#firefly crossover

She is the only home he knows now. The only ground he can count on. The only safe place to rest his head.

How long has it been since they’ve heard music?

When the wars ended, girls in pretty dresses danced and sang, and everyone waved their flags?

When Papa took them to the opera and they fidgeted in their seats, trying to play games without getting caught?

When Arthur took them to see a famous singer or two, and they started to see what all the fuss was about?

It’s been so long since they heard music. Not a single, lonesome melody. The black didn’t provide much as far as records, radios, and mp3s go. All they had were their own voices out here, the echo swallowed by the stars.

Amelia would sing, sometimes, on the ship. He knew it. In the lone hours of the morning when she thought no one could hear her, she would sing Serenity to sleep. The witching hour when the nightmares and all-too-real-mares kept her awake.

The witching hour, when all the best witches were up.

A man in a brown jacket and sash comes to dance with her, and a smile holds her up, as if pulled on strings, pulling her back, back, tethering her to a time when she was an eager-to-please American girl. Well, no, not quite. There was something fake there, then. Something plastered on. This isn’t made of stitches, and glue, and expectations.

This is America.

This is free.

A smile begins to break across the Canadian’s face too, like all the masks they’ve put on—(and there are many layers to get through)—are cracking, and for a brief moment she is America again, and he is Canada, and it’s them against a world that still exists.

Wild thing. Wild, wild girl.

She didn’t like being caged. Didn’t deserve it. Being cooped up in a tin can hurtling through nothing but the dark, gravity a distant memory. She didn’t like being away from her land.

None of them did. It felt like taking a drug you’re allergic too—not allergic enough to stop breathing, but allergic enough to never feel right, to always feel a little sick, so long as you take it. And she wasn’t the only one who had bouts of not-quite-sanity because of it.

How long has it been since they’ve been out?

The others went on missions—(a funny image: the Nations of the earth, stealing from the very people they once called their own, once called themselves, in order to survive…what a sorry lot they were). But the Captain regarded America as a bomb two ticks from going off; he didn’t dare think that going out planetside would bring her back down to, well…Earth. Or what passes for it these days.

It is at this point that she catches sight of her brother, standing out in the grass—so much greener when your world has been grey for so long. Those eyes, glittering, reflecting the sky—blue here, now, not black and white…(Dorothy, do you think we’re back in Kansas now?)—that smile is for him now. It makes her face shine, and he doesn’t think he deserves that smile, this golden girl…

…How long had it been since he last saw her smile? Really smile. Not an ignorant, or a plastered, or a not-quite-sane smile, but really truly smile?

It always seemed to go back to wars ending. A nice president maybe. No personal happiness. Just that of the world, and being told we can stop fighting our friends now. We can stop fighting…because we made them too weak to stand.

Was there anything personal to speak of?

England and her remembering, in a house in the moors, like a childhood dream, they still cared about each other.

Papa and her baking pastries. Matthew and her eating them all by themselves.

There was them. Her and Arthur. Her and Francis. Her and…him.

They all smiled before. She smiled.

He has a photograph from some year starting with nineteen where he managed to get that million-dollar-sighting, of his million-dollar-girl, and that more-than-a-million-dollar smile. A gentle, flickering thing, like catching a sunbeam with a net.

She smiled when they ran into the forest at their borders, smoking weed, stealing moonshine, running from the rest of the world, and all their bottled happiness.

Whenever their world was about something greater than pursuing happiness…that’s when they seemed to find it.

But you can’t chase a negative, can you? And we always must be chasing something. So let’s chase a smile all the same.

They were children once. Before all the wars and all the victories. Before they needed herb and liquor to laugh. Before they were used up, stripped for their parts, they and their people shipped out, the address on the box a blot of ink.

“We’re in trouble!” a little golden head pops out from behind the coffee table.

Matthew continues writing.

“We got cut off!” she gets closer.

“Cut off? Cut off from what?” he asks with the air of someone who isn’t really paying attention.

“Our platoon, Matthew!” she says like they’d been over this a hundred times. “We got outflanked by the independent squad and now we’re never gonna make it back to our platoon.”

He doesn’t respond.

“We need to resort to cannibalism.”

Matthew still doesn’t look up, unfazed by the should-be-alarming phrase, as if they resort to cannibalism every other day.

“That was fast,” is all he says. Like the only difference from all the other times is it took longer before. “Don’t we have any rations or anything?”

“They got lost. We’re gonna have to eat the men.”

Matthew looks up now, impatience leaking into his tone. “Aren’t you supposed to be practicing for your dance recital?”

She pouts.“I can’t practice without a partner…But maybe…if a kind nation were to offer his help…” she twirls her hair, trying to make herself look like the pretty girls in the books and paintings.

“Papa’s in the other room.” He flicks his pen in that direction.

She jumps up on the couch like a cat, swiping the notebook out of his hands with the same air—

“Amelia—!”

“Dance with me!”

The Great White North blinks up at his sister.

They are small. So small they could follow foxes into their dens, and fit into hollowed out trees in neverlands.

He glares at her. “No,” he picks up the the book, brushing it off. “I need to work on this.”

“You can work on that tomooorow.” She puts her chin on his knee and blinks, giving him those puppy-dog eyes. “don’t you love me?”

He lifts up his knee, trying to get her away. “No, you’re the worst.” He says, sounding very much like a nine-year-old boy.

She starts crying, like any self-respecting nine-year-old girl should.

At this he casts the notebook away, looking at her with pleading eyes “Wait—no! I didn’t mean it! It was just a joke!”

“Mon dieu!” Francis deigns this as the moment to walk into the room. “Whatever is the matter mon petit cheri?”

“Matthew won’t dance with me!” she points accusingly at him, her other hand rubbing her eye.

“Aww...But, my dear, is that a crime?”

Amelia pauses, thinks for a second. Matthew can almost see the gears turning in her head. “Yes! I heard the king say so!”

“Is that so?”

“Yes! He said ‘by my decree, all brothers must dance with their sisters’!”

“Well, if the king said so, then there isn’t much I can do, is there?”

“But Papa!” Matthew stands to protest.

France is already setting the needle down on the old record on the desk. Amelia holds out her hand, smirking, checkmate, written in her eyes.

Matthew snorts, taking her hand.

They were children once. And she smiled, and she danced, and she joked, and she cried and made up laws to get what she wanted.

They were children once. They were happy once.

But that was before. Before the world burned, and the sky turned black. That was before the Academy broke her into bits and made weapons out of the pieces.

Now dancing, music, Earth, happiness, are distant memories. A memory within a memory, until you can’t remember what’s the dream and what’s real, if you made it all up, and what’s your dream, after all.

They were children once. But they grew up, and the earth got used up. And they traded their souls for smiles in dark alleyways and cramped quarters.

She looks so small. So weak. Sitting in the cargo hold of some ship with a name like ‘Dauntless’ or ‘S.S. Elizabeth’—(they all hated people who gave unbreathing things names that breathed). So small. But no trees and fox dens to hide in this time. Just a room full of boxed-up lives, in this purring, creaking bus, taking them to new universes where the grass wasn’t greener.

Their governments provided nothing but the best for their nations’ transport to new worlds. But they could never understand what it’s like to be ripped from yourself. And people could get insensitive at even the best of parties.

So small. Nineteen-but-not-nineteen-years-old, and she looks like she hasn’t eaten in months—(though he has eye-witness accounts that she ate more than one burger in the same sitting a few days ago). Her dress, hanging off her, bones that look like they could snap at any moment. She shivers.

They all look like this; like they’ve been used up.

They say it will be better, out there. Americans will be American on other Americas, and Canadians will be Canadian on other…well, you get the gist. But they know that while their people keep them alive, and their land keeps them alive, because it’s still there…their land is still there. America will always be America, on Earth, Canada will always be Canada…and these are just distant moons, and half-baked dreams.

And they will always only be half-alive now.

She asked them once, she asked them with a child-like yearning in her eyes, and a woman’s anger in her closed fists, if they would die. If, when their feet left their ground, they’d just float away. If this was what dying felt like, and they’d all been fading for a long time now.

Father said he didn’t know. That he hoped not.

Papa said softly that it might be better if they did.

And Matthew said if they did, they would die together.

So now she’s here, worse than dead; undead. A zombie, shaking in the cargo hold of some ill-named ship, because some politician said something stupid—like most of them do.

“Great party, huh?” Matthew spits as he rounds the corner.

Amelia looks up, then puts her head back on her knees. “Great party.” She repeats in the same tone.

“Good cake though,” he offers her the plate he brought from upstairs.

She blinks up at him, then shakes her head and lowers it again.

He sets the cake down on a nearby box.

“Dance with me.” He holds out his hand.

“W-What?” There’s something real in her eyes when she looks up.

“Amelia Jones, may I have the pleasure of dancing with you?”

She rolls her eyes. “There’s no music…Idiot.”

“Then…I’ll sing for you.” He swings back and forth on the rails.

“Really? You? Last time you sang it sounded like a dying cat.”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes.

“Come on.” He holds out his hand. “Do you have any other plans?”

She takes a deep breath and stands. He puts one hand on her waist, the other on her shoulder. Her head falls easily on his shoulder, like it took all her effort just to hold it up, and he’s the last safe bit of land that hasn’t been taken from her.

And he sings a new song:

“Take my love

“‘Take my land

“Take me where I cannot stand.

“I don’t care, I’m still free

“You can’t take the sky from me.

“Take me out

“To the black

“Tell ‘em I ain’t coming back

“Burn the land

“And boil the sea

“You can’t take the sky from me”

And she cries.

They were children once. They grew up once. And they were used up, once. And all it takes is once to make it hard to smile, hard to dance, hard to sing, hard to find any solid ground to stand on, to hold on to.

But not today. Today is different. Today she’s found ground. Today she can dance. Today she can smile. And maybe, just maybe, things will be okay.

She holds out her hand to him, Come dance with me! written into her features, and he moves forward to join her—

And the black comes crashing back, pulled over his head.