Mal-Lilly-Wash, flying lessons.

[badinlatin]

The door from Milliways opens, and the first thing that greets Mal is the smell of Inara's incense.

He'd forgotten about the door leading into Inara's hatch, and holds out a hand for Lilly so she doesn't trip over the awkward lip of the entranceway.

"Wish like hell the door'd stop movin' around on me like that - I went into the bar through the door to the bridge."

Comments

[awesome_lilly]

"Oh, it could be worse," Lilly says, taking his hand. She's actually kinda grateful that they're stepping into Inara's beautifully decorated shuttle rather than the bridge. She hasn't been back to Serenity since... well, since the bridge was a redlit mess of shattered glass and twisted metal and Wash's broken body.

"I mean, at least it's never been the door from your bathroom or something."

Her voice is light, but she hasn't turned around to walk out of the shuttle yet, and she hasn't let go of his hand.

[badinlatin]

"My bathroom is a retracting urinal in the corner of my bunk, meimei," Mal informs, a fact of life.

Mal doesn't mind the hand-holding. It just takes him a moment to think about any particular reason that might be behind it.

"Ready to go take a spin?" Mal asks carefully, a wider smile than he feels strapped into place.

[awesome_lilly]

That gets an actual smile, even if it doesn't get him his hand back.

"Lead on, mu ji. And just remember, I haven't driven anything in ages, so this corner of space better be not have any, like, big obstacles or stuff."

[badinlatin]

"We're 20,000 miles away from the nearest planet. We'll be fine."

He hopes.

Leading Lilly out of Inara's shuttle, they make quick work of the short distance between the catwalks and the entrance to the bridge. Mal goofily waves a hand at the leering face of Crichton the T-Rex as he enters, and gestures Lilly to the left-hand chair.

"You make yourself comfy, I'll be over here."

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly grins, looking around. The bridge looks like nothing worse than dinosaur battles have ever happened to it.

She settles herself happily in the left-hand chair.

"Oooh. What's this button do?"

[badinlatin]

"No touching!" Mal flails at her quickly. "Just...gimme a second or three to make sure Wash's got nothin' that'll blow us all up before I go to explaining things."

'Oooh. What's this button do?' will now be Mal's crackedout dream narration for at least a week.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly sighs, making a great show of folding her hands in her lap.

"Fine. I won't touch anything. I'll just drive the ship with my mind."

[badinlatin]

Mal corrects, "Fly. You fly a ship, not drive," without any real force, giving a few cursory glances to radar and navsat before turning off the autopilot to both his and Lilly's controls.

"Now, both hands on the yoke. The...steering wheel."

[awesome_lilly]

"Aye aye, Captain Mu ji," Lilly replies.

Both hands go on the steering wheel, and she looks over expectantly at him.

[badinlatin]

Mal flips the autopilot on long enough to move from his seat to Lilly's, a quick explanation of the screens in front of her.

"'S different than drivin' a car or some such. You're driving in 360 degrees. Up down left and right. Forward on the yoke is nose-down, back is nose-up."

Autopilot is switched off.

"Try an easy left turn."

[awesome_lilly]

"Okay."

Lilly goes to glance in a mirror... which Serenity does not have, and then looks down at the controls.

"Do I have to check my blind spot or anything? And, uh, do spaceships have blinkers?"

[badinlatin]

"...Since I ain't got clue one as to what blinkers are, no. No blinkers. And the only thing you'd ever have to check is the radar screen, see if anythin's heading our way, but there ain't. So. All's clear."

"Just...easy. No sudden movements. Messes with the anti-grav."

[awesome_lilly]

"Got it."

Lilly moves the steering wheel, as she continues to think of it, slowly to the left, and her eyes widen as the view shifts and she feels the ship move.

"Mal! I'm totally doing it, look!"

Unfortunately, in her excitement she also leans forward, just a bit, but enough to make the ship dip down suddenly as it turns.

[flybywash]

Wash was looking through the cargo bay storage for a spare wire gauge he could stick on a broken crybaby.

Key word there. Was.

Because the proximity alert didn't go off, sure, but the ship just did some kind of lurch that almost sent him reeling against the wall. Without thinking, Wash instantly turns and hightails it for the stairs as fast as he can.

He's taking them two at a time as he emerges onto the upper decks, only slowing when he sees Mal standing by the pilot's seat.

"Mal!" he yells, limping up the corridor. "What the tiān xiăodé are you doing with the -- small blonde person flying...."

Blink.

"Lilly?"

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly's trying to get the ship level again, which she manages after a mildly bobbly period just as Wash comes up the corridor.

"Wash!"

She looks back quickly to beam at him.

"I'm driving the ship!"

She glances back out the window.

"Uh, Mal? When am I supposed to stop turning left? Space isn't big on the visible lane markers."

[badinlatin]

"Hi Wash."

A plaintive look. I promised?

"And uh...any time you want to, Lilly."

[flybywash]

Wash is still stuck on the staring.

On the one hand, no malfunctioning autopilot. That's shiny.

On the other:

Calmly, "Mal, just what kind of things are you teaching this poor girl?"

[awesome_lilly]

"Left turns!" Lilly announces happily, easing the steering wheel back.

"Also that spaceships don't have blinkers or rear-view mirrors. And that I need to check my radar screen before making a turn."

She peers out the window.

"Am I going straight now? Is there a thingy that tells me when I'm going straight? Like, Earth has roads for that and space has...?"

[badinlatin]

"Constellations. Et cetera."

Mal can take off and land again without getting his crew dead in the middle.

He leaves fancy to Other People, and looks up to Wash for further explanation.

[flybywash]

Wash looks back, and heaves an overdramatic, long-suffering sigh.

"Okay. A clause about me being the only person who gets to give flying lessons on this bridge needs to happen. 'Scuse me for just ooonne sec...."

He leans over to turn a group of switches all the way to the left of the console, then types in a quick command on the primary keyboard. It beeps in reply; satisfied, he crosses to the co-pilot's chair and finishes shunting over a little bit of the control to that station.

"Constellations, radar, pitch/yaw/roll readings -- that's the tiny one in the middle right -- we're in Norton Quadrant right now, so besides that big arc, your primary guidepoint's the star cluster in the bottom center right there."

[awesome_lilly]

...yeah. Lilly peers down at a small screen. There are numbers. There are Chinese characters. They are equally incomprehensible.

She peers out the window, spots the star cluster, and brightens.

"Oh, okay. I just want to keep those stars in the bottom middle? Shiny, I can do that."

It's not too hard for a girl who played a few videogames in her day. But there is one thing missing...

"How do I make it go faster?"

[badinlatin]

"Guuuuhyoudon't," Mal blurts out in a rush, moving a bit closer to Lilly's controls.

"Speed is...not a good plan. Heh. At the moment. Right, Wash?"

[flybywash]

Without missing a beat, "Speed is a very very bad plan that ends in death and destruction and running out of fuel before we hit the next point so no no speed. No. Speed can happen later, after the turning and the refueling."

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly sighs.

"You guys are no fun. Fine. No speeding yet."

Something occurs to her, and she turns to smile hopefully at them.

"Mal said there's anti-grav... does that mean barrel rolls are okay? I've done them before!"

When she was a raven. Shhhh.

[flybywash]

Wash considers Lilly for a long moment.

To Mal, "Naomi gets my dinosaurs, you get my shirts, and Zoe gets everything else."

And back to Lilly: "Okay. One barrel roll. But carefully, he adds, pointedly. "First, look up and to the right, and hit those three yellow buttons right in a row there."

[badinlatin]

"Yes. Yellow buttons are good."

Mal grips the back of the copilot's chair, and waits. Not that he doesn't have faith in Lilly or anything.

But.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly dutifully looks up and to the right, grinning madly, and hits the three yellow buttons.

"Here we go!"

She twists the wheelyoke sideways, carefully keeping it as level as she can as the stars in the bottom middle of her screen start rotating around and up.

It's probably not the smoothest barrel roll Serenity's ever performed, but it is almost certainly the one accompanied by the most gleeful giggling.

[flybywash]

Wash is doing his best to stop hanging onto the other yoke for dear life. It's mostly working.

Sort of.

As Lilly goes, Wash subtly sneaks in a few adjustments to slow the roll and keep them on course. And...okay, it's kind of hard not to grin at the way she's laughing.

It's not smooth, sure, but it's exactly how flying's supposed to be.

[badinlatin]

And Lilly's laughing.

This is enough for Mal.

As the ship levels out again, Mal beams at the girl with a quip, "Suppose you'll make a captain yet."

[awesome_lilly]

"Hell yeah."

Lilly is practically glowing as the stars end up in the bottom center of her screen again.

"Maybe the next time you take a vacation I could even fill in for you!"

She's probably kidding. Probably.

[flybywash]

"If you do, can I get a raise?"

Ridiculously hopeful.

[badinlatin]

"No raises for pilots who steal the captain's wine," Mal retorts with a grin.

[flybywash]

"I gave it back!" he protests. "And I didn't steal that much."

Beat.

"Did I?"

[awesome_lilly]

"I'm going to have to go with the 'stealing Captain's wine is wrong' precedent here," Lilly announces.

"I want it to carry over for when I'm captain too."