FireFlight: Fanfic

Leaving Serenity

Celli Lane
Copyright 2002

Yes, I did swear I'd never write Firefly fic. But when Mal shows up in my shower all vulnerable, what was I s'posed to do? (Besides *that.*) A lot of people were encouraging about this, so in addition to Perri, Kiki, and the other Horsechicks for their usual wonderfulness, I want to thank Jayne...er, Lady Jayne...er, Serrico, as well as Elis, Te, and Rhythm, for their encouragement at various stages.

This story is for Perri, as a belated sitewarming prezzie for "Fireflight."

"I'm not leaving Serenity." --Mal, Out of Gas

No, he doesn't leave Serenity. Ever.

Not at night, when he doesn't so much dream as travel back to dirt and fear and hunger and blood. Wishing to die rather than watch his own people die--he was a sergeant, he never wanted command of more than his own life, and not even that most days. Holding his oldest friend, his mother's foreman, Cheng, while he coughed blood all over a brown coat that was nearly the same color. Being held by Zoe as he finally cried, not even able to mourn before the shelling started again.

Not in the day, when flashes of light reflecting off a puddle would make him spin and draw on nothing for months, months and months, while he and Zoe worked and stole and argued their way across a half-dozen planets to get the money for a ship. While he daily told Zoe to leave, goddammit, he wasn't responsible for her until she knocked him unconscious just to get him to shut up about it.

He'll never tell Zoe that Serenity was for her, at first. A ship has real walls, not makeshift ones. A ship has doors that can shut out the bad guys. Harder to surprise you in space.

A ship can run.

But a ship can also make you l-- care for her. A ship can inspire affection. Pride. Responsibility.

He's through with heroism, with faith in a cause. He does what's best for him, best for Zoe, best for Serenity, and what's right can go to hell. And he believes that he believes that, most of the time.

Looking back, he thinks it was the crew that ruined it. Sometime between that first moment of connection with Kaylee, when he realized she could love Serenity too, and the day Wash--swear to God--asked him for Zoe's hand in marriage, Mal woke up one morning and realized that he had subordinates again. That brought on an avalanche of swearing Cheng would have been proud of and two sleepless weeks of walking the ship at night, all but listening at doors for their breathing.

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance," the man said, and Mal is beginning to believe in his own ignorance if nothing else. He doesn't know how Serenity runs. He doesn't know how to negotiate like Inara, fly like Wash, doctor like Simon, fight like...well, he can fight. But Zoe and Jayne are better.

Some days, he's fairly certain he only ranks above the crazy girl in usefulness. And those are the good days.

Serenity needs them. And he needs her. And the only thing he knows amidst all this ignorance is that someday he'll die to protect them.

No, he won't leave Serenity. Ever.

The "real knowledge..." quote is from Confucious.