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firefly_fanfic2006-01-04 07:29 am
mgsmurf.livejournal.com) wrote in firefly_fanfic2006-01-04 07:29 am
Fic: Sometimes Sorry is too Small a Word 2/3
Title:Sometimes Sorry is too Small a Word
Author: smurf
Summary: Dealing with grief and the horrors it brings, the wrongs of his past, almost does Simon in.
Rating: R (for violence and adult situations)
Characters: Simon, Kaylee, Inara, Mal, Jayne, Zoë and OC
Pairing: Simon/Kaylee, Jayne/Kaylee, Simon/Inara, Simon/Mal (slightly) (het and slight slash)
Warning: Dark versions of Simon, Kaylee and Simon/Kaylee
Spoilers/Timeline: BDM, set mostly years after the movie
Disclaimer: Not mine (except the little bit of Odin), I just like to take them out dancing.
Words: 6,600 total
Archive: Please don't
Author's Note: Again, this is dark, explosive Simon/Kaylee. Timeline does jump around a bit, and hopefully things are prefaced enough to make sense. Part 1
Simon knew all the evil the Alliance had done to River, but he wasn't sure he'd faced it outright until that very moment. There was gunfire, there was always gunfire, so much so he'd almost gotten used to it, could use a gun himself, had even killed, and more than Reavers. But River... she was a weapon unto herself, more deadly than all Jayne's guns combined.
She moved through the fight unarmed, the grace of a ballerina, and the strength of a gymnast. Pure, deadly beauty -- Simon could see why Mal, Jayne, even Zoë thought of her destruction as so. Were there a one to come out of his without a scrape, it would be River. He'd always figured it was the 'reading' allowing her almost precognition of actions. But whatever the means, it was in its way a beautiful act.
River turned to him, neck angled back oddly while her body fought on, and smiled, very much as she had with joy as his baby sister when a child, and yet just as much a monster without a bit of River left. He blinked it away, and tried to concentrate on playing his own role in the gunfire and bloodshed.
It wasn't until two days later, sitting down across from River at dinner that the thoughts finally settled in. She looked up from her food with that same grin, part his mei mei and part monster. It sent a shiver through him he couldn't suppress. It wasn't that he didn't already have the facts, had them all laid out years previous. But back then River was more his sister, less the weapon. Now, with Mal relying on her more and more, she'd gotten a taste of the weapon, and what was his mei mei had sunk deeper to the bottom.
It ripped something inside him, yet he stared back at River blankly, not that it mattered as she knew every thought he had. He loved her; she was the most precious thing he possessed. But, some part of him, larger than he'd wish to admit, hated the deadly weapon who sat across from him.
#
Kaylee rested on the exam table, eye fluttering closed, her exhaustion finally letting her sleep. The smile on her face was the brightest Simon had ever seen, and Kaylee's smiles could often match the light of the sun.
The small bundle in Simon's arms wiggled, bringing his eyes down to it. His son drifted awake, gray-blue eyes visibly focusing on Simon. For the past six hours he'd been more doctor than husband and soon-to-be father. The baby had come breach. Turning it about in utero had seemed the better option; the infirmary wasn't sterile enough to risk infection from a cesarean. Either way their means of pain relief were lacking, especially with the limitation of drugs that could pass placentally to the baby. Inara and Zoë acting as stand-in midwives had been rather calm through the whole ordeal, while Simon'd mentally flogged himself for not doing more to foretell this, for not having a greater knowledge of obstetrics. Kaylee couldn't die in childbirth, and not just because Mal would kill him over having been the cause.
But looking in that fresh little face all the tension of the past day ebbed away. Simon stumbled back into a chair, feeling as blissful as Kaylee looked, although without the use of medication on his part. The baby felt almost weightless wrapped in his arms. 'Such a little thing to turn the world upside down,' had been River's first words over her nephew. And Simon reasoned he couldn't weight much more than six pounds. The others had left them be, likely to get some sleep, and Simon was eternally grateful.
Pink, pointed head, Kaylee's soft chin and Simon's thin nose, but somehow he seemed the shiniest thing Simon had ever seen in the 'verse. He was sure he'd never felt this much love for another being, it out paced even his love for River by such a measure Simon wasn't sure if the chair he sat upon would hold the gravity of the situation. His son, warm and soft and alive in his arms, as if until this moment the whole thing had been abstract.
"Welcome to the 'verse Odin Tam," Simon spoke, knowing the words would mean nothing to the newborn infant, feeling they still needed said. "Not an all together and peaceful place at the moment. Captain and the rest have their way it'll only get worse, for a time. Not sure I'll be any good at this parenting thing, why should I." Funny how his own father and mother seemed top of his emotions, and Simon didn't want to think on who'd betrayed who in the matter just bury them back in the far reaches of his brain.
Kaylee sighed, and Simon looked up at her. He could already feel a distance growing between them. He couldn't be the man she wanted, needed, and he reasoned it wouldn't be much more time before he stopped trying. A child would never mend that back up.
Simon teased open one of Odin's balled hands with a fingertip, amazed at the perfectness of it, down to the tiny, tiny joints and fingernails. "I'll try to do the best by you, not sure I'm capable of otherwise." The very weight and fullness of his heart seemed to make the words true. The 'verse had given him a perfect, healthy, baby boy, it seemed only correct to do everything in his power to keep the child in the state given.
"I'll stumble, nobody's perfect. Just don't forget I'm human, whatever the others may think." Odin's eyes fell closed, and he gave the lightest little breathy sigh before drifting back to sleep. Simon settled deeper into the chair, setting his legs to steady himself. He nestled Odin closer to him, thinking the child must be able to hear his steady heartbeat. He tightened his other arm to secure the sleeping baby while sleep pulled at him.
"Don't ever forget how much I love you, Odin," Simon whispered. 'His son, his perfect, little son,' echoed in his thoughts before sleep finally caught up to him.
#
"Daddy! Daddy!"
Simon peeked out of the infirmary to watch the little boy racing towards him. With a smile, Simon knelt to allow Odin to run into his open arms. "What er zi?"
"Look what I did?" Odin flung up a paper at Simon. He had that broad smile on his face that seemed to light his blue eyes and stream directly from his heart. Always made him look very much his mother.
Simon took the paper pushed up to his face and held it out, turned so Odin stood cradled in his other arm. There on the paper in black paint was a series of words in Chinese followed by English.
"Aunt River said out the words, and I wrote them, see?"
Simon pulled his eyes from the paper to beam down at his son. He wasn't yet four, and Simon was certain they hadn't taught the child all the words he'd written.
"I see," Simon said. "You did very good." He leaned in and kissed Odin's cheek, hugged him closer. He couldn't remember ever having been this close with his own father.
Kaylee entered the common room, perhaps in search of the little bundle of energy in Simon's arms. They both looked up at her, Simon resting his chin on Odin's soft brown hair.
"Mama, did you see?" Odin took the paper from Simon and waved it for Kaylee to see. Simon wasn't sure he ever saw Kaylee brighter than when she had that look of love for Odin on her face, and he ignored it that not a bit of affection was given to Simon himself.
Kaylee steadied the paper, shaking her head softly. "Sweetie, you already showed me. You done very good, my smart, little boy." She tickled his neck, making him cringe away deeper into Simon's arms.
"I can show the others?" He didn't wait for an answer while he nimbly escaped Simon's loose grasp and dashed for the door.
"Odin," Kaylee called out.
"Don't bother the captain," Simon added.
But only the patter of feet and distant calls to the others echoed back.
Simon stood up, brushing off his knees. Kaylee sighed and shook her head. "Sure to bother the cap'n now," she said.
Simon smiled, boy had a way with Mal that outdid even Kaylee and River combined, even if the older man played as if he didn't like the attention.
Kaylee turned and look up at him, standing just a pace away, but feeling like a great gapping chasm. "Just where'd he learn all that?"
"A young brain is fairly amazing at what it picks up." Which was exactly why it angered Simon when Jayne couldn't hold his tongue around Odin. "He likely saw it when we read to him, or just around."
Kaylee smiled, but Simon knew it was a lingering one for Odin. "And he is a Tam, ain't he?"
#
The tiny body lays on the exam table in the infirmary, chest cracked, coated in the same blood as runs up Simon's gloved hands and bare arms, his blood. There's nothing peaceful or calm about the stillness, and it shatters Simon's heart to pieces, feels as though the hollow of space has opened itself in his chest.
He hears Kaylee wailing in the distance, can imagine Inara and Zoë tearing her away from the scene. "Don't want to have that in your memories, mei mei," Zoë says backed with knowledge. Inara whispers things Simon can't make out. Over it all Kaylee cries again and again the name of their son, calling Simon everything under the stars for not saving him.
Simon looks up to see Mal across the table from him, eyes on Simon. He's not sure he's ever seen the captain so grave, harrowed, wonders if this is what he looked like the final moments of Serenity Valley.
"No reason for you to stay, Simon. I can deal with...." Mal gestures to the body. Simon can't stop his eyes from following.
"No." Simon shakes his head. "I won't let her see him like this." He pulls the cart he'd thrown away back toward him. The flesh is still warm as he sets about putting insides back in, closing up the body.
Mal's hand falls on his wrist. "Said to leave Simon. I can manage. I won't have you tend your dead son."
Simon shakes his head, pulls his hand away with enough force to make Mal step back. "He's mine to deal with." That empty space inside him grows and expands until he thinks it may rip him apart, leave him laying an open mass beside his xiai er zi.
When he raises his eyes to Mal, the other man has no words left on his lips, merely nods. Pulling up a chair, Mal sits, watches.
The quiet echoes as Simon makes his son as whole as possible, cleans his soft lukewarm flesh, washes his fine hair, closes his crystal blue eyes. A drop of blood dips on his shoes, and Simon follows the path of another joining it. Blood it seems is all he's ever cared about; his treatment of Kaylee has proved this. Simon feels a single tear crawl down his cheek, and wonders if it will be the last he gives the 'verse, for it has just taken the most important thing his life will ever contain.
Chinese Translations:
Er zi = son
Xiai er zi = beloved son
Part 3
Author: smurf
Summary: Dealing with grief and the horrors it brings, the wrongs of his past, almost does Simon in.
Rating: R (for violence and adult situations)
Characters: Simon, Kaylee, Inara, Mal, Jayne, Zoë and OC
Pairing: Simon/Kaylee, Jayne/Kaylee, Simon/Inara, Simon/Mal (slightly) (het and slight slash)
Warning: Dark versions of Simon, Kaylee and Simon/Kaylee
Spoilers/Timeline: BDM, set mostly years after the movie
Disclaimer: Not mine (except the little bit of Odin), I just like to take them out dancing.
Words: 6,600 total
Archive: Please don't
Author's Note: Again, this is dark, explosive Simon/Kaylee. Timeline does jump around a bit, and hopefully things are prefaced enough to make sense. Part 1
Simon knew all the evil the Alliance had done to River, but he wasn't sure he'd faced it outright until that very moment. There was gunfire, there was always gunfire, so much so he'd almost gotten used to it, could use a gun himself, had even killed, and more than Reavers. But River... she was a weapon unto herself, more deadly than all Jayne's guns combined.
She moved through the fight unarmed, the grace of a ballerina, and the strength of a gymnast. Pure, deadly beauty -- Simon could see why Mal, Jayne, even Zoë thought of her destruction as so. Were there a one to come out of his without a scrape, it would be River. He'd always figured it was the 'reading' allowing her almost precognition of actions. But whatever the means, it was in its way a beautiful act.
River turned to him, neck angled back oddly while her body fought on, and smiled, very much as she had with joy as his baby sister when a child, and yet just as much a monster without a bit of River left. He blinked it away, and tried to concentrate on playing his own role in the gunfire and bloodshed.
It wasn't until two days later, sitting down across from River at dinner that the thoughts finally settled in. She looked up from her food with that same grin, part his mei mei and part monster. It sent a shiver through him he couldn't suppress. It wasn't that he didn't already have the facts, had them all laid out years previous. But back then River was more his sister, less the weapon. Now, with Mal relying on her more and more, she'd gotten a taste of the weapon, and what was his mei mei had sunk deeper to the bottom.
It ripped something inside him, yet he stared back at River blankly, not that it mattered as she knew every thought he had. He loved her; she was the most precious thing he possessed. But, some part of him, larger than he'd wish to admit, hated the deadly weapon who sat across from him.
#
Kaylee rested on the exam table, eye fluttering closed, her exhaustion finally letting her sleep. The smile on her face was the brightest Simon had ever seen, and Kaylee's smiles could often match the light of the sun.
The small bundle in Simon's arms wiggled, bringing his eyes down to it. His son drifted awake, gray-blue eyes visibly focusing on Simon. For the past six hours he'd been more doctor than husband and soon-to-be father. The baby had come breach. Turning it about in utero had seemed the better option; the infirmary wasn't sterile enough to risk infection from a cesarean. Either way their means of pain relief were lacking, especially with the limitation of drugs that could pass placentally to the baby. Inara and Zoë acting as stand-in midwives had been rather calm through the whole ordeal, while Simon'd mentally flogged himself for not doing more to foretell this, for not having a greater knowledge of obstetrics. Kaylee couldn't die in childbirth, and not just because Mal would kill him over having been the cause.
But looking in that fresh little face all the tension of the past day ebbed away. Simon stumbled back into a chair, feeling as blissful as Kaylee looked, although without the use of medication on his part. The baby felt almost weightless wrapped in his arms. 'Such a little thing to turn the world upside down,' had been River's first words over her nephew. And Simon reasoned he couldn't weight much more than six pounds. The others had left them be, likely to get some sleep, and Simon was eternally grateful.
Pink, pointed head, Kaylee's soft chin and Simon's thin nose, but somehow he seemed the shiniest thing Simon had ever seen in the 'verse. He was sure he'd never felt this much love for another being, it out paced even his love for River by such a measure Simon wasn't sure if the chair he sat upon would hold the gravity of the situation. His son, warm and soft and alive in his arms, as if until this moment the whole thing had been abstract.
"Welcome to the 'verse Odin Tam," Simon spoke, knowing the words would mean nothing to the newborn infant, feeling they still needed said. "Not an all together and peaceful place at the moment. Captain and the rest have their way it'll only get worse, for a time. Not sure I'll be any good at this parenting thing, why should I." Funny how his own father and mother seemed top of his emotions, and Simon didn't want to think on who'd betrayed who in the matter just bury them back in the far reaches of his brain.
Kaylee sighed, and Simon looked up at her. He could already feel a distance growing between them. He couldn't be the man she wanted, needed, and he reasoned it wouldn't be much more time before he stopped trying. A child would never mend that back up.
Simon teased open one of Odin's balled hands with a fingertip, amazed at the perfectness of it, down to the tiny, tiny joints and fingernails. "I'll try to do the best by you, not sure I'm capable of otherwise." The very weight and fullness of his heart seemed to make the words true. The 'verse had given him a perfect, healthy, baby boy, it seemed only correct to do everything in his power to keep the child in the state given.
"I'll stumble, nobody's perfect. Just don't forget I'm human, whatever the others may think." Odin's eyes fell closed, and he gave the lightest little breathy sigh before drifting back to sleep. Simon settled deeper into the chair, setting his legs to steady himself. He nestled Odin closer to him, thinking the child must be able to hear his steady heartbeat. He tightened his other arm to secure the sleeping baby while sleep pulled at him.
"Don't ever forget how much I love you, Odin," Simon whispered. 'His son, his perfect, little son,' echoed in his thoughts before sleep finally caught up to him.
#
"Daddy! Daddy!"
Simon peeked out of the infirmary to watch the little boy racing towards him. With a smile, Simon knelt to allow Odin to run into his open arms. "What er zi?"
"Look what I did?" Odin flung up a paper at Simon. He had that broad smile on his face that seemed to light his blue eyes and stream directly from his heart. Always made him look very much his mother.
Simon took the paper pushed up to his face and held it out, turned so Odin stood cradled in his other arm. There on the paper in black paint was a series of words in Chinese followed by English.
"Aunt River said out the words, and I wrote them, see?"
Simon pulled his eyes from the paper to beam down at his son. He wasn't yet four, and Simon was certain they hadn't taught the child all the words he'd written.
"I see," Simon said. "You did very good." He leaned in and kissed Odin's cheek, hugged him closer. He couldn't remember ever having been this close with his own father.
Kaylee entered the common room, perhaps in search of the little bundle of energy in Simon's arms. They both looked up at her, Simon resting his chin on Odin's soft brown hair.
"Mama, did you see?" Odin took the paper from Simon and waved it for Kaylee to see. Simon wasn't sure he ever saw Kaylee brighter than when she had that look of love for Odin on her face, and he ignored it that not a bit of affection was given to Simon himself.
Kaylee steadied the paper, shaking her head softly. "Sweetie, you already showed me. You done very good, my smart, little boy." She tickled his neck, making him cringe away deeper into Simon's arms.
"I can show the others?" He didn't wait for an answer while he nimbly escaped Simon's loose grasp and dashed for the door.
"Odin," Kaylee called out.
"Don't bother the captain," Simon added.
But only the patter of feet and distant calls to the others echoed back.
Simon stood up, brushing off his knees. Kaylee sighed and shook her head. "Sure to bother the cap'n now," she said.
Simon smiled, boy had a way with Mal that outdid even Kaylee and River combined, even if the older man played as if he didn't like the attention.
Kaylee turned and look up at him, standing just a pace away, but feeling like a great gapping chasm. "Just where'd he learn all that?"
"A young brain is fairly amazing at what it picks up." Which was exactly why it angered Simon when Jayne couldn't hold his tongue around Odin. "He likely saw it when we read to him, or just around."
Kaylee smiled, but Simon knew it was a lingering one for Odin. "And he is a Tam, ain't he?"
#
The tiny body lays on the exam table in the infirmary, chest cracked, coated in the same blood as runs up Simon's gloved hands and bare arms, his blood. There's nothing peaceful or calm about the stillness, and it shatters Simon's heart to pieces, feels as though the hollow of space has opened itself in his chest.
He hears Kaylee wailing in the distance, can imagine Inara and Zoë tearing her away from the scene. "Don't want to have that in your memories, mei mei," Zoë says backed with knowledge. Inara whispers things Simon can't make out. Over it all Kaylee cries again and again the name of their son, calling Simon everything under the stars for not saving him.
Simon looks up to see Mal across the table from him, eyes on Simon. He's not sure he's ever seen the captain so grave, harrowed, wonders if this is what he looked like the final moments of Serenity Valley.
"No reason for you to stay, Simon. I can deal with...." Mal gestures to the body. Simon can't stop his eyes from following.
"No." Simon shakes his head. "I won't let her see him like this." He pulls the cart he'd thrown away back toward him. The flesh is still warm as he sets about putting insides back in, closing up the body.
Mal's hand falls on his wrist. "Said to leave Simon. I can manage. I won't have you tend your dead son."
Simon shakes his head, pulls his hand away with enough force to make Mal step back. "He's mine to deal with." That empty space inside him grows and expands until he thinks it may rip him apart, leave him laying an open mass beside his xiai er zi.
When he raises his eyes to Mal, the other man has no words left on his lips, merely nods. Pulling up a chair, Mal sits, watches.
The quiet echoes as Simon makes his son as whole as possible, cleans his soft lukewarm flesh, washes his fine hair, closes his crystal blue eyes. A drop of blood dips on his shoes, and Simon follows the path of another joining it. Blood it seems is all he's ever cared about; his treatment of Kaylee has proved this. Simon feels a single tear crawl down his cheek, and wonders if it will be the last he gives the 'verse, for it has just taken the most important thing his life will ever contain.
Chinese Translations:
Er zi = son
Xiai er zi = beloved son
Part 3
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That was harsh. You've got a way with Simon though, really. Brilliant.
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Glad you the story and the Simon. It's odd that my fanfic writing has almost come full circle to me back writing a character enough like myself it takes little effort. Kinda nice.
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