Lilly-Mal in the Dreaming

[awesome_lilly]

Hammerbanghammerbang...

The smooth continuity of Mal firing his favorite pistol at the shooting range target fifty yards away made Mal somehow feel better about life in general.  What definitely made Mal feel better about life was that he was shooting far better than David standing next to him.

"Since when did you get better 'n me, Malcolm?" David jibes with a grin. "I never said you was allowed to ever get better 'n me."

"If you'd practice more instead o' flirtin' with Mary Ann Patterson, I'd still be yards behind ya." Mal reloads almost gleefully as he compares his last shot's bull's eye with David's last shot, which veered ever so slightly right of center.

Comments

[awesome_lilly]

It's the sound of gunshots that gets her attention. They're wonderfully loud, giving her split seconds of relief from the voices... long enough to think.

Gunshots. Gunslingers?

"Voices. Telling you that things happened one way, and another. And you won't know which to believe."

Roland's gone, but anyone can be here. Maybe even someone who could help, one way or another.

Cautiously, Lilly approaches the source of the gunshots - two young men with their backs to her.

[badinlatin]

Mal reaches around to his back pouch of his holster belt to reload when the footsteps behind him register.

Turning, he immediately holsters his gun. "Lilly? How...Why?" Mal can't seem to figre out what question he wants answered first.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly blinks at him.

"...Mal?"

She knows him. Grass skirts and tequila and teaching her to shoot, just like this. But the memory is slippery, they all are, and she isn't sure and she can't keep the uncertainty out of her voice.

[badinlatin]

"Why are you here, Lilly?" Mal comes to put his hands on her shoulders. "You can't be in this shootin' range, it's just mine and David's..."

Mal looks over his shoulder to point out David's presense, but David had disappeared. As well as the targets. The lights may be on in this particular setting, but no one is home except Lilly and Mal.

[awesome_lilly]

"I don't know David," Lilly says absently, frowning. "Or..." she trails off, looking like she's listening to something.

After a moment, she looks up and blinks again.

"Do I know you?"

[badinlatin]

Mal stands uncomprehendingly in front of Lilly.

"What? Of course you know me. Me, y'know...Mal? Reynolds? Captain a spaceship?

"Captain Mu Ji?"

[awesome_lilly]

mu ji wooden chicken rogue spaceship captain -wrong this is wrong don't know him never died never met- and Lilly bites her lip. She needs it to be quiet, just for a minute, just long enough to figure this out...

Lilly clenches her fists, driving her fingernails into the half-healing cuts on her palms. They start to bleed again and the pain rushes through her body in a wave, drowning out never died grew up never left came to new york to la to milliways -not that- .

"What up, Captain mu ji?"

[badinlatin]

Renci de Fozu

"Lilly?" Mal straightens his gaze into Lilly's eyes. "You with me? Mei-mei, I need you to tell me what's wrong."

[awesome_lilly]

"It's too loud," Lilly says. "Too loud and I can't hear her and if I can't hear her I can't find her and she can't make it stop and god, I just want it to stop."

There are tears welling up in her eyes.

[badinlatin]

"We'll find her, Lilly," Mal starts, unknowing what else to say, "We'll find her; we'll make it stop, please don't cry, we'll make it stop..."

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly looks up at him, a tear streaking down her cheek.

"You can't find her, you can't hear her, I can but it's too loud and then I can't-" She breaks off suddenly, and freezes.

There's a noise, faint but audible, in the distance. To Lilly, it sounds like the howl of a maddened wolf.

To Mal, it sounds like a proximity alarm.

[badinlatin]

Proximity alarm. What's near us? Why can't I seewhereamiwhereiseveryone?

The lights in the cargo bay flip to black suddenly, but Mal can still see somehow Lilly's streaked face and the space between them. Through the proximity alarm, he hears the sound of removing the gun from his holster, ready for anything.

But not the stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp of Reavers comin' in through the airlocks upstairs.

toomanycan'tstopthemlillyohmygod

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly's not crying anymore, but her face is white and wide-eyed. The cuts on her hands are stinging and the stomp stomp stomp is echoing around the cargo bay and the pain and noise are enough to quiet the voices, for now, so she can think.

"Mal, I need to go. They'll leave if I leave, how do I get out of here?"

[badinlatin]

"Can't leave, Lilly; lil' bit too much of the vastness of space outside." Mal begins to train his gun on the invisible perpetrators of the stomp stomp stomp - on the catwalks, the ladder down the other side o' the bay, every place that has more shadow than light. This, by the way, is almost anywhere.

"Maybe we could get out by the shuttle..."

Nope, the stomp comes from that corner of the ship too.

"Ain't no shuttle left."

[awesome_lilly]

The vastness of space is the vastness of the Dreaming and Lilly knows that but it's Mal's dream and what he knows matters more, so she has to tell him. There's a way out, there has to be... but the pain in her hands is fading, the voices and the stomp stomp stomp growing louder and she's trying to hang on to what she needs to tell... Mal?

the man beside her with the gun -veronica holds the gun on aaron- but the captain -the sheriff- she has to tell him something but what

Lilly doesn't remember what she was going to say. So she doesn't say anything at all, just stands next to the stranger with a gun and stares into the shadows.

[badinlatin]

Mal actually has a target now.

The reavers, in single file, are marching stomp stomp stomp stomp down the ladders to the main floor of the cargo bay.

Toward Mal. Toward Lilly.

Mal can't stop them. Any of them.

"Lilly - run. Hide. Go."

[awesome_lilly]

"There's nowhere to go, Sheriff," Lilly says, almost calmly. She can see the reavers in the cargo bay, but she can also see the police officers at the Kane estate and the security guards at the office where she works.

None of them are real. They're all real.

She doesn't move.

[badinlatin]

Mal knows there's nowhere to go.

There's no one can help me

Help us.

The front ranks of Reavers that have reached the floor of the cargo bay are forming column and file, still keeping the stomp stomp stomp.

Mal fears. His gun is useless, his body is useless. There is no defense.

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..."

[awesome_lilly]

If this were movie or a tv show, right about the cavalry'd show up. Jayne and Zoe mowing down the reavers from the catwalks, Kaylee and Wash showing them something their ship can't do, maybe even River showing them something a branch can do. It's big damn hero time.

But this is a nightmare.

Wash is being tortured in a tower where Zoe can't find him, Kaylee's tied up in an engine room, Jayne's gone where the money is and Simon and River are stranded outside the ship in suits with only a little air left. No borrowed heroes from other tales either, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood and the Magnificent Seven are off having a smoke. No one's striding into the cargo bay with their long coat flapping in a dramatic if convenient breeze.

This is a nightmare.

Two of the reavers break rank and rush forward, screaming with sliced tongues in pierced faces, one brandishing a rusty jagged-edged blade. Mal brings his gun up agonizingly slowly, trying desperately to fend them off. It only serves as a distraction, as the weaponless one turns to sink his teeth into Mal's arm.

The one with the blade goes straight for Lilly, who's still frozen, caught in the confusion of shifting views and times and voices whispering this is -isn't- real -you're not here- you didn't die.

His sword scrapes roughly along her rib as he thrusts into her side, and this is a nightmare but for Lilly it is also suddenly, painfully, real.

[badinlatin]

The Reavers break rank and all Mal can see is the grotesque face of the one closest to him.

My gun works I know it works shoot the motherfucker

Mal's arm is lead and his gun is iron, the combination of which makes training his gun on the Reaver seem like moving through quicksand.

The Reaver takes advantage and connects with Mal's wrist, tearing into the flesh of his bicep. Mal's vision flashes white shrapnel live shrapnel when the teeth sink in, and Mal's mind can't even connect to Lilly completely vulnerable behind him.

There are no green pastures here.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly gasps when the knife sword blade cuts into her, the agonizing sharpness of the pain dulling the voices in her head. She's here now, here in the dark cargo bay full of shadows and nightmare killers and it's her blood dripping through the fingers she's pressed against her wound. She staggers away from the reaver and grabs Mal's free hand.

"Mal, come on! We have to go, now!"

There's a corridor opening behind them now, just as dark as the cargo bay but free of reavers. Lilly's tugging on Mal's hand, desperately trying to pull him towards it, towards the best chance of escape they've got now.

[badinlatin]

The white has faded back to black...not to black, to the dark of the cargo bay. The Reavers - Lilly, it's Lilly - is pulling him toward the hall that materialized behind them. Mal clutches his arm as Lilly clutches his side while the pair stagger down the corridor.

[awesome_lilly]

They're not very far along when Lilly has to stop. She leans up against a wall, breathing hard, her hand pressed to her side. This fucking hurts, but it's given her time to think and she knows what she has to do.

"Mal, you have to listen to me, okay?"

[badinlatin]

"Yes," Mal spits out. Not rough, but loudly so as to keep in check his mind wanting to stop his arm bleeding.

"What, Lilly? We gotta keep goin'..."

[awesome_lilly]

"No, we don't," Lilly says, her eyes intent.

"They're not after you, they'll ignore you if I'm not with you. Just stay here, I'm going to go on and they'll follow me. Promise me you'll stay here, mu ji?"

[badinlatin]

Mal's face crumples at mu ji and acquiesces. He stands limply as he nods to let Lilly move on away from him, but in a last reflex, Mal's hand connects to Lilly's arm, sliding down to the hand which had attempted to staunch her bleeding.

The copper smell is the only way he can tell that the smear on Mal's hand is Lilly's blood as her hand slips through his.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly glances over her shoulder at him, tries to smile.

"I'll be okay, mu ji."

She turns away from him, starts moving slowly down the corridor, her hand pressed to her side again.

stomp stomp stomp and the reavers come, passing Mal by as if he were no more than the wall he's leaning against.

Lilly, moving faster now, doesn't hear the stomp stomp stomp of their boots anymore. She hears, instead, the triumphant howl of a wolf with the scent of blood in its nose as it closes in on its wounded prey.

[badinlatin]

"I'll be okay, mu ji."

Mal sits bolt upright in bed, throwing his sheet off his bed weakly with one hand, his mind reeling with Reavers and Lilly and the bite on his arm.

the bite

Mal looks at his arm quickly, no marks, no blood. Sighing, he drags his hand across his forehead, hoping to remove some of the cold sweat from his nightmare.

Now that is odd. Mal fumbles for a light switch, and moves to his mirror to rinse his face.

On which he now has a smear of blood.

"Son of a bitch." Mal can't wash off the blood fast enough.