Simple Things (the “Judged By Its Cover” remix) Remix Author: Kurukami
Original Story: Simple Things by Tara LJC O'Shea
Summary: Book thinks of the past, present and future.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Firefly
Spoilers: Through Objects in Space.
It used to be so simple.
There was the mission, and the mission was what mattered. Things, or people, that got in the way of completing the mission were just obstacles to be removed, nothing more. From the very beginning, when he’d first been recruited into the covert branch so many long years ago, the man who now called himself Book had understood that. He’d traveled the breadth of the Alliance for the better part of three decades with that certainty inside of him, because he knew the actions he took helped keep that union intact and preeminent.
He’d deceived. Stolen. Slandered. Infiltrated. Sabotaged. Kidnapped. Interrogated. Tortured. Murdered. Terrorists, anarchists, criminals, revolutionaries and radicals and extremists… and occasionally, because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, innocents. Men, women, and children, more than he cared to count or remember.
Until the day he discovered, quite by accident, that the Agency answered not to the authorities and the Alliance’s better interests, but to its own inner circle. One interested only in the exercise of its own power, and willing to do virtually anything in order to preserve it. One with tendrils deep inside the Alliance bureaucracy, able to obtain the most elite clearances and exert pressure on virtually any individual.
That had been just over seven years ago, in the final, desperate conflicts of the War.
At first he hadn’t believed what he’d found. Hadn’t been willing to admit to himself that what he’d spent more than half his life in the pursuit of had been a lie. He’d investigated, carefully, surreptitiously, tracking threads of information through clouds of false data. Until he finally comprehended the horrific entirety of what he had been a part of.
He’d cached what resources he could without drawing undue attention, a few key identities and some funds, and then found a way to take his retirement early. Chose to go quietly into that good night – or at least provided the façade that he had. And then… he did his best to disappear. After all the time he’d spent in his profession, he knew perfectly well how far his own reach could extend and what his limitations were. One man alone could do nothing overt against that magnitude of gathered influence and power, could go to no authority or truly hope to find redemption. If he did, he’d most likely be found face down in a trench somewhere with a bullet in the back of his skull. Assuming he was found at all.
Despite that, he couldn’t find it in himself to simply throw up his hands and live out his life as comfortably as he could. Acceptance of what was had never been a part of his nature. So he traveled from world to world, hoping to find someplace he might consider home, and tried to right what wrongs he could. To somehow make amends for the things he had done.
But what little he was able to accomplish never felt like enough, and most of his efforts were frustrated. Regardless of what he did, it couldn’t stop the guilt gnawing away inside of him. With each day that passed, each failure to affect the wrongs he saw, he felt more like a shell of the man he’d once been; hollow inside, with echoes of the things he’d done cycling endlessly in his thoughts. He’d tried to find his way back to the emotional surety he’d once had, the simplicity of purpose that had sustained him through hardship and moral questions and all the long, cold years spent between the stars. But he could find no foundation, no structure to begin to cover the aching despair and consuming memories. Until finally, he discovered that the only thing he still believed in enough to prevent trying to drown his memories in drink was something he’d thought he had left behind in his youth.
That was how he’d found his sense of self again, staring silently upwards from the timeworn wooden pews of an aging country church on the outskirts of Persephone. In the bleak light of that midwinter morning, he could hardly believe he was sitting there, could hardly reconcile what he’d dismissed as irrelevant for so long a time suddenly seeming like the only thing worth staying alive for. It didn’t make sense… and yet, for the first time in more than a year, the empty anxieties and despair churning inside him had seemed somehow lessened.
It’s not about making sense. It’s about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It’s about faith. You don’t fix faith, River. It fixes you.
And so, for a time, he hid himself away from the world. Took up the name Book, to signify (at least to himself) that he had turned the page on his past, started to write a new chapter in his life. Built things with his hands. Planted a garden, and took pleasure in creation rather than destruction. Lived simply. He entered the Southdown Abbey to meditate, to pray for absolution, and to try to find some measure of acceptance within himself for his past. But as time passed, he saw what was occurring in the aftermath of the War, and he knew he couldn’t in good conscience live out the rest of his life in seclusion. So, finally, he ventured out into the ‘verse again, thinking to share a portion of the hope and surety he’d found with those who had lost their purpose as well…
… and maybe, once again, try to do what he could to frustrate the efforts of those he used to work for.
Two days out of the sanctuary he’d found, his life had already grown complex again, and elements of what he’d once been had come to the fore like old friends saying hello.
I’ve beaten a lawman senseless. I’ve fallen in with criminals. I watched the captain shoot the man I swore to protect. And I’m not even sure he was wrong.
Flashes of the past, things he’d done and tried so hard to forget during his time at the Abbey, came back to him unexpectedly, triggered by the most mundane of things. Seeing a weapon holstered at someone’s hip reminded him of how a gun’s grip in his hand would feel – the wooden contours comfortingly familiar, and the muscles of his hand recalling precisely how to put a bullet inside a platinum’s radius twenty meters away. Standing outside the infirmary, his head would fill up with the cold statistics of which sort of wounds would be fatal in a short while, and which would leave someone still able to answer questions for a span of time without medical treatment. The way his limbs would strike a particular stance by long habit at the first sign of trouble and kick his perceptions into sharp focus. The light reflecting off the blade of a knife as he cut into a potato summoned the recollection of blood and bone and gristle and screams.
I don’t give half a hump if you’re innocent or not. So where does that put you?
Sitting in Serenity’s kitchen, Book suppresses a shudder at the memory of his own words as he laughs at Jayne’s aspirations to sainthood. He’s always been good at that – disguising what he felt or thought underneath a mask of false emotion or character. It was part of why he was so good at what he used to do. He’s done it for so long now that it has become almost second nature, and almost become more difficult to truly show what’s inside him.
He doubts anyone among the crew would honestly want to know, regardless. Better to keep his role among them simple.
From the corner of his eye, he suddenly catches a glimpse of River walking away through the galley’s forward hatch. But only a glimpse, as though his eye wants to slip off the girl’s slender form and his mind wants to forget she was ever there – even though, thinking back to the events of a minute or so ago, he realizes that she’d been standing in the mess listening to the conversation between him and Jayne the entire time.
She seems to be doing that more and more recently. It’s something that he believes the others haven’t fully understood yet. He’s not certain he understands it sometimes, even though he remembers full well some of the research the Agency was pursuing before he retired. Is she testing herself, to see what she can accomplish? Doing it unconsciously, uncomprehending of the things she can do or perceive? For Book is certain that she can perceive more than she’s saying, and thinks that perhaps the research he remembers has progressed further than he would have expected.
That certainty evidences itself in so many of the little things that River does and says, in the way that she has of intuiting the truths behind the masks everyone wears. The first suspicions had arisen in his mind with her behavior during the ill-fated train job for Niska… and the more he’s witnessed the more certain he has become.
You’re afraid that we’re going to run out of air. That we’ll die gasping. But that’s not going to happen. We’ll freeze to death first.
Book wonders what she’s seen in him, and in the others; wonders if she grasped the full extent of the memory that had thrust itself into the fore of his thoughts when she passed through the kitchen. It concerns him that she might not have, that she’s only understood a portion of the whole – or that while she may perceive and understand, what was done to her prevents her from truly comprehending. The shocked expression on her face, fresh in his memory now that he knows she’d been standing there, suggests that she unearthed more than he’s spoken of to any of the crew.
Perhaps he should speak to her about what she’s seen, about his past. Explain who he once was, what’s changed in him, how he came to be here. But the uncertainty about whether she’ll truly grasp the whole of it makes him hesitate – and the freshly healed scarring on Jayne’s chest attests to River’s unpredictable nature.
He has no idea what else they might have trained her to do.
Sudden shouts ring out from below, a cacophony of intermingled voices and emotions. Alarm, fear, confusion, panic, and before Jayne can do more than turn Book is on his feet and through the hatch. But by the time he reaches the bottom of the stairs, it’s all over – he catches another glimpse of River as she flees to the dubious sanctuary of her quarters in the passenger dormitories, emotions writ strong on her face.
He eavesdrops on the end of the conversation between the Captain and Simon by long habit, stilling his breath to low even cycles so as to better discern their words. Observes them, their silhouettes distorted through the thick glass windows of the infirmary. Sees the gun in the captain’s hand, held by its barrel.
“… are talking to a doctor.”
“Yeah, okay. My point is – it could’ve been you she might have shot just then. The doctor, as you made note of. And who exactly could fix you? Not nobody. We’re deep in space, corner of No and Where. You take extra care with her, ‘cause we’re very much alone out here.”
But things just won’t stay simple.
Kaylee’s revelation is disquieting. It suggests that whatever River was being prepared for extended far beyond the rumors of the initial research he’d read years ago. He clasps his hands together and tries to hide the anxiety the current situation evokes in him.
She’s just a girl.
But at the same time she’s exceedingly dangerous, and very likely trained as an assassin by those who once taught him.
The dichotomy unsettles him more than he would like to admit. But he tries to soften the impact for the others, knowing that he is perhaps the finest example that someone trained to kill and maim need not be a danger to those nearby. The others of the crew accepted him readily enough; why not River as well?
“Could be she saved your life, Kaylee.” Book keeps his words calm.
Kaylee looks at him with her innocent gaze. “Oh, I’m all aware of that. And I’m not saying –“
“She probably didn’t even know what was going on,” Simon interrupts. “You know, thought it was a game.”
Jayne scoffs at Simon’s tentative comment. “Later on you can explain to me how that’s a comfort. Might have to use some of that ‘math’ we’ve been hearin’ about.”
“What we got to deal with here is the larger issue,” Mal insists, grim-faced. “And that larger issue is we got someone on board this ship who might be a danger to us. Ain’t a question of whether we like her.” The captain pauses, sighs, arms crossed. “Some of us have grown attached to River. Kaylee, I know you have or you would’ve spoken up sooner. Which, by the by, you should have. I find River pleasant enough myself… but she does have an oddness to her. And I ain’t just talking about her proficiency with firearms. Girl knows things. Things she shouldn’t. Things she couldn’t.”
So he wasn’t the only one with questions and misgivings, Book thinks, as barbed comments fly back and forth between Jayne and Wash. The crew isn’t unintelligent – Jayne aside, perhaps – and surely they’ll come to the same conclusions he has. After that, what matters is how they – and the Captain in particular – choose to react.
Inara cuts off the edged banter with a withering comment, and Simon steps carefully into the following silence with a carefully measured comment. “She’s deeply intuitive. It’s true that sometimes…”
“I don’t think she’s intuitive, Doctor. I think she’s a reader.”
All eyes but Book’s turn towards Mal at his words, and Zoe says what’s suddenly in everyone’s minds. “Psychic?”
The anxiety curls and knots in Book’s stomach while the others speak disbelievingly. He looks down, trying to conceal the roiling emotion inside of him, offering up a silent prayer that the Captain will not be inclined to rash action.
“Whoa, back up a second,” Jayne cuts in. “Are you sayin’ she really reads minds?”
Mal looks evenly at Jayne, then lets his gaze sweep around the table. “Or near enough. Am I alone in thinking along these lines?”
“No.” Book matches the Captain’s stare with his own. Though they may be separated on matters of faith, he hopes that the other will see eye-to-eye with him on this. Book cannot countenance the thought of simply putting River aside, like an engine coil that’s stopped working properly. It seems unlikely that’s what Mal is working his way towards – after all, Serenity is largely peopled by individuals who didn’t fit in anywhere else – but if so, Book knows he’d sooner leave the ship behind than accept such a decision.
“Well…” Jayne slaps the table with one hand, decisively. “I don’t like the idea of someone hearin’ what I’m thinkin’.”
“No one likes the idea of hearing what you’re thinking,” Inara waspishly shoots back.
Convince the Captain, and the rest of the crew will most likely go along, Book reasons. Perhaps the judicious observation of the kinship between Mal’s antagonists and the ones who must be pursuing River…? “The Alliance could have any number of uses for a psychic.”
“A psychic… or an assassin,” Zoe states.
Simon’s face is filled up with hurt and confusion and reluctance. “She’s just a kid. She just wants to be a kid.”
Mal calmly regards Simon and the rest of the crew. “I wish it were that simple.”
Is this what life is, out here? Book remembers his words to Inara, months ago, like they’d been said yesterday. Her reply haunts the corners of his memory, re-emerging every time he reconsiders his decision to stay with Serenity. Sometimes. But maybe you’re exactly where you ought to be.
The meeting breaks up shortly thereafter, most of the crew silent in their consideration as they leave for their berths. Simon moves away slowly, unhappy and uncertain. Caught up in his own thoughts, Book merely watches as Kaylee pursues him. Once, he’d wished for something of the sort, the youthful infatuation and fumbling that is so evident between the two of them. He still does, sometimes. But the way his life was back then – always on the move, possessed of a dozen or more aliases, and putting himself in harm’s way more often than not – no, he wouldn’t complicate another’s life that way. Besides, pursuing that path would’ve diluted the focused purpose he’d had then. I never married, he’d told Kaylee the first day they met, and it was the strictest truth.
And now… well, his life is complex enough without entanglements of that nature.
He listens to the pair of them talking in the corridor as he finishes rinsing the dish he’d used earlier while speaking with Jayne. Their tentative courting of one another brings a weary smile to his face. They are young, and even out here among the borderworlds their lives are filled with simple pleasures that he can scarcely remember knowing in his own youth. When he moves over to descend to the passenger dorms he catches a glimpse of Simon hurriedly pulling his hand back from Kaylee’s hair, like a teenager in the middle of an embrace who’d been startled by a responsible adult. “Good night, you two,” he murmurs, smiling, as he passes them.
He hears them fumble through their goodnights in the wake of his passage as he makes his way down to the bathroom to wash up before bed. He’ll try to talk to River in the morning, he decides. That should be soon enough, and the outcome of that conversation will hopefully give him some leverage in the discussion of what course of action the Captain will select.
He sponges the sweat of the day from his face and arms, slings his towel over his shoulder, and steps out to return to his bunk. He feels strangely at peace despite the animosity of the discussion earlier. With the certainty that he will do what he can to help River, a calm settles into his thoughts; the simplicity of purpose is once again inside of him. There’s no doubt in his mind that this life will become complicated again soon enough, but for the time being—
Clank.
Book stops short, looks over at the staircase, but there’s nothing in sight. Might have been something Kaylee’s working on up in the engine room. But if someone’s hurt... “Hello?” he calls out, voice softly echoing back at him from the darkness. There’s no other response, and he turns away to—
Clank.
Hmm. Curiosity piqued, he walks back over to the base of the stairs and gazes up into the darkn—
end
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Simple Things (the “Judged By Its Cover” remix)
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