InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "It is known."

Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds (i_wearbrown) wrote in we_coexist,
@ 2009-03-08 22:08:00

Entry tags:

inara serra, malcolm reynolds

Well, something sure the hell ain't right. [Mal + Inara]

Snowflakes frosted the chocolate colored leather of Malcolm Reynold's signature piece of outerwear. The snow that had spilled into the lobby upon his arrival was already beginning to melt, but enough lingered in the threshold for Mal to have to throw his entire weight against the icy portal to secure it closed. A thick, wooly scarf was unwound from about his face as he shoved the apartment building door shut behind him.

Gasping breaths rushed to fill his frigid lungs with the heated air of the building's interior. The captain swung his gaze around until he landed upon the vaguely familiar facade of the stairwell door. Heading through, he kept a gloved hand on the railing, his legs starting to 'thaw' sometime around the third landing, with one more flight until he reached Inara's floor. Staggering through the doorway and into the nondescript hall, Mal counted two doors down to recall hers.

" 'Nara!" He called gruffly, in an attempt to sound more annoyed than worried that he'd come to look for her in this freak storm. His fist pounded against the door as he expected it to be locked. But the thumping of his hand was enough to jar the unlocked knob to let the door swing open with a creak. Strange place such as this... Inara wasn't the type to be lax on security. Mal bristled and reached under the flap of his coat to withdraw his pistol. Something wasn't right.

Sidestepping, so as to place his back to the now opened door, Mal kept his gun raised as he entered. There was no element of surprise after having pounded the door down... but he wasn't going to waltz in completely unprepared for the worst.

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i_dontwhore
2009-03-09 01:40 am UTC (link)

The air in the apartment was chilly, and almost stale, the scent of incense very faint. That should have been the first sign that something was amiss - Inara always kept her home fresh and prayed rather often, considering...

Everything was quiet, and very, very still.

She hadn't even made it to the bedroom. Inara now slept on the couch in the living room, not immediately visible from the entrance. Her bag lay in the middle of the floor and her coat was halfway off, like she'd forgotten to take it off before she collapsed. She slept peacefully enough, at first glance, only a tiny wrinkle between her dark brows giving away that not all was right, and she looked comfortable enough, only one of her arms had fallen off of the couch and one hand rested on the floor. She breathed, but didn't stir, and beneath her pale eyelids her eyes didn't move, didn't give away any signs of dreams.

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i_wearbrown
2009-03-09 06:32 pm UTC (link)

Mal started to sweep the apartment, following the wall to the break that served as an entrance to the kitchen. As in any room he'd soon enter, the business end of his pistol went first. Kitchen, clear. No sign of a struggle. In fact, no sign of anything aside from Inara's habitual neatness.

He didn't skip a door, not even the coat closet as he headed down the hallway, anxiously hoping at each turn that he'd be shouted at, scolded for not only letting himself in but for having his weapon out in her home. Who would have ever thought Mal would actually be looking for Inara to holler at him? The last doorway belonged to the bedroom and nowhere else was the stale scent of old incense stronger. Nothing had been lit in awhile, but no air had been circulated behind the closed door either. Not a wrinkle in her bedcovers, not a pillow out of place. Mal grunted in frustration as he backed out into the hall.

When he came back out into the living room from this other direction, Inara was all too apparent, sprawled out across her couch. "Inara!" Mal was already dismissing sleep as he rushed across the room to her. She would have woken up at just about anything he'd done thus far. When she didn't even flinch at her name, Mal knelt beside her, picking up the hand that had fallen to the floor. She felt chilled, but not the lifeless kind of cold he was all too familiar with. Mal pressed his thumb into her palm, seeing if the pressure stirred any reaction.. nothing. His brows furrowed and the captain set her hand near it's mate and turned his attention to her face. He leaned in close so that his cheek hovered quite literally a breath away from her lips. Warm air lightly rose to meet his skin, so she was breathing.

Next he moved his hand so that his thumb drew up her eyelid, watching for a reaction from the eye beneath. Mal was unjustly rewarded with nothing yet again. Already his mind was racing for what to do next. This was the one time in the City thus far that the doctor would have been useful but who knew where Simon was save for the hospital. And getting her to that building was going to be problematic in the snow and the cold. Reaching into his breast pocket of his dusty maroon shirt, Mal produced a small communication unit. Wash had dropped him off at Inara's and had gone off to look for his wife -- but Captain's orders were about to override that.

He pressed the call button and spoke into the recessed mic. "Wash." Nothing. Not even static. "Wash?!" Anger, not at the pilot but at his current situation, rose in his tone. But that had no effect on the lack of response on the communicator nor the woman laid out on the couch beside him. Tucking the electronic device back beneath his jacket, Mal's hands returned to Inara's face, palms cupping her cheeks. The last reports of the fate of the citizens of Miranda was playing as a haunting soundtrack within his mind. Pacified to the point of giving up, too placid to even move, eat, breathe. He wasn't going to let this happen to her.

"Inara! Come on." Her head was shaken in attempt to wake her. "Inara!" There was a twinge of panic to his calls. The panic of being completely isolated, of it the snow being too deep and the wind too cold to carry her to the hospital without risking the weather killing her... all contributing to the overall panic of watching Inara slip away and not being able to do anything about it.

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i_dontwhore
2009-03-11 10:15 pm UTC (link)

Inara didn't react, didn't even stir, while Mal shouted and jostled her. Her hand settled on her belly, the fingers relaxing, and she continued to breathe, slowly and rhythmically, her chest rising and falling ever so slightly with every draw. But she didn't wake up.

Somewhere else, she was swimming underwater, lost in the neverending blue, too distracted to notice the dim sun overhead, too preoccupied to care, to struggle towards it. She was floating, or maybe sinking, and everything around her was hazy and her limbs were heavy and her mind blank.

But slowly, hesitantly, like an echo from a distant chamber, something tugged her towards the surface.

Inara's cold skin warmed slightly under Mal's hands and the tiny frown deepened, almost imperceptibly. Her lips moved, almost shaping a word, but there was no sound, and if one had blinked, one would have missed it. Her ring finger flexed, and she sighed, and slept on.

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i_wearbrown
2009-03-12 08:24 pm UTC (link)

Inara's reaction was so slight that Mal questioned himself as to if he'd truly seen anything at all. Fingertips traced over her frowning lips and soon his hand lifted away from her face as Mal rose back to stand. His palm then wiped down along the side of his own face and over his chin, at a loss. Sure, Mal could roughly patch up a battle wound to tide a soldier over until medical help arrived -- but this was well beyond his skill. He couldn't think of anything he could do beside reach for the blanket that was so neatly folded and set across the top of the sofa.

He fanned out the quilted fabric and draped it over her. Mal even reached over to tuck the blanket it around her sides in hopes that it would keep what body heat she was generating near her chilled figure. From there... Mal had nothing else he could do but watch and wait.

He spent much of the next handful of hours sitting in the armchair beside the couch where she lay. He got up only to sweep her apartment again for any clue to her condition, only to come up empty handed. He'd go to the window to monitor the weather, only to see the snow drifts rising higher and higher. Outside help was completely not an option.

He eventually would end up at her side again. It was an unusual tender scene with the Captain at its center. Rough hands swept back some of her dark hair, drawing it away from her face. He'd let Inara go, be it right or wrong, in the past. He'd left her shuttle on planets for clients, he'd dropped her off at the training temple for an undisclosed amount of time. But there'd always been contact, or the possibility of contact. He shouldn't have let her go out on her own here. He was the Captain and working ship or not, he was responsible for his crew. He had to see that each got paid and that they were safe as well. He'd failed and it stung something terrible. For as far as Mal knew, Inara was dying. Right here.

She was dying.

The words echoed in his thoughts as his head lowered to touch forehead-to-forehead with hers. His eyes closed and a sigh escaped the browncoat. Mal's affection for Inara was perhaps a secret to only the two people currently in the room; as the rest of the crew had formed their own assumptions long ago. But Mal and Inara didn't discuss the topic, but found ways to fight over just about every other topic there was.

He would have given anything for an argument right now. A smile, a glance, anything. His nose brushed lightly upon hers and his warm lips touched upon her chilled ones.

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i_dontwhore
2009-03-17 01:15 am UTC (link)

Far away, something tugged at Inara and she lifted her head, or went through the relative motions - her body was still lying prone on the sofa, breathing shallow gasps of cold air.

Wake up. She had to wake up.

She saw flashes. She was swimming through cold water, rising towards a murky, distant sun; she was in the store, speaking with Xanadu; she was in her apartment, stumbling towards the couch; she was still in her apartment, only she was looking down on her own body, and someone crouching over her-

A shiver passed through her limbs, and she frowned, mumbling something intelligible, fisted her hands around the quilt and drew it closer around her. The cold was the first thing she felt, and the near warmth of another body, and the scent of something familiar, like engine grease and dust and the vast desert of the black.

Serenity.

Mal.

Gasping, she opened her eyes, and tried to sit up, only to discover that her limbs were not yet obeying her. At the same time, her forehead knocked into Mal's and she fell back against the pillows, the gasp turned into a coughing fit.

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i_wearbrown
2009-03-18 10:58 pm UTC (link)

The kiss dissolved quickly as Inara stirred. Mal pulled back, but not far enough to avoid heads bumping as she attempted to sit up.

" 'Nara?!" His arm slid around her back as she flopped down against the pillows again. Holding her carefully, he lifted her up to sit as it looked like she wished to. In an unusual show of attention, his palm even rubbed against her back hoping to ebb the coughing fit she was in. "Inara.. " Snatching another pillow from near her feet at the opposite arm of the sofa, he settled it in to prop her up and slid his hand free.

"Inara, come on.." His tone was gruff, in that commanding, captain of the ship way.. but not without a twinge of the worry that had been plaguing him in his quiet vigil over her as she'd been unconscious.

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i_dontwhore
2009-05-08 09:20 pm UTC (link)

Hand clapped over her mouth in an attempt to cover or subdue the coughing, Inara squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Slowly, the feeling of being both outside of her body and within it subsided and she regained control of her lungs. Gasping for air, she slumped back against the pillows, half-turning on her side to curl up awkwardly into the curve of the couch.

"Mal?" she gasped, hand splayed on her chest now, trying to still the residual rumble in her lungs. "What are you doing here? Did something happen?" Her head felt heavy and clouded, like she'd been asleep for too long but Morpheus was still reluctant to let her go. But the fact that Mal was in her apartment - although he had been staying there, she remembered vaguely - did a fair job of snapping her back to reality. Had he been... watching her sleep?

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i_wearbrown
2009-05-20 10:28 pm UTC (link)

His immediate reaction was one of suspicion, was she playin' at him with that stuff about 'did something happen'? But Inara wasn't that type. And she'd been cold and still far too long for Mal to dismiss the idea that upon waking up she just couldn't remember.

"Snow's a good ten feet deep in spots, ain't no one heard or seen hide nor hair of you in days." By 'no one' he really meant himself. The worry about Inara's well being was completely Reynolds-driven. "Got up here expecting the worst you'd need was supplies and instead I find you laid out. Trying to get out to the hospital would end with us both freezing to death, so I've been waiting it out. Whichever let up first, the snow or whatever it was keepin' you still."

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i_dontwhore
2009-06-06 12:39 am UTC (link)

"Snow?" Inara frowned, studying Mal's face for a hint of a grin, a quirk of an eyebrow that would give his words away as a joke, a prank he was playing on her. How like him it would be, to break into her apartment and wake her up to tell her that she was snowed in. That was ridiculous. The days had been quite clear, if chilly, no snow in the forecast...

But Mal wasn't laughing.

"I don't understand," she said finally. Her mind felt sluggish, and she craved a cup of tea, something hot and strong to clear her head. The last thing she remembered was- "I laid down for a second - I was so tired. It was a - a nap. What do you mean, days?" Have you hit your head? she wanted to say, but judging by the look in Mal's eyes, the strength of conviction with which he spoke, it was more likely that it was she who had hit hers. She remembered the oppressive weight of the almost-dreams, the restlessness of her sleep, the way it clung to her like tendrils of heavy smoke, and shivered. Something wasn't right.

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