ozmissage | Firefly Fic: Still Flying (Reply)

Title: Still Flying
Characters: Mal, ensemble (implied Mal/Inara)
Rating: PG
Words: 1,070
Spoilers: Through Serenity.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Mal knows he needs a new pilot, he just can’t bring himself to bother looking for one.
A/N: Written for mollivanders who requested Firefly fic.

Mal knows he ought to have found a new pilot by now. It’s been more than three months since they lost Wash and those who can fly have been taking it in turns ever since. It ain’t a practical arrangement and Mal’s well aware it’s his own sentimentality keeping him from doing what needs to be done. It just don’t seem right letting someone new onto his boat when the last man flew her so true.

He’s been contemplating the notion of letting little River have the post. She ain’t been half as crazy since Miranda and she’s got a certain kinship with Serenity that even Mal himself can’t claim to have. He loves watching her at the helm; she flies Serenity like she’s an extension of herself. River knows when something’s ailing their girl long before she makes a rumble and she flies so smoothly sometimes the crew don’t realize they’ve moved until they catch a glimpse of sunlight filtering in the window. The girl says Serenity talks to her and Mal can’t argue the point with her, not when he’s heard her whispering a time or two himself.

Still, River’s just a slip of a girl at seventeen and just because she ain’t trying to murder them all in their sleep today don’t mean the notion ain’t going to hit her tomorrow. Besides there are times when Mal needs her on the ground, much as it annoys her brother there’s some jobs that need a reader and others that need her aim. He’s starting to get used to having her at his side, gun on her hip. Brilliant though she is even little River can’t be in two places at once and right now she’s more use to him on a job than she is behind the wheel.

Sometimes Zoe flies Serenity, sitting in the chair where her husband breathed his last. It don’t feel right to stay on the bridge too long when Zoe’s flying. Mal feels like he’s interrupting something private. She’s got no real talent for the job and they both know it. Serenity shudders under her touch sometimes, but Mal ain’t about to tell her not to take her turn. He can’t tell if it does her good or harm to fly, but that’s the way of Zoe, she don’t let on much.

Mal has walked in and caught her running a hand down the back of one of those silly, plastic dinosaurs on occasion and the sight always unsettles him. Flying’s a part of mourning for Zoe; it brings her closer to Wash and pushes her farther away all at once. Mal ain’t such a hundan that he don’t understand that so he lets her take her turn even if it leaves his crew looking green around the gills.

Inara flies Serenity too and Mal keeps hoping she’ll ask for the job. She ain’t been seeing as many clients lately as she used to. She spends most of her time on Serenity now, but she still keeps to her shuttle. This doesn’t surprise Mal much, he never expected her to move into his quarters. She hasn’t had much practice flying a ship Serenity’s size, but you wouldn’t know it by watching her. Inara flies Serenity with the same amount of grace she does everything else with.

Mal’s taken to standing next to her on the bridge when she’s at the helm. He makes out like he doesn’t trust her not to fly them into an errant piece of space debris. The truth is he likes being close to her, he likes the way she looks in that seat, likes the way her hands work the controls. He wishes like hell she would ask him for the job because he knows he can’t bring himself to offer. It’d be too much like asking her to stay and even if he wants it, he ain’t about to say it.

The others---Kaylee, Simon, and Jayne---they don’t have the talent for flying and that’s fine by Mal. They’ve got their own work to do. Even if she could maneuver her way through Alliance territory without breaking a sweat, he wouldn’t want little Kaylee to stray too far from the engine room. She’s too good at keeping their girl in the air to waste in the pilot’s chair. Simon’s too timid to fly, too jittery, too nervous, but he’s the only one of the crew Mal would trust with a scalpel. And Jayne, well Jayne’s the man you want at your side when things go pear shaped as they’re like to do from time to time. He ain’t got the touch for flying, although he tried once. He wasn’t at the wheel five seconds before Serenity bucked him off.

Then there’s Mal himself. He’d be lying if he said he’d never thought of piloting his boat. Serenity’s his girl after all and he likes to think he knows her better than all of the rest of them. He was with her long before little River started slipping about the place. He’s always found a certain kind of peace behind the wheel. There’s something about being on the bridge in the middle of the night when it’s just you and the black. There’s some men that can’t stand that sight; it drives them crazy the nothing does.

The black ain’t never looked like nothing to Mal. It looks like a promise; a promise that you can keep moving, keep running, a promise that you don’t have to stop unless you want to. That’s a comfort to him; it has been since he was a boy. He never has been much for standing still. He wouldn’t mind sitting at the wheel forever if it was just him and Serenity, but he’s the captain and he’s got a whole crew of people counting on him to keep them safe and keep them fed. He can’t do that if he’s stuck in the pilot’s chair.

He knows he’s going to have to trust his girl to somebody else sooner or later. It’s just on nights like this when his crew’s asleep in their beds and it’s just him, Serenity, and the stars that Mal’s alright letting it be later. His gaze settles on one of Wash’s dinosaurs and he smiles to himself. They’ll get along a little while longer, they’re still flying and in the end that’s all that matters.