This is the second of the three part collaboration between Archer and I, using the brilliant characters who are the children of his pen. He created them and placed them in Joss Whedon’s ‘verse. I just get to play with them for awhile. It has been a great experience. Archer is a tremendously generous co-writer and I am flattered he let me participate in the Ghosts of Serenity stories. For those of you who haven’t already dipped into this series do yourself a huge favor and start with The Other Side of Serenity and read forward. All his stories are listed here: http://fireflyfans.net/showprofile.asp?un=Archer

These characters are his, the universe belongs to Mutant Enemy and no infringement of their rights is intended. Many thanks to Wulfhawk for his very fast and insightful critique. Please do not archive without permission.

Gentle reader if this story pleases or offends please feel free to let us know. If you want a response, it will be better to message me for the next couple of weeks, as Archer will be on the road. [See his hugely funny pastiche Serenity, Inc.}

Chinese Glossary

Nien ching duh [Little girl]

PART TWO--

It looks good, "Cafferty said, pulling off the ML-set eyepiece that had allowed him to closely inspect the stump of Jian-ku's arm. "You've been taking pretty good care of it."

"All the things you told me to," Jian-ku said. "Keep it clean, rub it down, keep working with what's left of it." Yinna offered him the soft-cap that covered the stump and kept it clean, and he swapped her for the eyepiece set.

Jian-ku glanced at the girl again, noting that as usual she made even the modest dress she wore for nursing look glamorous. Jian-ku wondered what the girl was doing here. She knew why Caff had come out. He was worried about her and he figured the hook might make a difference. He knew Steven was worried and that worried him even more. So he was out here trying to pretend that once she got used to it, the hook would make her the same as before. But he was also checking out whether or not she was off her nut. That didn't explain the girl, though.

Caff had said Yinna had come out to lend Steven a hand with the harvest and the house so Caff could work with her on getting used to the hand. Well, the girl should certainly know her way around a farm and she wanted Steven to start seeing what he was missing by not cleaving to her. She did want that, gorramit, didn’t she? Then why did it piss her to the gills to have that nien ching duh prancing around her kitchen like she was Queen of the May.

No, that wasn't fair. 'She doesn't prance. She glides—gracefully,' Jian-ku thought resentfully. ‘No, she never had to slog thru three klicks of mud just to fall on her belly and crawl another klick so she could line up some poor dumb bastard in her sights.’ Why shouldn't she be graceful, and feminine and pretty? All the things Jia had never had the time to learn-- or the inclination, to be ruthlessly honest. Until she met Steven, that was, and by then it was too late. She was--as she was--and nothing would change that now. It didn't stop her from resenting the girl though. Yinna's casual perfection made Jian-ku feel even more maimed. She didn't want the girl watching while she fumbled with the damn hook.

Seeming to sense the tension in the room, Yinna returned the eye piece to its case then put a hand on Cafferty's shoulder from her place behind him. "Iff'n you don't need me, I reckon I'll find Mr. Kellerman and lend a hand with the milking." Caff looked up abstractedly and smiled at her. He wasn't oblivious to the undercurrents but he'd learned that sometimes it was just better not to notice.

As she left the room he went to the titanium shipping case that had been sitting on the counter since they had walked in before dinner. He opened the case and took it out. It might look all fanciful, but it was just a hook as far as she was concerned. Cafferty, responding to the look of revulsion on her face, said gently, "Look Jian, I know that what you did with that hand was maybe the largest part of who you are. You were what, nineteen when you joined? Sniper by twenty-one? Now you're, thirty-one, most of that time you were defined by what you could do with that hand and now its gone. It was a large part of you but it wasn't all of you, not by a long chalk. You have to look at the hand . . ."

"Hook!" she interjected fiercely.

"Hook, then, as a tool. Just like the rifle. It's part of you but it's not all of you. And if you let yourself be defined by what you've lost rather than by what you still have, you've lost more to the Reavers than your hand." He looked at her searchingly to see if any of it was piercing the shell of her misery. All he could see was the mulishness for which she had been legendary in the unit. Well, pure stubborn meanness had gotten her through some tough spots, maybe it would be enough here.

He sighed and laid the prosthetic out on the table. He pulled the cosmetic latex hand off the terminal device and exposed the metal joints and McKibben artificial muscles. It took on the appearance of an alloy skeleton with muscles exposed, reminding him of the dissecting table in corpsman training. He took her through the whole mechanism, showing her the myo-electic contacts within the attachment sleeve and the microscopic piezoelectric battery that would assist in operating it. He pointed out how the fluid in the sleeve that attached to the stump could change consistency-from a fluid to a near-solid state, allowing it to respond as the stump tissues swelled or shrank, making it more comfortable and easier to control.

"If you think about it, it's just like your rifle. You need to know every part, what it's for why it's there and how to take care of it. Remember learning how to field strip your weapon and how to dry fire it? Same thing here. Take care of it, it takes care of you."

Despite herself, she felt interested in the device for the first time as she watched him disassemble and reassemble the arm several times before he told her to try. She struggled to do it one handed, unconsciously keeping the stump of her right arm in her lap. It kept skittering away from her awkward left hand. Cafferty didn't say anything and made no move to help her, until finally in frustration, with a defiant glare at him she put her stump out to steady the damn thing. When she finally did it all he said was "Again." She did it three more times, sweat beading at her hairline with the effort but each time a little faster, before he seemed satisfied.

Just then they could hear the sound of Steven and Yinna on the porch speaking too softly to be understood but she could hear the girl laughing gently at something he said. Jian-ku threw an anguished look at Cafferty and he picked up the hook with his quick, neat movements and returned it to its case, closing the lid as they entered the kitchen. She quickly put he stump out of sight under the table.

"We've finished here for now, we'll pick it up in the morning," Cafferty said calmly. "You should practice that morning and night until you can do it in the dark."

"Just like boot camp," she said. Her laugh had an edge of panic to it. "Just like." he responded matter of factly.

"Well, long day today, probably be a longer one tomorrow. I'm for bed. How about you Jia?" Kellerman suggested uneasily, sensing undercurrents he didn't understand.

"Let me get them settled and I'll be in," she said, responding to his anxiety with unusual gentleness.

The sleeping arrangements were not complex. The house had four rooms. Essentially a square divided into four equal parts. Each room had a door into two other rooms. The kitchen and parlor faced a roofed porch and they each had a door on to the porch as well. They'd built it themselves from prefab panels after living in an army surplus tent to get the first crop in the ground.

Yinna would sleep in the second bedroom, the one Steven had half-seriously called the nursery, and Caff would doss on the second-hand couch in the parlor. There was a communicating door between them if they were inclined that way but Jian-ku was fairly sure their guests weren't grappling. At least not yet. She bid them good night and joined Steven in their bed. Lying beside him, watching his exhausted, sleeping form, Jian-ku was torn by the thought. ‘How many more nights at his side?'

In the morning Yinna and Kellerman got ready to look after the animals and get back to the corn. Yinna was wearing a serviceable pair of trousers and an overlarge man's shirt, probably her brothers, as she cooked breakfast. The contrast with their usual meal was marked, which depressed Jian-ku even more. Jian suggested they take some food to eat in the far field, to save them the walk she said, but in reality she couldn't face them coming in while she struggled with the damn hook.

The door hadn't closed on them good, when Cafferty pulled the arm out and put her through the drill on breaking it down. She was faster this time and didn't hesitate to use the stump. He made her do it five times before he seemed satisfied. Then he had her take off the cap covering the stump. "Put your arm on the table, elbow down, palm up" he said intently

"Palm?" she asked with a bitter laugh.

"It will be once we get this thing on," he said ignoring the trace of hysteria under the laughter. He placed socket of the prosthetic over her stump and snugged it in to attach the limb and allow a firm contact with the remainder of her forearm. When he was satisfied he had it properly fitted he explained.

"The terminal device, the hand or hook," he elaborated in response to her questioning look, "is operated by the battery working with the electro-myographic potentials generated by muscular contraction in the stump. So what you are going to do is sit here and contract the muscles in your stump and try to close the fingers on the hand. Pretend that you are squeezing a rubber ball in the missing hand."

She tried to do as he instructed but nothing happened. He kept her at it until sweating with the effort and almost nauseous she managed to move the fingers of the metal skeleton in a slight grasping motion. She gave a gasp as she realized she had been concentrating so hard she was holding her breath.

"Good, remember what you did and do it again." After several tries she managed it.

"Again, harder this time." Cafferty said without expression.

"Again!"

"Again!"

By mid-day she was drenched in sweat and had a pounding headache, but she could close the damn hook every time she tried. They took a break for food and Caff stood behind her after the meal and rubbed the knots out of her shoulders. After lunch he had her break the damn thing down again half a dozen times then had her move on to actually attempt to grasp objects by closing the skeletal fingers around them. He explained he was leaving the cosmetic latex covering off so that she could better visualize the mechanism as she learned to control it. Before supper time, sensing her reluctance at having her attempts to master the hook being observed by her husband and Yinna, Caff put the thing in its case and set it aside.

As she dragged around the kitchen trying to scratch together something for supper, he said, "I have to go back to town tomorrow for at least a day or two." He gave her a wry smile. "Can't neglect my other patients, they might go elsewhere to be poisoned. I'm gonna leave Yinna here to help Kellerman."

Seeing her look of consternation he went on. "You can't help him and work with the hand, he needs to get the rest of the crop in and she knows what she's doing around the farm. I'll be back in two or three days. 'Til then you do just what we've been doing today. And no more candyassin' around! I want you to wear the gorram thing every waking minute. Just be glad I'm not Sergeant Martensen, he'd have made you sleep in it too."

She went to bed immediately after she ate, falling into an exhausted but fitful sleep in which she could occasionally hear the sounds of laughter from the kitchen. When Steven came to bed she pretended that he hadn't woken her.

For the next several days she sent Steven and Yinna off each morning then dutifully worked with the hand. She had to give it to the girl-- she was one gorram hard worker. Knew what she was doing and pulled her weight. Hell, she pulled more weight than Jian-ku had. It seemed that she and Steven were forging a bond. They'd got to know each other talking as they worked, had little jokes about what happened during the day and such. She kept telling herself this was what she wanted--for him to take an interest in another woman; it was still hard to watch.

She decided to be elsewhere at lunch time until Caff returned. There was nothing to say she couldn't work the hand while she went on a walk about. She left them lunch on the table and left the house before they came in at noon each day. She didn't come back until she was sure they would be back in the fields. She forced herself to sup with them at night because she knew Steven would demand to know what was up with her if she didn't. Jia was mostly silent while they chatted about the day's doings or plans for the next day.

One evening, she saw Yinna looking at her across the table,with an unreadable expression. Tto divert the unwanted attention she turned the conversation, to the first thing that came to mind, the gorram goats of all things! At least that got a laugh. Then Yinna actually thought it was a good idea, which seemed good enough for Steven. Jian-ku, pleading a headache from working with the hand, went early to bed and left them talking quietly in the twilight. She silently cried herself to sleep that night, telling herself they were tears of exhaustion.

Yinna had been there three days and no signs of Cafferty when Steven said he needed to take a load of corn to a customer on the other side of town. "So, we needing anything from town, Jia?" Steven smiled with weary satisfaction. "We'll have some coin to spend for a change, so just tell me what you need."

"Why don't you take Yinna with you?" Jian-ku suggested with elaborate casualness. "She can do any shopping at the mercantile while you make the delivery and check on what Caff's been up to. He might need her help in town, but if not she can ride back with you."

"Well, sure, if she wants to. Guess she might be ready to go home at that." Steven smiled in a way that cut her to the heart. "I been workin' her pretty hard. I reckon I'll go hitch the mules and get the buckboard loaded. Whyn't ya'll have another cup of what passes for coffee in this house and I'll call you when I'm ready to go"

Jia's forced smile faded as they watched Steven head to the barn. She sure hadn't planned to have a coffee-klatch with the girl; in fact, she had done a fair job of avoiding being alone with her altogether these last few days. Hoping that Steven would be quick, she turned back to Yinna.

"Another cup of coffee?" Jia saw that same expression come to Yinna's face, the one that had bothered her two nights ago. Fear twisted her guts, and she quickly stepped to the stove. "I got some extra biscuits too, but they are a bit heavy. Go ahead, sit down, I'll get us some."

Yinna was having none of it, and moved beside Jia to say, "Mrs. Kellerman, I got somethin' I been meanin' to say to you. Mayhap after I say it ya won't want me to come back, so best I say it now and be done."

"Call me Jian, Yinna, and I'm sure there's nothing you need to say, we're all good," she said evasively as she poured the coffee.

Yinna's eyes narrowed as she said. "You been steady throwing me at Mr. Kellerman the whole time I been here. What you don't seem to be comprehendin' of is that you could strip me stark naked, dip me in perfume and rub me all over that man and he wouldn't see me for mud, if you were in the room."

Jian-ku slammed the pot down and spun around to face the younger girl. "Now just a minute, here, I'm not gonna take any crap from a--" Jian-ku responded icily, only to be interrupted by the younger woman.

"Oh yes, you ARE gonna, Missus! We are going to take it as read that you think I'm a snot-nosed chit with more hair than wit and I think you are a hard-faced bitch wallowing in self-pity. But you ARE going to hear this snot-nosed chit out, if I have to knock you down and sit on you to make you."

Jian opened and closed her mouth in mute surprise.

"He don't know it, but you're planning to leave him 'cause you think that's what's best for him. Well I'm here to tell you, people don't want nobody to do what's best for them. I didn't like it when Papa or my brother thought they were doing what was best for me and I still don't, when Kevin does it. People want to be trusted by the people they love to know their own self what they want. They want to be respected enough to be let make their own choices and pay the price for them."

Fear left and calm settled over her, like when she was sighting through a scope. "What did your father and brother think that they knew better than you?" Jian asked curiously.

"They thought I ought to get just enough schooling to be a good wife, find a nice boy hereabouts and settle down to raise kids. Papa didn't push it out loud, he--well, he said it plenty of other ways. Well, I don't want to settle down and raise kids." she said rebelliously.

"What do you want to do?"

"Go off planet and get an education, see a bigger 'verse than the horizons of one tiny jerkwater planet. People look at me and see nothing but the outside. They see pretty and think stupid, they see girl and think soft. Well I ain't stupid and I ain't soft and I'll be gorram if I let anybody do what's best for me. And I bet Mr. Kellerman would feel the same. He doesn't want an easier life without you. To his way of thinkin' that wouldn't be any kind of life at all."

Jian felt a dawning respect for the younger woman. "If I stay I could get him killed, could get both of them killed." She spoke with a flat, matter-of-fact tone.

"Can't pull my weight on the farm, used to be worth something in a firefight, now I 'm just a liability." She shook her head wearily. "I ain't gonna watch him get ground down into the dust trying to take care of me when I can't keep up and I sure as hell ain't gonna watch him die."

"Lady, you need to get your head out of your ass! There's plenty folks around here lost a limb, they keep farmin' or ranchin' or what-have-you.”

She pointed north, “Mr. Smithers lost his leg above the knee when I was a little girl, horse fell on it, crushed it to hell and gone. He plows a bigger spread than you got, with a horse for Christ' sake. And Jeff Reilly lost his hand above the elbow in the first combine anybody around here ever saw. He farms just fine and took his gun out against the Reavers." She slapped the deal table in emphasis.

"It's not the same.” Jian said, unconsciously crossing her arms, her stump clutched in her left hand. “They knew the life, had people hereabouts to lend a hand. They belonged. I don't, but Steven can. He can find a place here, he wants to settle and there are plenty of women who'd be happy to have him. Good women, pretty women, someone who would know her way around a farm, and a kitchen, and be a good mother to his children."

"Jian,” she gritted in frustration, “He doesn't want those women, he wants you! He ain't gonna settle with one of those women. All you're doing is guaranteeing you both will be miserable for the rest of your lives. And if you can't see that then you are just damn dumb as dirt!" she said passionately.

Red faced with anger; she paused, forcing down her rising temper. Finally she asked speculatively, “If things were reversed and he lost his hand and lit out thinking he knew what was best for you, what would you do?"

Jian-ku laughed bitterly. "I'd catch the next ship smoking and find his sorry ass, and after I'd beaten the snot right out of him, I'd haul him home by the balls!"

Yinna started laughing, "What makes you think he'll do otherwise?"

"Well,” Jian-ku said after a moment, non-plussed, "I don't have any balls."

Yinna looked at her thoughtfully for a long moment. Finally, she snorted and said “Oh, I wouldn't say that, Missus!"

They stared at each other a moment longer, before they started giggling. It was a spontaneous, mutual release of built-up tension, and they both had to grab hold of the counter to keep from collapsing with hilarity. They were still howling with laughter when Kellerman thumped back through the door, pack slung over his shoulder.

His obvious puzzlement at their mirth causing further incapacitating gales of laughter. When they could catch their breath Yinna looked at Jian-ku and said "I think I'll stay. Me and Jian have some talking to do."

To be Continued