Another Way of Being by belasera A vague disclaimer is nobody’s friend: All recognizable characters, etc. belong not to me, but to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox, and no money is being made here. The story, however, is mine. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “Yes, well as hard as I find it to believe, it would seem that not everyone has had the pleasure of your hand in marriage.” The deal is sealed. Once he’s joking about our marriage, I’m in. Oh, he does love to joke about it. I think that in some twisted little way, our despicable union is the closest thing he’s had in a long while that even resembles a real life. God, I love this man. …………………………………………………………………………………….. “Oh, Mal, your little jokes can hurt a girl you know.” I say it like a sigh, like I mean it and probably I do. He just rubs his eyes and looks away from me for the first time, and I know that grudging sort of trust when I see it. “Sweetie, we can dance out here on this ramp all night and it’s not gonna change the fact that no matter how you say it ain’t so, you need me.” He makes a little animal movement and I don’t even flinch as he curls both hands into fists. He doesn’t strike though, merely snarls at me. “Whore.” “Ah, husband, you always did have a sweet tongue.” ………………………………………………………………………………………. An old whore’s diet. That’s what my mother called it, that liver killing blend of uppers and painkillers. I remember seeing girls on the street, grinning like jack-o-lanterns and hitching up their skirts with twitchy fingers. She swore it would be different for me. She wrapped me up like a beautiful present, smoothed my wild hair, though there was nothing she could do to smooth my eyes.

“You can’t hide the sort of girl you are, so just stare ‘em frank as you can, if that’s not what they want, then damn them all to hell.”

I smiled. The others were nervous. One by one they slipped through their mother’s arms, a long line of prancing ponies all waiting for a wreath around their neck. Judges. Companions. The girls practiced their sweet smiles, their apple cheeked blushes. I cricked my neck and walked from my mother the only way she’d ever let me. Without a glance back.

Of course I was what they wanted. Or maybe not, maybe those women who seemed more like pillars only wanted to keep me as a pet, to find out what kind of girl I was, what sort of girl didn’t even acknowledge when the heavy doors slammed shut and her life ended.

I was eleven, though I never was a girl, not really.

That may even be the truth of it. Even if it’s not, if I cried and clung to my mother’s soft skirts and trembled past those swinging doors, then it is the truth of it now. We all make our own truth, after all, and no one’s got the right to tell your story but yourself.

I didn’t learn that at the academy. The guild taught me to bury my story, to remember my life as starting the day I entered the lily gilded world of the companions. ………………………………………………………………………………………………

Mal stares at me, shrinking back a bit but I couldn’t care less. I know I have him, he has the cargo of a lifetime stashed on this boat and it’s not gonna sprout a profit if it never sees the light of day. I wait a moment, ready to press my advantage if I have to. Turns out I don’t.

“You just keep gorram quiet and come with me.”

He’s rough, but I don’t mind. Mal’s a man likes to keep his anger bubbling at the surface, thinks it burns me away, but it just settles a sort of peace in my belly to feel it.

I don’t need to explain that to the likes of you.

He moves quick, tugging my wrist harshly, until we’re moving through the dark hallways toward the cockpit. I think that’s where we’re going, but he stops short. Stops in front of the hatch to his bunk, kicks it open and gives me a bit of a shove.

“Down.”

I must confess, this is disconcerting and for a wild moment I think he’s been pushed too far, that he may have scenarios of pain on his mind. I can’t honestly recall the last time a man gave me a flash of fear, if in fact it ever happened, and I’m surprised by my reaction. I shimmy down the ladder. Unarmed into enemy territory. Enemy, yes, you bet your damn hide he is. No foolish love could change that simple fact.

He lands beside me and the shape of his presence makes this whole mad scheme worth it all, even failure and death. I can’t help but laugh, and he shakes his head at me, eyes like slits and mouth twisted like a snake. …………………………………………………………………………………………….. Durran’s mouth had twisted like that, the morning I woke not the bunk of the gorram detention facility but in a dim room that was defiantly moving. Twisted mean when he leaned down to kiss me.

“Good morning, bao bai.”

I wasn’t even shocked; I had been expecting this for ages. I’d not lied to Mal when I told him that Durran was diabolical, that he’d destroy anything to get what he wanted. I’d wondered if he’d tear my jail down to get his hands around my neck. Some days I’d expected the facility to simply spring its doors for me, foist me into the waiting arms of my least favorite husband. I was surprised that the official routes had failed him though. That he had actually gone so far as to break me out of jail. I almost couldn’t stop laughing when he told me it was so. When he told me he’d broken me out so that I could get it back for him.

Well, it wasn’t the first time my sense of humor got me in trouble. Probably not even the last.