Dear reader,
I just want you to know my beta is still being all lazy and I haven't gotten the corrections yet, so, again, the grammar and the spelling will be sub-par . . . even for me.
Chapter 25: In which the adventure truly ends
The rain had passed over Sweet Well, the sun was shinning and the air was crisp and clear, but the coldness had stayed. River watched as Serenity's crew loaded the ship with jars of fruit-preserves, baby supplies, and a load of spare parts from Kaylee's father's shop. River, because she was the youngest and because she was rarely trusted with anything, was not allowed to help. Zoë, too, was ordered by Mal to sand and watch or, as he diplomatically put it, supervise.
"You want it to be over," River told her softly and abruptly.
"What?" Zoë asked. The question seemed curl itself up into wisps of smoke, as her breath was visible in the cold.
River watched the white cloud with some interest and only answered when the little cloud had totally dispersed. For some odd reason, the girls breath didn't make little puffs of steam. "The excitement isn't enough," her voice sounded sad. "At first you thought you could, but it's not who you are, or who you want to be."
Realization flickered across Zoë's eyes. It was quickly followed by fear and shame. "You talkin' about the baby," the firstmate told River as much as asked her.
The young girl looked at Zoë curiously, as if the woman's deduction was totally illogical, and shook her head. "I'm talking about the mother."
Zoë wasn't sure how to respond to that. She opened her mouth with full faith that something would come out of it but, as fate would have it, no response was necessary. At that moment Jack, with his family in tow, came running across the yard.
"River!" the young boy yelled with innocent, unabated, teenaged passion.
River pivoted quickly and, although Zoë couldn't see it, she knew the girl's face lit up like a pulsar. "Jack," she said quickly, with a laugh, and then started running towards the boy. They met about six yards away, just close enough for Zoë to overhear every part of their conversation.
"Where were you this mornin'?" Jack asked. "I was real worried."
River hung her head. "I'm sorry," she whimpered.
"River, ya don't gotta cry over it."
River brought her hands to her face and wiped her tears away roughly with the edges of a too-large old gray wool sweater she'd been given by Nora Frye to fight off the planets cold. "I'm trying very hard," River told Jack. "Please believe me."
"It's sweet," Jack assured her. "The way you're skittish. You're not trying to be anything special, and that makes what you are just . . . specialer, I guess."
River laughed the laugh of a giddy teenaged girl.
As Zoë watched the two of them talk, she couldn't help but feel a little warm inside. She had a soft spot for River, for some reason she herself didn't really understand. It was, possibly, because River was so incredibly helpless. She knew, even if Mal had never dared tell her, that that was the real reason the Tam's had been invited to stay on Serenity. They desperately needed the type of protection Mal could provide. They didn't know how to be outlaws, they didn't know how to run and hide, they didn't know how to survive. Someone had to teach them, and Mal had always been such a good teacher.
Zoë remembered when she first met him in a sort of ramshackle boot camp for the independent forces. He was a sergeant because he'd survived the first major battle of the war, the battle on Tristram's Moon. She was one of the hundreds of thousands that flocked to Hera to join the Independent troops after the news of the 'Slaughter on Tristram' got out. Her oldest sister, Jana, had been a cook at a ranch on Tristram. She's been forced into the Alliance troops under threat of imprisonment. She wrote home saying it was better to be a foot solider getting paid than a prisoner being starved. She wasn't bitter and she wasn't worried and he wasn't going to fight, she'd just go to battles and doge bullets. She'd cost through the war and go back to her ranch after. Jana was young and naive and counted among the 48 Alliance casualties of Tristram, when well over 300 Independents were killed.
Zoë'd joined the war for her sake, for her memory. She couldn't blame the independents, they were clearly trying to protect what was there's. They hadn't forced anyone into the war, they hadn't thrown innocents onto the front line. An Independent solider may have fired the bullet that went though Jana's neck and flooded her lungs so that she drowned in her own blood, but there was no question that the Alliance was the ones that killed her. Zoë wanted revenge, pure and simple, the more Alliance blood on her hands, the better.
Mal had taken one look at her and told her to go home. She was too young, too scrawny. She told him her story, with all the overheated passion of a 17-year-old girl. At the end she had been crying, trembling with furry and grief. He'd nodded, coldly it'd seemed to her at the time, and asked simply. "If I say you can come along, you'll do everything I say, no questions asked?" For the first time in her life Zoë told Mal "Yes sir." And the rest, as they say, was history.
From that moment on she'd followed him to hell and back without qualm and, largely, without fear. At the beginning she'd gone through the resenting phase, where she hated him because he was the authority. After a while, about half way through the war, she entered the crush phase, where she loved him because he seemed perfect. When they lost she suffered through the interdependent phase, where they stayed together because neither of them had anywhere else to go. And finally he'd found Serenity and she'd found Wash and they'd reached the comrade phase. She knew him better than he knew himself at times, and visa versa. She'd never been happier.
Zoë saw the whole thing starting over again with Mal and River. He didn't really want her, he knew this wasn't a good place for her to be, but he also knew there was no place in the 'veres where she could go. She didn't think the willowy girl would ever be a comrade in arms with the hardnosed captain, but there was no question that Mal had found himself another lost little girl to take care of.
There had, of course, been Kaylee in the mean time. But she didn't need him half as much as Zoë herself had, or River would. Maybe that's why Mal loved the girl so much, Zoë mused, she didn't need his strong hand guiding her away from darkness – that and no one could help but love Kaylee. No one at all, Zoë thought as her attention turned from the adorable and bashful River to her somewhat less adorable but just as bashful brother, who was helping Wash carry the beautiful crib up the hatch. Kaylee was following, a large basket full of blankets, bottles, dippers and swaddling cloths. She was watching Simon walk with a seductress's smile on her face. Zoë couldn't help but laugh.
"What you findin' so funny?" Mal asked, stepping up to his first mate, a large wooden crate full of jars of Strawberry Rhubarb jam.
"The two a them," Zoë said, nodding towards Simon and Kaylee. "Looks like your hard policy against shipboard romances is gonna get broken."
"Yeah," Mal said. He didn't sound happy, really, but niter did he sound overly distraught. "Sometimes I wonder why I even bother makin' rules."
"Sometimes I wonder that too, sir," Zoë said, smiling just a little. She had her poker face back on by the time Mal realized she'd all but insulted him.
"Just 'cause you found true love on this boat, don't mean everybody will."
"I know that sir," Zoë said.
"Fact, odds are, ain't none of the rest of us that will."
"I wouldn't know that sir," Zoë said.
"What do you mean?" Mal asked.
"Just that 'Something and Nothing produce each other; the difficult and easy compliment each other; the long and the short offset each other; the high and the low incline towards one another; note and sound harmonize with each other; before and after follow each other.'"
"Zoë, did I just hear you spurt out poetry?"
"Philosophy, actually," the firstmate corrected smoothly. "Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching,"
"I didn't know you read philosophy," Mal sounded impressed.
"Don't," Zoë said. "It was part of the speech Wash gave me when he proposed."
"He gave you a speech splattered with ancient philosophy?" Mal asked.
"Yes, sir, he did."
"And you still said yes."
Zoë chuckled. "I did, sir."
"Didn't this whole thing start out about how Kaylee and Simon ain't you and Wash?"
"Yes, sir, I do recall that."
"Then why you bringin' up your proposal? A topic, which, I'm sure, you'll remember I asked you never to bring up unless absolutely necessary."
"I'm sorry sir," Zoë said dryly. "But I look at them and I can't help but see a ying and a yang. But that's just me." With that she turned and started after Wash and Simon so she could show them exactly where she wanted to put the crib, leaving Mal to wonder why people have to fall in love.
* * *
Serenity seemed to shake more than usual as it lifted off of Newhope. It was, Simon thought, as if the ship realized how much certain members of her crew didn't want to go, as if she was aware that Kaylee was standing in the cockpit, crying her eyes out, as the planet shrank until, eventually, it would become nothing more than another glittering dot in the sky and, after a time, not even that. It was as if the ship knew that River was sitting on the floor in her room trying to draw a picture of her mother and father, of Reginald and Regina Comworth and even of Jack, so that she wouldn't ever forget what they looked like, and that she was crying too, even as she tried to draw. It was as if Serenity knew that Simon was holding a tin box in his hands he didn't want to open, but he had told himself he would as soon as they left the planet.
Of course, Simon thought, Serenity was only a ship. It couldn't know anything. It couldn't will anything. It couldn't do any more or less than what Wash and Kaylee had it do.
And right now they were telling it to leave Newhope.
"Sorry about the bumpy ride," Wash's voice said over the ship wide com. "But leaving atmo we ran back into that storm hit us last night. Still, all's good, and from here on out it should be a nice and smooth all the way to Greenleaf."
The intercom crackled silent and Simon sat for a moment in the quiet, staring at his tin box. When the hush began to get to him he drummed his fingers against the tin once. The tinny rat-tat-tat sealed his resolve and, taking a deep breath, he unhooked the latch and opened the box.
A small chalky white cloud of peppermint dust wafted out of the box first. Simon breathed it in and remembered a lifetime ago when his godfather would open a box so similar to this. He could remember the smile on his godfather's face as he urged Simon to take more than one, an offer the young doctor never accepted. Then he'd turn the tin to River and Genie, both of whom had no qualms about taking a handful of the sweet candies. And then there was his first week at Medacade, away from home and family and all things familiar. In a pathetic, 'Getting to Know You' exorcise he'd been forced to participate in, he'd had to "Share something meaningful to you" with his whole class. While he thought about reading them his award-winning paper on the similarities in plant tissue and mammal tissue in regards to grafting, or perhaps show them a clip of River performing as Alice in "Alice and Wonderland" at the Osiris Met. But he'd decided just to pass around a bag of these types of peppermints after his room mate told him "Nobody likes a show off, people will sleep through ballet – not to mention you'll look like a pansy, but everybody likes candy."
Simon suddenly wished he'd accepted his Godfather's offer for a peppermint that first night at his villa. As he sat on his small bed, he was struck by the fact he'd never be offered them again.
Swallowing his sorrow, he pulled aside the wax paper that covered the small candies and looked into the box. It was only half filed with white sugary balls; the other half was taken up by a small wooden box, rosewood with orangeish-yellow and dark red roses painted on the cover. Simon stared at the box for a second, knowing that whatever gifts his godfather had always wanted to give him were sitting there. Opening it would be a resignation of some sort of finality, the end of their relationship, the handful of dirt flung at the coffin.
"You have to," River said softly, startling Simon so much that he almost dropped the tin and spilled the peppermints all over his floor.
"River," Simon said, sounding more scolding than he meant to. "I thought you were in your room."
River glanced over her shoulder to her open door, as if to demonstrate how short the distance between their two rooms was, and then turned back to him, "I was."
"Are you all right?" he asked, forcing himself to be the caring brother. "Do you need anything?"
"You have to open it," River said again, walking up and sitting next to him on the bed.
"Do you want one," Simon asked, stretching the tin out towards her.
She leaned forward so that her face was only a few inches above the peppermints and took a deep breath. After a second she looked up at her brother and smiled. "That's enough," she told him. "I'm full."
Simon smiled back and pulled the tin back towards himself, moving to close it.
"Don't," River said quickly, stopping Simon in his tracks.
"What? Did you change you're mind."
"You didn't finish."
"Finish?" Simon asked, "River, I couldn't eat all these candies tonight, even if . . ."
"No," River said peevishly. "You know the candy is for desert. You didn't even start the meal."
"The meal?" Simon asked, bewildered. "Are you hungry?"
"Substance, Simon," River insisted. "It won't make you sick, it will make you stronger and you'll learn to like it. Like mushrooms."
"River, I still don't like mushrooms."
"But if Uncle Reggie gave them to you, you would eat them," River told her brother seriously, and, suddenly, Simon understood.
"You want me to open the box."
River nodded.
"I don't know . . ." Simon started.
"It's bitter," River said moving to Simon's bed and easing herself down besides him so close their arms touched. "But that doesn't mean you can spit it out."
"If I open this pouch it will be like he died," Simon said. "I'll be admitting that I'll never see him again."
"You never will," River said flatly. "It's you're inheritance, Simon, what would Uncle Reggie say if he knew you spurned it?"
Simon nodded. His eyes threatened to tear up again.
"You should be alone," River said, leaning over and planting a sweet sisterly kiss on her brother's cheek before pushing herself off the bed and walking towards the door.
"River," Simon said, blinking away his tears. "Why did you come in here?"
"To stop the stopping," his enigmatic sister answered. "To move the process."
"The process?" Simon asked, baffled.
River threw him a smile over her shoulder, and then skipped away towards the cargo bay. Simon considered following her and insisting she clarify. But he knew that would be, most likely, an exercise in futility. Besides which, it would just be a distraction form what he really had to do: open that box.
Simon took a deep breath and pulled it out of the tin, setting it next to him on the bed. Slowly, almost ceremoniously, he closed the peppermint tin and latched it, placing it carefully on the shelf at the head of his bed. Then, taking yet another deep breath and preparing himself for just about anything, he picked up the wooden box and opened it. The first thing he saw was not the golden pocket watch, nor delicate, finely embroidered silk pouch, but a note sealed with sealing wax and addressed in a very formal hand to Dr. Simon Tam.
He picked up the letter, setting the box on his lap, carefully broke the seal so that, when he folded the letter, it would retain its shape, and read.
Dear Simon,
The events of the last few days have been tragic to say the least. I wish to God that there was something I could do for you and River, but it has become clear to me that there is nothing. Even if I were to disown my position and my fortune so that I could accompany you on you're had quest, I would be nothing but a burden and a liability. So, finally, I must let you go. Of course, by the time you read this you will, God willing, be gone. You don't know how hard it is for me to write that I hope never to see you again, because that is the last thing in the universe I hope for us. But, for your safety and mine, I do hope that I'll never see you again. I hope you and River find a way to fade into the darkness of space and the people perusing you never find you. I hope the crew of you're little ship, Malcolm Reynolds and Inara and Kaylee, and others, I'm sure, can provide you a light to keep the darkness that protects you from seeping into you. In short, I wish you all happiness, just not happiness here, with me. You are young and resilient; I know you will find it.
In this box I've given you two things. I would like to give you more, naturally, but time and circumstances limit my generosity. The watch had been in my family for generation upon generation, since Earth-that-was. I suppose I should have given it to Genie, but she'll get other things. I don't want you to forget where you come from, Simon. I don't want you to forget me or your parents, or disparage your upbringing. I know right now it seems to have failed you, we seem to have failed you, but you must remember that the strength which is propelling you forward to successfully conquer with courage and integrity challenges you'd never imagined, and the strength that is holding up River and keeping her from madness and despair. That strength is the strength you learned from us, me, your parent, and your schools in Osiris. The watch is to remind you to look backwards, on us who love you, no matter how impotent that love may seem, and being grateful.
The other gift in the box, which if I know you, you have not even notice yet, is a ring. It's new, comparatively, and it is for looking forward. I gave it to my wife when I proposed and she wore it until the day she died. My daughter, Genie's mother, Kristina, who you probably don't even remember, wore it after that, until the day she died. I do not blame the ring for either of their deaths, so don't take it as a bad omen. Again, I probably should have saved it for Genie, but she'll have so much and you'll have so little, besides, what I'm about to say is very important and I don't know how, besides giving you a woman's ring, I would be able to breach the subject. Some day, Simon, possibly someday soon, possibly some day years from now, after I'm long dead and buried, you are going to realize that you do not have to carry the burden alone. Someday there will be a woman who will gladly help you, and who, when you look into her eyes, will make you forget that you have such a heavy burden to carry. When you recognize that woman (wither it be Kaylee or some other, I do adore your friend, but I don't know what life plans for you and I would not think to speculate at such a precarious stage) I want you to give her this ring. I know you will make the right choice, some day, in the future. This ring was given to you so that you may look to the future and have hope.
I want you to be happy Simon, and safe and wu bo and all other good things that could happen to a man. You are more deserving of them than any man I've ever known, or truthfully, have known of, but, I'm afraid, you're path to these simple blessings will be long and hard. You will never be far from my toughs, and always in my prayers. There is so much I want to tell you, but needs be this letter is brief.
Your devoted Godfather
Reginald Comworth.
Simon, very carefully, folded up the letter. His throat was constricted and he could feel his nose running. His eyes were scratchy and dry, as if they wanted to cry but had run out of tears. He was glad River had left and he was alone in the room.
He took a deep, sniffly, breath as he replaced the letter and pulled out the golden pocket watch. He had admired it as a child with the sort of distant aw people admire jewels in a museum, without the hope of ever actually owning it, or anything half so grand. There was an engraved picture of a man and a well breed dog on the front of the watch, and on the back an etching of a fox, running away from the dog, and the man on a hoarse in the distant background. Simon had always liked the fox. He had, at age seven, when his Godfather had explained the scene to him and the tradition of the fox hunt and what the dogs and horses had to do with it, and why it hadn't been done for hundreds of years, insisted that this particular fox had gotten away. The hunter had gone home empty handed and the dog, who displayed vicious teeth in the second engraving, had gone to bed without any supper. Simon smiled sadly at the irony, he wondered if his godfather had thought of that story as he packed the box, or if it was just a coincidence.
When he opened the watch up there were a few words finely etched on the inside of the cover, opposite the watch. "For my dearest LJC I'll always love you NLC." Simon wondered who LJC and NLC were, and on what occasion NLC had given LJC the watch. He wished he could ask his godfather.
Simon carefully shut the watch, which ticked clearly and precisely every second, and put it back in the small box. Next he took out the embroidered pouch, which was a very dark purple with a golden dragon on it, and pulled out the ring.
It was more or less a simple gold band, but instead of a stone there appeared to be a simple knot tied in the gold string. It was simple and beautiful and elegant and would look beautiful on any woman's hand. Simon smiled as he considered the gift which, in a sense, wasn't really for him. He hadn't, despite his few tussles with Kaylee, really thought about the possibility of a girlfriend, or a wife. In part because of his tussles with Kaylee, he wanted one deeply. He wanted someone who could force him out of his morose shell and would laugh at his jokes, even if they were poorly told or sit and listen to him talk like a doctor and at least pretend to understand and be interested, someone who wouldn't think he was showing off or being pretentious, just being himself. He wanted someone to come up to him and squeeze his hands after a surgery and tell him that he'd done well, he wanted someone to run her fingers through his hair and snuggle up to him on cold nights. He wanted someone to love him for who he was now, the fugitive and criminal, and not hold him on a pedestal or see him as he had been. And, when he was sure he'd found that some one, he was so glad that he had something he could give her back.
"Time never stops," River's voice said, again softly from his doorway.
"Where'd you run off to?" Simon asked.
"It's time for lunch," River informed her brother. "I should get you."
"Can I assume, from the more or less delicious smells wafting down from the kitchen, that you're speaking literally?" Simon asked.
River laughed. "Where the mushrooms that bad?"
"No," Simon said with a sigh, putting everything back in his box and closing it. He considered putting it on the shelf with his other nick-nacks, but decided against it. Instead he got of the bed and knelt down, pulling his suit case out. "Go on," he told River, "I'll be there in a minuet."
"Why are you hiding it?" River ask. "That's the first place a thief would look."
"Where do you think I should put it?" Simon asked, turning to his sister.
River looked at him curiously, her mind working quickly, and then stepped forward and took the box from him. Simon didn't stop her. She looked around the room, clearly considering this the only appropriate place to keep such a valuable thing, and finally pulled up the matrices to his bed, revealing, not surprisingly, a row of nooks and crevices perfect for hiding small boxes and other valuable things.
"Right by your heart," she said, placing the box in a middle crevice, approximately under his chest, when he would lie on the bed.
"Your bed has this too?" Simon asked.
River nodded.
"You should hide your rings," he told her, reaching to the wall and pulling a nick-nack pot off his shelf so she could put her ring of gold and jewels as well as her ring of plain wood in it. "You don't want to lose them."
River smiled up at him, "Lost enough."
"Yeah," he said, watching her carefully put the two bands in the pot.
The walked over to River's room and placed the small pot in her bed smuggling nooks. She put them further up, closer to her head, so she could dream about them.
"Come on, Mei mei," Simon said, running his hand down his sister's soft hair as he turned and started walking towards the kitchen. "They're probably waiting for us."
He didn't even get to the stairs when her voice, colored ever so slightly with fear stopped him, "Simon."
"What?" he asked, turning around.
"When all that was comes to an end
And you seem lost in darkest night,
The stars see fit your wounds to mend,
Your hurts to heal, your wrongs to right.
Good grace and mercy will not rend
From your heart the hope of light
To blind the pain and shine again
Upon the path of your long flight.
Hearth and home are out of view
And every days calamity,
Yet love, despite the darkness true,
Blooms even in uncertainty:
Cold space made warmer by the hue
Of flowers on Serenity."
She told him, as he stood, one hand on the stair rail, frozen and transfixed.
"River," he said after a second, stepping away from the stairs and towards her. "I think that was the most beautiful poem I've ever heard."
She smiled her sheepish little sister smile, his favorite smile in all the 'verse. "It's you."
"You wrote it for me?"
"No," River said. "It is you. Don't forget." With that she started walking forward, and, as she passed him, said. "I'll tell them we can start without you."
Simon shook his head and exhaled sharply, pivoting to follow his sister.
That afternoon at lunch, Simon couldn't help but wonder what Kaylee's hands would look like if she ever wore a ring.
To Be continued . . .