(Written in May 2003. Inspired by the series "Sharpe," FF series canon aired and unaired, as well as the script for "Dead or Alive." Certain elements concerning Mal's past tie in to some of my other stories.)

No archiving, please.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. No infringement is intended on the rights of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, or 20th Century Fox TV.

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"Where I Cannot Stand" Part 1 by HawkMoth

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It didn't seem right that a man would prefer nightmares to dreams. Or that most nightmares could be banished and made insignificant by a few well-chosen curses and sheer willpower; while some dreams stayed etched in your memory far too long after they were over.

A nightmare was just a dream gone wrong. Dreams that made you feel worse than a nightmare did were the real horrors.

If anyone had ever asked Malcolm Reynolds what part of the war he wished he could forget, his answer would have surprised them.

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What the Independents had going for them, what the Alliance never understood, was that the very thing they were fighting for--independence, freedom--bound them closer together than any concept of "unification." Ties of blood and kinship seemed fragile compared to the loyalties that made the browncoat army like a family.

A huge disparate family, seeming completely dysfunctional at times, but always managing somehow to see things right and get the job done. The job was war, and as the war waged on, those who were lost to the cause had to be replaced.

His name was Davey Daniels but from the first day he joined the platoon he was Davey-boy. For as young as some of them were, he was younger by far, a boy three years shy of twenty.

Age didn't matter for much in this army. There were plenty of soldiers in their thirties, just as many far older--old enough to be Davey-boy's father or mother, older still. Malcolm Reynolds' first captain had been a woman old enough to be his grandmother.

Mal was alrea