Firefly fic!

[letterblade]

Yeah, it was inevitable.

Two (so far; at least one more must be coming, because I have some important things about Mal yet to say) little CWP pieces from butt-biting bunnies. (Characterization Without Plot. Like porn, only different.) Set during "War Stories," the episode that ate my brain (and only mostly because I'm a sucker for a good torture scene.) Yeah, I know they're in different tenses and such. Don't know what to do about that yet.

Walking Out, Coming In

Wash

How do you walk out of a nightmare? That's what Wash has been wondering ever since he walked in to this one.

He hadn't walked out of it before; he knows that. It ain't walking when you're leaning on your wife's shoulder, trembling with aftershocks, with the other man's screams following you all the way down the hall. Ringing in your ears when you're back on the ship--and you still have two ears for it to ring in, but you wonder by now if he has none, or if they took a finger or two instead, or an eye, or god only knows what to make him scream like that. And Wash had never heard Mal Reynolds scream in his life.

No. He hadn't walked out until now. Until that shaved-head goon went down the shaft and Jayne got Mal back in through the window with one great smooth heave and Zoe very carefully unwrapped the barbed chain from his neck. Until Niska had vanished into some locked rabbit hole, and Jayne had pounded at the door, cursing, until Mal raised one hand, wrist chafed bloody, and choked out, "No."

"What?" Jayne grunts.

"He's not worth it."

"Sir?" Zoe asks, very quietly. Just one word, and Wash can hear that she meant are you sure? You want revenge? You want to get his threat out of the way? We're with you to the end. Give us the word, we hunt him down for you.

Because she knows him and she understands, and Wash doesn't, never will, even though he's shared the torture rack with the man.

Mal lurches to his feet. The sight of it, the desperate sway of his motion, twists Wash's gut. "I meant what I said." His voice is painfully hoarse. Wash had heard those screams. He knows why. "Lan-dan jiang, overgrown bully wouldn't even as do his own work. Can't take the man seriously. Not worth us dying here chasing him down."

And he is still the Captain, after all. Wash swallows hard. He's imagined revenge. He's imagined Mal lopping off Niska's ear. He's almost wanted it.

"Then the longer we stay here, sir..." Zoe says, infinitely calm and soothing.

"The more goons about." Mal wipes his slick hands on his trousers--those ridiculously high-waisted stripe-legged military tight pants, already stained from the wounds in his gut. Zoe pulls out two spare guns, as if she's planned and imagined giving them to him all along. He takes them, checks them, panting with pain.

Somehow pathetic and unspeakably sad, the stained pants. Though no more pathetic, Wash supposes, than staggering about beaten and 'lectrode-burned in a torn-open Hawaiian shirt. Nice aquamarine hue, that one, with palms. He bites back a hysterical laugh. No good sounding like the shell-shocked soldiers. That's his wife's job, his captain's. Not his.

"Let's go," says Mal. Zoe offers him an arm. He refuses.

Now for the walking out of hell, Wash thinks.

And apparently, if you're Mal Reynolds, you just do it, one step at a time, with your shirt still flapping about your armpits and your gut still bleeding and a pistol in each hand. Wash watches him with the sort of awe one reserves for a mountain getting up and walking to the sea. He sees the blood, he sees the wounds, gashes of torture upon a body that should have given up hours ago. He knows he or Jayne or Kaylee or anyone else he knows, except maybe--and he almost doubts--his wife, would be begging or dead on the deck from that.

There goes Mal, just walking out, and Zoe and Jayne walk after him, sweat-soaked from battle, and a hint in their eyes of the horrified awe coursing through Wash. And Wash follows, hoping Mal's footsteps out of hell will be good enough for him, because he doesn't know how to leave on his own, and Mal, his breath hissing out in agony with every step, makes it look so easy.

Zoe, at least, manages to talk him into letting Jayne take the point.

***

Walking out of hell was hard, and Wash keeps being afraid that he's left some bit of himself back there, but coming into Serenity is almost harder. Everything is too bright, too quiet. His ears are ringing from gunfire. He barely registers that he has dropped his gun at last, that Zoe is holding his hand now. He's not entirely sure anything is real. Book and Inara and Kaylee greet and comfort and touch, gentle, soothing. Whispers of relief, horror, attempts at sympathy which Mal likely will have none of. River hovering in the distance, murmuring words nobody hears or cares to. Jayne grumbles in Chinese, manages to hide the bullet hole in his side from any unwanted attention. Simon, very pale, one short sharp curse under his breath as he surveys the bloody massacre that is Mal's chest and stomach.

Jayne punches the console and the bay door closes, and Kaylee is already scuttling off to the bridge because somebody needs to fly her away and nobody quite wants to shake Wash into reality to do it.

After the final airlock seals, Mal makes it three steps more towards the rest of the ship, then collapses. Most of the crew flutters around him. Simon gets Jayne to help him up and off to the infirmary, and Mal's worn brown boots are practically dragging on the deck as the big merc swings him up and takes a few steps, and then Book takes his other arm and between them he doesn't have to walk any more.

"Be very, very careful with him," Simon is saying, "I don't want to risk doing any more damage by secondary tearing with abdominal injuries those extensive, I just hope there's no damage to the digestive membranes, with luck I won't have to operate..."

"And his ear?" Inara asks, very softly, as if she has a vested interest in the symmetry of Mal's face.

"With the equipment you borrowed..." Simon is examining even as they walk. "Yes, it should be all right, I..."

"You already borrowed equipment for me?" Mal croaks. Wash had almost been sure he was unconscious.

"Your, ah, ear is waiting for you," said Simon.

"Didn't think you'd get me out."

"Idiot," Wash whispers, far out of Mal's earshot. "Of course we would." Book says almost the same thing, and then Simon opens the door and they all ease Mal through, and Wash and Zoe stand alone in sudden and incomprehensible silence, still holding hands.

River watches them from high on a catwalk, but neither of them pays attention, and she'll leave eventually, trying not to look.

"You here, honey?" Zoe asks finally, turning to face him, years of sorrow and pain and violence lying open in her eyes, because nobody who doesn't understand what torture and killing and firefights can do to a man could imagine that he'd be anywhere else.

But that grounds him--Zoe, his beautiful beloved wife--and he's back, in the warm light and brown metal of Serenity's cargo bay, suddenly miles from the blue walls of the space station and the cold metal rack against his back and Mal's agonized screams and everything that had been hell. And it could almost all be a bad dream, because somehow, almost, just maybe, he's made it out. Not untouched, but safe. Alive. And Zoe, too, alive, everyone alive, and he knows he won't have any scars, and Simon's just good enough that Mal might not either.

"Yeah," he says, beginning to hear the soft whirrs of Serenity without imagining gunshots, smell her familiar recycled air without imagining the stink of sweat and blood and smoke. Any poor bastard can get dragged down into hell, he thinks. Takes a great man to walk back up. "Yeah, I'm here."

***

Simon

What was it Book said? Huh choo-shung huh tza-jiao duh tzang-huo? Seems just about right.

The preacher and the merc laid their captain down on Simon's table, and the doctor was already scrubbing his hands clean, tugging on gloves, laying out the basic medications and implements on a tray.

"Shepherd, I might need an assistant for some of this."

Book folded his hands and looked gravely down at Mal. "Anything, Doctor. Or do you mean I should find Zoe?"

"No." That was Mal, startling both of them. Simon had been so sure he had given in entirely when he'd collapsed, lost himself in the pain, abandoned reality and trusted his crew. "Wash'll need her."

Book and Simon shared one long bewildered glance.

"No, Preacher," said Simon at last, thinking of kneecaps and Shan Yu and the catlike dart of the head with which Book had literally dodged a bullet. "I think you'll do just fine."

The silence ended; Book turned to scrub and get gloves on. Simon whirred back into motion, taking swift and careful inventory of every mark on Mal, for any well-trained doctor knows that a man coming out of the hands of torturers could be hiding some deep or terrible wound under any drop of blood.

"Right, Preacher, hand me the--"

Simon stopped short, two gloved fingers resting on a little round electricity burn, fainter than any of the others, and there was a matching one, lower down on Mal's chest.

"Shit," he whispered, with tremendous feeling.

"Good going, Doc," said Mal. "You'll fit right in one day."

"Thanks," said Simon. "Preacher, second cabinet above the sink, third row of vials from the right." He gestured vaguely. "No, little silvery things. Local anesthetic. Take down the entire stock and put it on a cart. I want things on hand. Next, drawer right beneath you, butterfly needle." And he didn't even have to tell Book which of the various syringes that was. He didn't know whether to be surprised or satisfied as Book prepared the injection himself and dropped the loaded needle carefully into Simon's hand. "Have you worked as a medic?"

"I have some knowledge, yes," said Book, gentle and dignified and ever-so-slightly evasive, as always.

Kneecaps, thought Simon again, and leaned over to probe gently around Mal's severed ear, ignoring his captain's harsh whimpers of pain. There, and in went the first local anesthetic, and he passed the needle back to Book to be reloaded.

"With that taking effect, we'll be ready to reattach in five minutes, but I may have to triage it. When I tell you, take his ear out of the freezer. It needs to warm up, but only a little. I think we'll have a very low necrosis rate though."

"I'm gonna get me an ear?" Mal croaked.

"Yes, captain," said Book. "You're going to get you an ear."

"Shiny."

"Don't go into shock," said Simon, somehow trusting that Mal could keep himself out of it by sheer force of will. "It complicates things." Simon drew a deep breath, looking back to the little circle of abraded skin in the middle of Mal's chest and the lines of distorted, fluid-soaked flesh running out from it. "They used a hydra on you, didn't they?"

"Wouldn't claim to know the technical name."

"Dear God," Book whispered. "I was afraid of that." Simon watched his brown hands, clutching the handle of the cart of anesthetics, go white-knuckled under the thin gloves.

You know too much, preacher, Simon was on the verge of saying, but knew this was not the time.

"Captain, this is very important," Simon said, gathering himself. "Did they extract the probes?"

"Pulled some little things on strings out of me. With pliers. Hurt like hell."

With pliers. Tah mah de... "That would be extracting the probes, yes," said Simon weakly. "How many?"

"If they were on tracking filaments," Book said quietly, as if prompting him.

"Wasn't exactly counting," Mal said, almost at the same time.

"Right," said Simon. "Now, are there any injuries that I cannot see, anything to other parts of your body, or something that wouldn't show on the surface?"

"Besides the little jing zi shee-niou fei oo?"

"Besides the hydra."

"No."

You're lying, sir, but I'll take your word for it, because that one thing I already know about. "Good." Simon let out a little breath of relief. "It could be much worse," he said, to nobody in particular.

"Not sure whether that's encouraging or not," said Mal. Simon ignored that.

"Ready to begin, Doctor?" Book asked.

Simon nodded. "This is the order of operation. Any probes left in him could go rogue at any moment, so we need to remove those first. Then the ear. Then the wounds in his stomach. Then we're in the clear--small wounds, bandages, cosmetic stuff--"

"Jayne," Mal interrupted.

"I beg your pardon?"

"What?" came a low and distinctly Jayne growl. Simon turned sharply to see him standing in one corner, his t-shirt rucked up to his armpit, plastering a bandage onto his side.

"Jayne!" Simon sputtered. "What were you doing concealing an injury from me?"

The big man shrugged, winced from it, and spun out another foot of bandage. "Ain't nothing but a graze. Captain needs your attention, so hop to it."

"But--"

"Got any painkillers?"

Simon stared at him. "Cabinet next to the door, blue bottle, take two every four hours," he said, almost without thinking.

"He is right," said Book soothingly.

Simon opened his mouth, then closed it. "I know," he said at last. "I just don't expect my patients to triage themselves."

"Jayne can take care of himself," Mal declared hoarsely.

"I've taken worse than this without no fancy doctor to patch it up," said Jayne, pulling his shirt back down. "Take care of the captain." He tucked the blue bottle into his waistband like a gun and left.

Simon drew a deep breath, turned, and held out his hand to Book.

"Local anesthetic." And Book placed the needle in his open palm.

"You ain't gonna put me under?" Mal asked.

"No," Simon said firmly, and started searching for the best place to inject a local at the entry point of the hydra.

"Why?" Mal asked, between little grunts of pain.

"I'll tell you when you're saner."

***

"So why didn't you put me under?"

Mal was on his feet, wincing only a little now, carefully buttoning down a fresh shirt over the bandages across his chest and stomach.

"You're on some strong painkillers at the moment, captain," said Simon, carefully stacking away the remaining anesthetic. "I'm not sure you're saner."

"I don't care what I'm hopped up on, that wasn't a request. Why didn't you put me under?"

Simon snapped the cabinet closed, drew himself up, and turned to face his captain.

"There were defibrillator burns on your chest."

Mal's expression closed up like shutters had fallen behind his eyes. "They had a hell of a lot of electrodes on me, Doc," he said, evasive to the last. "That don't mean nothing."

"No, actually. A defibrillator leaves a very distinct mark that cannot be compared to that left by a repeating electric charge."

"So why wouldn't you put me under?"

"Because if there were defibrillator burns on your chest, that means your heart stopped."

Mal looked away.

"One of those things doctors don't tell people so that they feel safer," Simon went on, "is that a general anesthetic can be, under the wrong circumstances, dangerous, even fatal. Your circulatory system can be significantly weakened by a heart attack, no matter how justified it was by the circumstances." He paused, remembering a late and terrible night on autopsy duty in the morgue as a student, when a police raid on an extortion ring had hauled out five or six torture victims from somebody's basement, their bodies marked by the telltale white acid tracks of hydra probes eating through their flesh. "I've seen people dead from hydras before," said Simon, a little more gently. "It's not unusual for a body to give out under that kind of pain. In fact, I'm impressed that you got back up again."

"Had help," said Mal.

"At any rate," said Simon, after a pained silence, "I'm not an anesthesiologist. I know the basics, not much more, though probably more than most surgeons know. With that kind of heart failure within the past few hours...if I had put you under, you might never have come back up."

Mal gave him a long, inscrutable stare, then turned away.

"I probably should give you a lecture about how you should have told me whether you had died or something equally important. That counts as an injury I can't see, if it hadn't been for those burns, and I asked about that sort of thing. But I think you've figured it out already."

"Reckon I have," said Mal. "I'll bear it mind the next time somebody tries to torture me to death."

"And succeeds," Simon added.

"But only a little," said Mal, and then flipped his suspenders over his shoulders and clipped them into place.

"Be careful with those," said Simon. "You don't want to abrade those wounds I stitched up."

"I know where they ride," said Mal, thumbing the elastic. Simon handed him another bottle of painkillers.

"Two every four hours. Don't you dare up that dose. And don't let Jayne do it either."

"He probably already has."

"Probably. Or gotten drunk or something stupid like that. I'm not treating two heart failures from men in their prime in one day."

Mal snorted and turned to leave.

"Captain," said Simon quietly, and Mal stopped where he stood but did not turn. "I suspect I or anybody else would have proclaimed you clinically dead for a few minutes back there. Is there..." He drew a deep breath. "Anything you want to talk about?"

Then Mal did turn, staring at him out of narrowed eyes the color of storm skies.

"Weren't nothing but darkness there for me," he said at last, his voice low and grinding and infinitely bitter. "No bright light, none of that shit. Nothing to mean anything in the end. So don't worry your pretty head about it." At the stark white bewilderment on Simon's face, he added, "He didn't hurt me none. My heart didn't give out because he broke me." He turned and opened the door. "You've done your piece, Doc. Thanks for the ear."

And then the door swung closed behind him and Simon was alone, staring blankly into space, lost in thoughts of death and despair and breaking points and Mal. And his sister.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Amazing. Absolutely perfect.




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