Written for the fffriday fic challenge redux, harkening back to challenge #70, "Blood".

Title: Hollow
Word count: 797
Rating: PG-13 (for violent imagery and flashbacks)
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon created Firefly and its crew, and Mutant Enemy owns it. Don't sue me, I'm broke enough as it is.

The Captain and Zoe always told me those stories, you know, about what things were like in the War. About battles and ambushes and the like. They talked about people they'd known, like Monty, and about being short on rations, and about being in the hospital after a fight, and about sneakin' their way through a platoon of purplebellies to sabotage a relay station so that a company of browncoats could cut off a whole regiment of Alliance troops.

But they never told me what getting shot felt like.

So when Dobson turned around when there was all the fuss and I saw the flash out of the corner of my eye, I didn't rightly know at first what had happened. Not 'til I put my hand on the spot on my belly and saw my fingers come up all red.

And then everything was so busy, and everyone was so mad, and Simon asked me if I could move my feet, and he touched my stomach as gentle as I'd wanted him to ever since he first came on board but it hurt worse than when I was twelve and I fell off the lifter and cracked a rib on the edge of that parts bin. Simon and the Captain picked me up like I weighed nothing, and I looked down and knew I'd have to get a new bit of fabric or something because the blood was all over my favorite coverall and I had to get it out. I remember them puttin' me down in the infirmary, and then there was a sharp sting on my neck and I wasn't there no more.

I still dream about it, you know? Wake up in a cold sweat in my bunk in the middle of the night, hands going to my belly like I have to cover the hollow of the scar just to keep everything inside. And sometimes, when I see Jayne cleaning his revolver on the mess table or Zoe putting fresh shells in her scattergun, I get all dizzy and cold inside and my gut flips over like the grav-boot gave out. Still, when the Captain got took by Niska, there I was with the others next to the locker in the cargo bay with the guns in it. Because I know that if I was in trouble, trouble as big as that, Captain'd do everything he could to save me. I had to be willing to do the same for him. A little fright inside me didn't stack up to nothing 'gainst that.

But when we went in to Niska's skyplex, and I was standing in the doorway with Simon and Shepherd Book with a gun in my hand, suddenly that certainty just curled up and died inside me, and I kept thinking of lying on Serenity's deck with blood pourin' out of me. Simon lifted the pistol he had and shot at Niska's men, but all I could do was stand there with my hands shaking. When they left me behind at the airlock door, suddenly that picture of me lying on the deck was all my head was full of. And then the three men came into the airlock and started shooting, and I couldn't do nothing but run and hide, put my hands over my ears and pray I wouldn't get hurt like that again.

And all of sudden, River was there. She took the gun I'd had, said something about not looking, closed her eyes, and killed all three of them 'fore I could blink. Then she stood there, ghost of a smile on her face like she just got kissed by a cute boy, and calm as can be said, "No power in the 'verse can stop me."

Same words I'd said after I chased and caught her earlier that day, but I wasn't talking about killin' three men like it was nothing.

I tried to talk to Simon about what happened, but I just couldn't get the right words out. He thinks I'm talking about bein' scared 'cause of what was happening, and says complicated things like "anxiety attacks aren't uncommon in the wake of serious trauma, Kaylee", and tells me I'll be fine. But I'm not.

I don't know what to think. What River did scares me – maybe even more than thinking I'd get shot again. I know that if she hadn't done what she did, I'd be dead now for sure. But I can't look at her like I used to anymore. Every time I do, I remember lying on Serenity's deck with a hole in me, and seeing Niska's men bleeding their lives out by the airlock door, and how she smiled at me like she'd just won a prize at the faire.