BLUE SUN ROOM FAN FICTION - DRAMA

AWINDSOR

Barriers
Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Another PC fic, 6 months before Tough, definitely a prequel. Context hard to understand without Tough, but still readable. Inara and Serra on Sihnon.


CATEGORY: FICTION    TIMES READ: 1745    RATING: 9    SERIES: FIREFLY

Title: Barriers

Rating: PG-13

Characters: Serra, Inara, Mal. Brief appearances by Abe, the rest of the crew, and the Sihnon Serras.

Pairings: Canon pairings apply, but I've run back to heavy M/I

Summary: Another PC fic, 6 months before Tough, definitely a prequel. Context hard to understand without Tough, but still readable.

Disclaimer: Most of the characters (sans PCs and Ally) aren't mine, but the situation is.

For newbies: Brother, Shadow, Mei-Mei, Mischief, Pirate Children, Mistletoe, Hell-Raising, Barriers,Tough, Echo (?)

Author's Note: I've gone back to the Reynolds family for this one, which had to be done as a prequel to Tough. It's mostly Serra and Inara, with Mal thrown in. It's not... fluffy. Nor very pretty.

Kacey Washburn, 26

Lolly Tam, 25

Abe Reynolds, 23.5

Serra Reynolds, 18.5

Alistair Caramia

Part 1

She’s drowned out the droning prison bureaucrat, holding fast to her brother’s arm, probably leaving bruises. She’s too lost in the horror to care, though age old training keeps her revulsion off her face until… Until, until, until. Until they round the corner and see her, huddled next to a cot, knees drawn up to her chest. Eyes vacant. That hollow look Inara’s only ever seen in Mal’s eyes, briefly, before. A strangled sob leaves Inara’s chest. Fahmy’s voice gets angry, booming, like their father’s when the office would call during dinner with a break in a case, when he would hold meetings in his home office with opposing counsel. His lawyer voice. Serra’s obviously been poorly treated: mal-nourished, sleep-deprived, and filthy, bruises sprinkled across her arms, bare despite the constant chill of the steel penitentiary. “You hold this innocent child...” Fahmy bellows. “She’s of age, sir,” the bored manager interrupts to correct, inciting further shouting from Fahmy. “No trial in sight… thwarting all legal attempts to…” Her brother’s voice slides in and out of focus, Inara’s eyes remaining trained on her daughter through the two-way mirror. There are other women in the cell, though they give Serra wide girth. “There have been some problems… fellow inmates…” A brawler, her little one. Serra’s eyes haven’t left the ground in front of her: cold hard concrete, wretchedly filthy with the dirt and dust of twenty women, one toilet, no regular showers. “Open the door,” Inara finally says, commanding with every ounce left of her Madrassa education. By the time Fahmy and the force of the Great City of Sihnon’s District Attorney’s office can echo the order, the assistant warden has entered the appropriate code (his DNA) and has had the accompanying guards stand inside the door. “Counselor Serra,” he bows to Fahmy, gesturing for them to enter. Fahmy gently pulls his younger sister into the musty cell, ignoring the staring and catcalling from the rest of the population. Inara hesitates in the doorway when she sees that Serra hasn’t even looked up to see the source of the noise. “Oh, Mei-Mei,” she whispers, fingers digging into Fahmy’s forearm. She releases him, falling to her knees beside her baby girl, pulling her close and feeling Serra’s muscles stiffen against the intrusion. “Serra, baby, it’s me. It’s Mama,” she says, desperate to get through the mental barriers Serra’s mind has erected. Brown meets brown and the faintest hint of light sparks back into Serra’s eyes. She relaxes in Inara’s arms, hands grasping at her mama’s waist as she buries her head in her chest. “Mama.” It’s a breath, a sigh. She doesn’t cry. //Take me away from this. Tell me it was a dream.// Inara sobs, broken by her broken little girl, the vivacious, vibrant child who danced around the cargo bay and challenged her brother to fencing bouts. She buries her face in Serra’s hair, escaping from a messy braid. It smells like the room: sweat and anger and emptiness. It probably hasn’t been washed in a weeks, at least. But underneath, barely detectable, is the smell of her daughter, the smell she was born with, the one every mother memorizes. “We should go,” Fahmy finally says, voice as gentle as the hand on Inara’s shoulder. “It’s over.” He repeats. “It’s over. We can go home.” Except they can’t.

***

He won’t enter the shuttle. Her scent lingers there, and he refuses to subject himself to that. Instead, after everyone’s asleep, he spends infinite hours just staring at the door of their home, the one they’ve shared for almost twenty five years, seated on the cold, unforgiving catwalk. The same catwalk where Serra used to run against his instructions, her mama often chasing and catching her. Abe still waves once a week, but he’s obviously taken his mother’s side. Mal expected no less. Even Mal’s taken Inara’s side; he is so absolutely in the wrong. And now he’s lost her. He stomps around the ship, barking orders, swiping Jayne’s booze to try to chase away the pain that never leaves. His chest constantly aches, but Simon, eyes somewhere between pity and contempt, says that nothing is wrong with him. Physically, he always adds. And though he doesn’t say it out loud, inside he’s probably saying, “Mentally, you’re a humped up hun dan.” Again, Mal doesn’t disagree. Lolly looks at him like he’s a monster. Kaylee doesn't look at him. Kacey, recently returned from a stint on Monty’s ship to find his aunt gone, looks at Mal like he wants to kill him. The captain’s sure that, without the influence the first mate wields over her son, there would be a mutiny on this ship. Everything on this ship reminds him of Inara. The stairs in the cockpit where he proposed, the chair in the cockpit where they spent many sleepless nights curled together in the pilot’s chair, watching the infinite stars. The kitchen, the catwalk, the passenger dorms she helped redecorate, the engine room. Every nook and cranny where they stole kisses away from the crew, and later away from their beautiful but attention-stealing children. The cargo hold where she once nearly bled to death after a firefight, nearly left him to raise a three- and eight-year-old on his own. The shuttle. Everything on this ship reminds him of Serra. The door to her and Lolly’s room, decorated with their names from when they were little, the white board nailed to the bulkhead where the children all left coded messages for each other. The couches outside the infirmary, where she used to curl up in his lap, ear pressed against his heart, and drift off to sleep. The catwalks she scraped her hands and knees on countless times, nearly tumbled from even more often. The kitchen, the cockpit, the infirmary she frequented. The cargo hold where she spent hours as a teenager practicing her fencing form, challenging whoever she could find to a bout, where she worked so hard to perfect this art. The shuttle.

***

Food, a shower, and eighteen hours of sleep brings more of Serra back. Aided by Umm Hafi and Sue Ling, Inara bathes and feeds Serra before tucking her into the crisp, cool, clean sheets of her bed in the Serra house. It’s Umm Hafi who discovers the needle marks in the bath. Sue Ling quickly assures Inara that they’re new. “Didn’t take ‘em long to figure out how to get to me,” Serra says over a gigantic breakfast after she wakes. The color’s returning to her cheeks, parts of life sparking in her eyes. She’s trying painfully hard to bring her characteristic nonchalance back to the forefront, emphasizing the traces of Rim in her accent. Inara doesn’t ask who stuck her and with what. She’s not sure she wants to know. Dr. George Patel, a family friend, has already been in to see her, has run tests on blood taken while Serra was asleep. She’s clean. Undernourished, but miraculously clean. She asks after her brother (on his way), but not her father. She seems to know, or at least guess, what Inara’s solitary presence here must mean. She stays off the issue. Inara lets her for now. “How’s Ari?” Inara asks now that Serra is physically back up to snuff. She’s refused all psychological help: of course she has, she’s her father’s daughter. They’re walking in the park, sun warm on their faces. Serra only shudders slightly when they pass Feds. Less every time. So strong, her baby girl. Too, too strong. “He was fine when I saw him.” She stops, hand on her mother’s arm. “You haven’t… told him, have you?” “No,” Inara answers honestly. “The only one outside of the Serra family who knows is George.” “Good,” Serra breathes, resuming their walk. “No one else can know. Please. Promise me, Mama.” At this moment, she could ask for the Throne of Londinium, shiny-hat and all, and Inara would deliver. “If that’s what you want, Mei-Mei.” Serra nods. “Bubba shouldn’t come,” she continues, “I’m fine, and he has class.” “He misses you. And you know Abe… Won’t believe you’re okay until he sees for himself.” Serra smiles, softly but genuinely. The first real one Inara’s seen in months. They walk on in silence for a while. “Mama,” she finally says, leaning against a boulder by the pond. “Where’s Daddy?” Inara smiles. “Wherever Serenity is.” “You left him.” Statement. Fact. “Yes.” “Did he… hurt you?” An absurd question six months ago, but now, after what she’s seen… Serra’s probably sure that anything is possible. “He didn’t touch me,” Inara assures her. Which is not a no, but answers the question Serra really asked. “Mama… I need to… touch the Black.” Inara knows it really is a necessity, that going land-crazy is very real possibility for Serra and probably made her prison stay that less bearable. Any progress made will be lost if she’s not free soon. “Soon, Mei-Mei, soon.”

***

“Gorramnit, Wash! What the hell was that?” “That, Captain, was me,” is River’s icy response as Mal stomps onto the bridge. “And also, an unexpected asteroid field I’ve now worked around.” “Any further complaints, Captain?” Wash asks from the copilot’s seat, where he’s observing River. “Or did you have a bottle that needs getting back to?” “Bi zui.” Mal turns to leave, headed back for… what? What the guay needed doing again? Right. The books. Which are in the shuttle. He really doesn’t want to take care of the books.

***

That night, Serra has a nightmare, waking up gasping for breath, with tears running down her cheeks. It’s the first and only time she cries over this. They share a bed. Serra shouldn’t sleep alone; Inara can’t. Inara immediately gathers her sobbing little girl into her arms. Serra rests her head on Inara’s shoulder and snuggles close, her hot tears soaking through her mother’s nightgown. Inara’s tears are silent and less violent than Serra’s, but they drip from her face into her baby’s messy curls. Both fall back to sleep. Inara’s sleep is restless, but Serra sleeps dreamlessly for the rest of the night in her mama’s arms.

***

Another sleepless night, this one spent at the kitchen table, spinning an empty bottle of Kaylee’s engine brew, the one he finished off an hour previous. The taste only serves to remind him of how it tasted on Inara’s lips. “Okay. I’m done,” a voice rouses him from his morose and drunken remembering. The newcomer snatches the bottle off of the table. “You humped up your relationship? Great, amazing. That’s on you. But you’ve still got a boat to run, Captain, and I refuse to let you take us down with you.” “Wash?” Mal asks, incredulous, as his senior pilot seats himself across the table. “You saved me from Niska twenty-five years ago; I’m saving you from yourself. Sitting around here, drinking yourself into oblivion isn’t going to get Inara or Serra back here. In fact, it makes them less likely to come back. And if you lose them forever…” “I already have,” Mal interrupts. “If you lose them forever,” Wash reiterates, ignoring Mal. “Then you lose Abram, too, because he will always take their side. And then you’re right back to where you were before Serenity, a no one, no where, with nothing.” “They’re not coming back, Wash. I stepped over the line one too many times, and I’ve lost ‘Nara for good. An’ if she’s not coming back, Serra’s not comin’ back. ‘Less it’s to kill me for hurting her mama.” “We’re a family, Mal, all of us. We help each other out, pick each other up. And right now, I’m picking you up off your pi gu and telling you to take care of this ship. That’s your job, Captain. If you continue to make yourself miserable, you make this home miserable, and if you make this home miserable, you’re getting off at the next world.” “Are you threatenin’ mutiny, Wash?” “Just a warning, Captain.” The pilot rises and leaves the galley.

***

Serra is herself in the morning, slow to wake, but as bright and charming and swaggering as she once was, what seems forever ago. It’s forced, but only Inara can see that. She tells stories about Noor with Sue Ling, laughing and digging into her breakfast hungrily. Inara wants very much to believe it’s real, but she knows Serra too well. “There’s a visitor,” the butler, Pirro, says, coming into the dining room as Fahmy, Jiang Li, Sue Ling, Serra, and Inara take their breakfast. “Business this early in the morning?” Jiang Li asks her husband, looking confused. “No, ma’am,” a familiar voice comes from the hallway, entering the dining room. “Bubba!” Serra exclaims, sounding momentarily like she was a little girl again. She leaps from her chair and practically tackles him to the ground. Abe laughs and hold her tight, obviously relieved to find her in one piece. “Mei-Mei,” he murmurs into her shoulder. He holds onto her for a few more moments, holding on for all he’s worth. Then he pushes her away by the shoulders, looking her up and down. “I’m fine,” she admonishes, swatting his arm. “Come. Eat.” She pulls him to the table as Pirro brings out another chair and place setting. Abe waves the plates off. “Just a cup of tea, please, Pirro.” His mama rises to greet him, pulling him close. “It’s okay, Mama,” he whispers in her ear, sensing her pain and anger and worry. “It’ll be okay.” He kisses her cheek and releases him. Abe then greets his aunt, cousin, and uncle, sitting down as Umm Hafi pushes into dining room. “Abram Reynolds. I certainly hope the kitchen was your next stop.” “Of course, Umm Hafi,” Abe smiles, a beautiful grin much like his mother’s. “You just beat me to it.” She hugs him close, happy to have him here. If anyone can help Serra heal, it’s her beloved big brother. “Are you certain I can’t feed you, Abe? You’ve been traveling; you must be starving.” “No, really, Umm Hafi. I’m fine. Thank you.” “Eila let you come without her?” Serra smiles, referring to Abe’s girlfriend, whom she met when she was visiting Abe at the beginning of this whole mess. “She should have come. I would love to meet her,” Inara teases. “Oh no,” Abe smiles. “She still needs a year to recover from Serra’s visit before she meets the rest of you.

TBC

COMMENTS

Wednesday, December 27, 2006 3:19 PM

GIRLFAN


Your pirate children stories are always a delight.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006 5:47 PM

TAMSIBLING


Aw, this is great! I'm so glad you're explaining what in the diyu happened to Serra when she was on Sihnon and also just how Mal so royally humped his family.

Really cool!

Wednesday, December 27, 2006 9:40 PM

AMDOBELL


Poor Serra, so happy that she is back with the family on Sihnon but so sad that Inara and Mal are not together. I absolutely loved Wash deciding enough was enough and it was time to save Mal from himself. Thank goodness, otherwise I can't see any happy outcome in either his or Inara's future. Great story as always! Ali D :~)
You can't take the sky from me

Thursday, December 28, 2006 9:27 PM

BLUEEYEDBRIGADIER


It's strange...but the part I loved the most about this chapter in the Pirate Children Saga? Wash. Especially his seemingly OOC (but really not) behaviour wtih Mal. We really missed out on seeing Alan get his moment where he's the one standing strong when Mal and Zoe and maybe even Jayne are in pieces, forcing him to dig deep down and find the steel core he hides under the fluffy coverings:D

BEB

Friday, December 29, 2006 9:16 PM

KAYNARA


"Even Mal’s taken Inara’s side; he is so absolutely in the wrong."

wow. powerful words, but so very true, i think. he would realize he's wrong while simultaneously having no idea how to make it right.

sigh, i loved this chapter. especially how little scenes just seemed to flow, one into the next. loved inara's quiet bravery too. just...beautiful as usual.

Sunday, December 31, 2006 10:40 AM

ELOISA


*Excellent* in every respect, particularly the details - events and people and places and everything. Thank you for this!


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