Malcolm Beauregard Reynolds

He looks...occupied, so don't spook him.

Inara. Just her name makes Mal smile. And for that, ladies and gentlemen, Mal feels like shit.

He is managing to climb the stairway to Inara's shuttle more quickly now as he is healing quite nicely. He retreats to Inara's shuttle far more often now, and pulls the shuttle hatch open. It's a little more...bendy than Mal is normally used to.

Can it really be true? After all this time...

With more than a fair amount of trepidation, Mal enters somewhere he hasn't been for what seems to him to have been a long time.

He's checking around for the last of the tools just outside the open cargo bay door, moving things back inside and getting ready to close up.

All it takes is one footfall from the man that has been watching him for the past few minutes for his hand to fly to his gun. Without turning to face him, Mal shouts, "If you're here to tell me we ain't finished, then we will be real quick."

The Operative doesn't step toward Mal. "Do you know what an uproar you've caused? Protests, riots - cries for a recall of the entire Parliament."

Mal finally turns, adding, "We've seen the broadwaves."

"You must be pleased."

"'Verse wakes up a spell. Won't be long 'fore she rolls right over and falls back asleep. It ain't my worry."

"I can't guarantee they won't come after you," the Operative finally steps closer. "The Parliament. They have a hundred men like me and they are not...forgiving."

"That don't bode especially well for you. Giving the order to let us go; patchin' up our hurt."

"I told them the Tams were no longer a threat - damage done. They might listen, but I think they know I'm no longer...their man."

Mal picks up a rag from the toolbox he had been carrying and wipes his hands. "They take you down, I don't expect to grieve overmuch. Like to kill you myself, I see you again."

The Operative smiles, almost...human, to Mal's eyes. "You won't. There is nothing left to see." This garners him an odd look from Mal, and they almost turn their seperate ways, but then the Operative adds, "'Serenity'. You lost everything in that battle. Everything you had, everything you were...how did you go on?"

Mal continues walking up the cargo bay ramp and hits the button to close it, eyeing the man on the outside.

"You still standing there when the engine starts, you will never figure it out."

The door closes between Mal and the Operative, and Mal moves further into the cargo bay, toward Zoe walking to meet him.

To himself, almost accidentally, but ringing true: "What a whiner..."

"I'm not going anywhere." she had said.

Nobody better go anywhere, gorramit. The lift doors close.

"No..." is the only moan Mal can pull off at surveying the damage, looking down to see...a trail of blood, leading from Mr. Universe's chair, to the couch where he had finally died, curled up next to his lovebot.

Almost not believing it necessary, Mal bends down to pay a second of respect for the man. He turns to leave, but a quick spoken "Mal --" stops him.

"Guy killed me, Mal," the recorded message plays through Lenore. "He killed me with a sword. How weird is that? I got...a short span here...they destroyed my equipment, but I have a backup unit, bottom of the complex, right over the generator." Mal finally lets himself flicker a smile. "Hard to get to. I know they missed it. They can never stop the signal. They can never...stop..." Lenore's head rolls back toward Mr. Universe, and Mal sprints off.

"That's a fact." Mal takes his jacket off, climbing precariously onto the railing in order to jump to the ladder rung. He promptly falls down again onto his back when he gets a laser burn straight at his spine.
Owwww. Mal stands as quickly as possible, turning to face the Operative sneakyass hun dan and gives him a painful smile. Piss him off.

"--Shot me in the back. I haven't...made you angry, have I?"

"There's a lot of innocent people in the air being killed right now."

Mal shakes his head. "You have no idea how true that is," he returns, straightening himself up for a fight. "I know the secret. The truth that burned up River Tam's brain and set you after her. And the rest of the 'verse is gonna know it too."

Flat. "Do you really believe that?"
Believe. Whatever you have to.
"I do."

"You willing to die for that belief?"

"I am."
Don't look don't look
Mal draws his gun first, and fires - again - again - push him back - again - again.

"'Course that ain't exactly plan A." Holstering the gun quickly, Mal jumps to the ladder rung and moves hand over hand to the backup unit. The Operative has recovered though and catches up to him, placing a kick to the same laser burn from earlier, making Mal drop onto a chain loop. Kick him! Before Mal can, the Operative flips a lever that makes Mal's chain drop and send him smacking into the plexiglass platform, forcing him to scramble upward.

Spinning, moving, blow and parry and thrust - Mal stabs the Operative in the hand with the screwdriver - then a bigger thrust and slow exhalation as the Operative runs Mal through the belly with his sword.

Finally showing exertion, the Operative spits, "You know what your sin is, Malcolm?"

Eyes still wide, Mal smiles weakly. "Aw hell - I'm a fan of all seven." Mal headbutts the Operative, forcing him backward before punching him, sending the Operative down. With a sickly liquid sound, Mal pulls the sword out and holds it above this...monster.

"Right now, I'm gonna have to go with Wrath." Mal thrusts down, but the Operative rolls and kicks Mal's knees out from under him, punching him in his stomach wound.

"I'm sorry," the Operative starts, picking up his sword.

Mal twitches his right hand, unnoticed by his attacker.

"You should know there's no shame in this. You've done...remarkable things, but you're fighting a war, you've already lost." Mal watches him come toward him with his sword, completely unexpecting Mal to palm his arm over and twist his swordhand, elbowing him in the neck.

"Well, I'm known for that." As serious as death, Mal spins the Operative and puts him in a full nelson - the kind that breaks your arms at the shoulderblades - and sits him against a railing. Picking up the Operative's sword, Mal informs, "Piece of shrapnel tore up that nerve cluster...in the war." Bending to meet the Operative's eyes, "Sorry about the throat. Expect you'd wanna say your famous last words now. Just one trouble." Mal uses the Operative's own sword to lock him in place against the railing.

"I ain't gonna kill you."

Standing, Mal makes quick work of prepping the backup unit for a system-wide broadwave. "Hell, I'm gonna grant your greatest wish." The cylinder clicks into place and alights. "I'm gonna show you a world without sin."

Mal gives the Operative one short disdainful glare, but he doesn't notice. He's too horrified by the transmission playing on the twenty screens in front of him to care about Mal.

One push of the controls on the backup unit extends a small plate-bridge from Mal to the other side as he picks up his gun and straightens himself to rejoin his crew, one hand to his stomach.

He never looks back.

Inara and Mal make it to the kitchen first, and Inara sits while Mal waits at the head of the table for everyone else to arrive. For as shaken as everyone is, Mal takes the moment to look straight at Kaylee and smile. He can only hope she understands.

The cylinder was sitting on the table since Mal had walked in the room, and he picks it up now. "This report is maybe twelve years old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried 'til River dug it up. This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear, 'cause there's a universe of folk that are gonna know it too. They're gonna see it. Somebody...has to speak for these people."

What do you think of that?

The crew is waiting for Mal to keep going, looking at him either like he's crazy or that he's finally sane; Mal can't decide which.

"You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I'm askin' more of you than I have before. Maybe all - as sure as I know anything I know this: They Will Try Again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground, swept clean. A year from now, ten, they will swing back to the belief that they can make people..." Mal pauses, eyeing River with a sudden clarity. "better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running.

"I aim to misbehave."

A long beat, where everyone just seems to be analyzing what Mal has just said.

Say something.

As soon as Serenity is hidden away, Mal flies off to the Training House in Inara's old shuttle.

Still in the oversized red shawl that Inara had left in her shuttle, Mal kneels beside her, head still covered.

"Dear Buddha, please send me a pony, and a plastic rocket, and ---"

The ship - his home, his love - is being repaired. Physically at least. Mal spent as much time as he could on both the inside and the outside of the ship, cleaning and clearing and making whole again. Mal's giving Zoe the widest berth possible, not wanting her to have to see him in Wash's place. Kaylee and Simon are off together, hopefully making each other as happy as they deserve to be. Jayne has been...well, Jayne. Mal sometimes feels like he should poke his head in at him, see what he's up to, but then he thinks about Jayne smoking his favorite type of stogie at Wash's funeral and smiles. Jayne'll be okay. And Inara, well...Inara is currently busying herself "repairing her shuttle", as she calls it. "Choose me," she had said. And Mal had definitely chosen, oh aye. He chose.

River. There's one that'll never make sense to Mal, no matter how hard he tries. Not completely, anyway. But the last month or so has given him...insight, as much as he can call it that. When River smiles now, no matter who she's smiling to or what it's about, Mal smiles back.

The ship is being repaired. Now it's time, slowly, to work on repairing his home.

The bridge looks like an insane artist's studio. Or maybe an ancient Franciscan monk's study, carefully placed inks and brushes lying almost at random across the small portable counter extension Mal has temporarily attached to the far end of the controls, next to the radar screen. It'd been slow, him having to carry all this and keep on the plain black cane he still needs, but Mal has dug out only his best parchment, and the inks Kaylee gave him for his birthday.

Dipping his detail-brush into the green ink very slightly, Mal sighs and begins to drag the brush across the page, in English. Mal may like Mandarin characters better, but his hand in English could be considered quite distinguished. The word "Wings" is done in a flash, and Mal takes his art knife and slices the nametag off, adhering it to the side lip of the console. Right under the pterodactyl model.

Mal smiles painfully to himself, admiring his own work for a moment before moving on to the stegosaurus.

Wash is was Mal's pilot. The least he can do is label the dinosaurs.

No one on the boat understands, and Mal is fine with that. He just...can't believe he did it. Told Kaylee to muck up the engine, Wash and Jayne to strip hull, Zoe and Simon -- Mal can't really think of a reason why they should forgive him for ordering him to do that.

Above anything else, Mal wants to hide. Hide, gather himself, and face whatever's coming.

"No hiding allowed, Malcolm," the cold voice - inhuman voice - calls to him, perched on a crate in the spare shuttle. Mal leans his head gently against the bulkhead just outside of the shuttle hatch, and holds his face in his hands.

"You know what's coming, Malcolm? The end. You see it?"

Mal lifts his head as resolutely he can manage. "The end." Inexplicably, he chuckles. "Been seein' it for awhile."

David pushes off his crate and stands within a foot's distance of Mal, eye-to-eye. "Probably won't be the end you expect."

Malcolm pulls off staring at the specter, this...vision of his mind. Waking dream. This dosn't mean he can smile at it.

"At least I'll be expectin' somethin'. That counts, right?"

David shrugs and disappears.

Mal'd never admit it to anyone that didn't know him, but he really does like coming to The Maidenhead. Except for the fact that the management makes Mal and his crew lock up their weapons with these go se key cards before walking down the center staircase. Simon and Kaylee first down the stairs, as they had no guns to stow, then Wash and Zoe are hand in hand while Mal and Jayne keep an eye out for the latest contacts for the last bit of business for the Lilac job.

Mal casts an eye to Wash and Zoe, who had been also scoping the bar for anyone seeming familiar, but Mal waves a hand in dismissal.

"Sir," Zoe offers in response to this, "You sure you don't want to---?"

"Go," is the more assertive cutoff. "Go get yourselves a nice romantic meal." Apparently this is more than enough motivation for Wash, who leads Zoe away from Mal and Jayne.

"Can you blame them?" a voice calls from the corner, just before Mal falls over his chair to the floor in shock.

The...specter was the only word Mal had for it, laughed riotously. At any other time, he would have - should have - been on the cover of some magazine for The Latest Trend (R).

Mal doesn't see it that way at present.

"Wha--David, how--"

"Speak English, Malcolm, 'less you forgot how."

"You're dead."

"How observant, Malcolm." David moves toward Mal as Mal rights himself in his chair.

"You should be dead too, you know."

Mal swallows his fear and stands eye-to-eye with David.

"No. I fought. There ain't any reason why I don't deserve to live, you hun dan."

David's eyes, oh-so-green in life, flash red for a split second. "What about those you promised to protect? What about the ones you made a promise to and broke that promise?" David gains ground as he sees Mal's stony expression falter. "God, Mal - you really have no damned idea, do you?" David moves forward quickly, forcing Mal against the bulkhead.

"You'll lose. You'll always lose; you already have lost."

David vanishes, and all that's left of the encounter is Mal, staring at absolutely nothing.