Once Upon a Time (May 2523)
"Baba, it's your turn to tell the bedtime story," a small voice called. Mal swiveled in the copilot's seat, a wide smile forming on his face when he saw his oldest son standing at the door to the flight deck, already dressed in his light blue pajamas, his hair slightly damp from his bath.
"My turn already?" he teased, already standing.
"Yes," River announced from the pilot's chair. "There are seven of us, one for each day of the week. Though day is an arbitrary construct based on the rotation of Earth that was. It's Inara, you, Kaylee, Zoe, me, Simon, and Jayne. You have what are conventionally known as Mondays."
Mal nodded, too tired to puzzle through the flow of words from River's mouth. She was more lucid than she had been before Miranda, for the reduced stress and some of the new medications Simon had found seemed to calm her, but she still spoke in riddles sometimes. "Thanks, Albatross," he said. Stepping to his son, he swung the small boy easily into his arms, and Ben automatically curled up against his father's shoulder. As Mal stepped out of the flight deck with the warm weight of his son against his chest and the clean scent of the baby shampoo Inara used flooding his nostrils, he thanked God or whatever other benevolent being might be out there for bringing such happiness into his life.
As expected, he found all of the children except Karina, who was not quite walking yet, crammed into the two small beds in the twins' room. "Looks a mite crowded in here already," Mal remarked, beginning the traditional bedtime ritual. "Perhaps you won't get a story tonight if the storyteller has nowhere to sit."
"No, sit with us, Unca Mal!" Toby pleaded. "We'll make room." He dutifully scooted over in the bed, nearly falling off in the process. Chuckling, Mal bent down to sweep him into his arms, settling onto the bed with both Toby and Ben in his lap. Immediately, Aanya crawled onto his lap as well, practically pushing her brother off of his father's lap. He accepted the change in position with more grace than Mal had expected, but Aanya had always been able to get away with more than any of the other children, both with adults and children alike. "Careful, gongzhu, let your brother climb on as well. There's plenty of room," Mal told her, shifting her weight so that Ben could slide back onto his lap. Once they had settled, Mal turned to the occupants of the other bed. "Does one of you want to pick the story tonight?" he offered. They nodded eagerly and bent their heads together. After a few seconds, Rose announced the selection.
"We want to hear 'bout the unicorns."
Mal raised an eyebrow at her. "The unicorns, huh?" All five children nodded eagerly. "Okay, okay. Give an old man a break. My mind ain't what it used to be." Mal pretended to think for a minute until Toby, tired of the silence, finally spoke.
"Unca Mal, just tell the story!"
"So impatient, yundong. Auntie 'Nara would tell you patience is a virtue."
"But Auntie 'Nara ain't here," Toby objected.
"Fair point. I suppose I oughta be getting on with the story then. The year was 2519. We were eagerly anticipating the arrival of a certain someone," he glanced meaningfully at Ben, "who was already two days late, mind you." The children all giggled, even Ben whose mother had teased him endlessly about his delayed birth. "I got a call from an old buddy of mine who was in a bit of trouble. He had found himself on one of the outer planets with a group of folk who believed in all sorts of crazy tales—witchcraft and dragons and other things you find in fairy tales. Despite their somewhat unorthodox beliefs, however, they were decent folk, and my buddy decided to settle with them. He even fell in love with one of them, and they got married.
Unfortunately, his young bride fell ill soon after their wedding, and she spent a number of days battling a fever. They didn't have medical supplies or fancy doctors or the like, for they didn't believe in modern medicine. Instead, they called a healer in, a woman they said was wise in the ancient ways. She claimed she could cure the young woman better than any doctor. She simply needed to apply a special poultice to remove the sickness from her body. My buddy was highly skeptical, but his wife believed the woman and insisted on the poultice. He was desperate to cure her by that point, and he thought that at the very least, the poultice might give her some hope which would allow her to recover. So he asked the old healer for the list of ingredients and set out to obtain them.
The list had all manner of odd ingredients, but he still managed to obtain all but the last one. Powder from a living unicorn horn. The woman insisted that she needed to be there for the extraction to ensure it was pure, so he could not simply pass off some dust as the ingredient.
He was desperate, and he had heard that I was a man who could do the impossible, so he sent me a wave. Now, I didn't want to go, for your mother was about to give birth at any moment, and I didn't want to be on some backwoods moon when that occurred."
"But she made you do it!" Toby exclaimed. Mal was happy to note that his voice was slightly softer than it had been. It seemed he was starting to succumb to sleep.
"Now just wait a minute, yundong. No one made me do anything. I am the captain of this ship, and it's me who does the orderin' around here." He stared down into the small boy's blue eyes, so similar to those of his father and felt for a moment that he was staring at his former pilot. However, he quickly shook those thoughts from his head and gave a small smile. "Though I suppose I did agree to it at her encouragement, nian qing-de," he admitted. In truth, Inara had ways to make Mal do anything she wished. He liked to pretend it was simply her Companion training, but he knew in his heart that it was more than that. He loved her, plain and simple. Loved her so much it hurt sometimes, and it was that love which made him more likely to agree to her plans than anyone else's, even Zoe's.
"She pointed out that it wasn't likely to be a dangerous job, the type that was hard to come by, and we did need the money. She even came up with a clever plan to make us a unicorn. We knew a rancher on the way who was willing to loan us a white horse, and she fashioned a horn out of plaster, prettied it up with some glitter, and attached it to the mare's head. She wouldn't pass close inspection, but she made a believable enough unicorn from a distance. We explained the plan to my buddy who also agreed it was a good suggestion, and we put it in motion.
We landed on the planet just after dawn and were planning to do the 'harvesting' that night. We were gettin' the horse ready when some idjit decided it was a fine time for target practice."
"Unca Jayne," Rose remarked with a yawn.
"Yeah, he's probably the biggest idjit on this boat. Anyway, his first shot spooked the horse. I was the closest, so I jumped on to try and reign him in, but he took off like lightning with me clinging on and the horn hangin' halfway off his head since we hadn't gotten 'round to attachin' it fully yet. Must've looked all kinds of stupid."
"Actually, I think you looked quite gallant," a soft voice remarked, and Mal looked up to see his wife standing in the doorway, her long nightgown hanging loosely off her body but still somehow accenting her curves in just the right way. Even after three children and four years of marriage, she still took his breath away, more so due to the soft curves indicating the presence of their fourth child.
"I s'pose that's why you were laughin' your head off with the rest of 'em then, huh?"
"Well, you looked quite gallant once you gained control of the horse again. I must say, Mal, until that day, I had not realized just how well you rode."
"Told ya I grew up on a ranch."
"Finish the story, Unca Mal!" Toby instructed. Mal cleared his throat, reminding himself that it was neither the time nor the place for the direction of his thoughts. His wife could be all sorts of distracting without even trying.
"Well, I did manage to get the horse under control again, and I brought her back to the ship so we could fully attach the horn. Then, we waited for nightfall and took her to a specific agreed upon location. My buddy was s'posed to bring the healer to a particular clearing to find the unicorn, and he promised to whistle when he arrived. We could then let the horse loose so he could tranquilize it and file off a part of the 'horn.' So there Zoe and I are, crouched behind some rocks with a horse who really just wanted to run, waiting for the signal. The time came when he was supposed to give it, but we heard nothing. So we waited. And waited. And waited. Just when I was about to give up, here comes Kaylee sprinting toward me, waving her arms around wildly. I tried to get her to calm down, to tell me what was going on, and she finally did manage one word. Labor.
Turns out someone had bad timing. Kaylee agreed to stay with Zoe while I ran back to the ship, and I fortunately got there before Ben made his entrance into the world. Barely. By the time Kaylee and Zoe returned with the 'unicorn,' it was nearing daybreak and Ben was about an hour old. We were so focused on that for awhile that we didn't stop to consider why there weren't a need for our unicorn. But when we finally realized that something must've gone wrong, Zoe went back to figure out what. A few hours later, she comes back all confused, sayin' something about how my buddy had found his unicorn and filed off a bit of his horn. When we told him it weren't our unicorn, he wasn't sure what to say. Finally, he just proclaimed it to be a miracle and left it at that. The healer had already made the poultice, and his wife was awake and cogent, so he wasn't too concerned with the details.
We left the next day and returned the horse. I still talk to my buddy from time to time, and he's doing quite well now. He's got a daughter and a son on the way, and his wife shows no signs of sickness anymore. Hasn't seen a unicorn again, but he tells me that it's probably the type of creature who shows up only when you need it. Reckon he's right, too, cuz I ain't ever seen one either."
"Never?" Rose asked, her voice soft. Mal looked over to see her eyes already closed. Rick had already fallen asleep in her bed, a fact which Mal did not find overly surprising. His boys were like wrecking balls on two feet when they were awake, but if you managed to get them to stay still for more than a couple minutes, they would drop off to sleep quite quickly.
"Never," Mal confirmed. "Now, close your eyes, xiaohua. It's been a long day today, and I have it on good authority that Auntie Kaylee is taking you all shopping when we land tomorrow." A small smile formed on her face as she followed his instructions. Mal glanced back at Inara who still stood in the doorway to the room. He nodded at the three children in his lap, and she stepped forward, lifting Aanya from his body. With his daughter safely nestled in her mother's arms, Mal stood and carefully transferred Toby to his bed, holding Ben to his other shoulder with his free hand. Once Toby had snuggled under the covers, he lifted Rick as well, barely noticing the weight of the two toddlers as he followed his wife from the room.
"Are you ever going to tell them that the healer felt bad for poor Tomas and put together her own fake unicorn for him to catch?" Inara questioned as they walked toward the crew bunk the boys shared. Mal shrugged.
"They're still young. If you can't believe in fairy tales and happy endings when you're young, when can you?"
"I like to believe that I got my happy ending," Inara said, looking meaningfully at the three children they carried. He smiled at that sentiment.
"Maybe that's why you ain't ever seen a unicorn."
"Maybe," she agreed. She pushed open the hatch, and he grinned, leaning over to kiss her soundly before stepping inside to tuck in his slumbering sons. No, Malcolm Reynolds certainly had no need for unicorns in his life.