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Race the Dark (Firefly) for boysinperil
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indiana_j Recipient:
boysinperil for the '10 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
apocalyptothon Fandom: Firefly
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: For the entire run of Firefly and Serenity
Warnings: Erm. Dark fic is dark.
Summary: Run until the end of everything.
A/N: Thanks to
deathpixie for her help with the beta!
Until the generator blew by way of a 32 caliber bullet or two, the room had been rather well lit. After it went, however, the only light source came from a small window that was dirty enough to actually dim the bright afternoon sun. Add the smoke from the sparking generator and gunfire and it made for one hell of a confusing scene.
Malcolm Reynolds simply pointed his gun at the vaguely man shaped shadow writhing on the ground. A larger, angrier shadow kneeled on top of the one on the floor. “Jayne, if you can’t hold that bun tyen-shung duh ee-dway-ro still, I might, regretfully and mistakenly of course, end up shootin’ you instead.”
“Gorram it, Mal,” Jayne grunted, “for a nutjob, he sure is slippery.”
“Nutjob or no, he’s got the answers we need.”
He’d survived a war that many hadn’t. Since then, he’d managed to get his skin out of jobs that went south before they’d even gotten started. The Alliance, Miranda, River’s attempts at cooking. Mal had managed to survive it all; not only that, but he’d managed to keep most of his crew alive during their years together.
No mean feat considering what they’d been through together.
It didn’t mean he was brave – more like stupid, actually. Fear came to Mal in the quiet hours of sleep and doubt crept in before breakfast. During a job, though? Those emotions would cripple a man.
Which was why he didn’t mention to Jayne or Zoe about the sweat on his hand that made it hard to grip the butt of the gun or the tremors that made it that much harder to aim in the small, dark shack that they’d found themselves in.
Mal wasn’t just afraid – he was gorram terrified.
The man under Jayne was muttering under his breath. “Gone, gone, all gone. Poof! The Lord gaveth. Poof! The Lord will taketh away.”
“Got a good hold of our friend, Jayne?” Zoe asked from somewhere near Mal’s shoulder. He could barely make her out in the dark but experience told him she’d probably be four feet to his left, give or take a foot or two.
“Well, let’s just say if he goes somewhere, it’ll be armless and we’ll leave it at that, okay?”
“Good enough for me.” Mal took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe he was about to ask the question that he was about to ask but they were dealing with strange times. “Right then. Dr. Howell, I’m going to reask that little question again – you remember us askin’ it right before you went and tried to run on us?”
“Downright stupid move,” Zoe commented.
“Yep, ‘specially since it got us even more riled up. Now, Dr. Howell – what the cāo is goin’ on? There seems to be an entire tāmāde planet missin’ and I want to know what, exactly, is goin’ on.”
*
When the end came for them, it came quietly and quickly. Lives were led, or lost, like normal as human beings went about their business. And then everything …
… just …
…STOPPED.
*
When Mal, Zoe and Jayne reached Serenity, they were going at a dead run. Not exactly unusual for them (Kaylee could count the number of times they hadn’t had to run back in the last few months on both hands) but it was a little bit odd considering there wasn’t anyone chasing them in the background. ‘Least not one she could see, anyway…
“Captain?” she called out, skipping back out of the way in order to avoid being run over.
“Kaylee,” Mal responded, stopping long enough to grip her by her shoulders. “I need you to do the fastest inventory of parts, spare or otherwise, that you’ve ever done. I want to know how long Serenity can stay off planet for and I need to know fast, dong ma?”
She stared up into his face, confusion and worry clouding her own, before she nodded. “Sure, Cap’n, I reckon I could do that right quick.”
“Good. And if you see that doctor of yours before I do, tell him I want the same done with medical.”
Kaylee nodded and Mal gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before sending her off. When he turned around, he wasn’t surprised to see River hanging upside down from one of the upper catwalks of Serenity. Ever since they’d gotten word regarding the so-called missing planets, she’d been acting more like she’d been before Miranda. Not as extreme as she used to be but certainly not right in the head.
Well, more not right in the head, anyway.
Before he could get more than “Riv-“ out, she was already talking. “Four months,” River said, fingers tangling in her long hair as her limbs dangled towards the ground. “That’s all that’s left. Four months, one hundred and twenty days, two thousand-“
“River!” His voice echoed off the walls sharply; running a hand down his face, Mal struggled to reel in his scattered emotions. It had been a long time since he’d let River’s – Riverness get to him but they were up to their necks in troubling times and it was getting to him. “Four months left for what, girl?”
Deep, dark eyes stared down at him.
“Until the end. For Serenity. For us. For everyone.”
“…Ai ya. Women wanle.”
She smiled. “Yes, just a little bit of trouble.
*
She felt the nearest one die so abruptly that she nearly rammed the nose of Serenity into nearby debris. Mal’s cursing faded as the sense of nothing spilled throughout her entire consciousness.
Wasn’t even aware that a planet was nearby until it was gone, gone, gone.
Cursing turned to concern as she started to scream and laugh at the same time, convulsing in the copilot’s chair.
When they laid her out on the floor, head cradled in Kaylee’s lap as her brother worked over her, all she could say, over and over again, was “It’s coming for us”.
Coming and coming and coming and oh so very hungry.
*
The map crinkled loudly under Mal’s hands as he finished up with “- that crazy doc said it ain’t just one planet that’s gone. More like, oh, ten or twelve now, he reckoned.” Zoe had carefully marked all but one of the planets that they had lost contact with (that had vanished completely, moons and all) because Mal figured that Kaylee really didn’t need to know that her home planet was one of the missing.
Not yet and maybe not until everything was fixed up. If it ever were fixed. Four months, River had said. It was, in the grand scheme of things, not a very long length of time.
“Now, he weren’t too clear on what exactly’s goin’ on…”
“Before, you know, that hùndàn managed ta get out from under me and then blow his own head off,” Jayne chimed in.
“Thank you, Jayne, for adding, as always such colorful commentary.” Mal glanced over to where Inara stood with Kaylee sort of curled up next to her – he shook his head. Now was not the time and she nodded shortly in response, bringing the younger girl closer to her side.
“Hi, yeah, please pay attention to the Captain now?” he said, dryly. “Look, all we know is that during a dig on an uninhabited planet near Janau, the Alliance managed to open something old, nasty and…”
From under the table, River’s voice rose to say “And hungry. It’s very hungry and nothing is going to stop it from devouring the entire universe.”
“If what River says is true,” Simon interjected, “then what do we do?”
Slowly and methodically, Mal folded the creased up map back into its original configuration. Which was sort of a mess of a ball – Wash’s original handiwork, no doubt. “What do we do?” He set his jaw. “We take Serenity and we head in the opposite direction. As fast and as hard as we can.”
One by one, he looked at them. Looked into the eyes of his crew, his friends, his family. “We survive and we come out on top, dong ma?”
*
Two and a half months later…
The rest of the crew lay sleeping in a mostly dormant Serenity in an attempt to conserve fuel and parts, except for Mal and Jayne. They’d been on the move constantly with short breaks here and there in an attempt to keep the ship together for as long as possible. Things hadn’t been so bad in the beginning but the past week, Kaylee had been run off her feet in her attempts to keep everything together.
Almost all radio chatter had simply gone off the air in the same time frame, too. During that first month, there had been an explosion of talk as people started to panic down on the various planets. Evacuations had been hastily tossed together but as days turned into weeks and then months, a lot of the ships simply had … dropped off the radar.
So far, Mal and his crew had managed to avoid that same fate but things were starting to look dicier. Which brought them to where they were now.
“I can’t do it,” Jayne said quietly, voice muffled by the door to Inara’s shuttle. “I ain’t made to be cooped up for long stretches of times, Mal. I almost shot that fancy pants doctor for lookin’ at me funny the other day.”
“Jayne, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all wanted to shoot Simon for one thing or another over our acquaintance with the man,” he responded, thumping a fist lightly against the metal. Once the door was shut and locked, it was a long and hard process in order to get it opened from the other side. It had been a feature that Inara had insisted upon when she came on board ship and one that Mal was starting to regret.
“But how long ‘til I look at Inara or Kaylee like that? ‘Til you and I gotta draw weapons on each other? Hell, who knows? I might even find somethin’ out there, send some word back to you.”
“Never thought it end like this,” Mal admitted slowly. There was a short bark of laughter from the other side of the door.
“Less messy than how it woulda ended, you know that.”
“Yeah, guess I do.”
No goodbyes were needed, no farewells, no good lucks because there was no luck to be had. Not out in the Black and not in one little vessel. But Mal couldn’t rightly tell a man how he should live or die. Whatever Jayne’s issues were, Mal owed him that much.
He had a crew to get out of this mess alive, even if they were now down by one.
*
Four months later…
“We’re not going to make it out of this, Mal.”
“Yeah, Inara, we are. We’ll beat this, you’ll see.”
“…of course, of course. Mal, I know our stores are low right now, but I made the entire crew some tea. Would you like some?”
“Well, how could I turn down an offer like that? Thanks.”
Inara smiled sadly as she handed him the cup of tea. “Please, Mal, don’t mention it. Just … drink.”
*
Four months and one day later…
As the darkness drew near, Inara smoothed down River’s hair as she reached past the still form in order to fully shut down the remainder of the ship’s power. She would have fifteen minutes of life support left but she knew as she staggered and her vision dimmed that the drugs in her system would shut down her body before that would happen.
Slowly but purposefully she headed down the darkened hallways. Past Kaylee’s room where two bodies curled up together, having turned a cheerful room into a quiet tomb. Zoe was down in her own room, the one she’d shared with Wash until his death. It had been … fitting.
And, of course, Mal…
By the time she made it into his quarters, Inara could no longer feel most of her limbs. She stumbled and fell to her knees; undaunted, she crawled the last few feet to the bed and dragged herself up into it. Shivering, she knew it was only a matter of time before she succumbed like the others to the tea she had made. Jayne might have taken her shuttle but she’d kept an emergency Companion stash in another hiding place.
Struggling to even out her breathing, she laid her head on Mal’s still chest and murmured, “It is coming for us, even out here in the Black. But … but you …” Her hand convulsed against his chest. “Didn’t fail. Gave us time. The sky. Life.”
Cool lips pressed against his cheek. “See you … next life …”
*
Inara’s eyes closed, her heart slowed.
Serenity’s life support clicked off and she settled into an unnatural silence.
When the hunger came for them, it found only a tomb.
And then, nothing.
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