The Troubles of Other Folks
Notes: Written for the fffriday "Edges" challenge at LiveJournal. (There really are a whole lot of edges here if you look... And after you read it once, you can go back again and see if you can count them all. Like one of those hidden picture games in Highlights Magazine. It's a story! It's a game! It's a story! It's a game!) Set sometime Pre-Movie, with no real spoilers to speak of.
The sky was falling. Raining down in sharp shards of vibrantly colored confetti.
It was beautiful.
She turned her face upward, watching them fall. Glittering fragments of a fractured blue ceiling, catching and twisting the light as they drifted to rest on the street around her. There were colors there that 'verse hadn't even named yet, and their half-formed syllables exploded in her ears. She couldn't hear them clearly yet, but it would come.
She spread her arms, feeling the tiny pinprick stings as the bright hues bit at her skin. One of them - a deep azure blue, she thought - brushed against her smiling mouth, and everything crystallized into crimson. She could taste them now. She had their shaded flavor on the tip of her searching tongue.
Roaring. Rocking. Ricocheting. Red.
Something hit her hard from the side, and she fell into a brilliant sea of burning papier-mache.
The arc of the beam swept just over Mal's back, scratching against his coat as it passed. He paused just long enough to suck in a shaky breath when it hit the street beside them, before jumping to his feet to pull the girl away from the smoldering wreckage of what used to be the town's local post office. A small square of flaming paper bounced off the back of his hand as his fingers circled around her thin wrist.
The shelling - small caliber cannons up in those hills there, way he figured - still hadn't stopped, and his boots fought for traction on all the broken glass as he dragged her toward their cover. There was a scream from one of the wooden buildings further down, cutting through the bombardment noise. She stopped short, turning in the direction of the sound. Mal yanked on her wrist and got her moving again.
They ducked into the saloon just ahead of an explosion at their backs, Mal's shoulder catching the doorframe as they went through. He pushed the girl into Zoe's arms and moved into a defensive position in the shadows of the doorway. "We get back to the ship, I'm fixing a leash for you, girl. First thing."
He stared out into the street, planning for what came next.
She'd heard the crying when the ship first kissed the soil, a frightened whimpering rising and falling over the murmur of a hundred angry voices. It traveled up through landing gear and support struts, writhing its way over bolts and plating to dissolve through skin that was both metal and flesh. It tingled as it swam in her blood, and she'd stood there on the stairs, washed in waves of its hum.
The difficulty had not been in the escape, nor in the following. The rest of them couldn't hear the tears, didn't listen for the anger. Calm breeding complacency, chess no longer the game of the day. Cards were better - all on the table and none up the sleeve. Nobody's worrying about destruction coming from the one that's tucked away.
The difficulty had been in the focusing. Focusing was problematic.
Without the wall of Serenity around her, the noise had been so much louder. People scrambling for that which was not theirs to want, more than willing to throw away lives that were not theirs to dispose of. She'd stepped off the ramp and been swallowed by their sound, the tingling morphing to a desperate kind of itching that threatened to take her whole. It had carried her, that sound. Carried her along in the wake of the only two familiar figures that moved farther up ahead.
Then the crying had swelled, the dirge whistling past her to turn her feet in a different direction. She'd followed, pulled by the unraveling rope of its sadness. She wanted to see the eyes that could cry such tears.
But the sky had cracked and come down on them all. And it was beautiful.
"How is it that we always manage to find ourselves all caught up in the troubles of folks we don't even know?"
"Been wondering that myself, sir."
Mal glanced back at the dingy interior, his eyes having trouble adjusting after the riot of lights outside. Aside from Zoe and River, there were two men and a woman hiding back by the bar. The three hadn't made any threatening moves since the strangers had invaded the relative safety of their establishment, and Mal was content to let them be. They weren't his to worry about.
He turned back to the street, trying to focus not on the noise but on which route back to the boat would provide them with the most cover. He thought the fire seemed to be thinning out some. Maybe they could make a run for it.
"We thinking about trying to wait them out?" Zoe asked.
He shook his head. "They got enough ammunition, no telling how long they could be up there. We did our business, got our money - no cause to overstay our welcome." Truth be told, there was more than one reason he wanted to get out of this place. He knew Zoe was feeling it too - for someone who was ordinarily so impassive, she was doing an awful lot of shifting around in the gloom beside him.
Hell, the girl was probably the calmest of the three of them at the moment.
"Time travel," River said. She'd bent her body to an unnatural angle, leaning far to the left to see around Zoe to the action outdoors. Mal ignored her. His fingers flexed around empty air, missing the comfort of cool metal.
Storm clouds long gathering, until past and present collided in an echoing thunderclap. Some had seen it coming, read the signs in the sky and the air and knew to take cover. Others were not so fortunate, razored through by an unexpected lightning bolt when they got caught playing outside in the rain. The unprepared were bound to end up bleeding and wet. Such was the way with nature.
The woman by the bar had a rifle, lead and powder to protect her interests. One of the men beside her dreamt of a horse named Trixie, a long-legged mare dipped in chocolate brown. He held in his mind a picture of dark naked eyes. Held it right next to his fear that he'd never again get to watch her run.
Borders reworked with lines redrawn. That which was yours is now theirs, unless you can hold on tight enough. The same sad song sung by the same sad singers, but the ink of the notes always dried to the same shade of black.
The acoustics would be much better outside.
"We leave now, we could be leaving a lot of innocents behind."
Mal counted the spaces between the explosions. "These people seem real intent on having this particular disagreement. Don't much see how we can do anything to stop them, do you?"
"Just a thought, sir."
The shelling was definitely slowing up. If they were going to go, it needed to be now. He straightened up, closing his fingers around the girl's wrist again. "Fast as you can, dong ma?"
She smiled up at him, and he blinked at the excitement in her eyes. He realized then for the first time that her lip was bleeding, that she had a dozen or so small cuts covering her arms. It didn't look serious enough to need any immediate tending to, he decided, but he knew Big Brother was apt to be pitching a fit all the same.
"Rushing River," she said with a nod.
"Yeah. Right." He wondered if it might make more sense to carry her. Worried that she wouldn't keep up. He supposed he should just be thankful she was actually wearing boots today.
He glanced at Zoe, careful not to let the look stray to the locals. The familiar readiness was there in her eyes, their money was there at her belt. Her gun was in her hand. It was time to get gone.
Mal flinched when River tossed their hosts a cheery wave as they moved through the door. He was hoping enough distance would settle this sick feeling crawling through his stomach. But he doubted it.
River in one hand and his weapon in the other. Mal stepped off the edge of the sidewalk and into a memory of hell.
end.