The Resistance

Firefly Crossover

Summary: Follows my other fic, Spinning In The Dark. Posits a large conspiracy against mankind, the lampshading of demons and other monsters into the series, and ignores shared actors between the shows (as that would just be squicky). Spinning In The Dark gives away the twist.

Chapter 3

1.

River hated to push Serenity this hard. It seemed like a poor way to treat the old girl. But right now, with the engines screaming feedback in her ears, she pushed a little harder. She felt the tremble in the deck that meant she was giving all she had, but River had to ask her for more.

She watched the rear-view monitor. It was grainy, and didn't display very well. But all she could see there was a wall of color. Bright color. An explosion so big it was like a little sun, consuming and breaking.

And the terrible wails behind her as everything died out, minds snuffed from existence so fast it might have taken her breath away.

Liam and Mal were behind her, saying volumes in silence. Mal wanted to know more about their prisoners; Liam wanted to say nothing.

And Mal was letting him get away with it; the worst part of all. Because as far as he was concerned, he was part of something now. Part of a Resistance that he needed like he needed air, a cause he could believe in.

And Liam was a superior officer.

Now that River had caught a little bit more of what Liam was truly like, this bothered her. A lot.

This Resistance wasn't what she had imagined, not at all. In fact, it was pretty much the opposite. She had hoped to find something like kinship; hoped to find people who understood her.

Instead, she had found people who knew what she was, and who thought killing her just might solve that problem.

She hadn't even realized Blood thought of her as a problem to be solved, but it was fairly obvious in retrospect. She was a weapon he couldn't let his enemies, the Alliance, get their hands on. A weapon he needed either neutralized or killed.

She stabilized their trajectory, watching Liam out of the corner of her eye, out of the corner of her mind.

Where was Blood, anyway?

Their tight, locked-up minds made her angry. She should have been able to pick and probe these people as easily as Jubal Early. As easily as anybody.

So she set the auto-pilot. "We're safe enough, now. Faster than their intercepts," she said blithely, interested by how Mal jumped at her voice as if stung. "Going to check on the prisoner now."

Another sore spot. Mal knew all too well that the safest way to deal with a prisoner with a grudge was to kill them. And he had already begun steeling himself for it.

Because Mal, for all his rules about being ruthless, had trouble killing women. He should have killed Saffron, that one time he'd had her where he could have done it. He'd known that, sure as he'd known that leaving Niska alive was a mistake.

But killing Niska would have been the same thing, wouldn't it have? Killing a defenseless prisoner. And he was able to rationalize it by telling himself that he couldn't afford a blood feud with Niska's people.

And killing Saffron… he would rather risk her stripping him naked and leaving him in the desert to die than do that. Or, worse, risk her killing him. That had been a serious risk in his plan, and they all knew it.

But that time was gone, and now they had an even worse threat on board. An agent of the Alliance, against whom they had declared war by attacking one of their prized vessels.

River found them in the cargo hold. She was tied to a chair, completely immobile. Blood was prowling around her like an animal, making an invisible perimeter around her. He wasn't questioning her, or even talking to her.

She was glaring at him, but in silence.

The rest of the crew was waiting, and watching. The doorway to the engine room held Kaylee. Jayne was standing on the catwalk, looking down at them. Inara stood in the doorway to her shuttle. Simon wasn't there, of course. He was back in his medical bay with Blood's men, seeing to the wounded.

Zoe was down on the floor of the cargo bay, standing by the stairs. Waiting.

They all knew how this would end, what a man like that would have to do to protect the Resistance. Why Liam had left his attack dog here with her.

Only Blood didn't seem to understand the situation yet.

"You want name, rank, and serial number?" asked the Operative, antagonizing him.

He ignored this. There was something about the pacing that bothered River. He wasn't just forcing her to stay in—he was keeping other people out, too. He was trying to keep control of this situation, even as it spiraled out of control.

River knew that she needed to intervene, but she waited.

"You're the worst kind of man," hissed the Operative. "You've betrayed your own ideals. Betrayed everything."

"Shut your face," he said. "You don't understand my ideals."

River was beginning to. He pretended to have none, but something drove him. Liam pretended to have none, but something drove him even harder. The two of them weren't as simple as their mission statement; they weren't truly the Resistance they pretended to be.

They were something else entirely.

She had to figure out what was going on with that.

The woman in the white leather tossed her head, growling something angrily. Blood dragged her back up onto the chair, shaking his head. "You're entirely too stupid," he said, and resumed marching around her.

It was a protective circle. He knew that her life was hanging by a thread, and he planned to keep her alive. River was amused by his bizarre, backwards way of doing this.

She was also angry, because she was scouring through the very guarded woman sitting there on the chair, tied up. All that was in her was twisted and ugly, a lifetime of training to inflict pain and suffering. She didn't really know how to do anything else.

River empathized with that. Killing came so easily, so matter-of-factly. Being nice, being good? Those took time, and effort, and she felt like she was her bumbling brother Simon when she tried. There were rules, and inflections, and all kinds of things she didn't understand.

There was a bright streak of red blood on the white leather now, from the dribble coming from the woman's nose. Looking at it, River felt excited—in a very sexual way, too. She had to stop for a second, realizing the emotion wasn't her own. Realizing somebody else was feeling very sadistic, very out of control.

Of course it was Blood.

River watched the man for a little bit, staring at the fuzzy almost-bald head. Staring at those bright blue eyes.

He let out a hissing noise, glancing around at the crew. He was putting on a show for them. River understood this. A show of hate.

He didn't feel any hate at all for the woman tied up. Pity, perhaps.

River wondered what it would feel like to scour her fingers over his scalp, to feel the short hairs pricking at her palm. She wondered what his skin felt like, stretched across those cheekbones. She wondered what he tasted like.

She was more than aware that this was a very dangerous man, and a more dangerous time for fantasy. But he was aroused, and she couldn't help but let that course through her, the emotions, the feelings.

She couldn't read him at all, but she could almost touch him, from across the room. She could feel the coldness of each angry breath that he blew out.

He slapped the woman in white, again. River could feel the hard impact against her own cheek, a blow that shook her and almost knocked her down.

Nobody noticed except Jayne. He could be observant, sometimes, which scared her. He was the last of them she would have wanted to notice when she was weak, but he was always the first to notice. Like a predator.

Which he was, from a certain point of view.

So was Blood, who was stalking in circles around the woman again, stomping his boots on the deck. River decided to go down there and test the waters. If she had to fight him again, she wanted to land the first blow this time.

She stalked forward, letting her hips sway just a little more than was necessary. An almost feminine movement, but it really borrowed more from a lioness in motion than a woman. It was a threatening, aggressive movement.

It caught his attention immediately. His eyes were sharp for threats, the eyes of a man who's missed those warnings before and been kicked in the face.

So of course he watched her come, sneering at her. "Got a problem with the way I'm treating the prisoner, love?" he asked, mockingly. "Want me to take it easy, do you?"

She didn't answer, staring at him as solemnly as she could. "What about you?" she asked.

His face hardened. "I can never tell how deep you can read me, know that, crazy? It drives me a little bonkers myself."

She wasn't sure if she really did want to protect this Agent of the faceless forces that had pursued her for so long. Sure, right now the Operative was looking for Liam and Blood, but that might change. Soon the same people would be trying to kill River.

And she was not amused by people trying to kill her, unlike some of the crew.

She could sense Jayne getting ready to fight. He had her back, which made her feel good and a bit icky at the same time. Jayne was a good man to have behind you in a fight, and a bad man to have behind you at all times. Also, even though he was fairly repulsed by her, he had no compunctions about staring at her butt. He had no idea at all that she could tell, even with her back to him.

And she had considered saying something, but had noticed that where Inara fought back against his innuendo and leers, it only excited him. He liked that sort of resistance—and she very much didn't like the idea of him enjoying fighting her.

She preferred his fear and respect.

Blood sneered, reaching out and grabbing her shoulder roughly. His group was too tight, harsh, and shouldn't have excited her nearly as much as it did.

He was making it difficult for her to think, with his terribly masculine presence and his entirely preoccupied thoughts. She slapped his hand away from her arm, confused by it. "Don't touch me."

"Don't like it? Or like it a little too much?" he asked, smirking.

She got a flash of what he was thinking, then. Or maybe he projected it forcefully. An image of him grabbing her, pushing her against the wall, trapping her with his body. Holding her. Touching her.

The thought burned into her mind, and she whirled forward, striking him. Punching him in the face, slamming her fist into it with the force to drive those thoughts right out of him.

He'd done it on purpose, she knew. Trying to manipulate her, to get her to stop talking and thinking. Because he didn't want her to unravel the problems he had with this woman. Didn't want her reading through this woman, finding even worse things.

So she advanced, hitting him again, and widened her mind, trying to drag everything out of this woman.

The Operative twitched, apparently aware something very wrong was happening in her head. River tore through, as she'd never tried to do, looking for something Blood didn't want her to see.

She saw him naked again, but this time she could see scars along his sides, and she was tracing them gently. He was saying something terribly important, warning the woman in white that she wouldn't like the next part.

The next part was a strike on the Alliance.

The next part was the discovery that they knew she was a spy in their midst, that as she had been trying to play them against each other, sleeping with both of them, they had been revealing all to each other. That they knew.

She could see Liam, with a smile like a deadly archangel, breaking somebody's neck with those powerful hands. She could see Blood using iron bars as deadly weapons, then driving one through the skull of an enemy.

She could see her own assault team, handpicked, lying broken and beaten all around.

And they'd let her live, for some reason.

River could see them fighting, then. A vicious, violent fight, smashing each other through walls, using deadly weapons. Guns, knives, fists. She could see Blood slamming Liam's face into the wall over and over again, screaming. Blood was flying everywhere.

River was too distracted by this trip through the blond woman's brain, and Blood darted forward, grabbing her by the neck and swinging her around, managing to punch Jayne, who was moving forward to back her up.

Jayne slammed down to the deck, surprised by the force of the attack. For a small man, Blood had a lot of hidden strength.

"Let's be honest, little girl," snarled Blood. "You may be a walking assassin with a weakness for seeing into other people's brains. But you're also vulnerable in so many ways!"

She had held the Reavers out of her own brain long enough to fight them, and if she needed to, she could block out the stream of anger, hate, and arousal she was getting from him, too.

Mal arrived, running down from the bridge, gun out. Liam was there, behind him, reaching forward and snatching the gun out of his hand before he could fire. "William!" snarled the bigger man. "What do you think you're doing?"

Blood pulled River closer, close enough to whisper in her ear. "Are you going to start talking now, girl? Say too much, and there'll be hell to pay."

And he wasn't lying, right now. Wasn't trying to point her somewhere else, misdirect her, shock her. He was just trying to do… something.

She was still confused. "I'm alright, captain," she said.

Mal was glaring. "What in the hell are you doing?" he demanded, aiming it at Blood.

Blood was sneering. "She tried to step in while I was questioning the prisoner, oh captain my captain. Never a good idea to step in at a moment like that, now is it? At any rate, your crew is far too squeamish for proceedings like this. Could you all go about your supper or some such and leave me alone so I can do this properly?"

Liam made a rough sound, halfway between a growl and a laugh. "Yes, leave us to this work. We're good at it."

Jayne scrambled to his feet, glancing to Zoe. She had a hand on her gun, but hadn't drawn, not even when he'd been knocked down. "You just gonna stand there and watch him kill me?" demanded Jayne.

"Two of you and one of him; didn't seem fair to add more," she drawled.

River put her hand on the hand still wrapped loosely around her neck. She tried to peel it off, but he held on firmly. "You've always let me handle the torturing," he said. "Trying to take some of the fun for yourself?"

Liam sneered, handing Mal back his gun. "Right. I'm sure you'd use your very best technique, for this one. Come on, folks. This show's over."

Liam led the others away, but Blood hung on to River. Zoe didn't move, waiting. Blood gave her a hard look. "I just want to have a word with her about playing with other people's toys," he said. "I'll play nice."

Zoe eyed him, and still didn't move. River wondered why she was staying, and reached out, touching Zoe's mind. Inside everything was strong, and hard. And nobody was allowed to grab a crewmember like that. She was waiting for Blood to let go so she could teach him that.

Blood chuckled. "Later, love. We'll settle up later. For now, just give me a minute, eh?"

Zoe was like a wall of stone. She kept her hand on the butt of her gun, smiling at him so coldly it might have cut a lesser man. "I've done torture before," she said.

Blood scowled. "I know you want to carve a slice of me off, tell me I'm over the line. I know you're mad I touched your girl here." He nodded his head towards River, their heads so close they were almost touching. She wondered if she ought to try to kill him.

Zoe's smile didn't falter. "Just so we're clear, then."

She left slowly, keeping an eye on River. When she was gone Blood let go, stepping back from River. "Damn lot of mother dogs here, aren't there? All of them in your corner. All right, pet, you think I should just let you go, don't you? Just let you go on making an awful nuisance of yourself. This isn't any of your business. Just go back to the others and let me get on with it."

"With what? If you're going to torture her, I'm a monkey's uncle," said River. "You're trying to keep her alive, is what you're doing, after she tried to kill us all. Just because she gave you a good ride!"

He grimaced. "You can't read my mind."

"I can see your eyes," she said. She was happy that her hunch had proven correct; even happier that he wasn't arguing with her.

He pointed back at the Operative. "You have no idea what she did. She tried to break Liam and me—and we don't allow that sort of thing."

"You fought for her before," said River, her trump card. He was shocked, stepping back away from her, convinced for a second that she could read his mind. It took him a moment to remember that the woman in white had known it too, and had no such protections.

He looked back at her. "How about that, Eva. I did fight for you, and yet you showed up to kill me."

There was some terrible hurt in her mind as she stared at him. "I came to you to kill you, the first time, but you taught me so much," she whispered. "I would have followed you all the way, helped you fight the very head of the Senate—but you were never telling the truth." She turned to face River, her face serious. "Liam has a priority one clearance from the Senate—and his voiceprint and ID check out. They're not trying to overturn the Alliance; they just want to take out their political enemies."

Blood sighed. "And there's the crux of her complaint."

It didn't faze River, who had already worked this out from the bits she had picked out of Eva's mind. "So you're not really Big Damn Heroes—that'll only surprise small children who still believe in those sort of things."

"Don't be so blasé. You believe in them. After all, you and the captain, here, you're bigger heroes than me an' Liam, by all accounts. And, not only that, it's not true."

She smiled indulgently at the obvious lie. "Oh?"

"Look, Liam isn't now an agent—well, maybe. But he wasn't in the past—or maybe he was. And he won't be in the future—unless he will. But I can categorically deny, right now, that whatever he's doing, past, present, or future, is the same as what he's doing here."

She stared at him. Usually she was the one who would say something completely crazy and derail a conversation. "Okay."

"Yeah, it's confusing. What's important is that in the here and now, I trust him. Well, sort of. Sometimes. Look, okay, it's gone so far beyond human understanding that you can't even—do you know anything about time travel?"

"Impossible," she said flatly.

"Yeah, except for that part where I did it. You ever heard the saying 'it ain't rocket science?' It sort of isn't. You're right; we buggered something. I don't know what, or how. Or why. But Liam's here, with me, and he's also… elsewhere. Elsetime. And… you don't believe me."

Neither of them did. River smirked at him knowingly, wondering if he was truly insane, as completely off his rocker as she was. "When I say things like that they give me pills and needles and try to make the crazy go away."

His face turned sour. "I've been crazy, little girl, and it was a lot more fun than this. I know you live in some rational world where things that don't make physical sense don't happen… but I don't. I live in a world where your pretty whore is a whole lot older than she looks; a world where your captain is always drawn into trouble, not because he goes looking for it, but because, bone-deep, he always turns instinctively the wrong way, towards the trouble, when that little tingle in the back of your neck and mine tells us to go the other way."

His words made a strange sort of sense. Inara's memories were a deep pool into which River could plunge herself; sometimes she thought she might drown, they were so deep. Much more deep than a few decades.

But how had he plumbed Inara's secrets when he'd only met her a few times, a few snatches of words?

Inara had returned and was watching them. "You think you know a lot?" she asked, very coldly.

He shrugged. "I've seen your kind hanging around the Guild for a while, kid. A man takes a like to expensive prostitutes…"

"I highly doubt you could procure the services of a Companion," she spat.

He smirked. "Know `m not much to look at, but a creature like me has a fair grasp on what manners are, what polite society is all about… I don't act this way because it's all I know, I act this way because it's all I love. You want me to fit right in, to be the prissy little man gets himself a piece of Companion? I can do that better'n most. As good as your lot is, only one in ten ever catches on I'm just pretending."

She flushed. "I find that hard to believe."

He grabbed River's neck, pushing her away. The sudden violence surprised her, and she was caught entirely off balance. She fell across the deck, just managing to catch herself and roll into a battle-ready crouch.

But he wasn't moving to attack her. He'd been stabbed, from behind, by their prisoner on the floor, a long, wicked flat blade that looked flat enough to hide inside the skin-tight leather she was wearing without being noticed.

He staggered, staring down at the tip sticking out just beneath his ribs. "Bugger," he said, his voice blank. "That's going to be pretty hard to explain." Then he pulled the blade out through his back, sinking to his knees with a gasp.

Eva had managed to get free from her bonds; now that most of the others had left, she was seizing her opportunity to try to finish Blood off.

She hadn't seen River in action, though. River sprinted forward out of her crouch, jumping up and spinning. She was wearing the thick, heavy boots that Mal had bought her when he was well and truly sick of her running around barefoot.

For a second she tumbled through the air, spinning around.

Then both of her feet slammed into Eva's pretty face, taking the assassin off her feet and slamming her back across the deck.

River cartwheeled to a stop on her feet, grabbing the knife Jayne had given her. She raised it, aiming it in Eva's direction. "Don't move," she said.

Eva stayed sprawled on the ground; she was bleeding from her mouth, and her nose looked broken. She gave a little burbling moan.

Blood had found his feet, although was swaying slight. River knew they needed to get him to lie down, to get Simon out here to fix him, but she knew better than to turn away from the very dangerous woman in front of her. "Inara, get Simon," she said.

But the racket had drawn Liam out. He crossed the deck in a flash, grabbing Blood. "Damn you, William!" he snarled, checking the wound. "Go to the room they gave us, the guest room. Don't argue! Go there, and lock the door. I'll see to the wound—nobody touches William but me!"

Then Liam let go and advanced on Eva, grabbing her roughly by the neck and swinging her up. He stood there, feet planted solidly, and held her off the ground by her neck in a one-handed grip, squeezing her throat. "And that especially includes you!" he snarled viciously. "I let you off easy last time because Willy thought you weren't beyond redemption, but the days of me leaving enemies behind me to come back to haunt me are done with!"

He squeezed down on her throat viciously, cutting off her air. She struggled in his grasp, but he held on, his hand like a vise.