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 people. His side won, but he still lost.

Old War Horses

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

River is off being River. Now this is part of my 6x6 friend challenge, and I got another really hard square, which is why River had to help me with it this time. The prompt was:

Workplace, torture chair, punishment, lime green, and tears.

Yeah, try putting that in a story without sounding crazy!

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

"That was unexpected," Zoe said as she stood in the hallway where Blair had exiled all of them. He'd ordered a very surprised Jayne to keep everyone out and then slammed the door. Jayne looked almost surprised to be following Blair's orders, but he was. He'd put himself in the middle of the door and kept Simon from following.

"I'm her brother," Simon said for about the thousandth time, but Mal didn't look impressed, and he didn't tell Jayne to let the man past. So Jayne kept guarding the door.

"Can you hear anything?" Mal demanded, stopping his pacing long enough to stop in front of Jim.

Jim cocked his head. River was saying a whole lot of things that didn't make any sense at all, and Blair was offering quiet reassurances while, at the same time, clicking away on something. If Jim had to guess, he'd say Blair was taking notes on River's ravings. "Yep," Jim admitted. He stopped there, and Mal's face slowly twisted with frustration.

"You plan to share?"

"Nope." Jim reached over and used one hand to rub the sore fingers of the other.

"You want I should shoot him in the kneecap?" Jayne asked in the sort of voice that made it clear he'd consider it a pleasure. Funny, Jim had just come to the conclusion that Jayne wasn't a sadist, and now he was going out of his way to prove Jim wrong.

Mal didn't answer right away, and Jim just watched him. These people had to know that Jim allegiance would always be with Blair. "No," Mal finally said. "Gorram trouble just always finds my ship," he muttered after a second.

"Does seem like it, sir," Zoe agreed. Jim studied her. She was calm, but the second Jim paid her some attention, she focused on him, her sharp gaze just daring him to make a move. She would have made a good officer. "Sir, how much do we trust River's word that Blue Sun is dangerous?" Zoe asked the captain without taking her eyes off Jim.

Jim was surprised when Mal turned and looked at him. "I reckon you know more about the Core than any of us." He crossed his arms and just looked at Jim like he was half expecting Jim to refuse to give them any information. The fact was that Jim didn't feel much loyalty to the Alliance or the Core, not anymore.

He shrugged. "My father is an Ellison. He always said that any company was fair game except Blue Sun. He said that business was so big that they could take a loss on any one division until they managed to drive the competition out of business, and they had more than once. When Blue Sun got into the business of distributing alcohol, that's when my father shifted his business over to ship fuel. He didn't even try to hold on to his old contracts. Food distribution, medical technology, alcohol and even canned and dried foods—my father considered them all bad business because you don't compete with Blue Sun."

"Ain't much there we don't already know," Mal pointed out.

"It's not like I'm involved with the business world." Jim crossed his own arms and dared Mal to make an issue out of it.

"Wait. So Crazy's all worked up because of some gorram fruit seller?" Jayne asked.

"I reckon they're a mite bit more than fruit sellers," Mal said. "Leastwise, I assume based on the fact that River thinks they're going to be the death of us."

Jayne's snort was the only answer he gave.

"Sir, we could ask our contacts on Whitefall..." Zoe started.

"No," Mal cut her off before she could finish. "We ain't pulling anyone into this. We got a job, so we're staying in the black until it's time to deliver."

Zoe nodded, and Jim thought there was probably a story there. God knows he'd arrested men who hadn't done anything other than make the wrong friends, and then held them until he could find his fugitive, so he suspected their friends had been harassed more than once in some attempt to get at them.

At the time, Jim had called his actions justified. He was a lone lawman in a very wild territory, and he'd been doing what he had to in order to get the job done. Now he wondered if that hadn't been how his brother had started... just bend a little law here and a little law there. Cao. Jim couldn't even find it in him to hate Charlie for being a dirty cop. On lots of worlds, a dirty cop still ranked above a fugitive, and that's was Jim was. The great hero of the Alliance was a deserter and a fugitive.

Jim wondered if the Alliance would go pick up Charlie now and pick up where they'd left off in their sentinel research. Jim's twin was the only other man in the whole gorram verse guaranteed to have the gene for these cursed senses.

The door opened, and River was standing there, her hair hanging limp and her fingers scrambling at the edge of the door. Jayne fell back as fast as he could, but Jim couldn't tell if the merc realized just how dangerous she was or if he didn't want a crying woman picking his shoulder to cry on. Tears slipped over her cheeks as her eyes found Jim.

Slowly, she walked toward him, and Jim kept himself carefully still. If her attention was on him, he would never be able to move fast enough to disarm or disable her. Instead, he made eye contact with Blair who was now in the open door, and he prayed that Blair could use the safe word fast enough if it came down to it. The doc opened his mouth, maybe even to say the safe word, but Mal reached over and pulled the man closer, whispering a warning for him to keep his mouth shut.

"Lime green, Kelly green, jade, viridian," she murmured, "all whispering back. Whispering."

Jim frowned at Blair. Blair could only shrug helplessly. River frowned and tried again. "viridian, emerald, chartreuse. Anger. Moss and emerald. Fear, teal and viridian and streaks of forest."

"Whoa." Blair stepped forward. "Those are multi-functional brain scan colors. She's describing the frontal cortex colors of a scan."

"Why?" The doctor asked.

"Good question." Blair shrugged. "I have no clue."

"They listen. Always. Little teeth." Reaching up, she tangled her fingers in her hair.

"Ain't like this makes much sense," Mal pointed out.

"It makes perfect sense if you're River," Blair argued. "Only I can't quite figure out what frame of reference she's using."

"Torture. Pleasure. Whispering always. Won't stop whispering."

Jim cringed at the pain in her voice. He knew what it was like to find yourself unable to shut out the whispers that slipped into your head. When the Institute played their games with people's lives, they never even considered that men and women would have to live within these drastically damaged and altered bodies. For the Institute, they were all just tools. Tools didn't give up because they were too goram tired of trying to relearn how to interact with the world.

River inched closer to Jim. Reaching out, her fingers searched for him as she moved like a blind woman feeling for the wall. She touched him, her fingers warm on his neck, and then, with a low cry, River took off down the hallway, her bare feet slapping against the floor and her tears still drying on her face.

"I'll—" Blair started to say.

"Chief, let me try," Jim asked. He figured he could understand her frustration. When his senses had first come online, the scientists were always asking him to describe things that he didn't have the words for. He could see a thousand shades of red in a fire, but he only had about a half-dozen words. They had rarely been patient with his attempts to cooperate—and eventually he had just stopped even trying.

Blair looked at him with concern. "I can be patient when I want to be," Jim said dryly.

"If'n he's the womanly one, shouldn't he be the one doing the comforting, anyway?" Jayne asked, poking his thumb toward Jim. Clearly the man had issues, and Jim was starting to think that a fist would be the fastest solution for it.

"I would appreciate it," Jim said slowly, "if you would quit trying to call me womanly. Not that I have anything against women," Jim said with a tight smile in Zoe's direction. "But as a man, my cock is starting to take offense."

Jayne opened his mouth, probably to say something even more disturbing, but Mal spoke up. "Could be that you should just try not talking for a bit," he suggested.

Surprisingly, Jayne shut his mouth. Leaning over, Jim touched Blair's arm. "I'll be right back. If you hear screaming, come and use that safeword of yours."

Blair grimaced. "If she decides to go after you, I doubt I'd hear a scream."

That was probably true, but Jim understood River, and he understood why she'd rushed away from Blair. Blair made a person want more and try harder and when they still failed, well that was a mighty bitter pill to swallow. Jim didn't think Blair ever understood that even though Jim had tried to explain. Jim gave Blair another pat on the arm and then turned around to follow River up to the bridge.

"Captain Jimmy," Mal called. Jim cringed at the name, but he turned around to look at the other man. Raising an eyebrow, he waited for whatever Mal had to say. "She's crew, Womak." Mal didn't have to say any more; Jim understood the threat. Nodding, Jim turned and followed River.

The ship's song shifted as she chose new coordinates, the smaller correction engines puffing their breath into the black. River was turning the ship. Jim shook his head at the lack of discipline on this ship. Of course, considering that she was one of the Institute's projects, it was probably good that no one tried to keep her on a leash. She'd cut their hand off.

Stepping through the last bulkhead, Jim looked around at the bridge controls. The Firefly class ships had a dizzying number of gauges and dials and buttons, and River sat in the pilot's chair with her fingers dancing between them all.

Walking over to the co-pilot's chair, Jim sat down. She looked at him sharply. "You think too loud."

"I'll work on that." Jim stared out at the planets and moons, each a slightly different shade. To any other human, they would all look like stars lying on a curtain of black, but Jim could see each planet and each star, some colors muted and others brilliant white. When he'd been a pilot, he'd never truly appreciated the black. Now that he could see the beauty in the dust that floated between worlds, he couldn't trust himself to pilot a ship.

"I don't get lost in it," River said.

Jim glanced over. "I do," he admitted softly.

"I get lost in myself. Can't think. Can think, can't explain."

Jim nodded. "Is this danger going to come after us?"

"Yes." River turned to look at him, and he could see in her face that she didn't have one second of doubt on that front.

"If I take off, leave and lead the hunters away from the ship, will Blair be safe here?" Jim supposed he should be asking about all of them, but he'd had his illusions of nobility stripped away a long time ago. He didn't care about the others; he cared about Blair.

River tilted her head. "Teal and viridian and streaks of forest." She grimaced. Jim wondered what it must be like to know that you're sane and to know that you sound so very insane. There were days when Jim had feared he was losing his mind, and there had been days he'd been trapped inside the pain or inside the beauty of a single flashing light through a prism, but he'd never been trapped the way she was.

"If I leave, there are brain scans?" he asked.

"Teal and viridian and streaks of forest."

"Fear." Jim said the word quickly. "You said those were the colors on a brain scan that indicated fear. Who would be afraid?"

"Sitting in a torture chair, teal and viridian..."

"And streaks of forest," Jim finished for her. "Would Blair be in that chair?"

She shook her head.

"Me?" Jim's heart pounded against his ribs.

She looked at him, her dark eyes shining with tears. She nodded. "Punish the misbehavior. Redirect with operant conditioning."

Leaning back, Jim closed his eyes and tried to control the fear that slammed into him. Redirection. That sounded like one of the Institute's nicely sanitized words for torture. "If I stay here, will the hunters find us?" She didn't answer, and Jim opened her eyes to find her studying him closely. After a second, she nodded.

Cao. So he was lost to the hunters either way. "If I leave, will the ship be safe?" Jim asked again. River caught her lower lip in her teeth like she was thinking on that real hard, and then she shook her head no.

"Gan ni niang," Jim cursed viciously. River looked over at him in amusement, and Jim could feel his face heat. He'd been out on the rim too long if he was cursing in front of girls barely old enough to be legal.

"Blue Sun is funding the hunters, aren't they?" Jim asked. It didn't make any sense. Blue Sun was a corporation with thousands if not millions of stock holders and a board of trustees and bank records and payrolls, and absolutely no reason for getting involved in the Institute and their sick research, but it was the only thing that made sense. River nodded.

"What does it feel like?" she suddenly blurted.

He looked at her. "What does what feel like?"

She wrapped her arms around herself. "To remember what it's like to be normal?"

Jim blew out a breath. Hellfire and Browncoat rebels. He'd never expected that question. Swallowing, he looked out at the beauty laid out in front of him in the black. Beaumonde was a slowly growing green glow, like a pinprick hole that let light leak in from some great distance. Jim knew he shouldn't be able to see it from here, but he could. It was so bright, even when it was just a pinpoint, that Jim could see the halo of light around it. Jim could hear each speck of dust as it slid over the ship's hull, each one a faint note that shuddered and failed when it touched glass which had no sound or echoed when it was caught in the giant chamber of their silent main thrusters. The ship was singing, a chorus of tiny notes all accompanying the gently thrumming engines that ran life support and gravity.

"It feels horrible," Jim confessed, his voice a whisper. "It's like remembering who you should be and knowing you'll never be that person again."

"I can't remember."

"Be glad," Jim said. He was probably being a real hwun dan because he had no right to suggest that he had a bigger burden than she did—that his suffering was somehow worse because he could still remember standing on the bridge of his ship or remember the feel of the engine controls under his hands. But there were days he wanted to rip out that part of himself that remembered. "I'm sitting outside, starving, looking into a window," Jim said, struggling to explain. "I used to be able to walk in and eat any time, and even now, there are people eating and happy and ignoring me. But I can't get in."

He looked over, and she had her head tilted. "Blair doesn't ignore you," she said softly.

Jim had to smile. "No, not Blair. He was a big enough idiot to come out and starve on the streets with me. But if you can't remember what life was like before all this, that's probably just as well."

"I remember Simon. He bought me an ugly shirt for my third birthday." She made a face like she was picturing the shirt right now. Jim laughed.

"That bad?"

"Yes." She smiled back. "But I can't remember it without still feeling like I can't find words, like I'm already broken even then. Everything's scrambled."

Jim turned his attention back out into the black. "You're doing okay now."

"Forming new neural connections, walking uncharted territories where I can put out word markers that we share," she said seriously, and suddenly she wasn't sounding quite as sane. Oh, Jim had followed most of it, but that definitely was sounding a little on the odd side. She sighed. "When it rains, all the old ruts come up."

Jim shifted around to look at her. "You said that before. You said that Mal and I were in the same ruts that had come up after a rain."

"Once a rut is there, it's hard to get the wheel out without whipping the horse."

That was true enough if you were on a border planet and traveling by wagon. The metal rimmed wagon wheels would cut into the ground and create deep tracks along the most common roads. As long as you wanted your wagon to follow the others, those ruts were handy. They kept your wagon out of any hidden dangers. But if you wanted to go off in a new direction, those same ruts became a trap that locked you into a path.

"Can you whip the horse that hard?" Jim asked.

"Don't know. I don't think so, and whipped horses scream in pain," she said. She turned back to the dials and let her fingers touch each one like some sort of rosary. Jim nodded. So she might be able to change the direction of her thoughts or her words, but not without a lot of pain. And if she tried and failed, then she would know for a fact that she was trapped instead of just suspecting it.

"The ship changed directions." Jim changed the topic. Just because he understood where River was coming from didn't mean that he wanted to contemplate any of this. He hated that the Institute had done this to him, but he was a soldier. A person could argue that he had signed his life over to serve his government, and his government had chosen a particularly offensive service, but it was a type of service. However, the idea that they had taken a child and warped her until she was afraid of trying to recover made Jim ill. He'd fought the gorram Browncoats to stop the abuse of those without the power to defend themselves, and then he'd found his side just as guilty as the other. He could taste the bile in his mouth.

"Beaumonde." She said only the name of the planet. It was an industrial world on the edge of the border.

"Can you tell me why we're going there?" Jim asked.

"No." River looked over to him. "Deep ruts in these thoughts. Screams of horses would drown all the words."

Jim nodded and stood up. "Then let the horses run where they will," he told her. For a second, he stood next to her, two broken souls escaped from hell. Reaching out, he let his hand rest on her shoulder. She didn't look at him, but a last tear slipped over her face before Jim headed out to tell the rest that River had picked a destination for them.