Old War Horses 28

[lit_gal]

AND HERE COMES THE SPURT!
Wed Chapter --26
Thursday's first chapter--27
Thursday's second chapter--28

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:
It's time for Jim to deal with family.  Yeah, like that's going to be fun


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

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


28.

Jim considered his father, not sure what to say to the man now that Blair was gone. Of all the people in the universe to entrust with the power to blackmail the whole gorram ‘verse, his father would have been on the bottom of Jim’s list. He couldn’t believe River wanted this. However, questioning his father meant questioning River and Blair, two people Jim did put his faith in.

“Perhaps we could talk,” William said with a look toward Jayne.

Jim glanced over and considered the possibility this was a trap. If his father wanted to get the drop on him, getting Jayne out of the way would be a good step one. But if this was going to go south, Jim would rather have it happen when Blair was safely off planet. “Jayne, you interested in some food?” Jim asked.

“Ain’t looking to eat any of that little fussy gos-se Inara’s trying to pass off as food all the time,” he said, holding his fingers out to show something small. Unless Jim missed his guess, Inara had tried to introduce Jayne to the amuse-bouche.

“Dad always has good old fashioned cakes and cookies around. Sally runs the kitchen. I’ll introduce you,” Jim said.

“James,” his father interrupted him. Jim looked over, prepared for the verbal battle to start, but his father looked too tired to even start a fight. “Sally will recognize that you’re not Charles in a split second. I’ll show him the kitchens. You… make yourself at home,” he finished.

At home. In the study. In his entire life, Jim had never been allowed to touch one book, one box, or one corner of anything in the study. When he had been called in as a child, his job was to stand with his hands behind his back and offer a respectful “Yes, sir” to everything his father said. There wasn’t a place in the ‘verse he felt less at home. However, his father gave Jayne a tight smile and headed out with a quick “Follow me.”

That left Jim alone. He ran a finger along the desk, feeling the grain of the wood roll under his finger. This wasn’t plastic, but a real living tree that had been chopped down to create a desk. The obvious show of wealth was something Jim couldn’t understand anymore. Wandering over to the shelf behind the desk, Jim could see the books with covers worn from fingers rubbing over the corners. These were the ones his father valued most, even though they didn’t have the gold edging that Jim could see on other bookshelves. Sitting in his father’s chair, he pulled one out. It was old, and Jim carefully opened it to find a family lineage. Turning the brittle pages, Jim read back into time, back to the generational ships that had brought people to this corner of the ‘verse. Closing it carefully, Jim slid it back into place on the shelf.

As he ran his finger over the spines of these well-loved volumes, Jim let his fingers linger over the ones his father handled most. They were slicked with the oils from hands. When he found a particularly slick back, Jim pulled it out. Machiavelli. Appropriate. Jim pushed that back into place without another glance. Again, he let his fingers explore the shelf, this time the lowest level, until he found a book slick with use. Pulling it out, Jim opened it, his breath catching in his chest as he saw himself staring up from the page. It was a report on his arrests of several smugglers working out of Whitefall. He turned the page and found a letter of congratulations on his son’s promotion, only this time it was Charlie’s promotion to captain. Obviously he’d been busted back a rank or two along the way. The next page showed Jim escorting a well-dressed man in handcuffs through the doors of the Ariel main jail. He’d trafficked in underage girls, and Jim remembered how Simon had bought him drinks after that bust.

Another turned page and Jim was into the war… pictures of Jim with his unit, all of them in purple uniforms, all of them so foolishly sure they were doing the right thing. Jim quickly closed the book.

“I was quite proud of all your achievements.”

Jim looked up at his father. “If you think this changes anything….” Jim stood up and stared down at the book. Why the hell would his father keep these kinds of clippings.

“I don’t. I know I made my mistakes, Jim. I thought I was teaching you to take care of yourself.”

Jim snorted and moved to the window. It was too early for Mal and Blair to be back, but he could stand here and watch for them until they did return.

“Are you and Dr. Sandburg in a committed relationship?” his father asked.

Jim looked over. “Are you ashamed of having a sly son?” he demanded.

His father drew himself up. “No. I am less than thrilled with your choice, but then I suppose given your hatred for me, it’s reasonable that you would choose such a plain-spoken man. Unartful even.”

Jim could feel anger wrapping around his guts. “He’s a good man.”

His father moved farther into the room. “I don’t doubt that. You’re a good man, so I can’t imagine you choosing anyone who wasn’t.”

“Right,” Jim said sarcastically, “because you have so much respect for me.”

“I suppose I deserve some scorn.” His father had such a martyred tone, that Jim had to grit his teeth to keep from exploding. His father did deserve scorn, so to say it in that tone of voice was insult on injury. “What did I do that was so very bad, though. I mean, other than misunderstanding the conflict between you and your brother and pushing you too hard, what did I….”

Jim whirled around. “You turned us against each other, Dad,” Jim snapped. “No matter what I did, it was never as good as Charlie. Guess what, Dad? Charlie cheated.”

Drawing himself up a little straighter, his father said, “I do know that now.”

“Now. Great.” Jim threw his hands up in the air. This shouldn’t matter to him. It absolutely shouldn’t matter. So why did he want to punch something hard enough to break it… preferable his father’s face.

“Yes, now. I know that I’m a good thirty years too late to make up for my basic inability to understand Charles. He is a petty man who will throw away human decency and long-term advantage in order to get himself what he wants in the short term. He’s a bad seed. I see that now.”

“Great, Dad.” Jim leaned against the window sill, suddenly too tired to be angry anymore.

“So,” his father continued, “other than allowing Charles to manipulate me, how am I such a horrible father? I wanted the best for you. I pushed you because I knew you had it in you to be great.”

A rough laugh slipped out. This was the most surreal conversation Jim even had, and he’d had some strange ones. He lived with Blair, for the love of God. That led to odd conversations. “You shot my dog, Dad. The only thing in this whole house that was truly mine, and you shot it.”

He’d been an old stray Jim had picked up at school, and Jim had been terrified that his father would make him get rid of it, but somehow he’d caught his father in a rare good mood and he’d been given permission to keep the scruffy little thing. Jim always suspected Sally had been involved in making his father let him keep Scraps. And then, once Jim had really grown to love it, his father had simply shot him. Jim had seen men die in battle. He’d lost friends. It was utterly ridiculous that even now he could feel this all-consuming grief as he remembered the gray fur streaked with dull red blood.

“Oh for… He was sick.” His father snapped the words out, and Jim didn’t bother turning around to see the look of utter frustration on his father’s face. He’d seen it every time he’d tried to bring the subject up. “You don’t leave an animal to suffer, James. I’ve had that conversation with you entirely too many times.”

“Do you remember Eric Sliverman?” Jim asked softly. His father didn’t answer, but the old man remembered everything, so he probably did. “His parents had just bought him a scanner, and when Charlie told him my dog was dead, he came over. There weren’t any tumors.”

The silence was its own sort of answer, but after painful, long minutes, his father finally asked, “How can you be sure?”

“I’m sure,” Jim said firmly as he turned around to see how his father would explain this. He was surprised at the look of weariness of his father’s face. His father ran his fingers through his white hair and sighed.

“I never wanted you to find out about that dog.”

Leaving the window, Jim crossed over to the desk, leaning over it and pinning his father with a harsh glare, the sort that had once intimidated criminals into confessing. “What?”

His father sighed again. “Your brother got frustrated because the dog chewed through one of his games. He hit the dog hard enough that the animal was suffering.”

Jim reared back. “Charlie?” That was the sort of thing Charlie would have bragged about in a , ‘hey, I killed your dog and got away with it’ sort of way.

“No, Stevie,” his father said, his voice whisper-soft.

Well, cao. His father would do or say anything to avoid responsibility. Jim didn’t know why River wanted his father involved, but the man clearly couldn’t be trusted. “He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. Nice try, Dad, but that’s not a believable story.”

William sighed. “I suspect Charlie either encouraged him or helped, but as much as I wanted you three to learn healthy competition and develop independence, I didn’t want you to hate Stevie the way you hated Charles.”

“Healthy competition? That’s what you called it?”

“I called it survival. The world isn’t kind, and I taught you to survive. You learned that from me.” His father leaned forward, poking himself in the chest with his thumb.

“So I should thank you for turning my family against me?”

That earned another aggravated look from his father. “You’re being melodramatic. You’ve always been melodramatic.”

“Yeah, that’s me, Dad. I’m a fugitive from the Alliance that I dedicated my life to, I’ve been tortured, had limbs frozen, electrocuted, beaten, operated on, imprisoned. I’ve been to war to defend a government that I now find out is a lie, a government that I killed friends to protect. I led men into battle and watched them die in my arms. I’ve seen raped children huddled in cages and then had to stand by while the traffickers brought their way out of a legal system that didn’t care about them, and through all that, I’ve tried to not lose myself to an anger that makes me want to burn the entire gorram ‘verse to the ground and piss on its ashes. But that’s probably more of my melodrama,” Jim snarled. His father had slowly lost most of his color throughout Jim’s rant, but Jim didn’t have time for his father’s precious sensibilities. “Fuck you, Dad. Fuck you.”

Turning around, Jim marched out of the room and toward the kitchen. If his father was going to call the authorities, Jim couldn’t even care right now. He was too angry to care about anything other than getting a little space before he murdered the man in cold blood.

By the time Jim slammed through the kitchen doors, Jim was starting to feel the first tendrils of shame at having lost his temper. Jayne sat at the counter eating what looked like an entire turkey. When Jim came in, he dropped his food, his weapon coming up. “Trouble?” he asked.

“Only my father,” Jim snapped.

With a grunt, Jayne lowered his weapon and picked up his turkey drumstick again. “He ain’t nothing. You should see my hwun dan of a stepfather. If the man didn’t make my Ma and Maddie so happy, I’d gut him and leave the entrails out for the coyotes. Cao, if I had to be around him even this long, I probably would gut him despite it.”

Jim wasn’t sure he believed that, but he moved so the pantry was to his back and he had a good view of all exits before he grabbed a chunk of turkey breast. It meant he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jayne who had chosen the same bit of counter for the same reason.

“Every once in a while, Blair waxes poetic about fathers and wishes his mother would give him a name so he could have some father-son moment with the man.”

Jayne grunted. “Don’t know what that’s got to do with poetry, but I figure most men quit their fathers about the same time they stop trying to be them.”

For a stupid man, sometimes Jayne did make sense. With nothing more to add to that conversation, Jim focused on eating food even though his stomach still churned with emotion.

Comments

[mulder200.livejournal.com]

Ah! Poor Jim! His father is truly something. And I love when Jayne is the voice of wisdom.

[lit-gal.livejournal.com]

His father is a wealthy man trying to figure out when he lost control over his life and his sons.

[1-mad-squirrel.livejournal.com]

So great to have so much of this in such a short space of time!

[lit-gal.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much. It's nice to finally feel like I can get the story out. The muse... she has not been happy lately.

[(Anonymous)]

Great! How did Willliam Ellison ever get the idea a lie could work? Jim is just the sort of person who could get a sort of autopsy on his old dog. Steve might have confessed. Charlie might have boasted. Lies are stupid. Especially ones that can be revealed.
Also not only does this hurt Jim, it means that Stevie never went into therapy and Charlie stayed a menace. Also what about teamwork and cooperation?

[lit-gal.livejournal.com]

I think William, like a lot of parents, was a little clueless. IN canon, Lieutenant Womak was a murderous, cheating ass, so I figure that he wasn't much fun to grow up with. However, parents make excuses. They never see the real danger their children might pose to others.