Work Text:
Poor guy looks kinda lost—out of place about these parts in his fine clothes and strange red glasses, and if Kaylee didn’t know better, she’d oughta say he was more looking at the ships, though not with the same kinda appreciation that Sheperd fellow was. He looks worried, with his brow sitting all furrowed like that, staring at Serenity’s signage.
Kaylee starts to call out to the man, but he turns and starts for her before she gets the chance. His steps are slow, not quite hesitant but real cautious-like.
“Hello.” He tips his head in a small nod, his voice quiet and soft. Kaylee can’t quite place the accent, but it’s clipped, smooth, like some of the men of Inara’s she’s caught snippets of over the Cortex.
“Hiya!” she greets. “You lookin’ for a ride?”
“Yes, I—you’re taking passengers to Boros, if I understand correctly?”
“Surely are! Anyone who can pay the fare is welcome aboard.” She hopes it don’t sound too desperate, but they really do need the money. Hopefully takin’ people on means they might get around to replacin’ that gorram compression coil at the speed of yesterday.
Anyway, Captain always tells her she’s gotta be careful scoping out passengers—only those can pay, and that seem trustworthy. Kaylee knows he don’t much like having strangers aboard Serenity, that he’d prefer, all things goin’ right, it was just the six of them and the sky.
“Yes, I have some cash saved. I hope that’s alright.”
“Perfect!” As a matter of fact, it tends to be a real bitch when passengers wanna pay with credits. Not that they won’t do it, coin is coin, but cash is better, easier to handle and less traceable.
He nods. “Thank you. Now, I have some luggage I have to attend to. It’s, ah… it’s rather large. Will that be an issue?”
“Shouldn’t rightly be a problem. Our pilot usually helps people bring their bags and things aboard. Once,” Kaylee whispers for dramatic effect, “a man brought a whole crate of piglets. He was on the ship for two whole weeks. So, as long as ya don’t have livestock in there, we should be golden!” She laughs, tucking a strand of hair, loosed from her bun, behind her ear.
A pause. “No,” he says then. “No, nothing like that.”
He doesn’t seem much for making conversation, which is more than a little intriguing, but might be something to worry on. Kaylee likes people lots, getting to know them, can’t help it—she figures that’s why the Captain always sends her to find ‘em passengers. But she ain’t naive, either, much as she likes to believe the best of folk, and she wants something, one sign that this man is okay to bring onboard her ship, to her crew.
As he starts to turn away, probably to go check on his things, Kaylee decides to test it out. “I’m Kaylee,” she tries, hollering slightly, smiling as wide as all the suns in the ‘Verse burn hot. Captain calls it her charming-people smile, but she’s not doing anything too special. “Frye. In case you were wonderin’. I take care of Serenity here,” she says, nodding back.
Kaylee can’t well see his eyes in those glasses, but the man smiles at her, just the slightest bit, not showing teeth but instead strain, the tight upturn of his lips. Her heart all the sudden aches a little at the sight. He looks tired.
Still, somethin’ about it seems genuine. Despite it all, she swears she sees, of all things, dimples peeking out. “My name is Simon,” he says slowly, quietly, almost like he’s a little afraid to say it out loud, but she shakes off the thought. She can’t figure a man like him’s afraid’a being known.
“It’s—it’s nice to meet you.”
Kaylee’s grin just grows wider as he turns again. She supposes a little mystery never hurt much, and anyway, she’s gotta good feeling about this one.
*
This is the one; Dobson’s sure of it.
So far, he’s quieter than any of the crew on board or that Shepherd. The man has barely said a word, in fact. But his suit’s all crisp, clean lines—he stands out on a rundown piece of metal-scrap Fèihuà like this.
It’s old, not registered with any of the big lines, and taking one look as he journeys inside, Dobson would wager a lot that it’s a ship ripe for smuggling—and if they’ll smuggle goods, he’s willing to bet they’ll smuggle people.
Anyway, a man like that doesn’t get on a ship like this. Not without a specific purpose.
Dobson feigns a stumble to get closer to where the man crouches, checking on his big metal box.
“Sorry,” he murmurs. He keeps a quiver in his voice as he scans the box quickly through his periphery as the man eyes him warily, still saying nothing. He looks distrusting of everything around them, wears it too clearly on his face as he turns his attentions back to his—
Cryobox. Definitely. Dobson’s read about them in mission reports but never seen one up close, and they only have so many uses.
As Dobson collects himself and makes his way to be told of the ship’s rules, he notes to himself the medkit the man keeps close by.
Simon Tam, so the story goes, was an up-and-coming trauma surgeon at the top-ranked hospital in Capital City. Got through med school and his internship on a breeze. Younger than most of his peers, but by all reports, he was hard-working, brilliantly focused, and punctual—that is, until a month ago, when he stopped showing up to work without a word, no notice to the residency program director, nothing. When River Tam was broken out of the Academy three days ago, the hospital ran an investigation and found through their logs that he’d stolen supplies upon his departure. Barely enough to be missed, but enough that they would last someone who knew what they were doing quite a while.
Dobson trips over the doorway as he heads for the dining area. The clumsier the fool they think him, the better. He’s alone on an enemy ship, after all—best not to make any moves until he’s gathered more information, until he can call for backup. But he has a job to do—the girl must be recaptured, whatever the cost, and he will not be bested by some ragtag team of smuggling low lives, or, for that matter, an aristocratic boy-doctor playing at criminal.
*
City-slick pretty boys don’t know when to stop askin’ questions, that’s for damn sure.
Jayne’d like to tell him to shut his gorram mouth and rightly mind his business when he gets to asking about the goods, but they’re all supposed to ‘act like they’ve heard of manners’, as Inara likes to tell ‘im, when they got passengers aboard.
But then there goes Kaylee blushing at ‘im with her wide eyes and cheerful smile, lookin’ at him with interest. Jayne don’t see the interest in his fancible tie or the way he speaks quiet and clipped, like one wrong word could detonate a room, and hell, he supposes that’s true enough because it’s always been right easy for Jayne himself to do just that.
“Kaylee here just wishes you was a gynecologist,” Jayne cackles, pointing his fork toward lil Kaylee to make the point. ‘S funny enough to watch the doc’s face grow pale, eyes flitting over to Kaylee, alarmed, uncomfortable, unsure. Serves ‘im.
Less funny when Mal don’t see the ridiculous in one of their own lustin’ on a man like that, and even less when he’s forced outta dinner on account of it.
He grabs his food without looking back at any of them. Go tsao de, does he hate passengers. Doc ain’t even been here a day, and already he’s muckin’ up things more than his fare’s worth.
*
Mal had a bad feeling about the doc the second Kaylee introduced ‘em. Hard to trust a man who don’t want anyone seeing his eyes on first sight.
He shoulda followed that line of thought, because now there’s a mole on their ship and an Alliance cruiser hailing them, and he does not have time for any this.
Well, whatever. At least now he gets the satisfaction of punching that condescending, schooled face right to the ground where he belongs.
Seems Mal’s slow on the take in general today though, ‘cause he never woulda figured the doc for a fugitive, or someone back-boned enough to stare him down and leverage his doctorin’ skills.
“You rich kids,” he growls, flitting his eyes up and down the boy’s clothes, then back to his face. Mal doesn’t think he’s half bad at reading people, generally speaking, but the boy’s expression is guarded, impassive, defiant—Mal can’t be sure what to make of him, and that makes it all the more reasonable to assume the worst. “You think your lives are the only things that matter. What’d you do?” he finds himself asking, though it’s barely a question, suddenly curious. It’s hard to imagine the boy with a gun in his hand, but easier to imagine him offing his parents for his own selfish gain if the cool, callous glint in his eyes is anything to go by.
“I don’t kill people!”
What a gorram selfless hero, won’t kill nobody, but he'll let an innocent girl die for his own damned sins.
Boy stares at him, and Mal stares back. Could be he’s bluffing, but just as easily could be that he's full-serious. Neither of them can budge, can blink, and if he doesn’t make a move, make a choice, Kaylee will die, and she's whimpering something fierce now. If they don’t do something, and if they don’t run, the boy can’t help whether he wants to or not because he’ll be in cuffs—
The doc rushes to her the second Mal says to run. He supposes for now, that’s all that matters.
*
Inara has known bad men in her lifetime. Though she was not subjected to their abuses herself, she has met the kind of man Mal seems to think Simon is: slavers, sex traffickers, people with a list of crimes so horrific they’d never pass a Guild background check without finding a way to cheat their system, which is extremely difficult, though not impossible.
She has known men who want women like her only for their bodies, who see women as objects altogether, and as she watches the boy—Simon, she thinks Kaylee had called him?—crouch down to the naked, shaking girl, blocking her from their view, his hands gentle and unassuming as they touch only her shoulders, she knows before he says anything that this is not that.
“This is my sister.”
Beyond her, Inara’s fairly certain she can hear the sharp inhale of Wash’s breath. Everyone is still, surprised, unsure how to proceed.
“Look, I can—I will explain everything. But may I check on her first? Please?”
This is directed to Mal, whom Inara flits her eyes toward. He nods slowly, twice, and clears his throat.
“You’ve got an hour.”
Inara moves forward then, her robe bunched in her hands, approaching carefully, quietly. But when she extends it in offering to the young girl, she jerks away, trembling, and Inara isn’t quite sure what to do.
“May I?” Simon nods toward the robe, without looking up. Inara gives it to him. “Thank you.”
With some careful maneuvering, Simon helps his sister dress herself in it and stand. As Inara watches them make their way toward the infirmary, Simon’s steps solid and sure, the girl like a trembling bird in his arms, Inara frowns. She may not understand everything that’s going on yet, but one thing is clear—neither of them deserves whatever has happened to them.
*
It’s all Zoe can do not to shiver as the Captain’s voice halts off the comms, but there’s no time, not one moment to be unmoving and afraid, well and truly, because she’s gotta get to the bridge, but—
“I—I don’t understand.” The doctor. Few men from his parts, she figures, would so readily admit to not knowing something, even something they didn’t have much reason to know.
Zoe halts and turns before she can go. It’s not altogether surprising, but still: “You never heard of Reavers?” Part of her wants to coil up and snap in resentment at the thought—he’d never had reason to worry like this—but where he was born ain’t his fault, and not knowing won’t do him or anyone any good.
“Campfire stories… men gone savage, on the edge of space, killing and—”
“They’re not stories.”
If one emotion seeps through right now, all of them will, and there’s no time for that. To the doctor’s credit, though his eyes are wide, she sees something else in his expression, too. He goes from I don’t understand to What happens if they board us in a flat three seconds. Like her, he is someone who needs information. To know what he’s dealing with. To have the necessary knowledge to adapt.
She lays it out for him as plainly as she can and then turns on her heel. The captain needs her on the bridge, they all need her on the bridge, and there’s nothing she can do to quell the doctor’s quiet, resigned horror anyway. That’s the most she can give him.
*
The young man comes in quickly, out of breath from exertion, looking harrowed.
“Is everything alright, son?” Book queries. Internally, he cringes a bit—well, not alright, he supposes, not with what the boy shared about his sister mere hours ago—but if he finds it in poor taste, he doesn’t comment on it.
The young man shakes his head, a little disbelievingly. “I just thought… the captain said… well, it doesn’t matter, in any case. I was mistaken.”
Book watches as he moves to Kaylee’s side, checking on her temperature with a quick touch of the back of his hand to her forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“Just dandy, Doc,” Kaylee grins. Book knows she’s still heavily sedated and smiles a little to himself. Despite the chaos of the day, somehow, the girl’s still in good spirits. Book’s never seen anything quite like it—nor, he imagines, has the doctor. When Book glances to him again, he’s got the faintest traces of a smile ghosting over his expression.
“How's your pain?”
“Oh, can’t hardly feel none. You fixed me up plenty, Doc, don’t you worry.”
Book watches as the doctor nods, his brow drawn tightly. He doesn’t think he’s seen the boy look well and truly relaxed one bit since they both arrived on the ship, but then, he supposes it hasn’t been an altogether relaxing journey.
“I’m going to check your vitals again. Just to be safe.”
Book watches as he quietly sets to work, gathering his instruments and speaking with Kaylee in a soft, gentle tone. He grows surer by the moment that though the boy has a lot to learn about the life he’s embarking on, he hadn’t meant any real harm. Book hadn’t known what to make of him at first, when he was threatening to let her die, but now he can see it more clearly: a desperate young man, scared not just for his own life but his sister’s. Now things have calmed just a spell, he can see the weariness in the young man’s shoulders, his dedicated focus.
Book understands why the captain doesn’t much like the boy at present. Truth be told, though, all he can see now that he knows the story is a young man out of his depth, trying very hard not to be.
*
The kid is on the bridge with him.
Funny—before, well, Everything, capital E intended, Wash would have guessed he was older. At least in the range of Wash’s own ripe age of a very spry-and-handsome 34, thank-you-very-much. Thought of him as Doctor, probably, or else Weird guy who asks a lot of questions and my wife and Mal both seem poised to kill at the wrong move.
Now, though—with a split lip, a purple shiner, and his vest—waistcoat? Fancy core planet people would probably call it a waistcoat—rumpled and his shirtsleeves rolled up, he looks oddly… young.
So, yeah. The kid.
“How old even are you?” Wash asks before he can quite remember that there are probably less blunt ways of asking that question. Oh, well, tact is kinda overrated on a day like this.
Simon glances at him, wryly amused, Wash is going to ahead and say in spite of himself. “Twenty-five?”
“That a question?”
“I’m not sure why it matters.”
Wash shrugs. "The both of you are pretty young, is all."
A stiff, suspicious tone enters Simon's inflection then. "I'm not a child."
This only really serves to make him sound more like a kid to Wash.
"Well, right, sure, in your old age, it's a wonder you're even alive."
Probably is a wonder he's alive, actually, now Wash thinks on it. He's never heard of anyone successfully breaking into a government facility and living to tell the tale.
He supposes Simon has a point, though. Not a kid-kid, then, but Wash himself was only 28 when he’d met Zoe and hadn’t yet developed the good sense to shave off what he’s since been informed was a horrific mustache. When he was twenty-five, he’d spent a good month so drunk he only remembered half of it. He wasn’t sure he’d have quite known how to be on the run from the law back then, and considering he’s pretty sure this is the first time the kid’s even been off his home planet this side of ever, he can’t help but sympathize.
"I don't know what point you're trying to make."
“I was just thinking about you and your sister,” Wash starts. Simon makes no indication he’s heard him, which Wash takes as all the urging he needs to go on. “It’s just the two of you? What about your parents?” Wash asks. “They can’t help?”
“They—no.” Simon shakes his head, just a little, a complicated expression Wash doesn’t feel the particular need to try and disentangle just this second playing over his features. “No, it’s just us.”
Wash doesn’t press it, but he does frown as he turns back to face the control panels. No one, it seems, is especially looking out for these two.
She was fourteen, he’d said. Two Years, he’s said. Couldn’t get near her.
Twenty-five.
“Might want to ask the captain to drop you somewhere else,” Wash tries to suggest mildly. "White Fall isn’t civilization in the strictest sense.”
A beat. Simon is still, uncomfortable, and says only, “You don’t have to worry about me,” but Wash can’t help but think Someone ought to be, and if he’s going to worry after Zoe anyway, which, of course he is, then he might as well worry a little for these two as well. It really isn’t that out of his way.
*
Simon is worried even though the day is gone and the chase is done and the man who tried to take her is dead. She can see it all over his face, in his heart, he’s always been easy to read, maybe not to other people, but she always knows exactly who her brother is and what he’s thinking, more than with anyone, his mind like a second home for her own, even now. Even now.
River dreamt for so long, of needles and scientists and blood, hers and others, and equations and Simon, too, of course Simon, always. She reaches now to touch his face, to make sure he’s there—everything around her is a haze and strange, unfamiliar, unsure, but he is the one solid thing, looks different now with bruises and cuts against his face, a little older than she last saw him, but mostly the same, and she has to touch him to be sure he won’t dissipate when she does, fade like smoke blown away like she’s back in that place , scary monsters, scary monsters, twenty needles in her eyes—
Simon is solid and warm against her hand.
“I didn’t think you’d come for me,” she whispers. Says it like she’s still in a dream. Maybe she is. Maybe maybe maybe.
She doesn’t know why she thought that. Not logical. Not congruent with the evidence, but she was so hurt and so gone and so long. Still…
Simon setting aside his schoolwork to play with her, Simon setting aside his first-ever date with Lucy D’arbanville, no, Attamonte because she was locked out of the house and their parents wouldn’t answer her Waves, Simon setting aside his whole life because he read a letter that said get me out and did just that.
Simon, setting aside.
His face is like a cliffside, cracking underneath the surface. He keeps it together, for her, always for her, but there’s no missing the well of tears in his eyes or the fear or the way he can’t convince himself to believe it when he says, We’ll find a safe place.
“Well, you’re a dummy,” Simon says, and it’s a long-understood joke between them, one she never put in the letters because it would have been too real, would’ve ruined the thing.
When he gathers her in his arms then—even though the darkness is coming and may swallow her whole, even though strange voices and flashing memories are buzzing strange in her head, even though blood-stained blue hands reach for her in her dreams, even though she can hear all he won’t say aloud—he is warm and gentle and holds her like he, too, is afraid to let go. There's nothing surprising to her about that.