Ursa Major, Ursa Minor

Chapter Twenty-Five:
River woke up to Zoë gently shaking her shoulder.

“River-honey? You alright?”

Kaylee twisted her fingers together behind the first mate. “We been callin’ yer name fer a while now, mei mei. You feelin’ alright?”

River yawned and allowed herself a morning stretch that tightened some interesting muscles. “I feel fine. All systems go.”

Zoë gave her that sideways “I-know-what’s-going-on-here” look of hers. “You snuck out last night.”

River slid sideways beneath the smooth sheets and walked gingerly to her bag to pick out a dress for the day. The grey one would do nicely. It was tight enough to tease Jayne but long enough to hide the fact that she wouldn’t be wearing any underwear with it.

“Did you an’ Jayne… Outside?!” Kaylee gasped.

“Mm-hmm,” she showed the other women the hickey he’d left on her palm. “Found the secret spot inside me. Exploded like gunpowder against flame. I bit him.”

“That good?” Zoë asked.

River turned her back to the other women, pulled her dress on, and smoothed the fabric out. She focused on Jayne for a moment just to see what he was up to and caught sight of that image again. The one he’d briefly considered last night. A primal image that sprung from his deep feelings for her—his affection and love for the crazy naked assassin woman who popped out of a cryo-box and changed his life. It was an image of what he would like to see in the future.

A beautiful child with his blue eyes and full lips and River’s pert nose and even brow.

She pressed a hand to her belly and felt tears well up in her eyes. “Can’t have that.”

Zoë wrapped a motherly arm around the younger woman and made her sit down on the edge of the bed. “Can’t have what, River?”

“Little girl with Jayne blue eyes and a River nose. Impossible. Doctors’ pinched me inside when they drilled for the hidden oil in my brain. No progeny allowed for River Tam. A weapon should not run the risk of becoming a mother,” her voice deepened to mimic a doctor from the Academy, “’besides, we won’t be able to keep her on birth control medications once we send her on more complex missions. Just do the tubal ligation and be done with it. Like spaying a bitch.’”

Kaylee covered a whimper with her hands. “Oh, River!”

She started crying and sagged against Zoë. “Can’t give Jayne what he wants. What I want. She is so beautiful, Zoë.”

The ex-soldier’s heart was breaking. She and Wash had never agreed on the topic of children, and she’d been feeling that internal maternal alarm blaring for a while now.

Unconsciously, she’d been pressing those motherly thoughts outward and River had picked up on them and felt the same tug at her heart.

Kaylee dropped down to sit beside River as well and wrapped her arms tightly around her friend.

*

Jayne noticed the bite on his ankle when he slid his cargo shorts on the next morning. I was actually pretty painful and Simon gave him a strange look when he saw it. It almost looked like… Concern?

“Give me your leg.”

Leery, Jayne propped his foot up on the nightstand and let Simon prod at the wound.

“This happened last night. Did you go out for a walk or something?”

“Or something,” Jayne admitted.

Simon looked closer. “This is a bite wound.”

Jayne scratched his head. “Mm-hm.”

Simon stopped looking at Jayne’s calf and swallowed a lump in his throat. Over his shoulder, Mal was eyeing the angle of the bite.

“How the hell did that happen?” he asked.

Jayne cleared his throat. “Um…”

“You snuck out last night, didn’tcha?” Mal asked. He crossed his arms and fought the teasing grin that was threatening to break across his face.

Jayne looked incredibly guilty. “Yeah, Mal.”

“My sister did this to you?” Simon asked with a frog in his throat. He desperately wanted brain bleach to get rid of the images his mind was conjuring up.

“Yeah, Doc.”

Both men cringed. Jayne dropped his foot and started lacing up his boots to distract himself from their discomfort. “She knocked me onto the ground and… Well…”

Simon waved his hands frantically. “No more! I don’t want to hear it. Just… Meet me in the infirmary when we get back on the ship and I’ll clean the wound. Just… Don’t talk about what you and my mei mei are doing. My brain can’t handle it.”

“The same goes for yer Captain, Jayne,” Mal added. “Now let’s get off this rock.”

*

River flew Serenity out of Sihnon’s atmosphere with a forced smile firmly in place on her lips. She would not let her sorrow get the better of her. As she set course for Bernadette,

Jayne limped onto the bridge and loomed over her to press a sloppy kiss on her forehead.

“We on course?”

“Yes,” she felt him shift his weight off his right leg. “What’s wrong with your leg?” she asked.

Jayne cleared his throat. “Um…”

A flash in his mind’s eye: River leaned back at a near-impossible angle with her mouth clamped on his calf.

She clapped a hand over her mouth and squeaked. “I’m sorry, Jayne!”

He laughed a little and rubbed her shoulders. “Aw, it ain’t that bad, xuan ni. Simon told me it’d heal up nice in a couple of days.”

River felt her unease ebb away as the big man pressed his thumbs in-between her shoulder blades with that perfect amount of pressure that bordered on pain but lingered in pleasure. She’d been planning on telling him what she’d seen in his mind’s eye and how the Academy had ruined that for her, but Jayne was so intent on making the tension leave her body that all thoughts deserted her mind.

*

Inara grinned as she closed the wave channel with her first teaching client—a sweet young girl from Harvest who wanted to make herself more presentable for her fiancée’s folks on Bernadette. She reminded Inara of Kaylee in a way. The girl, Georgia, had a firecracker whit and a genuinely likable personality.

As for the not so legal work that Mal would be looking for, Inara knew of a large bank that held most of the Core world’s Alliance payroll that the captain might be interested in. She told him as much last night (before he kissed the breath out of her and swung her in circles by her waist).

The plan was to land Serenity on the side of the planet opposite to the bank, fly the spare shuttle to the bank while Inara held down the fort (so to speak) and taught Georgia how to be more lady-like with River, Simon, and Kaylee. Mal, Zoë, and Jayne would take the payroll, do some fancy getaway driving, and wait in orbit for Serenity to return to the black.

As far as plans went, it was pretty good.

Mal didn’t have a hand in its conception at all.

*

Georgia exited Inara’s shuttle looking as sweet as a button and grinning wider than the space between suns. She was greeted similarly by Kaylee and Simon.

River was nowhere to be seen. Everyone assumed she was hiding in her room, but she was curled up in Jayne’s bunk wearing his “soldier” T-shirt and buried beneath the afghan his mother had so nicely let her take with her when they left Kerry.

She knew something was going to go wrong on Bernadette. She just knew it.

Her head was hurting in a way it hadn’t since Simon saved her from the Academy.

*

They landed the shuttle on the roof of the bank after hours—just in case the law was on high alert or something. Either way, their arrival on Bernadette went by unnoticed. Jayne clapped his gloved hands together and gave a gleeful chuckle.

“I do love me some good ol’ fashioned bank robbin’, Mal. You thank Nara for me, okay? Been feelin’ the need to put the hurt on some Alliance hun dans lately.”

Mal snickered. “Heard that.”

“We ready, sir?” Zoë interrupted.

“Yep.”

“Jayne, don’t kill no one.”

“Aw, Zoë…”

*

“Serenity is in orbit, sir. A shuttle from her port side just landed on the roof of Alliance Security Bank.”

A blue gloved hand tensed against a file bearing the name ‘Jayne Cobb.’ “Security?”

“Caught an image of three leaving the shuttle on the roof. Reynolds, Washburne, and Cobb.”

“Do we have a team ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring me Cobb. The others are expendable.”

TBC