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Serenity sailed through space, a ship that rocked gently in the unseen tide of the black. All around her the 'verse stretched out, an inky black sea that was broken up by the vague glimmer of distant stars. The Firefly class starship moved with a grace that most transports her age couldn't quite muster; grace that her captain credited fully to his mechanic, with her skilled hands and her way of hearing what their ship was calling for.
Treat her like the lady she is, Kaylee had said, giving the engine an affectionate pat, And she'll always find ya a way to where you're goin', cap'n.
Malcolm Reynolds sat comfortably in the pilot's chair, fingers tracing out arbitrary paths across the vibrating metal of the steering console. She was old; she was rebellious; and she was falling apart at the seams. But she was reliable too; and she was familiar; and she was home. She was an inorganic mother, carrying her children through an inhospitable universe; a place where the only people they could trust were one another, and even then it was a tumultuous sort of relationship.
Behind him the door slid open and then closed, a light gust of air washing over him and making the hairs on his neck stand up in the chill of it. The sound of bare feet on metal reached his ears; it was a dull noise that didn't carry well in the solid bulk of the ship, but in the dark silence of artificial night it was deafeningly loud.
River Tam slid into the seat beside his and he wondered if she was there to take over as pilot for the night - piloting Serenity was a job he'd found her to have an uncanny skill at in the absence of Wash.
She made no move to adjust their course or usurp his control; she just stared out at the passing stars with a distant focus. It was almost as though she could see the colony they were headed for; like she knew exactly which distant twinkle belonged to their destination.
"Bit late for you t'be outta bed," he said; offering the comment as an opening for idle conversation.
"The mind rebels against the needs of the body," she said, still staring out at the stars.
"Care to enlighten as to what that means?" he asked, raising a questioning brow.
"Can't sleep," she answered immediately.
"I reckon your brother could remedy that."
Her brows furrowed and she turned her gaze on him. "No more needles."
Mal inclined his head, letting the subject drop and letting the conversation drop along with it. It was no hardship to talk to River, but he was in a mood to be quiet; it wasn't a mood that often struck him. He tried to blame his pensive attitude on the swift approach of Unification Day, but the excuse didn't sit right in his head. Business had been slow since Miranda; most of their contacts had been cut down and with that sort of mess following them few were willing to form new business associations with the rag-tag crew of Serenity. They'd fallen into something of a stagnant period.
Mal had never been a friend of stagnation.
It seemed to him that he'd been on the move - doing things - since the war; he hadn't really taken a moment to himself in years. Zoe had found Wash, and in him she'd found the desire for moments of rest. Mal, who had been alone for far longer than he thought he ought to have been, had never discovered that want. Something in him gave an unpleasant pang, and he wondered if maybe he did have that desire; maybe he did feel that want for rest but was only lacking in someone to rest with.
He heard the quiet rustle of movement, the soft swish of fabric, and then the felt the warm proximity of another living being. He dragged his eyes from where they'd drifted and found that River was standing close beside his chair, a look of stern concentration on her face. She reached out and pushed her fingers through his hair, resting her hand on his head and looking at him with such sudden lucidity that he could almost convince himself she'd always been perfectly sane.
"We're old dogs," she said, reaching for one of his hands and pulling it up to press it against her neck. "We've seen too much, and we've never been trained how not to fight. They never told us how to live without our masters."
He wanted to tell her that she was crazy - she wasn't old by any stretch of the imagination -but looking into her eyes quelled that protest before it had truly formed. Her gaze was one of such understanding and experience - such exhaustion - that he knew she was just as old as he was in a way that had nothing to do with the passing of birthdays. Dog years were different than human ones, he recalled. Maybe they were both old dogs; old war dogs who didn't know the first thing about how to live a life that came after the battlefield.
Maybe they'd both been fighting so damn long that when they'd finally gotten what they were fighting for they didn't know how to take it.
"We can learn," she said. Her gaze was getting distant again; like she was looking right through him - beyond him. "We'll learn."
Mal's hand shifted down from her neck to her shoulder and he gave it a squeeze; her response was to pull her hand back from his head and retreat to her chair. This time she fiddled with the controls when she sat down; changing their path, he assumed. He didn't say anything, just watched her for a beat before returning his gaze to the passing lights.
Old war dogs were raised for battle, but they could be trained for civilian life too; they just needed the right encouragement.