STAND AND DELIVER

Written by: DeSangro

Summary: On Shadow, a young Mal Reynolds defies his mother's wishes and commits an act that will forever mark his future-- he joins the Independence movement against the Alliance authorities.

Author's Notes: The title of "Stand and Deliver" is taken from the Mr. Mister song of the same name. I do not own Mal Reynolds, and I do not own the Firefly 'verse. Those are the creations of Joss Whedon.

Big thanks goes to Weerwolf for pointing out that Mal was indeed raised by his mother and "4o hands", and not by his father. This eventually led to this fic being beta'd and revised.

In the text, I have included a few grammatical errors, solely for the purpose of making the story feel more like something that Mal might think or say, though the story is not 'narrated' by him. I've tried to get a rustic feel to the dialogue of Mal, his mother, and his sister. If you feel that I could do a better job, or if my portrayal of Mal is un-canonical or out of character, please tell me! I have been a bit afraid to portray the main characters, because I was afraid that I couldn't find their individual 'voices', so please let me know if I am doing a good job, an awful job, or a job that needs improving! Thanks!

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There was a war goin' on!

There was a war goin' on, somewhere out in the black where the starships flew in the vast, cold nothing. There was a war goin' on, somewhere on distant planets where the soldiers all fought in the dust for honor and great causes.

There was a war goin' on, and in a perverse, childish fashion, Mal Reynolds wanted to be a part of it.

His mother, Ruth, would of course hear of no such thing. Mal was the only boy in the family and was therefore precious. Ruth Reynolds would sigh sadly whenever she overheard her son telling his sisters 'bout how he planned to "sign up--soon as the Independents put up a recruitin' booth!" Then Ma would have to "talk to the boy; get him sorted out 'fore he goes off and gets himself killed."

Young Malcolm would listen to this time-worn lecture with a concerned and repentant expression-- and closed ears, though these were less obvious to his family members. After dinner, when the family had gone to sleep, Mal would lie awake on his bed, letting the cool, mild breezes of the grass-lands caress his face through the open window, and thinkin', as he always did on those pleasant nights, of war, and the glory and heroism therein.

He sure as hell didn't want to join the Alliance's ranks, though that was the fashionable thing to do amongst those young Rim-world folks who had moneyed parents and a deep-seated inferiority complex 'bout not hailing from those rich, glitzy Core planets. A few of the older kids in Mal's school had done just that; they finished their studies, and then up and joined when the Alliance had held a 'recruitment fair' in Shadow's larger townships. Shadow's citizens were pretty evenly divided 'twixt those who supported the Alliance and those who supported Independence. The rest were waffling on the issue ("cowards" as Mal called 'em), and the Council of Shadow had yet to make a decision on the matter, though the issue of springin' for Independence had come up several times. Officially at least, Shadow was still pro-Alliance, and the Alliance wanted Shadow to stay that way.

Mal intended to support the Independents, and he said this as long and as often as he could get away with it at dinner-times. Eventually, his sisters' eyes would roll at his talk, and his mother would strive to turn the conversation to somethin' else, but Mal kept at it. He was sixteen years old, and he would be turnin' seventeen in a while--almost a man. Mal counted off the months 'till that happy event, and his mother quietly dreaded it.

Then the Oppression happened. In stages, like a terminal disease. It crept up and got worse and worse, and no one could stop the awful progression.

One day at Mal's school, the Alliance stopped by for a 'recruitment fair'. The pro-Alliance kids were linin' up to sign themselves away for a tour of duty in the armed forces, when a few Independent-minded students came up and started to mock both the students and the soldiers present. An angry soldier started to yell at the students, fists flew, and the soldier ended up firing his weapon in a packed room. Six students--three of them Alliance supporters--were killed.

The event was played and re-played on the nightly news with sickening regularity. It had the effect of both galvanizing and polarizing the communities of Shadow. Those who supported the Alliance claimed that the Independents had deliberately caused the tragedy by brawling with the soldier; those who supported the Independents claimed that the soldier had deliberately murdered the students. Lines were drawn, and the amount of folk who supported Independence began to slowly--yet steadily--rise.

The Alliance had a few more 'recruitment fairs' in other towns and cities on Shadow, but the turn-outs to join the military were fewer, and protesters attended in their stead. They hissed and heckled, jeered and threw rotten eggs, as though goading the soldiers to fire upon them. The soldiers would stand stock-still, with stinking egg yolk running down their faces, their hands clenched tight on their guns, which, now, had no live ammunition in their chambers.

Eventually the protesters grew tired of throwing bad eggs.

They went to rocks.

And then one day, somebody tossed a Molotov cocktail.

The Alliance stopped having 'recruitment fairs' altogether. Mal was very glad to see this. For a time, even, it seemed as though the Alliance had passed Shadow by, as though it had just washed its hands of the little prairie planet entirely.

This, of course, was not the case. The Alliance returned, with a vengeance.

They swept in, under the fine-sounding pretexts of 'war-time emergencies' and 'suspicious uprisings among the local populace'. They confiscated the ranches of men who had had known Independence leanings, and those who had supported the Independence outright they arrested for treason. This was a fearful thing. Treason could carry the death penalty. At the least, it merited a long sentence at the infamous Shiva IV prison. Those charged with treason rarely, if ever, returned; either way, it was tantamount to a death sentence for the accused.

Mal was outraged, and afraid, though he was a man now and would never admit it. He was a liability to his mother and his mother's ranching business and he knew it. He'd shot his mouth off so many times... at school, at home, in town with his friends... he was a dead man for sure, ready to be hauled off any day by the Alliance thugs.

One day, literally out of the blue, blue sky, the Alliance landed near the Reynolds homestead The enemy delegation came in a sleek metallic troop transport, larger and more streamlined than most, bristling with weapons and brimming with soldiers.

Mal ran upstairs to his bedroom, sure that they had come just for him, personally. He expected them to kick the door down and demand Malcolm Reynolds' head on a spike!

Instead they was creepifyingly... polite. A middle-aged man, with the insignia of a colonel in the Marines, got out of the transport at the head of a band of soldiers. Mal watched from his bedroom window. There was one young Marine there, standing amongst them. He was the tallest man that Mal had ever seen at the time, with dark olive skin and bristling black hair. The big Marine looked up at Mal for a second as the eighteen-year-old stared from the high window; he had cold black eyes, as predatory as a hunting hawk, and Mal pulled his head back into his room and slammed the window shut, too afraid, almost, to breathe.

He could hear his mother open the front door for the colonel and his men. He could hear his mother greet the men.

There was a tap on his bedroom door. Mal flinched, then got up, and very, very carefully crawled under his bed.

"Mal, it's me. Open up!" The voice was a hissing whisper, and barely audible, but Mal recognized it all the same as the voice of his youngest sister, Rebecca. He breathed a long sigh of relief. The Alliance hadn't found him yet.

He squirmed out from under the bed and let her in, taking care to close the door with as little noise as possible, and she sat down on his bed without being bein' invited, as was proper. At the moment, though, he was too scared to be mad at her. She looked as afraid as he felt.

He sat down beside her. There was a long moment of silence, as each strained their ears to hear any noise from the downstairs, and as each struggled to keep from breathing too loudly.

Finally, Mal spoke, keeping his voice at a whisper. "Rebecca, what's happenin'? Where are they?"

She looked at him for a moment with wide, frightened eyes, then said just as softly, "They're in the den. Momma's talkin' with 'em."

"What are they sayin'?"

Her mouth twitched. "Alliance-speak. They frighten me. They're all real polite... but they scare me, all the same."

"Anything about me?"

She gave him a tight-mouthed, resentful look.

"Come on," he whispered, "Anything about me?"

"Yes," she whispered. Mal could hardly hear her, but he could read her lips, and his heart seemed to seize up for a moment.

"What?"

"That you're a traitor."

Mal swallowed, his breathing shallow. Visions of the Shiva IV Correctional Facility For The Reformation Of Insurrectionists floated up before his mind. For a moment he neither saw nor heard anything else save for those visions and the pounding of his own heart.

A voice--his mother's voice--came from downstairs, saying, "Malcolm! Come down here. We need to talk."

Mal froze. With a unwilling slowness, he got up, walked out of his bedroom, and started walkin' down the stairs. An order was an order, after all.

His mother was in the den. A few soldiers stood about, not exactly at ease. The colonel sat comfortably in a chair, opposite Ruth Reynolds.

"Ma?" Mal asked after a moment, not looking at the Alliance men.

"Come here, son," his mother said softly. "Colonel Tanaka just wants to talk with you. We just want to sort a couple of things out." Her voice was very calm, but Mal could see beads of sweat forming at his mother's hairline.

"Malcolm, how old are you?" Colonel Tanaka asked smoothly.

Mal forced himself to look at the man. "Seventeen, sir."

"Seventeen... still a minor, then... and still under the care of your parent." Tanaka paused, then said, "Have you now or ever supported the Independence movement in any way?"

It was a dangerous question, and there was no way that Mal could say 'No', and not be a liar. But to give the right answer would put his mother's ranch in jeopardy. He froze up while beads of sweat began to itch all over his body.

"Mal?" Colonel Tanaka said with great courtesy. When Mal didn't answer immediately, he added softly, "I know that this must be frightening for you, Mal, but it's not a crime to think like an Independent--though we would prefer that you didn't. It's only a crime when you openly aid or support the traitors. Every teenager has some sort of rebellious period in their lives, and I understand that."

"I ain't a rebel," Mal said flatly. "Sir."

A dark form stirred against the wall. Mal's eyes moved to him. It was the tall soldier that he had seen from the window. The tall soldier's dark face did not look at all happy.

"I know that, Mal, and it is good for you that you are not," Tanaka said, "but from what I have heard, you have supported the Independents in one way-- I have heard that you were at an Independence Rally a few months back."

And that was true. Mal had been at a youth rally for Independence a while ago-- back before the Alliance had returned.

"Sir, I--"

"This says, to us, that you are something of a radical, Mal," Tanaka continued, "and active insurrectionists must be punished."

The Colonel paused, smiling a damnable smile, while Mal stood and sweated.

"Also, " Tanaka added, "we know that you signed your name to a petition while you were at this youth rally."

"Malcolm!" Ruth Reynolds burst in. She looked at her son with a furious expression. "How could you? I specifically forbade you to do anything like that! What did you do-- join the damned rebel army?"

Mal cringed. Tanaka continued to smile, as pleased as a snake with his prey. The Colonel said to Mrs. Reynolds, "No, ma'am, he did not do something so foolish as that. It was merely a petition that was to be sent to the Council on Shadow, supporting Independence. Whether or not your son is a legal adult, his signature is... troublesome to us. And since you, as the parent, should have control over him, you are responsible for his treasonous actions. And you will pay."

"What! Now, wait, Colonel, please--" Ruth Reynolds pleaded.

"Your ranch is forfeit, Mrs. Reynolds... unless you would like your son to bear his own crime."

Mrs. Reynolds gaped, then she closed her mouth with a sharp click. She gave her son a look, and that look was the angriest, most disappointed look that Mal had ever seen on his Ma's face.

Colonel Tanaka handed Ruth a piece of paper with an official seal on it. It was a standard Bill of Sale, though Mal's mother would be signing her life's work over to the Alliance government.

"Corporal Tresca," Tanaka called, "please come and stand as a witness."

The tall, olive-skinned young soldier came forward out of the shadows. He had a large, crooked nose and cold black eyes. "Corporal Sala Tresca, standing as witness," he growled, giving Mal a cutting glare.

Ruth Reynolds signed the document, and from where he stood, Mal could see the tears in his mother's eyes.

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Mal snuck away and joined the Independents a few weeks later.

His family never found out what happened to him. Mal wondered if they cared, anyhow.

The ranch had been completely confiscated. The house had become the property of the local Alliance governor; Ma Reynolds's ranch-hands had been fired and new Alliance employees had been put in their places.

He snuck out to the grass-lands, where the cattle roamed free. It was night, and the stars shone down like the angels' lights from heaven. The black sky was so beautiful.

The grass rustled in the soft breeze, and Mal remembered how he had lain on his bed in the summer night, dreamin' about war and glory.

He felt tears sting his eyes at the memory.

Now he just wanted to get even.

A ship slowly descended from the night sky. All but a few of its necessary running lights were turned off, and its engines were dead; its pilot lowered it to the ground on anti-grav alone.

Mal hung back until the ship had shut off its anti-grav field; it still floated a few meters off of the ground, though, as if by magic.

A hatch door hissed open and a landing ramp slid down to touch the beaten grass. A tall, slender man, dressed in a long trench-coat, stepped down the ramp and slowly approached Mal.

The man's trench-coat was brown. On the shoulders, the coat bore the insignia of a captain in the Independent army.

"Hello there, Mal," the man said. "I'm Captain Marcus Wilson. You wanted to sign up with us?"

"Yes, sir," Mal said, and he saluted him.

The Captain laughed softly. "Well, son, we sure can do that, even though you are still seventeen--"

"Forgive me, sir, but I turned eighteen yesterday," Mal said.

"All the better," Wilson replied. He held out a electronic ledger. "Sign here, please... if you're willing."

Mal took up the pen. His hand trembled, hesitated, for a moment... then he signed 'Mal Reynolds' onto the dotted line. Captain Wilson nodded, and tucked the little device away.

"Welcome to the Armed Forces for Independence, Malcolm," Wilson said. "You've made a good decision, son." He started back up the ramp and Mal followed him.

As silently as it had come down from the heavens, the starship 'Serendipity' lifted up and away, and headed for parts of the 'verse that Mal Reynolds had only just dreamed about, before.

After all, there was a war goin' on, and Malcolm Reynolds was now a part of it.

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*****The End.*****

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End Notes: Just in case you've wondered, the 'infamous' prison of Shiva IV will show up in a later story, and so will Sala Tresca, the mean-spirited young Corporal. :) ~DeSangro.