My Serenity
WARNING: Rated M for some violence, language, and sexual situations. This fic contains (eventual) femmeslash and sexual situations between two female characters. Do not continue if this is not to your liking.
Trigger warnings: This chapter contains references to Charles Hoyt. While there are no graphic images or descriptions, some readers may be uncomfortable with the dark themes explored. Please be advised of trigger warnings for: kidnapping, psychological abuse, and physical violence. While these themes will not remain the focus of this story in general, it will be part of the plot for the next few chapters.
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Chapter 21 – Hands in the Parliament
Eight years ago - Ministry of Intelligence Building - Londinium
"Look, see here…" Jane smiled with as much charm as she could muster, her hands held in a clear gesture of peace, "I don't want any trouble. Just a little information is all—"
"Identification?" the soldier repeated, this time gripping the gun on his hip and examining her face with suspicion.
"Identification," Jane muttered, patting at the pockets of her duster coat, "um … yeah…"
Jane's mind was racing at light speed as she tried to work her way out of, well out of whatever the hell she had gotten herself into this time. To be fair, she had worked so many shady jobs at this point, she wasn't sure who she was in trouble with at the moment. All she knew is that when Hoyt's trail had led straight to the Alliance capital, she had jumped on the first passenger flight to the White Star system that she could find.
"About the identification …" Jane stalled. As a former soldier for the Independents, it wasn't easy to pursue leads with accurate identification. It was really much easier to use "borrowed" documentation. Most border planets either did not have consistent access to Alliance records or did not bother to check with the kind of foot traffic that came into the majority of their ports.
But a fake I.D. would not help her here in the heart of the Alliance itself. Even this common guard could use his security pad to scan her identification card and access all of its user's information. She highly doubted that she would be able to pass herself off as a fifty-six year old farmhand from Hera. Not even in her brown dust coat, muddy boots, and leather cowboy hat could she pass as a father of two teenage boys. Even if his name was Jack Rizzolo.
Jane's hand hovered at her hip. Pulling her gun would do her no favors, but she was at a loss for ideas. She bit her lip, becoming frantic as the officer took out his security pad to search for her info manually.
"Jane!" a familiar voice called from down the hall. "There you are!"
She blinked, equal parts confused and relieved. "What are you doing—"
"Looking for you of course!" Korsak laughed, slapping her on the shoulder as if her question was completely absurd.
"Hello, officer." He said courteously. "What seems to be the problem here?"
"Well," the officer said, eyeing him suspiciously, "she's refused to provide her identification card and according to the Union of Allied Planets—"
"Refused?" Korsak laughed, "Sir, as I'm sure she was trying to explain to you. She's here to procure an official Alliance identification card."
"She doesn't have I.D.?" he replied in disbelief.
Again Korsak laughed genially, "Of course! Well, hell. You really haven't spent much time on any border planets have you?"
The solider simply shook his head, looking between the two of them with a frown.
"Well, of course not!" Korsak continued. "And you're better for it. Stinking, barbaric places they are. Anyway, Jane here is from," he turned, looking at her expectantly, "where is it you're from, again?"
Jane stared at him blankly. She was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
He muttered under his breath, "Just give me whatever ID you have. And play along."
Wordlessly she gave him the ID. Korsak glanced at it and without missing a beat, he continued, "She's from Hera. This here is her father's I.D." He handed the officer the I.D. and as he scanned the file, Korsak ran with it.
"You see Hera's been a mess since the end of the war. Countless lives lost." He shook his head sorrowfully. "Damn brown coats…Anyway, Jane here has been working for me since then—trying to pay for her father's debts. And, well, without proper I.D., I certainly can't hire her on my cargo vessel."
"Right, Jane?" Korsak said.
Jane nodded, smiling awkwardly. She still didn't know why Korsak was even here in the first place.
"It says here Jack Rizzolo only has two teenage boys," the soldier scowled.
Korsak paused only for a breath. As he continued, Jane was amazed at just what a good liar the old man was. "See that's the thing, war makes keeping records … tricky. Needless to say, we're here on Londinium to fix the issue. We imagine the official birth records could be recovered."
The young soldier handed back the I.D. card slowly, examining both Korsak and Jane's faces. He checked his watch and then peered at the file on his security pad again.
Finally, after what seemed like forever to Jane, he sighed, "You've got the wrong building. Public Information and Records is in building 8, fourth floor."
"Goodness," Korsak said apologetically, "no wonder."
"I told you." Jane chimed in, almost smooth enough to be believable.
"Yes," Korsak nodded, ignoring Jane, "thank you, officer. We'll be on our way then?"
"Yes," the guard muttered, handing back her card and shooing them away, "get on now."
Xxx
Present Day – Persephone
"I can't believe you managed to get her before she was scrapped!" Tommy grinned, practically jumping up and down as they stepped off the walk and looked up at the ship.
"Wow!" Frankie said in awe. "It's kinda beautiful isn't it?"
"Well …" Maura said uneasily.
But none of the Rizzoli's were paying attention to her. Instead, they were practically running around the ship to reach the cargo bay doors on the other side. She tried to warn them, but she knew she was too late when Tommy and Frankie stopped dead, turning pale, and Angela's jaw dropped.
"I was trying to tell you," Maura said guiltily, "it needs a bit of work."
"A bit of work?" Tommy said indignantly, pointing to the cargo ramp that was stuck at almost a 90-degree angle and the airlock door that was crumpled and stuck open at an odd angle. "What the hell did Janey do to it?"
"It looks like she parked a damn asteroid in it!" Frankie cussed.
"The portside shuttle actually." Maura confessed.
"What?!" All three Rizzolis said at once.
"As best as Giovanni could determine." She confirmed. "He had to take the shuttle apart just to get into the cargo bay."
"Giovanni?" The Rizzolis repeated in unison.
"Yah?" a voice came from the cargo bay. A tall, muscular man stepped into view, a wide smile on his face. His hair was short, slicked back, and his brown eyes were bright. He wore greasy overalls and was wiping his hands with a filthy rag.
"Someone call for me?" He grinned, jumping down off the ramp and approaching them jovially. "Oh, hey, Maura. How you doin'?" He winked at her, not even acknowledging the others.
Maura blushed a bit. Giovanni had been laying it on pretty heavy since she met him three days ago. At first she had been flattered—and a bit confused as to why Jane had said he wasn't appealing. He certainly is physically, she had thought. But he didn't seem to catch her hints that she wasn't interested.
After a long awkward moment, he looked up. "Hello Mrs. Rizzoli! Nice to see you again."
"I told you to call me Angela, remember?" she smiled, giving him a hug.
He turned to the guys, "Hey Tommy, Frankie. Where's Jane at?"
There was a long awkward silence. Angela bit her lip and looked away. The guys scratched the back of their heads.
"That's why we need your help, Giovanni," Maura explained. "She's in trouble."
"In trouble?" he responded. "What kind of trouble?"
"She's in prison!" Angela burst out, no longer able to hold in her tears.
"What?" he gasped. He took a moment to scratch his head and think. "What for? Did she get in a fist fight again?" His eyes sparkled with admiration as he tried to guess. "A shootout?"
Maura almost laughed. She wondered what sort of trouble Jane used to get herself into when she was a teenager. It seemed Giovanni might have witnessed a bit of it himself.
Instead of explaining the long list of charges that had led almost immediately to Jane's 10 year sentence, Maura decided to let her work speak for itself.
She pointed to the cargo bay, "She outran the Alliance and then did that."
"She parked the shuttle in the cargo bay?" Giovanni said, his eyes growing wide. "How'd she manage that?"
"The record says she did that mid-flight." Maura nodded.
"Why the hell didn't she just park her in the shuttle bay?"
"She wasn't in the shuttle."
"What?!" All four responded.
"What the hell would she do that for?" Frankie insisted.
"To get this," Maura said, holding up an Alliance I.D. card.
Xxx
Eight years ago – Londinium
"What the hell are you doing here?" Jane demanded, turning on Korsak the minute they stepped outside the Ministry of Intelligence building.
"I could ask you the same thing," he retorted.
"I'm here chasing a bounty."
"Not exactly a good idea with a bounty on your own head."
Jane shrugged his warning off, "Just for a bit of petty stuff."
"Grand larceny is petty?" he scoffed.
"They needed that medicine on Ezra. Damn Alliance was going to charge them three times what it's worth."
"Smuggling contraband?"
"I needed that to pay Badger. He had info about … about a bounty I'm looking for."
"And this bounty, it good enough to risk getting your ass arrested by the Alliance?"
"Ten million units enough for you?" Jane smirked.
Korsak studied her. He had only known her a few months in the war, but he had an inkling there was something other than the money that was motivating his principled fellow Independent soldier.
"Why are you really after him?" he prodded.
She was quiet for a long time. She considered all that she had learned about Hoyt after chasing him for the past six months. She thought about all she had learned about herself and how her life had changed since she started bounty hunting—since she had left behind the war.
"He's a monster, Korsak." She said, her jaw stiff. "He gets off on torturing people while their loved-ones watch. He deserves to pay. And if I happened to get paid in the process, well, that's just a bonus."
After a long moment, Korsak responded with a resolute nod, "Enough for me."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm helping you catch him."
"No." Jane shook her head, walking away. "No, you're not."
"Like hell I ain't," Korsak said, running after her.
"I don't need your help, Korsak," Jane insisted, "trust me."
Korsak smiled, "You talk as if you have a choice."
Xxx
Present Day - On route to Athens
"You mean we might actually get there on time?" Frost said in disbelief.
"Not if you jinx it, we won't." Korsak cursed.
"Since when were you superstitious?" Frost laughed, taking a seat on his cot on the other side of the small bunk.
"Ever since I left Jane behind on the Serenity."
"That wasn't your fault."
"Maybe not, but ever since then our luck has been shit."
"You can say that again."
"Unlike you, I won't."
They were quiet for a bit. There was still some tension between them, even with the good news. Living for four months in close quarters will do that do anyone. But, on top of being stuck with each other practically every moment of the day, they had barely been scraping by.
Korsak and Frost had set off four months ago with one mission in mind: Find Hoyt. At first Maura and the Rizzoli's could not understand. They felt as if the two former soldiers were abandoning Jane when she needed them the most. Eventually, Maura came to trust them, but Angela and her boys could not imagine that what would help Jane the most would be to set off back on the trail of the exact reason Jane was in prison anyway.
But Korsak knew what he was doing, and Frost trusted him—even if he wouldn't admit it. Instead, the young co-pilot displayed the attitude that getting the bounty would be the only way to provide for Jane's defense. They had no other choice but to hope that justice would be on Jane's side.
It wasn't. Jane's "trial" had been short and quick. It ended before Serenity could even be sold to pay for her defense, as the Rizzoli's had been told it would be. The only information the family received aside from that was that she had been charged guilty on all counts and had been sentenced to ten years hard labor in a prison camp on Osiris. No contact information was provided and no appeals were permitted.
Angela had been devastated. Frankie was outraged and almost got himself arrested by an Alliance officer when he stormed into an Alliance government complex on Londinium demanding answers. Tommy temporarily disappeared, upsetting his mother even more. When his brother found him, it was clear he had been drinking his sorrows away.
Korsak and Frost taking off was almost the end of the oldest Rizzoli. Angela felt her family had been torn apart yet again—something she had experienced several times in the past, including with her children's father—and this time she was not sure she would be able to recover. But Frankie did his best to step into his sister's boots, so-to-speak. He found him and his brother a job, managed to secure a lease on a house, and even something for Angela to do with her time.
At first, she had taken to caring for the young red-headed teenage boy who had escaped with them when they left Serenity. But he was quick to run off, complaining that she was overbearing and obsessive. Frankie couldn't blame him, so he found some local children to occupy her time. They came from a local orphanage. The moment Angela spotted them playing outside the small shack down the road, Frankie knew she had her new project. It was not long before she was sewing them new clothes and knitting them sweaters. She read whatever children's books she could find to the little ones, and when she ran out of books, she made up stories, just as she had done when Jane, Frankie, and Tommy were little.
But Korsak and Frost knew that their departure took its toll on Angela. They asked Maura to check in on her for them. She promised to do so, and, for the most part, she did. But there was a lot the three of them could not tell the Rizzoli family—not until they were sure to have a plan put together.
Surprisingly, it had been Maura that had insisted that they keep the truth from Angela, Frankie, and Tommy. She had come to Korsak with the plan just a few hours after landing on Ithaca, having been forced to land for lack of fuel and supplies. They were about to head out towards Athens like Jane had told them, when Maura took the two men aside.
"We can't go to Athens." Maura had said.
"Why not?" they both had responded.
"We have to go back."
"There's no way we can rescue her from the Alliance now, Maura. She's on her way to the White Star system by now for trial." Frost said.
"There won't be a trial." Maura stated simply. "Not a real one."
"What gives you that idea?" Korsak questioned, though he didn't seem to doubt her assumption.
"I have an inside source."
"Who?" they responded simultaneously.
"Paddy Doyle. He has connections in the very center of the Alliance. All the way into Parliament itself."
"Patrick 'Paddy' Doyle—the most notorious mobster in all of the Allied Planets—has his hands in the Parliament?" Frost questioned doubtfully.
"That's what he's implied, yes," she affirmed.
The two men were quiet for a moment. Then, Korsak said, "I believe it."
"You do?" Frost frowned.
"How else do you think he gets away with the kind of business he does right under the Alliance's nose? Most crooks have to stick to the border planets. Damn, Doyle does business on Rubicon!" Korsak said.
"Okay …" Frost furrowed his brow, "but why go back to Regina?"
"Not back to Regina, back to the Alliance ship." Maura said. "We need to find out where they're taking her."
"Doesn't Doyle know?" said Frost.
"I believe so," Maura said with a sigh, "but he was not very forthcoming. And our communication link was cut short. He warned me about it not being secure. He warned that there were more forces at work than he can control."
"And you trust him?" Korsak said.
"I don't have a choice." Maura said with determination. "Jane won't make it in any Alliance prison. She's sent too many people there. She'll be lucky if she makes it a few weeks."
"Well," Korsak reasoned, "can you get him to help? If he really cares about you as much as he claims, he should be able to find some way to get Jane out?"
"It's not that simple." Maura shook her head.
They were quiet. No one seemed to know what to say, no less what do to.
"Why did she even go after that shuttle in the first place?" Frost suddenly said.
"She had the biggest clue hidden there." Korsak said.
"Biggest clue?" Frost and Maura said together.
"The I.D. card," Korsak said, looking at Frost "The one you made for her that hacked the Ministry of Intelligence's system."
"That -worked-?" Frost's jaw dropped.
"Yeah," Korsak laughed, "but only after I rescued her from getting her ass arrested."
"I made that for her -eight years- ago. When did she hack the system?"
"Eight years ago."
"What did she find?" Maura interrupted their back-and-forth.
"She uploaded the personnel files of every single member of government in the Union of Allied Planets." Korsak said, almost in disbelief himself.
"-All- of them?" Frost gaped.
"All of them," he repeated.
"Wait," Maura frowned, "if she had all this information, how has she not found him by now? How has she not used it to track down just about anyone else?"
"The files were corrupted."
"Corrupted? How?" Maura and Frost asked.
"In a shootout."
xxx
Eight years ago – Londinium
"You there!" A shout came from behind them. "Stop!"
Korsak looked at Jane. Instantly, he could tell she had not been telling him the whole truth about why she had been in the Intelligence building.
They dived into an ally to the left and darted in through the back door of a restaurant. Quickly, they shuffled around cooks and dishes. They banged through the swinging door and sped down an aisle of startled customers who had been eating peacefully. Practically skidding out the door, the sound of several officers gaining on them had them dashing through the busy street.
"What did you get us into?" Korsak shouted at her.
"Us? I didn't ask you to come in and rescue me!"
"You were about to get arrested!"
"I would have figured it out!"
"Would you, huh?" Korsak grunted, breathing heavily as they dived into another alley just as a gunshot sounded over their heads.
Jane drew her pistol. "You coming along actually worked out very well."
"Why? You didn't get anything." Korsak panted, taking out his pistol as well. They turned the corner and hid behind a waste truck.
"I got exactly what I was looking for," she said, holding up her counterfeit I.D. card.
"A shitty fake I.D.?" he glared.
"No." Jane shook her head, putting the card in her chest pocket and raising her gun, "It's what was uploaded on it from that soldier's security pad that's what's important."
"You hacked the Ministry of Intelligence's system?"
"No," Jane said, shooting an officer as he ran around the corner, "Frost's software did."
With that she jumped on the waste truck's bumper, gripping the handle as it took off in the other direction. Korsak was barely able to catch up and jump on with her. Jane shot at the officers running after her, but only clipped one in the shoulder and another in the foot.
"You're a horrible shot." Korsak scoffed.
"Hit exactly where I was aiming." Jane smiled, diving behind the back of the truck to avoid incoming fire. They were lucky the engine was so loud, the driver might have noticed the gunfire.
Korsak looked back, shocked as the first officer to go down actually sat up, "Well, I'll be damned."
"Bullet-proof vest." Jane nodded. "Alliance standard issue. Would have blown a limb off from that dist—"
Jane slumped over; she would have fallen straight to the ground if Korsak hadn't have caught her.
"Jane!" Korsak shouted, holding her to the side of the waste car with all his might.
Blood poured from her shoulder. She grimaced, dropping her pistol and grasping just above her heart. "I could… really …" she gasped, "use one."
Xxx
Present Day – Ariopolis
"Please…" Jane pleaded, tears spilling onto the pillow she held with a death grip, huddled in the corner of her bed. The lights finally came up as she repeated it over and over, "Please stop. Please let me go."
She wasn't sure how long she had been here. It might be that she always had. All that she knew was that she feared the dark. The dark brought his voice. The dark brought his bone chilling laugh. It brought his whispers in her ear.
The light wasn't much better. It seemed just as endless. Every moment that passed was a moment closer to the dark. The opening of the slot meant another third of the day had passed. She stopped eating. She muttered into the pillow instead.
"You need to eat." A voice said.
She dropped the pillow, looking around the room. "Who is that?"
"You don't remember my voice?" it said.
Jane waited. It was familiar, but she couldn't place it. An image flashed in her mind. Honey-blonde hair, the smell of flowers, a sweet taste on her lips.
"Maura?" Jane whispered; even her name seemed like a distant memory.
She closed her eyes. Hazel eyes met hers, a warm palm on her cheek. She saw her smile, could almost feel the press of her lips. The scent of flowers grew stronger. Gardenias, Jane thought, her favorite perfume. They always reminded Jane of a warm summer's day.
"Please…" Jane pleaded, "…stay with me."
She opened her eyes, praying she would be there. There was only the darkness again. She could smell the food rotting in the corner.
[To be continued]