CW: implied child abuse, spousal abuse, trauma, PTSD, violence
Out of Gas (Part 2)
Kaylee's forehead felt hot and cold all at once. Everything went wrong. It all happened so fast. 'She breaks, you broke her.' Mal's voice echoed in her head. Suddenly she's 17 years old and hearing her mother's voice reverberate into her head. 'You'll never attract a good man. What use are you?' She's 20. She's cowering in the corner of the repair shop. 'We're gonna get kicked out of here. We had a good thing and you fucked it all up.' Kaylee grips her middle as the fist sank into her stomach. She's trapped. She's trapped. She's trapped.
"Hey you." Kaylee was pulled from the sharp pain of the strike by a voice that sounds like water trickling over rocks.
Kaylee's eyes snapped around to the hand resting on her shoulder.
"Inara?" Kaylee sniffed and blinked away the tears that were budding on her lower lids.
Inara gently lifted up a gauzy curtain next to her bed and guided Kaylee to the edge. The two women sat together. Inara carefully reached her hand out and slid it down Kaylee's arm, coming to carefully rest atop Kaylee's tensely gripped hand, their palms stacked lightly over Kaylee's belly. The distant pain dulling as the throb in Kaylee's temples counted the moments by.
"Is the bullet wound bothering you again?" Inara asked in a quiet voice.
Kaylee was taken aback briefly before she looked down to see her arm had been tightly wrapped around her middle in response to the punch that had landed years ago.
"Yeah," Kaylee lied. Guilt flared in the back of her mind. Guilt for the lie, guilt for not providing what Serenity needed from her, guilt for failing her captain and crew, and guilt for dooming them all to die alone in cold space.
Inara's other hand moved silently to Kaylee's cheek. Subtle warmth spread from her touch. Kaylee's spiraling mind slowed and came back to an ordered pace.
"We are going to figure this out." Inara whispered.
Kaylee blinked her eyes a few times and nodded. "Yeah." She managed. "We're gonna figure it out."
Jayne leaned against the bulkhead of the cramped cockpit in Inara's shuttle. He was careful not to touch the seat or any of the blinking buttons because Inara told him not to touch anything, and she scared him sometimes. He was feeling antsy. His joints had started to tingle if he held still too long. The spicy smells from the burning incense on the other side of the curtained doorway made his nose and eyes tickle with pinpricks of discomfort.
Jayne sighed irritably. The energy from the pill he took all those many hours ago was completely depleted. The weight of the day and the disaster and their shitty circumstances weighed heavy on his aching body. If he was back on the ship he'd pop another pill and keep working or pop a different pill and try to sleep. With luck he'd get a few hours before the nightmares returned. 'If I was back on the ship I'd be losing consciousness before real Death took me.' He reminded himself bitterly.
They were all pretty well fucked. The shuttle they were in was only good for short range and they were far from anything. They'd been broadcasting a general distress signal to dark space. At best they were doomed to die alone gasping for air. At worst they were going to attract any roving gang of criminals, scoundrels, and violent scum within signal range, up to and including Reavers. They were sitting pretty in a limited range vessel with no defensive or offensive capabilities. And it didn't take a genius to figure out how to track down their ship from their current location. The rest of Serenity and even the other shuttle would be easy pickings for anyone who decided to investigate the lone signal in the deep, dark silence. They were hanging all of their hopes for survival on the slimmest chance there was someone who would respond to that signal out of innocent curiosity or cautious benevolence. Both of which were in shockingly short supply in the universe.
Jayne's irritation burned in his body and he stepped away from the console. The blinking and glowing needles were all indicating worrisome facts about their current predicament. He wished he had his pills. The ones that would numb this feeling in his brain and allow him to push down the rising volume of static in his bones. Or the ones that would make his body feel hot and alive and give him the energy to push through the pain, physical and mental, and get the job done. Either bottle would be a gift right now.
They're all gonna die. His danger sense flared and Jayne inhaled silently and whipped his head toward the hatch. Instead of seeing an assailant approaching to slip a knife in between his ribs, he saw Inara.
"You're about to have a headache." Inara stepped past Jayne and slipped into the worn leather seat.
Jayne scowled. "You a seer now or somethin'? We have one of those already" If she hasn't died yet, his dark thoughts added.
Inara checked sensors and communications with practiced speed and efficiency. Jayne noted that she handled this shuttle in the same way he handled his guns. Seemingly content with what she found, Inara turned her gaze back to Jayne and twitched her cheek into a joyless grin.
"Not yet, I think I'll be leaving that to River." Inara let out the smallest of sighs.
"You're going to get a headache soon if you keep pacing around irritably. I dropped the oxygen levels and readjusted the life support. I'll stay awake and pilot my shuttle. You and Kaylee go take a nap. We should be able to keep the current heading for 52 hours before exhausting the scrubbers."
Inara turned her attention back to her dials and lights, monitoring the shuttle's sensors as the power levels adjusted to the new life support settings. Jayne blinked and his mind went quiet for a moment and the image of Kaylee's sleeping form filled his mind. His skin felt cold and clammy and then immediately hot and feverish.
What's wrong with you?
"What?" Jayne asked the room. He heard someone. Who said that?
"Go take a nap. Now." Inara's voice had a firmness that stirred something in the back of Jayne's mind.
Jayne is four years old. He and his mother had been playing in the grass. She was beautiful. The sun was shining on her soft auburn hair. It was falling loose from the braid in which she'd tried to contain her thick curls. The light caught in the loosened strands and lit up the texture of her crown. Her cheeks were rosy and round. Her lips stretched across her laughing face. There was a fleck of paint on her cheek and a smudge of color on her hand from the pastoral scene she painted. But now her painting was sitting ignored. In her hands she twisted the last yellow flower into the chain, drawn in a small circlet to form a flower crown. They had been playing "Royalty". His mother was a queen. Jayne was the little prince. His father -
Jayne snapped back into himself. He nodded and tried to slow his breathing to conserve air. Taking a nap was a good idea. Sleeping uses less oxygen. His muscles and joints complained with every step. The only bed in the shuttle was occupied by Kaylee. She had partially undressed, unzipping her coveralls and letting them fall around her waist. Jayne's eyes drifted slowly from her hips, down to her feet which were bare and tucked up snug below her bottom. Then up, up over the curve of her hip.
In a different time and place his body would be reacting to hers, but the buzzing in his head and weight of his limbs were tying him to the gravity of the situation.
Heh, gravity. "Who's there?"
Jayne was startled by the sound of his own voice. He had asked the question into the silence and was oddly comforted to hear no response but the low whirring of the shuttle's engines.
Jayne laughed and spun in circles with the yellow crown upon his shaggy dark hair. He was a prince of the woodland realm, the flowers in his hair were as good as gold and diamonds. Mother's musical voice joined in with his small sounds of joy and she took him by the hands. They danced in the tall grass and imagined a grand ball. Their small home was a castle and the plants and small creatures who burrowed in the yard were their subjects. Jayne was a good prince and would grow to be a good king to take care of his subjects. Jayne felt pride in his small chest.
His days were filled with laughter and sunshine.
In the summer the nights were warm and he didn't mind when his mother sent him out to collect water or to check on the bird's nests or rabbit warrens. She only asked him to do these night-time errands when Father was home between jobs. Jayne would be sleeping soundly when his mother would wake him by gently shaking his shoulder and whispering "Little Prince, you must check on the royal subjects." Jayne would rub the sleep from his eyes and quickly oblige. He would go make the rounds to all his favorite spots. He sometimes would see the animals in the dark, but most of the time he never saw anything. He'd return home to see his parents' shadows moving across the lit windows. Sometimes he'd hear raised voices, or rhythmic beating against the thin walls, but not always. Sometimes his parents would just be talking quietly. He could see their shadows dancing around in the light from the fire burning low in the center of the one-room cabin.
Soon enough his father would be gone again on another job. He'd sit Jayne down and tell him to be the man of the house in his absence. Jayne loved his father and would promise to do a good job and take care of his mother and their home.
Jayne shook his head to chase away the bright colors that swam around his father's face in his mind, and immediately regretted it as a stabbing pain burst through his temples. Sneering against the pain he rubbed his face. Sleep, he needed to sleep. Because you're weak. There it was again. The voice was closer than before, right over his shoulder.
Jayne shifted his body instinctively and reached to grab the assailant around the neck. His body moved like he was trying to swim in honey. With great effort his arm swung slowly and stupidly through the empty air next to him. There was no one there. No one has been whispering to him.
"No one's there." Jayne murmured aloud to the bedroom. Kaylee on the bed let out a light sigh in response before her breath returned to its quiet rhythm.
Jayne's limbs felt heavy and stiff as he slowly pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the foot of the bed. He unclasped his belt and removed the variety of small weapons he had attached to his body. He laid these out on the floor next to the bed, reverently. Even in low oxygen he'd be ready if violence was needed.
Taking care to not disturb Kaylee's sleeping form, Jayne lowered himself to the bed. He'd left his pants in place and his boots on, laces loosened slightly for comfort. Their chances of being overtaken and boarded by scavengers or hunters were still too high to disregard. Careful to leave his booted feet off of the end of the bed, Jayne rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling of Inara's bedroom. This is where she did a lot of her companion work. Jayne could feel curiosity tugging at one side of his attention while the exhaustion in his bones and muscles pulled him down. His eyes fell closed and he was asleep.
Jayne was eight years old. He didn't play royalty any more. His mother still used the phrase "check your subjects" when she needed him to get out of the house at night. That only happened when his father was on moon with them. At eight he was old enough to recognize that the game wasn't for fun, it was to keep him safe. Sometimes his dad was fun and he'd tell Jayne stories about his adventures in the stars. But more and more he was quiet and sullen, only to have shouting outbursts which would scare birds from the trees. He was still gone for weeks or months at a time, but his time home was no longer marked by joy. Instead it was confusing and sometimes frightening.
Jayne had been pretending to sleep, his back was to the center of the room and he had his blanket pulled tight around himself. His knuckles were white. His father had been home for two weeks. He spent much of the day sleeping off the night before's drinking, but now it was night. He had been in town and had stumbled back to their little home. Jayne could hear him approaching the door. His steps were arrhythmic and betrayed his inability to balance. Jayne listened as his mother rose from her bed and went to the door to help him in. Jayne could smell him as she helped him walk across the room to the bed. Jayne felt like his stomach was in knots. He just wanted the sun to be up and his father to be asleep. Jayne heard his father's slurred accusations and his mother's whispered responses. He heard him call his mother words he didn't know the meaning of, but they sounded cruel in his mouth. Jayne's fists were clenched as he heard his father's voice rise. His mother's voice also rose, but not to shout.
"Jayne, son, go check your subjects." She must have known he was awake. Jayne jumped out of bed and ran for the still open door. He didn't close it behind him and the orange light from the low fire in the hearth spilled into the darkness in a sharp triangle on the ground. Jayne ran, barefoot, in a straight line from the cabin. The dark trees were dancing ahead of him, waiting to engulf him in the safety of darkness.
Jayne jerked awake. The buzzing in his head had returned immediately as soon as he rose to consciousness. Opening his eyes, he saw what had awoken him. Kaylee had rolled over and thrown her arm across his chest. He could smell her hair as she nuzzled against his shoulder in her sleep. At this point in withdrawal from the red pills Jayne expected his skin to feel like it was on fire, or possibly biting insects swarming on him, but instead the contact with Kaylee was a soothing silence in the cacophony of his senses. Slowly, as to not wake her, Jayne slid his own arm up his body and rested it alongside Kaylee's, across his chest. He allowed himself to enjoy the sensation as he drifted back into sleep.
Jayne was fifteen years old. Lana was four and sitting in the grass outside of their cabin. His mother was trying to rehang a window shutter that kept coming loose. The wood was too rotten to hold the screws for the hinges. He twisted the last yellow flower into the circlet and presented it to his little sister. Her eyes were large and so dark brown they appeared to be deep pools. Her face lit up with excitement as Jayne carefully set the crown of yellow flowers onto her head.
"You are the princess of the woodland realm," he told her, "you are to keep all of your subjects safe. Your kingdom has birds and frogs and butterflies and rabbits, all sorts of beings that will live out their whole lives right here, with you and Mamma."
"And you too Jayne?" Her little voice made his heart swell.
"You take care of your subjects," he said to her, "and I'll keep you safe. Promise."
"I promise too." Her small voice was earnest and her face solemn.
All Jayne could think in the moment, though, was that Lana was too weak to leave the cabin in the darkness alone when their father came home. When he would get angry she would not be able to go seek the safety of the tall weeds and buzzing flies, the anonymity beyond the dark tree-line as he had so many times before.
Lana leaned forward in her blanket nest to watch a beetle climb up a tall blade of grass. Jayne absently rearranged the blanket around her legs to help keep her sitting upright and then rose to his feet. His father was home again. It had been too long, going on two months. The sun was up so his father was down, sleeping off the substantial portion of his last paycheck that he drank in town the night before. Jayne felt the frustration boiling in his chest. Their house was literally falling apart around them and his father didn't even care. He didn't care about Jayne or Lana. He didn't care that there weren't jobs on this moon for an artist from a central planet, or that his wife was turning to trades and bartering with dangerous people in order to get Lana's medicine. Jayne cared, though. His father had a job lined up, leaving in just a few weeks. Just a few weeks more and they'd be able to breathe again.
Jayne approached his mother who was holding the window shutter in one hand and trying to line up the new hinge screws so as to catch the most solid part of the wooden window frame. His mother smiled at him as he silently took hold of the shutter for her. She finished re-attaching the hinge and sighed unhappily at how the shutter hung unevenly. "It'll work fine," he told her. "And it won't fall off again in the wind." He said this with a grin, but his mother did not return the smile.
"I should get a job off world." He said. His mother stiffened at his words. "I mean it, ma, if he can do it so can I." Jayne jerked his head at the closed window, indicating the snoring man inside. "And I'll bring the whole check home to you and Lana, we'll fix up the house." His mother had tears in her eyes as she reached up and cupped his face in her hands.
"You are too young to do what he does." She said, her voice cracking slightly. "You don't understand-" she faltered before steadying herself. "I don't want you to become someone who hurts people the way he hurts people." She said quietly. "There's too much hurt in the galaxy already." Jayne heard her response but did not hear her words. His teenage angst rose in his thin chest. He turned away from his mother and stormed away. He grabbed the hunting rifle from its place inside the doorway and set off toward the woods to find something to feed his family.
That night as he watched Lana eat her fill of the greasy rabbit stew, Jayne felt proud. When his father awoke to complain about how little meat there was in the gruel he felt his pride turn sour.
"You could have helped." Jayne heard his voice escape from his mouth. He didn't even think the words, they just came out.
"What was that, boy?" His father's voice had a sharp edge of violence, even through the haze of his ever-present hangover.
Jayne, surprised at his own courage or stupidity, repeated himself. "I said you could have helped. You could have hunted today. Or helped fix the house up. Or done ANYTHING to help."
"Jayne," his mother said sharply, there was fear in her eyes.
Lana was watching them with her deep dark eyes.
His father rose from the rough table and started sliding the belt from his pants. "You've got a lot of nerve, boy."
Jayne didn't remember getting the rifle. He didn't remember pulling the trigger. He didn't remember the sound of the gun going off. The first thing he did remember was staggering outside and finding his mother and sister. Jayne didn't see his mother scoop up Lana and dash out the door. When Jayne emerged his mother was stone-faced and Lana was crying. Somehow Jayne knew that she had no idea what he had done. Lana wasn't afraid of him. She was afraid because of the chaos of the moments which were now passed.
"I promise to keep you safe." Jayne said to her. She nodded and hugged him. Her thin arms wrapped around him and she pressed her check against his chest. To his horror there were flecks of blood on her cheek when she looked up at him again.
Jayne jerked awake for a second time. Kaylee was sitting up and trying to steady herself next to the bed, her face was pale and she looked a little ill from the low oxygen.
"I had an idea! It might work to buy Serenity more time. We need to go back." Kaylee's eyes were bright with excitement and her cheeks were twinged in color that stood out against the milky pale of her face. Kaylee set off toward Inara's cockpit.
Jayne dressed slowly to conserve air. When he made it to the cockpit Inara and Kaylee were both busy. Inara at the helm and Kaylee making quick adjustments under the dash and chattering away about her plan to reroute two other areas in Serenity's engine room in order to take the pressure off of the damaged parts. Then using the new part the she's building using mostly nonessential… and one or two essential… bits of the shuttle ("Don't worry, I'll pull those out once we're docked to Serenity!") Kaylee was confident that she'll get Serenity limping again. Maybe even for long enough to reach safe harbor in a trade route or station outpost.
Jayne looked at the women's faces and saw hope and steely resolve. There wasn't much of a chance, but Jayne was there to keep them safe.
