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Chapter 9: Relight My Fire

Simon walks into the schoolroom that is serving as an infirmary and offers his services to the town's doctor – Doctor Kimson – a bearded man maybe in his forties who gratefully accepts the help. Simon looks round the room and feels like he might pass out. He's a trauma surgeon, he is meant to thrive on this. But his shirt is already blood stained and he doesn't want to do this.

He spots Jayne first. He threads his way across the room to him and puts his bag on the table where Jayne is sat.

"Zoë is dead," he says before Jayne can ask.

Jayne looks at the floor. "Wode tìan!"

"Where's River?"

"Sent her home. Inara is with her." Jayne hisses as Simon gets hold of his shoulder. "Watch it doc!"

Simon resets the arm properly. Jayne makes a strangled screaming noise. Simon didn't have enough anaesthetic to spare. But Jayne moves the shoulder now.

"Thanks," he says sincerely.

Simon pats his good shoulder. "Glad you're alive Jayne."

"You too Simon."

"Where's Kaylee?"

Jayne jerks his head across the room at a figure wearing a bloody plastic apron over her pink and white dress, with her head in a yellow plastic bucket being sick. She straightens, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and moves onto the next patient she is helping. Simon walks up beside her and squeezes her arm. She looks up at him.

He swallows. "I have to tell you…Zoë…" he blinks. "She's gone."

Kaylee starts crying. Then turns away from him when Doctor Kimson calls her name. She keeps the pressure on the wadding she holds over a wound.

Simon doesn't have time to stop and tell her it's going to be okay. He just moves on to the next patient. He stitches up Jayne's brother Benjamin's arm and sets Daniel's break. Then checks over baby Mal and Maddie. He tells her to take the baby away. Take him home and stay there. He doesn't tell her why.

Simon does what he can for people and all the while his insides feel like he is falling. Doctor Kimson has warned him. He does things that go against all his Hippocratic oaths as a doctor and he isn't proud of it. He makes sure that Kaylee never sees him do it. She wouldn't understand. He sees her throwing up more than once. But she always goes back to holding the person's hand or helping Doctor Kimson. She keeps crying. Simon is so proud of her.

River climbs into the big double bed in their room in Jayne's mother's house. She pulls the covers up to her chin. She can hear the aftermath of the reaver attack and it makes her head hurt. She knows Zoë is dead. She felt it. She starts crying. She feels Simon, working himself into exhaustion and he won't stop yet, despite it being four a.m. Kaylee is one whirling ball of fear and horror; River can taste bile at the back of her throat. She won't reach out for Mal or Wash, she can't bear it.

Instead she listens to furore downstairs. Jayne is home.

"You get that blood off you and you go up to that little girl of yours! She must be scared stiff."

"Yes mama," Jayne replies and his feet come thudding slowly up the stairs. He stops and speaks to Inara. River eavesdrops through the wall.

"River okay?"

"Yes. But she sent me away and said she wants to sleep."

"Zoë is dead."

She hears Inara gasp, and then two sets of feet go back downstairs.

"Ma you got any whisky?" Jayne calls.

Then he thumps back up and River hears water running in the bathroom next door. Minutes later the door opens and Jayne comes in. he shuts the door silently and crosses the room. He is shirtless and she can see the blossoming red-purple bruises around his left shoulder and upper arm. In his right shoulder the scar from Osiris is still red.

"Hey baby," he says softly as he gets undressed and crawls under the covers. He pulls River close to him and buries his face against her neck. "Nearly lost you," he murmurs.

"Nearly. But we're alright." She takes his hand and guides it onto her belly. "She's alright. Staying indoors for now."

Jayne flexes his fingers over her bump. "Thank god. I would never have forgiven myself if…"

"Sshh," River's lip wobbles. "Simon…"

"I know what he was told to do," Jayne interrupts. "I saw Mal give him the gun. I'd rather that than the reavers…" he shudders and falls silent.

River starts to cry.

Jayne knows exactly what he could have lost tonight. "River, I love you so much." Then he kisses her deeply, savouring her mouth against his.

The whisky burns all the way down her throat. But she sticks out her glass for a second shot when she has downed the first. She wonders where Mal is. But she can't bring herself to walk out there to find him. But Zoë…oh Buddha. She prays it was quick. She prays that Jayne killed them all. She prays that Mal wasn't there. But he was. He always would be. For any of them. She prays for Simon who is still out there, up to his elbows in blood, who probably watched Zoë go. She prays for Wash because. She doesn't know where to go. And she sticks out her glass for a third slug of whisky.

Simon staggers, exhausted, into the barn seeking only solitude and quiet, and somewhere to collapse. He walks inside the dark until he finds a section of hay bales far enough that he can't be seen from the door and away from where that woman's body lay. Someone has already taken it away.

He peels off his shirt and throws it to one side. Then lies down and closes his eyes. The hay scratches his back but it feels like the softest bed in the world. His stomach swoops sickly.

Kaylee creeps into the barn, following Simon. She doesn't know where else to go. She stops and looks down at him, laying bare chested in the hay. She squirms her feet inside her shoes, he looks so gorram swai. Not now, she thinks, and bites her lip.

"Simon?"

He opens his eyes and sees Kaylee standing in front of him, her eyes red rimmed.

"Are you…alright?" she asks voice tearful. "I can go if you want me too."

"No, don't." He pats the hay beside him. "Sit."

She lowers herself to the hay beside where he lays. And they sit in silence for a few minutes; the only sound that of their harsh sobbing breaths as they give in to despair and exhaustion. They don't look at each other – Simon has shut his eyes again – somehow they can't bear to.

Simon rolls over suddenly and slings an arm over Kaylee's waist. She sucks in her breath. "Simon are you sure you..?"

"Shut up," he says opening his eyes. "Just shut up Kaylee. Please."

She looks down at him, his lip is wobbling. Then his composure goes. He presses his face against her stomach sobbing brokenly.

"I couldn't save her Kaylee." He hiccups. "And they stood there and watched me fail. We watched her die."

Kaylee starts to cry again. She puts her hand on his head and runs her fingers through his hair. She rubs her thumb across the bones at the base of his skull. Simon groans softly, feeling disgusted at himself at how good her hands feel on him. He looks up just as she looks down, her hands continuing to massage the tension from his scalp absently, not paying attention to what she is doing.

He feels his body reacting to her touch and sheer presence, and feels dismayed. He looks down and tries to will the feeling away. Kaylee realises and stops her hand.

"I…"

Simon looks up again. Then grabs her head and pulls her roughly to kiss him. He releases her from the bruising kiss a minute later.

"I'm sorry."

Kaylee blinks. "I thought…you…" she swallows. "I though you'd given up on me."

Simon pushes himself to a sitting position, reaches out and cups her cheek with a hand. "Never."

Kaylee is still crying but somehow it doesn't matter now. She pushes him back in the hay and fumbles at his belt, while Simon pulls her dirty dress over her head.

Their lips meet again, roughly, hungrily. Seeking solace and safety in each other. For these few hours nothing else will matter.

Mal retreats to the darkness of his bunk and bolts the hatch from the inside. He washes the blood off his skin silently without looking in the tiny mirror above the sink. He can't look. He doesn't want to know what he will see in his own eyes.

He towels himself dry roughly and flings the towel to the floor. He tears his bunk apart looking for it. When he finds it he closes his hand around its cold silvery shape and sits on the edge of his bed. He bows his head.

"Dear God, I know I ain't spoken to you for a long time and I know back then I was out of my mind with reavers and the like. But I need to ask you something. Please take care of her. She's better than what happened to her. She was always the better one. Miles better than me. I know you're watching Zoë, I did it for you. I thought it was what you wanted. But it weren't. I just wanted you to stop hurting. I could see from the doc's face that it weren't good. He gets this crease between his eyebrows when things ain't gonna work out an' he had it tonight Zoë. I just got stupid and scared. And I'm sorry. So you hear me God you take care of my girl you hear? I probably ain't gonna get up there to see her. I made my peace with that. Just look after her. For me. And for Wash. Amen."

He fastens the cross around his neck and lets it drop onto his chest, warmed by his palm. He grabs a shirt and pulls it on roughly, concealing the cross. It feels like it should belong there, it did once, a long time ago, but now he feels like a fraud.

"It mornin' already?"

Corporal Zoë Alleyne sits up and eyes her superior officer who is spooning beans out of a tin with a giddiness that is kind of disturbing. Especially at this time of the morning.

"Las' time I checked yeah," Sergeant Mal Reynolds mumbles round his spoon.

"Hurray," she says sarcastically. "We dead yet?"

Mal grins at her through the grime on his face. "Nope."

"Shame." Being dead seemed preferable somehow to being here.

"C'mon Zoë who'd wanna miss all this." He gestures with his spoon towards the empty battlefields.

She gives him a look. Mal just grins back at her and shovels more beans into his mouth.

"Want some?" he mumbles, mouth full.

She shakes her head and stares despondently at the trench they are sitting in.

"Cheer up. Its not like we'll be here forever."

"Only the sky and the green grass last forever," Zoë murmurs softly. "Today is a good day to die."

"Rubbish." Mal says merrily. He throws the empty bean tin to one side. "Ain't no good day to die." He stares into her eyes, a fierce look in his. He raises his voice so that the others nearby hear him. "No one here is gonna die you hear me? We hold this gorram valley!"

Translation Notes

Wode tìan! Oh God! (Literally Oh sky!)

Swai - cute