Feedback is more than appreciated. I'm posting this as I write it so if anybody has suggestions for what direction they'd like to see it go, speak up! Disclaimer: Sue me for all I've got. I dare ya. You can buy yourself a Coke. ------------------------------------------------- Pvt. Reynolds sat along the fence with the rest of the Browncoat prisoners, eyes closed, crucifix in hand. He felt like he should be praying, but he didn’t know what for. Courage? Strength? An end to the hours of forced marching they’d endured so far? He’d been done with basic training for a bare five weeks, seen action one time, and now it appeared that he’d spend the remainder of the war in an internment camp. He could feel his ankle swelling against the unforgiving leather of his boot. He’d tried to run when his ammo ran out, but one of the Purple-bellies had caught him on the temple with his rifle butt. The cracking of the bones in his ankle as his leg buckled beneath the weight of his body was the last sound he heard as the blackness took him. He’d awoken to the sickening pounding of his head and the unrelenting throb of his foot and leg to find himself in the belly of a transport with thirty or so other Browncoats, all nursing minor injuries. Time lost all meaning—he lost count of the pulse beats in his skull. After an hour—a day—a month—they’d landed and marched from the landing field to the camp. When he first tried to stand, the fiery jolt of pain from his ankle caused him to nearly fall, then expel the contents of his stomach beside the road. He wanted more than anything to sit down and refuse to move. He couldn’t move, couldn’t walk any more, but the sight of the purple bellies shooting the prisoners who couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up with the rest of the pack and leaving their bodies beside the road caused him to force himself to take the next step. And the next. And the next. He wasn’t going to rot a captive in this godforsaken place. Now here he sat, back against the fence of the internment camp. Night was falling. They’d been searched, relieved of any gear they still carried, and turned out into a fenced area that he’d guess comprised about five acres of bare dirt with unfamiliar prisoners that he could only guess had been taken in other battles. Guards circulated through the mass of ragged people and patrolled the outside of the fenceline. Mal had found himself the nearest vacant spot along the fence and taken the weight off his leg. “Lay down and prop your leg on your good knee. Don’t take your boot off—you won’t be able to get it back on for roll call in the morning.” Mal opened his eyes to see an unfamiliar girl sit down next to him. “If you can keep it above your heart the swelling won’t get as bad.” She sighed as she leaned back against the fence, closing her eyes. He looked at her for a moment, then decided her advice made sense. He slid down the fence, laying the calf of his injured leg across his other bent knee. He eyed her appraisingly. The thing that struck him about her was that nothing struck him about her. She was medium all over. Medium high, medium wide, medium looks. Her hair was long and dark, pulled back into a braid, but coming loose around her face. The patch on her coat showed that she was a major. “You heard anything new about how things are going?” she asked, her eyes still closed. “Just got here.” Her eyes opened. He was surprised to notice their color, a gloriously deep greeny-brown, the like of which he had never seen. “Welcome. Looks like you are the news then. What happened?” “Not rightly sure. We were pushing them back on St. Lucia, but we ran out of supplies. They picked me up in the retreat. I don’t even know where I am now.” “Not on St. Lucia anymore, but that doesn’t really matter. You’re probably gonna be stuck here for a while. They like to question the new guys before they start ignoring you. This your first time in internment?” “Yeah.” “Thought so. Just don’t give the guards a reason to notice you. They’re foul-tempered tian sha de e mo-- they’re mostly guys that didn’t do well in any other capacity. Almost as stuck here as we are. They’ll probably pull you out of roll call and question you sometime in the next few days, but after they realize you’re just a grunt and you don’t know anything, they’ll leave you alone unless you attract attention.” “How d’you know so much about it?” Her response caught him off guard. She tipped back her head and laughed. The sound of it was captivating. Rich and musical in the gathering dusk of this cold and terrible place. He smiled in spite of himself. “Young one, I’ve been fighting this war since before there was a war. As prisons go, this one isn’t half bad. And I don’t expect to be here long. A lady always knows when to leave, you see,”she winked. “Did you just call me young one? ‘Cuz you’re all of what, nineteen?” “Twenty.” “Hah, I’m older than you by 4 years. Who’s the young one now?” He found himself falling into the banter naturally, almost as if they were friends already. He didn’t even know her name. “Name’s Malcolm Reynolds. What should I call you, oh great and wise veteran?” He stuck out his hand, which she shook with a firm grip. “Riemann--Stephanie Riemann.” It didn’t take long for Mal’s new friend to pull her brown coat tightly around her frame fall asleep against the fence. It was impressive, really. Mal was finding it impossible to sleep. He passed the hours watching the white clouds of his breath dissolve into the cold night air and feeling the hard packed dirt against his back and head. He would occasionally fall into a light, fitful doze, but in a matter of moments his injured leg would slip a little on his knee and the pain would jolt him awake. Toward morning, he managed to drop off for a brief time, only to be driven back to wakefulness by a long, shrieking blast from what sounded like some kind of siren. All around him, prisoners were jumping up and running to line up in front of the gate. Stephanie blinked awake, stretched, and rose. “Roll call. Better get moving.” She took his arm above the elbow and pulled him to a standing position. Experimentally, Mal tried to take a step, but he could not prevent a cry from escaping his lips as the toe of his boot touched the ground. He didn’t think the injured leg would support his weight even if he could force himself to try to step on it. For the first time, he saw a look of nervousness come into Stephanie’s eyes. “We’ve got to get over there. Rule number one, don’t attract attention.” “Go. I can’t walk—there’s no use you gettin’ in trouble too.” She ignored his words, taking his arm in her hands and draping it over her shoulders. “Lean your weight on me.” “That won’t attract attention? Just go…” “Quit arguing. I outrank you.” Together, they limped toward the line. The last few stragglers were reaching its end. He heard Stephanie curse under her breath as those at the front of the line started shouting out numbers. Numbering off, counting the prisoners. Guards on each side of the line to make sure the count stayed accurate. His eyes on the end of the line, Mal concentrated on limping faster. He never saw the guard walk up behind them until the rifle hit him hard in the shoulder, spinning him to the ground. The guard was shouting something, but Mal couldn’t process the words he was hearing. He tried to roll himself into a ball, hiding his unprotected stomach from the guard’s beating, but to no avail. He felt the skin over his ribs tear as a booted foot struck him, and then he received a merciful blow to the head and knew no more. He awoke to a cool hand on the side of his face and a woman’s voice. He couldn’t make out the words she was saying. He opened his eyes to see a pair of greeny-brown eyes. “Malcolm!” the voice was saying. “You gotta wake up, Mal! Come on now, soldier!” She pulled him up into a sitting position. He noticed that a trickle of blood was coming from her nose. Shen sheng de gao wan, his head was pounding, and his stomach turned violently. Dabbing at her nose with her sleeve, Stephanie squatted next to him and wrapped a supportive arm around his shoulders. “What say we get the cao outta Dodge, Private?” she asked, a wicked gleam in her magnificent eyes. Mal had no idea what she meant by getting out of Dodge, and even years later he couldn’t quite remember how he ended up out in the rocky hills miles outside of the internment camp. His head was swimming in a fog of pain and sickness. His mouth tasted of acid and bile, and he hoped that he hadn’t thrown up on the woman who was had helped him, her of the eyes. He dimly recalled being half dragged, half carried up a steep incline, but the details were lost in a haze. He could only take the shallowest of breaths—any deeper inhalation caused sharp pain to lance through his chest. Mal found himself sitting alone in a hollow in the side of a hill overshadowed by a narrow outcrop of limestone. It wasn’t really deep enough to be called a cave, but it provided shelter from the sun and wind and prying eyes. He heard the crunch of booted footsteps on the rock overhead, but even if he could move there was nowhere for him to run. He was trapped in a hole like a rabbit in spite of all they’d done to escape. A brown blur dropped past the mouth of the shelter. Stephanie stood before him, having just jumped from the shelf of rock above their heads. Mal would have laughed if his chest hadn’t hurt so much. Not trapped after all—just surprised by the return of his rescuer. She walked over to him and lifted his his shirt. “Hey now, sweetheart, no fair takin’ advantage of a wounded man,” he joked. “Ha very ha,” she returned, glaring at him. “I have to check your bandage. guard broke your ribs. May have punctured a lung. All I can do for you is keep it bound up for now, but we’ll get you somewhere that it can be taken care of properly.” “Where did you take off to?” “Setting my transmitter up on top of the hill where it’ll get the best reception. Somebody should be along before too long to pick us up.” “Where’d you find a transmitter? And how long is too long?” “I learned my first time through the camps that it’s a lot easier to get out if you’ve got a way to get offworld. Kept a transmitter in my pocket flap ever since. I chucked it into the woods on the march from the landing field—they never bother to search for anything smaller than a weapon ‘till you actually get into the camp. Didn’t take too long to find it—just had to go back real quiet-like at night and pick it up. And it’ll be at least a couple days, maybe longer. Depends on how close the fleet is and how bad things are elsewhere.” She pulled his shirt back down over his bandage. “They’ll come this close to an Alliance outpost to pick you up? There a plan to liberate the camp or somethin’?” He watched as Stephanie moved to the other side of their small shelter and sat back against the rock wall. “I doubt they liberate the camp. From what I’ve heard in the last few weeks, our boys are pretty spread out right now. I don’t think there’s the manpower available for that kind of mission.” She noted the scandalized look in Mal’s eyes. “Look, life in the camps sucks, I’ll be the first to tell you. But the prisoners are alive. If the Independents come in and liberate the camp, they will have to take the landing field first and that is going to take a heavy assault. Chances are the guards will shoot the prisoners before our boys ever even get there. A low-profile shuttle can extract the two of us without drawing much attention. The Independent command will come after me because I have talents they can’t do without and I have access to a lot of information they don’t want the Alliance to get. The camp will have to wait.” “How’d you end up there in the first place?” She snorted derisively. “Stupidity. Was in the Independent outpost on St. Lucia right when the fighting broke out, just when the bombing started—before command started sending in reinforcements. Got myself trapped when Alliance ground forces came in. Just got lucky to be taken to the internment camp—real prisons are harder to walk out of.” In spite of his constant pain, Mal would have gladly spent the rest of his life out here in the hills rather than be taken back to the internment camp for even a week. He and Stephanie passed the days and nights in their shelter under the rock. For a few hours each day she would disappear and return with vegetation that was edible and occasionally a rabbit. They could light a fire during the day to cook, but they avoided letting it burn too long for fear of violating Stephanie’s rule number one. At night, they huddled together against the cold to sleep. It turned out that Stephanie had sacrificed her thermal undershirt to bandage Mal’s chest, and out of gratitude he shared his coat with her at night, wrapping his arms around her to help her stay warmer. At least, he told himself that it was the temperature and gratitude that made him pull her against his body and wrap his coat around both of them at night. Told himself that it was not a need to feel her frame against him as he slept. Truth was, day by day he found himself thinking about her more and more. About those greeny-brown eyes. About the way her hands felt on his body when they tended his wounds. About the warmth of her thigh against his hip, the rhythm of her breath on his neck as they tried to sleep at night. He caught himself looking at her when she was busy tending the fire, wondering how her lips would taste, how her breasts would feel. Memorizing the curve of her neck and the shade of her hair. The first time it happened almost without thinking. They were settling down for the night. She lay down with her back to him, snuggling in close to his body so that his coat would cover both of them. The pressure of her rear against his abdomen was so arousing that it was causing him physical pain. Before he even recognized what he was doing, he was leaning over her to kiss her just under her ear as he ran a hand down the length of her body under the coat. Stephanie rolled onto her back, turning to look into Mal’s face. He froze, afraid that he had gone too far, afraid that she would get up and leave, afraid that she would decide he was a creep, afraid that she would sleep on the other side of the shelter with one eye open until command came to extract them. Her hand came up behind his head, fingers twined in his hair, pulled him down close to her. And she kissed him, full and sweet, her mouth opening to encourage his to do the same. Her hands moving to his shoulders, down his back, back to his shoulders to push him back onto his back. She rolled with him as his hands moved to her coat, pushing it from her body. She shrugged her arms out of its sleeves. All fear left him as he pulled her shirt off over her head and unhooked her bra to free her breasts. Claiming her mouth as they fell into his hands, reveling in the feel of the soft flesh. Her hands had moved to his waist, were working there to open his trousers. To caress the hard length of him. When she wrapped her hands around him and squeezed, he saw stars and nearly came right there. He groaned and caught her hands in his, stopping her. Holding her off as he kissed down her neck, down her chest between her breasts. He could feel her tremble as he licked her nipple. He continued down, kissing her stomach, reaching her waistband, looking up into her eyes as he unbuttoned her pants and stripped them off. Ran his fingers through the dark curls between her thighs. Feeling the slick moisture there as he ran his thumb over her, the sharp intake of breath as he pressed down. Then she was pushing him back down onto his back again, straddling him, lowering herself so just the tip of him was inside her, teasing. And he was pushing up into her, feeling her wet, slick heat as she enveloped him. Riding him as he thrust into her, clamping down on him as she rose and fell. She pulled the elastic out of the end of her braid, freeing her dark hair, letting him see it as it framed her face and fell forward over her breasts. And he reached up to take its silk length in his hands as he exploded into her. When he woke the next morning she was gone. She came back late in the afternoon with food, and they ate in uncomfortable silence. But they were together again that night, and the next. And on the third morning he awoke to find her still sleeping next to him. He brushed the hair back from her face as she blinked her eyes open. She looked at him square in the face, and she smiled. “Malcolm Reynolds, I do believe I love you,” she whispered. He kissed her forehead gently. “I’ve loved you since we got the cao outta Dodge,” he replied.