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Strange Bedfellows
Summary: Two crews on opposite sides of a battle, bloodied and stranded together. Apart, they will die. Together, perhaps there is a way to survive.
Assumptions: We see Serenity's crew surrendering to Feds just before the Operative calls them off. At that point, Zoe is injured, Jayne is badly injured, Mal and Simon will die from their wounds in a matter of hours unless they get surgery. The next shots we see of them, all the crew (apart from Simon, who is only crutched) are walking soundly and do not seem to be in pain when they move. Time has obviously elapsed. This is my attempt to map that time.
Genre: Sci-fi/Western. It's Firefly. What else could I ever tag it as?
Rating: I'm calling it a T. There is no explicit sexual content, but I spend quite a lot of time on injuries. Some of it is rather gruesome. If you can handle the episode 'Bushwhacked' you'll be fine.
Note on vocab: I am providing a glossary for both the Chinese and any medical jargon. You should not need either to understand what's going on. They are there purely for curiosity's sake.
Mal
Mal saw the guns go down, he saw the Feds back away, retreating through the door as they slipped on the blood and tripped over the broken bodies, away from the girl standing like the Angel of Death, blood dripping from her hands. They'd gone; they'd left them there. The Operative must have ordered them off. Maybe he could feel something still, maybe he'd felt something when he'd watched the Reavers tearing that woman to pieces. Mal felt like he was about to fall down, every movement hurt like Niska's torture; he needed a medic, but Simon was down and bleeding.
"'Nara, adrenaline!" At the sound of Simon's voice, River came running back. She wasn't hurt. Gorram girl had stood on the corpses of thirty Reavers if it had been but one and she didn't seem hurt in the slightest. One gorram Alliance man had given him a hell of a beating, and that girl got out shiny. Inara passed Simon something; Simon gasped in pain, sat half way up and jabbed it in to his leg. Mal looked around at what was left of his crew. River and Inara looked okay, Jayne and Zoe were panting and bloody. Wo de tian ah, Kaylee looked bad, but Simon was at least moving now. Maybe he'd be more than useless now. Mal could feel himself swaying. He could hardly stand, and he couldn't bear the pain much longer. He didn't have it together enough to speak, to call for help. Couldn't the girl read minds? Simon had dragged himself to his hands and knees and was sticking a needle in Kaylee's neck, talking to himself. "Looks like M6, I hope it's just M6. Inara, rub that in. If she stops blinking or isn't significantly better inside of three minutes, yell. Zoe, still just… Yeah, Cat 3." He staggered across to Jayne. "Let me see." He half knelt half fell down in front of Jayne. "You were lucky; missed the artery, Cat 2. Let me check that-" Mal's legs gave out. River appeared right under him, taking his weight and lowering him to the ground as best she could.
"Simon," she said. Mal couldn't see Simon to tell if he'd heard. "Through wound, right superior abdomen. Shock. Cat 1."
"Gou shi." Simon started scrambling round towards them. He ran his hand over Mal's back, feeling for the hole. Mal twitched as he found it. "Lao tien ye, root of…" He tapped Mal's stomach sharply with his free hand, cursed, then reached for his neck and felt his pulse. "That's gotta be over 200. We need to get him to surgery, now. Help me." Inara appeared at the edge of Mal's field of vision, still looking composed, gui xiao dehow. River had him by the other arm. Kaylee appeared too, standing. "Oh thank God, was just M6."
"Shot wound, left mid abdomen." River said quietly. "Early shock, Cat 1. But there's nobody to help him."
Wo de tian, a a fairly mild curse
Gou shi a fairly strong curse
Lao tien ye similar in this context
gui xiao de hell knows (this is very dodgy Chinese)
Mesentery: a fine membrane from which the intestines are suspended, which contains a lot of fairly major blood vessels
This fic is completed, you may reasonably expect updates two to three times per week, my schedule is getting 'interesting' (by Wash's definition).
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