This was a little story which popped into my head and had to be written down. Thought you may enjoy. Please read and review.
(The sequel to Driftwood is still underway)
I am open to any challenges people wish to set me for stories.
Their War
Corporal Tam spat out a mouthful of muddy water and pushed himself back up to his knees and wiped his dirty hands on his fatigues. The man in the dirt in front of him whose vein he had been plugging with his fingers was dead now. Simon stands, steps over the body and moves to the command post.
"Sarge? Any word?"
She looks round at him. "Don't worry. She'll get our angels here."
Simon claps her on the shoulder. "Sure Zoë."
He retrieves his rifle from the mud and takes up position next to a soldier holding a big gun and barking orders.
"You hold you yellow-bellied cowards!" Corporal Jayne Cobb bawls at the other soldiers in the line.
"Yes sir!" they echo back.
One soldier goes down, a bullet wound in his forehead. Simon lets him fall. He's already dead. Simon wonders when he stopped flinching at every gunshot, every explosion, every death.
He fires a few shots over the edge of the trench and drops back into cover.
Suddenly their air support thunders overhead.
Jayne lets out a whoop and punches the air. "Bout ruttin' time crazy!" he yells at the ship.
Simon allows himself a grim smile, which freezes almost instantaneously on his face as he sees the ship trailing smoke. She's obviously been tagged by anti-aircraft fire and the ship is going down.
"River! River bail out!" Simon's not sure if he's talking to himself.
The explosion throws all of them backwards into the mud. Simon can smell burning flesh. His chest hurts but he's sure that's not an injury…not physical anyway. His arm is broken; he can feel the bones grating on each other. He pulls himself up, adjusts his helmet and looks around. It was bad. Very very bad.
"Jayne? Zoë?"
"Sarge is dead," someone says, and it sounds like its come from far away.
Simon winces and turns his head away from the command post. He doesn't need to see what is left of Zoë. At least she'll be with Wash now.
They were winning – the New Independents were winning – but they were still going to die.
Someone drops into the trench beside him. "Report?" they snap urgently.
"Dropping like flies General. I'm functional enough. But Zoë…"
Mal looks him in the eye and knows. And something dies in his eyes. She was all he had left, apart from Kaylee, far away and safe. The Alliance had got to everyone else. Inara had been murdered in her sleep. For no other reason than to get to General Malcolm Reynolds of the New Independents' High Command. Try to make him break. Well he did, but he didn't stop fighting. Nor had Zoë and now she was dead.
"Jayne?" Mal asked.
"Here Mal," came a weak voice from behind them.
Jayne lays across the far side of the trench, missing a leg from below the knee. His face is white. Simon and Mal tourniquet it as best they could, and Simon tries to clean the wound. But Jayne is already fading. He grabs the front of Mal's coat with more strength than expected.
"Do it," he growls. "You know what we said."
Mal draws his pistol and a long shuddery breath. Jayne closes his eyes. So does Simon, afterwards, when Jayne is staring dead at the sky in a pool of red. Simon remembers River's words and disagrees. He doesn't look better in red.
Apart from the soldier who'd told him Zoë was dead, Simon and Mal are alone.
"We're going to die aren't we?"
Mal just nods. Simon sits with his back against the wall and uses his uninjured hand to pull out a capture.
"Say goodbye to daddy."
The little girl waves from Kaylee Tam's arms, and Simon almost starts to sob right there. His girls were going to have to be brave without him.
She'd told him not to go. Screamed at Mal until she was blue in the face.
"I want to help, I can help," he'd said. I want revenge, he hadn't said.
She'd cried and cajoled and begged him not to leave her with a seven-month-old baby. But relented when Mal swore on Serenity that he would get her husband home safe and well. They trusted Mal. Always had. Of course Zoë and Mal would fight. Jayne too. River wanted to fly, get her own revenge. So Kaylee got Serenity, parked on her parent's farm while she waited with Hermione Tam for her husband to return. And now I'm not coming. Oh God. Kaylee baby I'm so sorry.
Mal is sat lost in his own thoughts. Neither man moves when the seeker comes whistling to the trench. And Kaylee Tam was alone and didn't even know it.
Kaylee was tired. She had rewatched the WAVE several times and tried to make sense of the short impassionate words that told her that her husband was dead. Words from a stranger who probably never knew the man she loved. She'd cried rivers of tears until one day she just couldn't cry anymore. She tries to be there from Hermione but two weeks is a long time to know Simon is dead. Her parents try but what can they do? Simon is dead and she is very much alone in the 'verse.
The knock at the door is an unwelcome interruption but she goes to it. The blurry shape through the window is a soldier, probably sent with condolences. Maybe a Browncoat flag. She'd never got used to seeing Simon in a brown coat of the Independents. She opens the door and firstly thinks he looks familiar, a bit like her dead husband. He stares at her silently, mouth tight beneath the short beard and she almost faints. She grabs the doorframe for support. He steps forward to catch her. He's limping. His uniform is as smart as he can make it but there are stitched up bullet holes in his coat. His left arm is in a sling and his face is bruised purple and blue.
"Simon?" she says in a whisper, afraid this may not be real.
He kisses her without a word. Like a thirsty man in the desert.
There are tears in his eyes when they break away.
"You were dead," she finally stutters, trying to will him to say something, anything. He hasn't said a word.
He nods.
"How did you? What happened?"
Simon looks at the floor while more tears fall.
"Simon…" Kaylee starts to cry. She hits her fists into his chest. "Say something!"
He says the only thing she needs to here.
"I love you."