fic post 2
Aug. 20th, 2006 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseAnd, finally, the two Firefly fics, both for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
3measures. The first was posted several weeks ago with a very poor ending and some complete lack of good thematic work. Many loving thanks to coralia13 and shinann for beta reading both of these and helping me out!
Title: Sphinx's Riddle (formerly "Of Man and Woman, and Woman again")
Characters: Mal, Zoe, Inara, and River.
Summary: Mal thinks he's got it all figured out, but in the end, the women in his life are beyond his understanding.
She looks like a statue, sitting as she does in that still silence that scared him when he first met her. Back then she’d been on sentry duty. There wasn’t anything to stand sentry against here in Serenity’s kitchen, but she sits just as still as she had back then, staring into her coffee like it’s about to impart the secrets of the universe. Just another cup of piss-poor coffee made with too much roasted grain and grit and not enough real beans to give it the right flavor, or to stir the blood more than by taste association alone. He’s watched her do this a thousand times, stare like that into the cup, take a sip, stare again. It’s no surprise she’d start up again, now that she’s gone back to the way things were.
Nothing about Zoe is a surprise to Mal.
She’s always the quiet one - doesn’t question, doesn’t push, doesn’t ask anything of him. She knows he’ll give everything in him, everything he can, so she doesn’t have to ask. He knows the sound of her feet as she approaches the table and sits down beside him as well as he remembers the way she can move without hardly making that sound, stunningly silent for a woman of her size and strength - she’s as tall as him, and sometimes he thinks she’s probably got more muscle on her. Her arms resting on the worn oak of the table ain’t quite so heavy-built as his, but her legs are stronger. Lithe, sure, but they’re all muscle - reminding Mal of pictures he’s seen of the big cats, lions and suchlike on Earth-That-Was and in zoos on the Core. Long limbs that bunch with muscle and sinew under silky fur.
It occurs to him he shouldn’t be thinking about the legs on another man’s wife - now another man’s widow - but with the kind of past him and Zoe have, he figures it can’t much be helped. Wash ain’t here to be jealous anymore, for whatever little Mal could ever figure it out, anyway, and Zoe would know he didn’t mean nothing by it.
She doesn’t say anything, just drinks her coffee and doesn’t even look at him. He knows her silences, the way they can sit for days on end without saying a word. What’s left that needs saying after all they’ve seen together? But this kind of silence is different, has been ever since Wash died, and it hangs in the air like the way she used to breathe when she was caught in a nightmare. He knows how she takes her coffee (when there’s a choice to it), how she prefers a long, hot bath to pretty much any luxury in the ‘verse (he’s seen that, back in times when they were too poor to afford more than a night’s stay in a cheap hotel with a single, rusted-out bathtub, and that’s another thing Wash would’ve killed him for, if he’d known). He knows how to wake her from those nightmares without getting his blown inside out, or parts of him he’d rather keep ripped off in the moment before she came to herself and recognized him. Mal always wondered whether Wash had the knack of it, too, or only survived living with her as long as he did because she didn’t sleep with her gun in her hand anymore. Either way, Mal doesn’t know how to wake her out of the nightmare that’s taken hold of her ever since Wash died. He keeps trying, though.
“We got enough supplies to last us 'til we finish the job on Paquin?” he manages after a several minutes of struggling for the right words.
“Ought to be fine, if Jayne don’t take to midnight snacks again.”
“I’ll see to it he don’t.” Mal finishes his coffee and gets up, thinks about washing the mug, then decides he could use a bit more. And a bit more time to think on this new silence between them. “You want more coffee?”
Zoe looks at her cup, still almost half-full. “Sure.”
“Ain’t bad, is it? Simon made it. Was half afraid he’d find a way to ruin it, but seems all that fancy education has some use, after all. Makes a decent cup even out of this grain-packed fake go-se.” He’s not used to trying to fill the silences between them, but they’re laden with new meaning after Wash’s death, and he doesn’t like it.
Zoe takes another slow sip. “Not bad,” she agrees. “Doc’s a good man, given his chance.”
Mal nods and pours enough of the black liquid to fill her cup again, and drops in one of the fancy little sugar cubes Inara bought and shared for no apparent reason. If he knew her less well than he did, he’d accuse her of showing off the luxuries she can afford that none of them can, but he knows her too well for that, and she’s too subtle about it, anyway. The cubes claim to be fortified with vitamins, and Mal’s checked three times to make sure they’re not a Blue Sun product, so he figures they’re as okay as they can expect from anything nowadays. Zoe pretends not to notice the extra indulgence, but stirs idly with a stray chopstick. Between them, the little kindnesses always go unremarked, a way to excuse their lack of comment on the bigger things. A body can only find so many ways to say ‘thanks for saving my life back there,’ before it starts sounding more than a bit trite. So they don’t speak about any of it, even the smallest gratitude. Just another thing only they understand.
“Mal, is that... oh, good morning, Zoe. Is that coffee?”
“Sure is.” Mal crosses the kitchen to take Inara’s mug. She’s wearing a silk robe patterned with red leaves and some kind of yellow flower, and her hair hasn’t been combed and tamed yet. He loves seeing her like this, no makeup, no jewelry, curls wild around her face. He figures her clients never see her this way, and he’ll gladly grab at any facet of her he doesn’t have to share with them.
While he’s at the counter pouring her a cup of coffee, though, he hears something he’s not expecting.
“Are you feeling any better today? You look as though you got a bit more sleep…”
Mal freezes in mid-pour. It reminded him of moments in the trenches, when there was a moment of silence between volleys and all anyone could do was hold their breath, awaiting the next storm of destruction. Zoe has never taken well to anything resembling pity, and for Mal this is a true walk on the knife of loyalty. She’s vicious about her secrets, about her privacy, and she’s killed men with a look for less impudence. Much as Zoe is the other half of his soul, he can’t stand the thought of her tearing into Inara just for not understanding the way she works, the way they work, and he’s on the verge of stepping in to defend the companion’s honor (again), when…
“A bit, yeah. Think that lavender tea you gave me might actually be helping. Thanks.”
Mal is still holding the coffee pot, Inara’s mug still half-filled in front of him. He’ll have to talk to the doc, maybe whatever the Alliance did to River found a way to be contagious, ‘cause there is no way in the ‘verse he’s actually watching Zoe publicly admit to weakness and wanting - actually wanting! - help from the other woman.
“It’s no trouble at all. I bought it years ago, and I’ve hardly used it at all since I came aboard Serenity. I’m just glad it happened to be among the things I left here, and that it’s helping you.”
“Still. I’m grateful.”
“It’s been hard for you.” Inara lays her hand tenderly on Zoe’s arm, and Mal tenses again - surely this will be too much. Zoe’s never been much for physical affection, not from anybody but Wash, and the soft, sad look that Inara’s got in her eyes…
Zoe glances at the hand on her arm, then offers a tight smile and nods at Inara. That’s all. Doesn’t even pull away. “You’ve been good to listen. Thank you.”
Everything about Zoe is a surprise to Mal.
Never expected her to get a soft spot for the rich-boy doctor, treating him with that mix of tired amusement and dry wit that lasted her through so many new recruits back in the war, or for his sister, watching over her with a quiet and stoic sort of concern that made him wonder what would’ve happened if she and Wash had actually had a child. He was secretly, guiltily glad that he wouldn’t ever know, wouldn’t go through nine months of trying to remember that she couldn’t handle herself as she usually could, or worrying about the baby getting hurt after, while they were on some job. He’d agreed with Wash on this one thing - a ship like Serenity was no place for a child. That, too, had surprised him about her - he knew Zoe was a woman, knew she would be a good mother, but somehow he’d never expected her to want a baby. The first time she’d mentioned it to him, off-hand and dry in the way she mentioned everything important, he’d been as shocked as if she’d said maybe they should let Jayne run the ship for a while, just to see how he did.
Well, maybe not that shocked. But damned surprised, anyhow.
And now she and Inara were looking likely to start having sleepovers and braiding each other’s hair while chatting about boys. Or, in this case, men, and Mal was no fool - he didn’t think he was much flattering himself by thinkin’ he was the man they’d most likely find the common ground to talk about. And that could only lead to trouble for him.
“Don’t suppose you two have work to do, somewhere on this ship?” he grumbles, and almost immediately regrets it. Inara has no specific work, of course, but she took long ago to doing little chores since her seemingly long-term temporary decision to stay on Serenity - she helps Simon in the infirmary, and has an impressive knack with the ship’s computers and flight controls, occasionally even taking over for River and Mal when the flying is simple - and Zoe... well, if there's one person on the ship who's never slacked off from her work, it's Zoe. She’s solid as stone, steady as though she’d been designed exactly for what she does. And the look she was giving him assured Mal that she knew exactly that.
“What exactly did you have in mind, sir.” Yup, standard Zoe anger - the question that sure as hell ain't asking him anything, and that cold tone that says ‘You’re a damned fool, sir.’ And the stone-cold look of death that always goes with it. And Inara’s glaring at him, now, too - she’s too classy to say it outright, but she clearly thinks he was being a worse hundan than even her usual estimate of his character would account for. It’s in those dark cat-eyes of hers, rimmed with lashes so lush he doesn’t understand why she bothers with all the kohl and shadow she uses with clients. They already look like the eyes of beauty incarnate. Beauty that can kill.
Women. He’s always hated to hear men say this kind of thing, and he knows his mama would’ve tanned his hide good if she heard him so much as think it, but sooner or later they always did seem to stick together against men. Even Zoe. “I ain’t paying you to sit here and gossip,” he grumbles, fully aware that he’s digging himself into the burning sands of hell, here. “Didn’t figure I’d ever have to remind you of that.”
“She’s allowed to talk to people other than you, Mal,” Inara sneers.
“That ain’t... you stay out of this! That ain’t even close to the issue. It ain’t even in the same system as the problem!”
Zoe stands up very slowly, and for a minute Mal’s mind flashes back to the war, when he once saw her take down two of the scariest hundans in their squad for trying to rape an Alliance soldier they’d been holding in hopes of an eventual prisoner exchange. Mal would’a done the same if he’d been the one to catch them, but he doubted he could’a whooped them so soundly. She’s got that look in her eyes again, and he’s definitely not thrilled to be on the receiving end.
“Zoe...”
She just stares at him for a minute, then turns and walks out without a word. It’s worse than any tongue-lashing she could’a given him.
“Hey, Zoe! Come on, don’t--”
“You’re such a yuchun heishôudâng liúmáng, Mal,” Inara interrupts, and her voice is sharp as a desert wind. “You probably don’t even know what your problem is. You just can’t stand the idea of she and I getting along, can you? You have to have everything you care about for yourself alone. Well, congratulations to you on that. I’m sure she’s feeling much better now that you’ve ruined the first good day I’ve seen her have in months.” Inara pushes past him, leaving her coffee on the table to follow Zoe up into the cockpit. “You’re such a child, Mal. One of these days, I can only hope you’ll grow up.”
It might be she’s right, but he’s sure as hell not about to let her think that. “What the hell makes you think you know what goes on between us?”
She turns back to him, her eyes as cold as the black and twice as dark. “I know men, Mal. And just then you were being the worst of the kind.” With that, she turns on her heel and climbs the stairs, then shuts the door behind her.
“That’s my damned cockpit, you know! You can’t just--my ship, damn it! My gorram ship!” He wants to keep yelling, but he’s so mad now that he can’t think of anything useful to shout about, and then a tiny hand rests on his shoulder, and he realizes he’s not alone.
“Four legs at dawn,” a quiet voice intones from behind him. “Two legs at noon, and three in the evening. And too little blood to run both minds at once,” River adds with a wicked grin when he turns to face her.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
She pats him on the shoulder as she slips by, padding her way up toward the cockpit with toast and a pile of dried apricots balanced precariously on a cup of tea. “You’re a good man, Captain. But you’re still a man. Won’t ever really understand us like you think you do. Especially not them.”
“Why not them?”
“Because they are the sphinx.”
Mal stared at the girl for a minute. Something about that rang a bell, but it was a pretty gorram rusted one. “Huh?”
“The goddess was the first deity for most cultures - the lady of the beasts, a woman with panthers or lions, or part lion herself. A sphinx,” she adds, rolling her eyes, as if he couldn’t figure that part out. “Culture and wilderness in one - nature and nurture are wrapped up in one body that chooses life and death at once.”
“And that’s them.”
River gives him a look that asks if he could possibly get any dumber if he tried, then smiles indulgently. “I have to go. It needs three to be right. Just don’t look them in the eyes for a while, or you’ll turn to stone. You need to learn.”
“Learn what?”
But River just fluttered up the stairs and closed the cockpit door behind her.
Title: Camera Obscura
Characters: Mal, Zoe, and Inara.
Summary: A moment of light seen through darkness.
In the instant before the door moved out of her vision, it was obvious; all was not business as usual beyond this threshold. She almost had time to react, almost enough to change her momentum and turn back around, before the light caught them.
They were all limbs and the sheen of skin in darkness, and Zoe froze, as still and quiet as she ever was lying in ambush waiting for the Alliance troops. In those days she’d been best for reconnaissance, silent and quick - her own fellow soldiers didn’t hear her coming until she was on top of them. And Inara was very much not silent atop Mal, so there wasn’t a lot of chance of them noticing her, another shadow at the edges of the room.
She had become that, lately, a shadow, and didn’t know how to stop. She sometimes thought Wash had been the light that cast upon her, making her solid and visible. Without him, without Book’s quiet wisdom to ease her hurts, without the certainty of her own sanity, she felt at once the center of attention as everyone worried over her, and completely invisible.
That latter was definitely taking precedence at that moment.
She couldn’t take it personal that they didn’t see her - with the tension that’d built around those two for the last two years, the ship could probably blow to pieces around them and they wouldn’t notice til the decompression hit them. But it was still a shock to watch Mal’s hands on Inara’s smooth, perfect hips, his mouth latched to her shoulder like he was afraid she’d disappear if he didn’t focus every sense on her in that very moment.
If she didn’t know Mal so well, the context would have assured her it couldn’t be him. If she weren’t so damned well acquainted with his body and that stupid tattoo Marsh had convinced him to get on his hip when he was a fresh volunteer. If she didn’t recognize the scar on his calf, where she’d spent hours pulling shrapnel from his flesh and praying he wouldn’t lose the damned leg. And knowing him meant knowing the smooth, golden-pale curves wrapped around him, dark hair casting an inky cascade down her back. It appeared Inara hadn’t been joking about the benefits of her stretching and exercise regime. Zoe hadn’t figured on a non-combatant being quite so flexible. That was part of a companion’s job, she supposed, but this sure as hell didn’t look like a business meeting. And Mal sure as hell couldn’t afford this.
It was the flash of an instant, a moment of light and darkness, and revelation. One way or another, nothing would be the same again. She’d seen Mal in any number of compromising situations over their long friendship, but this... The difference was that always before, they’d been in on their troubles together. I had my turn to be happy, to have Wash while he was alone. And now I’m alone again, and he has her. Ain’t fair, but the ‘verse never is.
Beyond the embarrassing pounding of her pulse in her ears, Zoe hears Inara gasp. Mal cries out, a low, rough sound that’s almost too honest to be his voice. Zoe turns her back, lets the door slip closed quietly behind her. They won’t hear, she knows - they’re both too caught up in this revelation, this new beginning, to notice the stillness of darkness and solitude falling back onto their moment. And Zoe? She’s grateful to be invisible as she disappears back into her empty bunk.
3measures. The first was posted several weeks ago with a very poor ending and some complete lack of good thematic work. Many loving thanks to coralia13 and shinann for beta reading both of these and helping me out!Title: Sphinx's Riddle (formerly "Of Man and Woman, and Woman again")
Characters: Mal, Zoe, Inara, and River.
Summary: Mal thinks he's got it all figured out, but in the end, the women in his life are beyond his understanding.
She looks like a statue, sitting as she does in that still silence that scared him when he first met her. Back then she’d been on sentry duty. There wasn’t anything to stand sentry against here in Serenity’s kitchen, but she sits just as still as she had back then, staring into her coffee like it’s about to impart the secrets of the universe. Just another cup of piss-poor coffee made with too much roasted grain and grit and not enough real beans to give it the right flavor, or to stir the blood more than by taste association alone. He’s watched her do this a thousand times, stare like that into the cup, take a sip, stare again. It’s no surprise she’d start up again, now that she’s gone back to the way things were.
Nothing about Zoe is a surprise to Mal.
She’s always the quiet one - doesn’t question, doesn’t push, doesn’t ask anything of him. She knows he’ll give everything in him, everything he can, so she doesn’t have to ask. He knows the sound of her feet as she approaches the table and sits down beside him as well as he remembers the way she can move without hardly making that sound, stunningly silent for a woman of her size and strength - she’s as tall as him, and sometimes he thinks she’s probably got more muscle on her. Her arms resting on the worn oak of the table ain’t quite so heavy-built as his, but her legs are stronger. Lithe, sure, but they’re all muscle - reminding Mal of pictures he’s seen of the big cats, lions and suchlike on Earth-That-Was and in zoos on the Core. Long limbs that bunch with muscle and sinew under silky fur.
It occurs to him he shouldn’t be thinking about the legs on another man’s wife - now another man’s widow - but with the kind of past him and Zoe have, he figures it can’t much be helped. Wash ain’t here to be jealous anymore, for whatever little Mal could ever figure it out, anyway, and Zoe would know he didn’t mean nothing by it.
She doesn’t say anything, just drinks her coffee and doesn’t even look at him. He knows her silences, the way they can sit for days on end without saying a word. What’s left that needs saying after all they’ve seen together? But this kind of silence is different, has been ever since Wash died, and it hangs in the air like the way she used to breathe when she was caught in a nightmare. He knows how she takes her coffee (when there’s a choice to it), how she prefers a long, hot bath to pretty much any luxury in the ‘verse (he’s seen that, back in times when they were too poor to afford more than a night’s stay in a cheap hotel with a single, rusted-out bathtub, and that’s another thing Wash would’ve killed him for, if he’d known). He knows how to wake her from those nightmares without getting his blown inside out, or parts of him he’d rather keep ripped off in the moment before she came to herself and recognized him. Mal always wondered whether Wash had the knack of it, too, or only survived living with her as long as he did because she didn’t sleep with her gun in her hand anymore. Either way, Mal doesn’t know how to wake her out of the nightmare that’s taken hold of her ever since Wash died. He keeps trying, though.
“We got enough supplies to last us 'til we finish the job on Paquin?” he manages after a several minutes of struggling for the right words.
“Ought to be fine, if Jayne don’t take to midnight snacks again.”
“I’ll see to it he don’t.” Mal finishes his coffee and gets up, thinks about washing the mug, then decides he could use a bit more. And a bit more time to think on this new silence between them. “You want more coffee?”
Zoe looks at her cup, still almost half-full. “Sure.”
“Ain’t bad, is it? Simon made it. Was half afraid he’d find a way to ruin it, but seems all that fancy education has some use, after all. Makes a decent cup even out of this grain-packed fake go-se.” He’s not used to trying to fill the silences between them, but they’re laden with new meaning after Wash’s death, and he doesn’t like it.
Zoe takes another slow sip. “Not bad,” she agrees. “Doc’s a good man, given his chance.”
Mal nods and pours enough of the black liquid to fill her cup again, and drops in one of the fancy little sugar cubes Inara bought and shared for no apparent reason. If he knew her less well than he did, he’d accuse her of showing off the luxuries she can afford that none of them can, but he knows her too well for that, and she’s too subtle about it, anyway. The cubes claim to be fortified with vitamins, and Mal’s checked three times to make sure they’re not a Blue Sun product, so he figures they’re as okay as they can expect from anything nowadays. Zoe pretends not to notice the extra indulgence, but stirs idly with a stray chopstick. Between them, the little kindnesses always go unremarked, a way to excuse their lack of comment on the bigger things. A body can only find so many ways to say ‘thanks for saving my life back there,’ before it starts sounding more than a bit trite. So they don’t speak about any of it, even the smallest gratitude. Just another thing only they understand.
“Mal, is that... oh, good morning, Zoe. Is that coffee?”
“Sure is.” Mal crosses the kitchen to take Inara’s mug. She’s wearing a silk robe patterned with red leaves and some kind of yellow flower, and her hair hasn’t been combed and tamed yet. He loves seeing her like this, no makeup, no jewelry, curls wild around her face. He figures her clients never see her this way, and he’ll gladly grab at any facet of her he doesn’t have to share with them.
While he’s at the counter pouring her a cup of coffee, though, he hears something he’s not expecting.
“Are you feeling any better today? You look as though you got a bit more sleep…”
Mal freezes in mid-pour. It reminded him of moments in the trenches, when there was a moment of silence between volleys and all anyone could do was hold their breath, awaiting the next storm of destruction. Zoe has never taken well to anything resembling pity, and for Mal this is a true walk on the knife of loyalty. She’s vicious about her secrets, about her privacy, and she’s killed men with a look for less impudence. Much as Zoe is the other half of his soul, he can’t stand the thought of her tearing into Inara just for not understanding the way she works, the way they work, and he’s on the verge of stepping in to defend the companion’s honor (again), when…
“A bit, yeah. Think that lavender tea you gave me might actually be helping. Thanks.”
Mal is still holding the coffee pot, Inara’s mug still half-filled in front of him. He’ll have to talk to the doc, maybe whatever the Alliance did to River found a way to be contagious, ‘cause there is no way in the ‘verse he’s actually watching Zoe publicly admit to weakness and wanting - actually wanting! - help from the other woman.
“It’s no trouble at all. I bought it years ago, and I’ve hardly used it at all since I came aboard Serenity. I’m just glad it happened to be among the things I left here, and that it’s helping you.”
“Still. I’m grateful.”
“It’s been hard for you.” Inara lays her hand tenderly on Zoe’s arm, and Mal tenses again - surely this will be too much. Zoe’s never been much for physical affection, not from anybody but Wash, and the soft, sad look that Inara’s got in her eyes…
Zoe glances at the hand on her arm, then offers a tight smile and nods at Inara. That’s all. Doesn’t even pull away. “You’ve been good to listen. Thank you.”
Everything about Zoe is a surprise to Mal.
Never expected her to get a soft spot for the rich-boy doctor, treating him with that mix of tired amusement and dry wit that lasted her through so many new recruits back in the war, or for his sister, watching over her with a quiet and stoic sort of concern that made him wonder what would’ve happened if she and Wash had actually had a child. He was secretly, guiltily glad that he wouldn’t ever know, wouldn’t go through nine months of trying to remember that she couldn’t handle herself as she usually could, or worrying about the baby getting hurt after, while they were on some job. He’d agreed with Wash on this one thing - a ship like Serenity was no place for a child. That, too, had surprised him about her - he knew Zoe was a woman, knew she would be a good mother, but somehow he’d never expected her to want a baby. The first time she’d mentioned it to him, off-hand and dry in the way she mentioned everything important, he’d been as shocked as if she’d said maybe they should let Jayne run the ship for a while, just to see how he did.
Well, maybe not that shocked. But damned surprised, anyhow.
And now she and Inara were looking likely to start having sleepovers and braiding each other’s hair while chatting about boys. Or, in this case, men, and Mal was no fool - he didn’t think he was much flattering himself by thinkin’ he was the man they’d most likely find the common ground to talk about. And that could only lead to trouble for him.
“Don’t suppose you two have work to do, somewhere on this ship?” he grumbles, and almost immediately regrets it. Inara has no specific work, of course, but she took long ago to doing little chores since her seemingly long-term temporary decision to stay on Serenity - she helps Simon in the infirmary, and has an impressive knack with the ship’s computers and flight controls, occasionally even taking over for River and Mal when the flying is simple - and Zoe... well, if there's one person on the ship who's never slacked off from her work, it's Zoe. She’s solid as stone, steady as though she’d been designed exactly for what she does. And the look she was giving him assured Mal that she knew exactly that.
“What exactly did you have in mind, sir.” Yup, standard Zoe anger - the question that sure as hell ain't asking him anything, and that cold tone that says ‘You’re a damned fool, sir.’ And the stone-cold look of death that always goes with it. And Inara’s glaring at him, now, too - she’s too classy to say it outright, but she clearly thinks he was being a worse hundan than even her usual estimate of his character would account for. It’s in those dark cat-eyes of hers, rimmed with lashes so lush he doesn’t understand why she bothers with all the kohl and shadow she uses with clients. They already look like the eyes of beauty incarnate. Beauty that can kill.
Women. He’s always hated to hear men say this kind of thing, and he knows his mama would’ve tanned his hide good if she heard him so much as think it, but sooner or later they always did seem to stick together against men. Even Zoe. “I ain’t paying you to sit here and gossip,” he grumbles, fully aware that he’s digging himself into the burning sands of hell, here. “Didn’t figure I’d ever have to remind you of that.”
“She’s allowed to talk to people other than you, Mal,” Inara sneers.
“That ain’t... you stay out of this! That ain’t even close to the issue. It ain’t even in the same system as the problem!”
Zoe stands up very slowly, and for a minute Mal’s mind flashes back to the war, when he once saw her take down two of the scariest hundans in their squad for trying to rape an Alliance soldier they’d been holding in hopes of an eventual prisoner exchange. Mal would’a done the same if he’d been the one to catch them, but he doubted he could’a whooped them so soundly. She’s got that look in her eyes again, and he’s definitely not thrilled to be on the receiving end.
“Zoe...”
She just stares at him for a minute, then turns and walks out without a word. It’s worse than any tongue-lashing she could’a given him.
“Hey, Zoe! Come on, don’t--”
“You’re such a yuchun heishôudâng liúmáng, Mal,” Inara interrupts, and her voice is sharp as a desert wind. “You probably don’t even know what your problem is. You just can’t stand the idea of she and I getting along, can you? You have to have everything you care about for yourself alone. Well, congratulations to you on that. I’m sure she’s feeling much better now that you’ve ruined the first good day I’ve seen her have in months.” Inara pushes past him, leaving her coffee on the table to follow Zoe up into the cockpit. “You’re such a child, Mal. One of these days, I can only hope you’ll grow up.”
It might be she’s right, but he’s sure as hell not about to let her think that. “What the hell makes you think you know what goes on between us?”
She turns back to him, her eyes as cold as the black and twice as dark. “I know men, Mal. And just then you were being the worst of the kind.” With that, she turns on her heel and climbs the stairs, then shuts the door behind her.
“That’s my damned cockpit, you know! You can’t just--my ship, damn it! My gorram ship!” He wants to keep yelling, but he’s so mad now that he can’t think of anything useful to shout about, and then a tiny hand rests on his shoulder, and he realizes he’s not alone.
“Four legs at dawn,” a quiet voice intones from behind him. “Two legs at noon, and three in the evening. And too little blood to run both minds at once,” River adds with a wicked grin when he turns to face her.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
She pats him on the shoulder as she slips by, padding her way up toward the cockpit with toast and a pile of dried apricots balanced precariously on a cup of tea. “You’re a good man, Captain. But you’re still a man. Won’t ever really understand us like you think you do. Especially not them.”
“Why not them?”
“Because they are the sphinx.”
Mal stared at the girl for a minute. Something about that rang a bell, but it was a pretty gorram rusted one. “Huh?”
“The goddess was the first deity for most cultures - the lady of the beasts, a woman with panthers or lions, or part lion herself. A sphinx,” she adds, rolling her eyes, as if he couldn’t figure that part out. “Culture and wilderness in one - nature and nurture are wrapped up in one body that chooses life and death at once.”
“And that’s them.”
River gives him a look that asks if he could possibly get any dumber if he tried, then smiles indulgently. “I have to go. It needs three to be right. Just don’t look them in the eyes for a while, or you’ll turn to stone. You need to learn.”
“Learn what?”
But River just fluttered up the stairs and closed the cockpit door behind her.
Title: Camera Obscura
Characters: Mal, Zoe, and Inara.
Summary: A moment of light seen through darkness.
In the instant before the door moved out of her vision, it was obvious; all was not business as usual beyond this threshold. She almost had time to react, almost enough to change her momentum and turn back around, before the light caught them.
They were all limbs and the sheen of skin in darkness, and Zoe froze, as still and quiet as she ever was lying in ambush waiting for the Alliance troops. In those days she’d been best for reconnaissance, silent and quick - her own fellow soldiers didn’t hear her coming until she was on top of them. And Inara was very much not silent atop Mal, so there wasn’t a lot of chance of them noticing her, another shadow at the edges of the room.
She had become that, lately, a shadow, and didn’t know how to stop. She sometimes thought Wash had been the light that cast upon her, making her solid and visible. Without him, without Book’s quiet wisdom to ease her hurts, without the certainty of her own sanity, she felt at once the center of attention as everyone worried over her, and completely invisible.
That latter was definitely taking precedence at that moment.
She couldn’t take it personal that they didn’t see her - with the tension that’d built around those two for the last two years, the ship could probably blow to pieces around them and they wouldn’t notice til the decompression hit them. But it was still a shock to watch Mal’s hands on Inara’s smooth, perfect hips, his mouth latched to her shoulder like he was afraid she’d disappear if he didn’t focus every sense on her in that very moment.
If she didn’t know Mal so well, the context would have assured her it couldn’t be him. If she weren’t so damned well acquainted with his body and that stupid tattoo Marsh had convinced him to get on his hip when he was a fresh volunteer. If she didn’t recognize the scar on his calf, where she’d spent hours pulling shrapnel from his flesh and praying he wouldn’t lose the damned leg. And knowing him meant knowing the smooth, golden-pale curves wrapped around him, dark hair casting an inky cascade down her back. It appeared Inara hadn’t been joking about the benefits of her stretching and exercise regime. Zoe hadn’t figured on a non-combatant being quite so flexible. That was part of a companion’s job, she supposed, but this sure as hell didn’t look like a business meeting. And Mal sure as hell couldn’t afford this.
It was the flash of an instant, a moment of light and darkness, and revelation. One way or another, nothing would be the same again. She’d seen Mal in any number of compromising situations over their long friendship, but this... The difference was that always before, they’d been in on their troubles together. I had my turn to be happy, to have Wash while he was alone. And now I’m alone again, and he has her. Ain’t fair, but the ‘verse never is.
Beyond the embarrassing pounding of her pulse in her ears, Zoe hears Inara gasp. Mal cries out, a low, rough sound that’s almost too honest to be his voice. Zoe turns her back, lets the door slip closed quietly behind her. They won’t hear, she knows - they’re both too caught up in this revelation, this new beginning, to notice the stillness of darkness and solitude falling back onto their moment. And Zoe? She’s grateful to be invisible as she disappears back into her empty bunk.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 03:19 am (UTC)And Camrea Obscura....It's perfect!
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 03:20 am (UTC)sphinx riddle
Date: 2006-08-21 05:52 am (UTC)Re: sphinx riddle
Date: 2006-08-21 02:36 pm (UTC)And I'm so glad it feels more clear now!
Re: sphinx riddle
Date: 2006-08-21 03:22 pm (UTC)Re: sphinx riddle
Date: 2006-08-21 05:16 pm (UTC)Re: sphinx riddle
Date: 2006-08-21 05:21 pm (UTC)Camera Obscura
Date: 2006-08-21 06:07 am (UTC)Re: Camera Obscura
Date: 2006-08-21 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 06:16 pm (UTC)I am going to need more Firefly icons.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 11:06 pm (UTC)More Firefly icons are always good. XD
no subject
Date: 2006-08-22 03:51 pm (UTC)