The Discomfort of Sentiment
Jayne left when he felt he could without inciting comment, and had every intention of staying to the cargo hold or the galley or someplace where he could do some good. But it didn't quite work out that way. He'd find a task in some part of the ship that would somehow end up, just coincidentally, necessitating a trip past the common room. If anyone was there he went on by without a peek. If it was empty, he'd find himself half through the door, angling for a glance into the infirmary. Checking. Then, disgusted with himself, he'd hurry on with what he'd been doing. Only to find himself back in the exact same spot a half hour later.
On Jayne's second pass of the common room, Simon was wrapping up his endeavours. He nodded reassuringly toward Jayne, who apparently wasn't as subtle as he liked to think. Also apparent, though, was the fact that River and the kid would both be fine. The concern Jayne felt eased. In four years, he'd learned the doc mostly got medical assessments right on the nose.
But he still couldn't stay away. On his third pass, the room's only occupants were River and the kid. On the fourth, he caught the movement of River's arm just as he leaned his head around the corner.
River had regained consciousness in the infirmary just as she had expected to, though she did not immediately see Simon as she had thought she would. There was a nasty taste in the back of her mouth, and a familiar numbness to her thoughts. Yes, the effects of Simon's drugs, with which he had battled her pain; physical, not psychological this time. She turned her head experimentally, looking for a small child, and discovered that he had been victorious; it didn't hurt as much to move. A smile touched her lips when she saw the slight form occupying the counter space across from her, with temporary bolsters to prevent falling. She wondered if the girl's awakening vertigo would be anything like what she herself had experienced her first few hours out of her box on Serenity. Darwhen was asleep; River assumed from the same types of drugs she herself had been given. She let her eyes linger on the girl, dwelling on her future. It seemed certain that her only parent was gone.
River was cautiously using a hand to explore her numbed ribcage when she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Jayne was lingering in the common room, rather calculatedly not looking toward the infirmary. River read the intent to deceive in him but knew it wasn't aimed at her. He knew better than that, by now. She let herself stare, recalling the sight of him gazing down from above her, casting out the harness to pull her up. That memory kicked off another, in the domino effect her neurons seemed unable to unlearn. But she was so much better now at wrestling her slashed synapses into submission, and at getting a rein on a thought and holding it still for inspection. So she was able to latch unto and hold the remembrance of that other rescue, Jayne hovering angel-like in midair and aiming his gun to defend her.
Though he couldn't know it, that recollection was the reason for the insubstantial smile Jayne observed when he let his gaze swing back in through the infirmary door. She called his name.
The soft sound pulled him into the room, an effect her voice always had on him. He caught a glimpse of a casted foot peeking out from beneath the sheet as he entered. It looked even more wrong on her than it would on anyone else. Bare feet – that was River. Ballet shoes and combat boots. Both of those were River, too. 'Weak' and 'dependent' hadn't been River in a long time. Still damaged, yes; she prob'ly always would be, he reasoned. But like Simon said, it was with scar tissue present, instead of open breaks or cracks.
She'd sneaked up on him when he wasn't looking. It was just a partner thing. He didn't believe in falling into great crushing emotions, 'cuz he'd seen what that did to people. No, definitely just a partner thing; this weren't anything like what he'd went through with a certain young woman named Lorre, on that cargo hauler when he was just out of his teens. River had haunted no dreams, consumed no thoughts, filled no loins with instant turgid desires (a phrase he'd gotten out of one of li'l Kaylee's love stories) … at least, not his.
Instead, there'd been these creeping increments of change. After Miranda she became not so dangerous to him or to this crew. Then she was flyin' the ship, and could be trusted to do it. Then she was protective – he could trust Kaylee's and Inara's welfare to her. She got cute, quirky and interesting, calmed down out of most of her anxieties and learnin' to handle herself. She'd developed into a woman, an admirable fighter whos abilities still stunned him sometimes. She became smiles at the breakfast table and a comrade at his back and odd soft sideways moments that glanced out of eye corners and brushed against bodies in the corridor.
Whoa, turn the ignition off on where that was going. It seemed to go there a lot lately, in his head. He'd have to give that some thought, later. But he didn't need it now, this close to River the Reader. Jayne checked quickly to see that the kid he'd hauled aboard was still out; she was. Leaning one hip against her counter, he faced the head of River's cart and didn't bother trying not to be obvious about studying her pale face.
River had always thought of Jayne as dark, but seeing him now with dusky-skinned Darwhen as a backdrop, she realized his skin had little tan. He wasn't exactly pale, but somehow he seemed the kind of man who should have lines around his eyes from squinting under a planet's sun. She found herself wondering what he was doing on a spaceship out in the black, where UV rays never graced skin.
He was just looking at her, not talking. Well, he never had been a stellar conversationalist. River felt herself smile at him. His stance loosened.
"Hurt much?" he asked.
"Don't know," she returned. "I've tried little movement, as of yet. I have a concussion, but I'll mend."
He nodded. There was silence again, but it was one of easy comradeship. Jayne cast about the infirmary as though he might find something to say in amongst Simon's equipment and accoutrements. The quiet lengthened. River observed the man with slightly groggy interest.
Behind him, Darwhen stirred. Jayne swung his hips away from the counter and moved in River's direction, but when the girl quieted again so did he.
"Has Simon said how she is?" River asked him. Jayne nodded.
"She'll do. Got a concussion too; and a broken arm, see he casted it, but he says with the bone mender she can have that off in a coupla days. You, too, for that matter." He indicated the lumpy shape of her casted ankle under the sheet.
"It will be good." River's gaze slid to Darwhen, again. "What will become of her?" She asked, and didn't stop to wonder why she was posing that question to Jayne, instead of waiting for Mal or Inara.
Jayne shook his head. "Don't rightly know. There aren't many other settlements on this benighted world, that we've been able to tell. We'll look a bit, but prob'ly have to take her elsewhere, find someplace for her, an' who knows how long that'll take." His eyes were narrow as he studied the small form on the counter. He changed the subject.
"Dam busted, you know. From all that rain they'd had."
She nodded; it had been what she supposed.
"How did you know it was comin'?"
River knew what he meant, but now she felt some discomfort.
"What do you mean?" It was a new thing for her, these attempts at subterfuge. Over three years since Miranda, and she still couldn't quite manage deliberate deception. She was working hard at it, though, studying everyone around her and how they did it. She'd thought she was getting better at it, but Jayne always could see through her; he jutted his jaw out and sneered at her attempt.
"You know what I'm talking about. The flood, after the dam broke. You knew it was coming before it got to you."
"How do you figure I knew?"
"You knew. Got up high as you could, held to something sturdy."
"It's a common need of mine." River spoke again without thinking. It must be the drugs; she'd become unused to chemicals running her system. Jayne threw puzzlement at her with his eyes. River shrugged her shoulders, and found that the movement stirred a dull ache in her ribs.
"I've often wondered if it's why I'm still here."
"Here?"
"On this ship."
Jayne shook his head. "I'm not followin'."
"There is much here that is sturdy. Ship and family." Jayne. She didn't say it aloud, but she knew he read something in her glance. His brain might have entertained that impression for a bit, but then it seemed that he shoved it away. Jayne was good at ignoring what he didn't want to understand. And tenacious about going after what he did want.
"You even got the kid tucked in where she might not get swept away. How'd you know?" he asked again.
River thought for the space of a breath, remembered for another.
"There was the river, coming. I could hear it, before I could hear it. Felt the ground responding, from those miles away." She frowned in frustration, knowing she wasn't giving clear answers. But Jayne was nodding.
"Thought so. Seems a bit beyond psychic, being able to tell actions of things what aren't generally considered thinkin', sentient beings."
River allowed the smile that wanted out. "Cognition, sentience … both are fairly murky concepts."
Jayne shrugged. The years they'd all been together, everyone had gotten accustomed to River's speech patterns. Of course, she'd worked at adapting them, too, so that the basic sense of what she said didn't lurk so far beneath the surface. Everyone, including Jayne, could follow her meaning pretty well.
For her part, River could remember being surprised, in the beginning, at some of the words that came out of Jayne's mouth. Pretentious. She'd worried around that one, awhile, before she figured out his knowing of it. It was an insult, and Jayne did like his insults. What better way to insult the type of person the word described than by usurping their place, figuratively, by using a word that itself could be rather supercilious? She felt that Jayne liked the symmetry of that. Symmetry being another word he knew, as it described almost any gun viewed barrel-on and vertically. She delighted that being around her added to his vocabulary. She could sense that he rather liked it, too. There were occasional moments when she knew he threw out the odd three- or four-syllable word to pull the other person up short, to catch them off guard.
And Jayne wasn't the only one whose vocabulary had expanded. River had been learning new words ever since she'd been able to sort out whose thoughts were whose. Before, in fact; the first curse words Simon and Mal ever heard her spout, as she threw things about the infirmary, were taken verbatim from Jayne's mind – she recognized the flavor of them later. Mal and Zoë, for all their soldiering, didn't have the depth of expression Jayne did. And she had come to respect his restraint; most of his cussing and vulgarity never actually made it out of his mouth. He had a lot more of it in his head than anyone ever actually heard, and wouldn't Simon be appalled at that? Although River felt her brother should be as impressed at the merc's restraint as she was. After awhile, the blue language could become a bit repetitious, but when Jayne was really motivated (to confusion, frustration, or anger, in ascending order) he could be quite original. She would eagerly lap up the resulting phraseology. For awhile she had purposed to motivate him, and did so frequently and well. Her education had expanded by leaps and bounds.
It had been a long time since she'd egged him on to glory that way. She sighed.
"You all right?" He was immediately beside her, arms braced on the cart, leaning in. She looked up at his strong, frowning face and another memory leaked over her. More than three years ago, he'd leaned in just that way when she collapsed on the floor of the bank they'd been robbing. He'd come across the room to get to her. He'd held her. He'd never once doubted her statement about Reavers coming.
That had all been before he had reason to trust her, reason to not want her off the boat. Later she knew he'd been proclaiming, again, that she and Simon were a danger to the crew and should be forced off. But one of those first few times she'd consciously made a recall effort, reached into her mind and tried to make it obey her, that had been the memory she'd pulled out.
A reason not to hate Jayne. A reason not to make him fear her. And, eventually, a reason not to fight the comfort his presence brought her. Since Miranda, he'd been there, that same way. A partner at her back to be depended on, at her side to be leaned on the few times she'd needed it. She'd reciprocated – it was what partners did. Over the course of three years they'd become entwined that way, subtly and without fuss.
Simon was her brother, and always would be, a blessing of birth that she would always treasure. But this, with Jayne, was something different, and quietly special in its own right. She didn't want it to change.