in space, all time is a relative thing, a fluid construct that people who are way-travelers give up on at some point in their lives, the jetlag a constant battle between planets, their hours brimming with too many black days, too many endless night sky views out the windows. lot’s of ships, serenity included, attempt to remedy this by installing clocks and timekeepers, lists of planets with their given solar cycles, and constant updates about the hour of arrival whenever a destination is determined, to help the crew acclimate better and prepare themselves for planetside reconfiguration. it’s a tedious, strenuous business, perhaps the reason why most people prefer staying on their own planet and the verse isn’t so constantly cluttered with ships.
but for yang jaewon, time has never meant too much to him, never held too tight a grasp, never weighed too heavily across his shoulders, born an alleyway orphan without a set birthdate, learning about years and numbers far later, initiated into space as a preteen, and indoctrinated into the war before the official allotted age. truth be told, even day to day processes have only ever grazed the edges of his coat, his breakfast meals the same as his dinner meals, his daytime bleeding into his nighttime, and him awake for too much of it, him awake through the exhaustion and the second-winds, through his crews’ comings and goings. jaewon doesn’t sleep well, and therefore doesn’t sleep if he can help it, deciding that his time is better suited to his tasks, and those never sleep either.
so when he hears the sound of a baby crying, at first he thinks he’s gone and lost it finally for the night, pressed himself too hard, too far, too broken inside his own cranium, wondering if maybe he’s fallen through his own psyche again. it wouldn’t be the first time the hallucinations have ricocheted into his head, cries and voices haunting him through serenity’s hallways, ghosts calling his name, tugging on his clothes, fingers white and thin and desperate. so he ignores it for a while, waiting for it to leave, waiting for it to pass. it may take hours sometimes, it may take everyone else waking up and filling his ship with light again, but the visions always leave eventually.
but then he remembers, no, there is an actual baby on board, one he’s been named partially responsible for, and the realization prompts him to stand from his seat in the navigation room and wander through the hull, his ears pinned to the noise, following it through to its source. he finds harper and her baby in the mess room, both obviously exhausted, neither of them very happy with the other, tensions and decibels high. the child sure has got some lungs on her. if there’s one thing jaewon does actually know about kids, it’s that sometimes they’re not hungry or thirsty or dirty or tired, they just want to be fussy. “midnight blues?” he steps towards them slowly, carefully, gold eyes landing on the babe. “want me to take her?”
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Nine blinked, thinking about Harper’s comment. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.” Nine spoke without emotion, each enunciation measured like a metronome. He peeked back out behind him, turned back to engage with the pair.
“None of the enemies are running.” Nine stated, noticing the look of disbelief appearing on their asset’s face. A wild bunch of swears came from the guy, looking to enter into an obvious state of shock as bullets chip away the wall acting as their barrier. Nine twisted the pin off a hand grenade and tossed it over the wall, reaching back into his jacket to pull out a protein bar.
“I heard being full helps to make one calmer. Your obvious lack of composure in such an environment may suggest hunger. Have a snack.” Nine offered the bar to their asset, the guy once again widening his eyes, his words failing him.
“Harper. I think this person we are supposed to be rescuing, might be not all there here.” Nine looked towards his partner, and tapped his head at the end of sentence.
the first time it happens, the two of them are surrounded by adversaries, their focused gazes and burning gun barrels firing, the explosive powder still already ringing in the air from the way the captain and his mercenary have ravaged through the slave ship like twin hurricanes, their bullets finding targets much more often than their enemies, thanks to the two of them having become in-sync enough with each other to thwart the bulk of the damage. they lay waste to the vessel, the two of them granting no mercy, no leniency, no grace for those who would bind the poor and weak of persephone’s underbelly and carter them off to the highest bidder; the captain and his merc hold no hesitation in their firepower.
the job is almost finished, almost completed, a duty they both commit to free of any charge, when jaewon looses it, drops control of himself, either mis-stepping or mis-aligning with the universe, the whole galaxy around him flipping out of place violently, the darkness closing in on his vision. no bullet had struck him but he drops down anyway, his eyes rolling back, long limbs falling useless to the ground, and he’s not sure how long he dips out of reality, but it feels like only a second. he wakes up to harper screaming his name while desperately fighting off multiple assailants from three different angles, and she furious of course but he can’t explain things to her, not now, not yet, bad timing. he shakes himself awake and catapults his mind back into the problem at hand.
they win of course and later when harper asks him what the hell that was all about, he acts sheepish and shrugs it off, shaking his head. “i think something hit my head before i could dodge. how long did i duck out for?”
her expression is muted, clinging to her sense of mystery and control, something he himself is only grasping at for the moment, so he can’t read her entirely but he’s sure she doesn’t believe him. “only a few minutes,” she answers him anyway, despite the small muscles in her eyebrows that tug them together slightly, only vaguely letting on to her concern, before she masks it again with her usual flippant, flirtatious banter. “but hey, if you’re a good boy maybe i won’t tell the others how you fainted in the middle of a fight.” a cocky grin spreads across her lips, his hip jutting out with an attitude and once again jaewon forces himself to get a grip and resume his usual positioning for their banter.
the next time it happens, they are more or less alone, albeit on serenity in the evening, loading a carton of food goods into the wall of the cargo bay, random bouts of chatter and conversation shifting between them, the way it always does. sometimes she’s helpful and then other times she’s more interested in goofing around, but he’s glad she’s here nevertheless, given that most the other crew are off eating dinner and there’s no way jaewon could move this crate on his own.
“don’t you ever just relax?” she teases him.
“i do. and then you all come in and ruin it about a minute later.” he rolls his eyes and ignores the way she laughs, the way she knows he’s not really annoyed, the way they both know the exact second yang jaewon stops moving, he’ll be dead; there’s just no slowing down for someone who churns like the heart of a sun, someone who drives forward faster than any ship in the verse, faster than comets through the skies.
ahh, but everything has to come to a halt sooner or later, and when the blackness closes down over jaewon once again, this time it feels so much worse, something dreadful and fearful and cold– a raw and empty sort of cold, the kind that freezes in an instant with a single touch– invading the core of him, just before consciousness leaves. his eyes flicker to harper’s face as she turns, time slowing to a grind as he watches her features crush and wrinkle, worried as he falls, asking him a question he can’t answer. he’s out before he hits the ground.
when gold eyes flicker open once again, he’s in the medbay and strangely enough he already knows what the doctor tells him, the two of them in private, hushed voices because jaewon can’t bare the knowledge leaking out any further than a meter radius around them. he can see harper through the glass door, the only person standing out there which probably means she hasn’t told the rest of the crew yet what’s happened, and he supposes he should be grateful, despite the fact that he knows he’s not getting out of this one with another excuse; her eyes are shining and focused, a determination on her face that jaewon knows there’s just no point trying to resist.
as soon as the doctor steps away from him, harper hits the button and the door opens, stepping inside despite the sigh coming from serenity’s medical staff. “i told you he needs to rest, harper, you need to wait–”
“no, it’s alright,” jaewon contradicts, straining against a blooming headache to sit up and meet her gaze, feeling somewhat stripped without his coat suddenly, which he assumes they’d had to pull off him to get a stick in his veins. he’s gone through something like this before.
“so what is it?” she demands, her voice deceptively lighthearted, a funny little smile between her pursed lips like a knife, her head tilting slightly, her arms crossing with a shrug. “not getting enough sleep? low blood pressure? so blinded by my beauty you keep fainting?”
“cancer.”
the word falls from his lips like a bomb, the radiating explosions echoing through both their chests because even though jaewon has known about this for a hot minute now, he hasn’t said it out loud yet, hasn’t admitted it to any of his crew, to his ship, to his skies, to his own lungs and ears. it feels too real now, too solid, too unshakeable, too weak, and he hates it and he hates his own body and he hates that he’s somehow not strong enough to fend off every disease or toxin.
he tries not to swallow thickly or let his voice shake as he continues, despite the growing seriousness in harper’s eyes. “a tumor, to be precise. logged… somewhere in my head, like a bullet.”
“oh my god, yang…”
he breaks eye-contact, steels himself against any rising of emotion, because he is vallurian, because he is desert storms and mountain ranges and he does not break, not for anything. “i’ve still got a while, i think.”
“we need to get you to a proper hospital.”
“honestly i think i’d rather die.”
“honestly you really might.” now he sees it in her, now he sees the cracks, the breakage, his eyes boring into hers and hers boring into his, only hers are reddening, her hands in fists gripping onto herself for lack of anything else to grab, the muscles in her neck straining. he watches her, watches someone with whom death still has an affect on, someone who can still cry, still love, still allow herself that sense of coming undone, even just a little bit.
might. maybe. perhaps. possibly. as though the chances of his impending descent into hell, his rejoining with the ghosts who constantly howl against him, is somewhat less than certain. as though he has a shot at another six months after the next set, as though the alliance would help someone like him, as though he has enough money to pay for a hospital visit, the drugs, the screenings, the tests, the treatments, as though yang jaewon would ever allow himself to die anywhere other than split between stars and suns and supernovas. “might. yeah.”
.
2. My muse tells yours that they have a terminal illness.
it takes quite a while for the captain to simmer down into a quieter sort of fury, the edges of him still burning and singeing everything he touches, the searing heat of his atmosphere felt from across rooms and hallways as he passes them, but he’s no longer burning holes in his ship with his eyes, no longer snarling answers to questions asked in innocence, his voice curling into a more control state of frustration. five hours is a long fucking time to wear on his nerves even as they scorch across sihnon’s sky at top speed levels, the stress and anger boiling to hatred seething uncomfortably through his ship and through his blood, his marrow, his nerve-endings, and he’s already fought with enough people in his crew already, that he’s beginning to carve in on himself, etching the responsibility into his chest along with the craters already imprinted there.
it’s the helplessness that scratches at him the worst, tugs on his shadow, at the ends of his hair, at the corners of his mind, this seething inability to do anything to help the ship fly faster, to ensure a victory, to ensure his crew’s safety-- all of his crew, even the passengers this argent asshole seems to think jaewon should care less about, the tracker apparently not very intuitive in gauging jaewon’s motivations apparently. which reminds him, once this is all over, they’ll need to perform a sweep of the ship, dock it on some moon somewhere so that everyone can fucking check over everything, find whatever tracker this boat has been infected with.
he already starts in on that a little bit, pulling out the operational panels along the walls of the main hallway, exposing the wires and circuits and buttons that help hold serenity together, having already instructed lynx and his engineers to get to work on other pieces of the ship as well. he’s not as knowledgeable as henry is and thinking about it, it would sure help a lot if henry were here to help fix this, but he’s not a total backbirth either and he’s lived on this ship for much, much longer than anyone else currently alive; if anyone would be able to spot something foreign or out of place, it would be her captain.
he’s halfway through the main hard-wiring when harper comes into the sphere of his hearing, her footfalls heavier than usual with what he hopes and assumes are guns and knives she intends on using to expense on their new mutual enemies. jaewon does intend on gearing up as much as possible himself, the plan to take out as many of these bastards as possible already branding its way over his thoughts, but they’re still a few hours out and despite pushing dex to fly faster, he doesn’t think they’ll be hitting any momentum surprises anytime soon. “you don’t happen to have any grenades on you, do you?” they’ll be landing on a skyplex, grenades might make for a good distraction.
did you know you can show how much you care for people and still be the toughest unstoppable force out there? please consider it.
there had been a book he’d read once, a largetome set before him as challenge of intelligence, something he had beenfuriously clawing to gain acknowledgement for, about a powerful queen who’donce resided on earth-that-was, a woman renown even among her enemies, a womanwhose reach spiraled across the surface of the primitive planet, fingersstretching, voice alluring, her dominion unfurling over the landscape withpoise and strength and an irreproachable design. she’d had red hair like fire,gowns made from the purest silk, commanded multitude of water-faring ships andarmies, men bowing to her advance, believing her a beacon, a symbol, a goddess,and they called her virgin.
in another book he’d poured himself over, helearned of an even older civilization, darker skinned and broader shoulders,men who breathed in deserts like vallurians, women who cast their homes instones, said to be the oldestlineage of earth-that-was, those who first created the written word. theybelieved their rulers were descendants of gods, ethereal half-breeds withcontrol and manipulations over sky and sea, sunlight and nether, and they wouldfollow these leaders even into death, would build them huge, imposing tombs ofpyramids, set in correlation to the stars themselves, with the magneticenergies flowing through the planet, bury them in sacred clothes and herbs andtreasure, believing that they would travel to the next life with everythingthey owned.
jaewon thinks about vera when he thinks aboutunstoppable forces, thinks about her eyes, clear and sharp like blades, aboutthe scars on her face from battles with monsters unnamed, about thethunderstorms in her chest, in her clothes, in her rings. he thinks about thefirst time he’d ever gotten a proper look at her, standing the way eaglesstraighten up, on one of the tallest buildings in valluria, her short, croppedhair flying everywhere around her face, the lights of her ship beaming frombehind her, drawing her a silhouette, drawing her a conqueror, drawing her agoddess, and he remembers how small he’d felt in comparison, how mortal. atwelve-year-old orphan rat, kneeling on the warm, brown stone, bleeding fromhis back, his lips, his chained wrists and ankles, eyes wide, breath caught,and that had been the moment he knew things existed larger than even kalidasa.
“the way i see it, leaders have two options,”this his experience from five years a captain, from four years in the war,from reading and memorizing histories of dead civilizations, “they can be normal people, show and dowhatever they want, say whatever they want, be whatever they want, have sexwith whoever they want, and get whoever they want killed. or they can try tobecome something more.” it’s a raw note, something whispered between only thetwo of them, the night late, the hallways of serenity dark, and jaewon’s eyesmanaging to be even darker. “you can’t be a human and a symbol at the same time,one of them has to give. i don’t think i’m inspiring, but i’m also not asstrong, as fast, as impressive as those i employ, and that’s sort of the point.so i have to be something else.”
he’s not as smart as his crew, not as strong,not as brave, not as quick, and he knows it. he’s not their level of training,their level of prowess, their level of deadly. if he were just a normal person,able to show whatever he wanted and act however he wanted, he would have diedby now, long been ghosted out in the black by any of the vultures who circle throughthe solar system, howling and hungry always for more meat. so instead, he makeshimself a burning sun, the center of gravity, something dealers and otherpirates and the alliance can’t kill, something his crew would follow throughthe haze of space, something they’d trust even when all the stars burn out.
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harper has the tendency to come to his life, leave so much behind and disappear without a trace. the first time they had met had been years ago, when he was simply a child in persephone, living with his second pair of ’parents’, in a gilded cage with no idea of what life was. teachers came and left, doing their money’s worth and filling his head with as much as they could. it wasn’t that lynx ( iseul back then ) hated learning, but it was lonely— boring, so much of the subjects he was given he didn’t care about. whitney was different, unlike anyone he ever met, anyone who had ever been a part of his life. he had stared at her with wide eyes, listened to all she could share, back when they were entirely different people.
then she had disappeared, gone off to somewhere else, leaving only fond memories and a sting in her wake. and he had gone through a lot as well, became someone else — ran away from home, not only changed his name but his entire self. never take any shit, be tough, you’re your own person. iseul became lynx, the silent boy who had hidden under his sheets became the self-proclaimed hacker, always proud of his skills, yet doing his best to ever be cautious.
then she came back to his life again, as harper rather than whitney, and he didn’t know what to expect either. it wasn’t the whitney-jie who had told iseul stories of her travels softly, but someone else, just as strong, sharp, gorgeous — the same fire burned inside of her — but lynx knew she had changed, maybe as much as he had. it was an entirely different scenario this time too. he wasn’t a child anymore, and they were partners, lynx finally having the opportunity to show off how good he could be. it wasn’t the helpless child on a trip to town, but someone with sharp edges too, an over-abundance of faked confidence to go with what he could make of himself.
she had smiled then too, this time sharper, flirty words fell from his lips with ease — and lynx realized maybe he wasn’t as closed off as he hoped he was. the flutter in his chest was pushed down, and he did his best to be engrossed in the job instead of what his heart might hide from him. as they ran down the emergency stairs of a six story building, he had laughed with her, their glory shared over a couple of drinks that same night. he had looked up at her when alcohol ran through their veins, her laughter echoing inside the crowded bar. his eyes held something similar to what they had all those years ago back in persephone, staring at the same girl with the stories, someone who had been in his memories ever since, someone who had made him yearn of a life other than the one he was living.
he was lost, unsure what to do with the feelings that rose up in his chest, the past weeks all a blur of planning, chatting, flirting. it was all light-heartedly done, he knew so, he wasn’t dumb enough to believe otherwise. that was who she was, but it didn’t change the fact that it hurt. alcohol did nothing to numb the feelings but only enhance them — the weight on his chest growing as they continued to talk through the night. his rationality took the back seat as he stared at her, for too long, watching how she talked, how she joked, his mind conjuring images of what there could be if it was another life entirely.
it hurt, even though he himself wouldn’t try to understand why it did. he didn’t want to feel — he was alone after all, wasn’t that the whole idea of the identity he made for himself ? untouchable, unseen, alone. then why did he crave her touch so, and felt the breath leave his lungs as he realized it was never meant to be. they had been working long enough for him to see her with other people, and he knew he wasn’t special. not in the way she was special to him. he was too young, too brash, too — everything. even though the facts were laid in front of him, he had hoped that night, closed his eyes as he leaned against the dirty bathroom walls, hoping he was too drunk to remember anything the day after. perhaps it was what they both thought as they slept that night, limbs mingled into one, but the intimacy did nothing but deepen the pain.
when he woke up, it was all done. she was gone. leaving him with an aching head, and a heart that was shattered on the ground. it didn’t make sense — and he shook his head, stood up, and made himself forget it in the way he forgot everything bad that had happened in his life. it brought a tinge of guilt with it as he did so, that he put her in the same category as the abusers, the adults he had sworn not to be. lynx needed to cope. harper deserved better. and it was all about that. he was never going to be good enough, so the best thing to do was to bury it all with everything else, forget the possibility of them ever being together. he was sure he hadn’t even crossed her mind in such way, and going through that road would only bring him pain. they didn’t have any way of contacting one another, no way for him to message her — and he promised himself not to look her up either. she was simply a partner after all, someone he had met when he was a child, when he didn’t know much. and maybe he still didn’t know as much as he claimed now, but he believed he made the right choice. love wasn’t an option for those like him, not with her — not with someone who deserved the world, not with someone who held so much fire inside her that brightened wherever she went. it was done. she was gone.
years pass, and when he sees her for the first time now, his heart skips a beat, and that’s it. nothing else. it’s all in the past, what was left of his feelings buried six feet under. it’s the best, because he knows one of them will disappear sooner than later. let it be iseul or lynx. whitney or harper. they’re not meant to be.
she makes her move and he’s flustered, heart set to pounding, skin flushing cold and electrified, and if he’d managed to get a word in edgewise between her accusation, declaration, and swift departure, he wouldn’t have done himself any good anyway, stumbling all over whatever sounds his throat would refuse to let him fully annunciate. her weight settles on him just long enough to bring his hands up to hold her in shock, before she’s just as quick to leave him there, and in her sudden absence, fury floods in. “turn me dow— i’m not the cowardice type to confess to someone without showing my face for it, alright!” he throws a piece of his food at her back, teeth clenched, blood pressure high. “and don’t call me ‘jaebae’ i’m your fucking captain, and i’ll throw you in the airlock if you try any of that shit again.”
somewhere on board the firefly class spaceship named serenity, there is a baby crying.
it’s not a sound endymion ever thought he’d hear on the supposedly terrifying pirate ship, especially not after the tales and stories saito has told him about his own travels on the ship in a past life, his history long and complicated, his knowledge of the verse and planets skewed interestingly in twisted, secret ways. saito knew a lot of different things about a lot of different kinds of people and places and laws, but the princeling wonders if he’d have any sort of experience dealing with the situation endymion is currently faced with. namely, the sobs and whines of a fussy child.
jaewon had to let him out from his designated room at some point, despite his obvious hesitancy with it, if only to let endymion eat and wash himself, which he supposes the doctor would have him think is a mercy he should be grateful for. the captain still won’t speak with him though, won’t even entertain him-- the guy just walks out of every room endymion enters and locks himself up inside his navigation room, or the bridge to fly the ship, and won’t open up no matter what endymion threatens or promises. every time they land somewhere, captain yang bolts the zephyran inside his room and leaves him there until they take off again, as though endymion isn’t even trustworthy enough to set foot on another planet, as though he’s ready to run given the slightest chance. which isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s insulting nevertheless.
so he finds himself wondering quite a bit while they fly, trying to bother henry as little as possible, occasionally sitting with galiad and reciting the prayers and hymns he still remembers, which admittedly, embarrassingly, are only a few. his sister melliandre would be ashamed of him; he can already hear the kinds of scolding she’d dole out on him. he would butcher all the stars in the sky just to hear her again, to get that opportunity again, to be spoken to by her even if it’s in anger. as long as she’s still alive to do it, he wouldn’t care.
he hasn’t heard anything about zephyr at all, and it’s driving him crazy, but what’s maddening even worse in the immediately sense, is that there’s an extremely unhappy child on board, and if there’s anything endymion knows how to do well, with thirty-four of his own siblings at home, it’s deal with children. he finds the source of the noise in the mess hall, another passenger cradling the wriggling creature as best she can while trying to make up a bottle. it looks like she’s juggling several things at once, so endymion hurries over. “here, can i help?” he touches the bottle lightly, not trying to take it from her, just making a note. “this might be too cold. can i heat it for you?”
