This was the prize for the chapter title competition I ran in my story 'Full Circle'. The challenge I was given was thus:
"Any pairing is cool (but non-slash please), pretty angsty/messy stuff as you write it so intuitively (but no character death if you could bear it!) and Mal as the main character please. Apart from that, free reign to you!"
Along with the following song lyrics.
San Diego Serenade
I never saw the morning 'til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine 'til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.
I never saw the white line, 'til I was leaving you behind
I never knew I needed you 'til I was caught up in a bind
I never spoke 'I love you' 'til I cursed you in vain,
I never felt my heartstrings until I nearly went insane.
I never saw the east coast 'til I moved to the west
I never saw the moonlight until it shone off your breast
I never saw your heart 'til someone tried to steal, tried to steal it away
I never saw your tears until they rolled down your face.
Its pretty dark and messy. Contains torture so you have been warned.
Its post-series but pre-BDM, and works with the theory that Inara and Book have left Serenity as outline in the comic book series.
PHAZED - THIS IS FOR YOU
San Diego Serenade: Chapter 1
Malcolm Reynolds slams his hand against the glass in front of him roughly. His palm bounces back a little, jarring his wrist. He glares at the glass partition that forms one wall of his present accommodation then whirls angrily to go and sit on the metal bench that runs along the rear wall. With the toe of his boot he pokes the unconscious man at his feet roughly. The man rolls a little, his head rocking on the smooth metal floor, but he doesn't wake up.
Mal leans his head back against the wall and stares up through the darkness at the ceiling. He'd made a vow a long time ago that he wouldn't be anyone's prisoner again. And here he is. Sat in a metal cell staring through the darkness at his probable death come morning. His stomach rumbles hungrily and he curses softly at the events that put him here.
The darkness his oppressive and he shivers slightly. He wraps his coat a bit tighter around him and looks down at the man on the floor. It's his fault we're here. He is glad that he is unconscious right now. Mal needed to think and couldn't cope with the freaking out that would occur if he woke.
There is an all-pervading smell of blood here. The whole place stinks of it. Mal hoped he was imagining it. This was all some horrible nightmare that he had caused drinking too much illegally brewed whisky. But he knows that it isn't, deep down in his gut.
He finds himself humming a tune, then realises that it's a tune from Inara's music box. Some piece of blue and white china frippery that she had packed up and moved out with the rest of her stuff. He hasn't thought about it in months, let alone heard the tune. Inara had smacked his hand away when he wandered in and played with it, always making him feel quite the chastised child.
Mal closes his eyes against the darkness and hums a little louder. A childish trick to scare away the Reavers under the bed. Mal prays this time that it will work.
"And then he goes all stiff," Kaylee pouts at the screen in front of her.
"Sometimes that is a good thing Kaylee," Inara says with a wicked smile via the WAVE.
Kaylee upon realising what her friend has said, clasps a hand over her mouth and giggles. "You can't say that!" Then she curls her feet beneath her on the pilot's chair and sighs. "Wish you were still here to help me 'Nara." She looks wistfully towards the doorway. "What I wouldn't give for Simon to come running in here and fling me down on the console."
"I don't think I want to be here for that," Inara says.
Kaylee laughs. "I need a good ravishing that's all. Dunno if Simon has it in him."
"Give him time. I think our young doctor could surprise you."
There is the sound of running feet from the corridor.
"Maybe that's him," Inara says smiling again.
"I wish," Kaylee says looking round.
"Kaylee move!" Wash yells uncharacteristically at her as he barrels through the doorway.
She leaps up. "What's going on?"
Wash throws himself down on the sheepskin seat. "We got problems!"
"What is it Wash?" asks Inara.
He looks a little surprised at the voice coming from the speaker in front of him but his hands continue to go through the start up procedure. "Mal and Simon got taken."
"What?!" Kaylee cries. "What are you doing?"
Wash flicks the switches to start the engines. "We're leaving."
Kaylee grabs his arm. "You can't!"
Wash shakes her off, not unkindly but firmly enough that she lets him go. Zoë appears behind them.
"We movin'?" she asks.
"Zoë!" Kaylee cries. "Why are we leaving them?"
"There were reavers."
Kaylee starts to cry.
River materialises on the stairs and suddenly says, "Take us off the world Wash."
She sounds so like Mal that everyone turns to stare at her. Then she starts to laugh. "Jesus. Wants us to go. Martyr. Wants us to live free." She wraps her arms around her body and sinks, almost in slow motion, to the floor. "Judas."
Kaylee runs past and straight into Jayne's solid chest a little further down the corridor.
"We can't leave them!" she wails, beating her fists into his chest.
Jayne grabs her wrists. "Reavers Kaylee. We can't!"
She twists wildly. "But Jayne!"
He pulls her into a crushing hug. Her tears make a wet spot on his t-shirt. "We can't do anything for them Kaylee. I'm sorry."
Kaylee cries like her gorram heart is broken and Jayne feels suddenly sick.
Behind them River starts laughing hysterically.
Jayne catches her with the scalpel. Standing in the middle of the kitchen dripping blood from a wound in the palm of her hand, which still holds the scalpel.
"Tell us where she is Doctor Tam."
Jayne stares at her. "What?" he splutters.
She laughs, but it doesn't sound like her. "No rutting way." Her voice is her brother's but darker than Jayne recognises. Surer than anything. Braver too.
She lifts the scalpel and poises it over her other palm. "We can make this easy or we can make this unpleasant. We will find her."
Jayne grabs her shoulders and shakes her roughly. "What in gorram hell are you doing?"
She spits in his face.
"Damnit River!" Jayne swears letting go of her momentarily.
"I won't ever tell you!" her voice is low and carries all the conviction it can manage.
River wiggles free of him and stabs herself in the palm. She screams earsplittingly. Jayne snatches the scalpel before she can do anything else. She holds her hands out wide and looks at him without seeing, blood dripping onto the floor from the holes in her hands.
"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."
Jayne feels a cold shudder run through him. Book used to quote that before he left. Jayne didn't know what it meant then ether.
"River!" he grabs hold of her. She blinks and looks at him. She is shaking in his hands. Then she breaks free and rushes to the sink where she is violently sick. Jayne stares at her back and feels suddenly terribly and inexplicably afraid.
"I know what I'm doing."
She pulls the black jacket around her shoulders sharply.
Sheydra looks unhappy. "What about your girls?"
Inara crosses to a drawer and removes a small wooden box; she flicks it open and smiles secretly at its contents. She snaps it shut and sighs lightly. "They are very dear. But I have to leave." She goes to the bed and puts the box inside the rucksack there, along with a selection of clothing. She scoops up the rucksack from the bed and turns to face her friend. "I've taught them all I can."
"You know that isn't true." Sheydra purses her lips. "You're going back to find him." A pause. "He's dead Inara. There were reavers."
Inara freezes in the doorway. "I know that." She sets her head at an angle that says she is not going to back down. "But I have to go."
Mal balls up his coat, shoves it beneath his head and tries to find a way to lie comfortably on the bench. He can't, but that is hardly surprising. He isn't dead which is a start. But maybe tomorrow morning or the morning after that. He'll fear every one until it comes.
He didn't scream. Not that first time…but he had the second and the third. Every time they kept him strapped to that gorram metal bed he would scream from the moment they touched him to the moment they let go. They would break him eventually. Mal knew it was coming. He could see it in their eyes. They were methodical. They would break him and it wouldn't particularly please them, it was just what needed to be done.
They never even asked him a single question. The only time they ever speak to him when they promise him what will come next time. They have always kept their word.
Mal finds himself thinking of Inara. She doesn't know he's here. Hell she probably never even thinks about him anymore.
The door is opened in one end of the corridor. Mal sits up weakly. The two men slide the glass panel back enough to shove Simon into the cell. He stumbles and falls to his knees. There isn't a mark on him. It's the first time they have taken him, preferring to let him see what they do to Mal.
"Simon?"
He looks up and his eyes are shadowed. "I'm okay," he says quietly as the door closes behind him.
"You sure?"
Simon stands slowly and sits on the bench next to Mal. He pushes up the sleeve of his shirt and holds his arm out. There is a row of red needle marks.
"Poison and antidote. Again and again." His voice is bitter. "I think I told them where Serenity is. I can't remember. I tried not to tell them."
"Doesn't matter," Mal's voice is thick. "Zoë and Wash know what they have to do. They'll be long gone."
Simon nods. "I know." He knows what that means. He and Mal talked about this plan in secret a whiles ago, after Jubal Early, as a way to make sure that River survives. Simon doesn't care about his own life. Death is just one more line he'll have to cross for her.
Inara walks through the town centre, keeping her head down. Trying to pretend she isn't what she is and feeling the pack burning on her back. She finds an inn and gets a single room easily enough; the reaver attack has scared away anyone else. But something doesn't seem right here. People survived. Reavers don't leave survivors, not ones that can coherently recall the attack anyway. Something is terribly wrong with this situation. She'd come looking for their bodies, at least that was what she had told herself so vehemently back at the training house. Inara sits on the bed but doesn't sleep. She sits and watches the first light of day creep up the wall opposite the window. Serenity has gone – she hadn't expected that. She thought they would be here or have come back for Mal and Simon's remains, little that they would be after a reaver attack. She swallows and feels sick. She had left Mal and she hadn't said goodbye, not really. She starts to cry, softly at first then harder until her whole body shakes with it. She never knew that Malcolm Reynolds had wormed his way into her soul so easily.
She opens the wooden box in her lap and wonders if it's worth it. Whether he is worth it.
Kaylee sits in the engine room, with her back against the locked door crying until her chest hurts, and even then she can't stop. She tried to WAVE Inara earlier and got a Sheydra at the training house who told her Inara was gone. Kaylee doesn't ask where. Two days. They just left them there. She knows what reavers do to people. And if they took Mal and Simon alive…she shudders. Then a voice comes eerily through the door behind her.
"He told them he loved you today."
Kaylee stands and yanks the door open. "Go away River!"
"He told them he loved you today," she repeats steadily. Then leans forward and kisses Kaylee on the cheek. She pauses there, whispers in the mechanic's ear. "I love Kaywinnet Lee Frye. I love my sister. Stop asking me questions I can't answer!"
Kaylee darts backwards. Its Simon's voice in her ear.
"What?" she stares at River who smiles serenely at her.
"I can't tell you. I don't know." The voice that comes from her smiling lips is rough, catching in her lungs, like someone is sobbing. "Stop it…please…"
Kaylee shoves past her and goes running to the bridge. "Wash!"
He turns. "Yes?"
"Take us back!"
"What?" he stares at her. "We've been over this. There are reavers. No."
"It wasn't reavers that took Mal an' Simon."
"Kaylee look…"
"Ask River!" Kaylee screams at him. "Ask her why she can talk in Simon's voice. Ask her why they're asking him questions. Reavers don't do that. They would be…would be…" she looks sick.
"She's right. Moonbrain knows something." Jayne stands in the doorway. "Reaver would be rapin' and torturin' them, maybe skinning them if they fancied it. Not asking questions."
"Thank you for that vivid image Jayne." Zoë says firmly from her place next to Wash.
"Jus' saying is all," he mutters sullenly.
"Please!" Kaylee pleads.
"Mal doesn't know anything."
Jayne jumps as River slips into the room under his arm.
"He can't tell you anything." She tilts her head and stares down Zoë. "We're going to take your little sister…" River breaks off, breathing hard, face white.
"She gonna have a stroke or summin?" Jayne says staring at her.
"Two by two hands of blue. Two by two hands of blue," she babbles.
"Not this again!" Jayne snaps. "Shut up!"
No one moves in time when she faints and she hits the floor with a thump.
Simon goes pretty much catatonic today when they throw him back to Mal. He sits on the floor of the cell staring at nothing. Mal wonders what they did to him.
"Simon?" he asks softly after twenty minutes of silence, moving his battered limbs so he can slide down the bench towards the younger man. He leans forward. "Simon can you hear me?"
A tear drips down Simon's cheek slowly. "They told me what they're going to do to her." His voice is dull.
He closes his eyes but Mal knows he can still see whatever they described to the young doctor. Simon blinks. Other than that one tear he can't even cry. His eyes are dead. Somehow that scares Mal more than anything these men have inflicted on him. When Simon thinks of River they can all see the love in his eyes, the pride he feels in his mei mei. The sheer devotion to her burns there. But now he looks hollow, staring at the dark sheen of the glass wall. Mal slips wordlessly to the floor beside him and places an arm around the boy's shoulders.
"We'll be alright," he says with forced conviction as he gives Simon's shoulders a squeeze.
Simon doesn't answer, just sits there.
Mal sits there until Simon falls asleep, then stays awake worrying on everything. Mal wonders if Simon is broken. Have they burnt out his mind with questions that he can't answer? If that is so, Mal worries on the coming of tomorrow. His throat is already raw from screaming. He wants it to stop. Just stop. He thinks about putting his hands around Simon's throat then dashing his own brains out against the glass. But he can't. Malcolm Reynolds isn't like that. He might sacrifice himself for the good of his crew but he can't murder an innocent man and then kill himself.
Simon mutters something incoherent in his sleep. Mal slides to the floor and rests his arms on his knees. The ripped fabric catching at his cut arms where they peeled the skin back with scalpels. Mal rests his forehead against his arms. He is going to die. He starts to cry.
And today they decide that Simon Tam is no fun to play with in this state.