Old War Horses 27

[lit_gal]

Title: Old War Horses
Firefly x Sentinel
Mal/Jayne, Blair/Jim
Rated: ADULT
Taming the Muse prompt:

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.

This time on Old War Horses:
TWO CHAPTERS IN TWO DAYS.  GET THE ORDER RIGHT.  Mal is really starting to wonder who this William Ellison is... and he clearly doesn't like him.


If you want to read the early chapters, go to Twisting the Hellmouth. 

If you want to read the most recent chapters, use tags.



27.

Mal stood back and watched the others. Jayne was wound tight enough to snap at any time, and considering that he had Vera on his hip, that weren’t a pleasant thought. Jim looked about as tense, but Blair was clinging to his arm like a limpet, so Mal figured that would keep him under control. William Ellison was the real unknown. After Jim’s description, Mal had expected a hard man, someone who had the hard look of a gambler or a slaver or some other sort who knew how to shred human dreams. Instead, he looked like a sad old man.

About every time Jim went looking off at something else, Mal could see William watching him with this lost expression Mal simply didn’t associate with the sort of hard man that would turn his sons against each other.

“Well, that’s it,” Blair concluded, leaning back away from the computer screen where William was watching the evidence they’d stolen scroll across the screen.

William looked around the room, and Mal returned his even gaze. The man would bleed as easy as anyone else, so Mal wasn’t much impressed.

He was also wondering exactly when his life had turned so strange that he’d be standing in the middle of a mansion on a gorram core planet with Captain Jimmy, Jimmy’s sly lover and a sly Jayne Cobb. It was enough to make a man wonder if he hadn’t gotten hit in the head once too often and started hallucinating.

“So Blue Sun is running the government.” William leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair.

“You don’t sound surprised,” Jim said.

“I can’t say I am. I always suspected that they had a lot of power given their ability to fund elections, but this level of unadulterated control is unexpected.” The way William said that made it almost sound like he was admiring the bastards. Mal scratched his stomach and wondered just how crazy River might be for sending them here. He also wondered if Jim was bothering to use any of his senses to keep an eye on his father. It didn’t exactly take a genius to see the man was not handling this reunion well. Zoe had warned him that people were unreasonable when it came to family.

“So,” Jayne spoke up, “do we go broadcasting that gou shi the way we did with the Miranda video?”

William’s eyes went large. “You were responsible for broadcasting the Miranda video?”

“Yep,” Mal answered for him. He might trust Jayne with their lives, but when the man talked too much, he inevitably said something real stupid. “We took down the hwun dan who ran that mess,” Mal said proudly.

“What an utter waste,” William said, disgust in his voice. “A total, unmitigated, foolish waste.” Mal could feel his spine stiffen in offense. They’d paid in blood to make sure the government never tried that again, and this man had no right to go casting aspersions, not unless he wanted to eat those aspersion along with a fist.

“Dad,” Jim said with aggravated tone.

“Power that is squandered loses its effect. I taught you that James,” William said, and rather than looking apologetic, he crossed his arms and glared at his son.

“Some of us aren’t manipulative bastards,” Jim took a step forward, and then Blair was out of his seat, pressing himself to Jim’s chest. For a little sly trick, he was good at keeping Jim in hand.

“If you can’t manipulate circumstances well enough to protect yourself, you are a victim, James. A victim.”

“Then maybe I’m a victim, Dad, but at least I’m not pulling this shit,” Jim said, waving a hand toward the computer. Mal could see Blair pushing to keep Jim back from his father, and Jayne shifted nervously. Mal caught Jayne’s eye and gave a jerk of his head to order Jayne to stand down before he shot someone.

William stepped back, his hands up. “I never wanted you to be the sort of man who would do this.”

“Really?” Jim demanded. “It seems like that’s exactly what you wanted. Hell, look at Charlie. You got a manipulative son-of-bitch with that one, and that’s who you always held up as the perfect example of a Womak-Ellison.”

“I did—” William stopped, pressing his lips together as he cut himself off.

“Okay, we all have strong feelings here,” Blair soothed them both, sounding a whole lot like Inara. “We all need to step back and seriously think about not pissing each other off to the point that we feel the need to kill each other.”

William frowned, but he didn’t disagree with that assessment. With a sigh, he retreated to the far side of the room and sat on a leather couch bigger than Mal’s whole quarters. “I recognize that I encouraged a certain level of deceit in Charles that is not healthy.”

Jim and Jayne both snorted. Mal figured anyone Lieutenant Charlie ran across knew the man had a certain level of deceit.

“Be that as it may, I never favored deceit in and of itself, only the ability to employ it when necessary.”

“Like when it benefits you?” Jim asked sarcastically.

Blair was muttering now, his mouth moving even though Mal couldn’t catch any of the words.

“Like when it prevents one from being hunted like an animal,” William said. “Machiavelli put it best. Humanity is by nature deceitful, and the honest man will be taken advantage of by the dishonest. To protect oneself, one must live in the reality rather than the imagined world, James. You were entirely too willing to live in an imagined world, and I worried that you wouldn’t be able to take care of yourself.”

“Well then, this must be a real affirmation of your whole belief system,” Jim snapped and then the two men glared at each other. Mal reckoned he’d never been quite so uncomfortable all his life as he was getting caught between these two. Well, maybe when he woke up and found out he’d accidentally married Saffron before figuring out she was just using him. That had been mighty uncomfortable. Considering the number of times women had made him feel like that, it was surprising he hadn’t decided to take up with being sly even earlier.

“No, this isn’t,” William whispered. He closed his eyes and for a moment, he seemed to sag. However, the moment passed and he visibly pulled himself back together. “You clearly have the skills to take care of yourself, but this is… Blue Sun is an enemy grown far too large for anyone to confront alone.” William looked over at Mal. “And if I offended your sense of strategy, I apologize. However,” he said, turning back to Jim, “as Machiavelli says, a man will sooner forgive the murder of his father than the seizure of his property. Humanity lives in fear of loss, and only through manipulating that fear can a ruler lead without fear of being overturned.”

“Huh?” Jayne asked.

William looked over and sighed. “If I threaten to shoot you, you have something to fear. If I actually do it, I’ve done the worst thing I could and you have nothing more to fear.”

Mal cringed at that particularly unfortunate metaphor, and Jayne brought Vera up to train it right at William’s head. Williams’ eyes went comically large.

“Don’t, Jayne,” Mal ordered before this could get out of hand.

“He threatened to shoot me,” Jayne said in a much put-upon sort of voice.

“It was an example. He ain’t going to shoot anyone,” Mal said firmly. Hopefully he was even telling the truth. Mal noted that Jim’s hand twitched toward his sidearm. The man might not like his father much, but he’d kill in defense of him. Luckily, Jayne was already lowering Vera so she pointed toward the floor.

“I ain’t liking his kind of metaphor,” he complained.

“Man, the testosterone in this room could choke an elephant,” Blair muttered loud enough to make sure everyone could hear. “Jayne, he means that if you guys had threatened to reveal the Miranda plot, the government would have done anything you asked. However, because you did reveal it, they didn’t have anything else to fear.”

“People went to prison over that,” Mal pointed out. He felt pretty damn proud of that.

“Probably not the right people,” William said. “The right people will have studied Machiavelli and Nietzsche and Nash, and they will have ensured that someone insulated them from any public disclosure. They are, no doubt, safe. However, if you had only threatened to expose them, they would have worried about a potential weakness in their defenses, they would have acted as if they were vulnerable, a state which would have given you more room to operate.”

“Or more like they would have tracked us down and gutted us,” Mal said. This whole conversation was souring his stomach something fierce. He remembered the pain and the desperation as he’d fought to get that message out. He remembered the bone deep terror that there wouldn’t be any of his crew—his family—left after he got done. Having this man dismiss all that as tactical error was making him feel about as homicidal as Jayne on a bad day, and there wasn’t a soul in the ‘verse who wanted to deal with Jayne on a bad day.

“If they believed they could neutralize you, yes. They would have. However, if they feared you….” William let his voice trail off.

“Oh man, that’s it,” Blair said, his voice full of wonder. “River wanted us to find the thing that Jim had learned so long ago that he’d let it rot and had forgotten it. Jim learned to manipulate others, but he rejected that way of life. True, he rejected it because it’s immoral and totally bad for the karma in a soul-sucking sort of way, no offense Mr. Ellison,” Blair offered with a smile that didn’t match his words. William failed to look placated. “But the lesson is manipulation. River sent us down here precisely because she didn’t want us to do the same thing with this data as you guys did with the Miranda footage.”

“You think River wants my father to handle this?”

“Me?” William asked.

“Him?” Mal and Jayne demanded at the same time. All of them looked around at each other in shock, all of them except Blair who rolled his eyes.

“Man, what do you think she meant when she talked about ruts covered over in leaves? She called us plough horses in the dressage ring, and if we’re the plough horses, William Ellison is definitely the dressage horse. So, if we want to win a dressage competition, we have to put a dressage horse on the line.”

William frowned. “I’m sorry, but is any of that supposed to make sense?”

“Sadly, it does,” Jim said with a sigh. “I don’t like it, but it makes sense. However,” he said, holding up a finger when Blair looked like he might start bouncing, “we need River to confirm it. Right, Captain?” Jim looked over, and despite Mal’s sour stomach, he had to agree that it sounded like the sort of logic River would use.

“I can take Blair up to talk with her seeing as how he’s about the only one of us that can make heads or tails out of her rambling,” Mal offered.

“Oh yeah, I need to check to see if Mr. Ellison is the horse that can eat the elephant in the room. Totally.”

Mal watched as William looked increasingly concerned. Standing up, he moved closer to Mal, surprisingly enough, but then Blair was plastered to Jim’s side, and William seemed to have a few concerns when it came to Blair.

When William came close enough, he whispered to Mal. “Is that young man quite sane?”

“Dad!” Jim said loudly.

“It was a simple question, James.”

“Don’t ask it again.” Jim crossed his arms and clenched his jaw.

“He’s totally questioning my sanity, isn’t he?” Blair asked, and oddly, he had a huge smile on his face. “No problem. Hey, I get that all the time.”

Jayne shifted. “Only ‘cause you act like a fengzi who can’t quite figure out how to hide it from the regular folk,” he offered, and sadly, that sounded like his sincere tone, like he was honestly trying to help.

“Might be you shouldn’t give others advice,” Mal suggested. “Try to keep them from killing each other until we get back,” Mal said, pointing from Jim to William. “Sandburg, let’s go. The sooner you have that talk, the sooner we can get off his gorram planet.”

“Oh, um, aren’t you coming?” Blair looked at Jim in clear concern.

“Go on, Chief. I’ll be here when you get back.” Jim looked over at his father, and Mal didn’t need any fancy degree in psychiatry to see that Jim was threatening to take his father apart if the man tried anything. William simply headed back to the couch he’d earlier left.

“Get the lead out, Sandburg,” Mal said as he started for the door. This whole place was giving him a sour stomach. He should make Zoe bring Sandburg back down. She was better at not shooting people who annoyed her. Mal always did have trouble with that.

“Play nice,” Blair ordered over his shoulder as he followed. “They are totally going to emotionally slaughter each other,” he said softly as he trotted at Mal’s side.

“Ain’t that what families are supposed to do?” Mal asked.

“You need therapy. I mean… seriously… huge, fucking amounts of therapy. You might want to look into that,” Blair offered sweetly.

Mal snorted and just walked a little faster, enjoying the fact that Blair and his short legs had to scramble to keep up.

Comments

[mulder200.livejournal.com]

Ah! The complication that is family.

[lit-gal.livejournal.com]

Isn't family just wonderful :/

[1orelei.livejournal.com]

“Huh?” Jayne asked.

Ah, how well Jayne speaks for all of us. Although much as I'm amused by William, I feel for him being presented with the idea of braids and ribbons (especially if being dressed by the likes of Jayne or Sandburg) and offered elephant to eat. Especially if said elephants first need hunting.

Sorry. Punchy.

[lit-gal.livejournal.com]

Jayne is fun to write. He's just a big lug.

And I think anyone would be confused by this crew, but William is used to a certain refinement. These guys are definitely lacking refinement.

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

“He’s totally questioning my sanity, isn’t he?” Blair asked, and oddly, he had a huge smile on his face. “No problem. Hey, I get that all the time.” *laughs*

I love how this brought River's ramblings together in a way that makes sense. Nicely done.

[lit-gal.livejournal.com]

This story went on a little longer than I would have liked, but in the end, this is what River was saying. By broadcasting the Miranda stuff, they lost the chance to use it as a lever. Of course, if they had tried to strong-arm the government, they would have needed to hold on tight to the tiger's tail. William is in a better position to do that

[jujukittychick.livejournal.com]

“You need therapy. I mean… seriously… huge, fucking amounts of therapy. You might want to look into that,” Blair offered sweetly.

lmfao i can just see the fluttering eyelashes to go with it. i wonder if the ship could get a group rate lmao