Firefly fic

[serafina20]

The ship was unfamiliar. Unfamiliar and empty. The deck was cold and hard underneath Camille's feet and her head felt heavy and dizzy.

"Hello?" she called. She tried opening her mind, but could sense nothing. It was like she was wrapped in cotton. "Is anyone here?"

"Camille?" a voice drifted down to her.

Fisting her dress in her fists, Camille followed the voice. It sounded familiar, comforting. It was the voice of a person Camille had spent nights wrapped around, huddling under the covers less for warmth than for comfort.

"Trinity?" She continued through the ship.

Halfway through, the bodies started to appear. Bodies with their throats slit and holes in their chest. Bodies with glassy eyes and knives in their brains and absolutely none with blood pouring out of their eyes and ears.

No blue hands, then.

Trinity was in the cockpit. The pilot and a couple other bodies were scattered around.

"What happened?"

The seat turned. Trinity was dressed all in black, a pistol in her lap. One arm was cut up and seeping blood, the fabric of her shirt torn to shreds. Her face was pale and streaked with mascara-black tear tracks. Trinity was three years older than Camille, smarter than perhaps even River, and the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen. Powerful, too. River would probably be just as power once she got everything under control.

Sometimes, Trinity had been her lover. But, most of the time, Camille just wanted Trinity for comfort. She was like a sister in the way Prophet was a brother. Okay, not *really*, because they all slept together, often all at once, but they had a bond, the three of them, that held them together. It was like Trinity wasn't complete without two other people in her life and Prophet and Camille...

They just were never complete.

"What are you doing, Trin?" Camille asked, when Trinity simply stared at her, blank-eyed.

"Going back."

"Back?"

She nodded woodenly. "They got me."

"They..." It clicked. "No. How?"

"They almost got you." Trinity raised her hand and touched the monitor at the base of her skull. Then she pointed to Camille's arm.

She looked down. Her entire armed was bandaged and throbbing, blood seeping through the gauze. "That thing. They shot me with some kind of..."

"Computer chip. It crawls under the skin until it finds the monitor. Then it locks on and activates our program. Since we're malfunctioning, we head back to them by any means necessary."

"So you killed everyone."

Trinity nodded. "They're trying to access the mainframe, too. Use me to get back to everyone." Trinity inhaled deeply and lifted the gun. "I can't let that happen."

Alarmed, Camille stepped forward. "Trin, what are you going to do?"

"What I have to do." She met Camille's eyes. "Tell Prophet I'm sorry. Tell him I love him."

"Trinity, no. Trin..." Feeling like the air was made of soup, Camille struggled forward, trying to get to her. "Don't."

"I love you too, Camille." She placed the gun at the base of her neck. Squeezed.

"No!" Camille shrieked, bolting upright.

"Hey, calm down. You're safe." Simon was at her side in a heartbeat, hands on her shoulders, easing Camille onto her back.

Her heart was pounding in her chest. Her eyes were gummy and mouth sticky. She felt like crap.

"Bad dream?"

Camille shook her head and said thickly, "Not a dream." She lifted her hand to rub her eyes. There were bandages wrapped around her arm and an IV stuck in her hand.

Simon lifted the head of the bed so she was sitting up. "How do you feel?"

"Tired," she croaked. "Sore. My arm hurts. I can't move my fingers."

"There was some nerve damage from the knife wounds. Muscle damage, too. My equipment here isn't good enough to heal it, but the damage seems minimal. I've no doubt that the equipment on Briss will be enough to reverse it." Simon smiled at her as he looked at her vitals on the monitors. Then, he pulled Camille's loose shift aside at the neck and carefully cut away a bandage. "You seem to be healing all right. Of course, lying still and not ripping open your stitches will help with that." He cleaned the wound and re-bandaged it.

"Where is everyone? All right?"

Simon nodded and smoothed his hand over Camille's forehead. "Everyone is fine. You were our only casualty. Thank God you came back when you did; Fredrick found out that Blue Hands were massing in on the docks for River. You, Mal and the others got back just in time." He took her good hand and squeezed. "Thank you."

"Don't," she said flatly, pulling her hand away.

Simon made a face that was part sympathetic, part doctorly concern, and part brotherly annoyance. "Do you feel strong enough for food?"

She shrugged.

Simon checked the monitor above her head, and turned away. "I'll bring something in for you in a moment. First..."

Simon kept talking. Camille tuned him out. She reached above her head, switched off the monitors, then yanked off the sticky pads that had been placed on her chest and forehead. The IV needle came out next, followed by a rush of blood. Heedless, she climbed out of bed and left the infirmary, wrapping the blanket around her for warmth.

There were no bodies as she climbed the steps to the cockpit, but, then, she hadn't really expected any. Trinity hadn't been on Serenity and Camille'd gotten that horrible metal thing out of her before it'd attached itself to her monitor.

Well. Simon had gotten it out. Camille had just ripped her muscles and nerves up.

"I hear there's a lake. A secluded one," Wash was saying as Camille entered the cockpit. "Think we can make an escape to it one day?"

"Depends on if the captain wants to stay or not," Zoe replied. She was sitting next to Wash, her feet in his lap.

"Oh, he will. He's not going to leave until Camille..."

"Camille," Zoe interrupted, feet dropping.

"Right, Camille. He's... Oh, *Camille*." Wash turned. "Welcome back, Camille. You're... you're bleeding."

Camille glanced at them, deemed them to be non-threatening, and went to the Cortex.

"Um, Camille? What are you doing?" Zoe asked, sounding alarmed.

She punched in Garrison's code and waited to see if he'd answer the wave.

"Can you at least make her stop bleeding on the controls?"

The screen flickered and Charleston appeared. "This is Base Camp. Identification?"

"Agent Cam... Just put Garrison on," Camille said tonelessly.

"Identification?"

"Put Garrison on."

"Identifica..."

"Put Garrison on you qiang bao hou zi de liu mang!" she screamed.

Charleston flinched and hesitated. He was about to say something when a hand descended onto his shoulder and Garrison said, "It's all right, Charles. Go monitor another line."

Shooting Camille a dirty look, Charleston rose and was replaced by Garrison.

"Hello, xin ai. I'm glad to see you're awake. I was..."

"Trinity's dead," Camille said flatly.

Garrison looked at her a moment without saying anything, like he was trying to process what she'd said. Then, suddenly, he turned away from the screen and shouted, "Avery! Get Prophet to C-wing immediately." He turned back. "How do you know?"

"I connected with her when I was asleep. The Blue Hands shot her with the same thing they shot me with, only it worked with her. It attaches to the monitor, activates our programming, and sends us back to them." She swallowed. "At any cost. But Trin blew her head off and..." Camille shrugged. "She's dead." She barely noticed that Zoe had taken her hand and was wrapping a cloth around it to stop the bleeding.

"Do you still have the thing Dr. Tam took out of you?"

"It's broken," Zoe replied for her. "River smashed it, but we've still got it in the med bay."

Garrison nodded. "Do you know how long until you get there?"

"Seventy-three hours, give or take," Wash supplied. "And that's at a hard burn."

Seventy-three hours. She'd been out of it for almost two weeks. Two weeks, and she had no memory of what she'd done or said or what had happened. Tian ah.

"Camille. *Camille*," Garrison was saying.

She blinked and forced herself to focus. "Yes?"

"Dr. Tam is monitoring your blood chem levels. I've explained what he needs to look for, and if he suggests *anything*, I need you to follow his suggestion. We trust him, understand? Dr. Tam is in charge at least until you get here. All right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Get rest. Lots of it. If possible, don't sleep alone. Even if you stay in the infirmary, get someone to stay in there with you. And don't worry about your arm; we can fix it."

She nodded hollowly.

"Bao bao, please, take care of yourself. Nothing stupid. Nothing self-destructive. I need you to come home whole."

"Why? So you can have your pretty little doll to play with and show off?"

"Camille..."

"Go to hell." She cut the connection.

"All right, those monitors I had you hooked up to were actually doing something," Simon snapped from behind her. "I swear you are actually worse than the Captain and Jayne combined as a patient."

She turned, but she didn't look at Simon. Her eyes went past him to Mal, who was standing just inside, leaning against the wall.

They looked at each other for a long moment. His eyes were dark and unreadable; her senses were so dull at the moment, she couldn't get a read off him. All she knew as that he seemed completely unreachable and foreboding. A stranger.

His eyes searched her face, moving over it like he was starving and she was the first food he'd seen in days. Then, he blinked breaking eye contact.

"Captain?" Zoe said from Camille's side.

Mal glanced at her. "Everything under control?"

Zoe, Wash, and Simon exchanged looks. "Yes," Simon said slowly. "Everything's fine. I'm just going to take Camille back to the infirmary. Would you..."

"Carry on, then." And then Mal turned and left.

More looks were exchanged. Camille just sat, looking at where Mal had been a moment before.

"Don't supposed it'd help you to know that he ain't left your side since you been sleeping," Zoe said.

Camille just hitched a shoulder.

"He was the only one who could calm you the few times you woke and threw a fit," Simon added.

"Yes, because that's what she wants to hear."

"Don't matter," Camille said. She stood, swaying unsteadily on her feet. "Nothing matters anyway." Wearily, she rubbed her eyes and said, "I'm going back to sleep."

There was a pause, and then Simon took her arm. "I'll take you back. Let's go."

And then, because it was what she'd been programmed to do, Camille followed orders.