BOOK ONE: The Beginning
Chapter Three: C is for Conversation
AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
Disclaimer: No son mios!
SUMMARY: Immediately post-Serenity. The alphabet of hope, redemption, and loss. River/Jayne.
RATING: R for the series, PG-13 this chapter
SPOILERS: Through the film, Serenity.
WARNINGS: Eventual character death
PAIRING: Rayne
NOTES:
Sorry this took so long, folks! I've been exhausted the past couple of days and didn't get a chance to type this out. I hope it's worth the wait!
C is for conversation, specifically the one Jayne was studiously trying to avoid. He knew Mal and Zoe were looking for him – could hear them clattering around as they searched his usual haunts – and he wasn't much in the mood for dealing with whatever they had to say. Likely they'd accuse him of getting too close to River; Mal'd bring up the whole Ariel fiasco (again), and he'd be stuck scrubbing floor grates with a toothbrush , just like he'd done that time he put the dead rat in Kaylee's bunk for a laugh. Well, he'd thought it was funny. It was everyone else who didn't have a sense of humor.
Today he'd holed up in a little nook at the back of the cargo hold with a few of his favorite knives and a whetstone. River was stretched out on her belly by his feet, chin propped on her hand as she watched him methodically drag the edge of each blade across the stone. Now and then she'd echo the shrip! sound the metal made as he honed each edge to razor sharpness. Even Jayne couldn't deny it was comically homespun, the girl on the floor as he reclined on a crate with his back against the wall. He kept expecting to see his Ma appear with a steaming dish of her famous Cod Pie Casserole.
They found him eventually, of course, because Serenity wasn't the biggest boat in the universe. Jayne was expecting the sour look on Mal's face, and the mildly disapproving one from Zoe, but he wasn't expecting the soft growl that came from the girl stretched out on the floor. He wondered if they'd heard her.
"You just stay there," he muttered to River as he watched the captain and first mate approach. "You go nutters on me and we're both screwed, get it? They're liable to think I egged you on or somethin', and I ain't lookin' to get tossed out an airlock or grounded on the next asteroid we come to cuz of you."
"I am defending your honor."
"Crazy girl, I don't need you defendin' my nothin'."
"Yes you do."
"Shut it."
"Mornin', Jayne," Mal said with deceptive cheeriness, breaking into the conversation as he and Zoe came to a stop in front of the pair of them. Jayne watched Zoe's eyes flick from River to him to Mal's face in the span of three seconds. The two of them seemed to share a moment of mutual understanding, concluding with a slight nod from Mal to his second in command.
"Gorammit, cut that out," Jayne snapped irritably, resheathing his current knife. "I hate it when you talk all silent-like."
"Quiet chatter keeps bugs at bay," River mused from her position on the floor, where she was studiously examining Mal's boots.
"Mornin' to you, too, River," the captain said, nodding down to the girl before fixing his gaze once more on Jayne's face. "Thought we could have a little chat, Jayne."
"I figgered that was what you was thinkin', Mal."
"Did I think wrong?"
"Do you think at all?" This from River, who was now toying with Mal's laces. Jayne snorted.
"River, why don't you run along and find somethin' else to occupy your time whiles me and Zoe have a little talk with Jayne?" Mal suggested, ignoring her comment.
"No."
That took the captain back a bit. "Um... Please?"
"No. I don't wish to. The conversation involves this girl, and so she should be present at the conversation."
"Now, River, this don't concern you."
"I am not a general talking point?"
The way Zoe's shoulders stiffened told Jayne that the girl had hit a nerve. "Oh, just git, girl," he muttered, exclamating the point by jabbing her in the hip with the toe of his boot. "I reckon I got a good idea what this is about and it'd go a helluva lot faster without you hangin' around and gettin' in the way."
"I do not get in the way."
"Look, just make yourself useful and go get me some o' that polish outta my bunk. You know the one I mean."
"Green cap."
"Green cap."
Slowly, sinuous as her name, River lifted herself to her feet. Casting a suspicious glance to Mal and Zoe, she turned and left the cargo bay, using the same dreamlike walk that always seemed to haunt her footsteps. When she was gone, Jayne turned his attention back to Mal and Zoe. "So talk."
"Can't help noticin' your relationship with that girl's gotten a mite friendlier of late, Jayne," Mal responded, leaping into the meat of the subject with his typical sideways brand of blunt. "Care to explain that?"
"Nothin' to explain. She just started hangin' around me like a, wassit called? One o' them fluttery bird things. Real tiny."
"A hummingbird?" Zoe ventured, typically deadpan.
"Yeah, that's the one. Like a hummin'bird."
"And you don't mind?"
"At first yeah, but she's a right sight useful to have about. You saw that; just sent her off to get that polish and she weren't none the worse for it. Figure with that brain o' hers, next time we're at Persephone or one o' them pleasure planets, she can help me win at the track."
"So what you're sayin' is you're friendlier with her because you can get her to do stuff for you," Mal observed.
"Shiny."
"Right. So what other kinds of things you got her doin', Jayne?"
It took a moment for Jayne to process the words and tone of that sentence, but when he did, his eyes narrowed. "Say what now?"
"Captain asked a very straightforward question," Zoe supplied, wrists crossed behind her back, stance relaxed yet somehow rigid. "What other duties or chores do you have River performing for you?"
Jayne rose slowly to his feet. "You know, I don't think I like the direction this here conversation's goin'," he growled.
"You know, I don't reckon I care," Mal snapped back. "Answer the gorram question."
"So's you can twist my answer again?"
"I don't hazard I've twisted your answers to start with."
"Implyin' I'd get trim offa that bit of frippy? What in the blue hell kinda man you think I am, Mal?"
"A man who likes the ladies, Jayne. All shapes and sizes."
"Right there you're wrong, Mal. I like a little meat on my women; somethin' to grab onto. That little girl ain't nothin' but a bottle brush. If I was gonna take a ride on the River, I'd want there to be somethin' to dip my paddle into. You get me?"
"If you never say anything like that again, Jayne, I think it'd still be too soon," Zoe said.
"Just cuz it ain't nice don't mean it ain't true," Jayne defended angrily. "I ain't never claimed to be a saint, Mal, but I ain't no baby raper neither."
"No one's sayin' you are, Jayne," Mal said calmly.
"Like hell you ain't! Ta ma de, Mal, why don't you just come right out and call me a gorram Reaver!"
Dead silence fell in the cargo bay. Jayne resisted the urge to wince as Zoe fixed him with an utterly calm, completely devastated stare, then turned on her heel and walked away. The sound of her footsteps echoed off the hull.
Jayne waited until she'd gone to flinch. "Ta ma de..." he muttered, running a hand through his short hair. "Mal, you know – I mean, Zoe knows I didn't mean to men-"
"Listen to me," Mal cut him off, voice level as he drew closer to the taller man. Jayne obediently shut the hell up. "I ain't got no reason to believe you're doin' right by that girl, but nor do I have reason to believe you're doin' wrong by her. All's I can see is that she trusts you, though I'll be a buggered son of a whore if I can figure out why. But the girl's got a brain bigger'n Serenity, and she's been doin' a damn sight better this past week. We all noticed it, and I've gotta believe it's got somethin' to do with you. So's I'm gonna go out on a limb and trust you, too. But you listen, and you listen hard." The already steely tone of Mal's voice took on a harder edge, like a dagger morphing into a bayonet. "I find out you laid one hand on that girl, that you done her wrong in any way... I find out anythin' like that, and you're gonna find yourself singin' soprano on the farthest backwater planet I can find, close as stink to the fringes of the Deep Black. Understood?"
Jayne nodded sharply. "Shiny, Cap'n."
"That girl's got a brother worries about her night and day, Jayne. Don't you go givin' him somethin' else to worry about on top of all else."
"Won't."
"See you don't." Stepping back, Mal gave Jayne a cursory once over. "I was you, I'd stay away from Zoe a few days."
Jayne nodded miserably. "Yeah."
Mal nodded, satisfied, then turned and strode from the cargo bay.
Jayne slumped back onto his crate and buried his head in his hands, muttering every Mandarin curse he could think of and inventing a few he'd never heard before. Gorramit, why'd the feng le girl have to go and attach herself to his hip like she had? And why'd he let her hang around? Hadn't he learned his lesson after Ariel? Nothing good ever came of fraternizing with the Tams. Not a gorram thing. It was one of those fundamental rules he lived by, but he'd gone and broken it, and now here he was, one wrong step away from the noose.
Something cold against his arm made him look up, to find River standing over him, tapping the small tin of polish against his arm. "Green cap," she said with an eerily vacant smile.
Jayne took the tin from her hand, noticing for the first time how small her hand was compared to his. How could someone so tiny screw his life all to hell so easily? "Yeah, right," he muttered distractedly, looking away.
Silence hung between them for several minutes, during which time Jayne didn't look up from his concerted study of his boots. He half hoped, when he did choose to look up, that she'd be gone. It was a small hope, but he clung to it.
It was shattered a minute later when she spoke. "They made you bleed," she murmured.
Jayne looked up sharply. "What?" he snapped, looking down at himself, wondering if Mal had managed to knife him without his noticing. "Where?"
"They take bits and pieces of you away," she continued, as if he hadn't spoken. Her eyes were disconcertingly clear as she swept them up and down his body; Jayne thought he knew now what it must be like to be one of those butterflies pinned to bits of cardboard. "Make you less than what you should be; make the lion into a mouse. They release the bad humors, only they take the good humors, too, and now there's no ice cream at the seashore."
He blinked at her. "You're crazy," he said, for lack of anything better.
She nodded. "I know."
"Why the hell'd you have to go and suction onto me like one o' them sucker fish?" he asked, suddenly desperate. "Why couldn't you've just stuck with your brother? Let 'im stick you with drugs to keep them voices in your head from driving you more batshit. Everythin'd be a whole lot simpler if you'd just done that!"
"I know."
"And cut it out with that all-knowing, all-seeing shi, get me? I ain't interested, and I don't think it's special. It's just plain wacko. Just like you. You're just plain wacko."
River tilted her head, regarding him with a distant gaze. He hated it when she looked at him that way. It always felt like she was staring right through his head and seeing every secret he'd ever kept hidden away. "You're going to tell me to leave," she murmured, as if she was reading from a script. "Then you're going to tell yourself it's okay, and I'm just a nutjob little girl. Then you're going to forget me."
Jayne stood up sharply. "I said quit it!" he snarled, leaning down near her face. River blinked at his proximity and quickly backed away when she saw his eyes. "Don't you ever listen, girl?" he continued, pursuing her until he had her crowded back against a stack of crates. She stared up at him, wide brown eyes almost black in the shadowy light of the cargo bay. "I said I ain't interested! And I don't want you tellin' me what I'm gonna do! Nobody tells me what I'm gonna do 'less I'm gettin' paid!"
She blinked up at him. "I have no money," she murmured.
"Well that ain't my problem," he growled. "And unless you can rub together some coinage, you ain't my problem either. I'm not puttin' my neck out there for you 'less I'm gettin' somethin' back from it, you hear me?"
She continued to stare up at him, as if seeing him for the first time. There was a look of something that might have been glazed awe, or possibly raw horror, in her eyes, and it put Jayne's teeth on edge. "What?" he snapped. "Stop eyeing me like that!"
She nodded slowly. "I understand," she said quietly. He expected her to slip away from him and scurry from the cargo bay, but instead she did something that took him completely by surprise.
She put her hand on his shoulder and pulled him closer.
"What the-" he stammered in shock as he felt her slight frame press along his body.
"Something in return," she said, and there was no dreamy quality to her voice. This was River the Statistician; the Epidemiologist; the one who saw the facts as they were and drew logical conclusions. "I have no money and I am not a thief, yet you need reimbursement. So I give you what I have."
"Girl-"
"Yes. That is what I have. I am a girl." And as if to impress that point upon him, she ran her hands down his chest.
Jayne shivered and for a moment his mind went utterly blank. Gorram, it had been a long time since he'd gotten any trim. Not since before the whole Miranda fiasco. He could feel his body responding to her warmth, the rainwater scent of her hair...
...You're gonna find yourself singin' soprano on the farthest backwater planet I can find...
His eyes flew open, and he suddenly realized once again exactly where he was and who was touching him. "Gah!" he exclaimed, jumping backwards, away from her small, nimble hands. "Girl, what're you doing! You tryin' to get me kicked off this boat?"
She looked like a ghost; a pale white girl backed by slate gray crates. "I am trying to give you what you want," she said, eyes beseeching.
"I don't want that!"
"Yes you do."
"No I don't!"
"You do. I see it."
"Get out of my head! And I don't care what you're seeing, it ain't right. I ain't never thought like that about you, and I like my John Thomas enough to know it ain't healthy to start!"
"I see better than you." River pushed away from the crates and took a step toward him. Jayne hastily took another step back. "I see the things in your head that you don't see yet yourself."
"Get out!" he growled, pointing angrily towards the exit. "Go on! I shoulda known 'fore we even started this that you was gonna do something gonna get me in trouble, but I went and fell for it anyway. And now you're tryin' to make things even worse by pulling things outta my head that ain't even there! What're you gonna do, get me naked then go runnin' to your brother to cry foul? That it? That your plan, crazy girl? Still sore 'bout Ariel and you wanna get rid o' me?" The hurt that flashed across her face would have made him check his words if she had been anyone else, but Mal's stony face and chilly voice was still clear in his mind. "Go on, get out! And I don't want you comin' back neither. Just leave me the hell alone!"
"The voices-" she began, but he cut her off.
"I don't give a flyin' hump 'bout your gorram voices! You're already crazy as a Mudder in a mine field. Far as I can tell, you ain't gonna get much worse!"
For a moment, she just stared at him. Jayne stared back, defiantly he thought, and refused to let the sudden absence of all feeling in her eyes affect him.
Then, very slowly, she closed the distance that separated them. Jayne tried to back away but found himself falling backwards as his knees bumped into the crate he'd been sitting on earlier, and he sprawled out into a sitting position. By the time he got his limbs straightened out, River was there, hovering over him like some kind of demonic angel, dark eyes oddly hollow as she looked down into his face. Leaning sharply forward, she pressed their cheeks together so her lips were right near his ear. Jayne tried to pull away, but she anticipated the movement and moved with him.
"Mouse," she whispered, and her breath chilled the back of his neck and sent goosebumps down his spine.
She didn't wait for him to respond. Pushing away, she backed toward the exit, and now her eyes weren't hollow anymore. They were filled to the brim, overflowing with tears, and they streamed down her cheeks like waterfalls. Like rivers.
"Mouse," she repeated, croaking hoarsely, still backing away. "A mouse too afraid to be a man. A mouse afraid of being a man. Cheep, cheep, little mouse. Cheep, cheep in your dark, filthy hole. I hope the voices get you, too!"
Then she spun on her heel, dark hair furling out behind her like a curtain, and fled.
Jayne stared after her for a minute, unmoving, unsure how to classify what the hell had just happened. She was gone, which could only be a good thing. But on the other hand, she hadn't sounded too happy with him, and having a lunatic girl holding a grudge against him didn't sound good for his health.
Still, if he had to choose between the phantom threat of pain at the hands of a ninety-pound girl, or the certainty of pain at the hands of his vagabond captain, he'd take the former in a heartbeat. Besides, he was prepared now. He'd just mind his step and keep out of River's way till she'd calmed down a bit.
The tin of polish she'd gotten for him was on the floor at his feet. Jayne bent forward and picked it up. There was a dent in the lid from where he'd stepped on it. He stared at it, felt the weight of it in his hands, saw the tears on her cheeks clear as day, and threw the tin as far across the room as he could manage. He heard it clang against the far wall before clattering to the floor and rolling away into a corner.
"Crazy girl," he muttered, and tried to believe he didn't care that it was true.
TBC...