An Imprecise Measurement
Simon let River and Darwhen out of the infirmary in the morning, having fixed them both to the best of his ability. Darwhen was ensconced on the couch in the common room and advised not to move her arm too abruptly, and to keep it in the sling. Perhaps she'd some experience with doctors, River mused; the little girl seemed to take readily to Simon giving her directions.
When Mal tried it, though, the story was different. Small elegant brows drew together and nostrils flared.
"You," the captain was informed in a you-stupid-you tone, "are not my Papa."
Mal's own brows elevated towards his hairline. "Real observant one, we got here. No, I ain't your Papa," he returned, eyes stern, "But I am the Captain on this boat, and until such time as we find you a Papa, you'll do as I say, when I say it. Just as any other crew or passenger would. Now what were those rules I gave you, again?"
Darwhen rolled her eyes. "No throwin' about or breakin' of things. No runnin' about an' dyin' and leavin' a mess to be cleaned up by someone not you. No listenin' in on conversations what don't concern me." She was glaring even as she gave a fair imitation of the accent the orders had been delivered in. Mal tipped his chin at her, and decided to let that ride. Girl'd lost her mother yesterday, after all.
River was quiet in a corner as she observed this exchange. As long as she was there, Darwhen seemed all right. But the one time she'd made to exit the room for her bunk, the girl had become agitated. She ran across to grab her pants leg and held it. Just that, no more – no tears or clinging limbs. But the hand shook a bit. River had caught up in the doorway to look down at her, then over at her Captain, in confusion. Mal lifted one shoulder at her.
"You brought her on," he said, "might as well take her with you. See she follows those rules. Find something to keep her occupied. It looks like we're to have the keeping of her for awhile, here. Until we figure somethin' out."
River tilted her head, her hair hanging to the side in one long wavy curtain. Darwhen stared at it until River spoke.
"Zoë would be a more appropriate custodian."
Darwhen had little interest in Zoë, who she hadn't met, but she did glare at that captain when he snorted.
"Don't know that she'd agree with you on that."
"It would be temporary wish fulfillment. Why would she dislike that?"
"Just let it be for now, albatross."
Darwhen was coming to see that the lady, River, wasn't the same as other people. She spoke different, walked different, looked at you different. It wasn't in a bad way, but sometimes Darwhen had trouble understanding what she meant. That wasn't a problem she usually had with grown-ups.
Darwhen stayed with River that day. She wasn't too sure she liked it here, on this ship. It was loud inside when the engine was running. She didn't know any of the people, and there wasn't even one other kid. But River smiled pretty, and even though she didn't talk much she listened careful when Darwhen talked, so that helped. And being with her made Darwhen feel safe.
Those were the reasons why she was with her late in the day when River found one of the other ladies, outside the ship. It wasn't 'cuz of that Captain Mal's order. If Darwhen wanted to just leave this ship and these people, she'd go right ahead and do it. She could just walk out the door; they had set back down by the transmitter beacon, back on high ground, while debating whether to scour the few other villages the planet boasted for long-lost relatives, or to try a different world altogether.
"Zoë", River had said, standing behind the other woman in the slanting sunshine that was so bright it seemed hard to believe the storm and flood had ever come, "This is Darwhen."
Darwhen had put on her best face, because it seemed evident that River wanted her to meet this person, though she hadn't quite figured out why.
The other woman, Zoë, turned. She had a very quiet face.
River was frowning. Darwhen could feel that something was wrong, but not what it was. She wrapped her fist tighter into the material of the pant leg she held. I'm not afraid, she told herself.
"Zoë – I was wrong?" River spoke soft, but she was upset. Darwhen could tell, and didn't like it. "I thought maybe, you would like to … but you're angry. This would not be your wish fulfillment. How was I wrong?"
Zoë's eyes got a look that was kinda scary. So, all right, Darwhen was a little afraid. Just a little.
"How could this possibly fulfill any of my wishes?" Zoë didn't have a very nice voice. Her lips were very straight and she made Darwhen feel cold.
"You always wanted … you and Wash … I thought this could be a small chance to mother …" River's voice was a whisper only. "I was wrong."
Zoë walked forward now. She was shaking her head, slow but it looked mean somehow.
"You were. I wanted Wash's child, River. No one else's. Certainly not a substitute for a week or so." Her voce was even more not-nice and River frowned more. Darwhen narrowed her eyes at the Zoë woman, just to show her she wasn't really scared, not at all. When she made River feel bad, Darwhen was angry. And only a very little bit scared.
Then that captain was outside with them.
He saw Zoë's face, and River and Darwhen standing there, and he got mad. Right away. Then he yelled. Darwhen tucked a little closer in to River's side. Zoë talked real sharp at Mal, saying she didn't need him to defend her. All of these angry people wore guns.
Darwhen hid her head in River's pants leg. But then River's voice got louder, too, and that was the scariest thing. So Darwhen let go, and backed away. None of them noticed.
Darwhen ran away from the angry voices, all the way up the ramp and into the big room with the crates in it, where she walked backwards from the entrance to make sure no one had followed her. She was ashamed of herself for not staying to help River, but she couldn't go back. She kept moving until she ran into something, then stopped.
She wasn't accustomed to people speaking to each other that way. Mama yelled, sometimes, but it had never sounded the way the soldier-woman's quiet voice had when she said 'no' to taking care of Darwhen. She had never seen a man make a woman glare the way that Mal did River, either. That kind of yelling was another thing, on top of all the others, that she didn't like about this place. And she wanted her mother, very badly. Maybe she should just leave. 'cept she wasn't to sure where to go . . .
Jayne had been re-stacking crates, more for something to do than because it really needed doing. He was turning to place one into its new stack when something ran into him. The thing was about thigh-tall, moving, and emitting body heat. He paused, crate in his arms. Unless Mal had picked up some living cargo without informing him, only one thing on this ship met that description. He carefully settled the crate he held before glancing down.
"Kid?" he grunted.
Darwhen jerked her head back as though surprised to hear a human voice. She'd been staring off towards where Mal, River, and Zoë had been engaged in some argument or other. It was quiet that way now, though. Instead of moving away, the kid wrapped the fingers of her good hand into the cloth of his pants. The other hand was still in a cast, though the doc promised it could come off soon. So would the one on River's leg.
"Kid," Jayne said, feeling he was being mighty patient, "I'm workin'. It's not good manners to be interruptin' a man's work."
Darwhen let go of him, and he moved to pick up another crate. She had turned to face him.
"You made Doctor Simon take my pain away." She said it with absolute certainty. Jayne stared at her, trying to remember what would have made her think that. Oh, yeah, he'd called the doc when he saw she was awake, back in the infirmary.
"I'm Darwhen," the kid was saying expectantly. He rolled his eyes in annoyance.
"Jayne," he returned shortly. "Move."
"I have good manners," she said, inching to her right and apparently referring to his earlier comment about interrupting. It seemed odd, hearin' a kid's voice on the ship. It just was odd, havin' a kid on the ship at all. Jayne didn't have much experience with kids, besides having been one. The most recent time had been years ago, his last visit home. His cousin Jyri had had a boy about ten years old, he remembered. He tried to recall how his family had acted when the kid was around but couldn't bring up anything. The boy hadn't made much of an impression, besides the annoyance he inspired.
"My mama says I have good manners when I wanna have 'em," Darwhen was persisting. He frowned in perplexity as he shifted another crate. Why was she in here, bugging him? Why didn't she just go away?
"My mama is dead," she said next. That pulled him up short. He'd just been thinking of his family, and an image of his own ma popped up in his head. She'd sent a capture of herself last year, and the number of lines on her face and amount of grey in her hair had shocked him. His best remembrances of her were from when he was still a teen, not long before he left home. She'd been dark-haired and vibrant. He'd been yanked to a mental halt, looking at that capture, realizing that someday she might be the one leaving him instead of the other way around.
"I'm sorry your ma's dead," he said gruffly to the kid. He wasn't sure how he'd feel if his ma passed before he did, but he knew it wouldn't be good. He'd been writing her even more regular, ever since that day with the capture.
Darwhen seemed to have caught the rough empathy in the big man before her, and took a chance to talk and be heard that most of the crew had not granted her. They'd yelled and whispered. They had talked over and around and about her, but except for a few sentences from River, not to her with anything but annoyance or that little-kid-speak that she hated. This man was talking to her, just like she was a normal person. So she asked him what she'd needed to ask all day.
"Where is my ma?"
Jayne put his current crate back down where he'd gotten it, and looked closely at the kid for the first time. Her clothing fit her worse than what they'd found for River when she first showed up. It was just a white t-shirt, whose he didn't know, and it covered the girl from neck to ankles. Her feet were bare except for socks that probably reached her knees, 'cus where were they gonna find shoes that little? He didn't even want to know what they'd done for underwear. Poor kid. His unaccustomed pity was the reason his voice didn't bark when he repeated himself.
"You just said it, kid. Your ma is dead." Must be the girl was a little dense.
Darwhen nodded. "I know. But where is she?"
Oh, damn. Jayne groaned and shook his head. "Your ma ever talk 'bout dyin' with ya?"
Darwhen paused in thought. "Mr. Tan died. Mama said he went to Heaven."
Right. Heaven. Relieved, Jayne nodded.
"So did your ma," he said.
"Is Heaven in the ground?" Her little voice was uncertain. Clearly she didn't feel this was likely to be the case.
Jayne sighed. He was getting a crick in his neck from looking down at her, so he dropped down and sat on the floor while trying to think of something to say. He was also trying to think why he was trying to think of something to say, instead of just telling the kid to shut up and leave him alone. But he wasn't bored, anymore. And all this talk of mothers had fixed his own ma's face firmly in his head, and he knew she wouldn't want anyone to treat her little boy like that, if he were in the fix this kid was in.
He was in his own fix right now though, actually. After a moment, Darwhen had walked quietly over to where he rested back against the crates. She stood at his side and leaned on his up-bent leg. He looked at her in puzzlement. No little kid had ever been motivated to approach him before, not even his own cousin's. All he could remember about children was how he'd been treated as a kid; what he'd hated, mostly. That had been hair-rufflin', cheek-pinchin', and bein' talked down at. Still all things he hated, come to think of it.
Jayne set his mind to trying to remember the church services his ma had dragged him to, where he'd paid little to no attention to what was taught.
"See, there's, uh, two parts to a person. One's your body. Ya know what that is." He paused. Darwhen nodded. He rushed on. "The other's your soul. Ya know what that is." He paused again, but with less positive results. Darwhen was shaking her head. Jayne wished for Shepherd Book.
"Well, ya can see your body. It moves and does stuff and feels and suchlike. But the other part, your soul, ya can't see."
"What does it do?"
"Uh . . ." he came up completely blank. "It … feels things too." He had a sudden flash of inspiration. "But not like the body. Your body feels this," he poked her good shoulder with his finger. "Your soul feels different things."
"Like what?"
He couldn't believe she was still interested. Him at that age, he'd a been bored to death and fixing to torment the boring adult in some unseemly way. But then, she thought he was helping her figure out where her mother was.
"Like how ya feel when ya think about your ma." He watched her face. She stared back.
"Ya thinkin' 'bout her?"
Darwhen nodded.
"Ya feelin' somethin'?"
Darwhen nodded again. He thought he saw a lip quiver and rushed on.
"That's your soul, feelin' that."
"What else does it feel?" She had fought the battle with her lip and won. He patted her arm awkwardly, thinking she deserved a reward for not crying in front of him. Then he was sorry for doing it, because she sniffled a little, and turned herself around and plopped down in his lap.
He jumped in startlement, then froze. He had never, once, held a kid aside from pulling this one into the ship yesterday. He had no idea what to do besides shove her off him. But he intuited that if he did that she might lose that battle with herself and cry, which was about the last thing he wanted. He could just walk out and leave her squallin', but Mal'd probably fuss, and River was sure to. So he sat still, hands at his sides, while Darwhen stared at him expectantly and quietly and just as though big mean weapons-laden mercenaries held her every day of the week.
"What else?" she demanded again, impatiently, when all he did was stare at her. Right, if he wrapped this up, she'd get up and he'd be out of here. What was the question again? He was starting to feel like he was back in school. Oh, yeah.
"Your soul, it feels, mmm . . . the energy in the 'verse ..." a glance down at her face didn't reveal any great comprehension, but he was gettin' there. "And when the body part dies, the soul part doesn't, and it goes to heaven," he finished triumphantly. He tensed his leg muscles in preparation for rising. But Darwhen didn't budge.
"Is it good in heaven?"
"Yep, heaven's great." Get off me.
"Part of my mama is in heaven, and part of her is under the water." Darwhen mulled it over slowly.
"Right." Anytime now.
"If we look under the water, I can have part of my mama back?" There was a fragile hope that he couldn't have labeled, but did recognize, in her voice, though her eyes were staring off across the deck plating.
"Well, no," he said, distracted from his desire to be rid of her. The conversation was kind of interesting, after all. Reminded him of times with Shepherd Book. "The part of your mama that made her laugh, and cry, and sing, and yell at ya, and love ya, is gone for now. That ole body can't do or be anything if the soul ain't with it." There, he thought he'd explained that pretty well. The Shepherd would've been proud.
"I want to see my mama." Ai ya,there were signs of rebellion in her voice, now. Jayne glimpsed her mulish face and began to panic.
"Some day you'll go to heaven, too," he hurriedly asserted. "You'll see her then. But not right now, cuz she wants you to stay here and . . . and be . . . happy." Sounds good. But Darwhen was shaking her head.
"Mr. Tan told me only good girls go to heaven."
Jayne had to smirk. "You sayin' you ain't been good?"
Darwhen's eyes were wide and serious as she turned her face to him. "Mama told me lots of times I was naughty. I can't go to heaven and see her, can I?" And now the mutinous look was gone, and there were tears in its place, though she was struggling against them. Damn, again! Jayne was getting exhausted trying to keep up with the changing emotional currents. Why was he doing this?
Oh, yeah. Mothers.
"Well," he said slowly while frantically searching through half-memories of talks with Shepherd Book, "that's not what I've been told, and I was told it by a right good preacher man. He'd know better than your Mr. Tan. You'll believe it if a preacher said it, won't ya?"
The kid was no Mal. She nodded solemnly. Then she leaned her side against his chest and cuddled her head in under his chin. He frowned down at her fuzzy black hair. Kid was makin' awful free with his lap and his chest, usin' him for a chair. He wondered if her ma, or his, would've put her arms around her. Prob'ly. He felt awkward, and for sure he weren't her ma, but he managed one arm, tucked across her back and over the injured arm and around her waist. When he did she let out a sigh that shuddered and did things inside his chest that he didn't want to think about.
"Way I understand it from this preacher is, ain't anyone not been bad some time in their life. So we're all bad." He glanced down to see if she was listening; if he was going to do all this thinking work she was going to hear the whole thing. "But some of us get into Heaven anyway. That's cuz we gotta equal things out, karma-wise, by gettin' forgiven."
That didn't seem like quite the way the preacher had put it, but it was the best he could come up with. And Buddha help him if she didn't know what forgiveness was, no way was he going to be able to explain that. He'd send her to Inara, who could explain the enlightenment part way better than him, or to River, who'd studied Book's Bible after he'd up and died on them.
River! He moaned mentally. Why hadn't he thought of her to start with?
He glanced across the bay and it was as if he'd conjured her. His partner was standing in the shadow of the cargo bay door. He watched her approach on crutches and lugging that cast.
She was staring at him with a look of fascination. He had to admit – but only to himself, of course – that it was good to see her up off that cart. Her bruises still stood out, as did Darwhen's, but anything was better than her just laying there like she'd done.
"What ya starin' at?" he asked, and it didn't come out in the usual rough growl but in the softer voice he'd unconsciously been using with the kid. River shook her head slowly, uncertainly.
"I am staring at Jayne Cobb, I believe, but I may need that impression corroborated. You are discussing theology – however muddled -- with a five-year-old?"
"No." Jayne snorted, and regained his growly edge in a hurry. Muddled theology, hah! "Just settin' her straight that we ain't goin' back and drag that canyon lookin' for her ma's body."
"And you were so mean in this 'settin' straight' that she, in fear, lost consciousness and fell across your lap," River smirked, "and you were just about to push her out the airlock for being so inconvenient." She nodded knowingly.
Startled, Jayne glanced away from glaring at River to the kid curled into his chest. Sure enough, she was sleeping. He looked up at River again. She raised her brows and tilted her head like the smart-ass she was. He grunted in disgust, awkwardly readjusted the slight form he held, and rose to his feet.
"Tell me where she's sleepin' and I'll get her out of the way," he said, daring her with his narrowed eyes to comment on the disparity between his actions and his words. River nodded and turned to lead him; he followed, with the kid, who didn't hardly weigh nothin' at all. Her head nodded against his shoulder. It was nice to have her not talkin' at him.
damn