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The first day isn’t even a whole one; Serenity eclipses the afternoon sun for a brief moment as she pushes away from the dry, grassy moon, too far away for them to even feel the hot breath of her thrusters. River laughs to see the way the ship seems to shift and drift slower the higher she gets, though her speeds are increasing; the precise mathematic formulas and the many variables of climate and atmosphere slip through River’s mind like one of Inara’s silk gowns slipping, frictionless, off a coverlet.
When she looks back from the sky she sees Simon, motionless, eyes still fixed up; and then it’s almost like another cloak of gravity has pulled its hood down over him again. The movement of his arm as he lifts it, touches his face, almost as if he’s physically forcing his gaze back to earth is slow, weighted; and then he looks at her and it’s just the same, just the same as ever only his feet are mired in the moon now, earth-shackles instead of ship-cage.
“Quicksand,” she murmurs to him, thinks Don’t struggle, but the words swell and creep out of her mouth and into her nose and back down her throat and she’s choking on the tiny, wet grains of it and then Simon’s dragging her out of it, arms banding around hers, her ribs creaking with the force of his grip, her own half-wailing voice becoming audible now that it’s stopped drowning.
Jayne’s swearing. Simon’s breath quick and damp against one of her ears, Jayne’s voice sharp and acrid against the other. He crashes into her field of vision, teeth bared, gun held crossways at his chest and every muscle swollen with thrumming anger, confusion, indignation.
“Gorram,” he says, the word spilling naturally as the breath between tirades. “Gorram. See what happens when I get left with the ruttin’ babysitting?” River feels Simon’s mouth open and his breath draw in but he doesn’t speak as Jayne crashes off through the underbrush, camouflage jacket and sunned skin soon losing him in the landscape.
It’s not yet completely dark when he gets back, and River’s climbed and is resting in the cradle of a skeletal tree, getting up and only somewhat out of the sluggish tar of what Simon’s saying (and not saying) It’ll be fine, we’ll just stay where we are (and They’re not coming back. They’re not coming back,).
“They’re not coming back,” Jayne says; and Simon starts and jerks to his feet from where he was crouched over the tree’s roots. Jayne moved silently, undetected but for the fact that she’s got the advantage of height and his tense bitterness gritting the teeth at the back of her mouth. Simon relaxes, to a relative degree, more than he has since before the sun began to melt into the horizon, anyway, as Jayne hunkers down just within the trajectory of the branches’ stunted reach. He spits. “There ain’t no sign of a message, only of some fightin’. Had to get back here before it got too dark.” He pauses, blinks, tacks on an explanation so’s not to be misunderstood. “Can only do so much trackin’ when there’s no light to be had.”
“Maybe they couldn’t leave a sign. Maybe… maybe there are other people here that’d find it before us.”
“Maybe.” Jayne unzips the front of his jacket, shrugs a little to separate the fabric without taking his hands off the gun, keeping it strapped around his shoulders. He’s sweating a little, breathing slowing. Their landing site hadn’t been nearby. “Couldn’t see sign of no body no where on this moon but us.”
The first night is very quiet, very cold. They sleep in the shrub, close to the ground; Jayne’s behaviour belied his apparent conviction that they’re alone, instructing them that they were less visible that way than when they were in a clearing - or up a tree; River can hear his slow, steady breathing a few feet away from them, the minute creak of the metal of the gun against the rough fabric of his jacket. Simon’s breath quicker, but the same rhythm; River curls her toes against the satin lining of his coat, the shoulders of which droop over and around her own, cuffs reaching past her fingers, enough room in the body to curl her knees up and still wrap it around. Simon’s shirt glows whiter and more immediate than the pinprick stars above. Sometimes she forgets how small she is. Sometimes she forgets how big he is. He opens his eyes, grips her wrist, wordless. She lies down, sleeps.
* * *
By the fourth day she’s in the habit of sleeping when it gets too dark to see and waking when the sun rises; and there’s something about the primal rhythm of it, lacking on the ship in its perpetual night, that soothes her, serves as a frame to contain what would otherwise flail out further to reach its (non-existent) boundaries. On the seventh day, Jayne leaves as the sun rises and returns not as its setting, as he has for the days previously, but comes wading through the dry grass just as it’s reaching its apex, beating down yellow-white.
“I found somewhere we can bunk down,” he says when he comes to a stop, squinting from where he stands easily just outside the shade they’re sheltering under. He doesn’t look at either of them, instead peering off to where the heat blurs the middle distance. “Once you get your shit together we can start walking. It ain’t far but it’d be best to get there before nightfall.” He finally shifts his gaze; glancing over Simon to squint at River for a moment before dropping to stare at the dusty earth in front of his boots.
Simon doesn’t say anything. They had this argument last night, when it had been dark long enough for the heat of the day to loosen its fist; before the icy chill of the thin air had pressed down, when they’d thought she was asleep. We should stay close, Simon had said, in the firm tone she was personally familiar with; one that wasn’t aggressive and yet brooked no argument. As close as we can to our last broadcasted coordinates. So they can find us.
They ain’t gonna find anything but a coupla dried up corpses if you stay here, Jayne’s manner brooked no argument either, but in more of a way that threatened violence if you disagreed. Bedside manner, she’d thought, and unwrapped her arms from her shins to flop, spread-eagled, on the dry, knotted ground. I ain’t bringin' you two sunbathers water for the rest of this little trip. Simon’s skin already red with sunburn; hers tender against the brush of fabric, skin paler under the shoulder strap of her dress.
“Fine,” Simon rises, retrieves his red med bag from the most sheltered space he’d been able to find amidst the tangled tree-roots. “River?” he turns to her, holds out an already grime-etched hand. “Let’s go.”
* * *
It’s cooler by the water, murky brown stream of it that Simon frowns at initially before gasping involuntarily as he splashes it over his face. His hands stay covering his eyes, cheeks, mouth for still moments too long before she stomps out where she’s ankle deep in it, boots and all, and gives the curved line of his back a firm shove.
Jayne’s laughter, rich and rough-edged like the dusty air, infuses her with its unabashed enjoyment and she joins it, imitates it, only grinning harder as it seems to make it all the more amusing for him. “Well hey, your sister does have a sense of humour after all.” Simon drags himself up, water dragging his clothes down, slowing his spluttering but not the incessant dripping, hair plastered down and into his eyes, legs jerking unsteadily as he attempts to wade out of the mud that lines the creek bed.
“It is not funny,” Simon’s emphatic. River sits abruptly on the bank and begins to tug at the buckles of her boots, leather slippery against her fingers.
Jayne smirks. “And here I was thinking she was the crazy one,” he says, and sits down himself, further back on the bank, where the shade is deeper. Simon eyes him for a moment, expression unreadable, and then seems to give a mental shrug before dragging himself back close enough to the bank to beach himself on it, legs half still immersed. The water’s like paradise against River’s feet, like Serenity’s cargo deck is cool liquid metal. Mud squishes up between her toes and she looks to Simon, but his eyes are closed, lashes congealing. Looks to Jayne. Bares her teeth with the fierce pleasure. He grins back.
* * *
By the eleventh day the mouthful of nutrition-brick they’d each consumed every morning had well and truly began to taste like clay. She had energy enough, but her stomach remained not necessarily painfully but wistfully hungry, for real bread, or fruit, or even just the saltily seasoned heated mush that Kaylee had always presented at mealtimes so hopefully. It’s Jayne, though, who stumbles into the campsite a just a little too long after dark, drops down a little ways away from them. He’s holding his body wrong; not the usual self-controlled sprawl, but tighter, tenser, closer. River’s belly turns and twists in on itself, taking the world with it; suddenly every blade of grass is edged blue and sharp and the dirt still too-yellow and River gives a low moan. “Not hodgeberries, Simon,” she tells her brother. “Not strawberries. Not this time.” And Jayne’s expression is one of dull panic, almost guilt as he looks up at her, eyes half-lidded, mouth loose-jawed, open.
Simon makes it to him in time to haul on one sweat-slick bicep before Jayne’s face follows the projection of the thick, syrupy vomit into the grass in front of him. "River," Simon says, wrapping one arm around Jayne's heaving chest and setting his free hand palm-flat on Jayne's forehead, turning his head to look her straight in the eye. His eyes are moving; she must be moving, swaying, shifting, hiding, the tree trunk dry and rough against her face. "River," Simon's voice a little louder. "Will you hand me my bag?"
At first Simon had only told himself that she was getting better, kept it something at the back of his mind that he didn't look at too closely, because the med kit really was only for emergencies. The infinite variety of pharmaceuticals he'd been trying on her (with varying success) remained, of course, in the infirmary. On Serenity. River could tell him the inventory of exactly what was in the med kit, down to the last sachet of antiseptic; could tell him the chemical compound and formula of each drug. But she knows the thought of it scares him a little, of her, out here, with enough of it in there to subdue her maybe once. "River–" but she's right behind him now, med kit in one hand and the clear vial he wants in the other and he pauses for a moment, mouth still open and breath still drawn, still jerked around by Jayne's retching, until he takes it and turns away from her again.
* * *
Later; and Jayne's stiller, now, the only movement his exhausted breath and the flicker of his eyes as he watches them, sprawled on the earth. She can get close enough now to tell that he prefers the creek-damp press of her dress tails to her brother's somewhat more agitated ministrations, she dabs the fabric to his forehead then is distracted by the tiny careening of the dust immediately before his open mouth; lowers herself with infinite care to peer closer, face pressing earth in an upside-down mirror image of his.
Simon's pacing. "Why--" he starts, stops. "What did you--" His breath huffs out in an exasperated sigh.
"Didn't know," River says, because Jayne's eyes are frowning a little, and she knows he wants to speak, knows he wants to get right up there and shake Simon and tell him. "All ripped out. Hungry." She blinks, shifts to lie on her back, the stars taking a while to pull into bright focus after the sharpness of Jayne's shooting spotlight filtered through her eyelashes. She grabs the torch. "He didn't know," she intones, holding it under her chin.
"Orange," Jayne mumbles, and Simon finally stops his pacing. "Safe." His voice sounds acid-stripped.
"Jayne," Simon rubs his hands over his face. "Why didn't you bring them back to us first? You know how things can… go bad with terraforming."
"Not stupid," Jayne's voice breaks into a whisper, and he finally manages, with infinite effort, to close his mouth.
"Silly rabbit," River says once his eyes have closed too, tapping his nose with her finger. The torch beam bends out into the dark when she drapes her arms over Simon's shoulders. He doesn't sleep much.
* * *
Simon isn't back by the twelfth night. Jayne swears that morning when he wakes up, squinting up through the branches into the midday sun, and drags himself to a sitting position against the trunk. River doesn't talk to him at first, because she knows he thinks she's crazy, and any questions he might ask will be asked with the assumption that her answer means nothing. After a while he starts talking anyway, and then doesn't stop much for a long while; as if he's talking to an animal, something that's present but can't respond; a mirror. I ain't stupid, he says, voice still a little hoarse. I spent my time on the trail, sure as he did in his fancy hospitals. What does he know about it? pausing. He'll end up all trussed up and skinned, or lost and starvin'. River braids the wiry grass into thicker bands that she can't break so easily, and wades in the water when the sun lowers enough for the trees to cast shadows over it.
In the morning when she wakes up Jayne is standing, methodically examining his weapons before slotting them back into their respective sheaths, strapped to his body. Her voice is inarticulate, her fingers not so; digging into the buckles, clinging to the straps; strong enough to make his body jerk forward a little with the weight of it. "Whoa, girl," he says, but doesn't strike her, and she lifts her feet up off the ground and tries to get a grip on his kneecaps with her toes. Finally he sits again, without a small amount of complaining; blunt, grimy fingers tearing the grass up restlessly by his thigh until she starts talking.
* * *
It's afternoon when Simon comes back, from downstream instead of up, and he's carrying something weighted and wet. His hair is wet, and his shirt, skin over his nose peeling to show up faint freckles beneath. She climbs into the tree when she hears him coming, he glances up to see her as soon as he rounds the bend, and Jayne relaxes, dropping the barrel of the gun and shifting his stance a little. Simon crosses the water and stops. "Sit down," he says quietly to Jayne, and River is too far away from them to see the expression that shifts across his face but she covers her ears anyway. Jayne sits, Simon drops the bundle he's carrying; it's navy blue soaked black, and he uncovers it, picks up one of the contents, holds it out to Jayne. "Tubers," he says to Jayne. "Roots. Edible. There's a pool further down stream. Probably fish in the rocks there." Jayne doesn't answer. He's staring at the blue fabric Simon had carried the food in. It's a jacket, a uniform; with lighter articles bundled in it as well, and tied together and thrown over Simon's shoulder. River stops a small noise in her throat with her fingers in her mouth.
"I went back to the landing site," Simon says. "I saw where there'd been a fight. Like you said." Jayne's silent. Simon turns part of the jacket in his hand idly, picking at a cloth badge stitched to it; a crest. "Saw some people that'd been killed in the fight. Saw some people that'd been hurt in the fight, and killed after."
Jayne licks his lips and takes a breath, as if to speak, and Simon's quiet, waiting. After a few long moments he takes it up again. "Saw who they were, where they were from." He half-lifts the badge, drops it. "Thought we could do with some more things to keep us warm during the night." He slings the rest of the bundled clothing off his shoulder and goes down to the water again, crouching and dunking his hands in up to the elbows. Jayne begins to unpick the knots in the fabric and lay them, flat, in the sun.
As the sun sets, Simon comes to stand beneath her tree. He says her name like something broke in his mouth and leaked out, and the dirt is almost soft on the soles of her feet after gripping the rough tree bark, the skin on the side of his neck smells like sweat and sun and mud.
* * *
River wears Simon's jacket, tails coming down to brush the back of her calves, sleeves rolled up and the inside of the lining stuffed with small keepsakes -- river stones, smooth twigs, woven grass knots -- where the lining's split to make a giant pocket. Further downstream near Simon's pond they line a crudely-dug pit with stones and light a fire in it in the mornings, before the sun has had a chance to heat up the air too much, and cook tubers to soften them, and sometimes fish. There aren't many other living, breathing things on the moon; Jayne claims he'd been following coney trails back out in the early days, but River's never seen one. Sometimes if the day's cooler than usual and she wanders far enough, locusts fill the grass around her, but she never sees any birds. "That's why there's no one here," Simon says to her. "Nothing to sustain them."
"That's not why," she says in response, but mainly just to irk him. Jayne seems to know this, surreptitiously smirks her his approval.
Simon wears a blue jacket at night, now, and sleeps sounder. Jayne's picked the badge off, pinned it somehow onto one of the gun straps that are perpetually crossing his chest. Jayne's not stupid, he's done his time in the dirt and the scrub; Simon offers occasional structural engineering advice at Jayne constructs her a bower. The trees closer to the water are green, more flexible, and he bends the branches in and has Simon hold them in place as he weaves strips of an already-torn shirt through and around it. Before the others wake at dawn the next day, she's already in her tree, and watches Simon hover on the edge of the shade of the bower until the sun eases enough for him to join Jayne closer to the water's edge, where they murmur softly until she comes down to eat.
* * *
On the fiftieth day she crosses the water and keeps walking. Her boots are solid, enforcing each footstep, caked with mud on the outside but snug and dry on the inside. Past the bracket of trees along the creek bed, the shrubs peter out onto dry, grassy plane. When she looks behind her she can see more of the same beyond the greener strip, and mountains, and sky. Burrs catch in the tail of Simon's coat and when she stops to pick them out she sees more of them on the ground. Some have rabbit fur caught in them, soft and weightless in her hand after she carefully disentangles it from the tiny barbs. She walks so far that she sees mountains in the other direction, and another green belt off to her left, and then she finds stone foundations amidst the flat; straight lines and corners she steps around, balancing. There's remnants of a chimney, and a hoary old apple tree off to the side. She thinks of Jayne.
She gets back as the sun's rising, crossing the creek at their old campsite and following the waterline to where the firepit is, and the dust worn smooth and Simon's red bag in a dug-out beneath a tree root. Jayne just looks at her, and it strikes her that is face looks haggard, hidden by his now-unkempt beard somewhat, but not enough, with this silvery morning light. She remembers the apples, digs one out of her deep pocket. He takes it with the hand that isn't resting on the back of Simon's neck, beneath the collar, Simon's face half-hidden in sleep against the mud-coloured fabric covering Jayne's thigh.
"They're not coming back, are they." Jayne's not stupid, he'll only answer her if he's sure he's right; and she's not asking a question, anyhow. They both watch in silence as the sun breaks over the horizon.