The Lovers Curse

part two

Serenity seemed hollow and less alive with everyone squirreled away, wrapped up in their new toys. Zoe found some busywork in the cargo hold, looking after the mule, which only limped along because she spent so much time on it when she knew she needed to talk to Mal or Wash and was putting it off. The first sign that something had gone terribly guo shi came as she was wiping grease from her hands, having just made up her mind that she and Mal needed to have it out about their next job. Or lack thereof.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." The deep groan echoed off the metal walls. Zoe froze, her hand straying to her gun, and dropped the greasy rag to the deck. "Ohhhhhhh. Ta ma de!"

The voice wasn't hard to recognize, now that the first shock had worn off. "Jayne?"

Zoe climbed to the catwalk, following the sound of Jayne's misery. She found him huddled up against the metal hull in the hall leading from the bunks, shivering like he'd caught the river plague. Her stomach did that clenching thing again. Jayne never got sick. Not without a lot of whiskey first. And Mal had started rationing the spirits months back.

"Zoe?" Jayne looked up at her, bleary and damp with sick sweat. "That da shabi. She poisoned me."

Now, that didn't make a lick of sense. Zoe reluctantly touched his pale forehead, but he wasn't feverish. Just sick as a dog. "Why don't we go see the doc?"

"Uh uh.Gan ni lao ma pi gu ." Jayne jerked away from her, then retched, but nothing came up.

"Nice, Jayne," she muttered. "My mother's not available."

"Well, wo cao ni ye ye de sao pi yan then," he growled, his teeth grinding so hard she could hear them.

"Stay here," Zoe ordered. "Da diao." Jayne only grunted at the insult and then let out another long groan that followed her down the corridor towards the infirmary.

"They're perfectly good copies, River." Simon's weary voice met Zoe at the door.

"There's things missing," his sister insisted, in that quiet way that sometimes gave Zoe the creeps. "The words are in the right order but the spirit is gone."

"Kaylee looked all over that backwater market for something for you to read. If you don't like them, at least you can be polite about it."

Zoe cleared her throat. Simon whirled, a glass vial in each hand. He deflated when he recognized her.

"Jayne's sick."

Simon sighed. "I thought the captain had hid the booze."

"Not that kind of sick. He keeps going on about being poisoned. But it looks like river plague to me."

"Malaria?" Simon frowned. "He didn't leave the ship."

Zoe shrugged. "He's sicker than a dog. Could be it took time to develop."

"Alright. I'll be right there."

The girl followed the doc and Zoe back to the hall outside Jayne's bunk. She took one look at his miserable self and let out a peal of giggles.

"Wasn't what you wanted. Not at all," she managed, gasping for air.

Simon ignored her. Jayne squeezed his eyes shut and grumbled another insult to their parentage under his breath.

"Poor Kaylee," River said, her giggles dying down.

Simon stiffened. "What's wrong with Kaylee?"

"Distracted." River grinned, one of the few times Zoe had seen anything like mirth on the young face. "Lost track of what was what. Your fault."

"I knew it!" Jayne surged off the deck and then fell against the hull again. "Cho yade! It's all Kaylee's fault!"

Simon's knuckles went white around his medical bag. If he'd been a man more prone to letting his feelings out, Jayne would have had a broken jaw by now.

"Can you get him down to the infirmary?" He asked Zoe instead.

"What's my fault?" Kaylee said at the same time.

Three heads whirled. She'd just emerged from her own bunk, blinking sleepily.

"It was an honest mistake," River answered. Then she broke into giggles again. It was downright disconcerting, River amused. Zoe decided she didn't like it. She had other things to worry about, and she saw them reflected in Simon's eyes. If Jayne had picked up some off-world bug...

"No one else has symptoms," Simon answered her thoughts, like he'd picked up some of his sister's parlor tricks.

"Not yet, anyway," Zoe hauled Jayne up under the arms. He was limp as noodles, and cold where he'd sweat through his shirt.

"What's my fault?" Kaylee repeated, pretty face all scrunched up with worry.

"Nothing," Simon assured.

"You poisoned Jayne," River said.

"I did no such thing!" Kaylee's chin came up.

"What is going on down here?"

Five heads swiveled up towards the bridge. Mal stood in at the top of the stairs, hands on his hips, looking none too pleased at the racket they must have been making. Four voices spoke in an overlapping jumble that hurt Zoe's ears.

"Gorram girl poisoned me!"

"Jayne seems to have fallen ill."

"I didn't do anything! Honest!"

"She was the instrument of Karma."

Mal stared at them. Then he dismissed them and looked to Zoe. "Can you make any kind of sense out of that?"

So she explained the past twenty minutes best she could, while Jayne shivered and Kaylee glared and River's giggles turned into hiccups.

"Karma?" Leave it to the Captain to focus on the least relevant bit. River nodded. Mal sighed.

"If you'll help me, sir, we can get him to the infirmary..."

Zoe and Mal got Jayne laid out on the examining table and stepped back. Mal wiped his hands on his pants and Zoe resisted the urge to do the same. Jayne had been slimy. As Simon went to work, a crowd formed in the doorway. Somewhere along the line the Shepard had joined them, frowning thoughtfully as Kaylee filled him in.

"I didn't poison nobody. Honest." Kaylee said for the fourth time.

"No one thinks you poisoned him." Simon said, distracted, as he stuck an instrument in Jayne's ear. Jayne batted it away and then groaned again as another cramp doubled him over.

River opened her mouth. "No one but River and Jayne think you poisoned him," Mal corrected.

Kaylee crossed her arms over her chest and sulked against the doorway.

"I don't see anything to indicate a disease vector. I'll have to do some blood tests." Simon announced, turning away from his patient. "It does resemble food poisoning; but we all ate the same thing at dinner and none of us are effected."

A giggle rose from behind them, out in the lounge. Everyone turned to River, but the girl was silent. "Wasn't me," she said.

Inara pushed her way through the bodies in the doorway. Her kohl-rimmed eyes were wide and unfocused.

"Oooh," she said, peering at Jayne. "Hey. What's wrong with him?" Then she burst into another round of girlish laughter.

"That's your fault, too," River said to Kaylee.

guo shi dog shit

Ta ma de Oh Shit!

da shabi big dumb cunt

Gan ni lao ma pi gu fuck your mother's ass

wo cao ni ye ye de sao pi yan fuck your grandfather's piss stinking asshole

Da diao big dick

Cho yade smelly slave wench