PART 5 – Fear of losing

Michael was glad his brother was here, sheltering him, protecting him, like a life raft amidst a tumultuous sea of pain and confusion. Sitting next to Cole, Michael could finally distinguish his own heart-ache from the mess of thoughts assaulting him, and somehow, it couldn’t hurt him as deeply with Cole there shielding him. He could not read Cole telepathically the way he did his Mama or the way he tried to with Zoë. With Cole, as with the rest of the world, he read the intentions and the truth of things. It astounded him to this day that all his brother usually wanted was for him to be there. Cole had his own friends and his own world. When they’d enrolled in a school planet-side, Cole blended easily with the people there. But he always made sure there was a place for Michael.

The heat of grief lifted and Michael felt he’d fall asleep next to his brother, it was so safe there. It had been safe to weep for his sister, without forcing words. Cole wasn’t a reader, but he always seemed to know what Michael was thinking, even before Michael could sort it out himself.

“Do you hear them, when they die?” Cole was asking. Michael had handed him a capture with pictures of all the worlds he’d been to, and Cole was reading between the lines, seeing the work that had brought him all those places. Michael always appreciated that Cole listened.

“I hear them beforehand,” Michael said, inhaling deeply and itching his face against Cole’s leg. He fingered his ear, but Cole swatted his hand away so he wouldn’t re-open the cut.

“Always shouting malice and hate, so loud I barely see,” Michael continued reflectively. “If you injure them, they just get louder. That’s why I go quick, right between the eyes. They’re dead before they know they’ve been shot. Then everything gets real quiet, and I can’t help but think the world’s a better place now that that voice is silenced.”

“Don’t go getting a God complex on me,” Cole quipped. “I know you and you’re not that great.”

They shared a laugh and Michael closed his eyes in peace. Somehow, Cole had cut to the heart of his fear, told him the truth, established a safety net, and made a joke in the same sentence. When Cole spoke, Michael was convinced that magic happened.

The silence settled again as Cole scrolled through the pictures on the capture and Michael sat up slowly. His head ached and his skin itched, but so long as Cole wanted him here, he wasn’t going anywhere. Cole was looking at the pictures of Athens, which Michael always thought was the prettiest world he’d ever been to until he was abducted and had to kill twenty people to escape. He thought he’d deleted those pictures.

“How’d you avoid the business?” Michael asked. He realized that he didn’t even know what Cole did for money these days. Last he’d heard, Cole was living with their grandparents and working on Sihnon. “How’d you get your job?”

“I talked to Mama,” Cole shrugged. “She had a friend of a friend who owed someone a favor and they pulled some strings at the Guild.”

The Guild! Michael looked at his brother critically. “You’re not companioning are you?”

“No,” Cole smiled. “I trained for about three weeks, but the rules on Companion dating are pretty complicated. I knew I wanted Genny to be my first, and when it came down to it, I knew I wanted her to be my only. So I withdrew my application and proposed.”

“Sap,” Michael said, and punched his brother in the shoulder. “So what is your job? Do you teach the romance languages?”

“I work the administrative security side,” Cole explained. “I mostly help Companions who have been wronged and need to enforce a black mark. You talk about the fanciful bits being built on the ugly bits. I pretty much hire people and tell them who to shun, rough up, … or kill.”

Cole’s lips twitched when he finished talking and Michael could tell he didn’t like the killing aspect of his work any more than Michael did. Still, Cole knew what he was asking a man to do, so it wasn’t like some of the people who Michael had worked for.

“You don’t use a gun,” Michael offered.

“Murder for hire is still murder,” Cole said bitterly. “Companions service the rich and powerful, and they can get in pretty deep need for rescue. I find the men and women who will stop at nothing to save them.”

They were silent a moment, letting the words linger. Knowing that Cole’s life wasn’t as fanciful as he’d imagined gave Michael some semblance of peace.

“Well,” Michael began, reaching into his shirt pocket. “I’m very good at my job and I never miss. So if you need me, here’s my card.” Cole took the card and burst out laughing. “Mercenaries don’t have cards, you dumbass.”

Michael shrugged and reached over to scroll through the folders on the capture, calling up a picture of his ex-girlfriend. “That’s Chelsia. For her, you’d have gotten business cards too.”

*~*

Sky had a collection. When people thought of her, they thought of big guns or the chocolate stash she kept in the armory. But she had a side to her that was sweeter than chocolate. Anytime she saw a rose bush, she’d stop and smell the flower, and then she’d break off a thorn. There weren’t many rim worlds with rose gardens, and they hardly ever took in the sites at the core. It didn’t matter if they were in the middle of gunfight, she’d stop if she saw one. She kept the thorns in a pillbox on the dresser. Jayne never knew if she knew he’d noticed, and he’d always figured he’d ask her later why she did it.

When they’d come to the hospital that morning and he saw the roses, his heart broke for Sky, and all the mysteries about her he’d never uncover. Then Emily went over to one of the bushes, smelled the flower, and broke off a thorn for herself. Why did she do that? Had she seen her Momma doing it? Did she know why her Momma did it? Jayne couldn’t ask her. He didn’t want to. It was the same reason he never asked Sky – he preferred the mystery. He could’ve told Kaylee about the roses. It seemed like a story she’d want to hear, but it seemed wrong to share it. It was something he wanted to treasure – not spread around like cheap gossip.

Jayne sat on the floor of the observation room, half-watching the surgery through the window, and half-watching Emily sleep. Her little head rested on his thigh, and her fingers were fisted around the fabric of his pants. He wanted so much for her to trust his friends – his family. So often, he knew he was getting too close and too attached to the crew, but he couldn’t deny the fact that these were the people he wanted with him until the end.

Kaylee dashed in suddenly, wild-eyed with panic, and Jayne tensed. Genny was a few steps behind, breathless and red-faced.

“I can’t find River,” Kaylee said. “She’s not in her room. She’s not … I can’t find her.”

Mal was immediately on his feet. “Does this hospital have a Ward?”

The Ward was an enemy similar to the Academy that had cut River’s brains to bits and rendered her crazy. One of Little Zoë’s primary goals in life was exposing the inhumanity and bringing them down. They were a powerful group, with a special interest in readers. Jayne had seen their symbol on one of the restricted wings.

“Floor seven,” Jayne said, carefully extracting himself from his sleeping daughter. “I’ll go.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kaylee said, her voice shaky.

“Where’s Michael?” Inara asked. Michael being a reader was Serenity’s closest guarded secret and anything threatening River threatened him as well.

Kaylee looked around the room again, her cheeks tightening in fear. “He came inside nearly an hour ago. You haven’t seen him?”

“He’s probably with Cole,” Genny said, placing a calming hand on her mother’s arm.

“I’ll check,” Mal said, switching on his Captain mode. “Wouldn’t hurt to have another pair of eyes looking anyway. Genny, start at the bottom floor and work you’re way up. ‘Nara, stay here in case someone comes. Let’s hope we’re being paranoid.”

Emily stirred as the groups split, and jumped to her feet to follow Jayne out the door. He took her chin and looked her in the eye.

“Stay with Inara,” he told her. He felt weak and he wasn’t ready for a fight. It was his own fault for wallowing so much and letting his body decay.

“But –”

“Stay,” Jayne ordered her, and then left. There was work to be done.

*~*

Mal knew Cole had ducked into a closet somewhere to be alone. There were times that his son looked at him in a way he didn’t understand – like Cole had been drowning and wanted to be saved. But then, he never seemed like he needed saving. Cole was noble and strong, and though Mal was proud of all his kids, he tended to boast about Cole more than the rest. He worried sometimes that it would make the others jealous, but they all lived away from home now. Weren’t like they were looking over his shoulder with a score card.

Cole had entered his ‘brooding in solitude’ stage right around eleven. Inara said it was the teen’s right of passage and he’d grow out of it, but in Mal’s mind, it started awful close to their day of hell – the first time they’d faced the Ward head on and the first time Cole held a gun to face an enemy and not a practice target – and he couldn’t help blaming himself a little.

Michael, on the other hand, was a completely different kind of marvel. Mal had never met anyone faster on the draw than himself, but Michael had taken the title, and he’d done it before Mal got slowed down by arthritis, so Mal had no excuse. He figured it had to do with the way Michael perceived the world. Even being the fastest, Michael practiced at getting faster and sharper, honing every skill. He’d gotten himself hired as a gun hand, but been promoted to first mate within a month. Mal couldn’t believe he’d produced someone so extraordinary from a night of sake-induced debauchery.

Mal tipped open the closet, and was relieved to see both Michael and Cole sitting on the floor, laughing their way through a capture. Michael was safe. That was one reader down.

“Have either of you seen River?” Mal asked and they both shook their heads. Of course they wouldn’t, having been holed up in this closet. “Well get up off your asses and help look. She’s been missing near an hour.”

*~*

Michael rubbed his ear self-consciously, but Cole pushed his hand down and shot him a look. The skin was still tender and he knew Baba would notice eventually. He didn’t get yelled at anymore since he was paying his own way in the worlds, but he got that firm, disapproving look and that felt just about the same.

“Genny’s on the ground floor working up,” Baba explained. “You two start at the top and work down. Skip floor seven.” “We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” Michael said. His tracker instincts were kicking in, and he figured it was smarter to start in Aunt River’s room and work out from there. The suggestion stopped his father on a dime, and he turned around sharply, pressing nose to nose with Michael.

“You’re not to be alone,” his father warned in a low threatening tone. Michael looked at him, trying to read the source of his father’s fear, but all he got was that loud blaring warning siren.

“Dong ma,” Michael said, knowing better than to question. Anything that worried his father worried him. His father handed him a radio and he looked at it like the confusing anachronism it was.

“I liberated a few of these from the front desk,” Baba said with a wink. “We’re on channel four.”

Michael shook his head, figuring he should’ve expected as much from his father. He nodded to Cole and headed for the stairs. It was a long way to the top, but River was the type to sit in a stairwell.

Clearing his mind, he reached out to her, seeking her in her extra-sensory arena. Aunt Riiiver. People are looking for you.

He listened, hearing mostly the echo of their physical foot-steps up the stairs. Reading his Aunt River was easy compared to the others, because he knew exactly where to stand and meet her. He had his own place in her arena and didn’t keep running into stray thoughts from bystanders. She was crouched and hiding her face, whispering a nursery rhyme to herself. Aunt River could be cryptic and playful at times, but this was not her hide-n-seek giggle.

Tell me where you are. Everyone is worried.

No response. She wasn’t even acknowledging the nudge. Had she lost herself?

At least tell me if you’re alright, he begged, starting to feel worried. He wondered if it would be too impertinent to move from his spot in her arena and try to look through her eyes. If he strayed from his place, and she wasn’t herself, she might think him an intruder. His father had been right to be concerned. Aunt River, are you okay?

Suddenly, the whole arena exploded in light and Michael’s face stung like he’d been whacked with a lead pipe. The force knocked him sideways and he lost his footing, but Cole grabbed his wrist, jerking him sharply and keeping him from falling down the stairs.

“Michael!” Cole cried in concern, lowering him quickly but gently to sitting and searching for the emergency syringe.

“No,” Michael grunted, staying his brother’s hand. It wasn’t that kind of blast that had knocked him.

“What’s going on?” Cole urged, grabbing the radio and calling for help.

“I’m fine,” Michael insisted, trying to sit up on his own, but finding it made him dizzy. He swore and touched his nose, wondering if it was broken, bruised, or just bleeding. The door to the stairwell burst open and Uncle Jayne charged through. Michael swore again, hating that he’d caused a scene.

“False alarm,” Cole said apologetically, though he was panting with residual panic. Uncle Jayne still checked them both over. He’d taken one false step through her mind, and River had knocked him pretty hard.

“Ta ma de, I hate it when she does that,” Michael griped irritably. He was going to have a black eye from this.

“If Baba wanted you to look that way, he would have asked,” Cole chastised. “Did she say where she was?”

Michael groaned as Uncle Jayne pressed a wad of napkins to his bleeding nose, but he couldn’t pull away without hitting his head against Cole’s chest, and he felt like a damn invalid. Forcing some sense out of what little he’d picked up, he said, “She thinks she’s dying. She’s probably curled up on a pile of laundry or some place safe.”

“The jumper,” Cole said, looking directly at Jayne. “I’ll check.”

“No,” Jayne said, standing and pulling out his radio. “You stay with him.”

Cole swallowed his frustration as Jayne radioed the others. Then Jayne squatted in front of Michael and Cole, chuckled at the pair of them, and reached into his pocket for a hip flask. There was no danger and no rush to move, so the three of just sat there and medicated Michael’s injury with scotch.

*~*

Mal was glad to get the message from Jayne because the world was a big place for River to get lost in. The jumper made sense. Kaylee’s hand-crafted, personal, inter-world transport was familiar ground for River and it was parked right on the roof of the building. The night air had turned chilly, and the wind whipped across the roof-top, but as he approached, he saw the hatch was open, and he could hear River’s soft, whimpering voice leaking out. The only lights were closer to the center landing pad, and cast long shadows across the area. Mal felt like he was robbing a grave.

River was curled into the pilot’s seat of the jumper – not that there were too many places for her to be. The jumper only fit ten people school-bus style, and those so long as no one planned on stretching their legs. Mal hunched over so he wouldn’t hit his head in the ceiling, and wove through the bench seats to get to the front. River writhed and moaned, her fingers curling and un-curling around the yoke.

Mal radioed Kaylee saying he’d found River, and told her to get all the others back to the observation room. There was too much worry to be had by being apart from each other.

“Little River, are you planning to fly some place?” Mal asked her.

“Leave me alone,” River snapped, then pounded the air in front of her face and pressed her cheek against the headrest. It sounded cogent enough. Mal inched a little closer, trying to see if she was hurt.

“That was quite a wallop you gave Michael,” he said. “I think maybe you should come in and apologize.”

“Nosy hun dan,” River carped. The sane side of her wanted to be alone, but the crazy side of her was worrisome.

“You’ll freeze to death sitting out here,” Mal pointed out, though River looked flushed enough to furnace a crematorium. Her little floral shirt was damp with perspiration.

“Useless,” she whimpered. “Left us to die. Useless.”

Mal couldn’t tell if that was a sane or crazy thing to say. “I ain’t giving you my coat.”

River sobbed and shivered, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “Sick. Can’t walk.”

“I’m old and broken. I can’t carry you,” Mal said dryly. Squatting beside her, he could tell she wasn’t injured, and given her tendency to break into violence when crazy, he debated with himself as to whether he could touch her. Finally, he placed a tentative hand on her elbow.

“Daddy,” she whispered, looking out the window into the shadows like she’d seen a ghost. Mal shook his head.

“How many times I got to tell you, you don’t get to call me that.”

“Daddy, take me home,” she cried, curling into a ball and sobbing. She repeated the request over and over. Finally, Mal relented, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her inside.

*~*

Inara was getting antsy and weary, and Emily watched nervously as she paced. She’d heard Cole’s cry for help on the radio, but nothing since then. Mal had told her to stay put. Damn him. Three minutes. Five minutes. Ten.

“Auntie ‘Nara,” Emily said softly, taking her hand and blocking her path to stop her from pacing.

“Stay here,” Inara said firmly, heading for the door, but Emily followed her out into the hall. Genny was dashing through the corridor toward them.

“Did you hear anything?” she asked urgently. “I think they’re in the back stairwell!”

Inara took Emily’s hand and the three of them hurried down the hall. Before they reached the stairs, the door to the stairwell opened. Jayne held the door while Cole supported Michael with an arm under his shoulders. Michael held a stack of bloody napkins to his nose with one hand, and an open flask in the other.

“Michael!” Inara cried, running to support him from the other side. “What happened?”

“He’s fine, Mama. Just got knocked,” Cole said. He released his brother, and true enough, Michael was stable on his own feet. Genny hugged Cole covering him with relieved kisses and Emily embraced her father.

“Everyone’s here,” Michael murmured in bewilderment, gazing at the bunch of them.

Inara directed him back to the observation lounge and he moved slowly, more from confusion than injury. “Where did you expect us to be?”

“Bi zui,” Michael said weakly. “Bi zui.”

“Maybe we should get ice,” Inara said, looking at Cole.

Cole held up a blue pack. “I got him ice. He’s just being a sha gua.”

“Tian sha de, cao!” Michael cried irritably, swatting at Inara’s hand as she tried to get a better look at his face. He had a look in his eyes like he didn’t even know her. “Get off me!”

“Hey,” she warned, grabbing his hand before he hit her. “I’m your mother; I’m supposed to fuss. It’s in my contract.”

“There’s always fine print,” Michael griped, his confusion clearing somewhat. “Ta ma de! I’m not a kid anymore!”

“I should slap you for talking like that to me,” Inara said sternly as they rounded the corner to the observation lounge. Then she added, “If your face weren’t bruised already, I would slap you.”

She motioned for him to sit, but he didn’t. Looking pained, he backed away from her, into a corner, resting his hand on the gun he had concealed under his shirt. If he were rested, he’d be able to handle the group of them, but he never liked being the center of attention when everyone looking at him was worried. Inara quieted her mind as much as she could, thought the words of the prayer she’d been praying for him since he was a boy, then crossed the room boldly, pulled his hand away from his gun, and pressed his shoulders until he sat down.

“Bi zui,” Michael moaned, burying his face in his hands without touching the bruises. “Bi zui.”

Inara looked at Cole and he winced pitifully, then swallowed the thought and reached into his pocket.

“Hey, Genny, check this out,” he said, showing her a card, if only to pull her attention off of Michael.

Genny looked at the card and smiled broadly. “That is so adorable.”

“What is that?” Kaylee asked, looking over their shoulders as she entered. Inara found she was curious as well, but she stayed with her son.

“A business card,” Genny said sweetly, waving the card at Michael. “Did you pay money for this?”

“Qu ni de,” Michael muttered under his breath. Inara covered her mouth, trying to hide an amused smile.

“His girlfriend made them,” Cole said teasingly.

“Girlfriend?” Genny squealed.

“Ex!” Michael shouted at them, annoyed, but not pained like before. “Yesu, Cole, why do I tell you things?”

Cole shrugged in mock innocence. “A card is a public thing. It’s meant to be passed around.”

Genny and Kaylee started complimenting the colors and font and Michael’s face turned red in embarrassment. Then Cole swiped the card from Genny.

“I said you could look. I didn’t say you could take it,” he said, dusting the card off and holding it protectively. “I might find need for his services some day.”

“It’s not like you’ll forget his name,” Inara teased. She wanted to get up and see the card, but so long as Michael was armed and not at his best, she wasn’t moving from his side.

“Michael, can I have a card?” Emily asked.

“Hey, if you need anyone killed, you ask me first. You hear?” Jayne snapped. They all looked at Jayne, excited at the prospect that he might be joining their conversation, but he didn’t add anything else.

Michael reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a card for Emily, and then he rested his face on his hands and elbows on his knees. Inara noticed him very quietly reaching behind his ear to switch off the hearing aid. She rubbed his back sympathetically, and knew he was wearing down because he didn’t shrug her off. Every now and then he’d clamp his hands over his ears then rake his fingers through his hair.

“How’s River?” Inara asked, changing the subject.

“Captain found her on the roof,” Kaylee said.

“Ice. Mama,” Michael whispered miserably. Inara snapped her fingers, motioning for Cole to give her the cold pack. Michael hissed when she pressed it to his face, but he settled again. Genny and Cole started talking about other things and Emily was holding on to Michael’s card like it was made of solid gold. Jayne stayed by the window watching the surgery and keeping one hand on Emily’s head.

Kaylee sat down on the floor next to Inara looking exhausted, and then pulled out her radio. “Everyone’s accounted for, Cap.”

The delay in response was just long enough to get Inara’s heart rate up again. Then Mal replied, “Can one of you let me in. I got locked out.”

*~*

Please comment before reading on to Part 6 - Hint of a Miracle