A/N okay, I wrote this in my head when I was lying in bed trying to sleep. On paper - er, screen - it doesn't seem as good, but then it probably only seemed good to me in the first place 'cos I was zombified at the time. Ho hum. A little backstory, which isn't needed, but may come in to play if I decided to write more in this time frame: We are about 4 years post BDM and the Alliance is holding onto power by the skin of their teeth. It isn't a WAR as such, but an outbreak of terrorism, and of course, Serenity are caught up in it, but they have NOT repeat NOT joined any kind of army. Tee hee.

Erm, Henry is a real bear - my friends. He is small and brown, and you know, a bear. My OWN childhood toy is Bunny, but I felt giving him to Simon would be a bit, well, gay.

So, with no further ado, enjoy. Oh, and bear in mind I NEVER write action on account of the fact that I CAN'T. So this is a lil outta my comfort zone.

Comment. Please?

Something, For Sure

Simon fell on his back. Hard. His head cracked against the gritty ground, hanging awkwardly off the end of Serenity’s ramp. The sky was grey and stained red. Red with blood. So different from the blue sky of Osiris he remembered. He gave himself a moment, a split second in time to wallow in the pain, to lose himself in the stars that had erupted in front of his eyes. It was a trick he’d learned as a surgeon, where a split second was all you had to make a life or death decision. Let the fear envelop you. And then let it go.

His body had barely come to rest on the ground before he was moving again, rolling on to his belly and crawling. He grabbed the pistol that had slipped from his hand and elbowed his way backwards, never leaving the ground. A hand grabbed him and yanked him back, helping his progress considerably. He found himself once more crouched behind a rusty crate, bullets flying over his head.

“Gotta say, doc, you’re impressin’ me more n’ more by the minute,” Mal told him, a roguish grin on his reawakened features as he released Simon’s shoulder.

Simon responded fleetingly with a smirk at the backhanded compliment. Insults and reprimands were force of habit between the doctor and his captain now; too much had passed between them for them not to have moved from mutual respect to reluctant friendship. Without another thought, his hand was back at his gun and his gun was aiming over the crate and his finger was pulling the trigger and another man fell.

That’s for my sister, Simon thought, as the uniformed man shuddered his last breathe.

A hand was at his shoulder, and he leaned back into Kaylee’s warm form.

“Kaylee, you shouldn’t be here,” he yelled over the noise, trying not to think about the un-covered space she’d had to have crossed to reach him. She replied with a half hearted frown, an expression he recognised. It meant ‘I may not be a fighter but I’m still a part of this.’

He relented with an understanding smile, feeling a rush of pride mixed with anger at the world that had taken the innocence from the woman he loved.

“You’re bleedin’,” she told him, stroking the back of his head, which he noticed for the first time was stinging. Even as he turned back once more to the fight, he felt her dab away the blood and dress the wound, quickly and efficiently like he’d taught her. He wondered at how they’d swapped, she the healer and he the criminal, as he shot another soldier dead.

That’s for my beautiful fiancé, he thought.

“Lil’ Kaylee, get outta this,” the captain was shouting, and with a swift kiss to Simon’s cheek she was gone.

“They’re pullin’ back, sir,” Zoe yelled, and Simon glanced across at where she sat, opposite them, hiding behind crates as he and the captain were. River sat with her, he hair back in braids. As Simon watched, she shot a man from a seemingly impossible angle, and her eyes showed she felt for that man, that life, she’d taken. Just as Simon did, and the captain, and Zoe. That was what made them soldiers, and not killers.

Simon turned once more to the sight before him. Osiris as he’d never seen it. The last time he’d been here he’d been scared and alone, taking a NightShip from his safe and comfortable life to a planet he’d always been warned of, to pick up his sister, not knowing what dangers had befallen her since he’d seen her last. Now, here he stood, or rather crouched, not ten minutes walk from the estate he’d grown up in, comrades, friends even, with people he’d once abhorred or dismissed.

And Osiris was unrecognisable. The men they were opposing were shooting at them from a gash in the side of a ship that had crashed into a tiny park Simon and River had played in as children. Simon could just about make out the remains of a swing set, and he remembered River’s frantic pleas for him to push harder. He remembered wishing his little sister would go home so he could go play with his friends. He thought about those same friends now, as he disabled a soldier who was fumbling to unpin a grenade. The friends who had abandoned him when he spoke of his concerns for River. They were probably in the safe houses quickly assembled on Persephone. Evacuated. That was where all the rich people had gone, when the terrorist attacks had started. When the Alliance had splintered and broken.

Five years, Simon had been on Serenity. Five years since his faith in the unified government had been shattered. His sister was better, but she would never be the same. She was strong and she could live and be happy as they all could, but she would never have her childhood back, and he would rather die than let a power hungry government steal away more childhoods in the night.

Jayne stumbled up behind them, and for the first time Simon purposefully laid down his gun and ducked completely behind the crate.

“How is it?” he asked, turning his back to the fighting and facing the larger man.

Jayne grunted, clearly in pain from the bullet that had hit his shoulder as he had attempted to retreat from the cargo bay. Simon thought about the recent, unsure and wavering romance that had bloomed between Jayne and his sister, and wondered for what felt like the millionth time why he wasn’t more concerned.

“It ain’t nothing,” Jayne lied gruffly, but allowed Simon to tear open his shirt and inspect the damage. “I got us a little something to end this…” He pulled three grenades from his pocket.

“Good job,” Mal said. “Pull back, we’ve got em!” he yelled over to River and Zoe. Zoe nodded and pulled River further into cover behind the crates. Meanwhile, Mal was handing out the grenades.

Simon had never used a grenade before, but he didn’t hesitate as he mimicked his captain’s actions and tossed the grenade in the direction of the opposing ship. Mal grabbed Simon and Simon grabbed Jayne and they all scrambled back to shelter from the blast.

Simon didn’t stop to think or catch his breath; he glanced up at the catwalk where Kaylee was sheltering, looking pale but steady as she met his eyes. Inara was sitting with her, sharing a similarly intimate gaze with Mal.

Kaylee’s eyes asked if he was okay and he responded with the same. Both reassured, she reached behind her and grabbed his medbag, tossing it lightly over the railings. He caught it deftly and ripped it open, glad the bullet in Jayne’s shoulder hadn’t gone in far.

He thought back to the hospital, where this operation would have been performed in a clean light room and Jayne would have been sedated.

Pulling out a scalpel and a pair of tweezers, he looked up at Jayne. “This is going to hurt,” he told him.

Jayne didn’t answer, but held out his arm.

Simon worked swiftly, blocking out the noise of Mal and Zoe assessing the damage and debating whether the coast was clear. For the moment. Everything was always for the moment now. Nothing was certain. Every moment mattered so much more. Each time River and Simon shared a joke as he checked on her in the bridge, each time he pulled a muscle lifting weights with Jayne, each time he moved inside Kaylee and heard her cry with joy. Everything was magnified. It was both intensely breathtaking and desperately terrifying.

As Simon dropped the retrieved bullet carelessly on the floor and wrapped a weave around Jayne’s still bleeding shoulder, a scream jolted him from his musings.

“River?” Jayne was up on his feet and rushing to her side before Simon could even replace his tweezers.

“She alright?” Kaylee cried from above. Simon felt his heart sink as he followed Jayne to where his sister lay bucking on the floor, fists clenched, head writhing from side to side. It had been years since she’d had an episode …but since the Second War her condition had deteriorated. The only difference now was that she could explain it to him. It got harder for her, she’d said, when more people were screaming. Screaming inside, she’d said. They lose people and their hearts hurt and I hear every single one of them. I’ll be okay, she’d told him. I just need to learn not to listen.

“What is it mei mei?” he asked her, not even flinching as Jayne wrapped his arms around the girl. He felt Kaylee do the same to him. He found her hand with his and squeezed.

“Gone.” River pushed the word out of her lips as if it was trying desperately to stay inside.

“Who’s gone, gorramit?” Jayne demanded, frustrated at her unusual inability to clarify herself.

“Not who…” The words seemed more painful than the last.

Then she was up on her feet and she was running down the ramp, and Simon said a thousand prayers to a thousand gods, giving thanks for Jayne and grenades and the fact that everyone on that ship was now dead.

It didn’t occur to him not to follow her, anymore than it occurred to Kaylee not to follow him. As they dashed after the girl, woman, really, they heard Mal’s voice.

“Stay with Zoe, stay and hold!”

“Gorramit Mal!”

“You stay!”

The voices were fading now, but footsteps behind them told Simon the captain had followed.

River was speeding now, gaining distance on them, and though Simon pumped his legs faster than he had known he could, he found it didn’t matter. He knew exactly where they were going.

One turn to the left… two to the right… dash across the field where the hodgeberries had grown and over the river where they had swam as children…

“You know where you’re headed,” Mal said. It wasn’t a question.

Simon didn’t need to think about it as he held out his hand to Kaylee, clambering over a style. “It’s not steady,” he said by way of explanation, remembering all three times he had fallen from the style, remembering each injury he had sustained.

“Where are we?” Kaylee asked, as the passed a hedgerow and turned a corner. “Where….oh!”

Her gasped drew Simon’s stubborn eyes from the charred ground and he looked up.

The house wasn’t what he remembered. The house wasn’t even there.

The remains of a once grand estate were, crumbled walls and broken furniture littered the ground ahead of him, still smoking, dust from the collapse still settling. Strange things stood out to Simon, like the rusted blue aga standing in what was left of the kitchen, and the pearlescent face of Buddha, shattered from a statuette, glaring at him from the ground of what had been the front room.

River was kneeling in front of what was left of their front door. The door had been, for all intents and purposes, vaporised, but the two stone pillars which had adorned it stood proudly, firmly, with barely a scratch, on either side of the empty space. River was holding something in her hands, something charred and jagged and dirty. A cold fist closed around Simon’s heart as he approached his sister, letting go of Kaylee’s soft hand for the first time in what felt like hours.

He fell to his knees beside her, as his good sense returned enough to remind him to close his gaping mouth. A high pitched buzzing was filling his ears, blocking out all sounds.

“River…” he began unsurely.

“Gone,” was her answer. “Now it’s gone and it can’t come back.”

Simon moved his arms around her, closing his hands over hers. The thing in her hands was a sign, and Simon remembered being eight and helping his mother pick it out from the selection in the shop.

Tam Estate.

Simon’s throat was suddenly dry and he wanted to blame the dust still settling around them.

He felt Kaylee behind him, to one side, and Mal to the other. He heard first her gasp as she read the sign, then his low, almost inaudible growl as he did the same.

“Oh Simon,” Kaylee breathed. “Simon…Simon…” She was on the ground beside him and she was enveloping him, her words penetrating the sound drilling at his ears, her scent and her warmth and her touch drawing out the splinter he could feel lodged inside him.

River clambered to her feet with all the grace of a dancer. She allowed Kaylee to squeeze her hand for a moment, but then she moved on. Simon noticed, with a hint of desperate amusement, that she had no shoes on. He wanted to warn her that there would be glass and rubble and that she would get hurt. But it seemed pointless, she was calm now at least, and she’d never once sustained so much as a scratch over the past years since she’d shunned her shoes. Besides, his throat hurt and Kaylee was holding him and his house was gone

He turned to Kaylee, allowing his eyes to meet hers for the first time.

“I just… I always thought…” he began, but he could say anything, he didn’t know what to say.

“I know,” she murmured reassuringly, pressing a kiss to his temple. That makes one of us, he thought ironically.

“It’s all just … gone,” he finished, somewhat pathetically.

“It’s okay, baby,” she whispered, her lips against his hair. “It’s okay … it’s okay.”

“Were…” The captain’s voice shocked Simon for a moment, having forgotten he was even there. He sounded unusually hesitant as he continued, not meeting the doctor’s eyes. “Were your folks… here?”

Simon felt the wind whip around him, blinding him with hair and dust. He blinked.

“No. This whole area will have been evacuated. They had plenty money … they will have got out.”

“They did,” Kaylee said, sounding relieved, and the two men followed her gaze to a huge oak tree a few feet away. A large red cross glinted in the sun. Reflective paint, Simon thought. Visible from atmo.

“To stop the terrorists from wasting amo on evacuated areas,” Kaylee continued. “They send in scouts … they must have just not seen this one.”

“Either that or the house was offending them,” Mal offered.

Simon found that suddenly he was on his feet, following his sister into the wreck that had been his childhood home. Home. That was a funny word. Home was where the heart is, and Simon had been loved in this place. He had been dismissed, rebuke, and finally, discarded here too. But he had been loved.

He wandered aimlessly across the unrecognisable rooms, weaving paths he could have taken in his sleep. In each knew room he entered, he found himself recreating it in his mind, rebuilding the walls, reassembling the furniture, redecorating … he reached a room that had been relatively undamaged from the blast. The playroom. He moved slowly towards a large shape, covered in a pristine white, but now dusty sheet.

Running his fingers over the grimy material, he thought back to the last time they had removed this sheet. It had been about a year before River had left for the academy, and they’d been talking about old times, and things they done when they were really young. Gripping the sheet, Simon pulled it away easily, letting it fall to the floor.

The wooden rocking horse had looked so huge to him as a child. Now he wouldn’t have been able to sit on it. He doubted it could hold his weight now. River’s, certainly. Probably even Kaylee’s. Kaylee would have liked it, he thought, if things had been different. She would have leaned against it, using her hips to rock it gently back and forth, before perching on it daintily, all the while her eyes locked on his. She would have wordlessly called him over, and he would have gone, because he couldn’t stay away from her. He would have pressed her up against it and it would have rocked in time with them, rocked as they made love. Kaylee would have loved that. She loved finding new ways to excite him, new places to love him. She wouldn’t have seen it as sullying something pure and expensive and childlike. She would have seen it as blessing it, blessing it with their love.

He turned to Kaylee now. She was standing a little behind him, giving him space. Her eyes were wide and bright with tears. He crossed the distance between them and kissed her, needing to feel her warmth for a moment. After a second he relinquished her and she smiled easily against his lips.

“It’s real pretty Simon,” she said, nodding towards the rocking horse.

Simon shrugged. “I guess. I could never really get the hang of it.”

She giggled. It was weak, but it was a giggle, and it made his heart soar. “It’s a rocking horse, what’s there to get the hang of?”

He silenced her with another short kiss, and then turned to search out River. She was walking silently through the remnants of a hallway, running her hands over anything and everything that was still there, that still existed.

“We need to get back,” Mal called. “Other’s will be worryin’ … an’ we should get off this planet ‘fore the bombs start again…”

A thought occurred to Simon, and he stooped to pick up a large-ish shard of wood from the ground. In it’s old life, he suspected, it had been the leg of the Tam family grand piano. Now it was sharp and splintered, and would serve well enough for a spade.

“One second?” he asked, rather than told, the captain, who nodded.

“Give me one second,” he said more quietly to Kaylee, who nodded, looking mildly puzzled. He kissed her cheek reassuringly, then turned, stepping over the foot high walls that were all separating the rooms of his once magnificent estate. At least this way is quicker than winding your way through the hallways, he noted.

He reached the back garden, finding to his surprise the fountain still standing, through the once shining marble dolphins were chipped and scorched. It was even still working, the water trickling half heartedly from the dolphin’s blowholes and splashing into the pool below.

Simon stood in front of the fountain, directly below the head of the largest dolphin. He stared up at it for a moment, until he felt River’s presence behind him. He turned, and smiled at her. She was holding a piece of pipe he recognised as being from the kitchen’s radiator. She smiled back.

The turned, so they were back to back, and as one, took five paces away from each other, each moving around a quarter of the fountain’s circumference. If Simon had looked left and River had looked right, they would have met each others eyes, but neither of them looked up. Instead, they each began to dig. Simon had not been around when River had buried her treasure, and she had not been born when he had buried his.

Simon prised at the earth with his piano leg, neatly and methodically, just as he had when he’d buried it, his mother standing watch with a torch and a smile. In a few short minutes, Simon hit metal, and he discarded the piano leg, frantically scraping away the dirt. The cotton bag wrapped around his quarry was covered in filth but he didn’t care as he lifted it into his arms. He felt the tin inside, but didn’t look. Satisfied everything was in order, he finally looked over at his sister, who was brushing the dirt from her hands, holding a similar, slightly smaller bag. She smiled once more at him.

“Time to go,” she said lightly.

Simon nodded. “Yes, mei mei.”

Together they moved back through the house towards were Kaylee and Mal were standing, waiting. Kaylee shot Simon a questioning glance, but neither said anything as the four turned away from the ruin and headed back towards Serenity without looking back.

* Showers were over-rated, Simon thought happily, as Kaylee dunked the sponge once more into a basin of water and shuffled closer to him. When he had first joined Serenity he had been horrified to learn that there were no showers. The concept had seemed alien to Simon. Now, as Kaylee ran the soft sponge down the crease of his back, the warm water trickling down his skin, he wondered why he’d ever cared.

“How’d ya get so dirty, just diggin’ through the mud like that?” Kaylee murmured. “Your hands, I can understand…”

“Don’t think it was just the digging,” he told her. He couldn’t elaborate too much, his mind was clouded with the sensations stemming from her skilled hands as they massaged the grime and the dust and the dirt away.

She didn’t reply, but kissed his shoulder lovingly in response.

He turned his face to look at hers, resting momentarily on his shoulder. “You know when I’m clean, it’s your turn,” he told her huskily.

She beamed. “I ain’t dirty,” she teased.

“Not yet, you’re not,” he retorted, and she giggled, wriggling even closer.

“I love you,” she whispered, moving the sponge over his neck and collarbone.

His head fell back as he let out a small moan of contentment. “I love you too,” he returned.

They sat in silence for a while, as Kaylee replaced the sponge and set about massaging some of the tension from Simon’s muscles.

“I’m sorry today was so hard on you,” she said after a while.

Simon lowered his eyes. “It wasn’t so bad.” He paused, and she waited. “I think I needed it. And River needed it. I think we needed to say goodbye.”

She didn’t answer, but he knew she understood. She always did.

“Besides,” he considered, a little playfully, “I picked up some treats while I was there.”

Kaylee smiled. “You plannin’ on telling me whats in that box?”

They both turned to look at the desk where the tin box sat, startlingly clean despite having being buried for over twenty years.

“I can barely remember,” Simon told her honestly.

Kaylee sat back on her feet. “You want I should leave you to open it alone?”

He smiled at her. “No.”

Leaning in to press a kiss to her lips, he stood and moved over to the desk, blocking Kaylee’s view.

“I remember one thing,” he continued softly. Gently, he removed the tin lid, and retrieved a small velvety box from inside, not even registering the remaining contents. He hid the box in his fist and turned back to Kaylee.

“I probably should have found this before I asked you to marry me,” he told her, sitting beside her once more. “But I didn’t exactly know we would be stopping by so … well, this is for you.”

He opened his hands to reveal the tiny box, and flicked it open as he held it out to her.

“I told you I would get you a ring,” he said softly, taking in her dumbfounded expression fondly. “Eventually,” he added.

“Simon,” she gasped, taking the box delicately as if it was made of dust. “It’s beautiful!”

Simon didn’t think before the clichéd words slipped out. “So are you.”

She giggled, her eyes never leaving the object in her hands.

“Well, put it on then,” he chided her, leaning forward to remove the ring and, as she stretched out her fingers for him, slide it gently on. It fit perfectly.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft and sincere. Her eyes fluttered closed as she brushed her lips against his, and he sighed happily against her.

“So,” she continued, sitting back a little, “when you kept telling me you were waiting for the perfect ring, what you actually meant was…?”

Simon chuckled good-naturedly. “I didn’t think there was any chance of me getting this, but… every time I almost bought a ring, I couldn’t go through with it, knowing I had this. That’s why in the end I proposed without a ring. I did this all backwards, I’m sorry.”

“It’s shiny, Simon,” she said, kissing him, and he knew she wasn’t talking about the ring.

“It was my grandmother’s,” he told her. “My mother gave me it just before I buried the box … she said I’d need it one day. I was seven, so I kind of just thought she was being stupid, but she was mom, so I took it anyway.”

Kaylee laughed. “I’m glad you did.”

“Me too.”

They kissed again, slowly and deeply, feeling the weight of the day’s events finally lifting.

“So what else in there?” Kaylee asked after they broke away.

Simon’s eyes flashed. “Let’s take a look!”

He retrieved the box, and they sat together, side by side on the bed, the box resting on his lap. He carefully prised the lid off again, wrinkling his nose as a little dust rose. Beside him, Kaylee sneezed, and he resisted the urge to tell her how adorable that was.

“Oh, Simon!” Kaylee squealed excitedly, and he reached down and pulled out the small brown bear he knew she was looking at.

A grin spread across his face. “Forgot all about this,” he commented. “Kaylee, this is Henry.”

Kaylee giggled. “Henry?”

“Don’t make fun of his name!” Simon reprimanded mockingly. “He can hear you.”

Kaylee giggled some more. “It’s nice to meet you Henry,” she told the bear. Simon moved the toy to give Kaylee a bear-y kiss which she returned delightedly.

“I like ‘im,” she said decidedly, and Simon laughed. Setting Henry aside, they both turned back to the box.

Next to come out was a photo of baby Simon with his parents, which Kaylee loved and Simon wanted to hide. The three marbles, on the other hand, bewildered Kaylee, but brought a huge smile to Simon’s face, as did the small cloth covered in what looked like red paint.

“What’s that?” Kaylee asked, confused as to why a ruined cloth would make someone grin so hard.

“It was a place mat,” Simon informed her. “Part of a set. We never used them, they were too expensive. When I was six, I was painting, and I ran out of paper, so I climbed up the cabinet where this was kept and painted all over it. My mom went absolutely crazy.”

Kaylee laughed. “I can imagine.” She looked down at the painting pensively. “Not very artistic, were you?”

Simon threw the cloth at her and she squealed.

“I’m a doctor he told her defensively. “I have a scientific mind!”

She simply kissed him in reply. “Sure you do. What’s next?”

He sniffed, pretending to be disgruntled. He pulled out a small pile of cards.

“Birthday cards,” he noted, flicking through them before setting them aside. “And…oh!”

“What?” Kaylee craned her neck to get a better look at the last remaining item.

“It’s …,” Simon’s voice was disbelieving as he held up the item, “… a firefly.”

Sure enough, in his hand was a tiny model firefly, almost identical to Serenity.

“Huh,” said Kaylee.

They stared at it together in silence.

“I…I used to collect model spaceships when I was young,” Simon said eventually. “This was my first one … my grandfather gave me it… I’d … I’d forgotten.” He sounded amazed. “It was my favourite … I guess that’s why I put it in there.” He turned it around in his hand, studying it, still sounding astounded. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

Kaylee dragged her eyes off the model to look at him. “You do know that’s really weird, right?”

He grinned at her. “I reckon it’s divine intervention, what about you?”

She smiled, and on impulse kissed his nose. “I reckon it’s something, that’s for sure.”

The way he smiled drew her in, and the kiss deepened. Feeling his body spark to life, Simon broke away for a moment, replacing all the items back in the box. At the last second, he removed the Firefly once more and perched it on the shelf above his head. Quickly, he slid the box under his bed and turned back to Kaylee.

“Now,” he said, leaning in as her hand crept up his thigh, “Where were we?”

fin