This was originally written as a response to Firefly Friday prompt #202, "travel," but it grew to exceed the word limit.
Firefly and Serenity are copyrighted materials of Mutant Enemy, Universal Pictures and Twentieth-Century Fox. This is a fan story intended for entertainment purposes only. No compensation has been received or will be accepted in connection with this work, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended or should be implied.
A Life of Constant Travel
It is a life of constant travel, and Simon hates it.
It's not the first time he's traveled, of course. Every well-bred Core citizen travels; it is expected. But Simon never liked traveling. It took him away from his medical studies, the hospital, and the life he created for himself on Osiris. It disrupted his routines and left him feeling as though he'd been left behind and out of touch when he returned.
Before River left for the Academy, before he left Osiris to get her out, Simon never traveled more than was necessary.
In many ways he still does not. His constant travel is because of necessity. It's harder to track a moving target, as Mal pointed out once, and Serenity never stops moving. So Simon travels with her, remaining in motion, never letting himself stay in one place too long. Always keeping clear of those who would gladly hunt him down and take him back to that place he can never live again.
Simon focuses on those things that do not change. He's still a doctor, and maintains his infirmary if not always his profession. He's still a brother, and loves his sister if not always what she's become. He has the same living quarters. He sees the same people every day, and comes to know them as well as he knew his former colleagues; perhaps, even to love them.
They are always moving. But within that movement, he is learning to find stability.
It is a life of constant travel, and he will learn to live with it.
It is a life of constant travel, and River loves it.
She remembers traveling before, always part of a group, always having to slow down and let them choose the level of experience they can handle, rather than the so much more she can. She exulted in the differences, the variety, the sheer newness of everything she found while traveling – and she remembers feeling frustration when she had to go home after learning so little from the trips.
Before she left for the Academy, River dreamed of traveling forever, finding and learning everything there was to learn.
At the Academy, of course, she learned plenty. She learned that there really are things a person might not want to know, and after Simon came to get her, she learned that travel can be a gritty, hard existence. But it is travel, and she still learns. She is learning to reach out, to touch the world around her; to slow down so that she can experience all there is to learn.
She learns that there is plenty left to learn, if she only looks to find it. Every stop brings something new, something fresh, another something to experience and enjoy and learn from. The worst trips for her are the ones in her own mind, when she's trapped and can't get away the way Serenity can by simply firing her engines and going into the black.
So River imagines herself as the ship, always traveling, always experiencing, and always learning.
It is a life of constant travel, and she never wants to live another way.
It is a life of constant travel, and Zoë has never known anything else.
She was born vessel-side, and has never lived on a planet. Been on one, yes. Stayed for a while, yes. The longest she's been in one place was her six months on Hera – the longest six months of her entire life. Travel has been her constant companion for all her life, the one thing that has always been there. She was a vessel-brat the same way she was a woman: she just was.
Before the war, Zoë had never even considered living planet-side.
Most of the war wasn't fought vessel-side. It's hard to fight in the black when only one side has ships with weapons. The Independents knew they were licked there, so they never even tried. Rather, the war was fought on planets. Their unit traveled from planet to planet, from place to place, from battle to battle. There was never anything else.
She'd thought she wouldn't fall victim to the mind-trick of associating travel and battle, but she did. When the captain offered her this position, she thought it would be a way to battle that demon. She is winning, but the fight does not come without cost. The association is broken, but she's more conscious of her traveling lifestyle than she ever has been in her life.
It's all she has. It's all she knows. She wonders if it's all there will ever be.
It is a life of constant travel, and she is weary.
It is a life of constant travel, and Wash has never known anything better.
He grew up in a world without the sky, a world that was always grey. It was never fully dark and never fully light. The polluted atmosphere saw to that. The sun and the stars were something his teachers covered in school, something other people missed, but not something he'd ever known for himself. No matter how far he traveled, he never saw them.
Before the war, he had hungered to travel to the place where he could: off-planet.
He was never the kind to let life pass him by, and he pursued his dream by training as a pilot. He'd thought that joining the Independents would be his ticket to the sky, but it all came to a crashing halt when he discovered that in the black, only one side had weapons. In the end, he'd exchanged the grey sky of one world for nothing more than the grey walls of a prison.
When the war ended, all he wanted to do was get away. No more grey, no more planets. His pilot certification was still valid and he took to the skies. He moved from berth to berth, in his chosen world of black space and bright stars. Sometimes he's wondered if he should be dissatisfied, if he should want more, but he no longer feels the need to find out.
As long as there is no grey, it is enough.
It is a life of constant travel, and he is content.
It is a life of constant travel, but Serenity has never known any other. Never will know any other. Never can know any other. She is a ship. She was built to travel. That is what she does.
In her lifetime she has seen the men who built her come and go. She has carried passengers who hungered for what she offered and passengers who would rather have been anywhere else. She has carried a dozen different crews of a dozen different types, all of them different from each other except for the fact that they traveled with her.
She is the vessel. She is the focal point. Serenity is the traveler, and her travel endures.