Ariel
“No one is setting foot on that fancy rock,” Mal orders, coming into the mess. “I don’t want anyone looking out the windows or talking loud. We’re here to drop off Inara. That’s it.”
“What’s the point of coming to the Core if I can’t step off the boat?”
Jayne sneers when Mal suggests he could’ve stayed at the abbey with Book.
River grabbing a knife from the kitchen and slashing it across Jayne’s chest happens so fast Harri can’t move to stop it.
Jayne jerks back and curses before he stands and backhands River. Harri rushes to his side as Simon rushes to River.
“He looks better in red,” River announces nonsensically.
Harri bunches up Jayne’s shirt and presses the wadded fabric to the cut. “It’s deep.”
“Thought she was doin’ better,” Jayne mutters back, low enough only Harri can hear as they make their way to the infirmary.
Harri shrugs almost imperceptibly. “We need to find a way to help her.”
“Ya want I should keep pretendin’ I hate ‘er? It’d be easier if I didn’t have to.”
Harri smiles tightly. “I know, luv, but I think the captain would suspect lecherous intentions.”
Jayne grimaces. “Why’d I want Moonbrain when I got you in my bunk?”
Harri rolls her eyes and dumps Jayne on the infirmary table for Simon to stitch up.
“Gorram freak’s completely off her axle,” Jayne gripes loudly.
“I’m sorry about this,” Simon says. “I don’t know wh-”
“Shut it. I ain’t talkin’ to you.” Jayne turns to Mal. “She gotta go. Both of them gotta go. Ariel’s as good a place as any to leave them. Might even pick us up a reward for our troubles.”
A plan slowly starts forming in Harri’s mind as Mal and Jayne argue about River and Simon staying on. She follows Jayne back to their bunk silently.
“I know that look,” Jayne grunts as he pulls a shirt from the dresser. “You got an idea?”
“You’re not going to like it,” Harri warns as she silently casts a healing spell and presses a kiss to his chest.
Jayne sighs in relief as the pain ebbs away.
“I want you to turn them in.”
Jayne frowns. “Thought we were supposed to be protecting her. Helping her.”
Harri nods. “We can do that better if we know who and what we’re protecting her from.”
Jayne heaves a sigh and tugs his shirt over his head. “You’re right. I don’t like it.”
No one really questions what Harri does, so it doesn’t take any effort to slip out after the group to the hospital.
She drifts along behind Jayne, Simon, and River under the cover of the Invisibility Cloak.
“They stripped her amygdala,” Simon realizes, horror in his voice.
“Her what?” Jayne asks.
“You know, uh… you know how you get scared or worried or nervous, but you don’t want to be scared or worried or nervous, so you push it to the back of your mind. You try not to think about it. Your amygdala is what lets you do that. It’s like a filter in your brain that keeps your feelings in check. She feels everything. She can’t not.”
Harri feels nauseous. For a witch like River - a Reader - to have no filter…
“That’s fascinating,” Jayne snaps, defaulting to aggression. “Let’s get moving.”
It takes all her self control not to comfort River as they prepare for Jayne’s perceived betrayal. Harri was already shielding her mind, but is extra careful to shield it now. She lets the Marshals take them and follows silently. She lets Jayne and Simon take out the Marshals that transport them to the holding room, even though she knows Jayne will give her lip over it later.
“They’re here,” River whimpers before devolving into mutterings about ‘hands of blue’. Harri hangs back when River runs. The two men that appear a couple minutes later send shivers down her spine. She looks into their eyes, one by one, and feels dread pool in her stomach at what she finds in their minds. She waits only long enough to be sure Mal and Zoë get the others out before she apparates back to Serenity.
“He’s telling the truth,” Harri tells Mal, stepping out of the shadows in the cargo bay as the captain is threatening to throw Jayne out the airlock.
Mal tilts his head back toward her. “Which part?”
“He would never betray them.”
“So he didn’t call the feds?”
“Oh no, he did.”
Mal’s face hardens.
“I asked him to.”
Mal’s lips thin.
“I needed to know who’s after her.”
Mal finally turns to look at her.
“We were never going to let any harm come to them.”
“And you were there to make sure that didn’t happen,” Mal snorts sarcastically.
Harri meets his eyes steadily. “Every step of the way.”
“Funny. Didn’t see you.”
Harri lifts the cloak hanging over her arm and deftly flings it over her shoulders before lifting the hood over her curls.
Mal startles back. “Jiàn tā de guǐ!”
Harri swings the cloak back off.
Mal’s eyes are wide.
“All of our lives will be infinitely easier, Captain,” Harri says calmly, “if you accept that there are things in this ‘Verse beyond your understanding.”