Firefly is not mine. Forgive me if the fighting is a bit awkward. I generally don't write unarmed combat.

- - - - - -

IV. A Bit of a Ruckus Mal liked nights aboard Serenity, when the crew was asleep. He liked how it felt. The ship was the only place in the universe. Everything else, the horrors, the worries, the failures, the needs, they didn’t exist. It was just him and his boat.

And Inara, at the moment. He heard her voice in the shuttle as he walked past. Why that woman found it necessary to stay awake at all hours of the night escaped him, but it offered an opportunity for some fun at her expense. He needed it. It was hard to shake the feeling that things were about to get more complicated than he’d bargained for.

He found her on the Cortex, her back turned to him. “Didn’t know you were still looking for clients,” Mal commented, moving to peer over her shoulder.

She pulled the curtain over the console and turned to glare at him. “It’s none of your business.”

Mal was prone to object to that, so he didn’t acknowledge her protest. “You have been dancing around something lately.”

“It’s just some ancient history.” She fixed him with a brutal, no-nonsense glare. “None of your—”

The door suddenly slammed shut, followed by a loud ‘thump’.

Mal rushed over to open it, yanking at it with everything he had. He turned to Inara. “Tzao gao. Locked.”

- - - - - -

“There you are,” River said, watching the intruder finish with Inara’s door, “I knew something was wrong.”

He turned and vaulted over the railing to land right in front of her. She pulled back half a step at the sight of his icy green eyes. “River Tam.” His voice held satisfaction, nothing else. “I’m going to kill you.”

River felt a flutter of fear, but reason soon dispelled it. They had been trained by the same people—and she had always been the best. “You’re going to try.”

He lashed out, but she had already ducked, sweeping his feet out from under him. He caught himself and pushed back to his feet, throwing an uppercut at her as he rose.

River saw the blow coming and backed off. It caught her, though not as hard as he’d meant it to. He went for her neck during her split second recoil. A desperate kick threw him back.

They circled each other, looking for the single misstep that would spell the other’s end.

It was a stalemate, the calmer part of River noted, surrendering pride. He had the same enhancements, perhaps more. Their brains had been modified to enable greater muscle control and access to strength that others had only in times of adrenaline-induced panic. River thought he might have an improved reaction time, too, one that wasn’t based on predictions.

Green eyes crossed brown and both combatants froze.

It was like wires had crossed, wires that really should not have been crossed. He was in her head and she was in his and in her own and it hurt. Everything he was swept through her brain.

“Cage,” she muttered, “That’s how you live. Caged!”

He—Hunter, his make and model—let a hostile growl tear its way from his throat and swung his fist at her unthinkingly, trying to stop the source of this bizarre pain. She caught his fist and nearly broke it, but she was so deep in his mind that she felt the pain as her own and couldn’t continue to squeeze.

Blows were thrown almost blindly, lacking grace. Lashing out was the only way to stop this terrible connection, this invasion, but every hit landed hurt both of them.

- - - - - -

There was some strange kind of shame in being a self-proclaimed thief that had just been beaten in lock picking by a whore.

Not that her gift in that shady little skill had solved anything, but it was a touch embarrassing.

“If you had been more patient, and thought before acting, Mal, I might have been able to open it,” Inara told him, glaring from the opposite chair.

“And what exactly was I supposed to do? Knock?”

“It would have been an improvement over your usual style.”

“My usual style?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t shoot the door,” she continued, “or dislocate your shoulder when you tried to break it open.”

Mal scrambled for his own side to this battle. “Well, you didn’t help, sitting there like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like some kind of lost princess. You think a man can focus on anything but you when you’re in the room, playing your fine feminine charms all the while?”

“I wasn’t trying to use my charms, Mal, I was trying to get you out of the room and out of my business!”

“Your business?” That was too easy; he couldn’t resist. “Thought you were through with that.”

To her credit, she wasn’t at all indignant, which he’d half expected. “It’s no concern of yours whether or not I decide to become an active Companion again. And the matter has no bearing on why we are trapped in my shuttle.”

“’Course not. That would be the fault of your previously mentioned charms there. You could’ve just spoke plain and it all would have been shiny.”

“I did speak plain. You could have been a bit gentler in dealing with the door, and I could have opened it!”

This was getting nowhere. From experience, Mal knew Inara wouldn’t understand, and he sure as hell knew it was her fault. “Listen, none of this is getting us out of this trap any sooner.”

Grudgingly, Inara nodded. “Agreed.”

“Good.” And he shot the door, to no effect except sparks and ear-splitting noise.

“Mal!”

- - - - - -

Hunter mentally tugged on the connection, pulling desperately at it, as if trying to break a chain. Psychic connections were usually very easily severed, but this one remained despite his efforts. The links were stretching, but they were strong, and the bond itself hurt more every instant it held.

His brother would probably like to learn what physiological effects this struggle was having. But he didn’t have a brother, he had no family…

“Who’s who?” one of them asked aloud.

Hunter—what he thought was himself, anyway—began to sort through the memories and thoughts. It was a jumbled mess of two painful lifetimes.

That painful description was hers. The assassination was his. That warm fraternal embrace was hers. The Reaver slaughter, also hers, and Miranda’s graveyard expanse…

The chain snapped, leaving both of them standing across form each other, frozen in surprise. Hunter was dimly aware of some purpose he had in being here, but the relief he was feeling was so great he couldn’t focus.

“Not enough room in the mind for two people,” River muttered.

Something about her voice caused Hunter’s thoughts to come back together and rally to his mission. It felt hollow, for some reason, but it was what he had. He lunged for her, prepared to simply snap her neck.

She didn’t move, though she clearly saw him. Her eyes seemed focused behind…

Pain exploded at the back of his skull, and everything went black.

- - - - - -

River started breathing again when Hunter fell at Jayne’s feet. It seemed like Jayne had taken so horribly long to cross the hold and come to her rescue.

“Don’t,” she told the mercenary as he leaned in to break Hunter’s neck.

Jayne shot her a confused look. “He was gonna kill ya.”

She stared at the prone assassin as she tried to come up with an answer. Her own memories of their shared mental ordeal were confused, but his past, what little of one there was, was like her own, though stripped of family and comfort and freedom. Not that Hunter cared. Such things didn’t occur to him. River mentally sighed and lifted her eyes to Jayne’s, and gave him the Scary Look. “Just don’t hurt him.”

The fearful expression on his face almost made her laugh. “Fine, but if he moves, he’s a dead one.”

River just shrugged and raced up to let Mal and Inara out. They had been fighting a while, and she didn’t want the Captain to die because of a misplaced word.

Hunter had placed some sort of compact mechanism on the door to keep it shut tight. River tore it off, and the door slid open quite easily. She noted the bullet hole with amusement.

“River!” Inara shouted.

The Captain stood up and steadied River, who hadn’t noticed that she was indeed at the verge of collapse. “What happened?” he asked.

“An assassination attempt. I won.” She grinned proudly.

“Mal, she wouldn’t let me kill him!” Jayne called up, sounding like a whiny child. Oh, she loved these people, even the violent ape-man.

Mal stepped out of the shuttle to look down at Jayne and Hunter, then turned back to River. The seriousness of his glance, an unspoken query, ended her inexplicable exuberance.

“You didn’t kill me,” she told him, “So don’t kill him.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, then sighed. “Let’s lock him up, then you’ll tell me what’s going on here.”

River nodded, moving to look down at Hunter, prone on the ground.

“That could have been me,” she told herself.