Chapter 7

There was a widespread misconception floating around the 'verse that Hoban "Wash" Washburne didn't like spending time planet-side.

True, he had occasionally turned a little land-crazy when they spent too much time in port, like more than a week or so, and yes, if you had seen one backwater moon, you had kind of seen them all, but that didn't mean he didn't like to sniff the air once in a while.

Even on his own.

He'd much preferred to take a stroll through the countryside or have a picnic with Zoë, of course, but she had gone with Mal almost as soon as they'd made touchdown to set his not-yet-a-plan into motion. Somehow, the captain had managed to talk (or coerce) both Simon and Shepherd Book into participating in his little I-make-it-up-as-I-go-scheme as well, and that had left Wash back on the ship alone with the girls.

Kaylee was busy repairing the damage their brief encounter with unfriendly fire had done to Serenity's engine, which she claimed wasn't very extensive. She was confident she would have it done by the time the others returned (and, judging by past experiences, would be in need of a hasty departure). Mal had said it would most likely not happen until the next morning, at the very earliest, but whatever the case, Kaylee was happy tinkering along in the engine room for the time being.

River had spent the afternoon walking around the ship talking about colors and rainbows and balls of yarn, but appeared calm enough, so Wash, after he'd taken a ladder to assess the outer damage to the ship and judged it to be only esthetic, had found it safe to leave her with Kaylee for a spell, while he picked up some necessities in the nearby settlement.

The others had taken the Dragonfly, as the alleged campsite of Svetlana Peng was at good thirty miles away and they had to go by ground, and so Wash pulled out his old backpack and made his way into town on foot.

If one could even call it a town. It was a single lane with a few buildings on either side. A convenience store with no competition and therefore overpriced goods; a school; a church and a temple; a couple of bars Wash did not want to visit, but Jayne probably would have loved; a selection of garages and private homes – and the infamous Fed outpost.

Wash walked past it a few times, trying to get a good look at the place without drawing too much attention to himself. It was surprisingly large, considering the size of the rest of the town. Wash would guess at least seven or eight people were deployed there, which made him wonder what this little moon had that warranted such an Alliance presence. Then again, this system had seen some heavy fighting during the war. They likely just wanted to remind everybody who'd won.

He knew better than to push his luck, so he didn't linger. He popped into the convenience store and haggled down the price for some canned food and the duct tape Kaylee had asked him to get. He sometimes wondered exactly how much of Serenity was held together by duct tape by this point, but dared not ask.

He tried to exchange pleasantries with the store clerk, but apparently he'd made a good deal, because the man brushed him off with a huff and a snort as he handed him his change and the bag.

He took his time walking back to the ship, enjoying his alone-time, which was somewhat out of character for him. He knew that the atmosphere onboard had been rather tense lately, but having stepped away from it for just a short time, he realized just how much, and he was, to be honest, in no hurry to get back.

He had spent some time thinking about the future these last few days, which was also out of character for him, as he was usually more than happy to live in the here and now. But it had dawned on him that things wouldn't always stay this way. Things would change, and whether you wanted those changes or not (and he wasn't quite sure how to plead yet), you did well to prepare yourself.

As he neared the docks, he slipped into a narrow passageway by the church, figuring it was a shortcut, and that was where he ran into River.

She just stood there, quietly, as if she had been waiting for him, and who knew, maybe she had? Wash didn't see her outside the ship very often, and at first he just stopped and stared at her, surprised as he was by the sight. She looked almost ethereal in the dimming daylight, dressed in Kaylee's mismatched hand-me-downs; a light blue dress, and a bright pink sweater, contrasted by the heavy black boots on her feet. Her eyes were a little hazed, as if she had just woken up (or, if he hadn't known any better, had smoked something), but they looked straight at him, clearly noticing him.

"Time to go," she said.

"River!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here? Where's Kaylee? Did you leave without telling her? Well, of course you did, she wouldn't have let you."

She didn't answer any of his many questions, and he hadn't really expected her to, either. She just glanced a little back over her shoulder. "Time to go," she repeated.

"You eager to leave, sweetie?" he asked, and tried to keep his voice kind and happy, which shouldn't really be a problem for a man of his disposition. "We can't go before the others are back, you see. Come on, let's go home before we shave too many years from Kaylee's life. We want the 'verse to have her as long as possible, right?"

He took her hand, and she came along without protest. But only until he reached the corner of the building. There she abruptly stopped, dug her heels into the sand and pulled at his arm. "No!"

"What is it?" he asked.

She was obviously scared, and that made Wash scared as well. He didn't quite understand the girl's spidey sense, but he knew enough to respect it.

Still, they had to get back. It wasn't safe for her out here. "Come on," he admonished.

"No, no," she muttered in a trembling voice. Her eyes flickered from side to side. She looked like she was about to burst into tears.

"There, there," he tried to console her. She was still holding his hand, rather tightly, truth be told, and he took the chance to drape his other arm across her narrow shoulders. He steered her along, as forcefully as he had to. "We'll just go home and –"

He stopped dead in his tracks. He'd rounded the corner. From here he had a clear view of Serenity. She was parked on a field right outside the settlement, in what the locals audaciously called The Docks, only a small grassy slope from where he stood, nestled in between two other vessels; a short-range scow that made their Firefly look brand new in comparison, and a sleek packet that had Alliance written all over it.

And she was surrounded by two hovercrafts, a van and a couple of Alliance soldiers on guard, their weapons trained on her open ramp.

Wash hurriedly stepped back into the shadows of the passageway, almost instinctively pushing River in behind him. "Dà xiàng bào zhà shì de lā dù zi!" he breathed as he pressed his body up against the wall. And then realized... "Kaylee!"

Carefully, he peeked around the corner and watched, with an ever-growing feeling of dread, as even more purplebellies emerged from the ship and began putting up tape to seal it off. Then Kaylee was led out. She was in handcuffs (extremely unnecessary in Wash's mind) and looked from side to side as she was taken to the van and forced inside. Wash was too far away to clearly see her face, but he knew she was frightened, and rightfully so, and his heart went out to her. He would have given himself up, just so she wouldn't have to face this on her own.

But there was River to consider. The Alliance couldn't get their hands on her.

He weighed his options. He had his transmitter, but he couldn't call the others. Mal had ordered full radio silence, and who knew what kind of trouble he could bring down upon them if he tried to hail them.

He looked at River again. She seemed calmer, withdrawn, as if lost in that strange, and probably not very pleasant little world of hers.

"Time to go," he finally agreed with her, and pulling her along, he hunkered down and ran in the opposite direction.

Into the woods.

Here was a thing about Jayne Cobb: he was impulsive.

His report card at school had said so. Many people across the 'verse had found out the hard way. He thought the thought, and he did the thing, and sometimes he even skipped the first step.

Like, he had no idea what he'd been thinking when he made the decision to fire that missile, if he had even played with the idea that he would get away with it. He didn't, of course, and in hindsight that made perfectly sense. He realized that even as their fists and heels rained down on him. Intentionally or not, he had chosen his own doom.

He had expected them to shoot him. Even as he was being beaten and kicked, thrown around from one person to the next, and frantically, but not very efficiently trying to fight back, he waited for that bullet to come and finish it all. But it never came. Apparently, he would not be granted an easy death.

On the contrary, they took their time. Jayne had taken a lot of beatings in his life, but not like this. These people seemed to enjoy it way too much, and yet there was an almost militaristic order to it. The girls were the worst. The redhead even belted him. Jayne had not been belted since he was a kid, and he did not care for it. But he couldn't fight back, not by then. There were just too many of them.

They didn't beat him to death, either. Svetlana called them off at some point, and a somewhat puzzled Jayne barely registered being tied up and unceremoniously thrown into one of the shacks.

The next hours he spent drifting in and out of consciousness, with no real sense of time and place. Images that weren't supposed to be there flashed before his eyes, people too… his mother, Marco, Mal...

They all screamed at him.

…

Your toes are in the sand.

Oh no, not her... Anyone but her.

Jayne is a girl's name.

Well, Jayne ain't a girl! Gorramnit, it wasn't right, tormenting a dying man like that!

…

He looks better in red.

…

He slowly came to. The smells, the sensation, the sounds, all rushed back into him. He could feel his body again, and kind of wished he couldn't, because it ached all over. He tried to look around to acquaint himself with his surroundings, which wasn't easy. His right eye was swollen shut, and he only managed to pry the left one halfway open. And the room was dark, daylight no longer seeped in between the cracks in the thin walls; it had to be nighttime. But he found he was lying on the dirt floor, curled up against a shelving unit filled with canned food.

And he was alone.

He got to work on freeing himself. Jayne Cobb was a survivor, after all; as long as there was life in him, there was fight in him.

His hands were tied behind his back with rope, but somewhat sloppily, and he twisted them back and forth, trying to loosen the knots even more. It hurt like hell, he felt it dig into his skin, and then the warm sensation of flowing blood, but he gritted his teeth and yanked and pulled until he had the space he needed.

Then came the task of getting the hands in front of him instead. And here was another thing about Jayne Cobb: he was surprisingly flexible for a man his size.

He pulled his knees to his chest and twisted and contorted his body, squeezed his backside in between his arms. His ribs screamed in protest; his assailants had obviously cracked a couple of them. But again, he ignored the pain, and in the end, he succeeded and could finally bring his bound hands up to his face to untie the knot with his teeth.

That last part was actually the hardest. His lips were cracked and bleeding, a few of his molars had loosened a little, and he had to gnaw on the rope for a long while, taking several breaks just to catch his breath and spit blood out onto the floor. But eventually, he managed that too.

Untying the rope around his legs was a cinch in comparison, and then he took a second to ride out the worst of the pain and have another look around the room, searching for anything useful. Not that he expected them to leave guns lying around, but perhaps a knife, or just something sharp.

He was about to pull himself up on his feet, when he heard footsteps approaching, and hurriedly put his hands behind his back again to make it look like he was still tied up. The door creaked open, and Rufus Miller slipped in, carrying a flashlight and a broad, wolfish grin on his face.

That man never stopped smiling, did he?

"Hello there, Jayne! Glad to find you awake. I was beginning to worry they'd overdone it."

Still chuckling, he knelt in front of him and shone the bright light straight into his one (almost) good eye. Jayne looked away with a snarl, and for once managed to quell his impulsiveness enough to not plunge his fist into that grinning face right there and then. He was down to his last card, he had to play it right.

"Then again, Svetlana knows what she's doing," Rufus continued. Jayne noticed the quite impressive bump on his forehead and felt a little satisfaction at the sight. "She wanted you alive, so you'll live."

"Why?" It hurt to speak.

Rufus shrugged. "I'm guessin' she figures she hasn't squeezed you hard enough just yet. That you might still harbor some interesting secrets. Me, I think she's a fool." He pulled a gun from his holster and pressed the barrel into Jayne's left cheek. "You're not gonna talk. I know you that well. You've spoken your piece, you'll take the rest to your grave."

Jayne only looked at the gun. It was his very own LeMat. Rufus saw the look of recognition. "Yeah, it's a pretty nice one, ain't it? She let me have it."

"What you gonna use it for?" Jayne said. "You can't shoot."

For a short second the ever-present smile disappeared from Rufus's features. He regained his composure just as quickly, though. "You're not gonna talk me into shootin' you, Jayne," he said. "I'ma let her have you. Much more fun." He holstered the gun. "And, oh, I forgot to tell you, this was all for nothin'. You might think you saved your crew, but you see, the Alliance guys on this here rock are livin' sweet in Svetlana's deep pockets, just like the rest of us. If your captain lands, they'll impound the ship and throw the crew in jail." He tutted. "And lots of unfortunate accidents have happened in that jail, I tell ya."

Jayne seized his chance. He shot his hand forward and grabbed Rufus by the throat, squeezing so hard that the man's eyes bulged, and his tongue protruded between his lips like a pink little worm. "Yeah," Jayne snarled into his face, "they do happen, don't they?"

As much as he wanted to finish him off, Jayne saw that Rufus was already fumbling for the weapon, and he just threw him aside and bolted for the door. Rufus scrambled to hold him back and managed to grab onto his boot, just as a weak wheeze of a cry escaped his mouth. Jayne only had to give him a solid kick to the head with his free foot to break free.

He wanted to reclaim his gun before he left, but the room was dark, and he couldn't see all that well on account of his injuries. All the commotion had certainly drawn some attention and getting away would have to be his priority now.

He threw himself at the door, stumbled out into the night and, as fast as his broken body would allow, made a beeline for the woods.