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still_grrr2007-06-29 11:15 pm
biggrstaffbunch.livejournal.com) wrote in still_grrr2007-06-29 11:15 pm
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Title: Singing on a Spaceship
Author: biggrstaffbunch
Rating: G
Word Count: 1000
Prompt: Makeup prompt for Bring out your dead: (016) Wash
Characters/Pairing (if any): Kaylee, Wash
~*~
Kaylee Frye likes music. In the engine room, when she's working with her machines and tools, feeling the steel warm under her fingers. Or in the mess, when she's arranging a sorry-looking protein platter, wistfully molding shapes of her favorite foods. The hum will start in the back of her throat, and then slowly but surely, she'll start whistling a tune. After a moment of soft-shoeing around the place, she'll just give up and giggle.
Then she'll sing.
She don't have a bad voice, neither. High and thin, mostly on pitch. So sweet her uncle used to say she could charm the moon from the sky, if she was of a mind to.
As for songs, she likes best all the stuff from down home: folksy melodies with bawdy lyrics or heroic tales. Sometimes if she closes her eyes, she can almost see her Pa tapping out a rhythm on his knee, his baritone rumbling a ditty about a ship in the sky.
Then, with her eyes still closed, she'll let her own voice come, soaring right up there in the clouds alongside that ship.
When she sings, she don't pay attention to nothing but the way the words make her feel, the way they flow down through her limbs and into her fingers, working all sorts of magic in ways Kaylee don't know how to do when she's just talking. Maw-Maw Frye once told her everything was better with a song in your heart, and Kaylee always tried real hard to believe it.
Time like now, though, Kaylee thinks ain't nothing gonna make things better. Not even a song.
Her hands skate over the destroyed leather of the pilot's chair, nails digging into the material, fingers catching against the threads and wires poking out of the torn seams. There's a big hole in the seat, right where, Kaylee reckons, the heart would be if a person were sitting in it. And there's blood. An awful lot of it, dark and sticky on the floor and spattered in strange patterns against the seat.
Kaylee touches it tentatively, feels the tacky grit, and there's no room for any songs, not past the bile that rises in her throat.
This is where Wash died. This is where Reavers speared him right through, after the greatest gorram flying of his life. This is where he landed his crew safe and sound, and where he was taken from them all in the next instant. Kaylee can't imagine what Zoe and Mal must be feeling right now, them being there to see a husband, a pilot, a friend impaled on a steel pole. Dead.
Kaylee wonders if he died straight off, or if he struggled against the weight of the pole holding him down. If he said anything, or if he was just there one second and gone the next. She wonders, and sometimes wondering is worse than knowing. All she got was a curt "He ain't comin'," and damned if she didn't know what that meant, but that's still all she got.
All she got, to know her friend, her crewmate, the only other person on Serenity who knew the way the old girl worked, was gone. It was all she got, but she ain't never gonna ask for more, because no one should hafta share that sort of moment with no one else. That sort of moment is for the nightmares lurking behind the Cap'n's and Zoe's eyes.
No, Kaylee sure can't imagine what those two must be feeling, if only looking at this empty seat is going so badly for her. Her heart's all afire and her eyes are stinging like a million wasps have took to buzzing in her brain. And her chest, her chest is so tight that she wonders if she's even gonna be able to talk to say goodbye, let alone sing something nice.
But she thinks she oughta.
Shepard Book was a good, kind man. He always smiled that special, just-for-Kaylee-smile at her, made her feel a little like she was back home at church, watching the preacher give his sermons while her Ma held her hand. And the Shepard thought she was something special when Kaylee wasn't sure anyone else did. Always came in to help around the engine room, or cook with her, or just told her to keep on smiling, even when it seemed like things were getting to be too much.
Once, he and River had gifted her with a nice little wall hanging with a beautiful passage from the Bible, painted over a pink sunset. It was Corinthians 13:4, and Kaylee's glad it survived the crash, because it helps her remember herself when the anger, grief at the Reavers and the Alliance gets to be too much. Most of all, she remembers Haven and the bloody bodies, and that's when she's gladdest for the way Shepard's always in her mind, his gift on the bulkhead grinning down at her. She thinks she ought to have a good memory of Shepard hanging over her so she don't always got nightmares instead.
And Wash. Wash, who always kept Kaylee company during the long, worrisome hours of their family being out on the job. Wash, who made her laugh and complimented her when she asked, and who had the sweetest, kindest, bluest eyes this side of the 'verse.
Wash, who once wandered into the engine room in the middle of her dancing with nobody, holding her tools in the stead of a hand, humming the waltz she'd heard at the ball in Persephone. And without Kaylee even askin, he'd swept right in and took her dancing all around the room, jauntily singing made-up lyrics along with the tune.
Because of that all, because of the way Shepard Book knew the power of poetry and words, because of the way the music had given her one nice, private moment with Wash, Kaylee closes her eyes. Thinks of a ship flying among the clouds.
And sings.
--finis--
Author: biggrstaffbunch
Rating: G
Word Count: 1000
Prompt: Makeup prompt for Bring out your dead: (016) Wash
Characters/Pairing (if any): Kaylee, Wash
~*~
Kaylee Frye likes music. In the engine room, when she's working with her machines and tools, feeling the steel warm under her fingers. Or in the mess, when she's arranging a sorry-looking protein platter, wistfully molding shapes of her favorite foods. The hum will start in the back of her throat, and then slowly but surely, she'll start whistling a tune. After a moment of soft-shoeing around the place, she'll just give up and giggle.
Then she'll sing.
She don't have a bad voice, neither. High and thin, mostly on pitch. So sweet her uncle used to say she could charm the moon from the sky, if she was of a mind to.
As for songs, she likes best all the stuff from down home: folksy melodies with bawdy lyrics or heroic tales. Sometimes if she closes her eyes, she can almost see her Pa tapping out a rhythm on his knee, his baritone rumbling a ditty about a ship in the sky.
Then, with her eyes still closed, she'll let her own voice come, soaring right up there in the clouds alongside that ship.
When she sings, she don't pay attention to nothing but the way the words make her feel, the way they flow down through her limbs and into her fingers, working all sorts of magic in ways Kaylee don't know how to do when she's just talking. Maw-Maw Frye once told her everything was better with a song in your heart, and Kaylee always tried real hard to believe it.
Time like now, though, Kaylee thinks ain't nothing gonna make things better. Not even a song.
Her hands skate over the destroyed leather of the pilot's chair, nails digging into the material, fingers catching against the threads and wires poking out of the torn seams. There's a big hole in the seat, right where, Kaylee reckons, the heart would be if a person were sitting in it. And there's blood. An awful lot of it, dark and sticky on the floor and spattered in strange patterns against the seat.
Kaylee touches it tentatively, feels the tacky grit, and there's no room for any songs, not past the bile that rises in her throat.
This is where Wash died. This is where Reavers speared him right through, after the greatest gorram flying of his life. This is where he landed his crew safe and sound, and where he was taken from them all in the next instant. Kaylee can't imagine what Zoe and Mal must be feeling right now, them being there to see a husband, a pilot, a friend impaled on a steel pole. Dead.
Kaylee wonders if he died straight off, or if he struggled against the weight of the pole holding him down. If he said anything, or if he was just there one second and gone the next. She wonders, and sometimes wondering is worse than knowing. All she got was a curt "He ain't comin'," and damned if she didn't know what that meant, but that's still all she got.
All she got, to know her friend, her crewmate, the only other person on Serenity who knew the way the old girl worked, was gone. It was all she got, but she ain't never gonna ask for more, because no one should hafta share that sort of moment with no one else. That sort of moment is for the nightmares lurking behind the Cap'n's and Zoe's eyes.
No, Kaylee sure can't imagine what those two must be feeling, if only looking at this empty seat is going so badly for her. Her heart's all afire and her eyes are stinging like a million wasps have took to buzzing in her brain. And her chest, her chest is so tight that she wonders if she's even gonna be able to talk to say goodbye, let alone sing something nice.
But she thinks she oughta.
Shepard Book was a good, kind man. He always smiled that special, just-for-Kaylee-smile at her, made her feel a little like she was back home at church, watching the preacher give his sermons while her Ma held her hand. And the Shepard thought she was something special when Kaylee wasn't sure anyone else did. Always came in to help around the engine room, or cook with her, or just told her to keep on smiling, even when it seemed like things were getting to be too much.
Once, he and River had gifted her with a nice little wall hanging with a beautiful passage from the Bible, painted over a pink sunset. It was Corinthians 13:4, and Kaylee's glad it survived the crash, because it helps her remember herself when the anger, grief at the Reavers and the Alliance gets to be too much. Most of all, she remembers Haven and the bloody bodies, and that's when she's gladdest for the way Shepard's always in her mind, his gift on the bulkhead grinning down at her. She thinks she ought to have a good memory of Shepard hanging over her so she don't always got nightmares instead.
And Wash. Wash, who always kept Kaylee company during the long, worrisome hours of their family being out on the job. Wash, who made her laugh and complimented her when she asked, and who had the sweetest, kindest, bluest eyes this side of the 'verse.
Wash, who once wandered into the engine room in the middle of her dancing with nobody, holding her tools in the stead of a hand, humming the waltz she'd heard at the ball in Persephone. And without Kaylee even askin, he'd swept right in and took her dancing all around the room, jauntily singing made-up lyrics along with the tune.
Because of that all, because of the way Shepard Book knew the power of poetry and words, because of the way the music had given her one nice, private moment with Wash, Kaylee closes her eyes. Thinks of a ship flying among the clouds.
And sings.
--finis--
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