Title: Blood, Leather, Steel
Rating: PG, Gen
Wordcount: 602
Challenge: FF Friday; about edges.
Vera may be the love of his life, but knives are his frequent mistresses.
All-purpose hunting knives, finely balanced throwing knives, and an antique straight razor even Mal doesn't know he has. It's got a jade-inlaid handle and ideograms so old he can't read them.
He loves to sharpen his knives. It's calming. He knows everything there is to know about the subject. The whetstone puts the sharp back on the edge. But aligning the blade is as important as sharpening it; a lot of people don't know that. So you use the steel now and then, careful even strokes, twenty to a side.
And then, when you want the edge keen enough to shave the hairs from your arm, you use the leather strop.
He's seen these laser-powered sharpening devices on some of the fancier worlds they touch down on. Stick the blade in, take it out. Done.
He distrusts those machines deeply.
Better to hone by hand. Besides, running the edge over and over the whetstone helps him think. Or think differently, anyway. Only way he can explain it. He thinks of places he's been, and the people he's known, and how plain crazy the universe is. But he thinks about these things in a calm, detached way, and sometimes it almost begins to make sense. Like he can focus, the way the captain does. Like putting the edge on a blade puts an edge on his thoughts.
And when things are really bad, and his brain is scattered, he takes out the straight razor. He only uses the strop on the razor, no whetstone for a blade so fine.
He's never used it. It has no name. He just hones it on the strop, not too often, because it doesn't really need it; and because if the ship had to maneuver suddenly, one little slip and he could be emptying his veins all over the deck.
Today he just takes it out and looks at it. Usually he doesn't remember, but today he does:
Eight years old, and the thug came into their little shop that night; wired and half-blind on some kind of stimulant they brewed from the local plant life. No way to know if he was after money, or goods, or if he was just crazy.
The colony hadn't exactly been a penal colony, but it didn't get a lot of what you'd call real upstanding citizens, either.
The thug cut Jayne's father's throat before anyone realized what was happening. And then everyone just stood there, paralyzed, like it wasn't really happening at all.
Except Jayne knew it was. The shotgun behind the counter was huge in his arms, but he knew how to use it and he unloaded both barrels into the man's chest before his father's body hit the ground.
And later on, the local sheriff pried the jade-handled straight razor from the thug's rigid fist.
"Here, boy," he said, handing it to Jayne. "You just keep this somewhere safe until the day comes you know what to do with it."
So he did.
Now, he remembers; and he wonders, for maybe only the third or fourth time since that day, if things would have been different if his father hadn't come to that end.
Maybe he would have done something with his life the old man would be proud of.
His hands shake a little. He unfolds the razor carefully and reaches for the strop.
Maybe his life would make more sense than it does.
One stroke. Two. His hands stop trembling and he sighs.
He says aloud, "Then again, maybe not."
END