FIC: Celestial Navigation (The Wishful Thinking Remix) by Maidenjedi (Firefly, 1/1)

[maidenjedi]

Remix reveal! I wrote Celestial Navigation (The Wishful Thinking Remix) for laurificus.

Posted below and also, of course, at AO3.

TITLE: Celestial Navigation (The Wishful Thinking Remix)
AUTHOR: Maidenjedi
FANDOM: Firefly
PAIRING: Mal/Zoe
SUMMARY: Zoe stays to light the way.

NOTES: A West Wing title, to sync it up with the original (He Shall From Time to Time).

Zoe knows it’s all gone to shit.

She stares up at the sky, which should be full of stars, though only moonlight gets through anymore. The fire has burned itself out and she is alone in that dark hour before dawn.

She realizes she’s cold.

She looks to her side, knowing he’d gone, and she knew where. She could follow, stand next to him as he looked out over the broken valley, wondering if they had hours or only minutes before the fight began once more. He’s counting their numbers now, subtracting the losses of the day’s victory – was it, then, a victory, he’s wondering, and he’s tense and tired at the thought.

She could follow. But in a while he will come back on his own and he’ll seek her warmth and nuzzle her neck, murmuring fantasies to chase away the horror for just a moment. So she stays and does her own accounting.

War ain’t done, she knows it. S’long as they can hold this place, ‘til they hear different from on high, it ain’t over.

Mal comes back, and he whispers again about his plans for a house and a horse and what he will do with the first sunny day on a fresh, green planet, and he plans their afters in spite of every protest and every proof that the next bullet will be the last.

It almost is, twelve hours later, as it rips her flesh and settles in and she doesn’t scream because Mal will do it for them both.

War ain’t over.

-

"We ain’t got after.”

She knew it was true, or she wouldn’t have said it. She wasn’t one to speak for the sake of it. Looking around, she felt the whole gorram place settle like an albatross ‘round her neck and she cursed herself for ever speaking at all.

Serenity Valley, for now and for always. The fightin’ done and the war over for most, but ‘til her dyin’ day, she’d wander that valley, blood poolin’ at her feet and Mal screamin’ revenge and death and hell to them that done it.

Ain’t that just the way.

-

Bullet didn’t touch her vitals, and the scar she bore spooked him unless he drank. Drink he did, of course.

“You don’t have to call me sir anymore, Zoe,” he says. “War’s done.”

His eyes were dull, but that was the liquor. She could see past it, always could.

He rambled on about all the things that couldn’t be, and before too long he admitted there was something that could be, maybe. A ship. A life in the sky, free as the Alliance would let them be.

When she promises – “Yes, Cap’n” – his eyes clear, just so, and if there is gonna be an after, it might could be this.
-
“Serenity,” he said, so nonchalant, like he didn’t hear cannon or smell blood when that gorram word was spoke aloud. Zoe held her tongue and nodded agreement. Would they ever escape, truly?

Part of her wasn’t sure she ever wanted to.
-
‘Course, she wasn’t lookin’ when Wash walked in, and she said yes before she knew what she was about. Mal smiled and his eyes shone, and everything was right in the ‘verse.

Mal plots the course and Wash guides the ship. Zoe is the light.

She smiles and she laughs and the credit goes to the ring on her finger and the after that came for at least one of them. Mal clings to his ship and his sky, wide and open and as free as he could want. And Wash flies.

The little albatross boards the ship and they veer off course so hard, so fast they don’t notice they’re spinnin’ till they stop.

When it’s over, a million miles and countless stars and planets behind them, Zoe runs her hand over the word on the ship’s hull and she fights to stay standing. There is no one to keep her upright and it is too much, too much.

All that distance, to end up here.

In her white dress, in the sun, she falls to the sand and finds she is cold, so cold.

-

She stands on the bridge. River’s gone to bed and Serenity flies herself until the captain can take the reins.

An unspoken agreement gives her a moment here on her own, every night.

On her own but for the ghosts that still walk. Or that she imagines into existence.

She is staring out among the stars, wondering which one is heaven if any are, when Mal walks in.

He curses under his breath, the syllables hitting her ears anyway.

“No, it’s fine.”

She turns and he grabs her hand. “Zoe.”

They let Serenity fly herself a while longer.

-

“You ever gonna have your after, sir?”

It is later, so much later, and maybe too soon. She focuses on her gun. He focuses on his coffee, favoring his left hand because it’s the morning after Unification Day.

“Sometimes you keep going, is all, Zoe. It’s enough, and a damn sight better than stopping.”

She cleans the barrel and blows on the brush, and sits down next to him, their thighs a hair’s breadth apart. His breath hitches and he sighs it out and sips his coffee like she’s across the room. Like she doesn’t know.

“Thing is, sir,” she says after a while, “you keep going long enough, cover enough distance, ain’t a chain in the world can hold under that strain.”
He sips and says nothing. Waits.

“Seems like yours should be broken by now, don’t it?”

A few more words, and that way he has of mussing his hair when he ain’t sure where to put his hands, and they come together like they were never apart.

-

There is a deep breath and a shuddering sigh, a whisper that might be promises no one could keep, least of all Mal. Zoe sleeps on, and dreams for the first time in so long.

-

In the after, if there is such a one, Zoe gets it all.

Now, though, out among the stars that don’t orbit a desolate planet whose name is just a slurred curse for a battle long lost, Zoe gets enough.
She doesn’t bleed and there are no screams, and her scars are a sacred map, leading somewhere Mal is more than content to go.

If there is such an after, Zoe might say no.