3
Mal walked Jenn all over the ship explaining the medical bay, the passenger's quarters, and the cargo bay, the lounge area for the passengers, the different stairways, how to get here and there, and then the galley.
"Through here we have the galley; people can come and go up here as they please. But meals are on a schedule, or as close to one as . . ." Mal let his sentence trail off. As he and Jenn turned the corner and entered the galley, they were surprised to find the entire crew waiting at the table, speaking in hushed tones. Their conversations dropped as soon as Mal and Jenn entered the room.
"What's goin on here?" Mal asked, looking from one face to the other. The room was silent, and all eyes were down cast, with the exception of one.
Across the room there was a young girl, around Jenn's own age from what she could tell. She had long hair like Jenn as well, except that where hers was a dark brown, almost black in the dimly lit corner she was in, Jenn's was a softer more golden brown, almost identical to her brothers. She stared at Jenn completely unabashed or showing anything other than a deep curiosity.
Jenn blushed and looked to the ground. Something in the way she stared at her, like she could see right through her, made Jenn very uncomfortable.
"Come on now people, what exactly is goin on here?" Mal said, he was growing impatient and it was beginning to show.
"They were talking about your sister," The girl in the back said, "and whether or not she can be trusted."
"River!" A young man standing almost in front of her exclaimed.
"What," she asked, still making the same wide eyed face, "the captain asked what was going on. I thought I was supposed to tell the truth. Simon," she turned to the man, "should I not tell the truth?"
"No River it's alright, you need to tell the truth, you just also need . . ."
River turned her head sharply away from the man she called Simon and faced Mal. "Your mother is dead. That's why your sister is here."
Jenn gasped and turned an uncomfortable shade of white, Mal's jaw dropped completely open, and every face in the room looked from Jenn to River to Mal, and back to Jenn. The silence in the room was palpable, and the only person who seemed unaffected by River's statement, was River.
"Jenn," Mal said, in a very low whisper.
Jenn said nothing but looked at her brother; her eyes were huge and starting to fill with tears. Mal bit back on the urge to look away or to even walk away from his sister. She was gonna cry and there wasn't a whole lot he could do about that right now, he had to know.
"Is it true?" he asked, "about ma?"
"Mal I'm sorry," Jenn said, "I didn't want you to find out like this."
Mal paled and shook his head. "When?"
Jenn sniffled and looked down, she doing everything she could not to cry. She knew how much Mal hated when people cried. She sucked in a deep breath and said, "About a month and half ago."
Mal looked around for a moment, not really seeing anything; he grabbed the chair from the front of the table and collapsed into it. He put his head in his hands sighed.
Jenn took a step forward but stopped when Mal put a hand out to stop her. "Zoe," he said. And without a word or hesitation she was there at his side. Head up, eyes forward, hands behind her back.
"Captain," was all she said.
"Would you please take Jenn to my room and get everyone back to work. We still have a job to do."
"Captain . . ." Zoe started.
"Zoe."
"Yes sir." She nodded and turned to Jenn.
Jenn opened her mouth to protest but Zoe shook her head ever so slightly and lifter her hand to escort Jenn toward the captains quarters. She shot one more look at her brother over Zoe's shoulder, and then let the woman lead her away.
-Mal's room-
Jenn paced back and forth in Mal's cramped quarters. There didn't seem to be any kind of personal anything anywhere. Not so much as a picture or scrap of anything that would suggest the room was occupied. There was a desk against one wall; it had a number of different things on it. Books, charts, documents about Serenity and firefly class vehicles, but nothing that said 'Mal.'
Jenn thought about going through the draws of the desk to see if there was anything in there that would suggest the room belonged to her brother. But she dismissed the thought just as quickly as it had come. Mal hated when people went through his things, always had. When they had been children he would sometimes arrange his things just so, so that if she were to go in and play with his toys, he would know.
She sighed and walked away from the desk. She walked under the door way and listened. There was no noise, no voices or footsteps or sound of any kind. Jenn sighed and went back to pacing.
As she paced she pulled the yellow envelope from insider her jacket. She'd been carrying it for almost two months now. She knew the way it smelled its weight, the way it was bent slightly on the bottom left corner. Most importantly, the name scrawled across the front. Well not so much the name but the handwriting and the person who wrote it.
Jenn felt a stab of pain at the thought of her mother. She missed her so much some times. Poor Mal. She knew how much he loved their mother, she was his whole world for so long, and this was going to be a terrible ordeal. Hopefully he would let her help him. He could be so damn proud sometimes.
A sound at the door pulled Jenn out of her thoughts. The door pushed open and Mal slowly descended the ladder. Jus t before the bottom he reached up and closed the door. He punched a code not a small keypad next to the door and a green light turned to red above the door. He jumped down the last few stairs and waited.
Jenn bounced back and forth anxiously from one foot to the next. She stared at Mal's back waiting for him to turn around. She had been thinking for months about what she would say to him when this day came. How she would break the news to him. At least now the girl they called River had broken the hardest bit of news to him. Now she just had to focus on explaining to him the letter their mother had written to him and what happened now.
What happened to her now depended completely on him.
"So," Mal said, finally turning to face Jenn, "What happened to mama and why did you wait this long to tell me?"
"Mal," Jenn said, "I didn't wait this long to tell you on purpose. It just took me this long to mind you. Mama was adamant that I deliver this to you myself." She held out the envelope to Mal.
"What is that," mal asked, making no move to take it.
"A letter from mama, to you," Jenn sucked in a deep breath, her voice was shaking now and she knew she had to get it under control or she was going to break down, and that would just make things worse.
"What happened to her?" He asked, keeping his position under the door.
"She got sick," Jenn said simply. "After the war the planet was all but destroyed, and it took everything mama had to hold on to the ranch and to keep it going. We were one of only a handful of ranches and farms to survive the battles. After that mama wasn't the same. She was tired all the time, and she lost a lot of weight."
"I thought you two were on the other side of the world when fight got to shadow."
"Close to it, but war makes everything hard. And there were a lot of people who were lookin to take back what had been taken from them. We had to defend the ranch from all sorts of folk, lost a lot of good people that way, some of 'um family."
Jenn's eyes had glassed over, she wasn't in the room with Mal any more, he could tell that, she was back on the ranch. He wasn't sure what kind of things she had seen, but it had always been his hope that he would have been able to spare his baby sister the sights of war.
"Jenn?" Mal asked?
Jenn looked up at Mal, she didn't look like his litter sister right then, she looked older, more jaded then before. She blinked a few times and cleared her eyes. "Sorry," she whispered. She whipped a tear from her eyes and turned back to her brother.
Mal stepped up and put a hand on her shoulder. He squeezed and took the envelope with his other hand. "So what does this thing say anyway?" He asked.
Jenn shook her head, "I have no idea. It wasn't my letter, not my place to read it." Once Mal had the letter in hand, Jenn felt and unexpected rush of relief, she had fulfilled her mother's dying wish; she had honored her mother's wishes. In an odd way, she was happy.
"I guess I ought to see what it says then." Mal sat down at his desk and pulled a letter open from a stand near the top. It was small and looked like a tiny black katana. Jenn walked over and leaned against the wall next to the desk.
"Mal if you want me to go while you read that, I can head back to the galley or back down to the passenger area if you want some privacy."
Mal shook his head. "I'd rather you were here, just in case I've got a question or two." He smiled and Jenn could see right through the lie.
"You just don't want me wondering around telling people stories about when you were little and how cute you were when you took a pair of the ranchers chaps and . . ."
"Exactly!" Mal shouted, making a face at his sister, "that is the exact kind of thing I can't have you runnin' around tellin' people! I have a boat to run and I can't demand respect if you go telling people about things like that!"
Jenn opened her mouth to laugh but the ship suddenly pitched to the side. Jenn flew forward and landed on her face and Mal fell backwards out of his chair.
"Gǒu niang yǎng de what the hell is going on!" Mal shouted as he got up off the floor. He grabbed Jenn and yanked her to her feet. "Are you alright?"
Jenn nodded, "I'm fine. What's going on?"
"That's what I aim to find out."
