The Truth of Wings by lyrstzha (PG-13)

[invisibleshrew.livejournal.com]

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: crew, gen
Length: 4035 words
Author on LJ: lyrstzha
Why this must be read:

And sometimes Firefly fic brings the angst in spades. This is River at the end of the pilot, wrestling with collapsing possibilities. Seven ways the crew may not have come together quite as we know them - seven ways River and Simon could therefore have met with disaster instead of precarious safe harbour on Serenity. Each of the possibilities is neatly plausible for that character, and the end results are grim enough that this is a good story to read while holding firmly to the knowledge that it didn't happen this way.



“Wait a tick, yeah. Some years back, there was call for workers to settle on Miranda. Daddy talked about it.”—Kaylee

Zacharias Frye up and takes his family to Miranda—they need the work something fierce, and things don’t look to be getting easier back home anytime soon. And the adverts have it right; there’s room for mechanics on Miranda, and the Fryes don’t do half badly there.

There’s enough fat in the budget to even put a little coin by for schooling someday, which is good, because Zacharias’ daughter is clever with her hands. He thinks she might make an engineer one day, if he can save up enough to send her to a fancy Core-world University. He likes to think of his little girl designing ships and machines and satellites and such; he imagines that she’ll never need to scour engine oil from her hands with harsh lye soap the way that he does. Someday, his Kaylee will be ordering grease monkeys like him around. It’ll be a better world for her.

But then Parliament gets the bright idea to test Pax on Miranda. The compound is odorless and colorless, and it doesn’t even stain the clear, blue sky of a lovely Sunday afternoon or taint the fresh scent of the breeze.

When it happens, little Kaylee is watching with big eyes as Zacharias tinkers with a cantankerous hover-mule. He puts a wrench in her soft, child-plump fingers and shows her where to press and turn and coax to make the hydraulics purr like they ought to. Already she cocks her head like she can hear the voice of the engine speaking to her, whispering softly in a language of gears and combustion that she can almost decipher. With a few more years practice, she could be a wonder.

But now she lies down beside her daddy, the wrench still in her hand. Long after the fingers that hold it go to dust, the fine chrome-plated steel alloy gleams on the garage floor in the sporadic sunshine from the skylight like something precious.

Under the unexceptional hand of Bester, Serenity does not sing with her full voice. He misses little things she needs, sometimes even big things. It’s true that Mal can’t always afford the ideal parts to work with, but also Bester doesn’t nurse her along as well as he might, and the catalyzer on the port compression coil blows months before it might have under a surer mechanic.

There isn’t anyone there to tell the crew that the cold will kill them before the lack of air does, but they find out for themselves just the same.


The Truth of Wings