Fighting The Hollows... Part 3: ~ BETTER TO STAND AND FIGHT ~

About an hour or so later, Kaylee found herself pacing back and forth, nervousness, irritability, and fear her only company. River had left, went out into the woods. The light was just starting to die on the far off horizon. Through the widows, you could see the beginnings of what was probably gonna be a very beautiful sunset. Not that, things being what they were, Kaylee was in any sort of mood to appreciate it properly.

River had told her to stay put, but, crazy as she knew it was, Kaylee wanted to be out there, with her. It was all very unfamiliar, feeling this way about someone. She didn't have a name for it, or know how to explain it, even to herself, but with River, it was just... different. Complicated.

With the men she'd been with, it was never like that, never complicated, just fun and easy (at least when things were good between her and the man in question). There wasn't a lot to think about, least not this much. With River though, she felt nervous, and afraid for no good reason sometimes (though there was definitely a good reason for that now, which only made it worse). Her mind just wouldn't stop racing sometimes, thoughts she wasn't at all sure she wanted to have, but... River. Something about her, just... did the trick. Fit. Kaylee felt so wrapped up in her already, and, while she didn't know quite what to do with it yet, with all these feelings, she knew she didn't want it to stop. Didn't want for this not to have happened... Well, if it ended up them getting tortured and raped for days then killed by Reavers, then she imagined she'd mightily wish the crash hadn't happened, but then when would a person not regret being tortured, raped, and killed to death? So that didn't really rightly count, now did it?

She looked down at the gun in her hand. They said that, if it looked like you were done for anyways, was far better putting an end to yourself than letting the Reavers have you. The stories she'd heard, things she'd seen, she believed it. Still, she wasn't sure she'd be able to actually do it, if it came to that.

"Zuzhou de mingyun he ta de suoyou mafan de haizi..." She whispered to herself. She looked out the window and thought of River out there. Somehow, as wildly improbable as it seemed to think about in any rational way, Kaylee just had this feeling... that they'd be okay. That, somehow, someway, River actually would protect them both. One woman though, even a phenomenon like River, against a horde of Reavers she didn't know how many strong...? Any way she looked at it, no one in their right mind would give River more than a snowball's chance in the hot place a getting out of it in one piece. Anyone'd ever seen a Reaver in person'd be like to think so. Savage didn't even cover it. There was something just so... far... from anything human about them. Hollows, River'd called them, and, you'd have to admit, the name fit. Still though, Kaylee had the crazy thought that River would win somehow, and she was trying to just... hold onto that.

"I had any sense in my head, I woulda dragged her outa here anyway I could. Take our chances running." She muttered to herself a little ruefully, sitting down on the bed, head in her hands, her frustration getting the better of her.

"They're here now." Kaylee heard River's voice through the comm.

Kaylee was on her feet and over to the comm station in a flash. "River? River, you still there?" She sent back urgently. But there was no reply, just silence. She let loose a string of Chinese obscenities and kicked the wall, hurting her toes a little. Luckily, she'd been wearing boots.

She was almost regretting that she'd got the comms working again. Any message they sent wouldn't carry into space much past a low stationary orbit, the state their transmitter was in, but it meant that one of them could call back to the ship when they were out if they had a comm unit with them. Right now, that wasn't exactly a comfort... wasn't exactly not either, it was just...

She went back to the bed and sat on the edge and started to look intently at the shuttle's hatch, her gun in her hands. Course the traps were there still, but River'd told her where to walk to avoid them, in case Kaylee needed to get out. She could go outside. Of course, she wouldn't know where River was to look for her, but still...

Time seemed to pass slow and quick at the same time. So she wasn't really sure how long it was until a sudden, soft noise caused her to startle a little and get to her feet. The shuttle was supposed to be sound-proofed, but, since the crash, it wasn't no more. Wouldn't be again unless repairs were made to the hull.

There were more sounds then, sounds that definitely didn't belong to the forest outside. Not that there had been many forest sounds coming in that evening, just a soft wind in the trees sound. It was like all the animals knew something truly dangerous was coming, and they'd all been sensible and went to hole up somewheres 'til it was over.

She bit her lip a little, clenched her fists, said something her mother wouldna approved of in Chinese, marched across the cabin, and pressed the button to open the hatch.

The light from the sunset came in on the breeze right along with the sounds of fighting.

Kaylee's nerves were more on edge than she could ever remember them being. She knew this was stupid, knew she was probably more than likely gonna get herself killed, but it didn't matter, because for the life of her, she couldn't think of anything else to do but go out there. River might need her help.

It was strange, like her actions weren't even really her own. She knew that, as soon as the hatch finished going down, she'd run out there. She knew it. She couldn't even remember having decided she was going to do it, but she was going to. Was just a fact.

The hatch hadn't hit dirt yet when she saw River out there, surrounded by Reavers, men an women all a horror, and her feet were moving, gaining speed. The hatch hit dirt, and suddenly River turned and their eyes met and River was moving right at her, so fast, and she could swear there wasn't even the sound of her feet on the deck plating. Then River's arm caught her around the middle, twirled her around somehow and, faster than she could really understand how it happened, she found herself being carried, gentle feeling as a feather, in River's arms just like that, the other girl hardly having seemed to even break stride in the doing of it. Kaylee only had time for the brief thought of how in the heck did she do that?

Behind them there was the sound of screaming and, what sounded to be bloody mayhem, plain and simple. River was setting her down gently on the bed. "Stay. I won't die." She promised her simply. "Believe in me."

Kaylee watched a little dumbly as River turned around to face what was coming, reloading her gun. Kaylee couldn't help herself, she moved to look around River at what was happening. The Reavers had followed River through and were being cut down mercilessly by the, as it turned out, deadly efficient traps that River had set. There... There were a lot of them though, and the ones behind just seemed to climb over the bodies of the fallen. Some started to make their way through that way and Kaylee watched as River calmly and efficiently killed them, one shot each to the forehead, right dead center every time.

Before long though, River's gun ran out of ammunition and she had no time to reload again. River already had a short sword in one hand and now she tossed aside her gun and drew a machete from behind her. What was next were a series of swift, brutal strikes. River just seemed to, it was almost like a dance for her, one she had every move down pat to an then some. Watching her like that, Kaylee couldn't help but think that maybe... Maybe she'd had it backwards, and it was the Reavers who'd never had a chance, stead of the two of them.

One of the Reavers came at her, a woman with three small human skulls on a macabre necklace around her neck, cheeks slashed with scarred over cuts, eyes that sent a chill through her unlike anything Kaylee'd ever felt before. Almost without conscious thought, she found herself raising her gun to meet the threat. Time seemed to slow unnaturally and somehow she had the time to think, There's not enough time. She wouldn't get her gun raised and aimed before the Reaver would be on top of her. But, the next thing she knew, the Reaver woman was falling to the floor before her, her head sliced clean off. A few bits of blood sprayed Kaylee's face, and, absently, she thought, There's not enough blood... She'd seen heads lopped off before, and there was always more blood sprayed about than that. Had River really moved so fast?

She looked up and met River's eyes. River, standing there, dirty and bloodied, the only one sides her left alive apparently. She'd won. They were safe. And she'd kept her word... She hadn't died.

River turned and threw her machete, killing one last Reaver who'd been hurt but not killed by one of her traps, then turned back to her. Their eyes met again as River walked over to her then, dropping her last weapon carelessly on the floor before kneeling down in front of her. The look in her eyes was haunted... but also sure and hopeful. "Everything will be all right." River told her softly, simply. "It's over now."

Kaylee moved forward and was hugging River to her then mightily, a few tears falling down her cheeks and no words immediately coming to her lips.

"Kaylee..." River started to say.

But Kaylee backed away just enough to move in and kiss her girlfriend fiercely. River acted surprised and tensed up a little at first, but then relaxed into the kiss and returned it. When the kiss finally ended by seeming mutual consent, Kaylee found herself feeling a little lightheaded, her heart beating fast in her chest. She closed her eyes a moment and tried to steady herself. "I'm not sure I believe all that stuff that just happened really did, just so you know."

"That happens to me sometimes too. It can be kind frustrating when it happens unexpectedly." River replied, seemingly in all sincerity. "...So I can relate." She told her, those last wistful words she'd spoken just sort of fading away she they left her lips.

Kaylee smiled a little of a charmed smile and kissed her just lightly on the lips for but a second. "You're kind of really amazing, you know that... If I haven't said it before." She told her. "Thank you."

"What for?" River asked curiously.

"Saving our lives again, dummy." Kaylee told her. "It's getting to be a habit for you."

River simply looked at her curiously. "You're welcome, then." She said with just the beginning of a smile before she sat down on the floor and sighed, getting up and crawling up onto the bed. "I need to sleep now though, I think." She explained, yawning in an oddly cute way as she lay down on her side and closed her eyes.

Kaylee smiled a little to watch this and thought again just how amazing River was sometimes. All the inexplicable things she could do... but watching her falling off to sleep like that, she looked just like any normal woman. Well, she was also very pretty to look at, even with the blood and dirt and such, but still...

Kaylee sighed and forced herself to look over at the carnage that was piled up on the hatch and strewn about the cabin of the shuttle they called home now. "This is going to take forever to get clean..." She said to the room. And it was already starting to smell.

She didn't feel like it at all, but they had no place else to sleep or live and she knew she had to start cleaning this up... and hope she'd be able to hold her stomach while she did, because, as she got up to start doing that, she really was starting to feel like she might throw up.

And it wasn't as though they had so much in the way of food supplies that they could well afford her doing that, now did they?

Chinese translations:

"Zuzhou de mingyun he ta de suoyou mafan de haizi..." = "Curse fate and all its troublesome children..."

(please note: I'm only getting my Chinese from Google Translate, so I can't guarantee it's accurate at all)

to be continued

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