Chapter Text
A man ran across a desert. A soldier, wearing chainmail and a brown coat, covered in dirt, sweat, and determination, with short brown hair, a cocky grin, and a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once.
Explosions shattered the ground he crossed, low-flying aircrafts dropping bombs and bullets alike as he tried not to focus on the bodies around him. The flashes of battle around him revealed a desert valley, with towering cliffs blocking out the moon and surrounded by war-torn sky.
He hopped over the uneven ground and slid his way behind an outcropping, rushing towards the radio on a makeshift table of metal crates. The operator looked up at his arrival.
“Sergeant! Command says air support is holding until they can assess our status.”
Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds grit his teeth and swore. “Our status is we need some gorram air support! Get back on line and-”
His Corporal, Zoë Hirst, entered the alleged room, showing signs of moderate to severe stress - which was how he knew things were getting bad. If Zoë was expressing her emotions in a way other people could pick up on, they were past all relief. If they survived - if - it would not be unchanged. Her curly black hair was plaited back practically, and she wore a similar getup to her Sergeant, with the same amount of battlefield grime and a contrastingly stoic expression that was breaking significantly faster than Mal would have liked.
“That skip is shredding us, sir,” she yelled over the gunfire.
The radio operator, Graydon, shook his head. “They won’t move without a Lieutenant’s authorisation code-”
Without further comment, Mal shuffled over to a corpse, a few days dead, ripped a patch off its arm and handed it to Graydon. He couldn’t think about how that corpse used to be his lieutenant. He wouldn’t.
“Here. There’s your code. You’re Lieutenant Baker, congratulations on your promotion. Now get me some air support!”
He left the radio and made his way to two huddled soldiers.
Turning to one, he said “Pull back far enough to wedge ‘em in here,” and, to the other, “Get your squad to the high ground, start pickin’ ‘em off.”
“High ground’s death with that skiff in the air,” Zoë said, revealing that she had followed him somewhat silently.
Mal responded without turning. “That’s our problem, thanks for volunteering.” He stood up slightly and checked his gun, before facing a young, terrified soldier. “Bendis! Gimme some cover, we’re goin’ duck huntin’.”
The ‘room’ shook with another explosion and a soldier landed, face down and lifeless.
“Just focus!” Mal yelled, drawing his soldiers’ attention off the body. “Alliance said they were gonna waltz through Serenity Valley, and we choked ‘em with those words. We’ve done the impossible, and that makes us mighty. Just a little while longer, our angels’ll be soarin’ overhead, rainin’ fire on those arrogant cods, so you hold.” He paused, observing everyone’s reactions, before barking out “You HOLD! Go!”
Zoë and Mal assumed positions to dash out to the anti-aircraft gun, and she cocked her own. “Really think we can bring her down, sir?”
“You even have to ask?!” Mal shot back cockily. As Zoë checked the surroundings, Mal pulled a small cross necklace out of his shirt and kissed it, closing his eyes and breathing for a moment, shoving it back before she saw. “Ready?”
“Always.” Zoë turned to see Bendis, immobile. “Bendis.” When he still didn’t move, she yelled. “Bendis!”
The young soldier remained frozen in fear, and Zoë sighed. “Rut it,” she muttered, before sending a spray of bullets across the landscape. Mal ran out, firing his own gun and taking out an enemy soldier as Zoë followed.
They paused behind a rock, taking cover from enemy fire. Mal lured out the soldier with returning fire and hit him with a spray of bullets. He staggered back, dying quickly, and neither Mal nor Zoë thought about the people that might have been waiting for him.
Mal ran towards the anti-aircraft gun as Zoë covered behind a different rock and let off sporadic bursts of fire. Carefully aiming at the skiff, Mal’s face curled in a mixture of focus and disgust, before firing as many rounds as possible.
A direct hit! The skiff went down rapidly and Mal whooped - before realising in horror that it was coming directly towards him. He ran at Zoë and roared her name, slamming into her and knocking her to the ground. The wreckage and ensuing explosion narrowly missed hitting them, and Mal dissolved into only slightly manic giggles as Zoë sighed in relief.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
“Nice cover fire!” she snapped at Bendis, upon return to the makeshift room. Mal clapped him on the shoulder as he walked towards Graydon.
“Did you see that! Graydon! What’s our status on-”
Mal retched and turned away from the dead body of the radio operator.
“Zoë,” he panted, and gestured towards it. He crawled towards Bendis instead as she started retrieving the radio.
“Hey,” he tapped Bendis’ forehead. “Listen to me. Bendis! Look at me!”
When he turned with a frightened look, Mal grinned. “Listen. We’re holdin’ this valley, no matter what.”
“We’re gonna die,” Bendis said miserably.
“We’re not gonna die. We can’t die, Bendis, and you know why? Because we are so, very…” Mal paused for effect, and also to catch his breath. “Pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die. Huh! Look at that chiseled jaw, huh, c’mon!”
Bendis shook his head and looked down, as the sounds of soaring came overhead. Mal looked up in wonder, though he couldn’t see anything, and his face split into another wide grin. “Won’t listen to me, listen to that.” He looked at the hope beginning to light the young soldier’s face. “Those are our angels. Blow the Alliance to the hot place.”
He turned back towards his corporal. "Zoë! Tell the eighty second to-”
“They’re not coming.”
Zoë stared down at the radio, then looked up at Mal with a heartbroken expression. “Command says it’s too hot… they’re pulling out.” She looked back down at the radio. “We’re to lay down arms.”
Mal turned back to Bendis, who was looking at him with a sense of betrayal. The sergeant himself struggled to make sense of the situation. “But what’s-”
He stood up and watched as Alliance ships descended into the valley. Bendis went down beside him, from three shots, and all he could think was that the kid’s suffering was over. The first light of the sunrise lit his face, marred by battle and death, illuminating his hopeless expression. He had lost everything, too overcome to even cry, and yet. The planet kept spinning, the sun still rose, and, for better or for worse, the ‘Verse would continue regardless.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
“I can hear something.”
Weeks later, the remains of both sides lay on the battlefield. Rations had long run out, most were dead, and those who weren’t surely would be soon enough. At first glance, it was hard to tell corpses from live people. The sergeant ignored his private, assuming delirium, and the private continued anyway. “Does anybody hear that?”
Suddenly, Mal’s eyes caught on something in the distance. “Private.”
When that garnered no response, he switched targets. “Zoë.” His corporal pulled herself up as he continued staring into the horizon. “Signal flare.”
This caught the private’s attention. “It’s a rescue ship, sir.” He breathed out in relief. “They came.”
Zoë grunted in pain as Mal knelt next to her. “Whose colours are they flying?” she asked, in a laboured voice.
He reached out a hand to help her up. “One side or another, don’t make no difference.” When she was stable on her feet, he started to walk away. “Both o’ you,” he said, having nothing left in him to be happy, or even relieved. “Pass the word. See who’s still with us.”
“Look alive, people!” He still had his sergeant’s voice, barely even choking on the irony of that particular turn of phrase. “We got medships on route. Need to prepare for extraction.”
He looked over the bodies of his friends, enemies, and people he barely knew, all lying in the same beaten and bloody poses. Rigor mortis had come and gone, and they were in that grey area between there and… gone. Mal had the distant thought that they should rename the battlefield to Uncanny Valley. Nothing serene about it. His eyes landed on the corpse that used to be Bendis, and he felt bile hit the back of his throat.
“We lost four more from the seventy sixth,” Zoë said, picking her way over to where he stood with a worried expression. “Are those really medships?” She passed him a flare. “Are we really gettin’ out?”
“We are.”
She closed her eyes. “Thank god,” she whispered, as close to a whimper as she ever got.
“God?” Mal lit the flare, and his face curled in a bitter smile, tinged with disgust, betrayal, hurt, and whatever devotion he had left pouring out of his heart like the smoke in front of his face. “Whose colour’s he flyin’?