Written for the LiveJournal picfor1000 Year 4: Four Seasons challenge
A/N: The word xi-niu means 'cow-sucking' in Mandarin Chinese, according to the Firefly-Serenity Chinese Pinyinary website.
This story is set after the film Serenity, but contains no spoilers for it. There is a reference to the Firefly episode "Out of Gas".
"Almost there, Mal," a little voice murmured, seemingly from under his arm, and he glanced down to see a pale little fairy face peering up at him.
He gasped for breath, the air so cold it burned inside his lungs, so thin it felt like he was drowning in it. His eyes slipped shut and for one awful moment he thought he was back on Serenity, his ship cold and dark, airless and empty, his life-blood seeping relentlessly from the gunshot wound in his stomach.
Forcing his eyes open again, he took in the gently rolling snowfields that stretched, unbroken, into the darkness to meet an invisible horizon. Above him, strange lights shimmered in ribbons of washed-out color against a starless sky that wasn't quite as black as space. The pretty lights caught his attention, and he stumbled to a halt to get a better look at them.
"Come on, Mal, we can't stop." The soft words dropped into the muffling snow as if they'd frozen solid the moment they hit the air. An insistent pressure around his waist pushed him back into awkward, dragging movement.
He almost couldn't recall a time when he hadn't been so cold it seemed like his bones were carved from solid ice. His clothes were heavy and stiff with frost, and he dimly remembered them clinging wetly to his skin, shedding water droplets in the snow as he shivered uncontrollably.
The small, encouraging voice kept promising that they could stop and rest soon, that there would be warmth and light somewhere up ahead, and all he could do was blindly follow the picture it painted. He could see no choices, no options – the concept that he could simply lie down right there in the snow and never have to move didn't even occur to him. There was only the voice to follow, murmuring in his ear that he had to keep moving, just a little farther, Mal, you can do it, I know it's so cold and you're so very tired, but you can't stop now, please, Mal, don't stop now.
He couldn't ignore it, couldn't disobey the sweetly pleading voice that wormed its way into his mind and tethered him to his aching body. To go against it would take more energy and thought than he possessed, so he just kept trudging onward.
They crested a gentle rise in the landscape, and suddenly, spread out before him, were a cluster of buildings, single story log cabins nestled in a small valley.
The shifting ribbon of light in the sky seemed to be aimed right at one of the cabins, a celestial path guiding them towards shelter. He found some last reserve of strength deep inside himself and staggered towards it, his eyes drifting shut again.
Then, suddenly, he was pulled to a halt. A burst of warm air swept over him and he fell into it, spiraling into welcome darkness.
He came back to consciousness slowly, finally warm all the way down to his bones, far too comfortable to move. His body woke before his mind did, responding automatically to the small hand stroking softly down his chest. He took a deep breath, his chest rising against it, allowing a slight sound of contentment to escape.
"Mal?"
His eyes shot open to see a thin face, both familiar and strange, peering down at him, dark hair hanging down to brush his shoulder. Dimly lit by the shifting glow of a hearth fire, she looked like some creature out of a fairy tale – the old ones told on isolated planets, the kind where the fairies stole unattended children and replaced them with changeling creatures.
"River," he said muzzily, trying to pull his wandering thoughts together. "Where –" He started to sit up, blankets and furs sliding away, and he was suddenly uncomfortably aware that he was naked under them.
She put her little hand on his chest again and pushed him back down with disconcerting ease. Her hair shifted, pale skin gleaming in the rosy light of the fire, and he realized that she, too, was naked.
"You were freezing," she told him quietly and unemotionally. "Simon says the best way to warm up a hypothermic person is skin-to-skin. Body heat."
"Oh?" he said weakly. "And, uh – where is your brother?"
"Not here yet. It's just you and me."
"Okay…" He took a look at their surroundings: one small room, the furniture reduced to vague shadows in the shifting light. A single square window, rimed with frost, showed a patch of dark sky.
"Mal?"
He focused on the window to keep his gaze off the moon-pale skin of the girl.
"Could I, ah, have my clothes?" he asked awkwardly. "I'm warmer now, feelin' much better, actually." His mind shied away from the blurred memories of endless snow and the overwhelming cold that made every movement, every breath a freezing torture.
"I only know three men," she told him, seemingly apropos of nothing. That was SOP for River, though, so he didn't pay it too much mind, just pulled one of the blankets tighter around his hips and looked around for his clothes.
"One is my brother," she continued. "One is - Jayne," the distaste was clear in her voice, and he couldn't blame her for it. "And one is you. The others are all…dead." She rose to her knees and straddled his lap in one swift, graceful move.
"I want to be a woman, Mal. I need someone I trust to help me do that."
"River…" he breathed, not knowing what to say or do. He looked into her dark eyes, seeing a frightened young girl; a damaged, ruined wreck of a human being; a lethal creature of such incredible abilities that 'human' might not even be the right word for whatever she was.
"Will you help me?"
He wondered – not for the first time – what it was about him that made the xi-niu gods keep thrusting these difficult situations squarely in his lap.
fin