fandom_muses: Application

[big_damn_hero]

1) What is one thing you have learned from your past?

Mal didn’t know why he stood there...why he couldn’t move, just watch the dining hall through the doorway, a few steps back and just off to the side, where he could see but not be seen.

Everyone was inside...settled in, sprawled out, or busy doing something with themselves. Kaylee stood on a stool, fixing a light while Simon held the stool...and her, hands on her hips as she looked down to share a warm smile with him. River was giving Jayne hell, trying to mess with his knives while he was cleaning them...and over in one corner, Zoe and Inara sat talking, heads bowed in voices Mal was sure were soft enough even those in the room couldn’t hear.

He never learned...not one gorram thing. Too many times in the past, believing in anything had only ended in pain and death. He ought to know better by now...never step up, never trust, never give his heart to anything or anyone.

The learning never quite stuck in his head, though...not until his mistakes had been made and people were dead. He’d tried to change the world once in the name of freedom, in the name of a young man’s ideals and all he got for his trouble was a lot of scars...not all of ‘em branded into his worthless hide.

So he gave up the fight for freedom...or so he thought. All it took to unlearn *that* lesson was a ramshackle little Firefly class ship that promised him just that. Then came the fight not for freedom, but for the right to exist...and it was Serenity Valley all over again. Scars on his hide, scars on his soul...realizing the fact that he ought not to have ever bothered.

But that was the hell of believing in anything...no matter how useless it all was, no matter how tragic...victory’s always worth it.

Maybe that’s what ate him so...that he could see Book and Wash’s deaths and being not just necessary, but *right.* Hurt like hell, but this time he’d taken the valley...he and his careworn little band of Browncoats. The Alliance couldn’t beat them twice.

Now here he was again, believing...believing in a high-class doctor and a naive little grease monkey with a sweet smile. He had faith in an old battle ally, a mercenary, and a disturbed young woman with the secrets to Heaven and Hell locked in her brain.

And he had given more than he wanted to into the hands of a Companion...the one woman he could never trust with anything he had to offer, because it all came from the heart.

Still...looking at them all together was like looking into the past...at a young, hardheaded ex-Browncoat that saw the key to happiness in a rundown old boat meant for scrap.

Seemed like he was never meant to leave Serenity...not the valley, not the ship...and not the family.

And if he were honest with himself...which he rarely was...he knew that he didn’t want to.


2) Describe a dream that you've had. How did the dream make you feel?

A dream, huh? Well, I reckon I got a few I could spin a tale about...but I got one in particular that’s any measure of unusual...the kind of unusual worth talkin’ about, anyhow. Most dreams are pretty straightforward and whatnot...somethin’ happens to ya, and on occasion it’s in a manner not fittin’ to reality. Like the kind you get as a youngster...nightmares ‘bout showin’ up to the schoolroom in your britches, or worse, nothin’ but what nature gave ya.

Worst dream I tend to have ain’t nothin’ like that. And yes, you read me right there...I dream it often, and it’s the kind of thing that makes a man wonder if he’s just plain kwong-juh duh or something.

It’s a sound. And ain’t nothin’ but a sound.

I ain’t doin’ nothin’, and I’m sayin’ even less...all I do is dream, and all that sits in my head is a sound, so loud I come nigh on to screaming. Lasts for years, seems like, ‘til I finally wake up...sometimes shaking so bad my teeth start knockin’, sometimes damn near swimming in my own cold sweat.

Now right off the bat? I’ll tell you: that sound don’t come from Miranda. That ordeal was one I ain’t like to forget soon...but those things I saw and did and felt there, they don’t haunt my sleep. They haunt me wide-awake. It’s the kind of horror that won’t allow for bein’ buried in your brain unawares...I could point out our own little albatross real easy as a ‘for instance.’

The sound I hear comes from Serenity Valley...it’s ships overhead, our own angels gettin’ all their wings chopped off. I don’t hear Zoe tellin’ me we’ve been ordered to lay down arms, I don’t hear her sayin’ that command’s telling us to give up. I hear it in the sounds of those ships, leaving us to rot in Serenity Valley.

Now that dream, that *sound* don’t scare me ‘cause we got beat that day. Ain’t ‘cause I’m so tender hearted that the Alliance gives me such a fright, neither. I ain’t that fong luh just yet.

Reason I get so ruttin’ riled by that nightmare is ‘cause that one sound...that roar of engines overhead...that right there’s the sound of the most vile evil that a man could ever know. It’s the sound of hope not bein’ lost, but bein’ taken, ripped away from a man like it’s some piece of shiny he took that don’t belong to him.

And I’ll tell you, much as I hate any and all that call themselves friendly with the Alliance? That’s not a fate I’d wish even on the likes of them.