elvenpiratelady ([personal profile] elvenpiratelady) wrote2010-11-29 11:08 pm

Fic: What You Eat, You Are [Firefly]

Another one written for [livejournal.com profile] sharp_teeth . The person who posted the prompt probably expected cannibalism; I took it in a different direction.

Title: What You Eat, You Are
Fandom: Firefly (post-BDM)
Rating: R for pica, character death, very minor bloodplay. (Pica: a medical disorder characterized by an appetite for substances largely non-nutritive (e.g. metal (coins, etc), clay, coal, soil, feces, chalk, paper, soap, mucus, ash, gum, etc. ...a specific appetite caused by mineral deficiency in many cases, in females named typically iron deficiency.)
Characters: Kaylee POV + ensemble
Word count: ~2800
Summary: It's cold out in the black. Sometimes you get lonely. Sometimes.. you just get awful hungry.

---



She doesn’t mean to lick the engine grease off her hand.

She’s eating an apple, a real apple and the first she’s had going on two years now, and she’s trying to take it slow and make it last so she remembers it later. She’s trying to be languid and luxurious, the way she imagines Inara attending to her callers, but it’s been so long and it’s so good that she’s rushing and tumbling over herself to finish it, to eat it all so she doesn’t lose any of it. Juice runs down her fingers and it tickles on her skin so she licks it off, sucking her finger to get it all, and her tongue brushes over the smudge of grease on the back of her hand.

It’s disgusting. Everything the opposite of what the apple is and what taste should be.

She eats the apple core and goes back to work, wishing she had another already. She doesn’t brush her teeth so her mouth won’t forget the taste for a while.

But it’s the grease that her tongue remembers.





It’s late. Her hands are sticky with grease and oil after she’s finished replacing the fan belt the Captain finally got the money to buy. She’s as tired and damp as an old dishcloth, and she slumps over on the floor when she’s done. The grill digs into her back but she’s more tired than uncomfortable.

Her fingers are covered in grease. She should go wash them, but her bunk’s too far away. She’s too tired to get up and waste water washing her hands when they’ll be dirty as soon as she gets back to the engines tomorrow.

She brings her hand up to her face. It’s dirty. She should wash it.

She licks her palm tentatively.

Maybe she was hoping engine grease tastes better the second time. She’s wrong. It’s horrible stuff, sitting dull and heavy on her tongue and mixed with her sweat.

But at least her palm is clean now.

She presses her lips together as her fingers curl up. This ain’t right. Grease and oil are for Serenity, not Kaylee. It ain’t right to take your friend’s food.

Serenity wouldn’t want her to be hungry.

Serenity wouldn’t miss a little bit.

She licks her fingers clean. She sucks the tips to get the stuff out from under her nails. She falls asleep sucking her thumb, still lying on the engine room floor.

When she wakes up she puts the covering back on the engine, and polishes it to keep it shiny. She doesn’t bother with the others, but this one’s useful as a mirror.

There’s a smudge of oil on her lip. She licks it clean.

There’s a little gob of polish on her thumb. She licks that clean too.

That’s breakfast done.





Her hands are always covered in grease when she cleans the engines, and sometimes she doesn’t have time to wash up before she eats. Sometimes Serenity shivers and bucks like a spooked horse and she has to rush away to gentle her, so she’s often running back to the engine room and stuffing food in her mouth.

Not her fault if a bit of grease gets onto the food. She’s got more important things to worry about.

Food isn’t the right word. This isn’t food, these are protein bars. They’ll fill you up but they never make you full like a proper meal does, and tongues need feeding just as much as bellies do. Things need flavour.

The bars never tasted like much before anyway.


...


‘You be a good girl and eat up your iron,’ River tells her severely one day at breakfast, and she sounds so much like her old schoolmarm that Kaylee doesn’t know how to answer her.

‘Say again?’ she says, looking at Simon, but he’s as confused as her.

‘Iron,’ River says emphatically, leaning towards her. ‘Carries oxygen from lungs to tissues.’ In no less stern a tone of voice, she adds, ‘Combines with oxygen, the stars and electrons align, pull towards north. Need iron to find your way home.’ Her eyes are dark, the colour of engine grease. Kaylee almost wants to lick them.

‘I’ll, um, keep that in mind,’ she says.

‘Take care of your compass,’ River warns her.

She starts to avoid River after that. The girl’s too sharp, even if her mind is all bits of shattered glass and jagged metal.





She’s tried all the types of grease and polish in the engine room. She’s itching for something new.

There’s dust on a rim planet, red and gritty in her mouth. There’s straw from a ranch, and leaves from a town square.

She tried a bit of cloth once. It was from one of her shirts, and she liked the engine oil taste but the texture wasn’t anything special. Maybe the fabric’s like the protein bars of cloth. She looks at Inara’s silks and imagines them melting like chocolate on her tongue. She looks at Zoe’s leathers and wishes she could chew on them. They’d be like jerky, but lasting longer.

Still, right now she’s just got engine grease to keep her fed. She doesn’t eat much of anything else on board. The food doesn’t sit right in her stomach any more, and she’ll have the Captain and the doctor prying into her head if they see her smearing the protein bars with oil.

They stop off on a rim planet that’s doing better than most – mining some sort of mineral, sifting through the dirt for the shiny stuff. She’s wandering the outskirts of the metal workers’ quarter, bored, until a glint in the dirt catches her eye. She scoops up a handful and it glitters in her fingers.

It’s metal. It’s all metal, cut up beautifully fine, just lying in the dust where anyone could take it. She shoves it in her pocket and grabs more in both hands, spreading her fingers a little to let the dust blow away. She knows what dust tastes like.

‘Kaylee!’ yells the Captain. ‘Get back on board, we’re goin’!’ She stuffs a last hasty handful of dirt into her pocket and hurries back to Serenity. Mal frowns at her as she jogs up the ramp. ‘What’s got you, meimei? You’re lookin’ awful happy for a girl who’s just been grubbing in the slag heaps.’

‘Didn’t you ever play mud pies when you were little, sir?’ she says, grinning. He rolls his eyes but doesn’t press her further, and she hastens back to the engine room. She’s got a sieve somewhere, and she means to make her stash last as long as it can.

Her first taste of it is amazing. She grins at herself in the polished cover, and her teeth glitter.

She’ll have to make sure it lasts until they visit that world again.





She tries. She tries so hard to make it last.

It’s so good. It’s too good.

She runs out a month after they’ve left.

The Captain never says what job they’ll be doing next. Maybe he don’t know himself. They came off well in that deal on the planet (why didn’t she get its name? Why?), maybe a little too well. They stirred up enough heat to keep away for a couple of years, she learns from listening to Mal and Zoe having their mysterious guns-for-hire talk.

Two years? She can’t last two years without the glitter. She’s already crankier than before. She can’t start acting strange, someone will notice and ask why. She isn’t good with explaining things.

She’ll have to find something to replace it for a while.





Glass is crunchy, but it doesn’t taste like much.

Metal would be better. She wonders what Mal will say if she asks for a metal grinder.

Maybe she could steal one. She’s running out of scrap metal and she doesn’t know what else to do. Serenity’s always been good to her and she doesn’t want to leave, but she’s getting hungrier and hungrier.

Serenity is her friend. Serenity wouldn’t want her to starve.

...


She takes little bits from places that won’t be missed. She cuts them up as fine as they’ll go and saves them up. She lets herself eat one a day to break up the protein bar boredom. They’re so hard that she can chew on one and make it last all day. She starts keeping them over night to make them last longer.

When she swallows each bit she can feel it settling in her stomach and she’s happier knowing that she’s full and fed. She can work for hours on just a bit of metal. She feels like she’s better at understanding Serenity now, and the twinges keep her awake longer too.

Until one day when she spits up blood. She looks at it dully, feeling her mouth taste like iron. She almost eats it again, but she stops short. Some things are going too far.

The next day, she doesn’t want to eat anything. The twinges have kept her awake all night and no matter how she leans her body they don’t stop. Her teeth hurt, a dull boring sort of hurt that’s been growing on her for days now, and when she checks them in the panel her mouth is bloody. There’s a splinter or something stuck in her gum and she can’t get it out, but the familiar metallic taste soothes her.

She wishes she could eat. Not those nasty bars, they’re no good for you, but some of her own food, something that will keep her healthy. The way her belly’s smarting, though, she’s likely going to bring food up as fast as she swallows it down.

She curls up in the space between the engine and the wall, and lets Serenity rock her to sleep.





It’s horribly bright. She can’t hear the engines.

She’s in the ward.

Meimei,’ the Captain says, clutching at her arm like he’s about to be swept away, ‘What the ruttin’ hell were you thinkin’?’

‘Let go,’ she complains, trying to pull her arm away, ‘you’re clinging too tight.’

‘Clinging too– wu de tyen ah, Kaylee!’ He doesn’t let go.

‘Captain,’ Zoe says, leaning in through the doorway, ‘we need you in the engine room.’ She looks worried. Why is she worried?

‘Get Jayne in there,’ he snaps.

‘He is,’ Zoe says, ‘we need you too. Get in there, Inara needs me in the cockpit.’ She disappears.

‘Gorramit,’ Mal mutters. He points at the doc. ‘You stay right here with her, and you’ – he points at Kaylee – ‘you don’t go anywhere, all right?’

She shouldn’t be here. She should be in the engine room, helping fix whatever’s broken. There’s a rumble, and Serenity rocks a little. ‘What’s happening?’ she says, getting worried. Her girl shouldn’t be shaking around like that.

‘Kaylee,’ Simon says, ‘I need to ask you a few questions. Have you eaten anything unusual over the past few days?’

‘No,’ she says impatiently. ‘What’s going on? Let me go back!’ She tries to get up, but her stomach’s twinging something awful and she can’t move. ‘What’s going on?’ she repeats, and the doc avoids her eyes.

River’s sitting on one of the benches. ‘Wire and bones,’ she says solemnly. ‘Running too fast, wire melts, bones fall apart.’

Kaylee looks at Simon for a translation. ‘There was a job,’ he says hesitantly. ‘It didn’t go so well. We’re being pursued, and the engines aren’t responding as they should.’

They had a job? Why didn’t she know? Why doesn’t anyone tell her these things? ‘I need to get back,’ she says, trying to sit up again. ‘I can fix it, it’ll be fine, I need to get back so I can fix it.’

‘Can’t give it back,’ River tells her dolefully. ‘Metal’s disseminated.’

‘You need to rest, Kaylee,’ the doctor says. He’s filling a needle up with something. She wonders what it tastes like, and chides herself for thinking about food at a time like this.

‘Need to help them,’ she protests as he finds the vein in her arm.

‘You need to sleep,’ he says, and she drifts off to the sound of angry, panicking shouts and the smell of hot metal.

...


Next time she wakes up, it’s in Inara’s shuttle.

‘Hello?’ she says. ‘Anyone there?’ Must be someone there, she can feel the vibrations as the shuttle moves. The bed’s awfully soft, doesn’t feel right after she’s slept on the floor so often.

‘Kaylee!’ Inara appears in a flurry of scarlet dress. ‘I’m so glad you’re awake! How do you feel?’

Kaylee thinks. ‘Hurts,’ she offers at last. ‘I’m really hungry.’

‘I’m sorry, meimei,’ Inara says. ‘I’ll get you some food.’ That’s not food, Kaylee wants to tell her.

‘Nara,’ she says, ‘why am I in your shuttle?’

Inara’s hands slip on the protein bar. ‘I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions,’ she says, sounding shaken, ‘but the doctor says you need to rest more than anything.’ Kaylee rolls her eyes, and Inara softens. ‘He’s piloting the shuttle right now. How about you eat this first and then I’ll take over piloting and he can come and talk to you?’

She’s mashed up the protein bar into a sort of paste. It’s disgusting, like eating cement, but Inara doesn’t leave until Kaylee’s eaten it all. Her eyes are red, and there’s a smudge of dirt on her face. ‘What’s happening?’ Kaylee says as soon as she finishes choking the food down.

Inara looks away. ‘I’ll get Simon,’ she says.

Simon comes and spends a lot of time prodding her. She winces as he presses on her stomach, and he asks her again if she’s eaten anything unusual. Nothing unusual except that protein paste, she wants to say, but she doesn’t. She’s still hungry.

‘Why am I in the shuttle?’ she demands when he’s finished examining her. ‘Are we meeting up with Serenity somewhere?’

His face falls. ‘Kaylee,’ he says very gently, ‘I have some very serious news to tell you.’

And he tells her.

Serenity’s gone.

...


Serenity (and Mal, and Zoe, and Jayne) has become lots of little serenities, pieces floating out in the black – bones fall apart without the wire, as River said, and Kaylee sobs. Inara comes back and holds her, crying beautiful elegant tears that slip down her face, but Kaylee sobs and snivels and wants to burrow into the bed and never come out again. She can hear the doc saying something else, something about eating, maybe, but she doesn’t care. Serenity’s gone, because of her. She’s killed her girl, her best and most beautiful friend.

She must have fallen asleep, and when she wakes up she can see Simon curled up on the couch. Inara must be piloting the ship (to where? Oh it hurts so bad and so wrong, like a bone wrenched out of its socket). She clenches her eyes shut and wants to scream. All this time she’s been nibbling at their home, their safe place between the Feds and the black, and she’s ruined it for everyone.

And she’s still so gorram hungry.

She presses her fingers to her mouth so it can’t open, can’t start chewing up the shuttle too and killing them all. If it was just her she’d let the black take her for its own, but that’s not fair for Simon and Inara. And River. Where’s River?

There’s a warm spot at her back. She turns over, gritting her teeth against the pain, and River is curled up next to her. Her hair has fallen over her face and she blows on it, giggling when it falls back. Her laughter stops when she looks at Kaylee. ‘Couldn’t give it back,’ she says sadly. Kaylee wants to cry, or scream, and River strokes her hair absently. ‘Can’t give it back,’ she continues, ‘all gone, none left except you. You’re our Serenity now.’

‘I’m not,’ Kaylee whispers. ‘I’m not, I can’t…’ I’m so hungry and I can’t eat what I need, is what she wants to say.

‘Serenity needs feeding,’ River says, looking solemn. ‘Can’t waste away, not enough left to build her again, just enough left for a memorial.’ She’s got a piece of glass in her hand and Kaylee wants to tell her that she tried eating glass and it didn’t taste right, but River runs the edge along her thumb and a line of red appears.

‘No,’ Kaylee mutters, staring at River’s thumb. It’s bright and red and it wouldn’t be the metal but it would taste like it, but she can’t, it’s not right, she’s a monster to want someone else’s blood, but she’s so so so hungry

River brushes her thumb against Kaylee’s lips and she licks them indecently fast. She’s staring at the blood welling up from the cut and this isn’t right, but soon it will drip onto the bed, you can’t waste food–

‘There’s no taste like home,’ River croons, and Kaylee sucks her thumb gently, letting the familiar metallic taste fill her mouth, and it’s good, so good.

[identity profile] dracoena.livejournal.com 2010-11-30 12:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Argh. This is creepy, and creepy is not the word I tend to associate with Kaylee.
The whole psychological process is really well described. One has to wonder what would happen to people whose only source of nourishment is protein. Wouldn´t scurvy be also another of the effects? And yet people in those sci fi series (BSG? Firefly) always seem so healthy in spite of everything... I guess realism has its limits, and nobody wants to watch them being sick and cranky.

[identity profile] elvenpiratelady.livejournal.com 2010-12-02 08:21 am (UTC)(link)
I saw the prompt and went 'noooo, I can't do this to Kaylee... except I can'. Because I write her best out of all the Firefly people. And I guess you can be creepy when you write about people going insane and having to wash blood off the walls, or you can go low-key creepy so that it's almost normal, and I find that scarier.

I have heard other fics use 'protein bars' but I guess they could contain all the iron/vitamin C/etc that a person needs, but that doesn't make them food. I remember watching the crew fall on real food like starving people, and seeing Kaylee enjoying the strawberry so much, and I think the bars could feed people appropriately but they'd get pretty boring soon enough. And so Kaylee starts eating anything else so her food actually tastes like something.

But then again, scurvy is creepy too! I read a book about it and there were horrible symptoms like lethargy and old woulds reopening. But I guess as you say, it's not very impressive in a show.