Over The Hills and Far Away - Ch 18
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Set after OIS. Much to Inara’s chagrin, Mal accepts a job offer that takes Serenity far away from New Melbourne and to an unremarkable moon called Three Hills... This bomb has gone off! Is Inara okay? Is Mal?
CATEGORY: FICTION TIMES READ: 3492 RATING: 9.0 (G) SERIES: FIREFLY
a/n: not betaed, so sorry for the errors
Ch 18
Zoe slowed the mule as she approached town square. It was not a pretty sight.
Not that she’d been expecting one. The tell-tail sound of an explosion of ripped through the night when she was not half-way to town. She was too late. Mal and Inara… if they weren’t dead, they’d been wishing they were dead. Mal…
Smoke was billowing up, covering the orange-blue sunset sky with malicious black clouds. It was a familiar sight for Zoe. She’d seen dozens of buildings fall, maybe hundreds, during the time of war. What she had never quite seen before were a hundred or so ladies and gentlemen dressed in formalwear, crying and screaming, standing around like frightened sheep in the aftermath. They’d gotten out okay. Somehow, they had gotten out okay. Mal was all right.
Zoe jumped out of the mule almost before she had it turned off. “Sir!” she shouted as she approached the crowd. “Malcolm Reynolds! Sir!”
The crowd was a battlefield, a perverted battlefield made not of soldiers but of frightened wives clinging to their husbands, clinging to their friends, all bunched up. Zoe fought her way inside of it. “Mal!” she shouted, though the named seemed strange falling from her lips. “Sir! Mal! Malcolm Reynolds!”
“He’s not here,” someone whispered.
Zoe turned around. At first Zoe didn’t recognize the woman before her. Tear strikes were unbecoming on the majestic face of Senator Woo. “Where is he,” Zoe demanded.
“He, he…”
Zoe took a harsh step toward to trembling woman. “Where is he?”
“He…” she paused, more tears falling from her cheeks. “He’s in the factory. Kentdale took him.”
Zoe didn’t react. She didn’t have time.
“And Inara? Is she with them?”
“I…I don’t know,” Woo managed. “She isn’t with him, but she… she isn’t here. I… I was one of the last ones out of the building but I… I didn’t see her leave.”
Zoe turned around without another word. She pushed her way out of the crowd, fishing for the com link in her pocket. “Wash?” she sa
You can't take the sky from me
I really loved seeing the crass, terrifying reality of the bomb explosions creating such a contrast to the earlier childish mischief, and how it affected Kaylee and became even clearer in Mal's conversation with Kentdale. I believe Mal's heartbreak there, because... he fucked up. ven if not half of it is his fault, he was part of this, in his arrogance and resentment.
In a completely different way, the conversation between Inara and Abaddon is just as effective. You're putting so many currents into her that make sense and enrich her below the surface without messing with any of the established characterization and that's a SKILL. :D It's a real wringer, reading her say goodbye (and not) to her love, and the sobriety in her dream self, that calm, draining acceptance of letting go of some dreams and some innocence. Within all the politics of it.
This is one hell of a series.
Definitely teared up over Inara's dreams about Abbadon and Mal's heavy guilt over his part in so many deaths. You really do have a skill for fleshing out these characters without having to tap dance around established bits and bobs of information;D
BEB
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