Capacity Chapter 14

Joly

Rated: PG-13

Summary: Picking up where I left off. 13 and 14 should have been together, but the muse deserted me, or I couldn’t hear her. Just about to set foot on Markham and face the bad. One way or the other.

Archive: Sure. Archive all my stuff. I just like a link to where it goes so I can look at it.

Disclaimer: Just a work of fancy based on Mr. Whedon’s lovely show. I get no money from this, just the satisfaction of finally getting it done.

Note: I hope I wasn’t gone too long. Real-life makes writing so difficult.

~~~~~

His internal clock woke Mal an hour before landfall. He laid on Ruby’s bed, face to face with her, arms laid on each other, her leg across his. He could hear her breathing, deep and slow, felt her heartbeat steady as a metronome.

He wanted to bury his face in her neck and take her in…

But time didn’t allow. He disengaged as stealthily as possible and headed for the cargo bay. There was Harken to deal with and then…

Then he had to pay the devil his due.

~~

At about the same time, River crept into Xiaofan’s room. Jayne was sitting upright in a chair, asleep.

The young woman moved delicately by the merc and curled herself into a ball at the end of Xiaofan’s bed. There she sat for some minutes, thinking, deliberating, deciding.

“We are connected,” she whispered, and Xiao stirred ever so slightly.

River was careful to keep her voice low, this was the only true sleep the woman had gotten since the beginning of her ordeal.

“Something in me responds to you…” she went on. “Something in me focuses when you’re here. When you were gone…” she paused, “it was bad. I was bad.

“We might never be best friends. We might not be more than shipmates and cohorts… But having you here makes me better, and I hope one day we find out why.

“I was thinking…” Here the young woman smiled ruefully. “Thinking in a linear manner… It was lovely…”

She shook herself from her reverie.

“I was thinking about your inc