Prompt Table #2- Love.
Jayne had always dismissed love as a weakness. It was easy to dismiss something that he'd never really had but, to him, love just served to make a body weak.
He'd seen it time and again when some poor, dumb hun dan had fallen for some trim and was left face-down in the dirt with nothing but bad memories and empty pockets.
Even his own dear ma had seemed broken and fragile once his pa was done and buried. To a young Jayne, watching his ma cry buckets and become less vibrant, it was unthinkable to let something hurt you so bad and so, at the tender age of eight, Jayne had decided that love was for suckers and he wanted none of it.
To be fair he hadn't seen much to contradict that thought in all his travels around the verse and his many years of life.
That was until the day River Tam crawled naked out of her box.
Not that he felt the emotion for her, of course, couldn't stand the feng le girl at first. But her brother was the first that challenged his inbuilt assumption.
It had been the first time that he had seen love in action and it left him reeling.
This prissy, pansy-assed, core-bred wimp had given up everything-- everything-- for his sister; his money, his career, his reputation.
Later, he'd discovered that he'd even risked his life to get her out of the institute where she was being tortured. He'd also threatened the captain and that took balls.
He didn't do it because he was brave-- he wasn't-- or because he had to-- he didn't-- but because he loved her.
Love made him strong.
A basic principle that Jayne lived by was called into question. In a frantic attempt to regain a fundamental grip on things he tried to prove Simon an abomination. For the first time, Jayne was forced to take a good look around and he was shocked at his conclusions.
He'd always seen Mal and Inara's relationship as proof undeniable that love was a weakness, after all Mal was all kinds of messed up over the skirt and Inara wasn't much better. But somehow he'd missed the way Mal would brave all to reach her side if she were in trouble, to defend her even if meant his own life and to make her stay when it would have been far easier for her to leave.
He'd always assumed that Zoë and Wash had fallen prey to hormones and the lack of real choice out in the black, Zoë and Wash being so very different. Yet, somehow, they'd made it work. Somehow the foolish pilot made the stoic warrior laugh, he gave her something to look forward to and, in turn, Zoë made Wash feel safe. The man lit up every time she walked into the room; something Jayne had always sneered at, but now envied.
Or would have if Wash had not been lying in the next room, ready to be buried.
Jayne closed his eyes and tried to block out the images of what they'd been through in the past twenty-four hours; Reavers and Alliance and more death and blood than Jayne had ever seen before.
Miranda.
Even the word was enough to give him the shudders and he took deep breaths to calm himself.
He lay in the makeshift hospital bed, newly sewn up and doped up by the Alliance as the Operative who'd slaughtered all their friends tried to make some kind of amends.
Jayne hated him in a way that he'd never hated anyone, but as he opened his eyes and looked around his thoughts weren't on hate or even revenge.
But love.
It was in the way Inara hadn't left Mal's side, even though she could lose her Companion's license and her livelihood.
It was in the way Mal reached out for her even in sleep, or the way he agreed to bargain with those he despised in order to get Serenity in the air. It was in the way he reached out for Zoë to give her any kind of comfort he could.
It was in the gentle way Zoë smiled at him in reassurance even as she fought back tears. It was in the way she cleaned and readied Wash's body for burial. It was in the way she carried on and held her head high, knowing she had the memories to survive on.
It was in the way Kaylee had found the power to take up arms to defend her family, it had given her the impetus to survive and to not be so scared.
It allowed Simon to take the next step, no matter what his life could have been. It was in the way he stayed, even though the rescinded warrant meant he could go back to life on the Core.
But most of all, it gave River the strength to jump into a nest of Reavers to protect her family and the one's she loved. It was what made her walk into the Alliance hospice tent to check on her brother, no matter the crippling fear that showed on her face that they'd somehow take her back to the place where she'd been so brutally tortured.
It was love that made her find her way to Simon.
Simon, who'd been the first to make Jayne see that love made you strong, made you full.
Maybe that's why Jayne hated the doc so very much, because Simon had made Jayne's life seem so very empty.
Jayne closed his eyes and listened to the gentle murmur of the crazy-girl as she talked to her brother, her voice full of emotion, and he prayed.
He prayed for his friend Shepherd Book, he prayed for Wash but, most of all, he prayed that one day he could feel that kind of love.