The Darkness
He looked right into the face of it. Was made to stare.
It?
The darkness. Kinda darkness you can't even imagine. Blacker than the space it moves in.
Malcolm Reynolds knows all about darkness.
He spent his youth growing up on a little planet called Shadow. Ironic, when you think of it. But Shadow isn't shadowed when he pictures it in his mind. Nah, the darkest thing on Shadow was the night sky, glowing deep and black. And even that was filled with a hundred thousand stars, sparkling from horizon to horizon. It was on Shadow that he first fell in love with the Black. The real shadows came later.
He lost his youth fighting a little war against a group who called themselves the Alliance. Because even if there hadn't been much darkness on Shadow, he could still recognize it when he saw it. And in that war he and darkness became right friendly. They met on the battlefield as the bullets rained down . They met by the dark edges, where fear and anger combined to make men do terrible things. They met in the trenches as food became scarce and water undrinkable. But through it all he still kept looking to the sky, and the darkness couldn't touch him, not completely, because the stars were still shining.
But one night the stars didn't shine. Because the sky was already too full of glowing beams of light.
They lit up the night.
And that was when the darkness claimed him for its own.
In the black days after he became real good at seeing the darkness all around him. Saw it in the faces of the soldiers who dragged him in and locked him up. Saw it in the slow sadness of those stuck in a place where they no longer belonged. Saw it in the petty acts of cruelty done by those who did it just to show they could.
And saw it in himself. Every day. As he looked in the mirror.
Oh yes, Malcolm Reynolds knows all about the darkness.
And each day he wakes up, looks at the ceiling, and wonders if today will be the day that it takes him away for good.
But one day…
Malcolm Reynold wakes up. He looks out into the Black. And waits for the darkness to reflect back into his heart.
But the darkness doesn't.
It doesn't because there are sparkling stars blocking its way.
There aren't a hundred thousand of them, and they don't stretch from horizon to horizon.
There are only eight.
But they are enough.
Malcolm Reynolds knows darkness. But he also knows light.
