Too Pretty To Die Chapter 4

[miri1984]

Title: Our Kind of Crazy
Words: 1500
Characters: OH SO MANY OF THEM
Summary: Who is in the box?
Title art by Uminoko
Translations by Ouyangdan

"I need to check his vitals," Finn said, struggling against Carver's slackening grip. "He's not supposed to wake up for another week - the shock…"

"The shock of what? Waking up? Finding he's been sold to some border moon baron?" There was a pool of white hot fury in her gut - was this what had happened to Fenris? Fenris' parents? She'd never got the full story of how he'd ended up in Danarius' hands in the first place but a picture was rapidly forming in her head and she didn't like any of the bits of it… "I'm sorry, was this one for you? Is it true love? Because you do seem a little…."

The hand around her throat was faster than anything she'd ever come across - faster than Aveline's draw, faster than Bell talking her way out of a fist fight. The strength behind it was inhuman, the skin of the hand and the arm attached to it clammy with sweat. She choked, hands suddenly unable to function enough to get to her gun.

"Saoirse!" Carver shouted, lunging forward, letting go of the doctor, who had stopped dead, eyes wide open and staring.

"Stay back!" she could feel that voice boom through her chest cavity, rumbling against her. The grip around her throat lessened slightly so she was no longer seeing stars, but it was joined by another arm around her waist, just as strong as the first. "Keep away."

Carver stopped dead. There was something about that voice that compelled obedience.

"Anders?" Finn took a few steps forward, and Saoirse felt the arm around her neck jerk, then loosen further. "Anders, it's me."

She heard the man behind her swallow. "Finn?"

"It's ok, Anders. It's ok! It's me…"

She was pulled backwards a few more steps, away from the crate, towards the wall. "Finn… Finn they …"

"Let her go, Anders."

He stopped. She felt breath on the back of her neck, and trembling. "She…"

"She's not going to hurt us," Finn said, taking more steps towards them and giving Saoirse a pleading look. "I promise, Anders."

"Finn." The word sounded like it was being dragged out of him from someplace dark and terrible, and he pushed her forward and away from him. She spun, drawing as she did so to point her gun at him but he was folded back in on himself, sinking to the ground, too-thin arms wrapping around long legs. Finn pushed past her and knelt in front of him, his careful veneer of civilisation broken open and simple pain, raw and naked on his face. "Finn they talked to me they kept talking and I couldn't stop them…"

"It's all right. Anders, it's all right I'm here. We're safe now."

Finn gently pulled his head upward and Saoirse could see, then, wide whiskey coloured eyes and stubble smattered across a sharp jaw. Her gun drooped. She wasn't going to shoot them. Not now.

"What the hell is this?" she said. Finn looked behind him to her, absently smoothing loose hair back from the other man's shoulder in a gesture so familiar, so caring that she almost winced at intruding on such intimacy.

"This is my brother," he said softly.

They put him in the infirmary, next to Merrill. He didn't speak again, just blindly followed Finn. Fenris had found him a robe to wear from his ridiculously large collection of fancy clothing, and although hairy legs poked out of the bottom (it was far too short) at least he was just crazy now and not naked and crazy, which she had to admit had been somewhat distracting.

She wasn't entirely happy with having the mentally unstable person in the same room as her injured engineer, but Finn was gentle and caring and spoke in a low voice to his brother. "He won't harm her," he said to Saoirse. "You have my word. He's still groggy from the suspension - he'll want to sleep for a good twelve hours. You really don't need…."

"Fine. I don't want him deciding to use Merrill as a human shield if he wakes up and forgets where he is again."

Finn swallowed. "He was afraid. They had him for years you can't blame him for being…"

"I think we might be starting this story in the middle, doctor," she said softly. Anders… if that was his name, had sunk back onto the spare cot, eyes closing. He had absurdly long lashes, she had time to think. He looked younger sleeping, too. Younger than she was. Younger than Finn, although the feral creature in the hold had looked far, far older. Finn took a shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair.

"Fine," he said. "I'll fill you in. Just… let me make sure he's all right and I'll… "

"Meet me in the mess hall, Doctor," she said. "If you can guarantee your brother will be asleep long enough to give us the full story?"

He gave a nervous laugh. "It's… it's not that long, Captain," he said. "Just…." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Just unfortunate."

"We're not going anywhere, Doc," she said, then nodded towards the figure on the bed. "Go see to your brother. We'll be waiting."

Finn swallowed, and nodded, making his way back to his brother with shaking hands. She watched them, for a moment, before turning and finding her own brother standing directly behind her, arms folded and his I'm going to talk to you face on.

"Not just yet, Carver," she said. "Go check on Bell, make sure we're clear of that cruiser. Then we can listen to the story behind this." She sighed as she watched Carver go and scratched the back of her neck. "It better be good."

In the mess hall, Finn stood in front of them, somewhat restored to his former self. The tilt of his head still spoke of a man who was used to having things done for him but somehow he had got from there to here and she wanted very very much to understand how.

"I am very smart," he began. "I went to the best medical school in Osiris - top three percent of my class. Finished my internship in eight months. Gifted, I think is the term…" he swallowed and looked down at his hands - long fingered, pale, elegant. "So when I tell you that my little brother makes me look like… an idiot child, I want you to understand my full meaning."

Finn's voice was measured as he explained. A life of privilege and money and everything the rest of them had looked on and envied but pretended to despise. A younger brother, bright and brilliant and cherished. A school that offered him everything he thought he wanted, but that was in fact, a front for something much more sinister.

It was like something out of a novel - not that she read novels, not any more, real life was weird enough, but she would imagine this tragic story could sell well on the central planets - a tragic tale of siblings who cared more for each other than for the 'verse that separated them. He should have been a younger sister, though, she thought to herself, someone more vulnerable and less… (she remembered that vice like grip)…

…freakishly strong.

"What happened to him there?" Vael asked.

"I don't know exactly what they did to him," Finn said, sounding anguished. "I've only just… I didn't get to ask before we left and he's been in stasis since. I ah… I need to… " he closed his eyes and shuddered. "He wouldn't hurt anyone. He was the gentlest soul you'd ever meet - what he did to you in the hold… Captain… that… that wasn't my brother."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Hate to tell you, doctor, but it sure as hell felt like it was him." She gestured to her bruised neck.

"I'm… I'm sorry."

"That's quite a story son," Vael said.

"Yeah," she said, rubbing her forehead and sighing. "It's a tale of woe, very stirring, but in the meantime you've heaped a world of trouble on me and mine…"

Finn shook his head, still wringing his hands. "I never thought…"

"No," she cut him off sharply. "I don't imagine you thought. In consequence of which we've got a kidnapped federal officer on board we got the alliance hot on our trail and Merrill…"

"How much does the Alliance know?" Aveline asked.

"Can't say," Bell said, uncharacteristically grim. "I killed the message pretty quick - they might just have our position…"

"Or they might have personal profiles on every one of us. Until that fed wakes up we won't know."

"So what do we do?" Carver asked.

"The job. We finish the job. We've had word from Mae, she's waiting for us. We slip around to Whitefall, make the deal, get out. Keep flying."

"What about us?" Finn asked.

"If Merrill comes through, you and your brother will get off at Whitefall."

"If she doesn't?"

She looked at him, making very sure that he could read the determination in her eyes. "Then you're getting off a mite sooner."

They objected. She clenched her fists by the sides of her body, thinking of Bethany, of her father, of Serenity Valley - always, always Serenity and of choices made and unmade. The doctor made his choice. He needed to understand the consequences of that choice and her crew….. well, they needed to know who was in charge.

"Da jia bi zui!"* she shouted. They stopped. She didn't use her shouty voice often, but when she did…

…it usually got results.

"The way it is is the way it is," she said finally, looking at each of them in turn. "We've got to deal with what's in front of us."

Fenris was glaring at her. "Saoirse you know those two will not survive a day on Whitefall." She would not be taken in by that green gaze. She would not. "If you throw them out, I shall leave too."

She looked at him, his immaculately pressed clothes, the delicate lines of his tattoos, the strong line of his jaw.

He wasn't one of them. He never had been, and he never would be.

"It might be best you do," she said softly. "You ain't a part of this business."

She turned away before she could see if those words had hurt. She didn't know if she actually wanted them to.

Not really.

As she stalked down the corridor she heard boots on the metal plates behind her.

"What business is that exactly?" Finn said. She turned back to him, eyes narrowing. "I'm a dead man, I can't know? Is it gold? Drugs? Piracy? What is it that makes you so afraid of the alliance?"

Afraid. "You don't want to go down this road with me, boy."

"Oh, you're not afraid of them? I already know you'd sell me out to them for a pat on the head. Hell, you should probably be working for them you certainly fit the profi…."

Her fist swung without thought. It shouldn't be so satisfying to hit someone. But it really, truly was.

He hit the deck plates and she shook her hand again, looking up to see Carver's smirking face.

"Saw that comin'," he said. She sighed.

"Come on brother. We've got a fed to interrogate."

He grinned.

*Shut the hell up.