lit_gal | Old War Horses

The war raged across moons and planets. Browncoats versus Purple-bellies. Malcolm Reynolds fought for the Browncoat rebels... men and women who felt that the Alliance and civilized core planets were taking too much control of the rest of the system. They wanted their freedom. They lost. James Joseph Womak was a commander for the Alliance, proud to wear the purple uniform and determined to bring justice to the common farmers who lived rough lives on an outer rim dominated by smugglers and slavers and criminals. His side won, but he still lost. A shadowy group called the Institute took a little too much interest in a rare genetic gift of enhanced senses, and now he's on the run. Two bitter old war horses really aren't good at forgiving or forgetting or letting evil grow like mold in those dark corners of the universe where other men are afraid to look.

Old War Horses

Firefly x Sentinel.
Slash: Jim/Blair, Mal/Jayne
Rated ADULT

Something has to make Mal see Jim as something other than "Captain Jimmy," villain of the Browncoat defeat. Time for that something to happen.

( Part one ) ( Part two ) ( Part Three ) ( Part Four ) ( Part five )

"You alive?"

Jim opened his eyes to see Mal in the doorway. "I figure it'll take a whole lot more than that to end me." Jim looked around. "Where's Blair?"

Mal's expression twisted, and Jim could feel fear rip through him. He forced himself to sit up even though his whole body was still weak. Clearly the doctor had given him something. "He's fine. He threatened all kinds of bodily harm if I so much as upset you. He's a mouthy little shit," Mal said with a pained expression, so Jim figured that Blair had really gotten his mouth running but good.

"He really is a good man," Jim said.

With a frown, Mal leaned against the wall and studied Jim in a way that made him mighty uncomfortable. "He spends a whole lot of time saying the same about you. He spends enough time saying it that about all I want right now is a little peace where someone isn't chasing after me listing all your positive attributes." That made Jim smile. Blair pretty much won arguments by wearing people down with talk instead of throwing a punch the way most men did. Mal shrugged, which did seem to suggest he was as helpless against Blair's unconventional attacks as most men. "How about we call a truce and just don't go talking on certain subjects?"

"Like the war?" Jim guessed.

Mal looked around at all the doctor's equipment. "Might be we should leave the subject alone."

Jim nodded. "It's not a subject I really want to discuss, so that seems fair. At least as long as not talking about it means you don't plan to throw both of us out an airlock." A little part of Jim wanted him to just drop the subject, but until he had this man's word that they were safe, Jim wasn't feeling safe.

"I reckon I can live with that so long as you aren't walking around here talking about your glory days."

A dark laugh slipped out of Jim. "Trust me, I remember those days as anything but glorious. I generally spend reunification day getting so drunk I can't stand up. At least I did until the Institute left me like this." Jim held up his bandaged hands. They itched. "So, as just one more passenger you're hauling around, I'm wondering if you've figured out the radiation leak."

"I ain't so sure we have one," Mal shook his head. "I know River's a reader, and a gorram good one, but Kaylee knows this ship, and she's been all over it three times and claims there ain't a thing wrong with her."

"The cargo?" Jim guessed. The captain would have to be an idiot to have not checked, but with this crew, Jim couldn't take that risk.

"Nope. What I got is a whole lot of worthless data disks with three year old racing stats sitting on top of a whole heaping pile of Darga root."

Jim cringed. Aiya. He wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that he was traveling with a drug smuggler or the fact that Mal was a drug smuggler by accident. This ship sure wasn't run the way he was used to a ship running. Jim sighed. Then again, the way he was used to things running, no one had any say or any right to speak up. That kind of blind obedience hadn't exactly worked out real well for him either.

"No smart comments?" Mal asked, clearly surprised.

With a shrug, Jim shifted around. His hands were still giant, useless cotton balls, and the annoyance of that was far greater than his annoyance with Mal. "Don't suppose it's any of my business what cargo you run. Not anymore. There was a day that I worked enforcement out here, and I will say that your story would not have been real convincing."

Mal scratched his cheek for a second. "Don't exactly look good for us, but now that we know what we're carrying, we can secure it. Honestly, I wouldn't believe that story myself if someone else were the one telling it." He scratched again. "Of course, if'n the Alliance boards, the cargo ain't going to be their first priority."

"True." Jim closed his eyes.

"Your little friend seems to think we're all at the end of a gun here, that whatever River has bouncing around in her head, it's as deadly as she seems to think."

Jim opened his eyes and looked at Mal. The man was studying the wall most carefully.

"I never knew one of the Institute's projects to be wrong about something like that," Jim said slowly. "The scientists didn't really know my range, so my cell's soundproofing was inadequate, and I can tell you that at least three of them starting making a fuss the night before one of them went missing. I guess that was River. The scientists never did figure out how they knew, but they did. They always knew when something big was coming, even if the scientists couldn't decipher their warnings until after it happened. That's how Blair got me out. He started planning the escape, and when the readers started in with their crazy metaphors and the place went into lockdown, he grabbed me during a transfer. If River says there's danger, I'm willing to put my money on it. More than that, I'm willing to put my freedom on the line for it."

Mal wandered over to the counter and picked up a cylinder of something. "Last time she started her crazy talk, the Alliance sent the Operative after us and we ended up having to run for Miranda just to get the ammunition to get them to back off. She ain't been near as much with the crazy since. In fact, she's been downright sane ever since. So that leaves me to ask whether the danger isn't something you're bringing on my ship."

"Might be." Jim could hardly deny that the Alliance wanted him back pretty badly. If Mal wanted to drop them on the nearest planet, Jim couldn't complain. "When you say they sent the Operative, are you using that word to mean agent, or did this man actually call himself the Operative?"

"Seems like you might know something about him." The thing in Mal's hand clattered as he tossed it back onto the counter.

"I heard a lot in there. The scientists stopped thinking about me as a prisoner and I was one more piece of furniture." Jim grimaced. That had been one of the worst parts, but Jim had fought to keep quiet and foster that disrespect. Oh, he could have tried to get them to identify with him and develop sympathy, but he had chosen to gather information and endure the process of dehumanization. Only Blair had cut through his façade to see how much he was hurting.

"Man makes mistakes when he underestimates his enemy." From the tone, Mal was making it pretty clear that he still considered Jim an enemy, even if he was willing to call a truce.

"He does," Jim agreed. "River and the other students were version 2.0 of their project. The Operative was the original. He doesn't have the physical abilities and he has limited access to the sort of mind-power they have, but he can read people and make almost impossible predictions. Blair always wondered why they weren't sending him after us, and I guess now we know. Is he dead?" Jim prayed to the universe that they would give him just one gift.

"Still up and kicking last I knew. Whoever holds his leash pulled him back after we got the message out. I guess we aren't that important anymore. We already told about their dirty little secret."

"And I still have all my secrets." Jim let his head fall back against the examination table. That had been their only advantage. They didn't know why the Operative wasn't on their trail, but he wasn't, and that had allowed them to slip through the noose over and over. Jim didn't have a lot of illusions about their chances if the man was now available to track them. Cao. It would explain why they'd been run so hard to ground in the last week. The man was hunting them and just keeping in the shadows so they didn't know the game had changed. "He's going to know we've taken up with you," Jim confessed. He didn't have a right to pull these people into his mess—not after they'd just crawled out of their own.

"How you figure that?" Mal was sounding surprisingly reasonable for a man who had just learned he was in the crosshairs again.

"The Operative is a reader. Readers create a sort of dead zone around them. River can't see him directly, and he can't see her. If we've dropped off his radar, he's going to know that could only mean one of two things—I'm back in the Institute and the other readers are shielding me or I'm with River."

At first, Mal didn't react. Jim tipped his head up in time to see Mal close his eyes and mutter something physically impossible about elephant diarrhea in Chinese. It was amazing how much more obscene anything became when muttered in Chinese.

"If I can get Blair to agree to it..." Jim sighed at the difficulty of that task... "will you take him on as crew if I move on? The Operative is sure to come after me." Jim figured he could run long enough and hard enough to give the Institute hunters a challenge, and then he could end it hard and fast. If he could take a couple of them with him, well that would be all the better.

Mal crossed his arms and just frowned at Jim in a way that made it pretty clear Jim wasn't going to like whatever he was about to say. Jim nodded. He'd try and find some other haven for Blair, then.

"Seems like you're mighty set on getting yourself killed there, Jimmy."

Jim narrowed his eyes at the captain, but then considered he was nearly unarmed and physically injured, Jim didn't figure his glare would go far. "Let's just say I'm realistic."

"And you're realistically talking yourself into an early grave. You mind explaining that to me because I never thought you'd be a coward. I expected an Alliance-loving back-stabbing, honorless son of a whoring turtle, sure, but not a coward."

"Son of a turtle works a lot better in Chinese. In English, it just sounds like you ran out of insults and reached a little too far to make one up," Jim pointed out.

"And if I tell that little sly friend of yourn that you're slightly on the suicidal side, he'll make your life so close to a living hell you really will welcome death," Mal counterattacked, and Jim had to admit that the captain had him there. If Blair heard any of this, Jim was going to get lecture on enlightenment until the rest of his hair fell out.

"You want the cards on the table?" Jim asked. It wasn't like he had anything left to lose. "Fine. The long and short of it is that we're out of money, out of planets, and out of time. I had a dozen false identities and bolt holes when I worked undercover, and my boss didn't know about most of them. Banks is a good man, but systems get hacked and waves get intercepted, so I took care of myself. But every bolthole that I ran for, the Institute flushed us out of. We're out of money, stowing away on ships and eating stolen food, and still on every planet they get closer. This last time... they were two rows over. If your pilot hadn't taken off as fast as she did, they would have gotten close enough to disable me, and then I would have been back in that cell and Blair would have been in the cell next to me. My time's up. I've come to accept that the same way you just sometimes know when you're losing the battle. It doesn't mean you stop fighting, but it means you change your expectations about how it's going to end up. And if I die, that's still a better future than I was looking at a year ago. Blair gave me back my freedom and a chance to die on my feet. I just refuse to pull Blair down with me."

Mal's eyes had gotten all big. "So you really were trying to get me to help you with a bit of suicide? Cao. I thought he were making that up."

"Who?"

"Your Blair. He were the one who asked me to come in and poke about to see if you were losing your mind or just really set on getting yourself dead."

"He... but. Cao." Jim let his head thunk back against the exam table. "I'm never hearing the end of this."

"Oh man, never is a long time, but you aren't hearing the end of this for at least three lifetimes," a familiar voice told him. Jim could hear as Blair's feet scuffed against the floor as he hurried past Mal.

"I should have heard you out there," Jim said peevishly, but he already had a pretty good idea what happened.

"You needed to turn the senses off for a while. How long has it been since you really slept? You just doze. Doze and let your senses constantly check the surroundings. Man, the brain needs rest." Jim glared at his partner. "And when it comes to understanding the senses and how far you can't push the human brain without sleep, I'm actually the expert. I have three degrees to prove it." Blair softened his words by coming close and trailing his fingers down Jim's arm. His eyes were dangerously bright, and as much as Blair hated crying in public, he looked pretty close to doing just that.

"I'll forgive you for slipping me the gorram drugs if you forgive me for pulling you into all this," Jim said softly.

Blair shook his head. "No way. Wait. That sounds like I'm not forgiving you. No, I mean that I got myself into this because I was so gorram curious and so gorram caught up in the possibilities that I didn't stop and do a morality check until way too late. Way too late. So I got myself into this. You and River just gave me a chance to do something good after putting myself into a big steaming pile of bad."

"You two are almost annoying in your mutual supportiveness," Mal commented. "I ain't sure whether you've gone and drunk some sort of happy water or if you're both a little touched in the head."

"He's touched in the head," Jim quickly answered, bringing a bandaged hand up to brush over Blair's cheek. "However, when it comes to strategy, I'm running the show, right?" Jim demanded. He knew the logical way out of this, but Blair was going to kick and scream the whole way. Even now he was fighting against answering, biting his lip and just looking at Jim.

"Show me a flaw in my logic, Chief. Show me one card we haven't played, and I'll change my mind. But I'm not taking any of this lightly, and I just don't see any way out unless you stay here where River can shield you."

"They want me, too," Blair said, and that was his stubborn expression.

"Yes," Jim said slowly, "they want you if they can get you, but they've already discredited your work and thrown up so much mud that you'll never convince anyone to listen to your stories about some grand conspiracy. I'm the one they need dead. I'm the one that keeps them up at night worrying, both about the contacts I might use and the information I might have overheard."

"We could go to Naomi," Blair blurted out. This was another old argument, and Jim didn't even bother answering; he just looked at his partner.

"If anyone could talk an evil government conspiracy out of being evil just through the sheer power of guilt, it would be Naomi." Blair gave a little laugh, but Jim noticed he wasn't making any attempt to actually argue the point. Jim's guts tightened. A little part of him had hoped that Blair would have a good counter-argument, that he could pull just one more rabbit out of his hat. Jim had already given up on living once, and Blair had given him back his life, but Blair didn't have anything left to give.

"How about I give the ship a good searching and see if I can't find this danger River is talking about," Jim suggested. A job would be better than sitting around waiting for planetfall so he could start his final run. Even though he should be making plans and gathering information on which planet they were heading for, Jim didn't ask. He didn't want to know whether he had days or just hours left with Blair.

"You think you can find what Kaylee couldn't?" Mal asked. He had spent the entire conversation studying them, but Jim was too tired to hide his feelings, and he didn't think it mattered much anymore.

"Yep," Jim said. He started swinging his legs around. The world warbled in and out of focus, straight lines warping into curves.

"Oh man, you can do that after the last of the drugs wears off."

"God, Sandburg, how much did you use?" Jim blinked to try and clear his vision.

"About a fourth of what I usually use." Blair did not sound amused. "You were about ready to pass out on your own. I just helped a little. Actually, that should not have put you down at all, so there is no way you can afford to focus your senses for a full search of the ship. No way. Priority one is to get a little lunch in you, and then we can check the hands, and then you need more sleep."

"We have time for that?" Jim asked, looking over toward Mal.

"Ain't like I'm in a hurry to get anywhere in particular," Mal shrugged and then headed for the door. "River opened every can of peaches we got, so we're having a peach-themed lunch before they can go bad. I swear, I miss her saner days already." With that, Mal was gone.

Jim sighed. He'd wanted time to plan his conversation with Blair—time to gather his arguments and put up sandbags around his failing emotional walls. He never meant for Blair to hear him talk about their failures to someone else, but it didn't change the fact that they had failed. No matter how hard they ran and no matter how many tricks Jim used, they couldn't break free of the Institute and the leash was still around their necks. Blair stood beside Jim's bed, and his silence did tend to suggest that he had pretty much reached the same conclusions. "How about we check the hands now, Chief? I don't really want you feeding me in front of the crew." Jim lifted his mummified hands. He was guessing Blair was responsible for the bandage overkill.

Blair rolled his eyes. "Manhood does not require you to ignore injuries."

"No, but male ego does. Besides, if the doc knows his stuff, they'll be healed enough for light use," Jim said. "I need to get the muscles loosened up, and I don't have a lot of time to spare."

That was the wrong thing to say. Blair's breath caught in his chest and then Jim could smell the salt of Blair's tears. Wiping angrily at his eyes with the back of his hand, Blair reached out and started unwinding the gauze.

"Chief," Jim whispered.

"No. Don't go there. Man, I am not prepared to talk about this right now. Later, okay?" Blair looked up, his eyes so red that Jim could trace the veins as they lazily wandered through the white. "Later," Blair whispered, brushing his eyes again. Jim nodded. Blair deserved a little time to get himself together. Jim just hoped Mal wasn't planning on setting down too soon; this wasn't how Jim wanted to leave it with Blair.

Once Blair got Jim's hand unwrapped, Jim could see the skin red and dried from the healer. Blair sandwiched Jim's hand between his two palms, the warmth making Jim's skin itch even more, but he wasn't about to say that, not when every moment of contact had become so important.

"I love you," Jim said softly. He wanted to add more, but anything he might say would just hurt Blair more. Blair wanted to force the universe to be fair. If Blair was right about them having other lives after this one, Jim could only hope that they found peace in some distant future because he didn't expect to ever have it in this lifetime. In this lifetime he was simply grateful beyond belief that he was going to die fighting; he was going to die knowing he had found a safe haven for Blair. It was enough.

Taking a deep breath, Blair let Jim's hand go like it was the most difficult thing in the world. Jim brought his hand up and cupped Blair's cheek, resting his thumb against his lower lip. "I will always love you." Jim stopped, not trusting his own voice to stay steady.

Time shuddered and stopped, and Jim just stared at Blair, memorizing every inch. Then something beeped, and time caught up with itself, and Blair reached for the bandages still wrapped around his second hand.

"Man, do not count us out yet. The universe has a way of surprising us. There are more things in heaven and hell than are dreamt of in your pessimistic philosophy, James Joseph Womak," he said firmly. Jim smiled. Maybe. He allowed himself to feel just a little spec of irrational hope as Blair undid the bandages on his second hand. Maybe, but probably not.