"Wuh tzai chien shr ee ding ruh dao shuh muh run luh bah..."
To be honest, Captain Malcolm Reynolds wasn't mighty fond of getting himself caught in handcuffs. To be doubly hones, it happened far too often for him to admit. Which was why he didn't; Mal was known for his honesty, yes, but more prominently for his tendency to stretch or withhold all the details. If anybody asked, he was in handcuffs this time not because he had lost or a fight or picked one too many fights with the Alliance but because he had a fetish for it.
Inara was prone to hitting him over the jaw for that conclusion but at least it got most of the others to blush and bite their tongues and Mal didn't find himself having to swallow his pride. But for all his covering up, and for all the times it happened, he really couldn't have said he was growing to like it. In fact, he was getting more and more fed up with it as time passed, and as the situations through which he found himself cuffed to police, radiators, or bombs got more elaborate, Mal's temper got shorter.
"Ta ma de! I don't have time for this!"
He was shouting at thin air. Or he might have been shouting at a person. Mal'd been knocked around the head far too many times today to be one hundred percent sure that he wasn't being watched, or circled. For all he knew he might have been unconcious and hallucinating all of this. He certainly felt dizzy enough. A bruise was rising under one of his eyes and for a long time, while staring at a slit of light shining through from the side of the door, Mal had been convinced that he was seeing two doors, sometimes even three.
He wasn't no gorram doctor but he was pretty damned sure that wasn't good. That Simon Tam was no browncoat but he was a good man and he would have done something about the bleeding from Mal's side by now... Mal cursed. Great. Now he was starting to like the hwun dan doctor. What next? Giving dancing lessons to the crazy xiao mei-mei?
"Oh, juh jen sh guh kwai luh duh jean jan...!"
Delirious. He hadn't been this delirious since the Battle of Serenity Valley, and he hadn't eaten for a couple of gorram days back then. The war had done strange thing to sane and good men and Mal himself hadn't escaped it. Neither had Zoe, but she'd taken it better than he had. But he really had to focus on the now, not the then. All he could remember was that he was somewhere in the Georgia System, maybe near Paradiso.
He was miles from the Core planets and for the first time he could remember, he regretted being miles from law enforcement. There would've been a kao lot of questions he'd have to answer but at least he'd not be handcuffed to... Well, it was hard to tell what he was handcuffed exactly when one of his eyes didn't open right but it smelled of shiong mao niao and he really hoped it wasn't that. Never live it down with the crew if it was.
"Tied up by some jien huo too!"
He was well aware that he was complaining, and that it would get him absolutely nowhere. But to be honest there was enough black and blue and red on him that he reckoned he was owed a fine lot of complaining and maybe enough Baiju to floor a rhinosceros. Inara could get him some if she was still on Ariel and they could pick her up on the way after they'd picked up him and it'll all be pretty kao good and... And...
Mal's head snapped back up. He wasn't sure how long he'd fallen unconcious for, but there was something bothering him, a nagging noise at the back of his head. The Browncoat rolled his neck until it clicked ominously and stretched his arms as best he could in the handcuffs before looking around through bleary eyes, growling quietly. How long had he been here? Had no one thought 'oh, Mal's missing, let's send out a search party' yet?
"Jeo shung yong jur goo jang. Jien cha yong chi gong yin. Life support failure. Check oxygen levels at once."
"Shun sheng duh gao wahn!"
Mal began to rattle the chain of the handcuffs violently, all other complaints ignored. The skin was easily grazed further from his wrist in the protest but he could deal with that later. One more job for the hwun dan doctor when Mal got his sorry ass back to Serenity. Mal had a funny feeling he'd never be so happy to see his Firefly again as he would be today! Focusing on other things, on happier moments instead of the drugged and injured blur in his head, he put himself back to work, cursing consistently and waggling his arm like it was a yao noo hoe tze. He'd better get himself out of this particular pair of handcuffs quick, or he wouldn't be living to wear another.