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It's real quiet once they've set down, and from up on the bridge it just looks like they've landed in some huge, muddy puddle, yellow-brown of dried grass moving somewhat like water away from the hot-air push of Serenity's thrusters. Once the engine shuts off the surface outside moves steady and smooth in a silent wind, continuing on as far as Kaylee can see before the shimmer of the heat over the horizon stops her looking further.
The Capn's already out in the cargo bay, Zoë with him, and Kaylee startles a little when she hears the distant thud-clang of the cargo door's mechanism engage, humming up through Serenity's body. She glances at Wash sheepishly, but he don't seem any more at ease than she does. "I'm goin' on out," she says to him, having a mind to alleviate the strangeness somewhat by getting right out there and seeing that it's nothing but wind and grass.
It weren't like she'd paid much attention to it last time (especially as her final glimpses had been tainted somewhat by the all-consuming urge that up and overwhelmed her from the inside to get away from all the yelling and the gunfire), so the shock of vague familiarity that lurches in her belly as she steps off the metal and into the deep grass is somewhat unnerving.
Zoë's already off and 'round Serenity's starboard, brown leather and dark hair disappearing behind the ship's bulk as Kaylee turns to look for her, and when she looks back the Capn's moving a bit more slowly in the other direction, his face all screwed up from the brightness of the sunlight, mouth pressed tight and brow heavy. It's hot. It's real hot. A sweat's sprung up between her shoulder blades and she ain't even moved from the shadow cast by the ship, yet.
"It's so hot," she turns to see Wash moving up slowly to stand beside her, frowning, with his hands clutched tight to his biceps despite his very apt observation. She watches as he peers out into the landscape, then blink once, fiercely. "Grass has grown," he observes, and the pause he leaves is heavy; Kaylee don't speak into it. "Strange how you don't think of things changing unless you're there to see them," he says, and offers her a half smile. She knows what he's thinking; she's thinking the same thing. Rising up away from the barren moon, dark stains of blood and fear amidst the brittle yellow getting smaller as they pull further away.
"It's been years," she says, and then hesitates to say what she's been stewing for some time now. Ever since, really. "Do you think there's any hope? That they…"
Wash's lips are pressed together between his teeth, and he's looking out over the grass again now, and not at her. "Captain doesn't like loose ends," he says, tone neither here nor there, and she nods, quickly; it was an answer she knowed already, one safe enough to tell her but not enough to stop her thinking.
They're both quiet, then, and with both Zoë and the Capn out of sight and the sound of their boots hidden by Serenity's bulk, the noise the grass makes moving against itself is the only thing filling up the air so much that it's like silence, almost, with no space in between, no other sound to compare it to. Just a constant, steady whisper.
* * *
When the sun starts sinking and the light turns the grass from bleached to gold and then toward tired blue, she follows Zoë back out with the Capn and Wash to where Zoë's marked a spot in the grass by folding and breaking it around in a circle. Kaylee thinks she should feel sick, but the corpse is too dried, too unrecognisable as a person even, as the Capn pokes it with his boot. Just a hard leather shrunken over knobs of bone, not even any damp 'neath it like there ought to be if you move something that's been lying on the ground for that long. "This is where we landed last time," Zoë says, and her brow furrows as she stands, looks about them as if trying to see through the deep grass to find some other signs. "There're six more, ranging 'round there," she sketches a vague semi-circle with her outstretched arm. "None of them clothed. No signs of animal ravaging. Some of them laid out." She and Mal exchange a long look, and Kaylee just knows they're both thinking on something but she don't know what.
"We'll prepare tomorrow," Mal says at length. "This time tomorrow night, we take the mule and head north."
"North?" Wash asks, and Mal nods, mouth twisting round to something that ain't quite a grin.
"Onwards and upwards," he says.
"I'm coming with you," Kaylee don't even realise how much she wants to until she says it, then recognises the fierce clench of her jaw that comes with not-backing down. Mal peers at her for a moment, then nods.
"Wash, you can stay with the boat, keep comm contact. Y'all get some sleep."
* * *
They don't get far the next night before the dark falls down sudden-like, and it feels to Kaylee as if the mule's been dropped into a pot of Inara's ink, the kind that Kaylee used to love to watch Inara write with back before she went to the training house, sitting in the close, warm shuttle and watching the rich, shiny black move thickly in the ceramic container. The headlights serve to illuminate a small radius of blurred brown ahead of them, and then less blurred, and then just selecting out a few curved, upright stems that move with complete lack of concern in the dim light. The Capn hauls on the brake, and the engine chugs down a notch, turning over quietly. Kaylee shivers, leaning in closer to where the others glow a little in the reflection from the dash.
"This is useless," Mal says, speaking the obvious. "Can't see within pissin' distance." He scowls, and Zoë lifts the comm unit to her mouth.
"Wash?"
"Yeah, baby?" His voice is scratchy, warm against the cold, pressing liquid black around them.
"We're thinkin' night wasn't the best idea."
"Heading back then?"
"Yeah. Look to be seeing you shortly."
She clicks the comm off and Mal revs the engine again, turns the mule in a cautious circle. They head back slower than they came out, all three of them straining ahead to follow the path they'd already made, two savage streaks of crushed-down grass leading back to Serenity.
* * *
It's hot. She's wearing a loose shirt to protect her skin from the sun, and the wide-brimmed hat she found in Jayne's bunk, but the heat presses in from all sides as well as from above, not helped much even by the push of air over her skin by the mule's movement. They started just before dawn, when it were light enough for the Capn to look through the 'scope before the heat-haze had come down, and she'd had a look too at where he'd pointed, a darker strip on the eastern horizon he figured were trees, maybe water. Trees always grew up 'round water, he told her, and other things too. She doesn't press him for more information, but sets her jaw firm and clings on tight to where she's perched atop the huge tanks they've strapped to the back.
When it gets just past the point where Kaylee feels like she can't hold on anymore, she feels something slam into the underside of the mule, the shock of it surging up through her feet and hips. Zoë don't swerve much, but stops it right after, and Mal clambers off, cussing loudly and sweating somethin' fierce, and Kaylee's legs are trembling from the residual vibration of the mule as she climbs off as well. She crouches down, trying to pull the deep grass aside enough that she can peer under the vehicle, tell if anything's been damaged too bad. She can hear the Capn pacing behind her, hear the creak of the plastic seat as Zoë dismounts too, the quiet swish as she walks back behind them.
At length, Kaylee stands, moves behind the mule and checks the bent grass in their immediate wake. "Well, we ain't leaking anything…" she begins, and then Zoë calls the Capn, voice sharp and urgent in that way Zoë manages to be while still sounding completely at ease.
The Capn hop-skips through the deep grass to get to her, and Kaylee follows as fast as she can after. Zoë's crouching, would be hidden almost completely if the grass weren't pushed down some by the mule's passage, and her hands are pulling aside some of the crushed stems to reveal something thicker, more solid, sticking up from the group. A tree stump. Not a big tree, but almost as thick as Kaylee's thigh right round, maybe, and the top of it all scarred and almost pointed. Mal's fingers rub over the surface of it, as if to make sure with his hands as well as his eyes.
"This weren't no natural culling," he says after a while, voice low, and Kaylee automatically follows his lead, glancing around at the ground surrounding them, looking for the fallen trunk. Zoë rises again, strides a few paces away from them, kicking around in the grass some before her boot hits something solid, a dull thwacking sound amidst the hushing of the grass.
"'Nother one here," she says; and then all three of them are kicking through the grass, heads down, until they've located several more and Kaylee's throat is dry and her lower back's aching. Her and Mal drink while Zoë walks back from where she was furthest ahead, out in front and to the south a little of where they were headed.
"More this way," Zoë says after she takes a long draft, and Mal splashes water over the back of his neck, rubbing fiercely before shaking off loose drops and climbing back onto the mule. "Wash, honey?" the pause is long, the response more crackly when the comm sputters in response. "We found somethin'. Gonna push ahead."
* * *
It don't take them that much longer to get to where the trees start proper after that, even though they're driving slower, trying to avoid any further obstacles and further possible damage. The shade is like nothing she's ever felt before when she near falls off the mule and into it; the other two don't seem that much better off themselves, and for a long time the only sound is the constant whisper of the grass and Kaylee's own hot breathing scraping in her chest. When the heat eases a notch, she sees Mal rise from where he were under the tree on the opposite side of the mule, sees him scoop up a handful of water from the tank, press it hard against his lips like his life depends on it.
"Capn," her voice is weaker than she thought it would be, as if she's sweated out all strength she had at the start of the day, all determination to keep her fierce hopefulness, her refusal to ask him outright. Her head's hot, forehead prickling where she's pushed up Jayne's hat and the band has come unstuck. "You really think they coulda survived this?"
He stares off, facing away from the trees, not looking at her but focus fixed on the distance, to the dark, blobby blur of Serenity. "Were a different season last time we was here. Cooler." She nods a little, acknowledging but still waiting for more, and he knows it. He looks to her, and the lines in his face ain't from squinting at the sunshine this time. "I don't know, mei-mei," he says, and his voice is hotter even than the friction of the grass against itself in the thick air; it's like the crackle of a fire as it's dying down, blackened logs turning from orange to white and crumbling into powder.
* * *
The mule don't start again. Kaylee figures it's overheated, but there's a sick feeling in her that it's something to do with hitting the tree stump as well, and she almost wishes she'd stayed back with Wash instead of being here and not being able to do anything about it; it's near impossible for her to even get under the mule, let alone have room or light enough to do any work on it.
"Could dig out a space under it," Zoë suggests, the skin around her eyes tense, forehead sheened with sweat.
Mal frowns fiercely. "No tools," he says, gesturing to where the mule would usually hold some useful sundries — a shovel or pick they'd use sometimes to uncover some particularly well-hid cargo — but the back of the mule holds only their water tanks, one of which is nearly empty.
Zoë don't pace, but Kaylee sees her fingers clench tight 'round the comm; Zoë ain't the type to try things over and over once she'd figured out the first time they weren't gonna work. The only noise the comm put out in response to Zoë's call for her husband is a tinny hiss, like it's the grass speaking back to them through its tiny speaker. "I could walk back," Zoë says, the tilt of her head already determined, though her tone holds an edge of a question as she directs it to Mal. "Til the comm's pickin' up a signal again. Get Serenity to come get us."
"It's too ruttin' hot to set out into that," Mal's voice is gruff, begrudging the truth of it.
"Could do it at nightfall."
"In that black?"
"Could follow the tracks, same as last night. Easy enough when I'm walking."
"Not with no light it ain't."
Zoë's jaw's set firm, and Kaylee sees them do that silent thing again, where they're staring right at each other and having a conversation without speaking aloud. This is a particularly long one.
"I could walk back," Kaylee volunteers at length, mainly just to break the stretched silence, and Mal turns to her immediately.
"No. That ain't an option." He frowns again, putting his hands on his hips and turning about a bit, gazing off into all directions. "Alright," he says finally. "Zoë, you walk. As soon as it gets too dark to see, and you ain't made radio contact yet, you bed down for the night. I figure that we ain't so far even in walking distance that you'll get caught in tomorrow's sun if you're following back the same path."
Zoë nods incrementally, and Mal turns again, looking into the trees, where further back they get more twisted, long, bone-bleached limbs wading in a haze of dusty shrubs. He rubs his hand against his mouth. "Kaylee and I'll wait here til the rescue arrives."
Zoë sets off as soon as the temperature starts to drop, the sun sinking ahead of her, and Kaylee watches until the sun drops low and fierce enough to melt her silhouette out of existence. Mal brings Kaylee a flask, and she smiles gratefully, his face dark where her eyes haven't adjusted back to the shadows yet, and takes a long drink. The water's warm, and its level in the tank on the back has dropped significantly due in part to the can of it Zoë's carrying with her.
"Shouldn't be here much later than first thing," Mal smiles at her, and helps her crush down the grass beneath a tree to lay on more comfortably.
* * *
The grass is scratchy, and the sound cooler with the black around them, but it still don't take her too long to fall asleep. She's more tired than she ought to be, sitting on the back of the mule all day and not doing any walking 'round. Mal lies an arm's reach away from her, on his side, back turned with his scarred brown coat pulled tight across his shoulders.
And then it's sudden, and she don't even realise she's awake at first, she comes to it so rapidly; and her eyes don't need much adjusting from her dream-scape until she realises she can see. Not ink-pot black this time, but like she's in a great big cloud of soot, with grey shapes streaked through it; tree trunks and the scratches of the grass, like it's been scored in with a fork or somesuch, and then her heart stops and squeezes and leaps on ahead because there're shapes in the cloud that ain't trees, her sleep-softened eyes able to pick out the texture where it's different to the wood, smoother, soft gradations and not the sharp fibre of the white bark, curved instead of twisted, and something gleaming above it. She can't speak, can't move, feels she might die if she don't scream, and then the sting of her eyes forces her to close them and she's able to make a sound come out of her mouth, one that makes the Capn stir out of the darkness next to her and when Kaylee opens her eyes again he's a dark, soft shape above her, speaking urgently.
"What is it? You hurt? Sick? Somethin' hurt you?"
"There–" she gasps it, and finds her fingers gripped painfully tight in the sleeve of his coat. "Over there. Somethin's over there."
His hands are on her shoulders, and he only moves one of them to reach for his pistol as he turns back to look over his shoulder, his body a tense shape above her for long moments before he turns back. "There ain't nothing out there, Kaylee," he murmurs, and the grass hisses dense and fierce above and around her head. "What did you see?"
She makes herself look again, then, but it's only empty space filled with black, and the skeleton shapes of the trees dim grey. The Capn's coat is softer than she thought it would be, like velvet flesh against her face as she presses to it, and he wraps an arm around her curled shoulders as she clings close to him. He don't make any reassuring noises, he never were any good at that; just pats her a little until she relaxes some, his own body still taut and the pounding of his heart giving him away where her ear's flush against his chest.
* * *
As soon as it's light enough the next day Mal's up and awake, and Kaylee can't sleep much longer herself, with the liquid white of the sunlight burning in under her eyelids even with her face turned to the ground. He's doing something all purposeful-like, not just fidgeting because there ain't no sign of Serenity yet, which she finds herself wanting to do. When he notices her sitting up and watching him, he don't stop, just turns his face look at her more frequently as he talks.
"You just sit tight here," he says, weighing a water can experimentally. "Wait with the mule. When Zoë comes�"" he grunts a little, hefting the can over his shoulder. "Tell her to come follow me. You get to work on fixing whatever our problem is here, and Zoë'll keep in comm contact with Wash. You both come fetch us when we call for you, dong ma?"
"But Capn…" she's feeling wrung-out, still, skin shivering as if she's been sweating all night, coming down from a fever or just heading into one. "Shouldn't we go together, or both stay here with the mule…?"
He shakes his head, takes a few steps forward, toward where the trees descend into shrub. "More progress this way. Zoë ain't too far off, I've no doubt, and you can work on the mule while we look around some more. Wouldn't be no good for them to turn up and no one was here, now, would it?"
She still ain't happy about it, but she nods anyhow, chewing her lip to stop her mouth from saying anything. She can take care of herself, and there ain't nothing out there she needs protecting from anyhow. Zoë'll be along soon enough.
* * *
By evening she's near out of water, having to tilt the tank awkwardly in order for the dregs to collect enough pressure to push out of the tap. There's no sign of Serenity in the white sky, and she's torn the grass down to bare earth where she's been sitting for what feels like an eternity. She thinks on what the Capn said on trees coming up near water, and watches the shrub-cluttered path he beat through the grass that morning. By the time dusk is on the tip of the horizon's tongue, she's made up her mind. There ain't nothing left on the mule she can record a message with, so she spends a little time bending down the grass in front of it, remembering how Zoë marked the body she found at the landing site. She figures Zoë will work out what it means; if she don't figure what Mal's gone off and done before then.
It gets dark quicker than she expected, time running faster without the mule pushing the ground by at high speed beneath them. When she turns around it's already too dark to see where she's left the mule behind her, and too dark to seek out the bent stems she'd read as signs of Mal's passage in the grass in front of her. Her fingers dig into the dry skin of the tree whose shade is rapidly merging with the tone drowning the rest of the grassy earth, and then curls up as close as she can to it, crying until her throat's too dry to make any more noise, then sleeps.
* * *
When Kaylee wakes up her face hurts and her throat hurts and her skin's tender and hot to the touch because she's left Jayne's hat with the mule, and her eyes hurt real bad when she opens them up because her eyelids are scraping across them like stroking a blade of grass against the grain, and because the light is fierce like a knife cutting into them. When she pulls her hands away from them again, she sees Simon, crouched just beyond an arm's reach away from her. She figures it must really be him because he don't look nothing like he does all those times she imagined this happening; not a little dirty, a little disarrayed, a lot happy to see her. Instead his expression is hidden by the heavy beard, eyes gleaming bright, incongruous blue amidst skin sun-darkened, patterned with freckles, limbs lean and brown, feet heavy-booted below torn cuffs of faded blue trousers.
He don't say nothing, just looks at her, and her face starts to hurt again, cheeks and eyes stinging until she realises it's because she crying again, after all that thinking she'd got no more liquid left in her. And then there's something wet on her mouth, stinging and softening her cracked lips, and when she pushes her tongue out into it she feels the rough weave of threadbare fabric, tastes grit and mud. There're hands on her face, then, cool and rough and Kaylee tips her head back a little to see River's face, framed by thick hair woven with wiry green into a carelessly-hacked mess, cheekbones sharp like Simon's, skin sun-rich and the shape of her from neck down shoulder to wrist carved strong, wiry muscle right beneath the skin, and her and her brother are both the same shape, and move the same when they stand up.
She's slept later into the day than she thought she had, because as slow as she's moving, they reach their intended destination just as the afternoon's cooling down again. She hardly feels like any time's passed at all, with her arm over River's shoulder at first, and then Simon's, their skin dry and warm in her own clammy grip, then just watching them move through the grass like it ain't even there, and River there one moment then disappearing amidst the sparse trees when Kaylee looks away for just a second. It's so much cooler by the water, moving deep, steady grey-brown and the noise of it a smooth, percussive background to the hiss of the grass. Simon helps her sit in a spot where there's no grass, just smooth-worn earth and the cradle of a tree root, and she drinks from the battered flask he offers her before drifting, again, not quite to sleep, but only vaguely aware of the movements around her beyond the gradual darkening of the landscape around her that's become almost familiar.
* * *
A sound brings her back to focused awareness, a sound like the crunching of dry grass underfoot but louder, familiar, low and rich, and she sits up straighter, rubbing at her eyes and blinking til she can see again. Everything's clear lines, as if the sound of the water's clarifying the air, instead of the sun-haze over the grass planes bleaching out details in everything. There's the soft murmur of voices and the laughter again, and then River's coming up out of the water, it streaming all off her, making her gleam in the low light, all hard, flat surfaces and fierce angles, solid and strong, and Jayne's voice says, "Awake, little Kaylee?"
And he's right there, beard thicker but lean and muscled like the others, closer to her too, though, crouched right there and the smell of earth and sun and water comes off him and she stares a little blankly before he presses something into her fingers, something odd-textured and sticky, and she doesn't realise what it is until she holds it up in front of her face and see a sliver of apple. "Didn't think you'd be comin' back," he says as she bites into the fruit, tartness and sweetness bursting violently onto her tongue, and his voice sounds gruff, unused. Simon's there, then, arms settling over Jayne's arms, the easy-slung line of them to where his hands rest on his upraised knees, Simon's knees coming to rest pressing against the sides of Jayne's ribs and his chin hooked over the angular muscle on Jayne's shoulder. The shapes fit together like components in an engine; as the light dims further and slips the world into monochrome tones, she can barely tell when one ends and the other begins. Simon's got that expression again, the one Kaylee ain't ever been able to imagine herself, and she thinks she might know why, now.
"Didn't," River murmurs from a short distance off, watching Kaylee with a degree less intensity than Jayne and Simon are. "Didn't come back. Not the same." And then the dark settles in, and the sounds come up to fill it.
* * *
Kaylee comes awake with Zoë's strong grip on her upper arm, shaking a little until Kaylee's eyes have blinked wide open. Zoë's face is flushed a little, sunburnt, and very still, hard. She lets go when Kaylee moves to sit up. "Capn says it's time to go," she says. The river's still moving strong and steady, Kaylee set a short ways back from it, with a length of smooth, empty bank between her and the water. Her legs are steady as she walks a couple of paces behind Zoë, who only pauses once or twice to examine the ground underfoot, and shortly they come across the mule, with Wash leaning against the bonnet idly beneath the mottled shade cast by the near-bare trees. Kaylee drinks her fill from the water tanks strapped to the back before they set off, and the sun hasn't even reached its zenith when they reach Serenity, her neck stuck curiously out over the first smattering of trees that mark the change between barren plane and determined scrub.
"Alright?" Mal asks her as she climbs off the mule within the cool dimness of the cargo bay, Zoë and Wash already moving about their business to ready Serenity for departure. Capn's not just a little sunburnt himself, though the high colour does nothing to hide the angry bruise that's risen on a cheekbone, swelling up the delicate skin under his eye a little. She can still taste apple sweetness in the corners of her mouth, and wonders if Mal's cracked lip come from thirst, too, or something else. She nods; and thus satisfied, he turns away.