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rivendellroseNew fic, requested by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jayneaintagirl - Happy belated birthday, hun!
You asked for pre-Serenity-Valley Mal, to see a Mal who hadn't been touched by all the horrors of the war yet, and maybe I took that a little farther than you meant. I hope you like it, anyway.
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Mal Reynolds
Summary and Warnings: Pre-series by a whole hell of a lot. A quick look at a much more innocent Mal Reynolds, back when the whole story was just barely getting started.
“Who’re you, boy?”
“Malcolm Reynolds, sir.” Mal held out his hand to the man behind the desk, a government clerk he didn’t think he’d met before, though he and his mama’d been buying feed from the general store just down the road long as he could remember. He’d got an awful clean office for a man helping to organize a war, but Mal figured maybe that was how it worked when you were the one doing the recruiting. “I’m here to sign up, to fight for independence.”
The man barely spared him a glance as he pulled out the a sheaf of paperwork. “You eighteen, boy? Don’t be lyin’, now - can’t afford to send you home if you turn out underage, and I don’t wanna handle the paperwork of sending you to forced labor for perjury. This here is a contract, legal and bindin’, and you’re swearing you’re of legal age to sign that.”
“Yessir, turned eighteen last--”
“Can you read?”
Mal blinked at the interruption, but nodded good-naturedly. “English and Mandarin, sir, and I can do sums in my head.” His mama’d always said no good came of a man who couldn’t use his mind, and she’d more or less beat that idea into him in his tutoring.
“Won’t be needin’ with much sums on the field, but with the kind’a men I seen enlistin’ in the last few days we could use a few boys ain’t illiterate sumbitches.” The man nodded slowly, and Mal kept his mouth shut on how it wasn’t anybody’s fault if they’d never been taught the basic niceties of an education. Weren’t everybody on Shadow had a woman like his mama, nor the rest of the ranch-hands and all, to keep ‘em in hand.
“Got any health problems?”
“No, sir. Always been healthy.”
“Well, that’s good news, at least.” The man gave him a critical look up and down. “You read off that vision chart, there, and we’ll waive your medical exam. You got ten pretty fingers, and I’m seeing you got both legs to stand on, so that’ll do us. Don't have time to run every damned kid to the doc for a look-see.”
Mal nodded and stood at the line the man indicated, read off the lines revealed when he pulled back the curtain, and accepted the sheaf of papers and pen when they were handed to him. He signed once in English, once in characters, just like his mama’d taught him to do on formal papers, and then gritted his teeth while the man behind the desk dabbed his thumb in an ink-pad and rolled it across the box next to the signature lines. That was for folks who couldn’t sign for themselves, but it looked like they’d taken it on for everybody, just in case. It grated at his pride to be made to do that, like the signatures weren't enough.
“Back there, boy. You pick up your kit and uniform at the desk, move on and wait for the transport to fill. Should be leavin’ at dusk.”
“At dusk...?”
“Yeah, boy, what’d you think? We charter new transport for every green new kid comes in here? You're lucky you're here on the right day - I seen enough fellas had to take a room in town while we waited for a ship to come in. Sit back and have a good wait. Don’t leave, or we might have to leave you behind, you’ll miss your big adventure.” The man snorted, like it was a real good joke, and Mal bit his tongue a retort. A smart mouth, he expected, wouldn't make him any kind of friends with this stuffy little man. He didn't particularly want to be, anyway.
“Right.” Mal sighed. Mama wouldn’t be happy - she’d wanted him to come back, let her know where he’d be going for basic. Now it sounded like he wouldn’t know until he’d gotten there, and it might be hard to get a wave back to Shadow once he was in training. “Can I send a letter back home, while I’m waiting?”
“Yeah, whatever, just don’t go far.” The man at the desk was already grabbing paperwork for another boy who’d come in the door. Mal nodded and turned back to the next desk.
“Heard you say your name’s Reynolds... you Meg Reynolds’ boy?”
Mal nodded, squinting at the woman behind the desk to see if he recognized her. She looked to be a few years older than his mama, gray hair creeping out of a carefully pinned twist atop her head, and her skin soft as aged leather in the dusty light of the office. “Yeah. You know my mama?”
“You bet. Went to school with her, back when she was still Meggie Claytor. You best make sure your mama knows you’re out here, boy, or she’ll tan you a good one when she gets you back. She don’t hold with runaways.”
“I know.” Mal shifted awkwardly. “And she knows where I am, ma’am. Weren’t happy about it none, but... she knows.” Talk of runaways never did sit well at home - Mal wasn’t sure exactly what had passed between his mama and whoever’d fathered him, but he had a notion he’d not exactly left a forwarding address. Not that his mama would’ve written the man if he had. He got that kind of feeling off it, though he’d never so much as heard the man’s name spoken. He’d seen it on a paper, once, that Mama’d taken out to show the doctor who passed through the ranch several years back. Malcolm Reynolds. Mother: Margaret Reynolds. Father: Samuel Reynolds. It was written in his mama’s hand, and signed by three others he recognized among the oldest hands on the ranch, including Jolene, the hard-bitten lifelong ranch-woman who’d acted as midwife at his birth. The government notary’s signature was dated nearly a month after his birth.
He’d made a careful note of that name, young as he’d been when he saw it. At fourteen, he’d had a notion he might want to hunt down this Sam Reynolds and give him hell for leaving his mama to a lifetime of hard work running everything, including raising Mal, on her own. By the time he was sixteen, he realized he preferred it that way. He had a feeling Mama did, too, and so he gave up any ideas of chasing after the man who’d sired him.
“She told me to write,” he clarified for the woman before him, thinking that if she’d known his mama as long as she claimed, she deserved a bit more explanation, and a bit of assurance that her friend’s son wasn’t the like of the man who’d left her already. “But she said she wasn’t gonna stop me if it was what I had in my heart.”
“Hmph, I reckon not.” The older woman nodded slowly at him, and held out her hand. “Henrietta Flynn. You need a letter sent back to your mama, then, boy? I’ve been meaning to visit Meg one of these days, might as well do it with an errand to pay my way.”
“Mama’s always happy for guests,” Mal said politely. “But I’d be real grateful if you’d take a letter,” he added, grinning.
“Save you a lickin’ when you get back, too, no doubt. Write your letter, boy. I’ll deliever it, and tell your mama I saw you off.” She eyed him intently for a moment. “You take care. Don’t be sending more pain down on that mother of yours - she’s too good a woman to suffer that.”
“I will, ma’am.” Mal accepted the waxed-paper package that she handed him, and the pad of yellowed paper and pen she laid on top of it all, then nodded politely and settled in a chair at the corner of the room to write his quick letter home. He’d barely gotten through the salutation, though, before he realized that Henrietta had a good point. He was doing the right thing by going to war - he had no doubt of the cause and its righteousness - but he hadn’t really thought what it must have been doing to his mama to worry about him maybe not coming back.
It wasn’t like Mal Reynolds didn’t have a fair concept of war being a bad thing for people. He’d heard enough stories from his mama and the hands back home on the ranch that he knew it did damned terrible things to the people around it. But sometimes it needed doing anyway. He knew that from the stories, too, and from the Bible, too. Didn’t it say that evil shouldn’t be tolerated, that the righteous man had to stand for good in the world? His fingers found the worn silver cross around his neck, and he murmured a quick prayer, then kissed it. If he died, it’d be for the greater good. It’d be for freedom, and for Shadow. But a hell of a difference that’d make to Mama.
He’d just have to pray God every day he wouldn’t disappoint her and turn out just like that other no-good Reynolds man that’d left her, some eighteen years ago. He sighed and scratched his chin for a minute with the back of the pen. It was a hell of a weight to carry along with the war, and not knowing what was going to happen in the next few weeks, or where he’d be when they dropped him off, or who he’d be with.
Dear Mama,
I made it fine to town, and am all signed up. I got my uniform, and I met an old friend of yours. She says she’ll take this letter back to you, and I promise I’ll write again soon. As soon as I can.
He kept writing on that old sheaf of paper Henrietta’d given him, trying to keep it light, until the hum of a transport’s engine at the port a few blocks away told him it was time to run down with the other boys and girls who’d gathered, and make a new life of it for a while. It was the first time he’d ever heard the engines of a ship that size, and he was surprised, after a life on a ranch, to find that it didn’t grate on him. It sounded like adventure.
jayneaintagirl - Happy belated birthday, hun! You asked for pre-Serenity-Valley Mal, to see a Mal who hadn't been touched by all the horrors of the war yet, and maybe I took that a little farther than you meant. I hope you like it, anyway.
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Mal Reynolds
Summary and Warnings: Pre-series by a whole hell of a lot. A quick look at a much more innocent Mal Reynolds, back when the whole story was just barely getting started.
“Who’re you, boy?”
“Malcolm Reynolds, sir.” Mal held out his hand to the man behind the desk, a government clerk he didn’t think he’d met before, though he and his mama’d been buying feed from the general store just down the road long as he could remember. He’d got an awful clean office for a man helping to organize a war, but Mal figured maybe that was how it worked when you were the one doing the recruiting. “I’m here to sign up, to fight for independence.”
The man barely spared him a glance as he pulled out the a sheaf of paperwork. “You eighteen, boy? Don’t be lyin’, now - can’t afford to send you home if you turn out underage, and I don’t wanna handle the paperwork of sending you to forced labor for perjury. This here is a contract, legal and bindin’, and you’re swearing you’re of legal age to sign that.”
“Yessir, turned eighteen last--”
“Can you read?”
Mal blinked at the interruption, but nodded good-naturedly. “English and Mandarin, sir, and I can do sums in my head.” His mama’d always said no good came of a man who couldn’t use his mind, and she’d more or less beat that idea into him in his tutoring.
“Won’t be needin’ with much sums on the field, but with the kind’a men I seen enlistin’ in the last few days we could use a few boys ain’t illiterate sumbitches.” The man nodded slowly, and Mal kept his mouth shut on how it wasn’t anybody’s fault if they’d never been taught the basic niceties of an education. Weren’t everybody on Shadow had a woman like his mama, nor the rest of the ranch-hands and all, to keep ‘em in hand.
“Got any health problems?”
“No, sir. Always been healthy.”
“Well, that’s good news, at least.” The man gave him a critical look up and down. “You read off that vision chart, there, and we’ll waive your medical exam. You got ten pretty fingers, and I’m seeing you got both legs to stand on, so that’ll do us. Don't have time to run every damned kid to the doc for a look-see.”
Mal nodded and stood at the line the man indicated, read off the lines revealed when he pulled back the curtain, and accepted the sheaf of papers and pen when they were handed to him. He signed once in English, once in characters, just like his mama’d taught him to do on formal papers, and then gritted his teeth while the man behind the desk dabbed his thumb in an ink-pad and rolled it across the box next to the signature lines. That was for folks who couldn’t sign for themselves, but it looked like they’d taken it on for everybody, just in case. It grated at his pride to be made to do that, like the signatures weren't enough.
“Back there, boy. You pick up your kit and uniform at the desk, move on and wait for the transport to fill. Should be leavin’ at dusk.”
“At dusk...?”
“Yeah, boy, what’d you think? We charter new transport for every green new kid comes in here? You're lucky you're here on the right day - I seen enough fellas had to take a room in town while we waited for a ship to come in. Sit back and have a good wait. Don’t leave, or we might have to leave you behind, you’ll miss your big adventure.” The man snorted, like it was a real good joke, and Mal bit his tongue a retort. A smart mouth, he expected, wouldn't make him any kind of friends with this stuffy little man. He didn't particularly want to be, anyway.
“Right.” Mal sighed. Mama wouldn’t be happy - she’d wanted him to come back, let her know where he’d be going for basic. Now it sounded like he wouldn’t know until he’d gotten there, and it might be hard to get a wave back to Shadow once he was in training. “Can I send a letter back home, while I’m waiting?”
“Yeah, whatever, just don’t go far.” The man at the desk was already grabbing paperwork for another boy who’d come in the door. Mal nodded and turned back to the next desk.
“Heard you say your name’s Reynolds... you Meg Reynolds’ boy?”
Mal nodded, squinting at the woman behind the desk to see if he recognized her. She looked to be a few years older than his mama, gray hair creeping out of a carefully pinned twist atop her head, and her skin soft as aged leather in the dusty light of the office. “Yeah. You know my mama?”
“You bet. Went to school with her, back when she was still Meggie Claytor. You best make sure your mama knows you’re out here, boy, or she’ll tan you a good one when she gets you back. She don’t hold with runaways.”
“I know.” Mal shifted awkwardly. “And she knows where I am, ma’am. Weren’t happy about it none, but... she knows.” Talk of runaways never did sit well at home - Mal wasn’t sure exactly what had passed between his mama and whoever’d fathered him, but he had a notion he’d not exactly left a forwarding address. Not that his mama would’ve written the man if he had. He got that kind of feeling off it, though he’d never so much as heard the man’s name spoken. He’d seen it on a paper, once, that Mama’d taken out to show the doctor who passed through the ranch several years back. Malcolm Reynolds. Mother: Margaret Reynolds. Father: Samuel Reynolds. It was written in his mama’s hand, and signed by three others he recognized among the oldest hands on the ranch, including Jolene, the hard-bitten lifelong ranch-woman who’d acted as midwife at his birth. The government notary’s signature was dated nearly a month after his birth.
He’d made a careful note of that name, young as he’d been when he saw it. At fourteen, he’d had a notion he might want to hunt down this Sam Reynolds and give him hell for leaving his mama to a lifetime of hard work running everything, including raising Mal, on her own. By the time he was sixteen, he realized he preferred it that way. He had a feeling Mama did, too, and so he gave up any ideas of chasing after the man who’d sired him.
“She told me to write,” he clarified for the woman before him, thinking that if she’d known his mama as long as she claimed, she deserved a bit more explanation, and a bit of assurance that her friend’s son wasn’t the like of the man who’d left her already. “But she said she wasn’t gonna stop me if it was what I had in my heart.”
“Hmph, I reckon not.” The older woman nodded slowly at him, and held out her hand. “Henrietta Flynn. You need a letter sent back to your mama, then, boy? I’ve been meaning to visit Meg one of these days, might as well do it with an errand to pay my way.”
“Mama’s always happy for guests,” Mal said politely. “But I’d be real grateful if you’d take a letter,” he added, grinning.
“Save you a lickin’ when you get back, too, no doubt. Write your letter, boy. I’ll deliever it, and tell your mama I saw you off.” She eyed him intently for a moment. “You take care. Don’t be sending more pain down on that mother of yours - she’s too good a woman to suffer that.”
“I will, ma’am.” Mal accepted the waxed-paper package that she handed him, and the pad of yellowed paper and pen she laid on top of it all, then nodded politely and settled in a chair at the corner of the room to write his quick letter home. He’d barely gotten through the salutation, though, before he realized that Henrietta had a good point. He was doing the right thing by going to war - he had no doubt of the cause and its righteousness - but he hadn’t really thought what it must have been doing to his mama to worry about him maybe not coming back.
It wasn’t like Mal Reynolds didn’t have a fair concept of war being a bad thing for people. He’d heard enough stories from his mama and the hands back home on the ranch that he knew it did damned terrible things to the people around it. But sometimes it needed doing anyway. He knew that from the stories, too, and from the Bible, too. Didn’t it say that evil shouldn’t be tolerated, that the righteous man had to stand for good in the world? His fingers found the worn silver cross around his neck, and he murmured a quick prayer, then kissed it. If he died, it’d be for the greater good. It’d be for freedom, and for Shadow. But a hell of a difference that’d make to Mama.
He’d just have to pray God every day he wouldn’t disappoint her and turn out just like that other no-good Reynolds man that’d left her, some eighteen years ago. He sighed and scratched his chin for a minute with the back of the pen. It was a hell of a weight to carry along with the war, and not knowing what was going to happen in the next few weeks, or where he’d be when they dropped him off, or who he’d be with.
Dear Mama,
I made it fine to town, and am all signed up. I got my uniform, and I met an old friend of yours. She says she’ll take this letter back to you, and I promise I’ll write again soon. As soon as I can.
He kept writing on that old sheaf of paper Henrietta’d given him, trying to keep it light, until the hum of a transport’s engine at the port a few blocks away told him it was time to run down with the other boys and girls who’d gathered, and make a new life of it for a while. It was the first time he’d ever heard the engines of a ship that size, and he was surprised, after a life on a ranch, to find that it didn’t grate on him. It sounded like adventure.
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Date: 2006-06-12 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 03:19 pm (UTC)(I have good timing, what can I say.)
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Date: 2006-06-12 02:42 am (UTC)I don't know if it's the not-so-great last few hours I've had, or if it's the fact that this story was written for me (squee!) cause you love me so much, or if it's just a brilliantly written story, but it's gotten me all emotional-like. *hugs*
Poor old Mal. I feel for this young Mal because of the things that will happen to him, and I feel for the old Mal because of the boy that he was. In short, I LOVE IT. Thank you! XD *hearts you*
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Date: 2006-06-12 02:45 am (UTC)Poor little Mal. He's such an idealistic dork, I just know he had to be the cutest teenager in the world, especially when he was going off all full of brimstone and righteous fire. I'm glad that wistfulness came through okay.
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Date: 2006-06-12 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 03:37 am (UTC)He's aware of what a total moron/jackass he can be, and somehow that makes him all the more endearing, because we know that he knows. He's not just dashing off into the face of danger... he's doing it knowing that's what he's up to, and he's making a joke about how stupid it is of him, to boot. I bet that comes from his mama - she and the hands probably spent a lot of time telling him what a dumbass he was, and now he just tells people so they know he's aware of it and will shut up already. XD
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Date: 2006-06-12 04:20 pm (UTC)That's such a perfect explanation of it that I don't even really have anything to add! That is Mal-in-a-nutshell, right there. He's a goofy bastard, and he knows it, and that's one of the things we love about him!
This story has really got me thinking about cute little teenaged Mal ... I want to see more of him!
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Date: 2006-06-12 04:25 pm (UTC)Now you've got me wondering what more I can do with teenage!Mal... I'll have to let that hang around in my head for a while, see what sprouts out of it. ;)
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Date: 2006-06-12 04:31 pm (UTC)I'd like to see him pull that off, I really would.
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Date: 2006-06-12 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 05:10 pm (UTC)Whenever I hear the words "creative differences," I have to restrain myself from guessing that the actor/actress just totally sucked for the part. Maybe I shouldn't have done so, in this case, from what you've said... I'm glad they changed over, anyway!
I guess it must've been so early on when Joss chose Nathan that everything else got built up around it. I mean, can you imagine how different the dynamic would have been?!
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Date: 2006-06-12 05:16 pm (UTC)She is SO NOT INARA. And her acting is just awful, from what little I've seen of her. I think she was on Melrose Place or something like that, if that gives you any indication. Creative differences, my ass -- from everything I've read, everyone came in and they all loved each other and got along and had chemistry on-screen and could actually act ... and then there was Rebecca Gayheart.
Yeah, I can't even imagine that Mal, and how different his relationships with each and every crew member would be. It would have to be done really well to convince me, cause I'm having a hard time imagining it working as well as Nathan-as-Mal does.
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Date: 2006-06-12 05:21 pm (UTC)I don't think it would have. Joss may be a fabulous writer, but sheer luck saved him on this one - the show wouldn't be as popular as it is if he'd stuck with what he'd wanted to do, made Mal dark and bitter and not funny. Nathan saved it, and, as much as I hate to admit it, the Fox execs. They told him to bring up the funny... and it worked.
If only the bastards had let him keep it.
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Date: 2006-06-12 05:24 pm (UTC)*sighs*
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Date: 2006-06-12 02:46 am (UTC)And I loved Henrietta, what a great character!
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Date: 2006-06-12 02:58 am (UTC)Glad you liked it!
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Date: 2006-06-12 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-13 03:32 am (UTC)I really liked the touch of the Bible and cross at the end. It showed the idealism and naivete he came from and contrasted the hard-as-nails man he had to become. A little foreshadowing, for those of us who know, but also a fine bit of characterization.
Nicely done!
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Date: 2006-06-13 05:01 am (UTC)