"So what do we do now?"
The fated question bounced off the walls of the mess, leaping from ear to ear of the men and women seated around the table that housed beakers of liquid, plates of food and the elbows of the aforementioned persons. Two men, four women, and Jayne; the latter being the one, in a typically blunt manner, who had posed the question.
No-one spoke for a stretch of time, going through the first of the five stages of grief.
The silence was destroyed when Zoe flung a decanter of water at the wall, shattering it into dozens of pieces. Nobody commented on the sudden outburst, some people trying to cling onto the last shreds of their denial while Zoe moved fitfully into the second stage. Zoe was bound to act differently from the others, and they made allowances for that – she was already dealing with a far greater grief than the others were with the loss of Serenity's pilot, and her husband.
Never one for working rationally and skipping straight to despair, Kaylee started to blubber and wail.
"What are we going to do? We got no pilot, we got no shelter, we got nobody to give us a job!"
Inara tried to reason with the emotionally crippled engineer, clutching her hand reassuringly. "There's always work for a resourceful group of people like us, we just have to go and find it." Simon rubbed Kaylee's shoulder, although the action seemed more meditative than comforting as he stared off into space.
Displaying that Tam family trait in another capacity, his sister River, curled up on the far end of the table, muttered something under her breath. No-one saw fit to question what it was she said.
With Zoe looking ready to tear somebody apart with rage, Kaylee steeped in despair, Inara in bargaining with Kaylee (and by extension her circumstances), it was fitting that long before the conversation had erupted across the table, Mal had arrived at the final stage of his grief and accepted the circumstances around him.
He rapped his fist lightly against the table surface, but no-one paid him any attention. He rapped again, to the same effect. Then he cleared his throat. Then tried both in combination.
Finally: "Hey. Hey! Hey!"
Silence once again consumed the crew of the Serenity; their captain had something to say, and he slowly rose to his feet to say it.
When he thought the suspense was going to kill them, he finally uttered his directive.
"Salvage."
And that was all.
Puzzled glances evolved into Jayne raising his hand, as if he were in a school room. Mal nodded at him, apparently unaware of the ridiculous gesture.
"Uhm…sorry but…salvage?"
Mal nodded again. "Salvage."
"Yeah…but, uh…salvage?"
Inara sighed. "Before this gets too repetitive, allow me to intervene. Mal – what do you mean by salvage?"
Mal smiled suddenly, winningly. "Why, a smart girl like you Inara, I thought you would've figured it out by now." Ignoring the roll of her eyes, he continued after a moment with his explanation, as if allowing his brilliance to sink in. He started to pace around the table as he spoke.
"After the Alliance patched up our ship and we said goodbye to them yet again…well, I've been thinking. Where do we know a lot of ships got blowed up into tiny pieces recently?"
Kaylee frowned, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "In that there ion cloud by Mister Universe's place."
Zoe glanced sideways at Mal dangerously, as if to dare him to suggest they return to the place her husband was murdered by Reavers, but he ignored the look. "Correct."
"But the Alliance is bound to have that place squeaky clean by now."
"Also correct."
Inara directed a puzzled glance at the table top. "I don't mean to question your logic here, Mal…well, actually I guess I do – what are you talking about?"
Again, ignoring his female crewmate, Mal continued. "By now that cloud won't have a piece of debris worth two credits that rub together and make that lovely noise that just sings wealth. But the Reaver field does."
A stunned silence settled on the room, and then numerous indignant cries assaulted Mal's senses. He raised his hands, and slowly the din died to a manageable level.
"Hey now, listen up. Most of the Reavers were blown to pieces in that great big space battle we had ourselves a few weeks back, and the ones that're left'll be in the cloud, feedin' off the salvagers that had exactly the same idea we did. But as usual, we ain't your ordinary crew and I definitely ain't an ordinary captain…"
He missed the muttered comment Inara made: "You can say that again…"
"…and as such we have two advantages over all of those ordinary boys and girls out there. One, we caused that debris field they're pickin' their way through, and two, we aren't scared of the Reavers."
"Speak for yourself," stated Kaylee vehemently.
"I'm speakin' for myself and for all of you as well. Every other salvage captain has had the thought I just had, and every salvage crew has refused just like you did just now. The difference between us and them? We've already been to the Reaver's back yard, so doin' it one more time is a walk in the park."
"We've been there bef…? Mal, there's a 'verse of difference between disguising ourselves as a Reaver ship and sneaking past, and launching a salvage operation," argued Inara, Kaylee nodding aggressively beside her.
"Hey – at what point is this open to debate?" asked Mal, his hackles rising.
"At the point you tell us to go back to Reaver land and we stick you full of lead and throw you out of the airlock," growled Jayne. "There ain't no way I'm goin' back there. We got no gun outside the ship anymore, remember?"
"I remember," said Mal.
"So what're we gonna do if one of those boys comes lookin' for blood?"
Mal glared at Jayne, apparently without an answer to his very good question.
"Let's do it," muttered Zoe, very quietly and very dangerously. "I'd like the chance to repay some of those bastards in kind."
Mal happened to look Inara in the eye at that moment, but was forced to look away. Here eyes narrowed in understanding.
"Oh. Oh, I think I get it now. The both of you are hurting, and with you being soldiers and all, you automatically want to break things and make loud, shooty noises."
Zoe stared at Inara without noticeably moving. "So?"
"So you're both just going to get yourselves and the rest of us killed."
Zoe shrugged imperceptibly. "I ain't got that much more to live for."
"Well I do. If you're going on a…crusade, then you can count me out, and I'm pretty sure there are other people here who feel the same way."
Mal glared at her. "There you go again. Can't make up your mind one way or the other, can you? You're stayin', you're leavin', you're stayin', and what's this? You're leavin' again? Cause that's what not following my orders around here leads to."
Inara trembled slightly for a few moments, and then displaying the polar opposite of the composed calm she normally displayed, slammed her fist on the table in front of her. "Why have you got to be so gorram stubborn?" she exclaimed.
"Cause this is my ship, and those that occupy it follow my rules. Anyone who doesn't like it is free to leave."
"Mal…" started Simon. Mal looked almost in surprise in his direction. "We don't mean you any disrespect…it's just that going into Reaver space in an unarmed ship isn't exactly the best of ideas."
Incredibly, the socially inept doctor's words seemed to defuse the situation somewhat, as Mal relaxed his physical posture and Inara seemed to regain some of her composure.
"If you try and force me to go into Reaver space again, I'll stick you full of lead and throw you out the airlock," growled Jayne, perhaps imagining himself helpfully adding to the debate. Mal shot him a look.
"While that would happen in never, I suppose…I can see your point," he very reluctantly gave to Inara.
"And I can see yours," said the Companion, eager to fix the rapidly increasing rift developing between the crew. "I know what happened was wrong, but going and getting yourself killed isn't going to make it right." She turned to Zoe. "I don't mean any disrespect…but you and Mal are soldiers; Wash wasn't. Isn't. He wouldn't want you to go and die on his behalf…"
"Who said anything about dying?" interrupted the warrior woman.
"You did, when you started to talk about talking on the Reavers single handedly. Think about how close we came to being slaughtered during that last battle. That was one ship's worth of Reavers. Imagine a station – or even a planet."
Zoe said nothing, but glowered at the table top as if it had offended her somehow.
Mal was working his jaw, obviously stuck on a moral fence. Inara pressed the offensive, cranking her Companion-trained charm to maximum.
"Mal…think of all we've been through. We're more than just a crew now. We're not disobeying…we're worried about you and Zoe. You're not thinking rationally. Don't finish what we all started like this."
Jayne was rolling his eyes and making small sounds of disgust, but it was Kaylee who drew Mal's attention while Inara spoke. Her normally happy eyes were brimming with sorrow, and she pleaded with Mal silently through the Companion's speech.
When Inara finished, there was silence for a few moments, and Mal shook his head slightly. "I finally found a force out there to make you not cheerful," he said softly, and Kaylee just sat there, exuding all of her emotion. Another few beats of silence. "Well, maybe it was a bad idea," Mal, falteringly, finally conceded.
Kaylee whooped loudly, throwing herself from the bench she sat on and grappling Mal in a rough embrace. Inara smiled in delight, but Zoe stomped from the room, clearly displeased.
"There'll be no solace for that one," said River.
"Don't worry about her," said Mal. "I'll talk to her later."
River met his eyes, and looked at him as if he'd just spoken gibberish.
Frustrated, Jayne exclaimed, "Nobody's answered my gorram question properly yet! What are we going to do?"
Disentangling himself from the overzealous ship's engineer, Mal finally responded to Jayne's enquiry.
"Well, our first port of call is to find a port of call. I'll set us a course for the first system with a bar and a spaceport. After that…well, I guess we'll see."
Everyone sat basking in warm glow of renewed purpose a little too long for Mal's liking.
"…Well snap to it!"
The crew hurried to their feet and out of the room, leaving only Mal and River in the mess. Inara, the last to leave, turned to address Mal.
"I appreciate what you did," she said, referring to the way he backed down – something that had never happened before. "I won't forget it."
Mal's eyes widened slightly. "Does that mean…?" But Inara floated out of the room, a coy smile on her face, before he could finish the question. He stood, grinning foolishly at the head of the table.
"You're going to get lucky," commented River, and the statement – especially who it was coming from – was enough to return Mal to normal and propel him – slightly creepified – out of the mess and towards the cockpit.
As the Serenity turned and made for the nearest planet to its current location, the crew bustling about its metallic interior were blissfully unaware of the wheels of fate that kept on turning, nor the new destiny that awaited them…lurking in the darkness of space.
Next on Void:
"Well I'll be…" said Mal, grinning. "What the hell are you doing here?"
A/N: Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance, for anyone who is/was confused.
Welcome to my attempt at Firefly! At the end of each chapter, I'll be adding just a mere sentence to give you a hint of what's going to come. Sometimes it'll be but the first sentence of the next chapter, others a key line from an early scene. The reason? I've never done it before, and want to test it out.