Note: Set after Serenity. Spoilers for series and movie.
Fic:
Before they received their honored guests, Zoe warns Mal four times not to punch either elder Tam.
"Just cuz they abandoned their own children doesn't mean I'll get hostile," Mal almost-promises with a grin, "I mean, there are any number of times I've felt like ditching Simon myself. So I can feel for them."
Zoe gives him a look that most first officers wouldn't give their captain, and he raises his hands in surrender and promises for real.
***
It is precisely because Zoe warned him four times that Mal can't help gloating when the visit is over. For a grown man, he is ridiculously smug that he refrained from beating down a senior citizen.
Not that there weren't some challenging moments.
The crew had remained polite as the Tams had suggested that there was only one right side to the war, and it wasn't Mal's. Zoe, luckily, had made sure Mal was seated at the opposite end of the table; she had even taken a seat next to Mr. Tam so that temptation wouldn't arise.
The crew managed to disagree civilly to the parents' points, and commented only subtly when it was further implied that Simon and River should be on a ship with fewer thugs (with Mrs. Tam glancing at Jayne), and an engineer who looked like she was old enough to go to technical school, much less qualified. Simon and River, to their credit, corrected them on these points, but remained silent as the parents talked about putting that terrible hands of blue nonsense behind them, and coming back home to practice medicine, and maybe River would like to try college now that she's feeling better.
The real problem was when River had a flashback, one of her occasional moments that reminded them - not that this crew needed reminders about this - that healing takes a long time and there ain't no way to rush it.
River's father responds the exact way he shouldn't - by trying to hold her down and screaming at her to stop - which of course just scares her more.
Simon pushes him off and tells him to give her some space.
Mrs. Tam tells Simon that he had no right to act like that - they all loved River after all.
Simon says some words then that nobody thought he knew. The gist was that the two of them had no idea what he and River had been through, that if they had gotten their way, River would still be locked up somewhere. Simon used any and all manner of obscenity to express said thoughts, and even Jayne was impressed with the coarseness.
Things went downhill from there.
Mr. Tam had slapped Simon in the face.
Then River got a moment of clarity and pushed Mr. Tam onto the ground.
As Mrs. Tam ran to her yelling to stop and calm down, her husband got up and said, "Don't bother, River's broken now anyway, we all know it."
For a second, everyone is silent, stunned.
That's when Zoe's punches River's father. A yelp follows as the man falls to the ground, this time not getting up so quickly.
Mal looks angry, like he's upset Zoe beat him to it.
Jayne looks amused.
Simon looks astounded and worried and Kaylee puts a gentle hand on his arm.
River just giggles..
Inara keeps her head and tactfully suggests that the older Tams use her vessel to clean up a little before the ship drops them off planetside.
Later, Mal visits Zoe. "Doc says to ice the hand," he tells her, handing over a coldpack
"That all he said? He upset 'bout what I did?"
Mal smiled. "Didn't seem it. Said to tell you thanks."
Zoe gave him a stoic face. "Had to be done. Don't take kindly to people not showing respect to broken things. Serenity's been broken plenty," she said as she gently kicked the metal hull beside her.
"Still running, though," Mal said.
They looked at each other then, a second of understanding and remembrance and loss and hope.
Then Mal smirked and asked, "So was that the oldest or the second oldest man you've suckerpunched?"
She rolled her eyes.
"Four times, Zoe!" he continued, "I listened to you lecture me four times!"
AN: written for a prompt found at comment_fic, a multi-fandom fic comm on livejournal. Prompt was the crew meets Simon's and River's parents.