This story is set before the series, so there are no spoilers to speak of. This is the third story in my "Tales" series, so check out the others if you take a liking to this one! They can be found here: River, Wash, Kaylee, Zoë, Simon, Inara, Jayne, Book Rated PG for some adult language. Thanks go out to my much appreciated beta-ers. Thanks ladies. Go-se=Crap Wong Ba Duhn=Son of a bitch Ni Bu Ying Duh Jur Guh=You don’t deserve it Dohn-ma=Understand ***** Malcolm Reynolds felt the gravel crunch beneath his feet. As Mal walked alone along the edge of Serenity Valley, he made a point to keep his head low, under the trench. There used to be grass here, but the Alliance had killed all of it. The Alliance was like some damnable sickness; everything it touched shriveled up and died like a calf that got rejected by its ma. He looked over to his left and then to his right. The bodies were still there, everywhere. He’d figured that his nose might have done him a kindness and just ignored the gorram smell. He was wrong, again. It wasn’t like Mal hadn’t ever seen death before. He’d been in the war for years now. He’d liked to have said that he’d lost track of everyone who’d died, but he hadn’t. Their faces kept coming back up in his head. Their names weren’t ever far behind. Some of those folks were friends, some weren’t. But he still remembered them. A body couldn’t forget it when a man died in his arms. Every detail got imprinted in the brain like a snapshot. Mal could remember the look in the eyes, the sounds of the last breaths, and the feeling of a body going limp. He remembered the first man he had ever seen die. He was a private on Ezra with a hole in his belly, who kept begging him to find his wife and tell her he loved her. His name was Layton. His wife’s name was Andrea. Mal never was able to find her to tell her. It’d been three days since the Alliance had blasted the Independents to hell and back. They hadn’t had much by way of food since then. The supply lines hadn’t lasted long when the Alliance started coming down from above like some unholy demons. Hundreds had died when they came down and started shooting. He’d tried to ration food for everyone as best he could, but there just wasn’t enough. All these months of fighting had blasted most of the plants to dust, and all of the animals were either dead or run off. He himself hadn’t eaten proper in two days. Zoë kept after him to eat. She told him that he wouldn’t do anyone any good if he passed out. Mal figured that was so, but he still split his rations up among some of the troops when she wasn’t looking. If he could stop his own heart and make sure everybody else made it home, he’d do it. He’d prayed mightily to God for that. God never answered him. Mal was more than willing to give up his own life if it meant that the men and women he fought with would be able to see family again. He was just one man in the ‘verse. There were thousands that he was supposed to be leading in Serenity Valley. All he wanted was to get them all home. It looked like God didn’t conjure that a good idea, though. He had decided to let him live, so that he could watch all of those who’d sworn to follow him die. Slowly. This was the first time he’d been able to get out from the troops and spend some time alone. He needed to collect himself. A man doesn’t lose his whole world without the need for some reflection, and Mal had lost his whole world. There wasn’t a way in hell that the ‘verse as he knew it would still be around once the powers-that-be decided what exactly they were going to do with it. Odds were that there wouldn’t be any more independent ranchers like his ma real shortly. The Alliance would step in, start interfering, and sell it all to one big company. It probably wouldn’t be too long before “Blue Sun” was painted all over the barn he used to sleep in on warm nights back on Shadow. He’d spent most of the last three days just trying to keep morale up. He’d gone from triage to triage, joking with the troops. He’d used his “So very pretty” line at least a dozen times today alone. It had gotten to the place where they would answer for him when he asked, “Do you know why we won’t die?” He couldn’t bring himself to mention God in that joke the way he used to. Mal wasn’t rightly sure just what God would do or wouldn’t do any more. He kept switching up the plan on him. That was assuming that there was even a plan to start with. Mal had been sure that there would be angels coming down from on high to take the Alliance out. It didn’t matter to him any that the angels might answer to the name 82nd, archangel, or local-farmers-with-a-mean-streak. He just knew they’d come. God was on their side. How in the hell could He side with the Alliance? The Alliance was chock-full of the kind of people that didn’t think twice about stepping on a man’s livelihood. Mal wasn’t much of a learned man, but he had read nigh on to the entire Bible. Jesus struck him as the sort of fellow who was all for “live and let live.” He traveled about with whores and tax collectors. That seemed to sum up the Alliance pretty well for Mal. All of the bastards he’d just helped kill were just the poor whores who the tax collectors had paid and sent out to be riddled with holes. Mal didn’t think that Jesus would have had any problems with those folks at all. Mal never doubted that God wanted him out in the war. He almost fancied himself sort of God’s soldier. The Independents were good folks. Most of the people that he’d fought with out here used to be farmers and ranchers who didn’t take to being told what to do by somebody on another world. They were people who’d worked hard to make their lives, and they didn’t want nobody taking that away. They’d pulled a life out of the dirt itself, without any help from the Alliance. They were men and women who didn’t want much by way of “civilizing.” Mal used to laugh at the videos over the cortex about the need to “civilize” the border worlds. Members of Parliament were real keen on talking unification up before the war so that the people would support it. As if they had a choice to start with. Mal could practically sing along after the first view speeches. First, they’d go on and on about the slavery problems on the border and how it was a terrible injustice that only unification could solve. Then they’d talk about how horrible the problems with drink and stimulants were. By about the twenty minute mark, it was time to talk about how downright ignorant the people out there were. For the finale they’d finish with a long list of all of the shiny technology that the Alliance could bring to those “poor, unfortunate backwards worlds.” It never seemed to occur to them that most slaves were shipped INTO the core. Or that most of the drugs came FROM the core. Or that a rancher didn’t have that much need for a new hovercraft if horses did the job. And that was assuming that he could afford one in the first place. As for the ignorance, Mal doubted most members of Parliament could rig a team of horses or herd cattle worth a damn. He might not be able to fit in at some capitol ball, but that didn’t make him any more ignorant than them. Nobody was supposed to know something they’d never learned. The border worlds had gotten along just fine since they were settled. The people didn’t need the Alliance’s help to improve themselves. They were managing to scrape by on their own. Most of the problems on the border were, usually, brought in from the core in a crate with the Alliance flag on it. If there was any improving to be done, the people would do it for themselves. Why wouldn’t God want him to help defend those kinds of people? All the Independents had wanted was to be let be. The Browncoats didn’t want to turn the core worlds into giant farms and turn all the fancified doctors and such out to plow them. They just wanted to live and let live. The Alliance could have the ruttin’ core. Mal had seen it, and he didn’t want it. Too many people, too many buildings, too much crowding. If that’s how they wanted to live, they could go on their merry. Folks had a right to do what they pleased. God would sort it all out in the end, regarding who was right and who wasn’t. There weren’t any point in starting a war over it. The Alliance wouldn’t stand for that, and Mal still couldn’t make any sense out of it. They weren’t hurting anybody out here on the border worlds. Hell, half the Parliament probably couldn’t even name all of the border worlds. The Independents weren’t any problem at all to the Alliance, at least not until Alliance Federals started showing up with guns. If the Purplebellies wouldn’t have come out and started a ruckus, there wouldn’t have been any ruckus at all. It didn’t make any manner of sense. Mal still knew why the Alliance came out here, though. They wanted more. They didn’t need it; the core worlds could do just fine if the rest of the ‘verse up and vanished. As long as the people making the decisions didn’t have to do the killing, they were powerful ready for killing to ensue. He figured that most men in power were like that. Give them everything they need, and they need more. It was like cheap liquor. Mal had seen the bottle swallow up many a good man, before the war and now. A man gets a taste of it, likes it, and then he can’t live without it. He figured power did the same thing. Give any one control over other folks’ lives, and eventually he’d need more lives just to feel all big and important. ‘Course, just because he knew why they’d come didn’t mean it made sense. Mal knew plenty of things that didn’t make sense. Mal was coming up on the edge of the safe zone in the valley. The bodies were starting to thin out. As the battle had pulled in, he’d brought more and more of his troops into one spot as their positions got overrun and taken back. With the ceasefire, most of those who were still able had moved into a central location. There weren’t as many lying here to find. Mal heard a splash as he put his left foot down. There was blood there. A pool of it lying fresh on the ground. Most of the troops who were inclined to bleed this much had long since done it, and there wasn’t anything left to be done for them. There looked to be some marks of an explosion out here, what with the scorching on the ground and the cracked rocks. Odds are no one would have heard the bang if there was one. There wasn’t anybody around to hear. The blood was seeping out of a still-fresh wound in a man that Mal couldn’t recognize on account of his being face down in the dirt. Looked to him like somebody had found themselves a “dud” grenade that wasn’t quite dead. Didn’t seem to rightly matter much if the grenade was Browncoat or Alliance. It still did the job just fine. He almost called for a medic out of habit, but stopped himself. The medics were all dead, and even if they weren’t, this poor soul was well on his way to his final reward. Mal pulled his pistol and checked each side. Wouldn’t be the first time the Alliance had pulled a trap on the Browncoats. He backed against the nearest cover and edged towards the body. He stuck his hand above the cover line and pulled it back. No fire. He peeked his head over quick-like. No fire. Oh, the hell with it. He got up and walked over to the body. Mal holstered his sidearm and flipped it over. He was finally able to make out the man it used to be. The grenade had managed to separate him from about half of his left leg, and his left arm was gone. The man’s eyes were frozen in a look of total shock. It was almost as if his last words would have been, “Well, that was unexpected!’ He wasn’t wearing the standard Browncoat uniform, either. ‘Course, given his job in this outfit, that just made sense. Mal could still make out the collar around his neck. This lump of meat used to be Shepherd Josiah McCarthy, the company chaplain for one of the other units defending the valley. Mal hadn’t met the man until he’d come to Serenity. It was an old saying that everyone in the trenches is religious, but Mal liked talking to a man with a little training when it came to God. During the months that Mal had helped hold the valley, he’d spent some time with the Shepherd during the lulls in the fighting. He’d even had the Shepherd re-bless the cross he wore when it got real obvious that this was going to be a long haul. Mal had bought the thing when he left for the war, and the Shepherd back on Shadow had blessed it then, but Mal figured that a little extra help from on high couldn’t hurt his chances any. Mal pulled the cross out and took a good, long look at it. Shepherd McCarthy was a good man. He’d probably come out here to be on his lonesome for awhile, just like Mal. Well, on his lonesome with God, anyhow. The Shepherd was the kind of man that seemed to carry the Lord with him everywhere he went. He was cheerful, helpful, and brave. Of all the men that Mal could have pictured winding up trying to preach “Love Thy Neighbor” in Serenity Valley, McCarthy was the one. He’d spent most of his time with the Shepherd before the ceasefire talking just like you’d expect from two men sure they were doing God’s work. The kind of talk that comes from knowing that you’re in the right. Then the shooting stopped and the dying began. Mal had pulled the Shepherd aside yesterday to talk to him about all the dying he was seeing. The ‘verse was running away on him. It was like someone’d spooked Mal’s horse something fierce, and he didn’t know how to get her back under rein. Mal needed somebody to show him how to calm her down. “Shepherd, this don’t make any sense. Why isn’t He helping us? We’ve lost already. I understand that. He works in mysterious ways and all. But why are we out here, lying on the ground and dying slow? It ain’t no way for a soldier to die.” “Sergeant, you just have to trust in Him. Believe that He knows what’s happening here, and that it has a higher purpose.” “What kind of purpose is there in good, honorable men starving to death? What kind of purpose is there when they get infections and waste away? If God was so all-fired excited about killing these folks, why didn’t he just direct some bullets their way? We all came out here ready to die for Independence. This is more than we signed on for.” “Don’t lose faith, Sergeant. God has given us all the gift of choice. We are out here in the pursuit of what we believe is right. You’re out here, I’m out here, Corporal Alleyne is out here, General Wilkins and all the other Alliance troops are out here, and all of us believe we are right.” “We can’t all be right, Shepherd. Right ain’t that complicated. And there ain’t no way that if everyone’s right that we’d all be dying in this valley.” “You don’t understand. What I’m trying to say is that God has let us choose our own destiny. He wants us to be who we are; otherwise he wouldn’t have made us that way to begin with. God allowed us all to be unique. We’re all part of His plan, and we must follow in that plan.” “So God’s plan was to bring us out here and set up a slaughterhouse? That don’t make no sense, Shepherd.” “This isn’t a slaughterhouse. This is a hallowed gravesite. All of these people, on both sides of the war, have died in the service of what they thought was right. Surely you can see the nobility in that?” “But it don’t have to be this way. These people just don’t have to die, not like this. Maybe if I…” Mal had let the sentence trail off. He hadn’t meant to say anything at all. “Maybe if you had what, Sergeant?” There’d been a little tremor in his voice when he’d spoke. “If I was better. If somebody who had some learning in this kind of thing was running the defense. I’m a rancher’s son, Shepherd. What the holy hell am I doing in charge of all of these folks?” “You don’t think you’re qualified to be in command? Sergeant, that’s just not true. I’ve seen you, with the troops. Your tactics are better than sound. Those men and women would follow you anywhere, and you know it.” “Is that supposed to make me feel better? It’s missed the mark pretty bad, Shepherd. So they’ll follow me out there to get mowed down one after t’other? Yes, that’s a powerful consolation.” “They aren’t following you out into the jaws of death. They’re following you in the pursuit of what is right. They trust you to the point that they want you to decide how exactly they can best fight for what they believe in. They are sure that you, of all others, can direct them in how best to defend the things that they consider most important in the ‘verse. They know that you will give all of yourself to bringing them back to their families safely. You will gladly sacrifice any part of yourself, up to and including your life, in the defense of a comrade, Sergeant. You couldn’t stop doing that anymore than you could stop breathing. You are the man they look to when they need guidance in how they should fight for right, and the one who will brave any danger for any one of them.” “That’s not worth more than air, Preacher. You say God can do anything. He could take me and leave them. Can’t be much harder than that pillar of fire trick He pulled.” “Do you really think that the universe works that way? That God keeps some sort of grand tally sheet to determine how much each individual life is worth? One Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds is worth X number of Independent soldiers? Your life is your own, and it is beyond value to Him.” “What the hell good does that make? It doesn’t matter what I do, they still die. They die by the score. If God had decided to put someone else in charge, they wouldn’t be dying right now. Don’t matter if we’d won or lost, but at least we might not be starving in this gorram valley!” “How could another commander have changed this outcome? Could some commissioned officer have magically conjured more foodstuffs? Could he have brought more medics and medical supplies down from on high? You’ve done well. The troops love you, Sergeant. You’ve kept them fighting long past the point when most would have simply surrendered to the inevitable. You’ve done all that you can to keep them alive, both in body and spirit. Count the living, not the dead, Sergeant. That is the point of God’s plan for you. All the men and women that survive this battle will know, beyond a doubt, that it was Sergeant Reynolds who had brought them through, literally, the valley of the shadow of death.” “That don’t matter, Shepherd, and you know it. That’s like saying that all them that might survive, and key on ‘might’ there, Shepherd, make up for all the rest that died out here. I did my best, right?” “You’ve missed my point once again. If God were the Alliance, he’d simply descend from Heaven and impose His will upon us. Some people might prefer that. It leads to a life that doesn’t require any thought or any conviction. One wakes up, hears exactly what God wants, and performs the tasks assigned. If there is rebellion of any kind, it is mercilessly crushed in fire and glory. All those who oppose the will of the Almighty will be struck down. There would be instant, horrible retribution on all sinners. There would be no ambiguity in life; no shades of gray. What is right is rewarded immediately, what is wrong is instantly punished. God has taken the reins of the ‘verse and established His moral order without question. “God’s planning is far, far more subtle than that. He has little use for fire and brimstone. Man can act on His behalf quite well; given the proper man is doing the acting. “God sees you as you are, Sergeant. He knows your heart and its ways. You’re a good man, and you can’t help but be a good man. You will always feel compelled to fight for what is right. That is how God makes his plans for us. He never forces us to do anything or to be anything. All that He asks of us is that we be ourselves, and in so doing we will carry out that plan. God’s plan for you was to be here, and to help as many as you could. That’s what a good man does. He doesn’t have to save everyone. All he has to do is try and save as many as he can. You’ve done that, and you’ve done it far above what any reasonable man could expect of you. “Never forget, Malcolm. You are who you are. It may not be easy, but what is right seldom is.” Shepherd McCarthy had smiled at him and looked him square in the eye. He put a hand on Mal’s right shoulder and, without saying anything else, walked away to give rites to a man who’d passed from starvation during their talk. That was the first time that the Shepherd had ever called him by name. And now God’s man was all manner of corpsified. McCarthy’d come out here to do His work, and God had blown him up. Mal shook his head. This was so far past stupid it was fascinating. The Shepherd had done exactly what he’d said God’s plan involved. He’d been who he was, and gone where he was supposed to be. His grand reward was getting himself all blown to hell. Mal gave some thought to digging a grave for the Shepherd, but decided not to. There wasn’t any point. Maybe God’s plan was for him to feed the critters around here. That made more sense than anything else Mal could come up with right now. At least that way his death might mean something to somebody. Right now, he was just a man who got killed on dirt he didn’t grow up on for a side that’d already lost. There wasn’t any point to it. Death hadn’t had a point since the ceasefire started. From the looks of it, that hadn’t stopped Death from doing his job. “Well, Preacher, I guess all the faith in the ‘verse don’t make much difference now. You’re dead, and ‘His plan’ seems to be that you die for no reason. At least you died clean. Most of those men out there are dying slow. They’re gonna keep dying until there ain’t a one of us left. I hope you’re happy with your place in the plan.” Mal thought about the Shepherd’s little speech about him being a good man. He thought that McCarthy was all sort of crazy. There wasn’t any definition of “good man” that he fit. A man like him just couldn’t be a good man. A good man didn’t kill other folks. That definitely ruled Mal out. Mal had shot, stabbed, exploded, and maimed more men than he had a right to. Hell, that Alliance ship he shot down a couple days back probably amounted to dozens dead. Those aboard her were in war, sure. Mal was right to shoot them down. It was them or him. But that didn’t change the fact that they were just other soldiers. They were the whores that the tax collectors sent out. Some of them’d been drafted, some’d volunteered. Some probably had families. He’d killed them in a right just war. He’d never murdered a man, but still, he’d killed too many to be “good.” A good man didn’t let his friends die, either. Mal had come up short on that score too. The Shepherd said that all he had to do was try, but Mal knew that wasn’t on the level. He’d heard McCarthy tell all manner of sinner that it was okay that he’d failed. God would forgive. Didn’t matter if a man’d killed another over his wife, or if he let thousands of good folks die. God would forgive. That man probably tried to stay away from murdering folks and stealing their wives. By failing, the man’d sinned. So what the hell did that say for Mal’s “trying” to save all these people? Mal thought about Private Layton. Dozens of names and faces ran through his head. Each one was somebody he’d failed. The Shepherd was wrong ‘bout what a good man was. A good man could have found some way to keep all of them from getting killed by the Alliance. A good man could get all of the dying out of Serenity Valley. If he were a good man, he could have protected them. He could have saved their lives, somehow. A good man didn’t let people die. Mal knew what Zoë would say. “Sir, you can’t hold yourself responsible for this. The Alliance started the war. Men die. Nothing in the ‘verse can stop that.” That meant that Mal wouldn’t bother talking to Zoë about it. The last thing he needed to hear right now was that load of go-se. Didn’t matter if Zoë believed it, Mal couldn’t. He didn’t deserve the comfort. No, he was responsible. He was the man in command, the one that it all came down to. Every death in this valley was his fault. That was part of being in charge. It didn’t matter if it was your fault or not, it was always your fault. The troops looked up to him, and they depended on him to keep them going. He was trying, but gorramit, they just kept dropping. His job was to bring them back alive. A good leader kept those under him from dying, and a good man protected his friends from all dangers. Malcolm Reynolds had caused too much death to be a good man. McCarthy, he was a good man. He’d come out here, not so much as a gun to his name, and he’d set himself up to bring the word of God to the Browncoats. He kept the faith when the world was falling down around him. He’d been a kind soul who’d listened to anyone who had any troubles, didn’t matter if they believed in God, Buddha, or something in between. Mal had never once seen him eat before he knew that every man on the line had food. His whole self was thrown into protecting the people he was caring for. No power in the ‘verse could have shaken him. But God decided to take him away from the ‘verse. He was too young for that. He’d already done right for people, and now he wouldn’t get to do anymore. Why would God do that? McCarthy could have preached on for another fifty years. He could have helped all manner of people. Maybe even saved a soul or two. Now he was just good for feeding the worms. Mal looked back down at the remains of Shepherd Josiah McCarthy. He might have been a good man, but he wasn’t a smart one. All his talk about God’s plan didn’t amount to anything. God had sent a good man out to die for a rock that wasn’t even his. Taking up a part in God’s plan only got him blown up. There wasn’t anything “subtle” about God. He didn’t even care enough to try and give His men a good death. God had this all planned out, and He was so stupid that He couldn’t come up with a better way of getting wherever He was going than letting thousands of men and women die slowly. ‘Course, maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe God just didn’t care about people. He set them loose in the ‘verse and then watched them go at it when he thought it was amusing. That’d certainly let the free will thing keep going, but it sort of undercut the “God loves you” message the Shepherds were always talking about. It’d explain why God let the Alliance keep killing and blasting the border worlds. All they’d ever wanted was to just be. If McCarthy was right and God wasn’t the type to blow fire and brimstone, then why did He let the Alliance do it? Maybe He really was just the sort to hover overhead and watch when it suited His fancy. Mal took a deep breath, and the smell of the dying filled him to his soul. Men and women dying for no reason everywhere he turned. He was fine with fighting a war. He wasn’t fine with watching good people die for the hell of it. Either God couldn’t stop this, or He wouldn’t. The way he saw it, that meant that either God wasn’t near as all-powerful as folks made Him to be, or He was downright cruel. At best, He just didn’t care about them at all. So his choices were a God who was weak, a God who lamed animals, or a God who cut and run when things got hairy. Mal had spent some time with all three types during the war, and he didn’t want any part of them. Mal pulled the cross off his neck without untying it. He’d made his decision where the almighty was concerned. It was time to inform Him of that fact. Another man might have hollered at God at a time like this. Mal didn’t think that would get his point across. When he spoke, it was quiet. His voice had a deadly calm to it. “Well, you sick wong ba duhn, this is it. I’ve had all I’m gonna gorram take from you. You sit up there, all high and mighty, letting us blow each other full of holes. If you’re so damn merciful, why don’t you end this? People are dying here. People are dying on both sides of the line, and you don’t care. It ain’t that you’re backing the side I didn’t. I might be able to cotton to that notion, eventually. A man who fights for what he believes in is worth something, even if he believes wrong. But you obviously don’t give a hump about anyone out here. We’re all just here to tickle you some, ain’t we? We get up, we march, we kill, we die, and you laugh. Browncoats don’t matter to you, Alliance don’t matter to you. Either nobody’s right or you just stopped caring. “Hell, maybe you’re not even up there at all. Maybe I have been lying to myself my whole life. Maybe you’re just as real as a fairy in some piece of go-se kid’s story. Point is, I don’t rightly care. Either you’re not real, and I’m talking to myself, so I’m crazy. But if you are real, then you ain’t worth my time. All the fancy speeches you have men like Shepherd McCarthy deliver to honest folks don’t mean a damn thing. You don’t have any love for us, you don’t have any mercy. You can do anything, you just don’t. And if your ‘plan’ means that thousands have to die for no reason out here for a war that’s over, then I don’t want no part of it. “You probably think that I’m gonna hate you now, don’t you? You’re wrong, big man. I’m not gonna give you the time to hate you. Ni bu ying duh jur guh. You may not care about letting a man make his own way, but I do. So I’ll let you be, and you just return the gorram kindness. Dohn-ma?” Malcolm Reynolds looked down at the cross in his right hand. He’d said his piece. There wasn’t any more point in talking about it. He tossed it over his shoulder and headed back to Zoë to see if there was any news. The way he figured it, if God ever wanted him back, He’d find him. And He’d better have a DAMNED good explanation when He did.