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 7

1.

Nero had been following the Firefly since the Operative had insisted on a face to face battle with them. He wasn't exactly sure why she wanted to do something so very stupid—was it just her own ghosts, haunting her? Was there a reason for it?

He'd known it would end badly. He always knew what would happen, before it happened. But he could never stop the bad things from happening. He wondered if this was some kind of curse, or if maybe he just needed to learn some fighting trick to make things like this stop happening.

He knew they'd pick his signature up eventually, realize that he was following them. Even a crazy ghost-stepper like himself couldn't be careful enough if they really were as good as she kept telling him they were.

Of course, he didn't work for her. If he had, he would have had to follow her into that crazy ambush. He was really, really glad he didn't work for her.

He noticed they were slowing down a little bit after that, and knew they were onto him. He knew in a minute they'd make a lightning quick turn, and no matter how he tried to run and hide, they'd be on him. He knew they had a faster ship with better acceleration. He knew they weren't supposed to be armed, but was willing to bet they could outgun him anyway.

So he sighed, and began maneuvering the ship around to make it look like he was making a run for it. He wouldn't bother burning all the fuel. He carefully unloaded his sidearm; he had no intention of trying to fight too hard, when all that could get him was shot.

He didn't like the idea of being shot.

2.

"He's not running," said River.

"Beg to differ," said Mal. "When they start moving away from you in a mighty hurry like that, it's called running."

"He's making a show of it," insisted River. "But he knows we can catch him, and he's not trying very hard. He won't resist at all."

Mal didn't like that attitude at all. He tapped the intercom. "We're closing positions nicely, and they aren't coming around to shoot," he said. He didn't trust people who let you catch them. "Stand ready with those guns."

Blood and Liam were in the airlock, suited up. It wasn't an ideal gunning station, but from there they could easily start firing. And with some of the big guns they'd brought, they could bring down a spaceship.

It didn't make him feel all warm and fuzzy at all.

River kept them behind and above the other ship as they approached, opposite its guns. She tapped the radio once to turn it on. "You've already surrendered," she said. "Just open your airlock and we'll make it official."

The airlock on the other ship slid open.

Eva, standing behind Mal, groaned. "It must be that useless weasel Nero. He's the liaison they assigned me from the military—some kind of spy. I don't know who he's working for. I thought he stopped following me a week ago, when I told him I was going to try to ambush Liam and Blood."

"How did you know where to find them?" asked Mal, suddenly curious.

Eva shrugged. "Turned one of their men to my side with money, of course. How else do you get ahead of men like that?"

"Which one?" asked Mal.

She shook her head. "I told Blood, and that's bad enough. Now pay attention; his ship is wired with some weapons, and not just the visible ones."

"He won't use them," said River. "Too smart. He shoots at us, Blood depressurizes his ship, he wears a space suit, he blows one of our engines, and Liam flies across in a spacesuit, gets in his ship, and kills him. Painfully, probably. He knows what'll happen. He's not putting any fight into it. He's hoping to get out alive, still."

Eva shook her head. "If he sees William we have to kill him," she said seriously. "Or Liam."

River could read the Operative's mind easily. She was worried about his reaction, worried for these men—and worried what they would do. She wasn't sure whether she loved them or hated them. She was confused.

River tried to put that confusion out of her mind. "We have him."

3.

Nero tried to keep his nerves under control. Sure, he could see Liam, the Angel, the killer, the Scourge, standing right there. And William Blood, his friend, partner, and the only man in the `Verse as crazy as him.

Sure, they were crazy. Sure, they were like shadows, things that stayed hidden in the dark so nobody but those at the highest levels knew about them.

But it was nerve-wracking, at this distance. He could smell the cheap soap Blood preferred. He could hear the leather in Liam's jacket creaking as he walked in circles around Nero.

"I haven't reported in since we left New Bellasaurus," he said, blurting out everything he knew. "But I think that they sent… uh, the specialist. After you."

Blood glanced back to Eva, the Operative, who was standing there calmly, not saying anything. Nero had been pretty sure she would tear these men apart. That they had talked her down was chilling.

Not as chilling as the thought of that Specialist.

Blood moved closer. "When you say a specialist…" he said, very slowly. His tone very reasonable.

Nero winced. "Yeah, I think they were talking about the guy who blew up that solar system that one time."

Blood didn't bother sighing dramatically, or gesticulating, or anything else to draw attention to himself. He didn't whine, scream, or anything else. His eyes slid sideways to Liam, who met his gaze. Both of them nodded.

Eva tilted her head. "Who?"

Nero wondered if he was going to die now. "He's… well, he's a psychic. And a monster."

"Only half a monster," murmured Blood. "Set a course for the nearest planet?"

"I'd like an army behind me for this," muttered Liam. They were both closer to Ian, with their backs to the others in the cargo bay, so none of them could hear the muttered plans. "But I guess we'll have it out somewhere. Couldn't we run and hide?"

"Not if he's learned how to use those neat tricks you taught him," grumbled Blood. "Of course, if we can take your bastard child down, then we might be able to figure out once and for all if the Other carries your, heh, curse."

Liam sighed. "Our curse."

"I meant the other one, but that one too."

"Other…? Oh, right."

Nero kept his face blank. He had no idea what they were going on about, but he knew that he was probably going to die. He could see it on the Operative's face. She knew he reported up the food chain quite a ways, knew he wasn't insignificant. She knew he was dangerous if left alive, because of the report he would file.

He smiled sickly. Only one way out of the mess now… "I can tell you what I know about him," he said pleasantly.

They all stared at him for a long, frigid minute. "Can you, now?" asked Blood, almost conversationally.

"I read the file on him. The weaponization of his talents, the low-grade virus they injected him with… the one that gives him superhuman abilities."

Blood closes his eyes very slowly, keeping them closed. "I know the one," he said, smiling as if at a pleasant thought. "Refined from the glands of some of the worst monsters left in the `Verse." He opened his eyes, glancing to Liam. "Question answered. Your double is your double—no doubt. That's the only way they'd have access to the stuff they'd need to make him into a half—half something like us."

Ian licked his lips. "That's not all. He's got, he's armed with some weapons that are still new. Laser weapons. Plasma weapons. Hot off the science pipeline."

Blood squeezed his lips together. "Don't matter. Tell me about the other…"

"Other what?" asked Ian.

Blood leaned forward. "Don't try that act with me, boy. You don't answer to the Operative, and you and I both know that's a pretty high-ranking Operative. You don't answer to the military. You aren't a merc. And you've got too much good sense to get killed here. And, last but not least, you know our boy Ian. Ian, destroyer of worlds, damn know-it-all, and the only weapon the Alliance has they're afraid to use. Tell me… what does the Other call Liam?"

Nero shifted in his seat and considered his options carefully. Cross his boss, and he was as good as dead. Cross these people, and he was as good as dead.

"I report to a man called Tomas Durns," he said softly. "You might know the name."

Blood smiled wide, showing his teeth. "Tommy, the dearest, best little man in the whole wide universe? Or Tommy, the dear little bastard who tried to take my heart out of my chest once?"

Nero's eyes narrowed. "What? Tomas. There's only one I know of."

"Yeah, but there's a lot of difference between the two. You report to him? And you've never met his superior?"

"N-no."

He glanced back at the wisp of a girl standing in the doorway. "Love, can you tell me just what he's not telling me?"

"He saw Liam," she said. "In a meeting with Tommy. Only it wasn't Liam, and he was nice. Very nice. And Tommy was nice. They were all very nice. And he knows they aren't always nice, but they're nice for him. And then they killed some people they didn't like, and ate them, he's pretty sure."

Nero winced. "Oh, a `path," he said, affecting a disinterested air. He was buggered, and he knew it. Any second now she'd find the important things in his brain…

"He knows you two aren't human," she said, staring at Blood. "Just monsters."

Mal's gun was in his hand and pointed at a point directly between Liam and Blood. "Could you repeat that just one time?" he said.

Liam glanced around. Zoe and Jayne, standing up in the stairs, on the catwalks, had locked them into a crossfire. Both of them had hands on guns too. River was just standing there, staring deep into Nero's eyes.

There she tumbled through viruses and things they couldn't explain. She could see powerful men using arcane rituals. She could see him watching holograms of Liam and Blood, and she could see them clearly. Not human; just monsters that looked human. Monsters who adopted a pose, because it kept them safe. Because it allowed them to lurk and hunt among the humans.

And for the first time, she realized why Blood laughed so hard about his name.

She looked at the back of his head, at the way he wasn't turning around to face her, and suddenly the tenderness he'd shown her before was covered through and through with his nature, undisclosed.

Blood leaned forward, into Nero. "Yeah, thought you might," he said viciously, grabbing the smaller man and lifting him up, into the air, where he dangled from Blood's grip like a fish on a line.

Apparently Blood felt the cat was entirely out of the bag, because he didn't even try to hide the unearthly strength.

"Oh," said Mal. "Not a metaphor, then?"

"No," said River. "Not a metaphor. None of what they say is metaphor; it's literal, but they hide it in plain sight."

Liam turned around, raising his hands. "Well, glass houses and all that, eh, little girl?"

Mal's mind rejected it, accepted it, then rejected it again. He was used to things changing fast under him, and when that carpet was pulled he tended to turn quickly to violence. He kept the gun out and pointed at this man, still unsure what any of this meant.

Jayne was starting to get a little superstitious, and unpredictable. River made a mental note to beat some sense into him on the subject some time.

Zoe was as dependable as always. She was not a woman with a great imagination; she was a soldier. She knew only that River's voice had changed, and when River had called Blood and Liam monsters, she knew that River had seen something that scared her in Nero's mind. Seen something of Blood and Liam that scared her.

And Zoe knew what scared River. She remembered River collapsing when Reavers were near.

And River was happy, for a second. Because Zoe didn't think about all the possibilities, and she didn't get stuck trying to imagine them. She didn't give in to fear, or to hesitation. She simply trusted River and Mal and Jayne to be as smart as she was being, and she kept her eyes firmly on Blood and Liam and thought about what ought to happen to people who scared River.

"Why?" asked River, emboldened by Zoe.

Blood tossed aside the man he was holding like he was a sack of potatoes. "Because!" he snarled. "Wait, why what?" He still didn't turn around to face her.

"Why?" she asked, a little bit plaintively.

He sighed, the life passing out of him. "Because you're a Big Damn Hero? Because there are monsters in the night? I don't know why. I'm not even sure who, any more."

River tried to find some little slice of truth in there, but wasn't sure what his questions were, any more than he was able to find her questions. So she tried to make her questions obvious. She didn't often do this. To her, if a person was too stupid to understand the level of thought she was achieving, they weren't worth the bother to talk to.

But he was worth it.

"I want to know… why you are. A monster."

"Why? Because there are monsters; because they like to make more. Because a monster, long ago and far away, chose me. Because I liked it. Because I still like it. No, love it." He turned around to face her, and his face was hard, so hard it made her insides tingle unpleasantly. "Look, we're a little bit of monster inside, aren't we? We have that darkness in us. That tingling feeling that the next time we kill... the last time we killed… we enjoyed it. We will enjoy it again. And we know we will do it again. It's just a question of when and how."

Mal had heard too much already. It sounded too much like his own thoughts, like the worst nightmares he'd had. "Shut up!" he growled.

Blood smirked. "Believe me, it brings me no joy at all to see how terribly, terribly alike you and I are. Time was, I didn't want to see it. Didn't want to see how even good people could get gummed up with killing and destroying, could let the darkness in. But it's not the darkness in us that defines us; it's not that rage that makes us a man. It's what we do with that. How we deal with that. Whether we kill the innocent or the guilty. I know the lot of you; survivors in a tiny island of peace in a terrible, terrible world. But you all try, in your own ways, to make that peace extend to the world in general. Thieves and bad man, yet you took your tiny island of peace to the very heart of the Reavers, and you told the `Verse who caused that. You set about shaking the foundations of this world to make things right."

That he was a stone-cold killer didn't change the way his words affected Mal. That he was a terrible man, and even some kind of inhuman monster, couldn't stop Mal's hand from shaking. He hated that, tightening his grip on the gun to hide it. "What are you talking about?"

"Monster I may be; but I'm not fighting the Alliance," said Blood. "Liam may be, but I'm not. I'm fighting Evil. Whatever form it takes, wherever it shows its face. I'm fighting for little islands of peace like this. I'm fighting the good fight—and I've been too long stuck in this one battle, against the Alliance. I was losing sight of that myself, like my obsessive friend here."

Liam growled. "Easy, Willy," he muttered. "You're scaring them."

"It's a scary world," said Blood. "Gets scarier the longer you see it; and I've been alive a very, very long time."

Jayne shot him.

4.

He woke up in the room he'd been sharing with Eva. Eva and Liam were facing off, and Liam had a few opaque bags in his hands, trying to get around Eva. He groaned, touching the bullet hole in his chest.

"That pile of go se shot me?" he said, trying to talk around the bleeding lungs. He mostly gurgled.

Liam pushed Eva out of the way. "Apparently somewhere between 'I'm a monster' and 'I've walked this Earth a long time' he decided you were too dangerous for little bitty River," he said sarcastically. "Damn, Willy! A gun that size, he could have taken your head off."

Blood groaned, leaning back in the bed. "And you two saved me, huh?"

"Crazy-girl did," muttered Eva. "Because a complete xiong meng de kung ren. I think I like her."

Blood chuckled painfully, leaning his head forward to catch the packet Liam was offering. "Thanks."

Liam shook his head. "Yeah, this is worse than the knife in the chest. That was a shot no human could survive. Now they're freaked out. Even your crazy girl. We're headed for the nearest planet, but they don't really trust us at all now."

"Just as well," muttered Blood. "Because when our boy shows up…"

"Who is he?" asked Eva. "And what is he?"

"Part what we are. Part what the Reavers are. Part what loony is," said Blood. "And completely psychopathic. They keep him in a deeper, darker hole than they kept me in, that time they caught me."

She sighed. "And how do you plan to fight him?"

Blood grimaced. "Sweetheart, how do we ever fight? Fists and guns and knives."

Liam rolled his shoulders, making popping noises. "Shut up and drink. I need you healed up for this one."

Blood chuckled. "Out of sorts?"

Liam laughed. "I'm trying not to die laughing, Willy. Here we are, about to go toe to toe with somebody we've never been able to beat before, and you're laughing at me. At me!"

"You didn't like my big speechifying," mumbled Blood, smiling. "Lost your flair for the dramatic with your will to fight this fight, old man?"

Liam leaned over Blood. "I haven't been myself since the time machine!" he snarled. "You know it; I know it! And I can't believe you don't care! Can't!"

Blood grabbed Liam by the neck with a weak hand. "I'm not all you have left in this world, you know," he said. He nodded to Eva. "Ask her, eh? Ask her who she would have fought for, who she thought was family. Ask her."

Liam shook himself free, moving away from Blood. "Ever the Romantic," he said bitterly. "There's nothing of hope or goodness left in me, Willy. Nothing."

Blood sucked down the contents of the bag, not bothering to hide the nature of what he was drinking from Eva. "Don't mind him," he mumbled around a mouthful of hot blood. "He ain't exactly what you'd call…. Right. Hasn't been."

"Right?" asked Eva, laughing. "You two are crazier than the girl!"

Blood chuckled. "Ain't that the truth… We're too much like them, and not enough like them. We have to leave them behind. Damn you for being right, Liam."

Liam sighed. "Always doing the selfish thing," he mumbled. "I'm sorry, Willy. I really am."

Eva shook her head. "Crazy's here to talk to you," she told Blood.

He sat up, checking his wounds, which were already closing up. "Let her in, then."

River walked in like she owned the room, as if everybody there owed her something. She glowered around at all of them, but mostly at Blood. "Show me," she said.

His face shifted, bones moving under his skin. His façade of humanity dropped away, revealing the true, monstrous nature beneath it. Predator. Destroyer. Then the yellow eyes and ridges moved back away, back to human, and he wiped the blood off his lips. "Sorry, love," he said.

She glared at Liam. "You too."

He shook his head. "Sorry, but not for you. I'm not as comfortable with that side of myself as he is."

Blood laughed. "You know why? Dualism. His soul got stuffed in on top of the demon. A punishment for the demon. My soul got merged in, a reward for the demon. Makes a lot of difference, really. Means I can be more evil than him, and it doesn't bother me."

"Demon," she said, tasting the words.

Blood rose to his feet, only stumbling a little bit. "Yeah, love. Demons. That's what we are. Monsters. Beasts who exist to prey on the innocent."

"You aren't evil, though," she pressed.

He shrugged. "It's a long story. But I wouldn't say we're not entirely evil. We're just… trying."

She looked down at the blood packet. "And you don't feed from humans?"

He laughed. "It's human blood, pet. And I've killed more than a few. If I'm going to kill them anyway, you know, why not get a little nourishment from it? I know, I'm just making excuses. That's part of what I do. Monster, right?"

She didn't like this answer, realizing immediately that he was trying to drive her back as a prelude to pushing her away from him permanently. She'd known when she went to him before that the connection they had formed was tenuous, and that she had jumped straight into physicality too soon.

So she scowled, glancing to Liam. "And just what is your relationship to him?"

Blood laughed. "The terminology is centuries old, and wouldn't make sense. He's an elder vampire in my pack… the one who taught me to hunt humans, to hate, to destroy. To kill. Sire, I always called him, although technically it would be Grand-Sire… but he never felt two generations removed."

River scowled. "And then who taught who to love and be… what you are?"

Liam laughed out loud. "Who taught who, Willy?"

Blood scowled. "He got a head-start on the self-control bit, and the doing good bit. But I didn't learn from him. I found my own way—and I didn't need some group of gypsies cursing me to kick me into it, either!"

"Just a chip in your head, eh?" asked Liam.

Their rambling was nonsensical. River reminded herself why she'd come here. "It doesn't matter to me. I've seen what you are on the inside—not a monster. A man." She pointed at Blood. "Hide it as you will, you care."

His face softened a bit. "Insightful, love. Tragically insightful. Sadly, it won't help. I'm leaving with Liam. I can't stay here; I have a war to fight. And it's been a long time since I've remembered so vividly why I'm fighting this war. Why I have to fight evil every day. And Liam's even more lost than me… but I can't fix him. I've never been able to. All I can do is kill things that need to be killed. Save the world. The whole `Verse."

"It's an awfully big `Verse for one man to protect," she said, terrified now that she'd lose this man before she even got to really know him.

He grinned widely and arrogantly. "That's why it's a good thing I'm not a man, eh?"

There were many things she wanted to say. Strange and unfamiliar emotions washed through her, and she wanted desperately to say something to let him know how terribly lost she felt.

But he had put up shields of happy indifference and monstrousness, and she knew that even if he were to stay here, on this ship, she had lost whatever might have been there.