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Title: The Things They Carried (#3598)
Author: NancyBrooke
Chapters: 9
Archive: Firefly
Category: TV-verse
Description: Reminders and treasures among the crew of Serenity. A series of drabbles and double drabbles - one for each crew member.
Response to Drabble Challenge #25: For Keepsakes
Published: 01 Oct 2007
Updated: 07 Oct 2007
Warnings:
Type: General
Characters: Mal; Zoe; Wash; Kaylee; Jayne; Simon, River; Sheph
Chapter 1 - Captain Malcolm Reynolds
It’s nothing you can see, with Mal. Not like the medals Zoë keeps tucked among her scanties, or that crinkled picture Kaylee hangs in her bunk.
Nope; Mal, keeps it all on the inside.
Inside but rearranged, like that jury-rigged nerve cluster, the shoulder ligament now working his knee - the stronger parts covering the damaged bits so the whole thing stays strong, a good unit.
No, Mal he doesn’t need any reminding; the ‘verse itself manages that just fine.
Yes, Mal keeps his reminders on the inside. That way he gets done his day to day without getting too twingey.
"The Things They Carried" is the title of a Vietnam War memoir by Tim O'Brien about, among other things, soldiers' keepsakes.
Chapter 2 - Hoban Washburn
Wash is too old to play with dinosaurs; you knew that, right? But he keeps them all the same, keeps them close, and talks to them every day. He tells them their stories, recalls the glory times as he was told them himself, and he says their names to them over and over again, lets them fight and play and live to fight another day. Wash keeps those dinos alive.
And they keep him alive, too. They keep alive in Wash the memory of when he first met the dinos, though he was too old to play even then; when he first learned their names and watched them fight to the death as if they would live forever, days when the hours were long but seemed to run quick, all too quick of a sudden and he couldn’t stop them running out like meds in the drip and dirt back into the hole. Heavy, silent days when just a man with a prop could’ve saved them, could have saved them all, not just the dinos.
He keeps those dinos alive and they tell him every day why he learned to fly and exactly why it is he keeps on going.
Chapter 3 - Zoë Washburn
Wash is always the first to say his heart belongs to Zoë and, though she just smiles, she knows it to be true.
It was the only thing she really wanted, after the war, from the moment she saw it all shiney and bright, seemingly unflawed, like a ruby pulsing in a junk shop window. It stopped her in her tracks: a simple thing of such extraordinary beauty, and she desired it with all her heart.
Zoë’d never wanted for much, and after she joined up never thought to hope for more than a dry kip, bite of mess and clear aim, though, eventually, she stopped hoping even for that.
And even after things were healed and moving on she looked for nothing more than she got: dry kip, bit of mess, clear aim … then Wash – weird, wacky, wonderful Wash, wanting her more than any other wonder the world had to hold, so much it made her cry though no one really knows this but him.
Wash is always the first to say his heart belongs to Zoë and, though she just smiles, she knows it’s true, and she keeps it zealously, gently, beating right next to her own.
Chapter 4 - Jayne Cobb
Why’s Mal always whining about freedom? Jayne never can understand it. He’s got Serenity (piece of hwai, but still), and a great crew (what wouldn’t Jayne do with a crew like Zoë?), and jobs a-plenty, if only Mal’s standards weren’t so gorram high.
Well, Jayne’s got something: he’s got Vera. Everybody thinks Vera’s just a gun – a damned big gun – but she’s more than that to Jayne. She’s his way into and out of any situation takes his fancy, ticket and destination.
Vera’s Jayne’s own little slice of Freedom. Course, he wouldn’t mind if that slice were a bit bigger …
hwai = shit, according to this site: http://web.missouri.edu/~heivilinj/Firefly/Firefly-Mandarin.pdf
Chapter 5 - Shepherd Book
He knows what it is to believe, does Shepherd Book; to believe with all your being that perfection is knowable, understandable, and attainable, that taking but one road will get you there and that even one detour, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, has the power to bar that way to you forever.
There was a time when he would have looked upon Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of Serenity – indeed, upon the ship herself – just as motes upon that perfection that needed nothing more than to be polished out.
But a lot of time has passed since then, time in which the Shepherd himself has suffered the rough side of the cloth at times. And though his faith remains strong, he has taken to his heart some strong doubt, as well, and it is this he now lets guide him.
When he boarded the ship that morning from Persephone he had no doubt he was heading into darkness, away from the light, away from his own, lost, perfection and, hopefully, toward the possibility of it in others. But he is confident that this path is now his: he had seen a sign, and that sign had said ‘Detour’.
Chapter 6 - Inara Sera
They have an understanding, Shepherd and Companion. They recognize in one another a life shaped by others, for others, the hands not of individuals but of organizations untouchable and cold. Sometimes late at night they can find some comfort, turn together from the new, unfamiliar warmth back to the nostalgic cold and mirror it for each other, for a time.
He confesses to her then his reasons: decaying faith, blossoming doubt, his reasons for shunning the corridors that made him.
She, too, has her reasons, for doubt, for sacrifice, and a new, fragile belief.
Chapter 7 - Kaylee Fry
Kaylee’s a keeper. She keeps everything: old love, lost hope, and all the parts she’s ever taken off Serenity ‘cause you never do know when a broken down thing might just come in handy.
Kaylee was broken, for a time. Leastways, she felt like she was. Who but a soul with something wrong in it could hang about her daddy’s barn tinkering instead of having tea parties and gossiping with other girls?
“Tinkerer!” That’s what her mother had yelled at her often enough – “That’s all you’ll ever be, just like your Pa! No-good tinkerer!”
So Kaylee would run, out of the barn and up an old tree, not come down ‘til the stars came out and she’d done her wishing on them. Then Cap’n’d come along and just handed them to her: the stars, the verse, and all the wishes she’d ever secreted there.
So those broken feelings, that’s all in the past, now, though she still has them, of course – Kaylee’s a keeper – and it’s not often but they still can ambush her time to time, send her running straight to the engine room, where Serenity croons to her and reminds her of just how perfect she really is.
Chapter 8 - Simon Tam
There was a capture their mother had once, of River. In it, she is dancing in a sunbeam, twirling on her toes, her dress a flower, her hair a parasol, and she is laughing. Her face is so lit up with sun, it’s though the light comes from within her, and not from around her, like she’s creating it.
It used to stand on their mother’s desk; Simon must have seen it every single day, growing up. He couldn’t excise it from his heart if he tried. And he has tried.
For he knows he’ll never see that girl again.
Chapter 9 - River Tam
So much has been taken from River, forcibly stripped from her brain, she’s afraid to keep anything, afraid even to reach for the comforts Simon offers.
So River squirrels away things she knows aren’t hers anyway. When she’s convinced Simon she’s asleep so that he, himself, will go to bed, she secretly takes them out and turns them over in her mind: the Captian’s tenderness, Jayne’s loyalty, Zoë’s innocence and Wash’s ferocity, Simon’s desires and Kaylee’s bravery, Inara’s hopes, the Shepherd’s name – all things their owners have forgotten and no longer miss, each ruby deep and diamond bright:
Buried treasures.
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