Chapter Two- Of Cabbages and Kings
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Although Simon was right about Zephyr being fine, four hours was a very low estimate. Twelve hours into Zephyr's long slumber, the crew started to get worried that perhaps she had slipped into a coma. Simon dutifully informed them that he was monitoring her brainwave patterns and vital signs and she was, in fact, just sleeping. He hooked her up to a nutrient drip and ship life went on around the sleeping girl in the infirmary.
It was Kaylee that first saw her awake again, when she went in to get a weave for a grazed knee. As she banged through the drawers, finally pulling out what she was looking for, Zephyr's eyes opened and she flinched away from the noise. 'Hey there sleepy head.' Kaylee beamed at the sleepily awake girl as she sat up and blearily rubbed her eyes, calming down as she realised she wasn't in any immediate danger.
'Hey' replied Zephyr, her voice crackly from lack of use. Looking around the infirmary she blinked a few times and yawned. 'What this?' she asked, indicating the needle in her arm that was attached to a bag of clear liquid. 'Nutrient drip. You've been asleep for going on a day now.'
'Wow. Guess I was tired.' Looking thoughtful for a second, she crossed her legs under the blanket and added; 'aaaand I really need to pee.'
Kaylee grinned and pulled out a draw to reveal that it was, in fact, a toilet. 'Do you need help?' she asked, suddenly concerned. 'Think I can manage. Thanks' came the reply. The mechanic nodded and went to stand outside the closed door to give her some privacy. She took a while, but eventually slid the doors open and hobbled out, her long sleeve pulled down over where the drip had been.
'Ugh, I feel like I've slammed into a wall' she joked. Kaylee winced sympathetically.
'Here sweetie' Kaylee offered her an arm for support, which she gratefully accepted. Slowly they made their way up to the mess area, arriving as the others started to gather for dinner. The sight of a tentative and rumpled Zephyr hobbling into the mess bought a small cheer out of Wash. She smiled at the reaction. Book, River, Mal and Jayne were also in the kitchen. Kaylee helped her to sit down, beaming with helpful happiness.
'What time is it?' asked Zephyr running a hand through messy blond hair. 'Food time,' answered Jayne, 'Shepherd, what's takin' so long?'
'Patience is a virtue. The cabbage just needs to boil for another few minutes.' Jayne made a face. River sat to the left of Zephyr, with Kaylee flanking her on the right. 'We're going to be short on for chairs' pointed out the blond pilot. 'Nah, we're right. Inara's not eating with us right now, and we can bring up a crate from the cargo bay later if we need to.' The captain waved it away, taking his usual seat at the head of the table. Zephyr and River ignored this exchange.
Sitting next to Zephyr on her other side, Kaylee watched curiously as the two girls each held up their right hands, matching them palm to palm. 'Sister' whispered River. A brief wind stirred in eternally windless mess. 'Sister' confirmed Zephyr. They continued to look into each other's eyes for a few moments, before dropping their hands and each looking away, to discover that everyone else in the kitchen was now staring at them.
'What?' asked Zephyr. River looked equally innocent. 'Dinner's ready' said the shepherd as the pot boiled over. Simon and Zoe walked in and the moment was broken. Book moved to tend to the food
Dinner was the usual rowdy affair, save that the conversation was centred around introductions, and rehashing old stories. The crew enjoyed telling their adventures to someone that had not been there at the time, and Zephyr was a good audience, although she seemed perpetually wary and any sudden movement on behalf of his crew would cause her to flinch. Mal watched her closely, his eyes shrewd even as he comically retold the story of his rescue from Niska led by his brave crew. There was something going on between her and River too. It was indefinable, but his instincts told him it was there, and they were something he had learnt to trust.
Another thing he had learnt to trust was Wash's insatiable curiosity. Predictable as sunrise, he soon breached the subject that everyone secretly wanted to ask about.
'So what are the full extent of you superpowers?' he asked the girl after Mal's story wound up and received the appropriate hail of laughter and retorts. She cast her eyes downwards and there was a moment's silence. 'It's hardly a superpower' started Zephyr, and Wash breathed a quiet sigh of relief, that he was not poking his nose in somewhere delicate.
'Seems pretty superpowery to me' replied Jayne. Zephyr laughed shyly. 'No, I just... it's weird sometimes, thinking that other people can't do it. I don't think they ever figured out why I can. When I'm not all run down like this, hopping from place to place is as easy as breathing. I do it in my sleep sometimes.'
'A worrying new twist to sleep walking' interceded Wash.
'And the energy stealing?' asked the captain, not wanting to start a fight, yet wary that this girl could be very dangerous. 'Not a thing I do in my sleep' replied Zephyr quickly. 'At.... that place, they try to turn anything into a weapon. I don't want to hurt people. Be made to hurt people. The energy stealing is another instinctive thing, but I've never actually done it before. At least I don't think I have.'
'That's pretty vague.'
'Like I said, my memories were stolen.' Mal nodded at this explanation, and the conversation moved on to other topics, namely a debate over which superpower would be the best to have. They pretended not to notice the way she ladled second and third helpings onto her plate, eating ravenously as though half starved to death.
Conversation flowed easily between them, and by the time the food was finished, the new girl had even begun to relax slightly
Even though her stay on Serenity would only be brief, Book helped her to set up a room in the passenger quarters, in the empty room opposite his. Returning to the mess area, pretty much everyone stayed up long into the night, talking and playing Chinese checkers. Zephyr didn't know the game, but Inara (who had appeared an hour or so after dinner had ended), tutored her to a stunning victory (OK, so it was only over Jayne, but it was a victory none the less). Finally, Simon declared that she needed to rest, and the party began to break up.
As usual, the captain was last to bed; stalking Serenity's passages long after the rest of her occupants had succumbed to sleep. Having got used to working on three hours sleep a day during the war, he just didn't feel tired enough to lay his head down so he decided to do an inventory on some of their supplies. One of the passenger rooms had been taken over as supply storage area long ago, so that was where he headed now.
As boring as the work was, it needed to be done, and since he wasn't sleeping... After an hour or so, the crates of food and other miscellaneous parts had been checked through and re-stowed neatly away. Standing and brushing his hands off on his pants, he yawned and stepped out of the room, sleep was now looking like a pretty good option.
Stumbling along the corridor past Book and Zephyr's rooms, he nearly jumped out of his skin when a mind rending scream tore through the air. Regathering his wits, he pinpointed the source of the noise and slid open the door into the room where the new girl was sleeping. The scream came again, and Mal made out the struggling form of Zephyr on the bed, fighting the nightmares in her head.
Flicking the lights on he quickly strode across to her, and, taking her by the shoulders, shook her gently. Quicker than a blink, a fist flew towards him but the captain saw it coming and caught it easily. In the next moment the lanky girl was fully awake, shaking with eyes wide. Registering Mal's presence, she looked down at where her small fist was being stopped by his open palm then quickly dropped her hand.
'Sorry' she said, eyes down-cast. She was wearing a pair of Kaylee's pyjamas. Mal noticed the way the girl was still shaking and, making a decision, sat on the edge of the bed. It was masterful, the way in which her shift away from him seemed simply as though she was making room on the small bed, but it did not go unnoticed by the captain.
'Want to talk about it?' he asked anyway, knowing that when nightmares were put out in the open, sometimes the silliness could banish the fear. Zephyr shuddered and shook her head. Trying for another tact, Mal tipped his head on one side. 'Do you know about the unification war?' he asked.
Everyone knew about the unification war. Everyone that hadn't been locked down in a government institution. And somehow, knowing that she wouldn't know made it easy to talk. As he had thought, she shook her head, finally glancing up at him, ready for a story.
'Six years ago, there was a huge war. It was the independents against the alliance. You can probably guess who won. It wasn't that easy to see the outcome from the start. But I didn't sign up because I thought the independents would be the winning side, I signed up for what I believed in. Thing is though, when you're waist high in shit, having shells rained on you in a trench that's been cut off from supply, that belief is bound to get a mite shaky. And when you close your eyes, 'cause if you don't you will drop where you stand, belief don't hold the images of your best friend's corpse at bay.'
'Makes being cut up like a guinea pig sound like a walk in the park.'
'That ain't what I'm saying. Let me finish,' he berated her lightly, allowing a quick smile to his lips. 'What I'm saying is, at one time or another, most people will find the place that is their hell. Some do it on their own, pushed by foolish beliefs; some are dragged there by others. And that place will always be with you from then on. It'll come back to haunt you; when you think you finally pushed it down far enough to forget it, you'll wake up screaming.'
'Not being so comforting here' joked Zephyr shakily. 'Nah, I'm not am I' agreed Malcolm. Looking thoughtful for a second, an idea came to him. 'Wanna show you something, do you mind if I pick you up? It's just that the deck plates get at bit cold'
Zephyr shrugged indifference, so, standing up, Mal scooped her up, blanket and all. Shuffling her a bit in his arms, he opened the door to her room and stepped sideways out into the corridor. Not bothering to shut the door again, he headed towards the bow. Even with the blanket, Zephyr was unbelievably light. They rule all the 'verse and yet can't afford to feed their experiments well, he thought bitterly.
The dark ship was silent as she ever was, a background hum of engines something that her captain didn't even hear anymore. Finally stepping up onto the bridge, he was rewarded by a gasp from Zephyr. She seemed to have been rendered speechless from the burning array of stars that frosted the black before her. 'What I was really trying to say was,' Mal said, 'is that until you've found your hell, you can't appreciate your heaven. And then the nightmares can't touch you, because you open your eyes, and you know... you know that you got this'
Glancing down to the bundle in his arms, the radiant smile on Zephyr's face told him that he'd got it right. She couldn't tear her eyes from the star scape, but she shifted slightly in his arms, and managed to breathe a 'thankyou.' After a minute or so, Mal shook himself at the slight trance he had fallen into staring out of the windscreen. 'C'mon. If I don't get you back to bed, Simon'll crucify me.'
'Thought you were the captain' commented Zephyr, looking at him for the first time since they had entered the bridge. 'That I may be, but mutinies have been known to happen. 'Sides, if I make Simon unhappy, then little Kaylee gets unhappy, and then the boat'll cease to work, so back to bed with you.' As he spoke he turned to head back to the aft of the boat, Zephyr briefly craning her neck to keep the stars in sight, before sighing and resting her head against the captain's chest, for the first time, relaxing completely in his presence.
She was almost dozing by the time he got her back to her room, so he tucked her in and retreated from the room without a sound. Feeling strangely content, he headed towards his own bed; finally ready to turn in for the night.
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To be continued.