lit_gal | Old War Horses

Malcolm Reynolds fought for the Browncoat rebels. They wanted their freedom. They lost. James Joseph Womak was a commander for the Alliance, 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. Two bitter old war horses really aren't good at forgiving or forgetting or letting evil grow 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 ) ( Part Six )

Jim was still flexing his hands, trying to get feeling back into the stiff muscles as they walked the corridors. "No guard?" Jim asked suspiciously. His mind went to the possibility of sealing off a section and flushing it to space.

It was an easy way to get rid of someone. Jim had done it himself when he'd been second in command on Captain Taggard's ship before transferring over to Captain Banks. Pirates had gotten on board, which had been part of the plan when they'd flown a decoy into pirate-held space. The part that hadn't gone according to plan was where the pirates had used an electrical disruptor cannon. Two guards died when their control panels exploded in their faces. Three more were flat-out electrocuted and most of the crew, including Captain Taggard, had been knocked out cold. Jim had been the first one to wake up, and with no ability to control the situation or arrest the pirates who had taken the bait, he had locked down crew quarters and flushed the corridors to space. Men died silently and quickly once you took their air away.

"Man, turn off your natural pessimism." Blair slipped his arm around Jim's waist.

"Says the man who's running from an entire government," Jim pointed out. Both of them had some cause for pessimism.

"Yep, but think about this... the universe landed us in the one place where the Operative can't actually see us."

"Which is how he's going to know exactly where we are," Jim countered.

"Okay, I'm trying to give the universe some room to work here. You might try a little positive thinking." Blair gave Jim a disgusted look before darting ahead and practically running down the stairs toward the hall that led to the galley.

"Anything fall off?" Jayne stepped out of the shadows where the deck walls met at an odd angle that created dead space. Firefly class ships were like that... funny little corners and odd angles.

"Nope," Jim answered. Jayne didn't have his big gun, but he was still carrying enough weaponry to set Jim's arm hairs on end. Jim expected some sort of smug reaction or maybe outright sadism, but instead, Jayne looked almost relieved. Could be the captain had given him grief because Mal did not seem like the sort to torture a man. He was more the sort to just shoot them.

Jayne fell in beside Jim, and Blair looked over his shoulder with a Cheshire grin that made Jim even more suspicious.

"You want something?" Jim just came right out and asked. He didn't know what Jayne was playing at, but he was not in the mood, and the last of the drugs was still pulling at him, preventing him from using his senses as easily as he had come to expect.

"Nope." Jayne walked a little faster so that he hit the door to the galley before Jim. For a second, Jim got a crawling feeling of dread as the large man came between him and Blair, and Jim stomped down on that dark instinct. He was planning on leaving Blair with these people, so he couldn't exactly go setting rules about them not getting too physically close to him.

Inside, Mal was already seated at the table with a bowl and Kaylee was hovering in the kitchen. "We got us peach cobbler... or something that comes close anyway and soup and biscuits.

Jayne walked over and nearly stuck his head in the soup pot. "Smells ripe."

Kaylee got an almost hurt look on her face. "It's just chicken and some peaches." From the look Jayne was giving her, that did not reassure him.

"Really?" Blair hurried over and sort of jostled Jayne to the side. Jim tensed up as Jayne's hands clenched, ready to follow up by throwing some fists, but Blair was totally engrossed in the pot. "My mother used to make this baked chicken and peach dish with a little clove and a little ginger. Wow. That brings back memories of home." Kaylee's smile lit up the room.

"We ain't got no clove or ginger, but I used cinnamon and something called allspice. I figured if it was called 'all' that must mean it's good for most anything."

"Good choices."

"Long as it don't poison us all, I reckon it's better than some would do," Mal said with a significant look in Jayne's direction. Jayne's body tensed up, but he didn't comment on Mal's criticism. He just grabbed a biscuit, walked over to the table and dropped down. Jim walked cautiously over toward Kaylee, not sure what the rules were now. Mal looked easy enough about having Jim walking around, but that look was deceptive. Even without using all his senses, Jim could see the tension in the captain.

"Looks good," Jim offered the engineer. Engineer. If she was a real engineer, she wouldn't be cooking or acting as the barker planetside. This whole ship ran like it was short crew, and Jim wondered how many they had lost during their little adventure at Miranda. Kaylee turned her smile toward him.

"Thank you kindly." She poured the thick soup into a bowl and handed it to him with a plate of cobbler and biscuit and something that might be a peach cookie or just a really flat piece of bread. It didn't matter to Jim as long as it was edible and had a lot of calories. They'd missed more than a few meals and even Blair was starting to look a little gaunt.

"Here you go," she said, offering the same to Blair.

"This smells really good. Doesn't it?" Blair asked. At first, Jim thought Blair was talking to him, but then Blair put the plate and bowl in front of Jayne before heading back for another plate for himself.

"Um... yeah. Ain't too bad," Jayne said, clearly confused. Jim sat across from Jayne and just enjoyed watching Blair turn that oversized brain to manipulating someone else for a change. Jim still wasn't sure if it was Naomi's training from the time Blair was a child or his psychology degrees, but the man could talk a settler out of his last horse and then make the settler thank him for the right to be swindled.

"So, it looks like Dr. Sandburg might be joining us for a more long-term stay," Mal commented just as Dr. Tam came in. The doctor's eyes went big.

"Truly?" he asked, and Jim wondered how the man managed to hold on to so many core mannerisms out here on the edge of nowhere. He sounded just like a cadet straight out of Alliance training. When Blair didn't answer, Jim looked over to see him just on the verge of sitting, his face stony and frozen.

"Yes, he is," Jim answered for him. That not only got Blair moving, but it earned him another glare from Blair as he sat.

Mal stopped eating for a second. "I suppose that means that we'll need to figure out what he's going to do."

"He's a doctor," Simon said as if that explained everything.

"Ain't seeing a need to have more than one of those on board," Mal said. If Jim were Simon Tam, he would have taken that as a warning. Simon, however, looked ready to argue.

Blair stopped that by holding up a hand. "Hey! I am not a medical doctor. I mean, I can take out a splinter and figure out which antibiotic to give, but my specialty is psychology. I haven't done actual medical practicing in a good long time because I focused my work on persistent, reoccurring psychotic episodes. My hypothesis is that psychotic episodes are actually periods of other-awareness rather than dysfunctions in and of themselves."

"You studied at Sihnon," Simon said with the sort of dry disgust Jim used to use to describe cadets coming out of Persephone's military academy. The place was little more than a warehouse of adolescents with attitudes.

"And you," Blair poked his spoon in Simon's direction, "studied at either Bellerophon or Osiris to get an attitude like that going. Did you know that on Earth-that-was, there were entire cultures that revered schizophrenics because of their ability to see the world through a different lens? Entire cultures. Our assumptions are just that... assumptions. We think they're processing information incorrectly only because they're doing it differently that we would."

"And they're unable to care for themselves or form coherent memories during the events."

"Define coherent." Blair's hands were dancing in the air now, and both Mal and Jayne were looking on like they weren't sure what was going on. Kaylee just started eating and Jim followed suit. "You're defining that term based on your own perceptions, just like you interpret River's behavior based on what you think a young woman should do. Norm-referenced behaviors are not, by default, correct."

"So, how would you handle it? Should we leave schizophrenics to..."

Mal whistled loudly, cutting the conversation short, and Blair looked over with the sort of happy curiosity he always showed. One day the man might figure out that most men didn't like getting interrupted in the middle of a fight, but today was not going to be the day.

"I ain't following any of this, because I'm still back on pondering what Blair is going to do with us if he takes a job as crew."

Blair dropped his gaze down to his plate, and his whole body just stilled. Jim could tell he was trying to come up with some argument for staying with Jim, but the time for that was past. If the Operative was coming after them, their time was up.

"You'd be a good barker, Chief," Jim commented. "That would free up Kaylee to scrounge for engine parts because it can't be easy to keep a ship this old flying the black."

"Amen," Kaylee said softly. "What are you going to sign on as?" Kaylee asked Jim with this guileless expression that stopped the words in Jim's throat. He looked over toward Mal, but the man's face was blank.

"I'm not," Jim said quietly. "And Blair is good with food. In the war, he learned to make most things palatable, even when he was cooking with tumbleweeds. However, if he tries to get you to eat his pickled tumbleweed recipe, I would suggest that you pass."

"It made the supplies last. The soldiers didn't complain," Blair said softly.

"Wait. You ain't happy about staying behind, but you are anyway?" Jayne asked, staring at Blair in a way that made all Jim's protective instincts come roaring to the forefront. Jayne might not be the simple mercenary he'd assumed when he'd first seen the man, but that didn't mean he had a right to go questioning Blair.

"Blair is in charge of anything touching on psychology, which is why I'm not yelling about him using drugs on me when I really didn't want them used," Jim said firmly. "However, I'm the one trained in strategy, and if I tell him that the only feasible strategy is for us to split up, then I would expect my partner to listen."

Jayne looked at Jim, and now he looked even more confused. Jim looked from Jayne to Blair, hoping that Blair could somehow explain whatever weirdness the mercenary had going on in his head, but Blair looked just as confused as Jim.

"I thought you were the manish one," Jayne finally told Blair. Jim might have taken offense at that, but Jayne was pretty clearly confused rather than just trying to be offensive.

"What?" Now Blair had turned all his attention to Jayne, which was good because it meant he wasn't thinking about the future that was rushing toward them faster than Jim liked.

"Him letting you do the fucking..." Jayne poked a thumb in Jim's direction. "I thought that made you the one who were a man."

"Oh good lord," Simon said quietly, his face getting quite pink.

"I am a man," Blair said. "I even have testicles to prove it, although I would really rather not provide visual evidence of that right now."

"Huh?" Jayne tilted his head, and Jim took a bite of peach soup just to keep from laughing. Yeah, insulting Blair's manhood was not healthy for anyone, and more than one person had learned that the hard way. Blair could be downright hard on a person's ego.

"I have balls; therefore, I am a man."

"But yer crying."

Jim's head came up, and he was surprised to see Blair wipe at the corner of his eye. Kaylee's overspiced soup and the drugs were clearly still interfering, but Blair wasn't apologizing for his tears at all. "I'm a man with balls who was crying," he said harshly.

"Oh, Blair," Kaylee breathed. That was one who Jim could trust to look after his partner.

"Okay, do you have a point here or did the universe just put you here to test my patience or perform penance?" Blair demanded of Jayne. Now Jayne was looking around the table like he expected one of them to back him up. Mal was looking very interested in the corner of the table, Simon was slowly reddening and Kaylee had her face scrunched up with sympathy for Blair.

"Cao. Ain't like I'm the one breaking all the rules here," Jayne said defensively. Maybe he realized that no one was on his side in this odd conversation.

Mal sighed. "You'd be best to ignore Jayne. He can say some mighty stupid things sometimes."

"Ain't like you aren't thinking the same thing." Jayne set both his elbows on the table.

"I really doubt I'm thinking anything nears to what you're thinking," Mal's tone of voice made it very clear that he expected there was a huge gulf between the thoughts of the two men.

Despite the frustration and danger clear in Mal's tone, Jayne kept right on trying to talk his way out of the mess he'd gotten himself into. Jim had a feeling it wasn't going to work, but he gave Jayne credit for being a gorram stubborn man who didn't give up easily. "I'm thinking that if'n the big one is the woman in the relationship, then the little one shouldn't be so girly."

"Yep, that is just about the most horrifying thing you could say, so naturally you go saying it."

Jim raised his spoon. "And can I add that I have testicles just as large as Blair's."

"Bigger even," Blair added. He speared two peaches out of his cobbler with his fork and then shoved both in his mouth at once so that Jim was reminded of growing up on Osiris and watching the chipmunks.

"And you're admitting that?" Jayne asked Blair. Now Jayne was confused and horrified.

Blair swallowed. "Did you know that in the animal kingdom, the species with the males who are least likely to get cheated on have the smallest testicles? The testicles of gorillas are like totally tiny." Blair held up two fingers to demonstrate just how small they were. "But rats. Whoa. Man, they have huge testicles. If our testicles were proportionally just as large as a rat's, then we'd have basketballs between our legs. But the rat gets cheated on way more than a gorilla, so it has to make up for that cheating in volume. It's all about the volume."

Mal was looking at Blair in dismay. "Surprised as I am to say this, I finally found someone whose conversating is even less appropriate than Jayne's. Rat testicles?"

"I think it's real interesting," Kaylee blurted out. Mal just looked at her with the same dismay he'd been using on Blair just a second ago.

"Exactly," Blair said smugly. "So you would think men would brag about having small balls. You know, more of a 'I don't need any more than this because my partner is faithful' kind of thing."

Jayne reached down and made a show out of grabbing his crotch. "I got two that are plenty big right here."

"And Jayne has reclaimed the title of most creepifying," Mal said wearily. "As the captain, I ain't interested in hearing any more on any part of anyone's sex life... or anything's sex life," he modified himself, pointing a finger at Blair.

Jim stirred his soup, and a lot of the little fears that had been squeezing his heart like tendrils started to loosen up. If Mal liked Blair enough to include him in the group teasing, then there was a good chance Blair had a place here long term. Given a choice, Jim wouldn't pick a captain crazy enough to make a run into Reaver space, but he had survived it. The fact that any of his crew made it out alive did suggest that the man might have some sort of brain.

"You know," Blair said, stirring the soup and wrinkling his nose so that he got wrinkles just at the bridge of it where his glasses rested. "We keep looking for radiation."

Mal looked downright relieved at the change of topics. "Seeing as how that's what River said were going to kill us, seemed reasonable."

Stirring his soup, Blair got that distant, dreamy tone to his voice that usually meant he was thinking about something too hard. "But what she said was that there was nuclear fusion in the peaches, and that's where the radiation was coming from."

"Ain't no radiation in those. I checked 'em before I started cooking," Kaylee offered.

"Yes, but we were assuming the peaches were the metaphor and the radiation was the part that was real. Let's turn that around. Assume that what she wanted us to look at was the peaches and radiation was a metaphor for..."

"For...?" Mal asked.

Blair shrugged. "I don't know, but that doesn't mean it's not a real danger. River's brain was rewired, particularly the language centers, but the information and memory is still intact."

"Ain't even going to go thinking too hard about how you know all this," Mal muttered, but then if he was muttering it, that meant he didn't plan to confront Blair about his bad choices in getting involved with the Institute.

"Where is River right now?" Blair stood up, his face lit with excitement, but before he could even turn around, River was there in the doorway, her bare feet and loose hair making her look much younger than she was.

"Listening to a brain that goes so fast it forgets where it's gone," River offered.

"Totally," Blair agreed amiably as he hurried to her side. "Talk to me about peaches, River."

River's eyes glazed. "It's always there, but no one sees it. Watching. Watching. No one watches the watcher."

"There she goes all crazy again," Jayne said in a voice that made it pretty clear he was feeling put upon. When Mal gave him a cold look, he grabbed a biscuit and shoved it in his mouth.

"The peaches are watching?" Blair asked.

River moved closer, and Jim stood up. He still had the slipwire in his belt if he needed it. That might be enough if she was distracted enough, but instead of attacking, she moved in and put her head down on Blair's shoulder. "In the corner. Look. No one looks. Not the peaches."

"Not the peaches?" Blair echoed, putting his arms around her. "It's the peaches, but it's not the peaches. And the thing watching us is in the corner."

Jayne snorted, but a look from Mal quieted him.

"Jim, any ideas?" Blair asked. Jim shrugged and looked into the kitchen. His vision zoomed in on a blue half-circle. The blue word "Blue" sat on top of the white word "Sun" inset into the half circle. Below it, the Chinese characters for blue and sun sat side by side.

"Um, Chief, could she be talking about the Blue Sun logo?" Jim asked. He was answered by a wild scream as River clung to Blair and caterwauled like an animal about to be taken for slaughter.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

raine-wynd.livejournal.com

I love how the story is progressing. One quibble though: you have Simon referenced in this section and it doesn't read right, i.e. Mal stopped eating for a second. "I suppose that means that we'll need to figure out what he's going to do."

"He's a doctor," Simon said as if that explained everything.

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Old War Horses

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