THE ONLY GIRL IN THE WORLD
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Eleven– Our Mrs. Cobb
The Captain based his business on a sterling reputation as an honest man. Even when transporting cargo to a planet infamous as a haven for smugglers, he nonetheless insisted on legitimate work and legitimate. Of course, these passengers didn't look as though they'd care if Jing Tsai was a smuggler's vessel or not. It was he who didn't trust them.
They looked more like a couple of petty criminals than newlyweds on their way to a honeymoon in Beylix– and who but criminals would go to Beylix for a honeymoon anyhow? The man's smile was clearly forced– closer to a grimace, actually– and the woman seemed awful jumpy. Plus, their luggage consisted of one large crate the perfect size to hold a human body. The Captain had had his crew surreptitiously peek inside, but there was no body, only clothes that they could see. And the fact that the large man made him nervous (and didn't seem to care for his wife enough to do more that clap her on the shoulder when she began to look especially sallow) wasn't proof of criminal tendencies, only a woman afraid of flying, which wasn't too uncommon. So, he took the two aboard for a ride to Beylix and didn't see them too much after. They spent most of the time in their bunk, which wasn't too uncommon either.
- - - - -
Helen climbed down into the small room that was supposed to hold the two of them for the next week and gaped at the furnishings. One hard chair, a ragged carpet covering half the metal floor, and one bed that could probably fit two if the inhabitants were wrapped in each other's arms (which, all lies and aliases to the contrary, wasn't about to happen). Jayne didn't seem too perturbed, and immediately slouched onto the bed as Helen continued to look horrified.
"What do you think you're doin'?" she asked after a moment of horrified silence.
Jayne scowled. "I'm tired, so I'm sleeping." Helen shook her head.
"You have the blanket and sleep on the floor, and I get the bed," she said firmly. He only laughed.
"'Course you get the bed. But I do too," he said with a wicked grin. "We're s'posed to be married, hun, case your blackouts made you forget."
"I didn't black out today," Helen retorted. (Jayne scoffed: "That's a first.") "And I ain't sleepin' with you neither."
"Then you take the floor if you're so damn worried," he muttered. Helen shook her head violently.
"You knocked me unconscious," she offered as justification.
"I saved you from the Feds, and don't think I had to!"
"Well," Helen said huffily. "You'd wouldn't've had to if you didn't go 'round convincin' everybody I was 'Elizabeth Arnold.'"
"Well you look like it," Jayne said grimly. "'Sides– it ain't all my fault. You were playin' the dead-sister-betraying mercenary before I even met you."
Helen crossed her arms. "I am a lady," she said primly.
"Like guay you are," he muttered.
And at that, Helen's face turned from sickly green to beet red. "Look," she said angrily. "I didn't ask you to help me. You coulda set me up like you were s'posed to, and we wouldn't even be bickering about this thing."
"No we wouldn't," Jayne said. "Because I'd be in my own bunk on Serenity. Besides, you coulda told good old Captain Jing Tsai you were my sister or something else, not my wife."
Helen laughed. "You're the one who taught me I'm no good at pretendin' to be somebody's sister."
There was some sense in that, and for a moment the two were silent, each trying vainly to rally more arguments to their side. Helen finally broke the silence.
"You knocked me unconscious!" she shouted.
Jayne glared at Helen as he yanked the blanket off the mattress and balled up his coat for a pillow on the hard floor, muttering all the time. "I could knock you out again and then you wouldn't care where you were sleeping," he said, as Helen, smug, switched off the lights.
Seven days later, the Jing Tsai touched down at Beylix. Once out of sight of the ship, Jayne dumped the clothes in the long crate and removed the weapons he'd hidden at the bottom. Helen Arnold crawled inside.
- - - - -
Helen bounced along in darkness for the better part of an hour, trying to think of wide-open plains and endless blue skies. Lying awake in what was essentially a coffin was probably not the best thing for her already-frayed nerves, but, miraculously, she didn't go faint even once. Maybe she sweated a little, and her heart rate didn't exactly resemble a metronome, but that was simply nervousness. Helen had a very pleasant time distinguishing nervousness from panic. The difference had to be that she had a co-conspirator who had her back. For the first time since she'd taken her sister's things from their home on Santo, Helen felt relatively safe. Whatever the stories said, she would bet on Goliath any day.
"We already saw Mal, day ago," a low voice said.
"I ain't working with Mal any more," Jayne's voice answered. "But I've got something better than he does, promise." Helen imagined he was gesturing to the coffin now. "He got the books– I got the writer."
The low voice of the smuggler murmured something, and Helen could hear another person (not Jayne) responding almost inaudibly. Two smugglers. Jayne alone could take two. If there were any more, Helen might have to help, and that wasn't a good feeling. Her stomach flipped as she felt the hard metal pistol under her jacket. She managed to stay calm. They wouldn't want to hurt her, anyway.
"She ain't much good to us dead," one of the smugglers responded. This voice was a little higher, grating. It was either the second voice or a third. She couldn't tell.
Jayne laughed. "And that's why the peow-liang de shaojie ain't dead." Helen closed her eyes and began to breathe slowly, feigning sleep. She could see the light behind her eyelids when Jayne lifted the lid of the box. "See– she's breathin'. I had to knock her out so she wouldn't try an' escape," he explained.
The light disappeared and reappeared as people bent over to see her more closely. She had to will herself to be still when a clammy hand brushed her face on the way to take her pulse.
"She's alive," said the grating voice.
"Good," the low one responded. The lid was closed again. "Now– we have the question of payment."
The low voice put forth a number.
"Chou ma niao!" Jayne cursed loudly. "You'd get twice that from the Feds!"
The grating voice laughed, and murmured again with the other smuggler. "I agree with you, Cobb," he said coldly. "I think we can do better than that."
Helen heard the beautiful clink of metal coins, hoping they were at that moment being passed to Jayne.
"That's more like it," he muttered. Helen grinned in the darkness. "I knew I made the right move when I–"
"What? Double-crossed your Captain?"
"Go-se!" Helen whispered, not needing release from the confines of her coffin to know who that voice belonged to.
"Mal!" Jayne said, surprised. "They said you'd gone– what're you–"
"Waiting for you." A cool, female voice. Helen recognized it, but just barely– Zoë, Serenity's First Officer. Go-se!
She felt her crate jerk backwards a little, and pictures Jayne backing up against it nervously. Mal and Zoë would be armed– Jayne would be out-numbered and unwilling to fire on his former crewmates. And he couldn't explain what had really happened here, of all places, with the smugglers who were supposed to believe that she was Elizabeth, not Helen, Arnold, standing right there. Go-se, go-se, go-se! It was frustration, not panic, that made her sweat now.
"This ain't what you think, Mal," Jayne said.
"No, it definitely ain't," Zoë said. "I know it doesn't matter to you, Jayne, but she isn't Elizabeth Arnold, and you can't go selling a perfectly innocent girl out to the Alliance. Not that her sister was guilty of anything in my book– I should've protested that too." She paused. "Looks like I've gotten my second chance."
"Not Elizabeth?" the grating-voiced smuggler spit. "You cheated us!"
"Aiya, Zoë– you've gone and spoilt it!" Jayne swore. "Fay-fay duh pee-yen! Godammit!"
The was a crack, a crunch that sounded like bones breaking, and more cursing from Jayne, punctuated with "Mal" quite a bit. The sharp report of a gunshot. Yelling. And worst of all, the click of two latches close by, a sound that could only be the locking of Helen's crate. She felt the box lift, and suddenly she was moving very, very fast.
"No! No! I'm awake! Let me out!" she shouted, pounding her fists into the splintery lid of the box. "Let me out!"
"It's all right, kid we're going to get you back to Santo safe." It was Zoë's voice, calm and soothing. "It's us, from Serenity."
"Santo can go to guay!" she screeched, hysterical. "Let me out!"
"You'll get out when we get back to the ship," Mal said in a terse voice, sounding quite tied of her screaming antics. "And you'd better bizui if you don't want you captors after you again."
"That is what I want!" she shouted over the roar of an engine. They must be on the mule she'd taken on Persephone, back when she was still playing at Elizabeth. "Where's Jayne? Let me go! Where's Jayne?"
"Bizui, aiya!" Mal ordered angrily.
"You got to listen to–"
"We're getting you home, dong ma? Now shut it!"
Helen, incensed, wriggled halfway out of her jacket in the confines of the crate and pulled the small gun out of a zippered pocket. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pressed the muzzle up against the wooden lid and pressed down hard on the trigger.
Bang!
The mule swerved wildly, and Helen could see Mal through splinters scraping her face and the window she'd blasted away in her coffin. He pulled out his gun and aimed it at her temple.
"What the guay is going on?" he demanded.
"Please– let me out," Helen insisted.
Not once removing the gun from her sight, Mal unlatched the crate and let Helen sit up. He grabbed her pistol away and gaped.
"Ship's ahead!" Zoë called, pointing out Serenity maybe a mile away. Mal nodded, but his eyes remained fiercely glued on Helen's.
"Explain," he ordered.
"You can't leave Jayne," she said. Mal laughed bitterly. "No! He knew– he knew I weren't Elizabeth on Persephone. He helped me escape!"
"So what was that scene back there?"
Helen rubbed her forehead wearily. It was beginning to pound, but she couldn't do much to help the pain. Her fingers were burning, tingling, then numbing very quickly. "It wasn't real. It was an act. He was gonna take the money and run– with me." She groaned. "Aiya! He'd better have the money!"
Zoë and Mal exchanged a strange look, Mal finally turning to look at Helen, shaking his head.
"Once we've got you on the ship," he said. "We'll get Jayne."
Helen watched the ship approach through a long tunnel, then promptly blacked out.
- - - - -
When she woke up, Helen was lying in an infirmary bed, Doctor Simon Tam hovering over her. She turned her head painfully, and noticed that Kaylee was well was in the room, sitting on a counter. Her face lit up when Helen opened her eyes.
"Good– you're up," he said briskly, immediately pulling out a small flashlight to shine into her eye. She felt woozy. "You have a minor concussion…. and a couple large bumps on your head." He smiled kindly. "But you'll be perfectly all right."
Helen nodded and tried to swing her legs over the end of the bed so she could find Jayne and get her share of the bounty from selling "her sister."
"No– I don't think so," Simon insisted, gently pushing her back against her pillow. "You'll need to rest. You shouldn't get up just yet."
"But I need to–"
"I think it can wait a couple hours."
"No! I haven't–"
He pulled out a small metal instrument and placed it against her neck. Helen struggled to get away. "You're going to dope me!" she shouted.
"You need to sleep."
Helen shook her head and backed towards the door slowly. Simon and Kaylee exchanged exasperated looks.
"You really should get some rest," Kaylee said sweetly from her perch. "You got bruised up somethin' awful."
Helen only shook her head. "I'll go to sleep– I promise– but I have to see Jayne. He has my share. He has–"
Simon shook his head.
"Jayne's dead asleep on his bunk now. You can talk to him later."
"I'm not going to let you dope me until I find out what's goin' on!" she shouted. Simon closed his eyes for a moment– for patience, she assumed– but remained calm. The "until" was a good sign, at least. And the caveat wasn't completely unreasonable.
"All right," he said calmly. "I'll tell you." Helen felt relief for a moment, but that quickly turned to suspicion when she noticed Simon glance up at something behind her in the doorway. She whirled around, but her reflexes weren't particularly sharp, and in a moment, Mal had her hands pinned behind her back. Simon was at her side with the drugs in an instant.
"Just tell me what happened!" she insisted. "You don't have to put me to sleep yet! I'm not dangerous!"
"You almost shot me in the face from inside a box, kid," Mal muttered. "You're not wakin' up 'til we're back on Santo."
Helen was pushed back to her bed.
"I said I'll let him dope me," she directed at Mal. "I just want my share of the money."
Now Mal and Simon exchanged looks, and Helen realized that she wasn't about to receive any good news… or platinums.
"He didn't get it, did he?" she asked, despondent. Mal shook his head 'no.' "Go-se!"
"Not all jobs work out the way you plan," Mal said. "But at least you ain't sold to the Feds, right?"
Helen glowered. "This is your fault."
A shadow passed over Mal's face. "That's why we're gonna try and fix it. We still have the crate of your sister's writings, and if you want, we can help you distribute them– we have jobs all over, so I bet we can get them to half a dozen planets in the next few months. Dong ma?"
Helen laid her head back on the infirmary bed. "Distribute them," she muttered, feeling rather numb. Glancing at Simon– "Dope me, Doctor." As a sharp prick to the neck sent her halfway to sleep already, she glanced up at Mal. "Captain Reynolds?" she asked.
"Go ahead."
Helen was feeling limp, tired. She'd be out in a minute, but she didn't want to be dropped off at Santo before she could tell them what it was she really would like to enlist their help for.
"Can you help me sell them to the Feds instead?"
- - - - -
Mal glanced at the girl incredulously, who had fallen asleep before she could hear the answer. But after everything, Mal supposed she could only expect an unqualified 'yes.' He glanced at Simon and Kaylee, who looked completely shocked.
"A mercenary," Mal muttered, gesturing to Helen's supine form on the bed. "No wonder she and Jayne got along."
Simon was shaking his head, not believing what he'd heard. Kaylee simply sat, staring wide-eyed at the girl she thought had taken her place. Mal seemed to be thinking along those lines–
He glanced at Kaylee, close to laughing. "I don't think you have anything to worry about," he said.
A/N: This was my first story for Firefly, and I plan to continue writing for it in the future, so I really appreciate the reviews and favorites I received, as well as anyone who just read through to the end. Thank you so very much for following along. You're all quite shiny. – Tegildess