Disclaimer: See chapter one.

A/N: Also don't own E. A. Poe, though the poem quoted herein is my second-favorite of all time.

Brompton Cocktail

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"We're going to wind up landing on fumes," Oriole said, making slight course-corrections. "Won't be enough to even break atmo off-world, to say nothing about getting to a fueling station."

Mal frowned. "Any way we can stop at a station beforehand?"

Oriole shook her head. "Only if you want to delay our arrival on Silverhold by at least a day."

River looked up from the copilot's seat. "The worry is unnecessary," she commented.

"You know somethin' li'l 'Tross, you'd best make with the sharin' of it," Mal calmly returned her gaze.

"We'll refuel on Silverhold," she simply said.

"Aren't any refueling stations there," Oriole objected.

River smiled. "Not for ships," she nodded. "But most of the heavy mining equipment uses the same fuel cells as Serenity. And the Cobbs are very highly respected."

The look leveled her way by the pilot was blatantly skeptical, while Mal's was more speculative. "I'll trust ya on this one, 'Tross. How long before we land?"

It had been five days since they'd left Three Hills, and the trip between there and Silverhold normally took a full seven. However, going hard-burn should shave a nice chunk of time off that estimate. "Approximately three hours," Oriole replied before River could. "Do we know yet just where I'll be landing?"

Mal shook his head. "Not yet. I'll send Jayne this way, have him give ya the coordinates."

The captain headed down to the common area. The past few days had seen Jayne's condition rapidly deteriorate. He'd gotten bad enough that he could no longer climb the ladder up and down into his room. Simon had wanted to move him into the infirmary, but that idea was shot down completely. Jayne hadn't yelled, not even a little, but he hadn't bent at all on the idea, either; he simply kept repeating 'I ain't gonna be hooked up ta no machines, doc, 'tain't my way,' until Simon eventually backed down.

So, instead of the infirmary, Jayne had spent the better part of the last two days wrapped in blankets on the couch. And that was exactly where Mal found him, talking with Zoë. On hearing Zoë's voice, however, he halted on the stairs, just out of sight. "…ya a question, Jayne?" Jayne's voice rumbled an affirmative. "When… When ya get there, you tell that man of mine I miss him, ya hear?"

There was silence for nearly a full minute before Jayne replied. "Ah, hell, Zo'… I'm sure Wash knows 'at. 'Sides, I doubt I'm gonna see 'im. Your man was a good one, Zoë. Ain't no way he wound up where I'm headed."

"Ni ge gou pi! Jayne…" Zoë sounded distressed.

"No, don't," Jayne replied. His own voice carried a bit more gravel than it had before. "I ain't been a good man, an' we both know it. Kilt a mess o' folks, an' it weren't 'cause of war or ta save m'self or others. I got paid for damn near all of them. An' them as I didn't take payment for, I honestly enjoyed killin' 'em." Jayne's words were interrupted by a wet, hacking cough. After it finally subsided, he finished with, "God don't take kindly ta either scenario."

"The way I understand it," Zoë countered, a familiar uncertainty threaded through her words, "is that if you're sorry for it, God has to forgive you."

"Not quite how it works, but close enough, I suppose," Jayne blithely agreed. "Only thing wrong there is assumin' I'm sorry for any of it. If I got any regrets 'bout my life, the only thing what fits the bill is that I'm sorry it took me fourteen years ta find 'em."

Further conversation was halted once more by coughing. Mal, feeling a little like he'd just been sucker-punched in the stomach, figured it was a good time to appear. No sense in Jayne havin' ta try an' make sense of one of Zoë's rambles on how the Christian religion don't make any sense. 'Sides, I heard enough of those lectures back in the war – I really don't need ta hear it all again now I agree with her. He strolled over to the couch and waited for Jayne to quit coughing. The cough might have started life as a simple reaction to an airborne irritant, but Simon had explained that the tiny shards of glass accumulating in his blood were shredding the blood vessels in his innards, and his lungs were badly damaged; Jayne was drowning in his own blood. The man's complexion was mottled, bruised where it wasn't turning yellowish, with his lips a delicate blue color – Jayne's liver had started shutting down, as had his kidneys. Don't care if we gotta pay through the nose ta have fuel delivered to us. I don't think Jayne has more 'an another day or two on the outside. "We'll be landin' here in about three hours or so," he said, once Jayne's coughs subsided.

Jayne grinned brightly. "Good," he said.

"Speakin' of landin', Jayne – just where is that gonna be? Silverhold's got several docks, but they're all for the mines."

Jayne gave the coordinates of his family's homestead. "There's an empty place, desert scrub, 'bout two hundred yards south of the house what should do ta park."

"We ain't gonna have problems, are we?"

Jayne shook his head. "Nah. Once we land, I'll wave Uncle Ken. He'll take care of ev'rythin'."

"Who?"

Jayne smirked. "Not really m'uncle. Ken Darby. He was Pa's chief deputy an' now runs district seven."

Mal blinked. "Wait, what? You mean ta tell me your father was a planetary marshal?"

Jayne chuckled and Zoë joined him. "Yeah, he was."

Mal looked from Jayne to his second in command and back again. "Huh." He shook his head and sighed. "Guess ya learn somethin' new every day. S'pose I best let Oriole know where ta set down."

After Mal headed back to the bridge, Jayne yawned. "I'm gonna take a nap. Wouldja do me a favor, Zo'?"

"What?"

"Have Simon wake me up, 'bout half an hour afore we land?"

"Sure," she said, climbing out of the leather recliner that faced one end of the couch. "Sleep well, Jayne."

As had been the case since Three Hills, Jayne did just that. Almost before he knew it, Simon was shaking his shoulder. Jayne clawed his way out of the velvety black and pried his eyes open. "We're there?"

Simon nodded. "Mal said we'll be landing in about forty minutes or so."

"Good," Jayne smiled. "Need a favor, doc."

Simon closed his eyes and swallowed. He knew what Jayne was going to ask. "I won't be able to talk you out of it, will I?"

"Nope," Jayne agreed. "Best all-around, an' ya know it. Done tol' ya a'ready, I ain't gonna be chained ta no machines." Jayne struggled a little with the heavy blankets wrapped around him and managed to get himself into a sitting position. "Ma wouldn't be able ta keep from tryin', an' I never could tell 'er no, not when it was somethin' important ta 'er." A small series of coughs interrupted. "'S better this way. An' I'd take it as a kindness if ya kep' it quiet."

Simon nodded, resigned. "I'll do that, Jayne. But are you absolutely certain about this? It's not something that can be taken back or done over if you change your mind."

"I'm sure, doc," Jayne replied without hesitation. "I'd do it m'own self, but…" Two pairs of eyes darted to his now-useless hands, the flesh blackened and puffy, streaks of sickly discoloration arching halfway up to his elbows.

Simon reached for the small black satchel sitting on the coffee table. Opening it, he ignored the injection gun and vials in favor of the small box secured under them. He stared at the preloaded syringe containing an oddly pretty periwinkle liquid. Simon knew it as Clementia, though for reasons unknown to him, it had acquired the street-name of 'Brompton Cocktail'. It had been developed nearly fifteen years earlier as a possible cure for Kurohaima, but what worked to cure rats and monkeys didn't work so well on human beings. It wasn't a cure at all, but it would bring some measure of comfort. Simon picked up the syringe. "It will take about twenty minutes to take effect," he said, removing the cap from the needle.

"I know, doc." Jayne had been told as much by Dr. Baker. "An' I know it'll get me on m'feet again. But when I go ta sleep t'night, I won't be wakin' up again. An'… I'm alright with that."

"I'm not," Simon muttered. He slid Jayne's sleeve up past his elbow. "We had a class on this, back at the MedAcad."

"How's that?"

"It was on how to deal with terminal patients. The ethics of euthanasia."

"Youth-a-what-a?"

"Assisted suicide's what most people call it. What I'm doing now." He slid the needle into a vein and depressed the plunger. "I was always so supremely confident, arrogant you might say, that life – any life – was preferable to dying." He removed the needle and returned it to the little box, then tugged Jayne's sleeve back into place. "And now I find myself standing on the other side of the debate." He looked into Jayne's bloodshot eyes. "There are times when the best thing a doctor can do is help their patient find rest."

Jayne returned Simon's gaze. He saw sadness and sympathy shimmering across the kid's eyes. The poison tingled, racing through his system, and for the first time in days, he could feel his hand. He flexed his fingers. "Every man livin' has the right ta die how they wanna, Simon. An' it ain't up ta no gov'ment or any fancy ethics class ta make that decision for 'im." He tapped the underside of the doctor's chin. "Ya did the right thing, an' don't ya let nobody ever tell ya any diff'rent, dong ma?"

Up on the bridge, River froze, her gaze fixed on something far distant from where Mal was standing. "Vainly he had sought to borrow from his guns surcease of sorrow," she murmured. "Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe." Gooseflesh trickled down Mal's neck as he recognized the poem she was quoting from. "This and more he sits divining, with his head at ease reclining, on the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er." Her eyes suddenly refocused, and landed on Mal's. "And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, on the pallid bust of Pallas just above his chamber door; and his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, and the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; and his soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted nevermore."

"What?" Oriole broke the tension by simple expedient of being confused.

"Ain't nothing important," Mal said, not noticing the corner of his left eyelid twitching. "Just set us down."

Once Mal had vacated the bridge, Oriole looked at River. "Care to tell me what that was all about?"

A sad smile stretched across River's face. "Jayne," she said, as though it explained everything. And to her, it did.

A/N2: The visiting family has gone to deal with the leasing office, so I had some time I hadn't been expecting. Still no guarantees on how quickly additional chapters will be posted, though – we're still at least three or four chapters from the end.

Review if you will, don't if you must, but either way I thank you for reading.