1A/N: Welcome to Day Four of my Twelve Days of Christmas ficathon! Every day will be a different fandom, so look for the full list on my profile. Today's loose prompt: four calling birds.
...
It had been a long day full of dealings with unpleasant folk, involving some not-strictly legal activity and a couple of near brushes with having to shoot people, and Mal Reynolds, to put it mildly, was not in the mood for any further aggravation. So when he came stumping into the galley, it was with single-minded purpose, and that purpose did not involve nearly walking into loops of frippery dangling at eye level.
On closer examination, the stuff impeding his progress turned out to be shiny and vaguely fluffy, tacked to the ceiling back and forth across the galley. It was mostly red and green, with some white in there, which only served to confirm his suspicions. Somebody had been decorating for Christmas on his boat.
"Kaylee!" he barked, stomping back a little more vehemently the way he had come, making for the engine room. Mal figured the mechanic was the likely source of the trouble: she had always been one for hanging stuff all over her cabin door and the engine room, even when there wasn't the excuse of a holiday.
The engine room was empty of Kaylee, though Mal found Simon there, staring at more Christmas stuff-shiny colored balls hooked into the wall grating, and some gold ribbon around Kaylee's favorite repair alcove.
"Kaylee put you up to some decorating, Doc?" Seemed like the kind of thing the Core boy would be into.
Simon just shook his head. "No. Actually, I didn't know we were anywhere close to Christmas until I started seeing this stuff everywhere."
Something in the doctor's tone struck Mal. "You ain't been with us a year yet, have you?"
"If you're trying to ask whether this is our first Christmas on the run, then yes, it is. I was sort of planning to not think about it, but..."
Mal gave an understanding clap on the shoulder. "You wouldn't happen to know where Kaylee's gotten to, would you?"
"No. No, I came here looking for her."
"Probably off spreading more festive cheer." The captain made for the bridge-it wasn't unheard of for Kaylee to be needed up there.
She wasn't there at the moment, but she'd clearly been though-long strings of small red and green lights had been hooked up to the wiring of the controls. A passing glance was enough to tell Mal that anyone but Kaylee would be hard pressed to unhook them again. When he straightened back up, River was there, head on one side, staring at the dinosaurs.
"Were you here when Kaylee did all this?" Mal asked, gesturing expressively. Kaylee and the little psychic did tend to be thick as thieves on occasion.
"No." River's fingers trailed over one of the light strings. "Wrong time of year. The baby came in springtime, but they pretended it happened in winter. Wanted an excuse to celebrate the days getting longer. Now the whole planet is wasted away, and the annual observances are vestigial."
Mal decided, as he often did when talking with River, to leave the whole thing be and move on. Following her unfocused gaze, he spotted Wash's dinosaurs. The plastic creatures were wearing small twists of tinsel around their necks. So the pilot had been corrupted, too.
"Kaylee!" Mal was bringing out the space-monkeys voice now. The hold was also Kaylee-free, but it did contain Jayne perched on the catwalk and Zoe down below shifting cargo. It also featured some pine-looking branches hanging from the bottom edge of the catwalk.
"You know anything about those?" Mal asked, approaching the big merc. Jayne was cleaning a knife and looked up shiftily.
"I didn' have nothin' to do with that," he said. "Kaylee an' them came through with a bunch of stuff. They wanted to put up more, but Zoe wouldn't let 'em put nothin' down there."
"Xie tian xie di for small mercies," Mal muttered. Zoe would understand, he reflected, about Christmas. About things that, once you've done them one way, you don't feel much inclined to do any way at all anymore. A suspicion crept into his mind. "Jayne, the shepherd wouldn't have happened to be one of those with Kaylee, would he?"
"Funny you should say that," Jayne replied, giving his knife a mighty rub, "but he was." He jerked his head, in the direction of Inara's shuttle. "They went thataway."
Mal went in the direction indicated. Zoe looked up and met his eyes as he walked, and he thought some understanding might be reflected there.
As he often did, Mal entered the companion shuttle without knocking. Inara was there, as were all three additional suspects. They were gathered around a medium sized pine tree that Mal supposed must've originated on the moon they'd recently visited, and appeared to be in the process of decorating it.
"What's been going on here?" he demanded. "Who started this? Maybe you, Preacher? Or you, Kaylee? A man can't walk around his own ship without getting snagged on some kind of ornamentation."
"Oh, hi, Captain," Kaylee said, halfway between sunny and caught-in-the-act. She took a small step back from the tree and put her hands behind her back, still holding a small bell on a loop of string.
"It was a joint effort, in all fairness," Shepherd Book said, with his usual lack of consternation. "Kaylee happened to mention that it had been quite some time since the crew had made planetfall during Christmas, and since that occasion is in two days, while we will be en route to Persephone, I suggested we pool our funds and collaborate in some festive cheer."
"Well, you can collaborate in taking it down right quick. I told you before, Preacher: you're welcome on my boat. Your God ain't. Inara, I admit I got no right to tell you what to do with your own rented shuttle, so by all means have them bring their stuff in here."
Wash stuck his hand into the air. "Can it be my turn to have the captain angry at me? Because I've been wanting to do this for years, and I fully admit to having funded more of this enterprise than anyone besides 'Nara."
"You want somebody to be stiff with you, go find Zoe. The rest of you, I mean it about taking that stuff down." Mal exited the shuttle, leaned against the wall, and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.
The smell of expensive scent opened his eyes again sharpish. Inara was standing there, looking unusually displeased. "That was uncalled for, Mal. I don't know what you have against Book's faith, although goodness knows I've been trying to figure it out for years, but the others are entitled to a little celebration regardless. There've been plenty of people who celebrated Christmas without belonging to a church, even on Earth-that-was."
"Ain't about the Preacher," Mal said stiffly. "An' this is my boat, and I'm saying we ain't having none of this Christmas stuff going on, regardless of the participants' religiosity or lack thereof." With that, he stalked off to his bunk, where a man could count on some peace without being pestered with festive cheer.
...
Inara didn't often seek out Zoe for conversation, but in this instance it seemed called for, somehow. She finally managed to corner the second-in-command on the bridge, where the light strings had been removed under heavy protestation, but Wash's dinosaurs still bore defiant strands of tinsel. Zoe was running her fingers over one of the plastic animals.
"Why is Mal so dead set against the crew celebrating Christmas?" Inara asked, feeling the blunt approach might be best.
Zoe looked up. "What makes you think I know?"
"Something Mal said when he was angry earlier. Wash was arguing about taking down the decor, and Mal implied you would be on his side."
Zoe looked back at the tinseled dinosaurs. "You know, the war dragged on for a few years," she said quietly but evenly. "Cap'n was a different man back then. When Christmas came around, didn't matter how bad things got, he'd make sure his men had a little bit extra, and the night before, he'd go reading the stories out of this Bible he had. Some of the men that lived long enough kind of got to thinking of it as a tradition."
Inara wasn't sure what to say. Mal used to own a Bible? was one strong possibility, as was Please, don't tell me any more; I already know this won't end well. But she said nothing, and Zoe went on.
"Then Serenity Valley happened, and I guess even Core folks know that wasn't pretty. We were stuck there for weeks after the real fighting shut down, and a lot of the men took sick. More'n a few of the ones that died, got delirious on the way out, started thinkin' it was Christmas. Kept asking the captain to read 'em the stories."
Silence hung between the two women.
"I don't reckon he had much of what you'd call faith left at that point anyway." Zoe fingered a strand of tinsel hanging off the T-Rex. "But by the time we walked out of Serenity, it was clean gone. An' neither he nor any that keep with him have celebrated Christmas since."
Inara stood a moment, taking it all in, then nodded carefully. "Thank you," she said. "I won't tell anyone else what you've told me."
This was, of course, true. However, she did plan to do something about it.
...
The next night, on Christmas Eve, a small group gathered in Inara's shuttle, now hung with the decorations that had once been scattered around the ship. Shepherd Book sat cross-legged by the tree near the center of the room, and the others formed a semicircle around him: Wash, sporting a bright red Hawaiian shirt; Kaylee, who'd insisted that Simon and River come ("ain't right that you should be alone your first Christmas away from your folks, no matter what the cap'n thinks!"); Inara, keeping a cautious eye on the door.
Nobody would admit to inviting Jayne, but he came anyway, squatting at the far end of the semicircle from the Tams, strangely devoid of weapons. Zoe, according to Wash, wouldn't be showing up either, but Inara saw her slip in as the Shepherd reached for his Bible, and lean against the wall without comment.
"While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son," Book read.
Inara took in the faces around her-Jayne, wary; Wash, at peace; Kaylee, rapt and eager; Simon, lost in memory; River, skeptical but intent; Zoe, unreadable. And Inara herself. Did she believe in the words that the Shepherd read? She wasn't sure, but she did know it had brought the crew together in peace.
"An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified."
She wasn't sure, but she thought she saw a shadow lingering against the doorway, as if someone were standing outside, listening but unwilling to come in.
"But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.'"
Inara half-expected the shadow to go away as Book continued his reading, speaking of angels and shepherds and holy infants and Mary who treasured all these things in her heart. But it stayed, stayed for every word, and only crept away after the little group had sung a quiet carol and begun to disperse.
