![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
biz-munchee.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
remixredux08Title: ...and When You Can't Crawl,... (Bring the Boys Back Home Remix)
Author: Lyrastar (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
watergal)
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Rating: R
Pairing: Mal/Zoë/Wash
Original Story: "You Hold" byinalasahl
Part one.
"All right, you'll feel some pressure. Try to relax your hip and thigh muscles, and it won't be as bad." Over his instrument, Simon looked down at the expanse of Inara's skin laid bare below him.
"I wish you'd been there on Ariel," Inara said as she settled her hips.
"I was on Ariel. Big stick." Simon jabbed the trocar into her iliac crest, and despite the Algliocaine, she winced. "Try to keep the muscles loose. Contracting them makes it worse for you."
She closed her eyes, her pinched face smoothed out, and Simon's syringe began to fill with red marrow.
"Good," he said. "Almost done."
"I mean with me--for the evaluation last year. The Alliance doctors were not only disheartening, but painful and dehumanizing as well."
"I know what you meant. I had other things on my mind that day, but I do wish that you'd told us sooner. As it was, it was almost too late." Simon kept his eye on the level rising against the syringe barrel calibrations.
Careful not to move, Inara made a rueful sound. "What was it that they used to say with their friend--Tracey? 'When you can't run anymore, you crawl, and when you can't crawl anymore you find someone to carry you.' Perhaps the proudest amongst us are unwilling to be carried until they are entirely unable to crawl."
"Well," Simon pulled out the trocar and slid a gauze pad over top of the puncture wound. He held pressure with a white-gloved thumb. "As one of the formerly too proud to ask for help, I feel obliged to warn you: if you're going to stick to the hard line, you'd better count on a lot of luck."
He smiled at her. "Hold this."
She replaced her thumb where his had been, and he moved to place the marrow sample in the processor.
"So, it'll be almost six months until the transplant graft matures. Until then, you'll need to be under relatively continual medical care and observation. What are your plans for that?" He turned back around and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
"I assume any of the core worlds would have adequate facilities."
"Oh, more than adequate," Simon agreed.
"But they wouldn't know my case."
"I'd provide records. Stem cell transplants are routine. The only catch is finding a donor. It usually has to be a first degree relative." Simon peeked at the processor. "If this layers out as well as it's beginning to, I'd call you stable for transfer as soon as three days."
Simon didn't lie; he really wasn't very good at talking to women. Inara knew she was being manipulated, but she also got the message. And her own nose was getting pretty sore from as many times as she'd bitten it off for the spite of her own face.
"Or," she said, giving almost as poor a performance as Simon had, "I suppose I could stay for a while, if I weren't too much of an inconvenience to your other work."
"Inconvenience? You must be joking. Most fugitive, unlicensed physicians only dream of one day being put on retainer to the upper social echelons."
She gave a gentle laugh. "Then, I thank you. And I accept. At least for a few weeks. We'll see how it goes."
Simon gave her an odd look. "Weeks?"
"To be frank: I'm not sure that Mal is comfortable with me here. Things could become awkward again. None of us want that."
"Mm." Simon put a pressure plaster on the biopsy site and pulled the brocade shrift down to cover her pelvis and legs. "Having a critical illness often gives one tunnel vision: the sense that everything does or should revolve around us."
She flipped over on the table and gaped at him in a rather impressive display of indignation, considering the circumstances.
Simon just shrugged. "Mal hasn't been comfortable since I've known him. With you on board or off. Zoë told me some things from the war, but I've wondered if it doesn't go further back than that. I hear that he was raised by single mother, who ran a veritable black-market cattle cartel."
"I shouldn't be surprised. Leaf--tree. Dung--sow." Inara made a dry noise and a dropping gesture with her hand.
"Well," Simon continued, "there are certain theories about children--particularly male children--of absent fathers and domineering mothers..."
"Yes, I've heard them." Inara gave him a sly smile.
"I've often thought that might have something to do with why someone like Mal, who could succeed at any life he wanted in conventional society, would choose the counter-culture in the first place. Join the Browncoats. Turn his back on everything. Fight everything and everyone conformist."
"Did you ever ask him?" Sarcasm gone, her tone was one of raw curiosity now.
"No," Simon chuckled. "Although my tastes have broadened considerably out here, I've yet to develop one for being punched in the nose. The point being that Mal's not comfortable, period. You might consider something that uncommonly beautiful women seldom do: his discomfiture has absolutely nothing to do with you. He's not comfortable in his own skin. If it's any consolation, recently he's been better and better each passing week. Especially since you've been back."
Inara still looked unconvinced.
"Really."
The processor dinged and broke the moment.
Simon turned and scanned the report. "A-plus. You can go. See you for a blood sample on Wednesday."
Inara slid from the table and gathered herself. She paused quite deliberately at the infirmary hatch, causing Simon to cast clinical eyes over her again. He saw nothing new.
"Can you keep a secret?" she asked.
"I hope so. I took an oath saying I would. Of course, they made us recite it aloud from a Hanyu text, so who knows what I actually said?" It sounded flat to his ears, like the all-purpose bedside manner joke that it was.
She ignored him. "I love this ship." Under long lashes, she stroked the infirmary bulkhead.
Simon blinked at her intensity. "That's not an uncommon reaction to a terminal illness: to have everything seem unusually precious and special."
Inara shook her head. "That's not it. 'Zi zhi zi ming.' That's one of the first tenets of Companion training."
"Well," Simon drew in a huge breath and blew it out. He plucked the plastic cassette of marrow results out of the analyzer and turned it over in his hand. "Apparently you're no longer dying, so if you stay, you'll be able to find out which of us is right."
She drew a billow of fabric around her shoulders and gave him a sweetly supercilious smile. "Why, I am, of course."
He chuckled softly. "Wednesday. Same time, same place. Don't forget."
"Not if I have to crawl." In a swirl of silk, she swept from the room.
The door unlocked with a click. Two officers and two privates in full uniform with caps and side arms came to escort him.
"Ready?"
"Always." He was dressed in only a lab/infirmary robe and geta. The physical sensations of it reminded him of the abbey garb. How easy that was to become accustomed to. The physicality of it brought back more. There was something very powerful behind the idea of uniforms--dressing for a mindset. How easy it was to convince the brain that if your being is outfitted one way, that's the way you must feel. And be inclined to act.
They led him down the hallway and out to a hangar bay.
The major ripped the two I.V. catheters from his arms. Blood began to spew forth, and Book whirled into an attack stance.
The four armed men stood appearing amused, but at ease.
"Press your sleeve to it," said the colonel. "We need your 'escape' to look uncontrived."
Book did so, willing his mind back to the matter at hand. "Wait," he said. "I'm going to need fruit."
"You'll be in hibernation." The major shot a meaningful look to the colonel.
No, they didn't trust him.
Of course, they didn't trust anyone, so that didn't necessarily mean much.
"It's not for me. Like you say, I know them. I need this." For some reason, this tiny detail of the double-cross meant the most to him. Enough to risk pressing his luck. "Bait," he added calculating the effect of the word on such men.
"Type?" the colonel asked.
"Whatever's fresh, plentiful and appealing."
"Now, what kind of way is that for a shepherd to talk?" The colonel gave a vulgar laugh, but seemed to relax and sent an underling off.
He lay down in the tube and shifted the padding under his head. It was still tender at the surgical spot. He positioned himself on the egg-crate padding as to avoid cramps and pressure sores. It felt odd, there was so much less of him than there had been two months ago. He could only hope it was the correct parts that he had chosen to leave behind.
The private returned with a large sack. "Asian pears?"
"Perfect." He nestled the bag careful in the folds of his gown so the fruit would neither bruise nor be smeared with the bloody ooze. He filled his head with the thoughts of the nine sitting around the galley table, passing around slices and stories.
He'd done this enough to know that like most things in life, Bifidan dreams were mostly what you decided to make them.
"Ready?" the medic asked.
"Always."
The hypo hissed into his neck, and Book's body crumpled, exanimate.
The past two days had been more exciting than average, largely due to some poorly guarded credits of previously disputed ownership that now lay secured in one of the more difficult to find cargo bins. Things had settled down to smoothish sailing, and now some compensatory bunk time for Mal, Jayne and Zoë had begun.
"Captain," Wash called down to their bunk. Mal answered. From long experience on the other side of this equilibrium, Wash could imagine Zoë, eyes closed and pretending to sleep but listening and marking every word. "I'm picking up something between us and an outer moon."
"Care to be more specific, or are you thinking I've suddenly turned reader too?"
Mal looked so cute with bed hair.
"Working on it. But here's a xiao kuai le de jin zhan worth getting up for: whatever it is has homing nav software set for Serenity's specific engine cycle."
"Qiu!" Mal swore. "I'll be right there."
"So, what do you know?" Mal leaned over Wash's shoulder, his face and neck smelling of Zoë's sex. Sweet Pete, that turned him on, but now was neither the place nor the time for that.
In the co-pilot's seat beside him, River giggled.
"Mind your own business," Wash and Mal both said in unison.
Wash forced all thoughts back to the console readings. "Tiny. A suit or an escape tube. Minimal life support's active; it's on course for us. I still can't figure how they managed to track us. I don't think I could have programmed that. Kaylee, I'm sure, could have figured it--"
"Wake her up."
River had already opened the call down to Kaylee's cabin.
"If it launched from that moon with constant acceleration, it's been traveling for three days."
"With no independent propulsion and only minimal life support, that would take a lot of gorram faith," Mal said.
At the last word, they all exchanged glances.
"The Israelites wandered the desert for forty years on faith," River said.
They blinked at her.
"'course, that's only a story."
"You don't think--?"
"I'm here." Wash rubbed his chest. "Why not? The preacher started out with more faith than me. Only seems fair."
"Bring it on board," Mal ordered. He started down to the cargo bay.
"What's up, Cap'n?" Wearing Simon's extravagant, tailed silk pajama top and a pair of bunny slippers, Kaylee crossed paths with Mal on the stairwell to the bridge.
"That's a good question, little one." Mal tousled her hair.
"Aaaaooooooooooooo." Face pressed to the porthole, River howled at the moon.
It was indeed a transport tube. Insulated and warmed to 34°C, oxygen supply for about two hundred hours, Alliance markings on the side.
"Matthew," River pronounced.
At the name, Wash creased his face. "Was there another man when I was dead?" He tried to get Zoë's attention, but she just brushed him off.
Simon ran a scanner over the tube. "Nothing, but if someone's been put into a proto-coma or given a hibernetic, I wouldn't be able to get a reading."
"River?" Mal looked to her.
She ran her hand over the markings. "Wolf in sheep's clothing," was all she said.
Mal combed a hand through his bed hair and winced. "Jing tsai de huangyu nao dai! I've been up for two days straight--"
"If they gave him a drug that shut down his higher cortical functions, she couldn't read through it either, Captain," Simon volunteered.
Jayne cocked his weapon and trained it on the tube. "I say, let her rip. If his brain's asleep, his trigger finger's asleep too."
"Ain't always been proved so," said Zoë.
"Shepherds separate sheep from the wolves," said River.
From up on the catwalk, Inara looked down on them, her robe clutched to her middle.
Mal glanced around the bay. Seven faces looked to him where once there had been eight. Where there should rightly be eight.
"Open her up," he said.
Kaylee and Wash set to it.
Jayne raised the weapon's sight to his eye.
The hatch released with a pop, and the gasses equilibrated and shut off in a hiss. There Book lay in a terry-white medical robe, his shock of hoary hair fuzzier and more unruly than ever.
Mal blinked.
Kaylee gasped.
From up on the catwalk, Inara pulled her robe over her chest.
"Sheep's clothing," River mumbled, but her words were lost in the confusion.
"I'm pretty sure he's alive," said Simon. "He's been given something like Bifidan."
River ran slender fingers through kinky shocks of hair. Almost immediately, she hit the surgical depression in the skull. She threw her head back, and she howled.
"River." Simon restrained her at the waist. "It's all right. It’s just hair." Simon tried to explain, "It's his orders--"
"His orders," River repeated, with a slightly demented sounding giggle.
"That's right, mei-mei," Simon soothed. Although she now sounded more hysterical than frightened, anything was better than that wail. Tentatively, he let her go.
He had a worse off patient to tend to.
Turning his attentions back to the tube, Simon hefted Book by the ankles. "Help me get him into the infirmary," he called to the rest of the group.
River walked with them, her hand on the matted and discolored sleeve. "Blood of the lamb," she mumbled.
Although, all their attention given to Book, no one paid her any mind.
Reversing the hibernation drug was simple. Much simpler than bringing someone with those kind of injuries back to life. Trauma medicine had advanced much in the year since he left, Simon thought.
Either that or the Alliance was keeping more alarming secrets from the populace. Perhaps River was right about their job on Serenity not being done.
But Simon didn't have time for that train of thought now. Not all the scars on the Shepherd's body were ones he remembered from the Haven attack. Many were much fresher. And they appeared to have been inflicted in a deliberate pattern. Simon traced the arms of a stellate one out from the xiphoid where they radiated like some subcutaneous, radioactive starfish and wondered what the hell could have done such a thing.
"Torture," Mal said. He recognized all the marks. Many he bore himself, but the latest and greatest advancements--the ones he didn't sport--he'd seen on Wash's body and left their bunk for his old cabin when it looked like his friend might need to cry in his wife's arms.
Butt-fucking is one thing, but some things real men just don't do together.
Eventually he'd heard the story behind all of them--when the time seemed right.
"'fraid I told them a good bit about what I knew of your operation. And your plans." Book met Mal's eyes, and the infirmary went silent but for the clinical beeping of Simon's machines.
"Hell, I told them everything I could think of," Wash burst in with clearly strained cheer. "From my childhood best friend's hiding place for his allowance, to the way Zoë likes her tea, to the exact plan for getting the news of Miranda out. Except that we didn't have one, so there wasn't so much there to tell. Then things I just made up. Anything I could think of. Anything they wanted to hear. I would have told them anything at all to make it stop."
River howled.
"Yeah, like that," said Wash, rubbing his nearer ear.
"It's not his fault, Captain," Simon said. "With the drugs they have, the mind control, they can induce about anything. Look what they did to River. You don't need me to convince you it's no one's fault, do you?"
"It's someone's fault all right," said Mal through tight lips. "But no one in this gorram room."
"Woulda been their only reason to bring you back." Zoë said it looking at Book, but Wash moved a little closer to her.
"Then it was worth it," said Kaylee brightly. "I mean, the secrets, not the torture." From her seat near the infirmary table, she offered Book a sympathetic look.
"I've heard tell of much worse." Book squeezed her hand.
"After you reached Miranda, they lost interest in me." Book continued with his tale. "Seemed to have more important things on their mind. I wasn't under much guard. Seemed to think a preacher wasn't much of a security threat--"
"Imagine that."
"--so I had fair little trouble getting out."
"Something they teach at the abbey?" Jayne snarked, a 10-kilo dumbbell in his hand. After taking more than his share of upper body hits on Miranda, he'd bought a fancy set to build back up. Like a kid with a shiny new toy, he sat on a folding metal infirmary bench as if waiting for Book to get better to come out and play.
"Lions' dens and such," said Book. "You never know what will come in handy when. Speaking of--" Book reached under his robe.
"Whoa, now!" Jayne backed off. "If you're goin' all 'rods into serpents' on us..."
"Jayne--"
"Nothing of the sort. But I do intend to pay my passage." From an inside pocket, Book pulled out a burgeoning cloth sack and passed it to Kaylee. "As I remember your terms, this should be a fair start."
She opened it. "Pears! Xing fu!" With ecstatic abandon, she sniffed the sack and tossed the most perfect one to River.
"Passengers pay before they get off," Mal said. "Crew stay and earn their keep. Soon as they're able. Doc, let me know when that is. There's important crime to be done, and we'll need all hands. Bad enough we got one too worried about her fingernails to pitch in.
"Wash, you have the bridge. I'm going back to my bunk." Mal grabbed a pear, yawned, and sauntered out of the infirmary with Wash not far behind.
"Me too," Jayne announced. "Back to my bunk, that is. Alone. Not his...theirs. Whatever, I'm not."
All eyes were on him.
"Gorram it!" Jayne blurted. Cradling his dumbbell, he stormed out.
"So, what else did I miss while I was out of the world this time?" Book elbowed himself a little farther up on the infirmary bed to watch Kaylee make goo-goo eyes over the fresh fruit.
"Would you stay still flat, please, Shepherd?" Simon called the order over his shoulder as he reviewed some tests. "There's something on your head scan I don't understand. I think it would be better if you lay still."
Obediently, Book slid back down.
"Oh, not much," said Kaylee with her trademark cheerfulness. She took a bite and waited till it was almost down to go on. "River's a full-blown reader, but other'n that, she's all better." She looked over to the corner where River was studying the stem of the Asian pear through an anoscope. "Well, at least most days. Wash was dead, but he's better now too. 'course, I guess you know how that is."
"Might've heard a story like that before."
If Kaylee caught the double reference, she skipped right over it. "The cap'n and Wash and Zoë are sexing--"
"Pardon?" Book started to jerk his head up before he remembered.
"Well, really it's more the cap'n, Zoë and Wash." In deliberate order, Kaylee played connect the three dots in the air with her fingertip. "If you know what I mean. At least I think that's how it works. Tho' with the cap'n, you can never be sure."
"Had it right the first time," River mumbled from her countertop perch. She put down the anoscope and slid the pear down her shirt like a lopsided breast implant.
"That's all right." Book raised a palm in the 'versal gesture of 'enough.' "I've either been out of the world a little too long or not quite long enough to care for exact details on that one. Next?"
"Well, Simon and me are sexing too. Oh, and the big one!" Kaylee brightened. "Inara was dying, but the cap'n tracked down her mei yong de selang of a father, Jayne cut off one of his testicles and Simon put part of it in her to save her life."
"Really?" Book rolled his eyeballs toward Simon.
"Stem cells," Simon muttered absently, still looking at the scan, not his patient. "Please, hold still."
"So that just goes to show that everyone is good for something after all. 'tho he wasn't what you'd call real happy 'bout the forced donation. But the cap'n convinced him to see it his way."
"Imagine that."
"I think Inara has a little crush on Jayne after the way he fought for her against that se mi mi de ren so-called father of hers." Kaylee leaned her head down to Book with the intimation.
"Really?" Book's eyes widened.
From the distance came a crash that sounded a lot like a full barbell rack and a muffled "Gorramit!"
"A very little crush," said Kaylee. "But, little things do grow, don't they?" she said, with a flicker of the eyelids in Simon's direction.
River looked down her shirt.
Kaylee wiped pear juice from her chin and continued in a different tone. "What else? Serenity got a new ion conversion pump. The cap'n was gonna start a suicidal revolution against the Alliance with the five of us and a few friends but changed his mind and decided to become an agricultural blockade runner instead, and I think that's about it."
Book closed his eyes and chuckled quietly. "Sounds like I landed on the right ship."
"Clever your using Serenity's Chou wave output to do that. None like it since I jury-rigged the compression coil. No one else woulda known that, 'cept someone who'd been on her. Good thinking." She punched him in the arm.
Without turning, Simon pointed to a head scan. "Shepherd, there's a metal thing in your skull. On top of your brain. I don't know what it is."
"Likely from the Alliance attack on Haven, I reckon. Can you get it out?"
"No." Eyes to his tests instead of his patient, Simon missed the curiously nonchalant tone "Whatever it is, it's not shrapnel. It looks electronic. And intentionally implanted."
River rolled her eyes. "My brother is such a boob."
Book made his tone firm, deliberate now. "As I said: likely from the enemy attack. Can you take it out?"
Now Simon turned.
Kaylee had ceased eating. Her gaze darted between them both.
"I think I should wake the captain," said Simon.
"Boob is palindrome: it appears the same from either direction." River shoved the pear to the other side of her chest, but it rolled out of her chemise, onto the floor, and under the infirmary bed. No one bothered to track where it landed.
"Do whatever you think is right, of course," said Book. "But I suspect that getting it out sooner instead of later would be best for us all. And happy as I am to be here, don't care to spend the rest of my days laid out on my back. So, can you remove it?"
Simon wet his lips. "Easily. The insertion burr hole is still open, and it's only gelled to the surface of the cerebrum, not implanted."
"Might want to drop it in some strong acid or oxidizing solution straight away when you get it out."
"I've got a jar of carbolic in the stern," Kaylee volunteered, the half-eaten Asian pear long forgotten.
"That'll do," said Book.
Kaylee jogged off toward the engine room.
Simon took a hypo of Algliocaine and pressed it to the occipital nerve. "One day I'd love to hear the whole story." He parted the shepherd's unshorn hair over the area of the foreign body.
"And one day I'd love to forget it," said Book, just before Simon paralyzed him with a second hypo.
River hopped down from her seat and tip-toed over to Book's other side. She folded one thick, gnarled hand in her thin pale one. With her other hand, she combed searching fingers though his hair. "Sheep's clothing," she murmured to no one in particular.
Simon stopped and turned to her with irritation. "River, please, the sterile field--" But where her fingers displaced the thinning hair, he saw the scars where other surgeries had been done.
"Don't ask him. You don't want to know." Silently, she held Book's hand through the rest of the procedure.
Simon removed a thin computer chip. It made a terrible screech when removed from the body. Simon held it to the light to study it, and the noise became louder. He had never seen the like.
"The howling's stopped," said River. She beamed a radiant smile and began to hum a Chinese tune.
Simon dropped it into the jar of acid and quickly closed the lid.
"The operation was a complete success," said Simon when Book came around again. He held up the little jar. "I'd give you the souvenir, but it dissolved completely. There's nothing left to see."
"Suits me fine that way," said Book. "May I--?" He gestured to the floor and the pile of clothing Wash had scrounged up.
"Sure. I pronounce you ship-shape." Simon crossed arms.
"So, what's our first crime?" Book asked Kaylee as he slipped pants on under the gown.
"Earthworms and slugs. Big fat ones to develop soil. Athens and all its moons are desperate for 'em, and we fell into news of a huge stock of 'em on Hera. We were on our way there when we ran into you. I hope we've got time for some fishing 'fore we make Athens. Back home, we used to dig up these night crawlers and--"
Book stopped, mid-leg.
"Bait," said River.
"You bet," Kaylee agreed. "Best this side of Sihnon. We used to catch gigantic bass and trout with 'em. I'll take you. If our ju tou of a captain lets us have shore time."
"We're en route back there?" Book asked.
"Uh-huh. Wash says planetfall in less than thirty hours, lessen we run into any more transport tubes long the way."
"Doctor, I think you were right. I think we should talk to the captain right now." Book fastened the trousers and slipped into his pair of geta.
"No fishing," said River, with a wistful glance to Kaylee.
"Figures. Such is the life of crime." Kaylee sighed. Not unpredictably, she brightened almost straight away. "At least we'll always have pears! We didn't; but now we do." Slopping a pear-flavored smooch on Simon's cheek, she picked up the sack and skipped off towards the kitchen.
Simon shook his head. "Definitely the right ship."
"Yep," Book agreed. He pushed the jar of acid to the back of the counter.
"Yep." River picked another pear and slipped it into the front of her panties this time. With an odd dancing shuffle, she drifted out of the infirmary.
Running into her into the passageway, Jayne did a double-take, veered into his cabin, and sealed and bolted the hatch from the inside.
Author: Lyrastar (
watergal)Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
Rating: R
Pairing: Mal/Zoë/Wash
Original Story: "You Hold" by
inalasahlPart one.
"All right, you'll feel some pressure. Try to relax your hip and thigh muscles, and it won't be as bad." Over his instrument, Simon looked down at the expanse of Inara's skin laid bare below him.
"I wish you'd been there on Ariel," Inara said as she settled her hips.
"I was on Ariel. Big stick." Simon jabbed the trocar into her iliac crest, and despite the Algliocaine, she winced. "Try to keep the muscles loose. Contracting them makes it worse for you."
She closed her eyes, her pinched face smoothed out, and Simon's syringe began to fill with red marrow.
"Good," he said. "Almost done."
"I mean with me--for the evaluation last year. The Alliance doctors were not only disheartening, but painful and dehumanizing as well."
"I know what you meant. I had other things on my mind that day, but I do wish that you'd told us sooner. As it was, it was almost too late." Simon kept his eye on the level rising against the syringe barrel calibrations.
Careful not to move, Inara made a rueful sound. "What was it that they used to say with their friend--Tracey? 'When you can't run anymore, you crawl, and when you can't crawl anymore you find someone to carry you.' Perhaps the proudest amongst us are unwilling to be carried until they are entirely unable to crawl."
"Well," Simon pulled out the trocar and slid a gauze pad over top of the puncture wound. He held pressure with a white-gloved thumb. "As one of the formerly too proud to ask for help, I feel obliged to warn you: if you're going to stick to the hard line, you'd better count on a lot of luck."
He smiled at her. "Hold this."
She replaced her thumb where his had been, and he moved to place the marrow sample in the processor.
"So, it'll be almost six months until the transplant graft matures. Until then, you'll need to be under relatively continual medical care and observation. What are your plans for that?" He turned back around and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
"I assume any of the core worlds would have adequate facilities."
"Oh, more than adequate," Simon agreed.
"But they wouldn't know my case."
"I'd provide records. Stem cell transplants are routine. The only catch is finding a donor. It usually has to be a first degree relative." Simon peeked at the processor. "If this layers out as well as it's beginning to, I'd call you stable for transfer as soon as three days."
Simon didn't lie; he really wasn't very good at talking to women. Inara knew she was being manipulated, but she also got the message. And her own nose was getting pretty sore from as many times as she'd bitten it off for the spite of her own face.
"Or," she said, giving almost as poor a performance as Simon had, "I suppose I could stay for a while, if I weren't too much of an inconvenience to your other work."
"Inconvenience? You must be joking. Most fugitive, unlicensed physicians only dream of one day being put on retainer to the upper social echelons."
She gave a gentle laugh. "Then, I thank you. And I accept. At least for a few weeks. We'll see how it goes."
Simon gave her an odd look. "Weeks?"
"To be frank: I'm not sure that Mal is comfortable with me here. Things could become awkward again. None of us want that."
"Mm." Simon put a pressure plaster on the biopsy site and pulled the brocade shrift down to cover her pelvis and legs. "Having a critical illness often gives one tunnel vision: the sense that everything does or should revolve around us."
She flipped over on the table and gaped at him in a rather impressive display of indignation, considering the circumstances.
Simon just shrugged. "Mal hasn't been comfortable since I've known him. With you on board or off. Zoë told me some things from the war, but I've wondered if it doesn't go further back than that. I hear that he was raised by single mother, who ran a veritable black-market cattle cartel."
"I shouldn't be surprised. Leaf--tree. Dung--sow." Inara made a dry noise and a dropping gesture with her hand.
"Well," Simon continued, "there are certain theories about children--particularly male children--of absent fathers and domineering mothers..."
"Yes, I've heard them." Inara gave him a sly smile.
"I've often thought that might have something to do with why someone like Mal, who could succeed at any life he wanted in conventional society, would choose the counter-culture in the first place. Join the Browncoats. Turn his back on everything. Fight everything and everyone conformist."
"Did you ever ask him?" Sarcasm gone, her tone was one of raw curiosity now.
"No," Simon chuckled. "Although my tastes have broadened considerably out here, I've yet to develop one for being punched in the nose. The point being that Mal's not comfortable, period. You might consider something that uncommonly beautiful women seldom do: his discomfiture has absolutely nothing to do with you. He's not comfortable in his own skin. If it's any consolation, recently he's been better and better each passing week. Especially since you've been back."
Inara still looked unconvinced.
"Really."
The processor dinged and broke the moment.
Simon turned and scanned the report. "A-plus. You can go. See you for a blood sample on Wednesday."
Inara slid from the table and gathered herself. She paused quite deliberately at the infirmary hatch, causing Simon to cast clinical eyes over her again. He saw nothing new.
"Can you keep a secret?" she asked.
"I hope so. I took an oath saying I would. Of course, they made us recite it aloud from a Hanyu text, so who knows what I actually said?" It sounded flat to his ears, like the all-purpose bedside manner joke that it was.
She ignored him. "I love this ship." Under long lashes, she stroked the infirmary bulkhead.
Simon blinked at her intensity. "That's not an uncommon reaction to a terminal illness: to have everything seem unusually precious and special."
Inara shook her head. "That's not it. 'Zi zhi zi ming.' That's one of the first tenets of Companion training."
"Well," Simon drew in a huge breath and blew it out. He plucked the plastic cassette of marrow results out of the analyzer and turned it over in his hand. "Apparently you're no longer dying, so if you stay, you'll be able to find out which of us is right."
She drew a billow of fabric around her shoulders and gave him a sweetly supercilious smile. "Why, I am, of course."
He chuckled softly. "Wednesday. Same time, same place. Don't forget."
"Not if I have to crawl." In a swirl of silk, she swept from the room.
The door unlocked with a click. Two officers and two privates in full uniform with caps and side arms came to escort him.
"Ready?"
"Always." He was dressed in only a lab/infirmary robe and geta. The physical sensations of it reminded him of the abbey garb. How easy that was to become accustomed to. The physicality of it brought back more. There was something very powerful behind the idea of uniforms--dressing for a mindset. How easy it was to convince the brain that if your being is outfitted one way, that's the way you must feel. And be inclined to act.
They led him down the hallway and out to a hangar bay.
The major ripped the two I.V. catheters from his arms. Blood began to spew forth, and Book whirled into an attack stance.
The four armed men stood appearing amused, but at ease.
"Press your sleeve to it," said the colonel. "We need your 'escape' to look uncontrived."
Book did so, willing his mind back to the matter at hand. "Wait," he said. "I'm going to need fruit."
"You'll be in hibernation." The major shot a meaningful look to the colonel.
No, they didn't trust him.
Of course, they didn't trust anyone, so that didn't necessarily mean much.
"It's not for me. Like you say, I know them. I need this." For some reason, this tiny detail of the double-cross meant the most to him. Enough to risk pressing his luck. "Bait," he added calculating the effect of the word on such men.
"Type?" the colonel asked.
"Whatever's fresh, plentiful and appealing."
"Now, what kind of way is that for a shepherd to talk?" The colonel gave a vulgar laugh, but seemed to relax and sent an underling off.
He lay down in the tube and shifted the padding under his head. It was still tender at the surgical spot. He positioned himself on the egg-crate padding as to avoid cramps and pressure sores. It felt odd, there was so much less of him than there had been two months ago. He could only hope it was the correct parts that he had chosen to leave behind.
The private returned with a large sack. "Asian pears?"
"Perfect." He nestled the bag careful in the folds of his gown so the fruit would neither bruise nor be smeared with the bloody ooze. He filled his head with the thoughts of the nine sitting around the galley table, passing around slices and stories.
He'd done this enough to know that like most things in life, Bifidan dreams were mostly what you decided to make them.
"Ready?" the medic asked.
"Always."
The hypo hissed into his neck, and Book's body crumpled, exanimate.
The past two days had been more exciting than average, largely due to some poorly guarded credits of previously disputed ownership that now lay secured in one of the more difficult to find cargo bins. Things had settled down to smoothish sailing, and now some compensatory bunk time for Mal, Jayne and Zoë had begun.
"Captain," Wash called down to their bunk. Mal answered. From long experience on the other side of this equilibrium, Wash could imagine Zoë, eyes closed and pretending to sleep but listening and marking every word. "I'm picking up something between us and an outer moon."
"Care to be more specific, or are you thinking I've suddenly turned reader too?"
Mal looked so cute with bed hair.
"Working on it. But here's a xiao kuai le de jin zhan worth getting up for: whatever it is has homing nav software set for Serenity's specific engine cycle."
"Qiu!" Mal swore. "I'll be right there."
"So, what do you know?" Mal leaned over Wash's shoulder, his face and neck smelling of Zoë's sex. Sweet Pete, that turned him on, but now was neither the place nor the time for that.
In the co-pilot's seat beside him, River giggled.
"Mind your own business," Wash and Mal both said in unison.
Wash forced all thoughts back to the console readings. "Tiny. A suit or an escape tube. Minimal life support's active; it's on course for us. I still can't figure how they managed to track us. I don't think I could have programmed that. Kaylee, I'm sure, could have figured it--"
"Wake her up."
River had already opened the call down to Kaylee's cabin.
"If it launched from that moon with constant acceleration, it's been traveling for three days."
"With no independent propulsion and only minimal life support, that would take a lot of gorram faith," Mal said.
At the last word, they all exchanged glances.
"The Israelites wandered the desert for forty years on faith," River said.
They blinked at her.
"'course, that's only a story."
"You don't think--?"
"I'm here." Wash rubbed his chest. "Why not? The preacher started out with more faith than me. Only seems fair."
"Bring it on board," Mal ordered. He started down to the cargo bay.
"What's up, Cap'n?" Wearing Simon's extravagant, tailed silk pajama top and a pair of bunny slippers, Kaylee crossed paths with Mal on the stairwell to the bridge.
"That's a good question, little one." Mal tousled her hair.
"Aaaaooooooooooooo." Face pressed to the porthole, River howled at the moon.
It was indeed a transport tube. Insulated and warmed to 34°C, oxygen supply for about two hundred hours, Alliance markings on the side.
"Matthew," River pronounced.
At the name, Wash creased his face. "Was there another man when I was dead?" He tried to get Zoë's attention, but she just brushed him off.
Simon ran a scanner over the tube. "Nothing, but if someone's been put into a proto-coma or given a hibernetic, I wouldn't be able to get a reading."
"River?" Mal looked to her.
She ran her hand over the markings. "Wolf in sheep's clothing," was all she said.
Mal combed a hand through his bed hair and winced. "Jing tsai de huangyu nao dai! I've been up for two days straight--"
"If they gave him a drug that shut down his higher cortical functions, she couldn't read through it either, Captain," Simon volunteered.
Jayne cocked his weapon and trained it on the tube. "I say, let her rip. If his brain's asleep, his trigger finger's asleep too."
"Ain't always been proved so," said Zoë.
"Shepherds separate sheep from the wolves," said River.
From up on the catwalk, Inara looked down on them, her robe clutched to her middle.
Mal glanced around the bay. Seven faces looked to him where once there had been eight. Where there should rightly be eight.
"Open her up," he said.
Kaylee and Wash set to it.
Jayne raised the weapon's sight to his eye.
The hatch released with a pop, and the gasses equilibrated and shut off in a hiss. There Book lay in a terry-white medical robe, his shock of hoary hair fuzzier and more unruly than ever.
Mal blinked.
Kaylee gasped.
From up on the catwalk, Inara pulled her robe over her chest.
"Sheep's clothing," River mumbled, but her words were lost in the confusion.
"I'm pretty sure he's alive," said Simon. "He's been given something like Bifidan."
River ran slender fingers through kinky shocks of hair. Almost immediately, she hit the surgical depression in the skull. She threw her head back, and she howled.
"River." Simon restrained her at the waist. "It's all right. It’s just hair." Simon tried to explain, "It's his orders--"
"His orders," River repeated, with a slightly demented sounding giggle.
"That's right, mei-mei," Simon soothed. Although she now sounded more hysterical than frightened, anything was better than that wail. Tentatively, he let her go.
He had a worse off patient to tend to.
Turning his attentions back to the tube, Simon hefted Book by the ankles. "Help me get him into the infirmary," he called to the rest of the group.
River walked with them, her hand on the matted and discolored sleeve. "Blood of the lamb," she mumbled.
Although, all their attention given to Book, no one paid her any mind.
Reversing the hibernation drug was simple. Much simpler than bringing someone with those kind of injuries back to life. Trauma medicine had advanced much in the year since he left, Simon thought.
Either that or the Alliance was keeping more alarming secrets from the populace. Perhaps River was right about their job on Serenity not being done.
But Simon didn't have time for that train of thought now. Not all the scars on the Shepherd's body were ones he remembered from the Haven attack. Many were much fresher. And they appeared to have been inflicted in a deliberate pattern. Simon traced the arms of a stellate one out from the xiphoid where they radiated like some subcutaneous, radioactive starfish and wondered what the hell could have done such a thing.
"Torture," Mal said. He recognized all the marks. Many he bore himself, but the latest and greatest advancements--the ones he didn't sport--he'd seen on Wash's body and left their bunk for his old cabin when it looked like his friend might need to cry in his wife's arms.
Butt-fucking is one thing, but some things real men just don't do together.
Eventually he'd heard the story behind all of them--when the time seemed right.
"'fraid I told them a good bit about what I knew of your operation. And your plans." Book met Mal's eyes, and the infirmary went silent but for the clinical beeping of Simon's machines.
"Hell, I told them everything I could think of," Wash burst in with clearly strained cheer. "From my childhood best friend's hiding place for his allowance, to the way Zoë likes her tea, to the exact plan for getting the news of Miranda out. Except that we didn't have one, so there wasn't so much there to tell. Then things I just made up. Anything I could think of. Anything they wanted to hear. I would have told them anything at all to make it stop."
River howled.
"Yeah, like that," said Wash, rubbing his nearer ear.
"It's not his fault, Captain," Simon said. "With the drugs they have, the mind control, they can induce about anything. Look what they did to River. You don't need me to convince you it's no one's fault, do you?"
"It's someone's fault all right," said Mal through tight lips. "But no one in this gorram room."
"Woulda been their only reason to bring you back." Zoë said it looking at Book, but Wash moved a little closer to her.
"Then it was worth it," said Kaylee brightly. "I mean, the secrets, not the torture." From her seat near the infirmary table, she offered Book a sympathetic look.
"I've heard tell of much worse." Book squeezed her hand.
"After you reached Miranda, they lost interest in me." Book continued with his tale. "Seemed to have more important things on their mind. I wasn't under much guard. Seemed to think a preacher wasn't much of a security threat--"
"Imagine that."
"--so I had fair little trouble getting out."
"Something they teach at the abbey?" Jayne snarked, a 10-kilo dumbbell in his hand. After taking more than his share of upper body hits on Miranda, he'd bought a fancy set to build back up. Like a kid with a shiny new toy, he sat on a folding metal infirmary bench as if waiting for Book to get better to come out and play.
"Lions' dens and such," said Book. "You never know what will come in handy when. Speaking of--" Book reached under his robe.
"Whoa, now!" Jayne backed off. "If you're goin' all 'rods into serpents' on us..."
"Jayne--"
"Nothing of the sort. But I do intend to pay my passage." From an inside pocket, Book pulled out a burgeoning cloth sack and passed it to Kaylee. "As I remember your terms, this should be a fair start."
She opened it. "Pears! Xing fu!" With ecstatic abandon, she sniffed the sack and tossed the most perfect one to River.
"Passengers pay before they get off," Mal said. "Crew stay and earn their keep. Soon as they're able. Doc, let me know when that is. There's important crime to be done, and we'll need all hands. Bad enough we got one too worried about her fingernails to pitch in.
"Wash, you have the bridge. I'm going back to my bunk." Mal grabbed a pear, yawned, and sauntered out of the infirmary with Wash not far behind.
"Me too," Jayne announced. "Back to my bunk, that is. Alone. Not his...theirs. Whatever, I'm not."
All eyes were on him.
"Gorram it!" Jayne blurted. Cradling his dumbbell, he stormed out.
"So, what else did I miss while I was out of the world this time?" Book elbowed himself a little farther up on the infirmary bed to watch Kaylee make goo-goo eyes over the fresh fruit.
"Would you stay still flat, please, Shepherd?" Simon called the order over his shoulder as he reviewed some tests. "There's something on your head scan I don't understand. I think it would be better if you lay still."
Obediently, Book slid back down.
"Oh, not much," said Kaylee with her trademark cheerfulness. She took a bite and waited till it was almost down to go on. "River's a full-blown reader, but other'n that, she's all better." She looked over to the corner where River was studying the stem of the Asian pear through an anoscope. "Well, at least most days. Wash was dead, but he's better now too. 'course, I guess you know how that is."
"Might've heard a story like that before."
If Kaylee caught the double reference, she skipped right over it. "The cap'n and Wash and Zoë are sexing--"
"Pardon?" Book started to jerk his head up before he remembered.
"Well, really it's more the cap'n, Zoë and Wash." In deliberate order, Kaylee played connect the three dots in the air with her fingertip. "If you know what I mean. At least I think that's how it works. Tho' with the cap'n, you can never be sure."
"Had it right the first time," River mumbled from her countertop perch. She put down the anoscope and slid the pear down her shirt like a lopsided breast implant.
"That's all right." Book raised a palm in the 'versal gesture of 'enough.' "I've either been out of the world a little too long or not quite long enough to care for exact details on that one. Next?"
"Well, Simon and me are sexing too. Oh, and the big one!" Kaylee brightened. "Inara was dying, but the cap'n tracked down her mei yong de selang of a father, Jayne cut off one of his testicles and Simon put part of it in her to save her life."
"Really?" Book rolled his eyeballs toward Simon.
"Stem cells," Simon muttered absently, still looking at the scan, not his patient. "Please, hold still."
"So that just goes to show that everyone is good for something after all. 'tho he wasn't what you'd call real happy 'bout the forced donation. But the cap'n convinced him to see it his way."
"Imagine that."
"I think Inara has a little crush on Jayne after the way he fought for her against that se mi mi de ren so-called father of hers." Kaylee leaned her head down to Book with the intimation.
"Really?" Book's eyes widened.
From the distance came a crash that sounded a lot like a full barbell rack and a muffled "Gorramit!"
"A very little crush," said Kaylee. "But, little things do grow, don't they?" she said, with a flicker of the eyelids in Simon's direction.
River looked down her shirt.
Kaylee wiped pear juice from her chin and continued in a different tone. "What else? Serenity got a new ion conversion pump. The cap'n was gonna start a suicidal revolution against the Alliance with the five of us and a few friends but changed his mind and decided to become an agricultural blockade runner instead, and I think that's about it."
Book closed his eyes and chuckled quietly. "Sounds like I landed on the right ship."
"Clever your using Serenity's Chou wave output to do that. None like it since I jury-rigged the compression coil. No one else woulda known that, 'cept someone who'd been on her. Good thinking." She punched him in the arm.
Without turning, Simon pointed to a head scan. "Shepherd, there's a metal thing in your skull. On top of your brain. I don't know what it is."
"Likely from the Alliance attack on Haven, I reckon. Can you get it out?"
"No." Eyes to his tests instead of his patient, Simon missed the curiously nonchalant tone "Whatever it is, it's not shrapnel. It looks electronic. And intentionally implanted."
River rolled her eyes. "My brother is such a boob."
Book made his tone firm, deliberate now. "As I said: likely from the enemy attack. Can you take it out?"
Now Simon turned.
Kaylee had ceased eating. Her gaze darted between them both.
"I think I should wake the captain," said Simon.
"Boob is palindrome: it appears the same from either direction." River shoved the pear to the other side of her chest, but it rolled out of her chemise, onto the floor, and under the infirmary bed. No one bothered to track where it landed.
"Do whatever you think is right, of course," said Book. "But I suspect that getting it out sooner instead of later would be best for us all. And happy as I am to be here, don't care to spend the rest of my days laid out on my back. So, can you remove it?"
Simon wet his lips. "Easily. The insertion burr hole is still open, and it's only gelled to the surface of the cerebrum, not implanted."
"Might want to drop it in some strong acid or oxidizing solution straight away when you get it out."
"I've got a jar of carbolic in the stern," Kaylee volunteered, the half-eaten Asian pear long forgotten.
"That'll do," said Book.
Kaylee jogged off toward the engine room.
Simon took a hypo of Algliocaine and pressed it to the occipital nerve. "One day I'd love to hear the whole story." He parted the shepherd's unshorn hair over the area of the foreign body.
"And one day I'd love to forget it," said Book, just before Simon paralyzed him with a second hypo.
River hopped down from her seat and tip-toed over to Book's other side. She folded one thick, gnarled hand in her thin pale one. With her other hand, she combed searching fingers though his hair. "Sheep's clothing," she murmured to no one in particular.
Simon stopped and turned to her with irritation. "River, please, the sterile field--" But where her fingers displaced the thinning hair, he saw the scars where other surgeries had been done.
"Don't ask him. You don't want to know." Silently, she held Book's hand through the rest of the procedure.
Simon removed a thin computer chip. It made a terrible screech when removed from the body. Simon held it to the light to study it, and the noise became louder. He had never seen the like.
"The howling's stopped," said River. She beamed a radiant smile and began to hum a Chinese tune.
Simon dropped it into the jar of acid and quickly closed the lid.
"The operation was a complete success," said Simon when Book came around again. He held up the little jar. "I'd give you the souvenir, but it dissolved completely. There's nothing left to see."
"Suits me fine that way," said Book. "May I--?" He gestured to the floor and the pile of clothing Wash had scrounged up.
"Sure. I pronounce you ship-shape." Simon crossed arms.
"So, what's our first crime?" Book asked Kaylee as he slipped pants on under the gown.
"Earthworms and slugs. Big fat ones to develop soil. Athens and all its moons are desperate for 'em, and we fell into news of a huge stock of 'em on Hera. We were on our way there when we ran into you. I hope we've got time for some fishing 'fore we make Athens. Back home, we used to dig up these night crawlers and--"
Book stopped, mid-leg.
"Bait," said River.
"You bet," Kaylee agreed. "Best this side of Sihnon. We used to catch gigantic bass and trout with 'em. I'll take you. If our ju tou of a captain lets us have shore time."
"We're en route back there?" Book asked.
"Uh-huh. Wash says planetfall in less than thirty hours, lessen we run into any more transport tubes long the way."
"Doctor, I think you were right. I think we should talk to the captain right now." Book fastened the trousers and slipped into his pair of geta.
"No fishing," said River, with a wistful glance to Kaylee.
"Figures. Such is the life of crime." Kaylee sighed. Not unpredictably, she brightened almost straight away. "At least we'll always have pears! We didn't; but now we do." Slopping a pear-flavored smooch on Simon's cheek, she picked up the sack and skipped off towards the kitchen.
Simon shook his head. "Definitely the right ship."
"Yep," Book agreed. He pushed the jar of acid to the back of the counter.
"Yep." River picked another pear and slipped it into the front of her panties this time. With an odd dancing shuffle, she drifted out of the infirmary.
Running into her into the passageway, Jayne did a double-take, veered into his cabin, and sealed and bolted the hatch from the inside.