Against My Will

*** Part 2 of the story. I’m really having fun writing this, and thanks for all your amazing support and comments. I hope you continue with this, because as long as you want to read it, I’ll write it! -------------------------------------------------

Ch. 2 – THE TRAIN JOB

Unification Day. In the past, Simon had celebrated along with the best of them, singing incredibly off-key with the other revelers, watching parades of people litter the streets of Osiris. This year, Simon was standing watch over River on a ship that was being flown randomly through the ‘verse by a crew made up of people who had fought against the very unification being celebrated.

Talk about severe twists of fate.

Simon bent down to listen to River’s breathing, making sure the smoother he’d given her hadn’t slowed her heart rate down too quickly. Satisfied, he let his gaze wander around the infirmary. He’d just set it right again after her outburst of aggression earlier, and didn’t fancy having to do it again any time soon. If this was going to be where he spent the majority of his time, then it would have to be meticulous. It was his one last thread connecting him to the life he’d left behind.

A wave of guilt swept over him as he looked at his sister again. It wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t asked for any of this. She had been an innocent girl who had fallen prey to the government being celebrated at this very moment for their wondrous works. Simon quickly wondered if his parents were at a Unification party…if they even thought about him and River at all…

Shaking his head, he tried to put the disturbing thoughts as far out of his mind as possible, although he’d been thinking of them more and more often recently. The infirmary had been far too quiet the past few weeks since he’d finally cleared Kaylee for work.

She had been good company, chatting away as he’d worked on cataloguing and organizing his new ‘office’, and at least one member of the crew stopped by every half-hour or so to check on her. There hadn’t been a shortage of socialization while she’d been his patient, and although he hoped he never saw her lying in his chair again, he couldn’t help miss her – just a bit.

He wouldn’t miss Jayne, however, and that had been the only good thing to come of releasing Kaylee. Jayne now had no reason to come into contact with him for any reason. They didn’t speak to each other during meals, and Simon tended to walk another way if he saw the great oaf of a man walking through the ship. But Kaylee had obviously meant something to him, for Simon had often caught Jayne hanging around the doorway at all hours.

He couldn’t understand the conflict of character. Around anyone else, Jayne was boorish, mean-spirited and dismissive. Not counting the off-color comments during that first dinner he’d spent on Serenity, Simon had never heard Jayne say anything to Kaylee that was mean-spirited. He certainly didn’t dismiss her, either. Simon had more than once wondered if there was more going on between the little mechanic and the mercenary than a friendship, but Kaylee’s welcoming smile looked the same directed at Jayne as it did at Mal or Wash.

Other than Jayne, Simon was actually getting used to the rest of the people on board. He found that the more he spoke with Wash, the more he liked the man. Zoe kept mainly to herself, but when she’d come to check on Kaylee, she’d always included Simon in their conversations. Inara was as genteel as the women he’d known back on Osiris, and therefore, he tended to feel most comfortable when she was in the room. The Shepard, it seemed, was becoming incredibly adept at ingraining himself in the everyday goings on of the ship; something which Simon almost envied. He himself still felt as awkward as a first-year intern…finding very little common ground to bond over as he tried to adjust to his life on Serenity.

Mal…well, the captain still confused him. And the less he tried to figure the man out, the better off he felt he’d be.

Suddenly, River sat bolt upright in the chair, screaming her head off. He whipped around to see her jump off the chair, practically squeezing her head between her hands. She crouched low to the ground, her screams turning into sobs and mutterings he couldn’t make out.

He rushed over to her and knelt down next to her.

“It’s okay…it’s me,” he said, trying to move her hands away from her head. “Do you know who I am?”

River stopped sobbing instantly, and gave him a patronizing look out of the corner of her eye. “Simon.”

“Were you dreaming?” he asked, wondering if she would finally tell him anything. “Did you dream about the Academy?”

“Not really,” she said, rising to her feet. He followed suit, frustrated that after all this time he was no closer to understanding what was happening inside her head.

“If you can talk about what happened there,” he started, but she physically backed away from him. “I know it’s hard but the more I know, the faster you’ll get better,” he said, lowering his voice so she wouldn’t keep putting distance between them.

“This isn’t home.” It wasn’t a question, but it wasn’t a statement either. Simon saw the confusion in his sister’s eyes and his heart constricted painfully. He might not want to remember home right now, but at least he could when he wanted to.

“No. No, we can’t go home. If we go home, they’ll just send you back to the Academy. This is safer now,” he explained.

River started crying again, shaking her head in disbelief. “We’re on a ship,” he offered lightly, trying to get her to recall her old fondness for adventure and excitement.

It must have worked, to a degree, because her tears stopped and her gaze swept around the room. Then she rattled off the statistics of the ship as if she had the flight manual in front of her. Simon could only listen incredulously as she spouted off facts that she couldn’t possibly know.

“Well, that’s somethin’. I can’t even remember all of that.”

Simon turned to the doorway to see Mal striding in with an impressed look on his face. He moved quickly to the sink and began running his knuckles under the water.

Simon peered over his shoulder and saw the blood roll off his hand into the drain. “Need a weave on that?” he asked.

“It’s nothin’,” Mal replied, shaking the excess water off his fist.

“I expect that someone’s face feels differently,” Simon quipped lightly.

Mal grinned and dried off his hand. “They tell you never hit a man’s face with a closed fist, but it is, on occasion, hilarious.”

Simon smiled back, wondering for the millionth time at who the man standing before him really was. “I suppose so.”

Then, a dark thought crept into his head. “So, the fight didn’t draw any, uh…attention?” He spared his sister a look over his shoulder and found her watching the two of them closely.

“No feds,” Mal offered quickly. “Just an honest brawl between folks. None of us want the Alliance on us doctor…that’s why you’re here.”

“I thought I was here because you needed a medic,” Simon said.

“Well, not today,” said Mal, giving him a tight-lipped grin as he made his way out of the infirmary. River watched him go with a hesitant look on her face.

“Mal. Bad. In the Latin,” she said, her voice dipping low.

Simon didn’t know whether to agree, or defend the honor of the captain he was still struggling to figure out. Seems River didn’t want to give him any time to decide, since she moved over to his tray of tools and flipped it over onto the floor.

He sighed again, moving to her side to try and calm whatever thoughts were flying about in her brain this time. He didn’t know how much of this he could actually take - or his infirmary for that matter.

------------------------------------------------ When Simon reached the kitchen later that evening, he found the place deserted. There was no one preparing dinner or milling about, and he realized they must have gone planet-side again – most likely to set up the next job. He found the silence on the ship distracting, allowing him too much time to think things he felt he was better off not thinking about, and before he knew it he found himself standing in front of the engine room.

He hadn’t seen Kaylee since last night’s dinner, and even then she’d eaten quickly and run off to finish whatever job Mal had assigned to her earlier that day. She had been working almost non-stop since being released from the infirmary, and although Simon understood that kind of passion for one’s job, he found himself missing their brief conversations.

She wasn’t in the engine room, however, so he set off to find her. He didn’t know why, but he felt like he almost needed to see her. To see one of her welcoming smiles light up her face and assure him that at least one person on board didn’t mind that he was there in the first place.

He finally found her in the cargo bay, fiddling with some buttons on a remote that apparently opened the doors in front of where she was standing. He watched them creak open, approaching tentatively in case she was actually deep into what she was doing.

“Hey,” he called out, finding his hands uncharacteristically moist for some reason. He swiped them quickly on his pants as she looked up in surprise.

“Oh, hey…doctor,” she said smiling at him, then lowering her gaze to the doors once more, her cheeks reddening a bit.

When the rest of the crew called him that, Simon almost took it as a sign of grudging respect, but coming from her it sounded…well, too formal. He decided he didn’t like the title as much as he thought he did.

“You really should just call me Simon,” he offered, smiling back at her.

“Oh…I’ll do that then,” she said, bringing her eyes back up to his and smiling even wider than before.

He searched around for something to say to her. He had never been especially good at talking to girls back on Osiris, but at least he’d had things in common with them. He could usually come up with something that resembled conversation. But she was nothing like the girls back home.

“So…what are we doing?” he asked finally, peering down into the hold that had been opened by the doors.

“Oh, crime,” she piped readily, her smile still intact.

No. Definitely not anything like the girls back home.

“Crime!” he said, his eyebrows shooting up as he looked back into the hold. “Good…okay…crime.”

“It’s a train heist,” she explained patiently. “See, we fly over the train car. The captain and Zoe sneak in, we lower Jayne onto the car and they bundle up the booty, and we haul ‘em back up…easy as a lion.”

He stared at her warily, trying to decide whether or not he really wanted to know the answer to his next question. “You’ve done this before?” he asked despite himself, watching her closely for her reaction.

Her face split into an even bigger grin. “Oh, hell no,” she laughed. “But I think it’s gonna work. The captain is jen duh sh tyen tsai when it comes to plans.”

Not for the first time, her unwavering faith in Mal surprised him. It only further served to make him like her more, since he himself was beginning to think that the captain just might be worth that kind of faith. He hadn’t tossed him and River out yet, after all.

“Uh…well, is…you know…is there anything I can…you know…” he swallowed hard, marveling at his impeccable conversational skills, “something I should be doing?”

She smiled at him, shaking her head, her thick apricot hair falling in waves over her shoulder. He barely had time to appreciate the way it looked with the lights overhead bouncing off it when he heard the one voice he dreaded booming out and echoing off the metal walls.

“How ‘bout stayin’ the hell outta everyone’s way?”

Simon looked up to see Jayne approaching, dressed in heavy gear that he apparently needed for his part in the heist.

Kaylee frowned at Jayne as he arrived and fiddled with the remote she was holding. “There’s no call to be snappy, Jayne,” she warned lightly.

Simon took a step closer to her, drawn there almost invisibly by the way she’d stood up for him.

“Are you about to jump onto a moving train?” Jayne snapped at her. Then he turned his hard gaze to Simon. “Cap’n ain’t around. I’m in charge.”

“Since when?” Kaylee interrupted, drawing Simon’s attention to her once again. Maybe there wasn’t anything more than friendship between her and Jayne after all.

“Just ‘cause Mal says you’re medic doesn’t make you part of the crew,” Jayne continued, as if Kaylee wasn’t even there. “You just plain figure out what’s wrong with that moonbrain sister of yours until we call for you. Dong ma?”

Simon’s insides twisted at his words, and not for the first time, an overwhelming desire to punch the great oaf in his face swept over him. He didn’t mind so much being picked on by the mercenary, but he had no right to go around calling his sister names. River hadn’t done anything to him, or to anyone else…except perhaps creep them out a bit with her ramblings.

He felt Kaylee’s eyes on him, and although he hated simply backing down, he didn’t see any other course of action. Jayne was incredibly big, and although Simon liked to think that he wasn’t completely helpless in a fight, he was smart enough to know that Jayne would have him bloody and beaten within minutes.

“Right,” he said, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. He tried to look up at Kaylee, to gauge her reaction to all of this, but he couldn’t do it. Embarrassed, he turned and made his way back to the infirmary where he could think up thousands of ways he could hurt Jayne without it coming to physical violence.

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The more he thought about the embarrassing way Jayne had treated him in front of Kaylee, the more Simon felt it might be a good idea to stay in the infirmary unless people needed him. He had been stupid for seeking her out in the first place. She, along with everyone else save Shepard Book, was a part of the crew here. Simon and River were simply passengers. Why try and make friends when in a few short weeks he would be trying to carve out a life somewhere else?

Just as he was promising himself to never go off and seek her out again, she came hurtling into the infirmary. She looked pale and worried, and it was such a different look for her than the one he’d grown accustomed to that he knew that something was very, very wrong.

“Kaylee?”

“Simon, Jayne’s been shot in the leg and he’s too big…I can’t get him here…and the captain and Zoe aren’t with him. I think they got snatched.” She said all of this very quickly, wringing her hands in front of her. “I don’t know what to do…”

Simon’s instincts took over, and he gently grabbed her arm to lead her out of the infirmary. “Alright, first thing’s first. Go get Shepard Book and he and I will get Jayne into the infirmary. Then you go tell Wash what happened, and we’ll try and figure out what to do next.”

Kaylee nodded the entire time he spoke, and he wondered if she’d even heard a word he’d just said.

He squeezed her arm gently, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Kaylee, they’ll be alright. It’s Mal and Zoe, after all,” he said resolutely. It must have been enough for her, because with a definitive nod, she took off down the hall to find Book.

Simon entered the cargo bay and saw Jayne on the floor, cradling his leg with one hand. He approached slowly, already sizing up the wound as fairly superficial from where he stood.

“So, I guess you called for me?” Simon said, tossing Jayne’s words back at him. “You’re just lucky I’m not busy trying to sort out my moonbrained sister, or your leg would have to wait.”

“Ni hun qiu!” Jayne spat out defensively, holding his hand up to him. “Can’t you see I’m bleedin’ all over the floor!?”

“I’ve seen worse,” Simon said calmly, seeing Book appear on the landing above them. “But we’ll have to get it cleaned out before I can know if we’ll have to amputate or not.”

“Amputate!” Jayne bellowed, getting to his feet and staggering a bit in his haste. “There ain’t no call to be amputatin’ doc…just a graze, like you said.”

Simon saw Book hiding a grin as he joined them in the cargo bay. Simon gestured for Book to take one side, and he the other, as they helped Jayne limp to the infirmary. “I’m just saying,” he continued, struggling under Jayne’s massive form. “I’ll do a thorough exam, don’t you worry.”

In no time, they were joined by the rest of the crew. Wash’s face was tightly drawn, and Simon found his concern for Mal and Zoe growing by the minute.

Wash resolutely refused to go anywhere without Zoe, despite Jayne’s insistence that Niska was not the kind of man to be crossed. Simon set about his business, letting the rest of them fight over the right course of action. He wasn’t worried that Wash would lose this battle, though, since they couldn’t go anywhere without him flying them there. And, if need be, Simon had one or two tricks up his sleeve as well.

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Jayne took off so suddenly that Simon had to run to catch up with him. In a way, he was almost impressed with the ability of the great oaf to move as freely as he was with a bullet just having been removed from his calf.

“That’s it!” Jayne thundered, hopping up the steps to the bridge where Wash and Kaylee were standing, looking very solemnly out the window of Serenity. “We’ve waited long enough. Let’s get this bird in the air!”

Wash stood and faced Jayne. “No ruttin’ way.”

Simon saw Jayne falter for a minute, and guilt overtook him. “You really should sit down…” he warned.

Kaylee stepped forward to take her place beside Wash. “We can’t just leave the captain and Zoe here!” she refuted, staring Jayne down.

“They ain’t comin’!” he shouted back. “We can’t walk in there and get ‘em, so let’s fire it up!”

Simon saw Inara and Book slide through the doorway to the bridge. “What’s going on?” Inara asked, looking around at all of them for an explanation.

“Strap in, we’re takin’ off,” Jayne said, wavering a bit on his feet again.

“We’re not,” said Wash, in a surprisingly strong, determined voice.

“Cap’n do the same if it were any one of us,” Jayne tried to reason, earning him reproachful looks from everyone in the room.

“Not in a million years!” Kaylee demanded in a low voice.

“Shut it,” Jayne snapped at her.

“Listen to me…” Wash began, but Jayne cut him off irritably.

“You know what the chain of command is? It’s the chain I go and get and beat you with until you understand who’s in ruttin’ command here,” he growled. “Now, we’re finishin’ this deal. Then, maybe…maybe we’ll come back for those morons…got themselves caught…”

Simon’s practiced ear could hear the dip in Jayne’s voice, the falter of speech even before he started talking nonsense. He stood in back of Jayne, prepared to try and catch him if he fell. He didn’t like the action he’d taken, but he hadn’t seen any other way about it.

“You can’t change that,” continued Jayne, “gettin’ all…bendy…”

The rest of the crew stopped scowling at him long enough to shoot him confused looks.

“All what?” Wash asked, his eyebrows raised.

“The…the light from the console…keep you…lift you up. Shine like…ah, little angels…” Jayne’s hands started groping in front of him, apparently reaching for those little angels he was seeing. Simon forced himself not to grin too broadly.

In the next instant, Jayne swayed on his feet and Simon prepared himself for the heavy burden of Jayne’s body. When he fell forward onto his face instead, Simon chalked it up to karma and felt that the slight toward River was now paid in full.

Wash’s eyes cut to everyone in the room. “Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?”

“I told him to sit down,” said Simon quietly. He knew that there were two ways they could take this. They would either hate him for using his trade as a means of pulling one over on one of their own, or they could thank him for keeping things level. Jayne did, after all, have quite a few guns in his arsenal.

“You doped him,” Kaylee announced incredulously. She stepped over Jayne’s body to sidle up next to him.

“It was supposed to kick in a good deal sooner. I just didn’t feel comfortable with…well…with him in charge,” he explained in a low voice. If Kaylee hated him for doing it, he didn’t know how he’d feel about that. He turned to face her. “I hope that’s alright.”

She raised her eyebrows, appearing impressed with his quick thinking, and smiled as she looked out at the rest of the crew, who didn’t seem to mind all that much that he’d taken Jayne out of the equation. Simon breathed a sigh of relief as he listened to Book start to formulate a plan for extraction.

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After Inara had left in her shuttle to collect Mal and Zoe, the rest of them set about trying to move Jayne to the infirmary. They had also decided that Simon and River should wait there in case anyone followed Inara back to Serenity upon their return.

Moving Jayne this time was much harder than the first, and so after a very strenuous and earnest attempt, they left him on the stairs. Kaylee took hold of Simon’s arm as Book went back up to the bridge to talk to Wash about their exit plan once everyone was back on board. “That was a brave move,” she said, gesturing down at Jayne. “Dopin’ him up like that. He’ll be madder than a hornet’s nest when he comes to, you know.”

Simon sighed wearily, knowing that what she said was the truth. “I know…but I also knew that we couldn’t leave without Mal and Zoe. But Jayne outweighs us all, and I didn’t want things to get ugly.”

Kaylee beamed at him as she let go of his arm. “Just when I thought I had you pegged, doctor,” she said in her lilting, light voice.

“Simon,” he reminded her, returning her smile.

They stayed like that for a moment, smiling at each other with nothing whatsoever all that funny. From somewhere in the back of his mind, Simon’s earlier vow to himself came roaring to the front of his subconscious. He wasn’t supposed to want to be friends with anyone…her especially. Things would be much simpler if he kept his distance.

He cleared his throat then, backing away before thinking twice about it. “Well,” he said, giving her a tiny wave of his hand, “You know where I’ll be. Let me know if they need me when they get back.”

Her smile faltered only for a moment, but it was a fleeting moment. “Okay,” she called out, returning his little wave. “Yeah. I got stuff to do too…see ya, doc – I mean, Simon.”

At the same time, they turned away from each other and walked off in opposite directions.

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When he’d heard the gunshots, he knew it was only a matter of time before someone walked into his infirmary. Sure enough, Mal walked in about an hour later, his shirt bloody at his right shoulder.

“What happened out there?” Simon asked, as Mal discarded his shirt. “Was it anything to be concerned…”

“It wasn’t Alliance,” Mal interrupted, grimacing as he sat in the chair and let his head fall back against the headrest. “You sure are jumpy about them folks, aren’tcha?”

Simon spared a glance at him as he put on gloves. “Well, let’s see. I stole my sister out from under their noses, and I’m on the run. Jumpy would be putting it mildly.”

Mal conceded the point and winced when Simon began feeling around the deep cut to make sure there weren’t shards stuck under his skin. “Careful now. These stitches need to be small, doc. I won’t be havin’ any scars to remember this little scuffle by - dong ma?”

Simon quickly threaded his needle and set to work. “You should have let me do this sooner,” he said, knowing that the longer the wound went unattended, the more likely it was to in fact scar.

“I have had plenty worse,” Mal barked. “This is just – OW!”

Simon smiled quickly. “Sorry,” he said, setting about his work again.

“Just be careful,” Mal ordered, although there was no order in his voice. There was a moment’s pause, then, “Pretty fast thinkin’…dopin’ up Jayne.”

Simon’s hands stilled for the briefest of moments. Out of everyone, he was most afraid of what Mal would say when he found out. Mal treated his crew equally, and Simon had seen first hand what he did to people who crossed his crew.

“Can’t say you’ve made a lifetime friend…” Mal continued, smiling wanly. Simon breathed in a sigh of relief and continued his work. He and River were safe yet again from being tossed out into the black.

“I’ll deal with him,” he answered, concentrating on looping the thread through the thickest part of Mal’s skin.

“Yeah, I’m not too worried about you,” Mal offered grudgingly. Simon’s brow furrowed for a quick second. Had the captain just complimented him?

“How’s your sister?” Mal asked, further surprising Simon beyond comprehension. If Mal was putting him on, he was doing a stellar job of it.

“The same,” Simon offered hesitantly. “One moment she’s perfectly cogent, the next she’s speaking nonsense. She’s like a child.” After hearing the words escape him, Simon realized just how good it felt to be able to let someone else see that side of River. It was almost as if it was shared between two, the pain of having to watch his sister slowly disintegrate before his eyes lessened just a bit.

“So difficult to diagnose,” he continued. “I still don’t know what the government was trying to do with her. And, I have no idea if they succeeded.”

Mal gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher. “Well, that’s the government for you,” he said, the undecipherable look sliding into one of pure disdain. “So busy tryin’ to make the ‘verse a better place that they stomp on the little guys without a second thought.”

Simon huffed in agreement and finished stitching, tying the loose end as tightly to the skin as he could. He snipped the end with a pair of small scissors and stepped back, taking his gloves off.

“Well, you’re all set. Keep it clean and don’t pick at the stitches, even if they itch. They’ll fall out on their own when they’re ready,” he said, tossing the gloves onto the counter behind him. “And, if you can manage it, try to avoid being stabbed again…at least until you’re all healed up.”

Mal hopped off the chair and pulled his worn shirt over his head gingerly. “No one likes a smart ass, doc,” he said, once his head had cleared the shirt. Then he grinned suddenly before he walked out the door.

“Which is why we’re all so damned unpopular.”

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There, that’s done. The next installment will be Bushwhacked…which might take longer to get out because it’s so damn sad…

Dong ma – understand? Ni hun qiu – you no good bastard Jen duh sh tyen tsai – an absolute genius