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Red	By : Lyra Category: 1 through F > Firefly Views: 3565 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Firefly, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Red
- 1
Disclaimer: Firefly belongs to Mutant Enemy Productions. I am not they.
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RED

When he closes his eyes, Mal sees Red. Red colors everything: his past, his future, his world, his friends. Especially his friends. The Red has already eaten up Wash and Book. No surprise. They were good; they were strong; they were worthy, however, they never did learn to respect the Red.
Or maybe Book had once, but took a damnedfool notion to put his mind to happier times and force himself to forget. If so, Book had died for his girlish whimsy.

Mal wonders if it was worth it, and rues the boy he left behind�before so many battlefields--who wouldn't have stopped long enough to ask. But Mal doesn't have the luxury of such whimsy. He has nine people depending upon him for their lives.
Seven.

He never used to lose count so easily.
Mal supposes that Kaylee will be next. She's been splashed and splattered with Red, but washes it clean with no respect and no memory of the stain. Mal wants to teach her to learn and fear the Red�to give her a chance to live a full and aged life complete with wrinkles ,arthritis, and breasts that hang down below her waist�but with her carefree spirit Reddened, what sort of life would that be?

And so he leaves her to her fate�for however long that is�and resolves to make red pay dearly on the day it decides to swell over her. He expects Book would approve of his decision. He's none to sure about Wash.

He decides to ask them both if-- when he sees them again. It should make for stimulating conversation.
Mal doesn't worry about Zo�. Although the Red has permeated as deeply through her as it has through him, Zo� can't be taken by Red. It ricochets off of her and on to whomever is standing nearby. It is not a joysome fate to draw. And they wonder why Zo� never smiles.

Mal doesn't wonder. He's drawn the same one, and he would gladly exchange it for any other. Book's and Wash's included. Especially.
Space is black. You'd think it was big and black enough to ink out everything, but not the Red. No matter how far Mal travels, he never flies far enough to find enough black for that. Yet he keeps looking all the same.
He doesn't know what else to do.
Mal comes to Inara because she ain't Red. She is the shimmery blue of Saint Albans when the sun sprays over the morning splendor of a fresh ice storm. That her shuttle is done in red, Mal would consider more than a speck ironical should he consider it. But he doesn't. He doesn't see red and Red the same way...at least not in his conscious mind. All he knows is that Inara is the one spot in his little 'verse That Matters that hasn't yet been hurt by Red�leastways not so to let it show�and that makes him despise her and treasure her both at once, which leads to more than a mite of confusion at occasional times.
Like now.

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"Qing jin!"1 Inara's voice is musical, as if she'd been born to speak Chinese. It kaleidoscopes every color of the rainbow except for Red. As the door slides open and Mal takes in the red of the Sihnon tapestries, he considers the dichotomy. Inara is not untouched of Red�quite the contrary�she lives and breathes in it, only she refuses to let it live and breathe in her.
Mal knew there was a reason he wanted her on his ship.
But then again, Mal hears red means different things on Sihnon than on Londinium. Perhaps there is some significance to that. Maybe one day he'll sort out, but right now it's all making his gut ache.
"Mal?" Inara stares.
"Inara." Mal shuffles at the hatch.
"Come in." She ushers him to a seat.
Mal clears his throat. "I came to ask you about your plans for Beaumonde." He shakes his head. "No, I didn't." He sits still hands folded uncomfortably in his lap.
Even a blind and deaf mute could see how the Red floods over and through Mal tonight. By rights he should be drowned. Would, if he weren't already accustomed to living on a fraction of the bare necessities�like air and rest �that lesser soldiers say they need to live.
Inara is neither blind nor deaf. She is, a highly skilled Companion, fine tuned to the state of those nearby. And no decent soul�much less a highly trained Companion dedicated to The Code--could leave a friend, or a stranger, in such distress as bleeds out across her shuttle floor tonight.
She reaches in for all her skills. This will be hard�as hard as any client she has had so far. Mal is not the kind of man at ease with finding ease this way.

Perhaps that is the very reason that she remains so intrigued by him.
"Mal�" She lays a hand upon his knee.

He startles and jumps up. "I shouldn't have come."
"Yes, you should. We all need each other out here in space." Given the acuity of the moment, she argues in her most beneficent tone.
"You pay your rent; I run this boat. We settled those needs long time back."
"I'd like to think I'm not just a business arrangement." Her tone is less solicitous now. How does she let him get to her like this?
Mal's eyes grow distant and his body language cools. This was the wrong tack to take. Terms like "business arrangement" in the same thought as herself always rankle his antediluvian, misguided sense of chivalry and propriety.
He heads to the door "I shouldn't be here."
A hundred responses come to her mind, but she has time for only one. "Yes, you should. You should because I need you to be here."
He pauses and turns his head to her and she knows this was the right path to take. Malcolm Reynolds would walk out on almost anything, but not on one of his crew who had declared need.
"I need you to be here. We all do. We need a captain who is...whole."
"Might find one when we put in to Beaumonde." It is nigh on impossible to separate out Mal's everyday cynicism from his cynicism with a special point.
"Not our captain. Mal, we need you back."
Mal turns from her and takes a wall. "I just get so...tired sometimes."
"We all do. But we are only carrying ourselves. You're carrying seven." She had almost said nine. It didn't matter. They both knew it was closer to three thousand...and most of those were Red.
Inara doesn't move or speak or even look too closely at him lest he spook. The choice must be his; like gazelles, men will bolt if prodded too hard.
Mal returns to his seat. There is no fear in his eyes. She has underestimated him again. She should be annoyed, but instead her heart swells.
The Guild would not consider her motivations proper, although her conscience is clear on the act. And one reason she left is that should the Guild find out all, they would not have considered her proper long before today.

Again, what she is about to do she knows is warranted; no one but herself need know the why.
"I can help," she says.

"I ain't so sure." For possibly the first time ever, it sounds as if Mal wishes that she were right. It doesn't feel as good as she'd thought it would.
"For thee hours, Mal, I ask you not to worry about being so sure. Just let me try. What can it hurt?"
His eyes meet hers, and in them she sees what it can hurt. She gives silent prayer that she will be good enough�that she will not fail. Then the eyes drop, and she perceives the same question that she has met from every man�or woman�who has sat in that same seat: Can you take this ache away from me?
Now she knows that she can help. If he will only let her in. She pushes his suspenders down. Deliberately, she undoes his shirt.
"I can do that," Mal retorts.

"I know you can; that's not the point. The point is that knowing that someone else is eager to."
"You're eager?"
She turns doe-brown eyes up at him. "Oh, yes." She runs one manicured finger down the ripples of his chest, and suddenly all Mal sees is red.
Mal grabs her and kisses her as if the kisses will stopper up everything she makes him feel, but it doesn't work. The room swirls in around him in a crescendo of red and everything that was solid dissolves.
With the mass of his body, Mal pushes her down. With rough hands, he shoves the expensive silks off and up, freeing her milky skin. He sucks her breasts; he grazes at her belly. He laves her navel with exuberant excesses of his tongue. Beneath him, she knots graceful hands in his hair and writhes.

She pushes his head down further, and he slips into a gash of red. He sucks and eats and licks and nibbles until her spasmodic cries drown out all the Red voices within his brain.
Slowly, like a man fighting demons, Mal pulls away and finds his feet. His jiba2 stands out straight as an engine drive shaft and as hard as iron.
"Mal?" Inara sits, sated, but confused. She sees Mal strain to rebuild every last bit of composure she has just given herself to tear down.
He shakes his head. "It's wrong, Inara. It shouldn't be like this. I want it�want you too much, and not in a fitting way. Not like it should be. T'ain't right like this." He bends down to collect his crumpled shirt.
Inara sees red, and all those years of careful training go careening out the hatch. How does he get to her like this?
"Cao ni zu zong shi ba dai!3 What a fangzong fengkuang de jie!4 Who in suoyou de dou shidang5 are you to decide what should and shouldn't be? If you haven't noticed, civilization is shaking itself apart, we're stuck out here on this cho feiwu6 of yours, and yet you're the one person who can decide what's universally right!"
"Serenity ain't cho feiwu." That seems to be all the rebuttal Mal has to offer on the matter.
"No. She isn't; I shouldn't have said that." Inara lowers her voice. Absently she strokes a bulkhead in contrition. "But neither am I. I am here because I choose to be. Because I want to be. Can't you trust me as much as you trust the rest of the crew? Don't tell me how to do (my job) what I know; just let me help."

Mal wavers. It could go either way. Companion training says to hold silent: she who speaks first loses. She throws Companion training out the airlock.
This is not a business deal.

"Malcolm Reynolds, just how stupid are you? Can't you see that I want this too?" Naked already, she drops her Companion cloak and trusts him with herself as everything and nothing more than the woman she is.
Mal relents and throws himself on her, then they both see red. He drives her to the edge of the 'verse--where it there is nothing but brilliant white stars on unbroken black--and back again. When he thinks he cannot possibly hold off one second longer, he comes in wracking spasms deep inside her embrace and takes her with him one more time.
Then he begins to cry.
She babies his head until he is done. Moments like this are why she chose this career. Choosing this ship, well, that was just a lucky draw.
Mal takes a breath. His world is still Red, but perhaps a little pinker than it once was.
"You won't tell." He asks. Or he states. It's both and neither. In any case, he doesn't mean the sex.
"Of course not," she says. "As far as they will know, I still consider you the same uncultured, boorish, suoxi sha gwa7 I always have."
"Good. I expect you to keep it that way. I think." Confusion flits across Mal's face. "I think."
She kisses him. It lasts...a while.

Mal sits up on the side of the bed.
"You don't have to go," she says.

"Think maybe I do. Could be too easy to start believing all this is real."
Hurt rises to her eyes. "I wonder why that is?" She hears all the sharpness in her voice, but lets it stay.
He looks at her. "Inara, you can't. No. People who stand too close to me get hurt."

"Too late," she whispers, almost to herself.
"Inara, I never meant�" His eyes rush back to her, but he won't let his body do the same. Again.

"I don't want your apologies. I want your help."
Help: that four letter word. Again, the hero's fire lights up in Mal's eyes.
It was the right thing to say. Inara has many talents, but at the top of the list Inara credits that above all, she knows men. Which is a bit disturbing to her as the conclusion is, if she has been at odds with Mal, it is not because she has no choice.
She makes a choice. "We're a team, Malcolm Reynolds. We're your crew, but we're a team. We all need each other. Right now, I need you."
Inara holds out unsteady arms. Mal steadies them with his body and crawls back into her bed.

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Mandarin (to the best of my research):

1) Quin jin!: Come in

2) jiba: penis

3) Cao ni zu zong shi ba da!: Fuck eighteen generations of your ancestors!

4) fangzong fengkuang de jie: a knot of self-indulgent lunacy

5) suoyou de dou shidang: all that's proper

6) cho feiwu: smelly junk

7) suoxi sha gwa: petty retard
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Red