while trying to activate backups and safety measures to prevent them from crashing.
They’d barely made it onto the bridge when a shudder went through the ship, and the roar of the engines outside went silent. Looking back later, the sudden silence, the sudden drop, and the look on Mal’s face in that breath before Wash flicked the last switches and the backup thrusters roared in to replace them and they were just dropping through air would probably be funny. In that way that near death experiences can be funny mostly because you got away alive. But at that moment, dropping from the sky at a speed only a metal ship could, little could compare to the terror.
The backup thrusters stabilized the ship long enough for them to catch their breath a minute. They had to land as soon as possible, backup thrusters were meant to soften an emergency landing and even someone who knew as little about mechanics as Zoe knew there was something seriously wrong with Serenity.
“There” Mal said, pointing to an empty stretch of land alarmingly close in the vertical sense. Feet were pounding up the hall toward the bridge as everyone of board raced to see the reason for the “turbulence”.
Wash eased her down as gently as he could, not answering the clamor of inquiries as to what was going on. Zoe could read her husband well enough, even in the weird zen calm state he got in when the piloting got tricky like that, to know he didn’t have the answers. She was just glad they hadn’t crashed.
“Nice to see your reputation is well deserved.” A voice said as the cortex blinked to life, a sickly pale man with unruly black hair appearing before them. A jolt of fear nearly greater than the one she was just recovering from ran through her as she recognized the man. “Sit tight, it should take even your genius mechanic a few hours to sort out the mess I left for you. I’ll be by in good time to catch up.” No one said a word. “What? Zoe never told you? Shame on you girl, such good friends as we are. You know they say killing each other is very bonding. Well, I guess we’ll just have to sort through the boring details tonight. Shoot ya later Zoe.”
