Th'only thing I really miss 'bout planetside is the horses. Even the brushin' and cleanin' them up is a respite. They don' want more than a kind hand and their feed and their water. Smooth terrain and nothin' to jump over's always a bonus, but they'll do as you ask so long as you treat 'em nice. It's easy, a simple relationship that don't require no conversation other than whoa or giddup or an occasional shh and attagirl or attaboy as the case may be. Leave you alone wi'your thoughts, horses do.
S'more quiet than I had in almost two weeks, ever since she come into th' cockpit and says "Black is quiet and soothing," an' I find myself talkin' aloud to the horse. Practicin' my speech to the little bird, since as she says, thinkin's one thing and sayin' aloud is another. But damned if it don't sound stupid and hollow and like nothin' I'd ever listen to if I were givin' that speech to my men. Horse thinks so too. She keeps flickin' her ears back at me and chuffing disgusted-like.
"What do you know?" I hear myself asking. "You're a gorram horse, an' it's complicated." She just chuffs disgusted-like all over again. But took me long enough to get out past city limits, so I'll be gorramed if I let one horse as disagrees with my thoughts on my love life convince me I ain't gonna camp and look up at the Black from the ground, not from a chair.
It's nice, that stoppin' for supper and campin' an' watchin' the Black bloom overhead. Horse lightens up and stops givin' me her own eye rollin' when she smells as I brought her sweet feed to go on with her graze, an' I even catch me the local kind of a rabbit, fresh meat all to myself after not too long over my fire. 'Nara and Simon're always goin' on about vegetables, but I still say it's fresh meat as there's nothing like. Jayne'd agree, prob'ly want to wrestle me for half if he didn't catch his own. Prob'ly would, though. Man's a fine hand with a knife.
Supper done and offal and all them scavenger-attractin' castaways set far downwind, bankin' the fire done too after I hobble the mare, it's easy enough to roll out and up in the blankets I done borrowed from the stables along with the horse. I lay there, watchin' the Black and the stars blinkin' and smellin' the air that's not the same as we been breathin' weeks on between jobs. And sleep comes, 'ventually.
O'course, ain't never as easy as just wantin' sleep by one's self under the stars where he's the only one thinkin' and the only one for miles around to hear himself thinkin'.
They're dyin' around me again, and those bombers done come an' gone, and it's like the whole earth's come to swallow us up, 'cept from above. Fiery rain from above, and exploding lines of gunfire from their ground cannon sending up dirt and rock, buryin' men and all their parts by sheer dint of explodin' them into millions o'pieces and scatterin' them so far an' wide it ain't never like to be possible to tell who's who anymore. Not when all's left is a finger. An' I left Zo' with them because jus' seein' all that death-- they don't care, those who done this to us. They'll wipe every last one of us off the surface, off any surface, if it'll get them the cowed assent they want instead o' people actually agreein' with what they have to say because it's actually the right thing to do. Zo' thinks I'm goin' out to administer that what they used to call the coup de grace back on Earth-that-was, but what I always called better us than them. But there ain't no one to give that final metal kiss to-- just fingers and parts I ain't ever gonna make sense of, nor ever forget.
The smell-- it works its way in your soul, not just your nose, though there's that too. Dirt, copper and char, bone, flesh and hair, raw an' cooked, smellin' like no other meat. Chemicals and gunpowder, melted metal and burnt plastic, and fuel burnin' from those few of their planes we did manage to shoot outta th'air. So I'm stumblin' over all these piles of smell, and I get to their last gunnery station-- and find they've even bombed their own men too, so long's it kills us in the process.
It don't stop me, though.
"Four thousand men," I kept sayin', "and there'n thirty left, thirty," I say, soundin' too calm to be anything but completely feng kuang when I find their last gunner. A sergeant, like me. And then I start makin' slow even cuts, shallow ones that hurt and bleed and I know, not like I ain't been on the receivin' end enough myself to know how it's done so it hurts so much you just wish that God that don't exist except in those Books'd come along and smite you just to put you out of your misery. I'm wonderin' how close I'll get to four thousand less thirty cuts on their sergeant, their me, him as now knows at least one Browncoat ain't down, at least one Browncoat's gonna fight back. 'Cept it ain't fightin, and I know damned well his back's broken, that his own folk done abandoned him if it leaves me and Zo' and twenty eight others all that's left o' us. An' I do it anyway, 'cause that smell in Serenity Valley's so far from serene that it's an abomination of sorts. That smell does drive one more'n a bit mad. Bout the fortieth cut or so, right about when he stopped beggin' and just shut his eyes and breathed blood and set his mind to endurin', though, his face done shifts in the dream and o'course it's the little bird.
I spook the mare, I wake up so loud an' suddenlike, yellin' an' pantin' an' sweatin' an' tears streamin' down my face like they ain't since at that fiftieth cut when that one last Alliance man left bubbled out a gasped "Sorry" and died on me. Took me another three hours to crawl my back way to Zo' and them last twenty eight after just layin' there two hours watchin' his finally-still face and knowin' how I just became them, killin' without need to, just because I could. Never did tell Zo'. Never did tell no one. Just ... tried to have a reason for killin' someone thereafter. I always do, even if it's not always a good reason. At least there's some explanation aside from sheer vicious crazy.
"That's why, little bird," I say aloud, wonderin' if she can hear. Wouldn't surprise me. And I sort of hope that she can. Maybe it'll settle things before I have to actually talk to her when I get back to the ship, and she'll go back to lettin' me treat her like a mei-mei and nothin' more complicated than that. Nothin' more unsettlin' and too comfortable all't once.
"That's why. You done killed lots of folk, but never someone who didn't deserve it on purpose, nor just because you could. You never needed to kill no one, River, just because nothin' else but killin' would do." I think some more on it and say the rest out loud, since thinkin' it's one thing. Admittin' it out in the air is another.
"See, you ain't never killed yourself, girl. I killed that sergeant there on that ridge, I done killed myself by bein' like them, and that's more broken as ever is fair to foist on someone. You ain't done that, and that's a loud behind voice I ain't ever gonna let you have to listen to later for your own self. But it ain't once you can work your black magic on, neither."
Little speech to the Black and my bao bay little bird made, I shift 'round to feed the fire back up a bit. Ain't no use in tryin' to sleep no more tonight-- better to just wait 'til it's dawn enough to head back in and get myself clean at the bathhouse before headin' back. Gonna be a while before I get a proper haircut that ain't at the end of Zo's fingers, her as never cuts it quite short enough but does it more even than I can. And best to wash off the stink o'fear sweat, since while River's sure to know what's on in my head, I don' need Jayne and Zo' pickin' up on the fact that my ridin' off to collect my thoughts left 'em more scattered than before I ever left. They was doin' the peckin', for sure, and it's true, I was just about bleedin'. I'm gonna ignore the fact that by tellin' the Black that the girl can't be black on that particular ill, I think I made that final cut, that one that lets me bleed out all myself.
It'll be a slow bleed, though, I tell myself. Won't be but months before anyone notices he's not just broken but well on his way to not workin' no more. Even her, maybe. He hopes so.
"That's just shiny," I say aloud to the mare as I saddle up at the first light. "Now he's talkin' just like she does, even as he thinks he's done talkin' her outta this whole fong leg bao bay thing."
The mare flicks her ears back and chuffs even more disgustedly at me. "You got that right," I say.
You kill enough people and see enough dyin', you get on to wonderin' how your own's like to come. I done thought of a thousand possibilities, th'Alliance and people I done hornswaggled and people who done hornswaggled me, lots of Reavers, and that last sergeant up on the ridge most prominently. He does it most in dreams, not in wakin' speculations. But I always thought it'd be some kind o'violence, him living by the sword dyin' by it and all them cheery thoughts. Never thought I'd live old 'nough to die in my bed, lest I came down with some space plague.
'Specially never thought it'd be from gettin' rolled by a horse too shy to take a dry streambed not two feet wide at a canter. Gorramit. Leastaways Jayne ain't likely to kill Zo' anymore to take over the ship. They might even work somethin' out, amicable-like, keep the crew altogether.
O'course, horse's fine once she's done rollin' atop me, I can see that much even after crackin' my head I see stars in full on daylight. More'n a few ribs. Arm, maybe both. Thigh bone, too, maybe. Had too many broken bones in my time not to be able to recognize what it feels like. Know, too, what it feels like when one o'those ribs gets stuck in somethin' what's going to bleed somethin' serious. Just hope this conked head o'mine knocks me out before I done feel what it's like to drown in my own blood. Seen that too many times to wish that on anyone, even myself, even after killin' myself with that sergeant up on that ridge, there.
Bones don't always knit when they break, little bird. Sometimes when they break, they cause their own bleedin', and there's no time to knit before you just stop workin'. I'm not sure if I say it out loud. Don't s'pose it matters. Sorry, little bird.
"He's not to go to the Black yet. Not allowed. Not time to. Still more big brother and bao bay things to do. She sees it. The Black tells her it's going to happen. He just has to not go to the Black yet."
She ain't seriously naggin' me even after I've done already gone now, is she?
"Not in the Black yet, he isn't. Not allowed." She don't sound panicked. Just like she's decided and that's all there is to it.
River, bao bay, ain't no sense in talkin' to the Black. You're like on to make Simon worry. Can't believe I'm havin' a conversation with her after I'm already dead an' all. Shepherd's Book ain't had nothin' to say 'bout that. This ain't gonna be shiny, talkin' to myself for the rest of eternity.
"Not talking to the Black. Talking to Mal. Mal's here, he just feels like the Black because she can be big sister about the broken parts until she makes them knit again so they're just broken, don't bleed so much they become not working. But she can be big sister on this."
"River..." Simon's voice done sound spooked. Don't blame him none. "Are you talking to the Captain?"
"No, I'm talking to Book. Of course I'm talking to Mal, Simon. Book's dead. Mal's not."
Whoa, there, little bird, ain't no cause to be talkin' to your brother that way. He's just on worried 'bout you.
"Mal, shut up, I'm trying to work," she says clear as day, an' more direct than she's ever done said to me. "I've never done this healing thing before, if you don't stop talking you're going to distract me. Now Simon, you just get out of the way."
And then I kinda lose track o'the conversation, 'cause I can't feel much except what might be her fingers doin' that thing in my hair or on the side o'my cheek again. "There's the Black and there's black, Mal," she says. "One's the end, one's just quiet and soothing. Think on the quiet and soothing type. No loud behind voices right now, okay? Promise."
If'n you say so, little bird.
"Shh. Go to sleep, Mal."