trans_9 | An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

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An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

She thought her life would be different by now, but she's a prisoner again. Voluntary, she guesses, which makes it a little bit different than the first time. At least she can blink on her own this time. Not that she's using her body to do much good.

Ironically, she almost always looked better when she was a more total prisoner. Without her makeup and hair clips and changes of clothes to arrange herself into some approximation of health, without even a mirror to confirm her suspicions, she looks a wreck. Dark circles line her reddened eyes; her hair is unbrushed and falls in tangled clumps over her face; chapped, bloodied lips and fingernails bitten down to the flesh speak to her uneasy transition back into captivity.

Eva's given up all attempts to look 'okay'. She ripped a man's face open with her bare fingers. She's been a long road away from 'okay' for a while now, but she spent too long mistaking her anger and stubbornness for strength and resilience to recognize it. She's wised up now.

She really wants a drink right now. Instead she has some books - selected poems by Pablo Neruda and an anthology of poetry by women poets in the Andes - and a pillow and blanket. She's curled up on the cot with the former book in her hand, but drifting in and out of sleep. Her breath comes lazy and heavy as she alternately reads, dreams, and watches the door to the brig with heavy-lidded eyes, looking for nothing.

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Wash raised his eyebrows. "Personal conflicts like taking a brig vacation?" he asked dryly. "Here, I brought you a pick-me-up while you're stuck."

He fished in his pockets and finally produced a flask full of plum wine, handing it to her with smudged fingers through the bars. "What was that about, anyway? You're not a bad shot, Eva. I mean, true, this is the only boat I've flown with external cannons, but it's a lot easier to fly it with you than it is without you."

"Things on the ship got a little messy. I made some calls I shouldn't have and turned myself in," she says, keeping it vague. She'd rather keep Wash's respect than lose it. "It's probably best I'm not behind the cannons, honestly. I'm sure you'll find someone to replace me."

She takes it, then holds it close to her chest. "Thank you. I'll probably be putting this to good use sooner rather than later."

It's not nearly enough booze for her to keep herself in an oblivious drunken state until her sentence ends, but it'll take the edge off a little. If she can't binge she can at least imbibe.

Wash had flown Serenity long enough that nothing Eva did would be something he hadn't heard, seen or done himself on board the Firefly. "I missed you on the bridge," he said. "It's hard to do all that stuff by myself. I'm a delicate talent, I need an opportunity to focus on flying. You'd be disappointed with my shooting, probably. We've got some lower decks with lovely new windows into space."

He sat down on the floor next to the entrance of the cell. Clearly, he planned on being here a while no matter what Eva said. "The General told us about your resigning and turning yourself in. She didn't say anything about why, though, she said that was your call. And, well I know it's your call and if you don't want to say anything that's fine, but you do remember what I used to do before I got here, right? Unsavory crook, robbing people blind across the Allied planets?"

She sighs. "I did love working with you. I just think the last battle revealed certain personal issues of mine that might conflict with my job. You don't really want someone with anger management problems manning a cannon."

She takes a seat too.

"And you might not have heard what I was, but I was the face of the general of the alienforce invading Earth. I don't delude myself into thinking either of us came onto this ship with clean hands, Ensign." She folds her hands across her lap. "I didn't kill anyone, at least. I used some extreme interrogation techniques on a captured terrorist."

"We don't?" Wash asked - seriously. "Jayne seems to do pretty well, and that's Jayne. You've met Jayne, right? Big guy, brain not proportional? You didn't slice off any ears did you? That's Jayne's thing. I'm not a fan. Saw an ear get cut off once." He made a face.

Eva might not appreciate his particular brand of flippant humor right now, he reminded himself. She did volunteer for this brig thing. "From what I understand, you weren't exactly in the driver's seat for that alien invasion thing. Have you ever actually shot someone, when it was you choosing to pull the trigger?"

Thankfully, Eva's exactly in the mood for flippant humor. "Oh, so he likes to Van Gogh people? Well, if that's the case maybe I'm not so bad off."

She whistles. "I have. Shot to kill, even, but given that that was a combat situation, that's not why I'm here. I ripped someone face open with my fingers."

"Ouch," Wash said. "You'll have to teach me how to do that sometime." The first part of that was probably the reaction she was expecting. The second? Not so much.

"Since none of the crew members are missing faces and we didn't have a diplomatic incident with the refugees, I'm going to go ahead and assume that whoever's nose you remodeled was trying to kill us at the time. Where's the problem?"

She makes a 'two fingers up the nose' gesture with a dry smile. In a way, it's comforting how casual Wash is about it. On the other, it's making her regret turning herself in.

"Mostly the problem was that, well, besides the obvious human rights violation, he was already incapacitated and I somewhat...shortened our window for getting information out of him. What with how hard it is to talk with someone's hand up your face and all."

The mental image her gesture provoked actually did give him pause for a moment. Despite his talk of Jayne lopping of ears, the mercenary never actually tortured anyone on Serenity, just threatened. His time spent with Niska gave him a dim view of torture.

But Eva looked like she was already beating herself up about it enough. He wasn't going to help her any by judging, and he wasn't in much of a position to judge.

Plus the phrase 'hand up your face' made him snort a small laugh despite himself. "Okay," he said. "So you're here out of guilt. Which, by the way, I can understand." Except that, looking at her, Wash didn't think she looked guilty. "He made you angry and you lost it. It happens to everyone, taking some time to cool off is a good idea - but shooting things is really good therapy and you know it."

"Well, a little bit guilt and a little bit because taking responsibility for our actions is something we former hosts have to put on our little day planner to check off. It's too easy to run away from responsibility. It's like a muscle that's gone slack, to own your actions." She thinks she might have seen a pause there, but purposefully chooses to ignore it.

"As much as I agree about shooting things," she gives him a grin there, "I'm not sure I wouldn't fire when told to stand down. And that's why I'm here. I wasn't disobeying orders, exactly, but I would have if they'd been given to me."

Wash raked his hand through his hair and blew out a long breath. Eva seemed bound and determined to stay here and beat herself up about the whole thing. Once someone was trying to kill him, all bets were off as far as he was concerned, but from what Eva said that wasn't the problem.

She didn't feel guilty about killing the guy, that much was clear. Wash wouldn't feel guilty either. Eva seemed more like she was here because her conscience told her she should be here doing penance of some kind, or else she wasn't an adjusted human being.

"I don't think jail has been very good to you," Wash said. She looked awful, something he'd avoided mentioning until now. "Or you haven't been very good to yourself. If you need to work on controlling your temper, there are better places to meditate on the smudgy parts of your soul."

"Jails never have been." She sighs and scrapes her teeth over her lip. She wonders if, given his line of work, he ever saw the inside of a jail. She can't imagine he'd like it, with how at home he is in the sky. He doesn't seem the type to feel comfortable without room to move and breathe.

"Did I ever tell you I once punched out a police officer over a parking ticket?"

"While there are several worlds' worth of difference between an improvised facelift and a sucker punch, and cops can be the worst kind of bastards sometimes, clearly this isn't a new thing with you."

It wasn't like he was going to come right out and say she had anger issues, because that wasn't helpful and people got defensive. But he could politely suggest as much. It was also none of his business to ask whether she was working on it, but the question hung there silently.

"Not at all. I mostly throw things and hit things with baseball bats in the Sensoriums. Practice sharpshooting, that sort of thing."

But being surrounded by the teenagers that live with her has mostly kept her temper under wraps. She can be angry around her close friends, around Peter, but not around her son or his fellow child soldiers. Maybe busting into someone's nasal cavity was just the outburst of something she'd been penting up.

"But honestly, I don't know what else I can do about it."

"I don't know, I'm not a shrink," Wash said. "When I get mad, I spend a few hours shut up in my bunk. That's when we don't have enough fuel to go on a joyride, but I can't remember last time we had that. Maybe you need space - not space here, it's not exactly private here. Maybe you need space away from people for a while. Hell if you need a place to stay for a while, you can take one of Serenity's spare bunks. Although that's not exactly private... and Mal's awake now so he'd have to posture about you being on his ship for a while... on second thought maybe that's not a great idea."

He just didn't like seeing her like this - she didn't seem to care that she looked terrible, and she didn't really seem to care that whatever it was she was dealing with wasn't getting better. There had to be a change of tactic she could try.

"The offer's tempting, but at some point my son's going to start worrying about when I'm coming home."

She smiles a bit weakly, but it grows stronger and into a cheeky grin. Wash may not know the best way to make her feel as if she's worth investing her own energy into, but he does lift her mood a little.

"You know, I haven't met this Mal, though. Maybe I should slot up a coffee break in my schedule. I've heard so many great things it's hard to believe the man will live up to the legend."

"I don't know if I'd call him legendary," Wash said. His expression changed into something between panic and amusement and he added quickly, "Actually please don't ever call him that anywhere near earshot. And definitely don't tell him I've been talking about him."

He sighed, thinking back to Marco's reaction on the omnicomms. "I'm... not really going to tell you how to be a mom because I've been avoiding being a dad for a few years now, but you might want to put yourself together a little before Marco gets down here. He wasn't taking it very well on the comms." He paused. "Part of that was probably half the stuff they were saying on the comms..."

She grins and winks. "Don't worry. If I let on that I know about his dark history as a captain wed to misplaced machismo, I'll blame it on Kaylee."

She tugs at a tangle in her hair. "I can't guarantee I'll find it in me to clean myself up. God knows he's seen me at much worse than this. But at least I can take the weight of him worrying about Stepfather Kang off his mind."

Wash looked pained. "Eva," he said, "you need to take care of yourself. Sitting in the brig for a few days because you need to do some soul-searching is one thing, but..."

He trailed off. He was scolding her like she was a member of his crew, and even though they'd served together he still wasn't quite sure where he stood with her. He couldn't give her orders, certainly.

"I'm just worried," he finished.

A chill seems to fall over her expression. "And I appreciate the concern, but I can take care of myself, Wash. I'm not starving myself in here. I'll find ways to make myself useful after I'm released."

It stings, feeling pitied. She knows she should be glad to be worried about, that she has friends, but she feels as if he's chipped at the little scraps of her pride that remain.

His face fell immediately. "That's not what I'm saying - don't take it like that," he said. "None of us asked to be here, none of us want to be here, and you don't have to make yourself useful. If you don't want, that is."

Pity was not what this was. This was concern. Eva was a friend, at least, Wash thought she was. And even though he wasn't a terribly religious man, he still knew that some things weren't good for the soul, and one of them was being in a cage.

"If I don't make myself useful, then what good am I? Just squatting in a body someone else could be putting to better projects, could be working harder, could be enjoying..." She presses her lips together and shakes her head, letting lanks of messy hair swing over her eyes.

"It's a nice thought, Pájaro, but it doesn't mean much." She smiles just a little, faintly. "But thank you for it anyway."

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An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

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