Big Damn Hero

13

Serenity’s close call with the liner had pushed Simon closer toward anxiety. Serenity and crew had had to leave their captain behind to an unknown fate, because unless they offloaded Badger’s cargo, it could conceivably blow up and kill them all. And on top of that, it seemed the Alliance were narrowing in on him and River.

Kaylee was fond of calling things “shiny.” This situation, to Simon, felt like the opposite of that. Gloomy. Dim. Leaden. Dismal. Pick your antonym.

Carefully he observed River at the dining table, which had been relieved of fort duty — River’s blankets and pillows taken back to her bunk, and the table itself righted. Though the dismantling of her safe zone had clearly agitated her, his sister hadn’t protested beyond a few barely audible and unintelligible complaints. But he could see it in her eyes: River was still terrified by the threat of what lay in Serenity’s cargo bay, the crates of precarious HTX-20 mining explosive.

Inara had taken it upon herself to braid sections of River’s hair and wind them across the crown of her head, allowing a few stray brown wavy locks to brush her shoulders. Then the elegant Companion had added little trinkety bits of shimmer, and made up River’s eyes with black and turquoise, and dressed her in a brocade tunic and flowing black pants. The result Simon found both wonderful and painful to behold. It comforted him that River had allowed Inara to touch her face and head. He didn’t know what the Alliance had done to her, but she usually panicked when someone besides him laid hands on her.

What was wonderful, above all, was how sophisticated and grown-up she looked, like the beautiful, responsible young woman his parents had assumed she would one day become. But hadn’t.

After he had decoded the letters River sent from the Academy— the Alliance-run experimental center that had methodically driven her mad — Simon had spent countless sleepless nights wondering if she was dead.

In a way, she was.

The fantasy of her future had turned to dust.

Steam rose from the two clay cups of tea Inara had prepared for them. Simon had hoped that the soothing, warm beverage would ravel his sister back together, at least temporarily. His happy, smart, accomplished mèi mèi. Was she still in there somewhere, lost amid the swirling maelstrom of post-traumatic stress disorder and brain damage?

While he sipped and contemplated what to do next, River drained her cup. Then she sat ramrod straight in her chair beside his at the dining table, staring into the bottom of the cup as if she were a fortuneteller reading the tea leaves.

He heard her muttering and leaned forward to catch what she was saying. She was repeating the phrase “getting closer” over and over again, like a mantra or a witch’s spell. Or a crazy-person recording loop. The Alliance was after them, no doubt. It was always after them, and getting closer and closer, just as River was saying. When would it end? Maybe never. Or at least not until it had River back in its pitiless clutches.

She glanced up at him. Suddenly clear-eyed and focused, she shook her head in the negative, and a frisson of apprehension skittered up Simon’s spine. Had she actually just read his thoughts? Could she see into his mind?

“Shh,” she said. She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “You-know-who.” She tipped the teacup left, then right. “There.”

Simon’s hair stood on end. A sudden, chilling thought had occurred to him. What if Mal being taken was a distraction, and the real scheme centered on seizing River and him? With the Alliance’s near-infinite resources, faking some business contacts and ID papers was child’s play. Removing Mal from the equation left the remaining crew weakened and rudderless. What if there was an Alliance vessel hailing Serenity right now, ready to exercise boarding rights and exploit Mal’s absence? Had that been the plot all along, and the business about anti-Browncoat vigilantes nothing more than a red herring?

“Closer, closer,” River murmured.

Jayne appeared in the corridor, ducking through the doorway into the dining area.

River rolled her eyes meaningfully.

Ah, thought Simon. That’s what she meant by you-know-who.

Jayne strode past the table, directing a wary look at River and then a dismissive shrug at Simon. Simon and the big mercenary had arrived at an uneasy truce after Jayne sold out the Tams to the Alliance during a caper on Ariel. A remorseful Jayne had changed his mind at the last moment and saved them. His excuse for the lapse: the money had been too good. Since then, the bounty for River’s capture had increased many times over, and Simon knew Jayne was a simple, reactive man. He liked to think Jayne wouldn’t succumb to temptation a second time, but he wasn’t convinced that someone with such a thirst for lucre would be able to hold out forever.

“So that was bracing, huh, Jayne?” he said. “The near-collision.”

“Yeah, well, we were both in a hurry. Us and the liner.” Jayne glared at him. “Guess why we were.”

River stared intently at her tea leaves and whispered to herself, making a rhythmic swish-swish-swish, swish-swish-swish sound.

“If—when—the Alliance next comes after us,” Jayne went on, “and believe me they will, we gotta figure out where to stash you two. Feds’ll take the ship apart, bit by bit, looking. It might be best to have a couple of suits ready so’s you can go outside again, like that one time.”

Simon experienced a wave of vertigo as he recalled clinging to the hull of the ship, with no up or down, only the endless night. River had been enchanted by the vastness of space, the velvet black dotted with fields of stars. Simon had grappled with a low-grade panic that had threatened to paralyze him. Now, that same panic reared its head, building and nibbling at his carefully maintained composure.

Still, it was comforting to hear Jayne talking about helping them hide, as opposed to handing them over for the reward money. Unless, that was, Jayne was simply saying what he thought Simon wanted to hear. Lulling him into a false sense of security.

“It’s an experience I’d wish not to repeat if at all possible,” Simon said.

“Yeah, well, if wishes were horses, they’d ride beggars. No, wait, that ain’t it. Beggars would ride unicorns? No, that ain’t it either. Somethin’ about beggars, anyways.”

River looked up from her tea leaves again and gave Jayne a long, measured stare.

For second Jayne squinted at her, a look you could interpret either as kindly or as hostile. With Jayne, the two things weren’t that far removed from each other. Then he said, “Any more of that tea going, or did the pair of you hog it all?”

“Perish the thought,” Simon said. “The teapot is on the stove.”

“We used to put tamarind in it,” River said to her brother.

Simon smiled at her. “Yes, at home. I remember.”

“I miss home. Why did we leave?”

“Mother and Father thought it was best for us. You at the Academy, me at medical school. They… didn’t realize the consequences.”

“Yeah,” Jayne muttered. “The consequences being one of you’d end up with a stick up his butt, the other as mad as a gopher in goggles.”

“Jayne, that’s not helpful,” Simon said, which was about as stern as reproof as he dared give the much bigger and burlier man.

River made circles of her thumbs and forefingers and placed them over her eyes, like goggles, then stuck out her front teeth goofily.

In spite of himself, Simon laughed. River laughed too, a sound he didn’t hear often enough and yearned to hear more.

“Who made these cookies?” Jayne said as he rummaged in the galley’s cabinets. His cheeks were bulging, and cookie crumbs sprayed as he talked. “They’re powerful good.”

Simon didn’t reply. He didn’t know or care about the authorship of baked goods. As he turned back to River, he saw that she had stood up and was now rotating in a circle, gracefully waving her hands, and tilting her head in what appeared to be ancient, courtly poses. She slid a glance towards him, her eyes glittering like polished topaz.

“They dance like this there,” she said.

“Where?” Simon asked.

“In the crates. The busy crates.”

“The crates in the cargo bay?”

Jayne was happily munching away on cookies while pouring himself some tea, seemingly oblivious.

“Yes. The crystals inside. They dance in their hearts, getting faster and faster.”

River swayed back and forth, her arms swooping and diving as if she was holding two large folded fans. The she abruptly halted, holding a pose, her body still, only her head moving, winding sinuously from side to side like a snake’s.

“When the music stops, they’ll stop dancing,” she said. “Everyone will stop dancing, and we’ll all go into the light.” Then she melted back into her chair. “I’m so tired, Simon.”

Simon watched as his sister picked up a drawing pad and a charcoal stick and began sketching. He soon saw that it was a picture of him. It was amazing how fast she worked and how well she captured his likeness. He smiled and she frowned back.

“Don’t smile,” she said. “You weren’t smiling when I started.”

Humoring her, Simon reassumed a serious face.

River erased the left half of his mouth with her thumb and redrew his lips on that side into a scowl. She added lines across half his forehead and a tear welling in his left eye. One half happy, one half sad.

“You’re homesick, but you’re getting used to being here,” she announced.

“That’s true,” he said.

“You’re angry with me but you love me.”

“That’s not so true.”

“It is.”

“I could never be angry with you.”

“You saved me,” River said, working again on her drawing. She shaded his cheekbone and began adding his hair. Then, looking puzzled, she said, “Something’s missing. I know! Your mustache.”

“I don’t have a mustache,” Simon pointed out.

She leaned across and scribbled one under his nose with the charcoal. She giggled and pulled back.

“You are such a brat,” her brother chided, his voice breaking just a little. He ruffled her hair and she shook her head, pushing him away.

“You have no idea,” she said. Then, putting aside the drawing pad, she stretched and yawned.

“Do you want to rest?”

“Rest in peace,” she said. She closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest like a dead girl.

Unnerved, Simon rose. He looked down at her placid face and wished that for her — peace. For himself as well.

“Let’s get you to your bunk,” he said. “Okay?”

She nodded and he escorted her back to her quarters. River lay down on the bed in all her finery and closed her vividly painted eyelids.

“I’ll come check on you later,” Simon said. River did not answer. Maybe she was already asleep. In repose, she looked relaxed and tranquil. All the tension was drained from her face. She looked how a girl her age should look, unencumbered by cares. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and slipped out of her bunk.

As he climbed back up the ladder into the corridor Simon found himself nose to nose with Kaylee. She raised her brows and cocked her head appraisingly.

“Nice ’tache, Doc,” she said. “Makes you look more distinguished. Like a proper gentleman.”

Awkwardly, hurriedly, he rubbed away River’s handiwork with the back of his hand.

“How’s she doing?” Kaylee made as if to look around him so as to peer into his sister’s bunk.

Simon put a finger to his lips. “Asleep.” Gently he pulled the door closed and gestured for Kaylee to walk with him.

They headed back for the kitchen. Jayne was gone, and so were all the cookies. Simon glanced over his shoulder, assuring himself that there was no one within earshot, and said, “Kaylee, I know the Alliance is hounding us and all, but do you think there’s a way I could contact my parents somehow? I mean, a way that’s safe? Just to let them know River and I are alive and okay. I’ve been thinking about them, and I know I’m kind of estranged from them, but I miss them. River misses them. And maybe they miss us and are worried about us.”

Kaylee sighed and shook her head. “It’s just too risky, Simon,” she said. “The Alliance is probably monitoring your parents’ wave accounts real close in case you try to make contact. If you look into how they’re doing, the Alliance finds out how you’re doing. They’ll know for sure that you’re both still alive, and they’ll be able to triangulate which sector you’re in. Next we know, we’ll have the I.A.V. Magellan or some such looming over us, sucking Serenity in like a bug into a vacuum cleaner.” She pulled a sad face. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. Just thought I’d ask. Should have known it wasn’t possible.”

“You just have to accept that you and River are your only family for now. Well,” Kaylee added, “and us too. The crew, I mean. All of us. Not just me. I’m not saying I’m your family. Perish the thought. ’Cause that would sound like we’re, y’know, related, and we’re not related, and that’s good, real good, since us not being related means…”

She was flustered. She seemed to have got herself all tangled up in her own words.

“I’ll stop talking,” she said.

Simon looked at her. Kaylee was the kindest, sweetest person he had ever met, and she, more than anyone else in the crew, was doing her darnedest to make him feel at home aboard Serenity. Not only that but sometimes, the way her eyes flashed when she looked at him, he got the sense that she was trying to tell him something about herself. She was sending him a coded message which he couldn’t quite interpret correctly.

She reached over and touched his upper lip. “Missed a bit,” she said. “Just there.”

Self-consciously he wiped away the last smudge of charcoal.

“There,” Kaylee said. “Now you look like the Simon we all know and… like.”

And with that, she trotted off back to the engine room, leaving Simon nonplussed but the kind of nonplussed that felt good. He put a fingertip back to where she had touched him, and for a brief while he forgot about his parents, about River, about the Alliance, and was consumed instead with thoughts of this wonderful, baffling young woman with the thick chestnut hair and hazel eyes and quirky smile who loved his sister almost as unconditionally as he did and who enjoyed teasing him and who would let him kiss her, he was sure, if only he could summon up the nerve to do so.