Expectations and Suppositions

AN: Hello! After a very long hiatus and welcoming one very cute baby girl, Rayne, and yes, she is named after River (me) and Jayne (my husband),, I am trying to get back into updating this story. No promises on how often updates will come, but I will try.

Also, get ready to see more familiar faces in this chapter and let me know who else you think is going to pop up from the Firefly-verse. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 7

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Eric is clearly not amused by my new living situation. Every thought reeks of frustration, and he doesn't understand why I didn't try and protest Max's plan of having me stay with Zoe and Wash. He respected each of them for their professional talents, but Eric was a solitary person. Me being here made it harder for him to find out more about what Jeanine had done to me.

"You could have said something back there."

I shrug. "Not my place."

Irritation prickles Eric's skin. "Max may have listened if you had."

"He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight."

I roll my eyes. "I can't fight every decision. I am an initiate and it was not my place to question Max's logic."

Eric is still annoyed. He reminds me of the first time I corrected him when I was five. He didn't stop glaring at me for a week.

Eric takes a step closer to me. "Max isn't the only person you can't question."

A chill runs down my spine. I'm still not sure what to make of Eric's possessive streak. I'm not even sure if he knows what to make of it.

I look up at him, but this time I don't say anything.

"You have the rest of today off. I'll find you in a few hours." He says as he turns and quickly leaves, slamming the door behind him.

I roll my eyes when I hear his boots storming down the hall.

I hear Wash walking back out a minute after the door slams. "I take it the fearless leader isn't too happy you're staying here." Wash says with a chuckle.

"He wanted me to stay with him." I reply nonchalantly.

I register genuine shock from Wash when I say this. I just shrug. I had a feeling Wash and Zoe would be seeing more of Eric with me here, so it was better to address it now.

"We grew up together. He was my brother's best friend."

"Still the idea of Eric Coulter willingly wanting to share his space with anyone is mind boggling. It's like juggling baby geese."

XXX

Wash had to return down to the mechanics bay for work, so I used it as an excuse to leave the apartment. It would be more amusing to make Eric have to look for me later too if I was already out. Much like Christina, Wash had no problem filling the space between us with funny stories about Dauntless.

By the time we get to the mechanic's bay, I've already heard three stories about some of his more 'thrilling heroics' he and his co-workers had gone thru when dealing with Factionless.

We walk into the bay when Wash is in the middle of telling me what a Crazy Ivan is when someone yells for him.

"WASH!" The voice comes from across the bay. "Hurry up and get back to fixing that engine would ya?"

The man in question walks towards us while wiping grease from his hands with a rag. When he stops in front of us, he extends his hand to me.

"Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds."

I reciprocate. His handshake is firm, but not domineering. His introduction is formal, but not quite Dauntless. It's less stern, less formal than a Dauntless born would have been. His clothes also are more casual than the Dauntless would normally wear. Practical for getting dirty. Malcolm Reynolds is clearly an Amity transfer.

"River Tam, Zoe and Wash's houseguest."

"Houseguest?" Mal looks surprised as he looks to Wash for clarification.

"Max wants her to stay with us thru her training. Since we're impartial to ranks."

Mal quirks an eyebrow surprised. "Didn't think they normally move initiates out of the dorms during training."

"I was a… special case." I respond along while shrugging my shoulders.

"Uh huh." Mal says as he regards me more closely.

"Anyways, I have to get back to work. I'll see you later River." Wash says as he takes the grease rag from Mal and heads back over to the engine that is clearly in pieces around the truck.

"So how's training going?" Mal asks, curious as a cat. He's still trying to figure out what got me the special treatment.

"Fine. Some of the other transfers tried to attack me and I may have beat one of their faces in during first round of fights." I say as I start to look around the bay. It's clearly well taken care of, even with the inevitable clutter and mess that comes with maintenance of the trucks.

The armory is also housed in this area, and I can see crates of what I assume are weapons waiting to be catalogued near the weaponry annex.

"So they moved you out of the dorms?"

I shrug. "Max thought it was best."

It's enough for Mal to be satisfy his curiosity and let it drop. "Well I am sure Max has his reasons."

Truthful. Malcolm and Max were in the same circle as each other because of Wash and Zoe, and had a mutual respect for each other. Malcolm would follow Max's orders, but he would question him if he thought there was a flaw in the plans.

"So what do you do in Dauntless?" I ask to change the topic.

"Kinda a bunch of things. Oversee patrol deployment, equipment requisitions, shipping and receiving."

He's also leaving out some of the more covert ops that he may or may not have had a part in. "Any job that needs doing?" I say with a smile.

He smiles back. "Whatever the situation calls for."

"Can I help? I have down time today and I don't mind doing shipment receiving and cataloging."

Surprise. Mal hadn't expected the offer, let alone what appears to be an offer as genuine as the one I had made.

"JAYNE!" Mal yells to someone behind me that is towards the weapons annex.

"WHAT?" A man yells back, who I assume is the person in question.

I turn and look at a man who is moving crates from the latest pallet of weapons from Erudite.

"Got someone to help you with that weapons shipment you still haven't catalogued in inventory.

"Goddamit Mal if you try and pawn off some low level patrol guy on me again, it's gonna take more time for me to correct their mistakes than it's…." But Jayne stops his tirade as he gets a look at who is actually standing with Mal. Confusion reads all over his face as a slip of a girl was not who he expected to see.

"Jayne, River. River, Jayne. River here offered to help since she has the rest of the day off from training.

Jayne is still utterly confused as to who I am and why I was there. It clearly reads on his face, so Malcolm continues. "She's staying with Zoe and Wash right now, till the end of training."

Jayne shrugs as he finally decides I don't look like an idiot and he's not about to turn down help. "Suit yourself. Clipboard with the requisition numbers is there, you can tag each of the weapons in the crate with the scanner." He says before he goes back to what he was doing.

I feel Mal roll his eyes. "Jayne isn't much of a people person." He says as some sort of apology.

I turn back towards Mal and smile. "Doesn't bother me." I say before I turn and walk over to the clipboard and scanner.

XXX

A half hour later, I can see why Jayne would have been skeptical of anyone offering to help. The Dauntless system was antiquated compared to Erudite, and they had lost valuable time scanning each gun individually for new requisitions versus using the encoded programming on each of the Erudite boxes. What they needed was to reprogram the scanner to plug directly into the crate via hardwire connection to download the info contained in it to their system. The issue was that the scanner needed to be retrofitted to do so.

I had already disassembled and reprogramed the scanner when Jayne came over to see what I was doing.

"What in the hell ya doing? I told you to scan the weapons, not break the damn scanner!" He yells as he sees the bits and pieces around me.

"I'm upgrading it." I say as I snap a few other pieces of the circuitry back in place. "The way you said was highly inefficient."

"Yeah, but it's what worked! How am I supposed to use the thing now?" He continues to yell.

"By rewiring it to allow for a hardline connection directly into the digital manifest on the crates this will now autonomously tag and catalog the contents of each crate by serial number and assign them digital IDs in the Dauntless records."I explain calmly as I continue my work.

Now Jayne is confused. "Huh?" He didn't know the digital manifest had that info, since no one from Erudite had bother to try and explain it. Typical.

"They should have updated the system and given you a new scanner that could process that, but since they didn't, I did it for you." I say as snap the remaining pieces back in place and connect the hardline to the crate next to me.

Jayne watches mildly astonished as he sees all the info begin to download into the scanner, as if each one had been manually scanned.

"Those damn noses! Too goddamn proud to ever explain anything to someone they don't like. How'd you know how to do this?" He asks when he sees the info transfer complete and I unplug the scanner.

"I transferred from Erudite." I say as I turn to look at the mild embarrassment comes across his face.

Jayne's cheeks redden slightly. "And I agree, they are a bunch of noses."

His embarrassment turns into amusement and Jayne laughs. "Well it's a good thing you're here then. Anything else you can update to make my life easier then?"

I smile, Jayne's not so bad as long as you weren't an idiot.

XXX

A couple hours later Eric finds me. His angry footsteps and blustering thoughts announce his presence long before he physically enters the cargo bay, and I feel my back prickle as he draws closer.

I turn from the computer terminal where I had been doing further upgrades to the Dauntless armory catalog system, along with perusing what weapons were in circulation. He enters a second later, and his gaze immediately falls on me. He doesn't move forward towards me though, almost as if he expects me to just come to him.

I glare at him and stay where I am. I watch as Malcolm Reynolds approaches him, quickly seeing what the young leader needs. Eric's mind is unreadable now, but a twisted smile spreads across his face as he continues to look in my direction. Mal follows his gaze to me, and then they are both walking towards me.

"Keeping busy?" Eric asks me as they come to a stop in front of where I am.

"Wanted to be useful." I say with a shrug of my shoulders.

There's a tension in the air, something Sergeant Reynolds picks up on. I feel him glance between myself and Eric, not sure of what exactly is going on, but curiosity clearly piqued. He files it away to ask Zoe and Wash about it later.

"I'll go grab the gear you were asking about Coulter." He say as he walks into the back of the armory.

"I said I would find you later." Eric hisses in a whisper.

I smile. "You never said I had to stay still."

There is a flare of… something from Eric, although I am not sure what it is. Frustration, possessiveness, confusion? It all mixes together into a mass of swirling thoughts and emotions.

He leans in towards where I sit, tension coiled in his body. "Careful, you're playing a dangerous game."

I don't give him an inch though. "I have played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable."

His eyebrow quirks in surprise. It is not what he expected me to say, and I feel an old memory resurfacing in the back of his mind.

Eric quickly represses the hints of the memory as Sergeant Reynolds approaches and leave a black duffle bag on the desk in between Eric and myself.

"Here you are Coulter."

Now it's my turn to quirk an eyebrow at him as he says nothing, but quickly grabs the bag and nods at the Sergeant.

"Come on." Eric says as to me before turning and starting to walk away.

I roll my eyes at his behavior, but don't question him. I give a quick look to Malcolm Reynolds before leaving. "Thanks for letting me help Sergeant Reynolds."

"Call me Mal, and you're welcome to come help whenever you like." Mal says with a small nod of his head, almost like he's tipping an imaginary hat to me.

I smile and turn to follow the retreating form of Eric out of the cargo bay.

XXX

Eric practically slithers through the Dauntless underground like a viper. It appears he's chosen a route few people take, and we pass maybe three or four people in total. The one's we do are quick to avert their gaze and try and stay out of his line of sight and don't even seem to register the initiate trailing behind the fearsome leader.

After fifteen minutes or so, Eric takes a sharp turn through a set of doors, and it appears we've come to our destination. He quickly flicks a light panel beside the door as I follow him in, and the overhead lights illuminate the room. I step forward and examine what remains of the indoor basketball half-court. The floor isn't waxed and pieces are missing, along with part of the backboard. It was likely too far away from the other training rooms or exits to the outside to be on any use for training facilities, so it was left vacant.

I hear the click of a lock behind me and turn to see Eric has secured the doors so no one would be able to enter. My skin prickles as I watch him toss the bag he had been carrying towards me. It lands with a thud between us.

"Now then…" Eric says as he quickly shucks off his jacket and drops it by his feet. "About earlier…"

I watch him as he walks forward, crouches down, and unzips the bag. What he takes from it surprises me, and I cannot suppress the smirk that pulls at the corners of my lips.

Eric produces two swords. He tosses me one and I catch it by the pommel. I feel the weight of it in my hand, slightly twisting and turning it to inspect it. It's balanced, in fairly good condition, and I'm more than a little surprised that this is what Eric would pick to test me.

"You want me to beat you in fencing?" I say with a chuckle. Eric had always had a fascination with more… arcane forms of combat.

"I think you're going to have to try." He says as he stands up and removes the tee shirt he had been wearing and tosses it back towards his jacket. "First to draw blood from the torso wins." He adds as he now kicks the bag back towards his things as well.

I watch as Eric stalks towards me, blade at the ready, and a slight menacing look in his eye. I'm not surprised he's chosen to forgo any safety equipment that might have also been in that bag, he is Dauntless. I begin to open my mind. While Eric isn't thinking anything specifically, he isn't guarding his mind either. This was after all meant to test me as a reader, and picking a form of combat this out of favor in modern circumstances would mean I wouldn't have knowledge of it from anyone but reading him.

"And when I win?" I say mirror his stance and stand at the ready for him to attack.

He stands like a coiled serpent ready to strike, and I'm his dinner. "We'll see."

I have time for one last breath before Eric lunges at me and I quickly parry. I'm not elegant, as I move to defend his barrage of attacks, each one aimed with purpose at achieving it's mark.

Eric advances in, and I move in close and then shunt him away quickly to create distance. But as the muscle memory, Eric's muscle memory, begins to seep into me consciousness and limbs there is a change in the tempo of the fight.

Instead of moving on the defense, I move into offensive attacks. Our blades clash in a flurry of strokes, and as I lunge forward I manage to graze Eric's shoulder with the tip of my blade. It isn't the torso, but it is enough to make him pause.

"Not bad." Eric says, a thin bead of sweat beginning to cast a sheen on his brow as he inspects the tiny line of blood.

But that is all the pause I get from him before our fight begins anew, and I feel him take it up a level. After the next flurry of feints and clashes, Eric manages to make his own mark and cut a thin slit in the thigh of my leggings. He chuckles as he executes a circle-parry and brings my arms up to allow him to step right against me. I quickly bring my blade and his back down to create space.

Eric smirks. "Not bad at all."

He uses his body weight to force me into the defensive position again, and as I move backwards a few steps I collide into the wall. I quickly dodge his attack to my torso, but he manages to redirect and slice into my shoulder. My eyes narrow, annoyance that he had managed to make that cut, and his dark chuckle bounces around me.

I charge at him in a furry, and as our blades clash I mange to knock his away from him and keep him moving backwards.

"Hmm… this will make it more difficult."

Eric attempts to reach for his blade and I lunge to try and make the connection with his torso and barely miss. But I have over-extended myself and Eric sees this as his opening. He grabs the hilt of my blade and wrenches it away from me, while also pulling my body against his, before quickly spinning me so my back is against his chest. He lays my blade against my torso, his mouth coming down next to my ear. My skin prickles at the feel of his breath against my skin.

"Do you surrender?"

His words are like poison in my veins. "You will not surely die, the serpent said to the woman." I say nothing.

He draws slightly closer, his nose brushing against a few strands of my hair. He inhales slightly. "I asked you a question initiate."

"Dauntless don't surrender." I throw my elbow into his solar plexus, catching him momentarily by surprise. It's enough of a window for me to wrench the blade away from him. He tries to move to his fallen sword, but as he does I twirl and lunge enough to leave a tiny trail of blood on his abdomen.

His eyes widen ever so slightly as his hand finds the small wet cut. He touches it and brings his finger up to see the blood, as if he doubted it was there at first. He smiles a toothy grin, the first real smile I have seen from him since I have been in Dauntless… the first I have seen in six years.

XXX