Once
Summary: Once she's been a mother, a wife, and a cleaning lady.
Once this reaver had been a person.
Disclaimer: I do no own firefly.
Her name had once, long ago been Candice Bath and she was twenty-seven years old when a world ended. Not the world for in her universe there was always more then one.
Just a world, a world named Miranda.
Candice Bath wasn't a particularly bad person when you considered the grand scheme of things. Sure she'd lied in the past and once she'd even cheated on a long forgotten teen sweet heart, but that was years ago. Now things were different, Candice was well scrubbed and neat determined to make a decent impression. In one hand she held her suite case, the other was interlaced with the fingers of a small boy.
Together they stepped off the gangplank, far away from dusty dead moons to a place with running water, electricity, lights, and sound.
To a city of miracles.
To Miranda.
"See, fantastic isn't it?" a voice asked and she glanced up at her husband. Of course he wasn't the child's father, but it was easier getting transport visas when you were husband and wife.
Her own darling, little Thomas stared up at her blinking sleepily and she wiped away a stray smudge of dirt.
"Mum is true that this place has ice cream? And mules?" he asked her grinning with excitement.
"It really is," she confessed.
The children were the first to die.
Candice knew something was wrong when Thomas stopped terrorizing the children in the apartment building and began spending long lazy hours lying in bed while drawing all over the walls.
"Isn't it a relief? I mean at least he isn't crashing around like a gorram retard anymore" said her husband, but there was no malice, no anger, and no cruelty in his voice.
Rather easy going acceptance.
Candice had never particularly loved him, rather he was a tool of convenience, and she'd learned to ignore his beer stained breath and his tendency to shoot down anyone who tried to cheat him.
"It's been weeks since you've bothered to sell your stash" she pointed out, having smuggled medical drugs in their apartment made her feel uneasy but they were worth their wait in gold.
"What's the point? Nobodies interested in buying Candy Cane, their aint no crime here, nobody ever gets shot or injured" he replied sleepily.
"Then we'll leave and find another world that's interested in buying!" she snapped.
"Other new worlds don't have electricity and schools Candy," he said mildly.
"Other new worlds have rent I can afford, we cant live on my cleaning wages"
"Just relax Candy Cane it'll all work out" he sighed shutting his eyes.
Now however he never seemed to drink much at all and his gun their prized possession lay abandoned on the mantle piece.
Candice cleaned the lower floors of the local school, in fact she spent the majority of her new life cleaning, but at least the school was somewhat interesting. She liked watching the children from wealthier families play together, dreaming of one say sending Thomas to classes, these dreams would often end with a grown up Thomas becoming a pilot or an engineer, they were just dreams after all. Sometimes Candice would recognize some of the children who lived in the wealthier apartments of her building. One of them had blond hair and brown eyes, her parents did work with computers and if her son married a girl like that… well their future would be set in stone.
The next time she saw the little girl whose name was either Stone or Rock, something hard; she wasn't skipping rope or straightening her perfect little uniform.
No she was dead, slumped over her eyes barely open.
Candice had found her in the bathroom still sitting next to the sink.
She was as still as a doll and something feral, something strange stirred in Candice's heart.
For the first time in almost three decades she felt something akin to true anger, true madness.
Her own fingernails cut the palms of her hands.
By Thursday sixteen thousand children had died.
The scientists had likened it to a mysterious virus; the first signs were of course a lack of energy followed by a complete nervous collapse. The people were beginning to panic and there was nothing left for Candice to clean.
The schools were empty.
Thomas had stopped drawing.
"You have to drink this protein" Candice pleaded with him, the broth had cost half a weeks wages but as she forced the spoon into his mouth the liquid just dribbled down his chin.
She stared at his mouth, sixteen platinum's worth of food wasted within seconds her hand raised before she could stop herself slapping her darling, her baby across the mouth.
"Eat you gorram son of a bitch," she screamed but he didn't even flinch.
"EAT," she screamed again pounding at his tiny fragile chest but he continued to stare at her with glassy dull eyes.
Underneath her hands his chest rose for the very last time.
In the kitchen her husband was already wondering why he should bother breathing.
"It depends on how healthy the central nervous system is, it could take weeks, perhaps months if we're lucky" she heard Doctor Stevenson address several nurses as she entered the free clinic in her apartment building.
It was a basic building, treating common illnesses and the like.
Nobody was ever injured on Miranda.
He glanced up and judging by the expression on his well-worn face she guessed what he saw, a haggled mother in a second hand set of cleaning overalls with her dead son in her arms.
"I tried to give him the broth you prescribed but he wouldn't even swallow! He wouldn't do nothing at all" she choked.
"Oh dear another one" he sighed to the world in general.
"What could take weeks?" she'd asked him fretfully.
"Dear you best collect your savings and arrange for that poor boys burial" he sighed.
"But he ain't sick, there's nothing wrong with him at all" she cried still clutching onto her darling.
"It's best if there's no body for them to find" he informed her gravely and she stared at him terrified.
"Them?"
"There are stories from the other cities, the virus has mutated.. We have orders to destroy all corpses in the mortuary within the next forty eight hours" he replied.
There was a faint sigh from one of the medical centers waiting chairs.
A small elderly lady dressed in a baggy over coat had stopped breathing.
These are the last things Candice Bath ever did.
She arrived home from the medical center walking past the kitchen until she stood before the slumped over body of her husband his hand still curled around a bottle of beer.
Without even thinking she reached into his trousers and pulled out his wallet where he left whatever money he didn't spend on ammunition or cigarettes.
Inside she counted their money and she found the small stash of drugs he'd been trying to hide from her.
He'd never even bothered to take them.
Candice Bath had first met her husband George when she was a barmaid at the Three Stumps on Lilac.
He'd tried to engage her interest for several months but she wanted nothing to do with second-rate drug dealing hustlers.
Until he brought the advertisement from the cortex.
"Look at this Candy, families wanted for paid jobs on a new planet! apartments with electricity running water and health services guaranteed" he said and she rolled her eyes.
"You aint ever had a family," she pointed out.
"You've got that kid with no daddy around and I aint got no wife" he pointed out.
"What are you suggesting?" she asked him coldly.
"Look my heads want to send me to start exporting and importing catch my drift Candy girl? But I need a wife and a kid so I can look all respectable I need to fool those feds" he replied and Candy who only knew a bit of reading and writing found something that caught her eye.
Public schools.
Her eyes trailed to Thomas who was chasing the tale of a horse outside and then around the bar where even in the gloom she could make out the tell tale sign of guns.
And that was how it happened.
She stared at him, to the man who'd brought her to this world where the only thing that had ever mattered had just died.
The feral feeling scratched and prickled again.
On the kitchen counter there was a knife.
In that second Candice Bath died, something continued to use her body to move and scream but whatever that was.. It wasn't human. Nobody missed Candice or Thomas after all she wasn't a particularly interesting person, her story was nothing new. Just another young girl who got fell for a boy with kind eyes, who was kicked to the streets and disgraced .
It was a story that had existed for centauries, a story so old everybody knew it without ever having to hear it.
River Tam knew all about fairy tales and she would often make ones up of her own.
Fairy tales about princesses and princes, witches and goblins and maidens who were cursed.
But as she stared at a terrifying face, mutilated and torn with evil and rage she remembered the oldest fairy tale of all.
This was the story of the princess who was cursed by the wicked witch; this was the story of the monster lying in the shadows.
But there were thousands of other fairy tales she saw beyond the madness.
Candice sixteen and in pink dancing at her sisters birthday outside in the warm summer evening. Fairy lights in the trees with the hum of crickets accompanying the music and in the corner a young man watched her. Candice eighteen and foolish enough to bed a criminal. They lay together in the barn her breasts brushing against his chest and already inside a life was beginning to grow.
Candice screaming as Thomas entered the world, Candice cleaning floors, Candice sewing shirts, Candice waiting for letters from a father who never returned.
Candice fixing drinks.
Candice's hand brushing hair away from a babies face.
A Million and one Candice Baths entered River's mind within a second.
River swung back her blade and struck, metal connecting against a bare throat.
It only took a second but death was always sudden.
River Tam stared at her tiny niece, tiny fingers tiny hands, and tiny pieces of muscle tissue still forming still growing.
"I'm sorry I had to kill you," she whispered and she jumped when she heard the infirmary doors slide open.
Kaylee still euphoric yet exhausted after the whole experience gave a halfhearted wave when Jayne entered.
"Had to wait till the whole birthing was over" he admitted sheepishly staring at the baby.
"River keeps insisting on calling her Candice" Simon Tam said with small indulgent smile his eyes falling on his daughter before smoothing back Kaylee's sweat tangled hair.
"I like Candice it's a little sweet" Kay lee smiled dreamily.
"I thought you liked Grace as well baobei?" he asked her.
"She'll tell us what her name is eventually" Kaylee sighed shutting her eyes.
It was then that Simon noticed something in Jayne's expression, something furtive and guilty.
"You been reading my mind moon brain?" he snapped at River and her lucid gaze traveled towards the baby.
"No, not yours" she replied.