Carving Out a Future

By: Dreamfall

Summary: Her crew doesn't know that Serenity's new passenger, a carpenter with an 'unusual upbringing', is a relic from the past. And Xander's not looking for trouble. Then again, neither are they. Not usually, leastwise. It just tends to come calling anyway. Gen. Canon couples mentioned, but definitely not the focus of the story.

Written for: NaNoWriMo and TTH100: Xander/Firefly

TTH100 prompt: 025-Jealousy

Rating: FR13/PG13/T

Disclaimer: I own neither Firefly nor BtVS.

Spoilers: Takes place post Season 7 for Buffy, and post-Objects in Space (and post the comic books, for that matter), but pre-Serenity for Firefly.

Author's Note: This is the story I started in November for NaNoWriMo. I'm thirty or so chapters into it, but since there's going to be at least one hundred chapters (since it's for tth100, too), they're mostly pretty short. If you're coming from this from my HP fanfics-- it's very different. Way less dark. It's also an incredibly fun story to write, and I do intend to continue with it to its conclusion. And no, it's not taking any real time away from Cat, now that I'm not working obsessively on it, like I was in November. I'll be posting every couple/few days at least till I'm caught up with my livejournal (username dreamfall(underscore)nnwm). Hope you enjoy!

Review Response: Responses to any reviews will be posted in the same livejournal as my other review responses-- username dreamfall(underscore)ff.

Chapter Sixteen
Laughter and Tears

Mal leaned back in his comfortable chair and hitched one foot up onto the table in front of him, turning slightly away from Zoë so he could get a clearer view of the drama beyond. At a table about halfway across the room and just to one side, Simon was working on a paper screen, researching. Or at least pretending to. Maybe even trying to. At the far end of the room, and to the Mal's other side, Xander and Kaylee were ensconced on a couch, obviously comfortable with each other. Kaylee was leaning slightly on Xander, and his arm was about her shoulders. They were talking animatedly, although quietly enough that Mal couldn't make out what they were saying, Kaylee often pushed herself up to turn and look at her friend before leaning back into his half-embrace. Most of Simon's attention was clearly focused on them, and most of Mal's attention, and Zoë's, for that matter, was on garnering every bit of amusement he could from the situation.

Kaylee threw back her head, laughing delightedly at something, Xander grinning with her and still talking. Simon looked up from his work to send another glare over, and Mal silenced a snicker at his doctor's expression.

"Fourteen," Zoë murmured, her lips twitching slightly.

He nodded agreement. "Yep."

"Think he'll go over?"

"Nope."

The doctor dropped his eyes back down to his work, glaring at it. Mal noticed he didn't put his stylus to much use and figured that if any work was getting done on the ship, it wasn't being done by the doc. Kaylee finally stopped laughing enough to start talking again, just loud enough that Mal could catch the enthusiastic rise and fall of her voice but couldn't quite make out the words. The worst possible volume: too loud to not notice but too quiet to actually make out. He'd consider moving closer, but this was the only spot he'd have a clear view of all three of their faces. Besides, given how much nonsense the boy talked, listening in probably would take all the fun out of it. And having Zoë able to listen in would definitely take out the fun because she'd just start going on about not trusting him again. This way, not able to hear them, she was able to just lean back and enjoy Simon's misery.

Xander started nodding as she spoke with increasing energy, and finally interrupted, speaking quickly, and Simon sent them another glare.

"Fifteen," Mal commented.

"Not gonna do anything 'bout it yet, though," Zoë said.

"If he ever does," Mal agreed, as the doctor once again returned to his screen, jaw clenched, by the looks of it.

Both of the two on the couch started laughing a minute later, and each time one started to calm down, they met each others' eyes and relapsed. It lasted long enough that Mal felt a smile building on his own face from the sheer contagion of it. He rested his elbow on his leg and his hand on his chin to hide it in case the good doctor looked over. That one was good for two glares before it ended and they both managed to compose themselves and returned to just talking.

Zoë took a sip of her drink, eyes off Simon to study Xander, trying to figure him out. Zoë liked things to fit into neat little compartments; things, and people, too. Mal knew her better than any other living being. The way she carefully put everything away, always in the exact condition she'd want it again for next use, exactly where she'd look to find it-- that hadn't come from her time as a soldier; it was older than that. That same feeling, she liked it in people, too. That was why she stayed with him, Mal figured. He wasn't perfect, and she knew that as well as anyone, maybe better, but she knew each one of his flaws inside and out, knew how he'd respond, what he'd do. That was the kind of behavior that she trusted. Xander on the other hand, he was a mystery. Every time Mal thought he had him figured out, he did something unexpected. No telling what he'd do, what he was thinking. Half of what he said seemed like it was hiding something, though Mal didn't often catch him in an honest-to-god lie. He didn't mostly call him on it when he did, of course. That was never a good way of finding anything out.

"Eighteen." Zoë's voice broke him from his thoughts.

His eyes flashed to the doctor, who was just turning back to his paper. "Glad you were on him-- I missed it."

"It was a quick one," she said.

Mal nodded and then twisted his head to the side, cracking his neck. He turned his gaze back to Simon, but his thoughts stayed on their new passenger. Always seemed like there was something hiding out in him just waiting to get out. The only purely honest moments he'd seen, that he was sure of, were when the boy had attacked him on waking, and that instant with Jayne when suddenly he wasn't fighting Jayne any more. It was hard to trust a man who was only honest when he was shit-scared.

"Wouldn't bother me so much if it'd been a flashback to a particular fight," Zoë said, the words fitting into his thoughts as if she were reading his mind. Only it wasn't creepy when she did it -- she just knew him so damn well she could follow the same patterns, not like River who actually did her reading.

"Yep."

"If it was just a flashback, it'd be one time," she persisted.

"Been thinkin' that myself."

"The fight he had where he lost his eye, that'd likely be bad enough to return to now'n then."

Mal nodded, a smile flicking over his lips as he added, "Nineteen," the word echoing a bit as Zoë said it in the same instant.

"Thing is, if it's not one fight, means he was in enough that one don't stand out much above the rest. Not even that one," she said.

"Yer tellin' me nothin' I don't know, Zoë."

"Sorry if I'm boring you, sir," she said stiffly.

He glanced over at her, offering her a brief smile before returning his gaze to the entertainment. "You ain't never bored me, Zoë, and you know it. And I'm not saying I don't agree with you. It's more'n a mite disturbing that he ain't fought in the war but has spent enough of his life fighting to be flashing back to nothin' in particular."

"You believe he didn't fight in the war?"

"If he was lyin' when he said it, he's a damn sight better liar than I've ever met," Mal aid simply.

"I thought the same," she admitted. "I've known worlds with crime, but if he grew up in a slum fightin' with a gang -- or without one either--" she shook her head. "It don't feel right. He don't feel right."

Mal nodded. "True 'nuff. But the thing of it is, he fits in okay anyway. Kaylee's having a ball just having someone she can talk to who don't put her down by mistake and is never too busy. River worships him. Hell, even Jayne likes him."

"How 'bout you, sir?"

Mal snorted, then grinned as the doctor looked up to glare at the pair on the couch. "Twenty. I don't like nobody, Zoë, you know that."

She actually laughed at that one, a slow, soft chuckle that he didn't get to hear much, especially when her husband wasn't with her. "You just keep tellin' yourself that, sir. But--"

"Hold on, here's a whole new development to our little drama," Mal said, waving her to silence as he noticed River appear at the top of the stairs.

The girl glanced around, and then she ghosted down the stairs, bare feet hardly seeming to touch the steps as she moved into the common room. A smile curved her lips, and she moved unhesitatingly to the pair on the couch, sitting on the broad arm of it, next to Xander. He welcomed her with a grin, wrapping his free arm about her as she slid down the side of the arm a bit so she was half sitting on his lap.

"Twenty-one-- nope, he's had it," Zoë said.

Simon had started with a glare, but as his sister slid into the other man's hold, leapt to his feet with enough force that his chair clattered to the floor behind him. "River!" he said, just short of loud enough to call a shout.

She turned to glare back at him, not answering.

"Come here. Right now."

Her lower lip jutted in an expression that would have seemed childish and petulant on the face of any other girl in her mid-teens, but on her it just looked like River. "Don't be a baby," she snapped and then turned, whispered something in Xander's ear, got up, and flounced away through the door to the cargo hold, not giving her brother a second look. He chased after her, talking with ever increasing volume as the door closed, and they just caught the tail-end of his harangue from the hall because he was shouting. "--like a common floozy!"

Mal felt his face stiffen with fury as he saw the hurt look enter Kaylee's eyes as she stared at the door. Xander said something to her, and she shook her head angrily. He touched her cheek, drawing his thumb under her eye, probably wiping away a tear, and her expression softened a bit, but then she said something quickly, got up, and walked quickly upstairs, probably heading for the engine room. Mal just caught a glimpse of the tears on her face as she left. He rose purposefully to his feet with a curt nod of farewell to his first mate and headed towards the cargo bay. Xander caught his eye as he went past, an unusually serious, questioning expression on his face, which relaxed slightly into angry approval at whatever he read in Mal's face as he left the room to go bawl out his doctor.