Title:Jedi Serenity
Genre: Crossover, Humor, Action, Romance, Angst
Characters: Luke, Mara, Corran, Tionne, Kam and the Crew of Serenity (Mal, Inara, Wash, Zoe, Kaylee, Jayne, Simon, River, Book)
Summary: On their way to the planet Persephone the crew of the Serenity come across a damaged ship and rescue the otherworldly passengers. Already on the run from the Alliance with two known fugitives on board, Captain Reynolds decides to up the ante and help the stranded Jedi whose journey into their universe did not go unnoticed. The Jedi, the Force now seemingly mute to them, have to rely on a band of misfit thieves to find a way home, but perhaps the Force is not as absence as they thought.
Note: This is my first non-Star Wars fan fic but it's a cross-over so there you go. It was inspired by Darth_Marrs on the Jedi Council Forums who makes doing cross-overs look easy.
Chapter One
"Go-se," Jayne kicked the unopened crate and it skidded a few inches across the deck of the Serenity. "See, this is exactly why we shouldn't be dealing with Badger."
"If I remember correctly," Wash tilted his head almost laughingly, "you where the one who said we should take the job."
"Yeah," the mercenary tossed the sling of his automatic weapon over his broad shoulder, "your point is?"
The pilot rolled his eyes and leaned back against the grated stairwell that led to the upper part of the cargo hold of the Firefly class ship. Simon, the ships medic, and Kaylee, the mechanic, were standing behind him on the stairs having come to see how the latest caper had gone. Sheppard Book was absent, his turn at cooking midday meal, though he was never to keen on the crew's less than legal activities.
River, Simon's younger sister, was lying across one of the catwalks overlooking the hold, staring down at them.
"Sir," Zoe, the second in command, ignored the barbs between the two men and addressed the captain, "the goods were where Badger said they would be. It isn't our fault that the manifest was wrong."
Captain Malcolm Reynolds was crouched in front of the opened second container, staring down at three hundred ballerina dolls. He turned one over in his hand, "Don't think he'll be seeing it that way."
"You think he'll try to back out, sir?" she asked him, though he knew the woman was smart enough to have figured it out herself already.
"Uh, let's see," Jayne interjected, "when has that piece of luh-suh not tried to hump us out of our take?"
"I think they're cute," Kaylee smiled, then again she was always smiling.
"Cute don't put rutting money in my hand," Jayne shot back.
More words were exchanged, Mal ignored them for the most part. The way it is, is the way it is, and at the moment the way was paved with ballerina bolls.
"Wei," he silenced his bickering crew members before he stood to face them. "Badger fancies himself a business man, I'm sure he can find something shiny to do with these, make some kind of profit."
"And us?" Jayne pointed his finger angrily in the captains face, "what about our profit?"
"You gonna point something at me, Jayne, best be a weapon," Mal didn't hesitate in his words, "and any profit is better than no profit, lest you can think of someone else we can unload these to?"
An eerie quietness fell over the area as everyone averted their eyes, knowing that the captain was right, the captain was always right, especially when he was wrong.
"She forgot how to dance," the voice was soft but boomed in the silence, every head tilting up to see River leaning over the catwalk, eyes transfixed on the dolls, "she used to love to dance, but now she's a broken doll, thrown in a box with other dolls, forgetting how to dance."
The crew simply shook their heads and went on about storing the cargo, setting a course for Persephone. As it where, that was one of the least crazy things the young fugitive had said… this week...
***
As the crew went about their routine, Simon watched as his younger sister walked down from the catwalk lightly, every step seemingly done intently, as if she had to think about even such mundane of movement. Every day that went by where he couldn't figure out how to help River, a bit of seemed to die inside.
He was the older brother, he should have protected her. Instead he encouraged her to go to 'the Academy' or whatever it was. They said she would learn, be challenged like the genius child she was, but instead they cut into her brain, cutting her amygdala so that she was forced to feel everything that happened to her, everything around her.
And he gave up everything to get her back.
River picked up one of the dolls before Jayne had a chance to put the lid on the container.
"Hey, moonbrain!" the mercenary shouted but she turned away, walking back across the hold to the open area.
"Jayne," Mal called out, waving his hand in a 'just let it go' gesture.
One doll wasn't worth getting into a fight over, especially since it was recently learned that River could be terrifyingly efficient at death… she only needed to do the math. The scary part being that she didn't really understand what she had done that day, what it had meant, and perhaps that was for the best. Her psyche was fragile enough as it was.
Slowly River began to twirl like a ballerina, lifting up on one foot, arms raised in a pirouette. River had loved to dance when she was young, and she was a creature of extraordinary grace, still is. But Simon wondered why she danced now, was it to enjoy the movement, or to distract from the voices?
He thought he heard her whisper, "He should ask her to dance…"
***
"Got word from Inara," Wash mentioned to Zoe as he heard her boots clank on the metal floor of the cockpit. "Seems she's got a full docket, Mal said we'll be staying on Persephone a few days then, you know, if we're not having to run… screaming, possibly bleeding, but definitely whimpering."
Zoe chuckled, wrapping her arms around him to rest her head against his shoulder in his seated position, "Captain knows what he's doing, maybe we'll get a chance to rack up a few hours of R&R this trip."
"Did you ask his permission?" he replied dryly to his wife. Gods did he love that woman, but her unfaltering loyalty to Mal did often ire him. Of course, Zoe and Mal served together in the war, two of the few survivors of one of the bloodiest battles… the battle that many say lost the war for the Browncoats as the loss was so great.
He tried to understand that loyalty once, ended up being tortured by a psychopath for his trouble, but Mal had kept him sane, helped him to survive it. For that Wash would give the man the benefit of the doubt and a certain amount of loyalty and respect, but no, he probably never would truly understand what was between Zoe and Mal.
Didn't mean that he didn't get annoyed when conflict of interests arose and he questioned who would come first to Zoe, him or Mal.
"No," she answered softly, teasingly, "but I'll ask."
"Hhhmm?" he lost his train of thought, but kept just enough presence of mind to lock Serenity into auto-pilot. He turned his seat and met his wife's lips, her slowly pulling him out of the pilot's chair.
"Think the ship could do without its pilot for a couple of hours?" she grinned at him.
"Well, you know," Wash shrugged, "probably crash into something, blow up in a fireball of, uh, fiery death."
"Fiery huh?" she kept him walking backwards towards the door.
"It'll be horrible," he kissed her again, "we'll all be dead but I'm sure they'll write beautiful poems to its tragic demise."
"You and your poems," She laughed again, and he loved that laugh, that grin.
Beeping filled the room and they both paused, her peering over his shoulder and him turning his neck to view the control board.
"You know, crashing after the coupling would have been preferred," he mumbled as he went back to the pilot's chair, hitting switches to bring up a view of whatever sounded the proximity warning.
"Everything okay?" his wife was back to her serious self in the face of possible danger.
"Think so," he slowed Serenity down as he did a trajectory analyst of the other ship, downloading the transponder codes, "Je shr shuh muh lan dong shi?"
"I dunno, you tell me," Mal joined them in the cockpit.
"Unknown ship, about the size of Serenity," Wash filled him in, "just sitting there, dead in space, and it's registering as something, but the computer doesn't understand it."
"What do you mean, doesn't understand?"
"Just a bunch of random symbols," the pilot moved to the side so Mal could get a better look at the scroll on the screen.
Mal nodded, "Yeah, I'd call that random."
"Sir," Zoe was at one of the side stations, "looks like it's damaged, leaking atmo, but still has containment in the main bulk of the ship. The engines are giving out a very massive heat reading, could be ready to blow."
"Give me visual," the former soldier ordered, a horrible thought occurring to all of them at once.
Wash brought it up, the image small on the screen but they could make out the design of the ship, "What the guay is that?"
"I do not know," Mal replied, "you ever seen anything like that?"
"No," Wash answered truthfully, and he had seen a lot of ships, even ones taken over by Reavers and turned into flying palaces of death.
"Safe," the small voice startled them as it was habit to do.
All three of them turned to see River peeking her head through the door. Mal was the first to recover, "Safe? You sure?"
"Safe, for now, for us, for them… then boom," she disappeared down the short stairway that lead into the cockpit. Dancing as she ran into the kitchen.
They sat in silence for a moment, Wash finally finding his voice, "You know, it's even extra creepy when she does that and she's probably right."
