FicWad

-I-I-I-

Simon sighed and turned his back on the crew members loading up the mule. "Now, River, you stay behind the others," he told his sister, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her too-big eyes. "If there's fighting, you drop to the floor, or run away. It's okay to leave them to die."

The seventeen-year-old gave him a bemused look before slipping on her goggles. "I'm the brains of the operation," she told him in all seriousness.

"We should hit town right during Sunday worship. Won't be any crowds," Zoë said as she, River, Jayne and the captain climbed into the mule.

Mal settled into his seat. "If Fanty and Mingo were right about the payroll, this could look to be a sunny day for us."

River abruptly turned and looked towards the cargo bay's entrance. Simon followed her gaze to see Harry standing there looking back at his adopted sister. The doctor couldn't help but be a bit startled; usually, getting Harry to leave the cockpit required leading him by the hand. He'd never seen the child leave voluntarily before, though he was perfectly capable of making his way back. Wash had once joked that if the Alliance hadn't messed him up so bad, he would've been going through flight school right now.

Feeling a new surge of determination, Simon turned and walked over to the mule. "Captain, I'll ask you one last time-"

Mal rolled his eyes. "Doctor, I'm taking your sister under my protection here. If anything happens to her, anything at all, I swear to you I will get very choked up. Honestly. There could be tears."

The only thing that stopped the normally peaceable Simon from planting his fist in the man's face was Zoë revving up the mule and lifting off. In moments they were out of sight.

Kaylee came up beside the fuming man. "Don't mind the captain none, Simon. I know he'll look out for her."

His lips thinned in disgust. "It's amazing. I bring River all the way out to the raggedy edge of the 'verse so she can hide from the Alliance by /robbing banks/."

The mechanic smiled cheerfully. "It's just a little trading station. They'll be back 'fore you can spit. Not that you spit..." she hastened to add.

Simon was silent for a long moment, still staring out the cargo bay doors even though the mule was long gone. Then he turned and walked over to the young boy still hovered in the background. "Came to see her off, did you?" he said quietly, stopping in front of him.

Harry nodded, looking up at him. "She was very excited about going," he said solemnly. "She loves /Serenity/, but she gets so very bored sometimes."

The doctor sighed. "I know." He ran his fingers through the boy's hair, a habit he'd noticed quite a few of the crew picking up as well. Then he smiled. "That was fairly lucid, Harry. You're doing much better."

But the child's attention had already strayed, back to the slowly closing doors. "Is the Ball over, then? But we never danced like the Professor said."

Simon sighed again as Kaylee approached. "We can't expect a miracle, I suppose."

"Me, I think the fact he's alive and can function a'tall is miracle enough," she replied. "He has been gettin' better, though."

Simon nodded, distracted as a thought occurred to him. "Has anyone made sure Harry's eaten?" The Alliance had only ever fed Harry through a tube, and once the doctor had gotten access to proper instruments to scan him with, he'd discovered the boy had been malnourished to begin with. By the time he was free on /Serenity/, Harry had forgotten how to eat properly, and even after nearly a year needed to be reminded when to eat, for he simply wouldn't on his own. It was one of the reasons Simon never even considered parting ways with the boy.

Kaylee frowned, a rare expression for the bubbly girl. "I don't know. With everything so hectic gettin' ready for the heist, I can't say as anyone remembered."

Simon held out his hand, and Harry automatically took it. "We'd better go get him something, then."

She grinned, following along behind them. "Flash-frozen veggies and pseudo-meat paste. Yum."

-I-I-I-

An hour or so later, Simon was waiting in the cockpit with Wash for any sign of the mule. Harry was back in his usual spot in the copilot's chair, for once not watching Wash fly, but rather swiveling his head back and forth as the doctor paced.

"She's seventeen! How could he even think about putting her in this kind of danger?" he ranted to his audience. "If she gets hurt, I'm swear I'm going to..."

Wash pushed himself up from his chair to stop Simon with a hand on the shoulder. "Easy, there. She'll be fine. This one's supposed to be a cakewalk, everyone out at church and such. What could happen?"

Simon scowled. "Plenty, mostly because of that 'supposed to be.' Since when have any of Captain Reynolds' plans gone the way he meant them to?"

The pilot thought for a long minute. "Um. The hospital job?"

"You mean the one I planned?"

"Oh, right." Wash shrugged helplessly. "Well, River's got my wife looking out for her, at least. Zoë won't let anything happen to her."

Simon closed his eyes, reaching for the calm and control he'd had trained into him since birth, and that had slowly been slipping away ever since they'd come out to the Rim. Wash kept that comforting hand on his shoulder as he composed himself. "I know she'll do her best, but-"

The sudden whine of Serenity's engines interrupted him, and they both spun to see Harry leaning out over the console, his finger on the guilty button. "Harry!" Simon shouted, dismayed. "What do you think you're doing?"

"The Death Eaters are coming," Harry told them, his eyes wide and afraid, such an abnormality for the normally expressionless boy that for a moment they didn't move.

Wash reached for the console to shut down the engines as Kaylee's startled voice came over the intercom, wanting to know what was gorram happening. The boy's hand caught his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip before his hand was halfway there. "No!"

Simon stepped forward. "Harry, you know you're not supposed to play with the controls. Now, let Wash stop the engines-"

Harry shook his head violently. "No! She's afraid, because the Death Eaters are coming. She wants us."

"Damn, he's strong. What happened to the Harry who came on board, the one who couldn't even walk on his own?" Wash asked, trying to free his wrist.

Simon bit his lip. With Harry this deep in his delusion... They needed to try another approach, unless they wanted to try to physically subdue him, and that might hurt the boy. "Harry," he said soothingly. "It's all right. The Death Eaters went somewhere else. We're fine."

"Just what are Death Eaters, anyway?"

Harry blinked at his prisoner. "They eat death," he said matter-of-factly, and the unspoken 'no duh' tacked onto the end of that was so loud Wash winced.

"Right, should've guessed that..."

But the boy was suddenly thoughtful, tilting his head to the side as though he were listening to something they couldn't hear. "No," he said slowly, gradually relaxing his grip. The pilot freed his hand with a relieved sound. "They don't eat death."

Simon relaxed a bit, now that it seemed Harry was coming back to himself. "They don't?"

Harry shook his head, curling into himself in the seat. He wrapped his arms around his legs, shivering. "They eat you before you're dead," he murmured, his voice disgusted.

The two men blinked at each other. "Harry," the doctor began, stepping towards him.

The radio crackled.

"Wash, get the gorram ship movin'! We got Reavers!"

-I-I-I-

"Wash, baby, can you hear me?" Zoë asked, her voice made tinny by the speakers.

Wash punched a button with one hand, the other guiding the ship off the ground. "We're in the air, baby. You got someone behind you?"

"That was fast. And there's a Reaver skiff on our behinds."

The pilot's expression could only be described as half grin, half pained grimace. "Yeah, well, Harry decided to warm up the engines for us a couple of minutes ago."

The seconds of silence over the air spoke volume. "That's... strange," she finally said.

"Tell me about it... Good thing, too, or I'd be a lot more worried right now."

"You should still be worrying. We're not gonna reach you in time."

Wash patted the console reassuringly, though in truth it had a greater effect on himself than on anyone else. "Just keep moving, honey. We're coming to you."

Simon stood behind Harry, one hand resting on his shoulder. The boy was quiet again, though the alertness in his eyes hadn't quite faded back to his usual incoherency. "River," the man murmured, paler than usual. "God, I hope she's all right..."

"She isn't," Harry told him gravely. Simon looked at him, horror in his eyes. After the way the child had somehow known about the Reavers, he wouldn't put it past him to know how his sister was doing. "She swallowed a bug."

The doctor stared at him for a long minute, then sighed, shaking his head to get rid of the fanciful thoughts. Starting the engines had only been a fluke, a spark of childlike curiosity. Harry wasn't going to just magically get better.

Serenity flew on, passing low over scrub and craggy bluffs. "Get some distance on 'em," Wash said into the receiver as they came over an area of smoother ground that stretched into the horizon. "You come to the flats, I want you to swing 'round. Gonna try a barn swallow. Simon, open her up," he told the doctor, who nodded and hastened out the door.

"A barn swallow isn't all that complicated," Wash told his silent audience, anxiety loosening his tongue. "Really, it isn't, you just need a couple of decent pilots. My baby's just going to turn 'round the other way and hit the gas while we come up behind her. Scoop her right on up. No trouble to it at all."

Apparently the boy's unusual spate of talkativeness had all been used up, though, because he just looked back at the pilot with big green eyes. Wash sighed. "Right."

It wasn't long before the mule's tracker was bleeping on the radar, and he triggered the radio again. "Okay, baby, we've talked this through."

"Talkin' ain't doin'."

Wash grimaced. Through the thick windshield they could see the mule and the trail of dust it left, as well as the larger skimmer a bit farther away. As they watched, the mule abruptly spun to head in the other direction, and Wash lined up Serenity with the mule's stern. They were almost there...

"Don't slow down!" he yelled. Then the mule had been scooped up into the cargo bay, and the ship was rising.

Though, not rising quite quickly enough, as their keel scraped the top of the Reaver ship with a tooth-aching screech. Wash heard a noise to the side, and looked over to see the copilot's chair empty.

-I-I-I-

The cargo bay looked like a disaster area. The mule hadn't landed properly, leaving deep scrapes on the deck plates, and wreckage from the Reaver ship littered the floor. Mal groaned as he picked himself up off the deck. Jayne had been thrown clear of the mule as well, but Zoë and River were still inside.

There was a flash of movement that resolved itself into the Doc, running over to check on his sister. "River?"

The girl looked at him, an unhappy pout on her lips. "I swallowed a bug."

For some reason an odd look passed over the Doc's face, before it was as blank as ever. Kaylee came running into the bay, then. "Are you okay?" she asked Simon breathlessly.

"Is he okay?" Mal grumbled. Shit, the kid hadn't even been in any danger, not like the rest of them!

There was another flash of movement that the captain caught from the corner of his eye, coming from a direction there shouldn't have been anything moving. His head snapped around to see a bloody, disfigured body charging towards him with its point-filed teeth bared. Mal's gun was in his hand without conscious thought, and along with Jayne and Zoë, he unloaded as many bullets into the Reaver as he could.

Reavers took some killing. This one took eight, ten, twelve shots and just kept coming. Finally, after the fifteenth round had punched a hole through it, the creature fell to the deck, unmoving.

No one even twitched for a long minute after the Reaver was killed, until finally the bzzt of the intercom broke the stunned silence. "We all here? What's going on? Hello?"

Zoë stepped on over to the pickup to reply. "No casualties. Anybody following?"

"Nice flying, baby, and that's a negative. Clean getaway; out of atmo in six minutes."

Mal slipped his pistol back into its holster and walked over to join the first mate. "Set course for Beaumonde," he ordered, then turned to Zoë. "First thing, I want this bod-"

The sound of a footstep made him turn, just in time to meet Simon's fist with his jaw.

"You want a bullet?" the captain spat in Chinese, picking himself up off the floor for a second time. "You want a bullet right in the /throat/?"

Simon glared at him. "You stupid, selfish son of a whore!"

Mal felt anger run through him, leaving him alternately hot and cold. "I'm a hair's breadth from riddling you with holes, Doctor," he hissed.

The Doc didn't get the message that he was seriously starting to tick Mal off. "'One simple job,'" he mocked, quoting the captain. "'She'll be fine!'"

"She is fine! Except for bein' still crazy, she's the picture of health." Simon looked like he was about to try to slug him again, but Zoë interceded.

"Wasn't for River, we'd probably be left there," she said quietly. "She felt 'em coming."

Simon's jaw clenched. "Never again. You understand me?"

Mal's eyes narrowed, and he took a step closer to the other man. "Seems I remember a talk about you giving orders on my boat."

"Well, sleep easy, 'cause we're off your boat! Just as soon as River gets her share of the bounty." Mal took a closer look at the kid. He'd seen the Doc irritated, annoyed, and even aggravated before, usually by himself, but he'd never before seen the man truly angry like he was now.

Standing as witness to their argument, Kaylee looked dismayed. "Well, let's not do anything hasty," she said quickly.

But the idea was growing on Mal. "No, shiny. I'm sick'a carrying tourists anyhow. We'll be on Beaumonde in ten hours' time, you can pick up your earnings and be on your merry. Meantime, you do your job," he said, gesturing towards Jayne, who was almost cheerfully ignoring the pain the Reaver harpoon through his leg had caused. "Patch up my crew."

"He didn't lie down."

Everyone looked towards River at the sound of her voice. She was staring at the downed Reaver, her face sad, and Mal blinked when he realized she was holding Harry in front of her, her arms wrapped around his waist and clenched at his stomach.

Well, crap. He'd forgotten Harry would be going with the Doc and his sister... Mal ruthlessly suppressed the dismay that threatened to well up. Yeah, he'd miss the kid, but keeping him just wasn't worth having the other two on board.

Harry wrapped his hand around River's, but for the life of him Mal couldn't tell just which of them was comforting the other. The boy shook his head and answered her.

"They never lie down."