Out of Gas (Part 1)
(CW: addiction, drug use, death.)
Jayne watched the boy fall in slow motion. He reacted at the same speed and caught the boy's fragile body in his arms. He had no weight to him. Just hollow bones and feathers under mud-crusted rags. The boy's eyes stared up into Jayne's face and then through him to some light beyond him. Dark blood soaked into the dried mud covering everything around them. The blood then covered Jayne's hands and arms. Ignoring gravity entirely, the red liquid flowed up Jayne's arms. It should had felt warm but it was cold as ice. The cold blood was covering everything now, he felt it climbing up his neck. He tried to struggle away from the boy but his body wasn't reacting. Jayne pinched his eyes shut and tried to strain up and away but it did no good. The cold oozed across his skin and pulled him under into darkness. He thought he would wake up as soon as the darkness took him, but it didn't happen right away. Instead Jayne spent some indeterminate amount of time… dead. He could still feel weight of the boy's dead body pressing down against his arms and lap. Seconds or hours later the weight shifted. It was pushing against his back instead of his lap. Panic rose and Jayne came to the realization he was awake but the cold blood was real, he still felt it all over his body. Jayne's eyes snapped open, air flooded into his lungs and he realized he had been holding his breath. His arms moved blindly, trying to wipe the blood off of himself. A moment of thrashing passed and the realization that the cold he felt was simply sweat.
After a few moments of deep breaths and nearly monastic thought clearing, Jayne's heart rate lowered to a rate which didn't betray the fight or flight instincts which have been kept close to the surface of his psyche. Jayne rolled his head to the side and glanced at the small clock he had strapped to the wall with some adhesive straps he'd requisitioned from the ship's general stores shortly after coming on board. The glowing readout advised him that he'd been asleep less than two hours. It was one of the worse nights lately.
In the weeks since Canton Jayne had been lucky on the nights where he managed to keep the nightmares at bay for five or six hours. There was never any avoiding them completely, though. Whether it came right away or waited in the wings of his mind until the wee hours of the morning the same scene would come and he would re-live the final battle of the mudders once again. Sometimes the boy's face would belong to actual young man who died that day. Other times it was his mother, or his sister. One more than one occasion it was Caid, the young man he'd met on this recent visit to the mudder village. Sometimes it was Sora, Rosalie, or Vera. Sometimes it was one of his crew: the Shepherd, the Pilot, the Captain, the Soldier, the Mechanic, the Mad girl, even the Doctor. It didn't matter whose face the deeply scarred portions of his mind chose, Jayne could not save them. Jayne could never save them. They were dead before he caught their body. The last flicker of their soul drained away as their weight settled into his arms. They would die and bring him down with them. The cold fingers of Death would always find him and pull him down, down into the cold, wet, darkness.
Jayne rolled off of his bunk. The air felt cool against his sweat-covered skin. He'd been sleeping in the nude. As his sweat evaporated he felt clammy and somewhat ill, his subconscious mind equating his emotional upheaval and physical discomfort with flu symptoms and drawing unhelpful conclusions.
Jayne stepped over to his small bathing corner and picked up a small towel, he soaked it in hot water from the sink and began to wash his face. The warm water ran down his neck and chest bringing back another flash of memory from Canton. His brow furrowed in annoyance and he threw the towel into the sink, splattering his legs with warm droplets. He pushed the sink/toilet structure back against the wall containing the mirror and the old gears moved with some minor squeaks of protest. Once this structure was stored into the wall Jayne had room slide open the panel on the wall to his right and opened up a small space the approximate dimensions of a coffin. Stepping into the small room and sliding the door closed behind him he punched the small waterproof panel to the side of the door and the panel illuminated, lighting the coffin space and showing a simple interface. If the Serenity had been made built a few decades later this panel would probably be showing a wide variety of showering options, but the state of affairs being what they were he was lucky to have a temperature control. Smacking the water on with decidedly more aggression than was necessary Jayne was relieved to feel the hot water pour onto him out of the holes in the ceiling. Jayne didn't bother with any soap and just leaned his forehead against the wall of his tiny shower. He rested here for several minutes. This was a graywater unit, designed to use as little water is necessary to clean a body. Only the first few gallons were fresh and potable water, after that the tank switched to the water reclaimed from the drain in the floor, which collected the water starting about 60 seconds after the shower was switched on (in theory so that most of the actual dirt on a body didn't get re-showered onto the bather). The collected water was piped back up to the top, reheated slightly along the way, and resulted in the bather having basically unlimited hot water. The system still used energy, of course, so there were some limitations advised for the sake of shrewdness, but systems like these were necessary for any sort of sustainable living in space. Jayne closed his eyes and let the wall support more of his body's weight than was fully prudent. Sleep took him again briefly, but luckily the almost claustrophobic nature of the small shower stall kept him from falling and injuring himself in a powerfully stupid way.
Jerking awake once again, the only kind of waking he seemed to do anymore, Jayne punched the shower controls again and slid the door open. The shower busied itself in collecting the steam (any kind of water was vitally important to control, especially in space) and made quiet whirring noises behind him and Jayne stumbled out into his quarters. He shook his head and began a sort of jogging-in-place motion for several seconds, waking up his body and brain. Once he felt functional he took a single step (as the room was really more of a glorified closet) to the cupboard which was an all-purpose dresser, locker, closet, and storage area. He pulled out some snug undergarments and pulled them on. Before closing the cupboard he paused and reached up to the shelf on top which contained smallish odds and ends, and two bottles of pills. He reached first towards one, and then paused. Did he really want to sleep more? It was certainly early enough that he could theoretically get several more hours of sleep and there was even a chance he'd feel rested before the nightmares came back and ruined it all. If he'd had a job planned for the next day this would be the responsible choice. But he really didn't want to see the dead boy again tonight, or whichever face the dead chose to wear the next time he fell asleep. They were on their way to their next stop, but due to Mal's desire to be as far from the clutches of the Alliance's long-reaching fingers they were taking a very long way around through deep space. There was nothing on their schedule for the next few days, nothing that would require muscle anyway. Slowly Jayne changed his hand's path to the other bottle of pills. Taking it down he noticed the bottle was still half-full, he wouldn't have to requisition more until after they made their next stop on Greenleaf. He shook a pill out into his palm and tossed it into the back of his mouth. Stepping over to the sink structure again he cupped some water in his palm and tossed that back as well. Jayne could kill a man with his bare hands in approximately 25 different ways, he could physically wrestle most living things to the ground, he had jumped out of space ships and off sea ships and one note-worthy time jumped onto a moving train. And yet, despite having most physical control over his body than the average human, Jayne couldn't bring himself to swallow a pill dry. After swallowing Jayne took a few more moments and drank from the sink some more. Feeling the pill make its way down his throat and disappear into the pit of his stomach to mix with his anxieties and tension. Much quicker than he knew could physically be a result of the drug, Jayne started to feel 'better'. His energy levels started to creep up to the point that he could ignore the lack of sleep and keep the normal tells of his deteriorating physical and psychological condition from being detected by the rest of the crew.
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Kaylee couldn't sleep. She was excited for Simon's surprise. Tonight would probably be it! The night when they would finally have sex. Simon was a fancy sort of lad, everything needed pomp and circumstance. She'd done a lot of the legwork in getting him to bring his walls down. He'd been opening up to her more and more. Once the initial embarrassment had passed after their drunken night on Canton, Kaylee had been able to step within the sphere he used to keep every other human away. They'd slipped a few chaste kisses over the last weeks, though nothing as satisfying as the sloppy, tongue-heavy, kisses they'd shared on the rough bench in the mudders' bar. That night had been passionate and enthusiastic with more than a little groping, but they hadn't gone beyond heavy petting and swapping spit. Tonight, though, was going to be the real deal. Kaylee had planned it all out. And to make it perfect, today was Simon's birthday. As Kaylee lay in her bunk in the dark she smiled at her plans. It was like trying to sleep the night before Candlenight. There was a present wrapped up in shiny paper just waiting for her. She rolled over and tried to sleep, because it wasn't Candlenight. She was going to be busy all week, after all, and really did need to sleep. They were on a slow roundabout trek to Greenleaf where they would likely take on supplies. In the meantime she had a good amount of patching and rerouting to do in Serenity's engines. More than a few important parts were on their last legs and patching was only getting just so far. Her improvised patches were requiring more improvised patches to the point where the whole beast was becoming quite a mess. She had some plans for ways to improve the systems and make better use of the remaining structures. Kaylee drifted to sleep envisioning complex mechanical engineering diagrams dancing through her dreams.
Kaylee was wide awake again. It felt sudden but she couldn't tell what had woken her. Had she heard something? No, the sounds of the ship coming at her from all around her small room were all normal. Not heard… she must have felt something. Rolling up to a sitting position Kaylee got out of her bunk and rested one hand on the wall of her bunk and one on the floor where she knelt in a crouch. The vibrations seemed normal right now. What had woken her up? As the moments passed she was more sure than ever that she had sensed something in her sleep. Something Serenity was trying to tell her. Kaylee closed her eyes and tried to feel the ship's vibrations. Whatever she had sensed was gone. She couldn't feel anything abnormal now. Shaking her head Kaylee stood and made her way up and out of the hatch of her quarters. It was some ungodly hour so she didn't expect to see anybody. Someone was probably taking a shift at the helm but other than that most everyone would be asleep. Kaylee had heard about ships with larger crews making judicious use of the limited space by enforcing multiple shifts, having everyone up and awake at the same time would put pressure on the life support systems, in addition to pressure on the crew. It makes a ship feel much bigger if a third of the population was asleep at any given time. Serenity, however, had a small crew. Their jobs staggered the needs slightly, and someone was always needed on the bridge in a 'just in case' sort of deal. Any decisions or fancy flying was always left to Wash, but just about anyone could hang out in the big chair for a few hours and hit a buzzer if sensors started going wonky.
Her ears perked up right before her head popped out into the hallway. Someone else was in the hallway. It must be Zoe, heading to relieve Mal who usually preferred to take the first half of the night.
"Hello!" Kaylee said brightly as she pulled herself up and stuck her head out into the shared space. To her surprise it wasn't Zoe's shape in the hallway. Jayne was standing there awkwardly, near the ladder to his quarters.
"Uh, hey." He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to think of what to say. They had avoided each other for so long they weren't sure how to behave. After the events of the trip to Canton they had been more civil. Jayne seemed to be… over her, for lack of a better term, as far as Kaylee could see. She had a strong feeling that he'd gone for a roll in the proverbial hay during the hero worship portion of their time on the planet. Kaylee had been surprised by how relieved she was that he'd went off and done what he'd done. Not that she was sure what he'd done, but whatever it was seemed to take his mind off of her. Kaylee had come a ways from her own anger with him and now just felt some low burning embarrassment over the whole situation. She couldn't quite think of it as a breakup because that would mean the breaking of an attachment between them which they never should have formed.
They both stood there in silence for a beat of time. Kaylee decided to break the silence: "Did you get woken up too?"
And unexpected darkness flashed across Jayne's eyes, Kaylee was taken aback briefly.
"Can't sleep," Jayne grunted.
Kaylee nodded quickly. "Something woke me up, I think Serenity is trying to tell me something." A silence fell between them. Jayne was about to turn toward the gym when her voice stopped him.
"Are you busy? I could use a hand."
The dark cloud cleared from Jayne's eyes.
"Uh, yeah," he said. "I mean no... Sure, I can help."
She smiled at him. There was a time when that smile made him feel weak in the knees and would make a warm tingle rise in his core. Now, though, Jayne felt disconnected. Cold. A barrier came up between his heart and his mind. He wasn't sure which one was causing him no end of grief, but he was going to hold it against them both until he could get some things figured out in both places. The pills gave the illusion of energy to his body, his muscles moved on a barely noticeable delay. His brain sent the signals to his limbs and Jayne followed the little mechanic as she began chattering on about the different parts that she'd had to build bypasses and patches for in the last weeks and months since Mal hasn't been able to get her the replacements she'd been begging for.
"Honestly," Kaylee said almost breathlessly as she stopped in the doorway to her engine room, "I don't know how long I can keep this up."
This last sentence hung in the air. It was the only thing that seeped into Jayne's mind past the fuzzy walls of sleeplessness and fears. 'I don't know how long can keep this up.' A quiet voice repeated inside him.