Ch 3

August 11, 2507. Sihnon. House Madrassa, bedchamber of Inara Serra.

The evening had been a dream. Inara had not celebrated her birthday since she turned twelve years old. Her father had woken her early and made her breakfast before he left for work. He kissed her forehead and apologized for not having time to take her to the market place for her present. He promised to take her that weekend. It was the last time she ever saw him. That afternoon her mother took her to the academy. Her father hadn’t sent her so much as a letter since.

But her eighteenth birthday had been a dream. She woke early and had morning tea with House Mistress Sato of the Madrassa House. Her heart had been in her throat. Applying for a seat in House Madrassa was ambitious. They kept forty girls at any given time. It was the most prestigious house in all of Sihnon, arguably the most prestigious house in the galaxy. It was the only house Inara had applied to be in. She knew no purer joy than she knew the moment that House Mistress Sato told her she had been accepted into the house.

After that, she had been floating on air. She had her final lunch with the girls at twelve noon exactly. Good-bye lunches were like nothing else. She had not attended one since Nandi graduated from the academy two years before. They girls gave her parting gifts. After that she and two third year girls-in-training retreated to her chambers and began dressing her for the party. As they meticulous curled her hair and applied her make-up Inara remembered how her mother had told her once that it usually didn’t take two hours for a Companion to do her hair in the morning. Usually, she was right. That day, she was wrong.

It was never hard to find a party at Sihnon. It was always someone or another’s birthday, or wedding anniversary, or some ball being hosted. It wasn’t everyday, however, that a Companion came to one to make her debut. Dressed in a red and gold, eighteen year old Inara Serra was taken to the Rim Restoration Charity Ball by famed Companion Aiko Sato. When they walked in Sato’s name was on everyone’s lips. By the end of the evening, all anyone spoke of was Inara Serra.

“Well done,” House Mistress Sato told her as she sat down after her bidding. She was unable to keep the blush from her cheeks. For as long as there had been Companions in the universe there had been auctions held for their virgin price. It was the most amount of money a Companion would make for only one evening’s service in her entire career. When the auction was over, Inara’s virgin price was nearly a third as high as Nandi’s had been, nearly twice as high as the other girls who had premiered that year. It was unheard of it. It was unthinkable.

The evening had been bought by a man named Dougray Bonamici. He was a handsome man of fifty with light blue eyes and graying brown hair and was just slightly shorter than her. He worked for a medical supply company and had come to the ball to make a donation for soldiers fighting on the Rims. He was well known among the Guild. He had bedded more Companions, it was said, than anyone man in the Core. She took him to her new chambers and made love to him. The night before, she had imaged she would be nervous. But when she time came, lovemaking came naturally to her. It was exhilarating. Afterwards they lay together in her new bed, Dougray holding Inara to his breast as he caressed her back.

“Did you know that you share a birthday with Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici?” he asked. “Do you know who Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici is?”

“Of course,” Inara answered and kissed his chest. “The Medicis were a family of rich Florentine bankers who were the unofficial heads of the Florentine Republic from the 13th to 17th centuries. They were well known as patrons of arts, commissioning everyone from Donatello to Michelangelo to Leonardo De Vinci. Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici was the last member of the family, born in 1667.”

He laughed while caressing her arm. “You’re a classic,” he whispered into her ear. His words were love poems. “Beautiful body, exquisite mind, the package of perfection.” She adorned his neck with soft kisses as he caressed her. “Have you ever been in love?”

She mentally cringed as she felt her body tense up involuntarily. “It’s all right,” Dougray whispered in her ear. Inara let her eyes close as her ran his fingers through her hair. “Inara, tell me what you know about me.”

“You work for a medical supply company. You own an apartment on Sihnon, as well as Londinum. In addition to this, you rent property on Ariel, Bernadette, and Osiris. You…”

“That’s not what I mean,” he interrupted, placing a small kiss on the top of her head as apology. “You’re a Companion, and I know that you’re the real deal. Tell me what you know about me. Please.”

Training told Inara not to honor this request. It told her that there is a distinct line between personal and professional relationships. All a client needed to know what that you cared, that you were interested in them, that you appreciated them. While you are under their hire, they need to feel that you are involved in their life. Everything else, she knew, is best kept to oneself. “I…” he put a hand under her chin and raised it gently so that they were looking eye to eye. This was a test. Inara knew it. “I…” she tried to begin again.

Something inside her, it was beating in her chest, told her that it was all right.

“You play that same game that I do,” she told him softly, looking him in the eye. “You’re a businessman, a salesman, a man who knows how to make people feel just the way you want them to, make them think about you the way you want them to with ever actually letting them know you. You’re organized, intelligent. You laugh differently when you’re humoring someone who needs to be humored than when you really mean it. When you’re holding back words you know you shouldn’t say you tend to nod your head every so slightly and blink more rapidly than you should. You enjoy talking about the theatre. You follow politics. You claim to support the war, but you don’t. You’re still grieving for your wife. You always will be.”

He held her gaze for several moments before running his hand through her hair again, directing her to lay her head back down on his chest in the process. “We couldn’t have spoken for more than half and hour at the party. It’s like as said. You are the real deal, worth a great deal more than any credits you’ll be given, a great deal more.” He caressed her cheek. “You don’t need to be afraid to answer the question. Have you ever been in love?”

Inara took a moment to gather her thoughts before answering. “No,” she told him simply.

“I’ll find you again once you have,” he said. “All the discipline, the training, it’s made you talented. It makes all Companions talented, much more adept at give strangers fulfilling orgasms than any woman you’ll find walking the street. It even makes you better at holding, touching like you mean it. But it isn’t love. Love is a thing that shows you your heart. It changes you, makes you see a world you can’t imagine before and can’t touch again after. It grants you ecstasy and in the same instant it makes you tragic. When it happens to you, Inara, you will be the most powerful companion of all.”

She didn’t know what to say to this. She had no idea what he could possibly mean, or why he meant to tell her these things. She felt for an instant that her heart had been wrong and her head had been right, that she had crossed a line she could never cross again, and that somehow there words were punishment. Nervously, she flashed him a blushing smile. “You flatter me,” she said sweetly.

“No, I don’t,” Dougray told her. “I’m an honest man.”

~*~

“Well, that about settles it,” Mal said, handing the bag of coin he’d just counted to Zoe and extending his arm to Heather Zagorska. The young, leggy girl with blond tangles hanging around her shoulders did not rise to shake Mal’s hand. Inara kept her eyes on both of them, gauging their reactions. For the past hour and half, she had been sitting with Zoe and Mal in the dining room listening to them plan the Three Hills Job in more detail than she cared to know about. In that time, she had learned two things. First, Mal really was having a hard time finding worthwhile work if he was willing to accept this job; in the future, she would have to make an effort to cut him some slack… assuming that he behaved. The second thing she learned was that there was no chance in this or any other universe that she trusted Heather Zagorska.

At first, Inara had felt some sympathy for the girl. She only looked to be eighteen or nineteen years old. Inara remembered that age. It was a tough one. If she had had a difficult time being eighteen on Sihnon in House Madrassa, Inara could only imagine how difficult it was for a girl to come of age in the middle of nowhere and nothing. When Mal asked the girl where she had gotten the money to pay for her services, Heather revealed that her father had passed away two months before. This deepened Inara’s sympathy. Fathers were harder to let go of than one would think.

After twenty minutes with the girl, Inara’s sympathies were quickly shattered. The girl was crass, vengeful, and opportunistic. Inara didn’t like her, and she certainly didn’t trust her.

“There is one more matter we need to talk on, Captain,” Heather Zagorska said with a half smile before turning her attention to Inara. “We haven’t discusses your role in all this.”

“My role?” Inara repeated. She was wearing her most charming voice and her eyes were sparkling. She didn’t like Heather Zagorska, but no one save for a Companion, and perhaps River Tam, would know this by looking at her. As always, she was the picture of the professional. “I believe that is for my client and I to discuss. Mr. Crane? If you’ll follow me to my shuttle…”

“He won’t,” Heather said, eyes darkening. “You’re his dinner date and his dance partner, that’s it.”

Inara swallowed ever so slightly and smiled politely. She quickly turned to face Gilbert. “Mr. Crane?” she prompted.

“I…” Inara’s initial reading of Gilbert Crane had proven to be accurate. He had spent a great deal of the conference with Mal and Zoe looking down at the table or staring at Kaylee’s flowers painted on the wall while rubbing his hands together under the table. He spoke only while spoken to, letting Heather, who exuded arrogance, and Rye, who radiated confidence and rationality, conduct their affairs. Now, he was looking Inara in the eyes, mouth slightly ajar, struggling with what to say. “Heather’s only financing half of this, and we thought it would look less suspicious if it seemed like I was spending a lot of money on a… on you, but…” She waited patiently while he cleared his throat. “She’s my girlfriend,” Gilbert said lamely. “I’m really not interested in…”

“I understand,” Inara said softly, putting an end to his misery.

“That’s why we wanted you to be here. We’re paying you, handsomely,” Heather said the word with a degree of bitterness, “to throw off any suspicion that this is happening. You’ll also be providing me with a dress.”

“A dress?” Inara repeated, slightly taken aback.

“You owe us money,” Heather said plainly. “I mean, you’re not exactly going to be doing what you’re getting paid for, right? So, you’re going to let me borrow a dress. Well, three dresses, actually. I have something I can wear to the factory tour and the financial review seminar, but as far as the lunch and the tea party and the ball are concerned… well, I’d be underdressed. So you’re going to lend me things to wear. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

This was the part where the two women were supposed to stare each other down in a battle of nerves, but Inara wasn’t compelled to play that part. There was another pair of eyes looking into her, familiar blue eyes. Inara turned to Mal. “It shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, addressing Heather while looking into Inara. He was nervous. If Inara didn’t chose to go along with Heather’s plan the entire deal would slip out of his hands. He was trying to radiate dominance, radiate strength. Any other day, Inara might have contradicted him for the sport of it… She looked back to Heather, Gilbert, and Rye, then to Mal again. They were kids, not clients, the job was no more sophisticated than a series of school pranks, and Mal was…

Inara turned to Heather Zagorska. “You’re shorter than I am,” she said quietly. “I’ll need you in my shuttle at least an hour before we depart. That should give us ample time to pin.”

“Excellent. Well, Captain Reynolds,” Heather Zagorska said as she stood up. Her cohorts followed in suit as she extended her hand to Mal. “Seems like our business is settled.” Inara watched as the two shook hands.

~*~ She’d eaten dinner alone. This was very unusual for Kaylee. She got along with everybody. Even Jayne usually enjoyed her company as he shoveled in his meshed protein… but that evening, Kaylee had eaten alone. She turned down an offer to eat with the Shepard and decidedly did not go to Inara’s shuttle to ask the companion to dine with her. She had been waiting for Simon.

But, Simon didn’t come looking for her. Instead he ate in the infirmary, just him and River. When she finally went looking for him he’d already eaten. She’d ask him just to come and sit with her, but he’d declined, saying that Book had wanted to talk to him. So, Kaylee ate alone, no one to talk to. It made the loneliness she had been prone to carrying with her as of later feel ten times heavier.

No matter how hard Kaylee tried, Simon just didn’t seem interested in pushing their relationship into the direction that she thought it should be going.

When she was younger, Kaylee wouldn’t have minded this all too much. She had what Inara called a very Companion-esque attitude about dating: if one fish don’t bite, cast the line out again and grab another one. She’d had her fun with boys when she lived on the ground. She’d gone out with many, liked quite a few, and had even fallen in love with one every now and again. But when things were over it had been no problem for her. She might be sad for a spell, but there was nothing too bad about it. She could just start looking for the next boy to run with.

But things were different here in the Black. When Kaylee had first started sailing, she had adapted her old ways to match her new lifestyle. She’d fly from one planet to the next and meet a new guy on each one. Sometimes she’d only see them just the once, sometimes she’d find them again and again, each time Serenity docked… but eventually, the guys she had thought she could always come back to started turning her away. They got married. One had a baby now. Everyone was settling.

Kaylee had been confused by this. She wanted a family, sure, but she didn’t want to settle no where. She loved Serenity. She loved sailing in the Black. There was no place she’d rather be. But it was lonely. The captain was nice, but he wasn’t always friendly. God knows Kaylee loved Zoe and Wash, but they were married. There just was no way she could be on the same level with them. Jayne was… well, Kaylee supposed that she appreciated him in her own way, but he was Jayne. If you wanted to have a nice night full of laughter and good conversation, you just didn’t go to Jayne.

Things had gotten better when Inara came on board. They were friends instantly, and they would always been friends. Kaylee could rely on Inara… but their friendship didn’t give Kaylee everything she needed. Inara was a woman after all. The older Kaylee got, the more she longed to spend sometime with someone, a man, who she could be more than just friends with, someone who would love her and who would stay.

Then Simon came on board with his big box and his red glasses. He was like nothing Kaylee had ever seen. She could see instantly that he was a good man, he was kind, even if he was nervous as a kitten as sea. And he was intelligent. He was funny. When Kaylee spent time with him she felt light and bright as a flying chandelier.

Simon was supposed to be the answer. Simon… she had thought he would be the one who promised her she’d never be lonely.

But he wasn’t going to be. With a sigh, Kaylee fiddled with the compression coil. At least her engine would never leave her, right? Another bout of uncertainty washed over Kaylee Frye. A month ago, the idea of Inara leaving Serenity would have been unfathomable. The companion loved this boat. If she was leaving, anyone could leave. Kaylee could….

“Oh, there you are!” Wash’s voice rang as she walked into the engine room. He looked quite harassed. Kaylee thought that that was cute. She grinned, walking towards him. Wash. She might not me married to him, but it was good to know that he would always be around. And she would always be around for him. And right now, it looked like he needed that. “Would you happen to have a box this size?” He asked, shoving a tiny blue vial towards her.

Raising her eyebrows, Kaylee took the vial into her hands. “Hmm…” she said. “Well, I ain’t sure, but I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check. What is this thing any…” She moved to hand it back to him, but the vial slipped through her fingers, shattering into a million tiny pieces on the engine room floor.

~*~

There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Inara called from inside her shuttle. To her surprise, Mal stepped inside. “You knocked,” she said flatly.

“I reckon I did,” he responded. Inara took in the sight of him and immediately pulled her shoulders back, readying herself for whatever was going to happen next. Mal’s shoulders were tense. His chin was squared and his eyes were heavy. Mal wasn’t making a social call. He wasn’t going to invite Inara to sit with him on the grates above the cargo hold to drink Kaylee’s ship-make wine or ask her to talk a walk with him outside before they both returned to the ship to sleep. His footsteps were terse and heavy. He’d come looking for a fight.

She took a few steps towards him, looking him the eye. “What do you want?”

He crossed his hands over his chest. “You really gonna take that boy’s coin when you ain’t sleeping with ‘im?”

Inara felt a heavy weight forming in her chest. It was a heaviness that had been with her all too often as of late, and all too often it was Mal who… she remembered, suddenly, the Heart of Gold, sitting in the room alone and letting this feeling, this too familiar feeling, wash over her… but standing in the shuttle before him, Inara pushed it back. Instead, she took deliberately even breaths through her nose and kept her expression calm, perfectly calm. “Gilbert Crane and I reached an agreement before the stipulations of this service were made known to me,” Inara said briskly. “If he doesn’t want to partake of all that I have to offer, that is his choice, but it doesn’t mean that he’s getting anything for free.”

For a moment Mal just look at her, his eyes like ice. For a moment, she thought it was over. She though he would mutter in Chinese, maybe call her a whore, turn around and walk away from this. He didn’t. In a moment of rage almost completely unfamiliar to Inara, he turned and slammed a fist into the shuttle wall. “Fó shuì mián shé, Inara!” he shouted, turning back to her, walking to her and grabbing her shoulders. His fingers burned. He was trembling. “Just who do you think you are? What game is it that you think yer playin’?”

“I am not playing games, Mal!” she shouted back, shrugging him off of her and retreating further into the shuttle. This wasn’t what she wanted. For a moment, the thing in her chest threatened to push forward and over take, her… but Inara pushed in back with might rage. She looked into his eyes, burning, scorned. “This is part of my job. How long have I been telling you this, Mal? Being as Companion is about more than sex.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is!” he retorted, throwing his hands into the air. “Actually, Companion is a synonym for babysitter. What’cha really do is tickle ‘em and play tea party and dress up like a reg’lar fairy princess. Oh, yeah, and then you sleep with them.”

Her heart wasn’t in this. She didn’t want to fight with him. Inara stood for a moment, stance defensive, her heart racing inside of her chest. “Mal…” Her voice was low, cold. She wanted to calm him down. She wanted this to be over. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She was supposed to be leaving tomorrow. Everything was supposed to have been… but it wasn’t. He hadn’t let it. Mal never… She didn’t want this from him, she didn’t…

He crossed his hands over his chest again. When he spoke he voice was low too, and dark, full of an emotion that didn’t match his words. He wasn’t looking at her. “Takin’ that boy’s coin when you ain’t given’ him what he pays for ain’t honest, and it ain’t right.”

It was too much to take. “So now you want me to be a whore?” she spat.

Mal’s head shot up in a flash, nostrils flared. “I want you to show a little integrity.”

“Integrity?” Inara repeated. This was easier. Standing in front of him with her hands at her sides and her eyes wide with insult spinning insults with her tongue was easier, easier than standing before him making wishes, easier than standing before him, wanting him to… “Mal, explain to me why a man who is being paid large sums of money to play at being an eighteen year old girl’s prom date and help her teenage friends play teenage pranks is lecturing me on integrity?”

“I an’t feedin’ nobody any delusions…”

“Neither am I…”

There was a soft knock on the door. “Come in,” Inara shouted. She turned away from Mal’s indignant face to find Simon Tam stepping nervously into the room. “Simon,” she greeted in a strained voice. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Simon stood for a few moments, looking back and forth between Mal and Inara. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Inara said quickly, brushing past Mal as she darted across the room, stopping in front of Simon. “Mal and I were just finished with our discussion.”

“Oh, I see…” Simon began, clearly not believing this. “I was just going to ask you if you could watch River tomorrow. Book asked me to come with him into town tomorrow to do some relief work. I was going to see no, but he says that there won’t be any Alliance workers outside of the factory, so then I thought…”

“I wish I could help,” Inara said quickly. “But I’ll be engaged with my client all throughout the afternoon and evening. Perhaps you should ask Kaylee.”

“Don’t bother,” Mal said darkly, eyes locked on Inara. “She’ll be helping Zoe out with the shào nián è zuò jù.”

For a moment the three of them stood there, locked. Simon excused himself gracelessly. Mal followed him without another word. The shuttle door was shut. Inara stood in the room alone, surrounded by her half-packed things. Without bothering to walk to the sofa or the bed, Inara sunk to her knees.

~*~

Wash avoided looking at Zoe as he undressed. This was not something he normally did. Normally, he drank in the sight of her body… her smooth buttocks, her supple breasts, her muscular arms and thighs… he loved Zoe, every inch of her, every limb, every curl, every scar. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. It was hard looking at her knowing that he was going to disappoint her, knowing that her birthday was in five days and he had nothing to give.

“Are you all right, husband?” she asked from the bed. She was stretched out, naked on the white sheet. She was looking at him with a slightly raised eyebrow. Wash smiled at her as he took his shirt off and settled in next to her. She cradled him, letting him rest hid head on her chest.

“All right? I think I’m all left,” he said with his trademark goofy smile and his started planting sloppy kisses on her left breast. “I could be all right if you wanted me to…”

“I was being serious,” she said with a slight smile. “You weren’t planning on doing something for my birthday again, were you?”

“Zoe…” he began, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. It was supposed to have been a surprise, something nice for her, something that she deserved and would enjoy despite her reservations. It was… it looked like it wasn’t happening. The gift was broken. There was nothing Wash could do about it. “Zoe,” he started again, voice deeper, quieter, serious. “I love you like a… but, honey, I don’t…”

“Shh,” she said, caressing his cheek. “It’s okay. If you don’t have anything, it’s okay,” she said. “All I want for my birthday is a nice, quiet evening with the person I love most.” She was smiling at him like an angel. Wash didn’t know whether to feel relieved or heartbroken. Zoe seemed amused by his indecision. “Tell you what? Friday morning we’ll get ourselves a nice bottle of wine, put in on some ice, and then in the evening when job is through we’ll come down here, open it, and be cozy.”

“Cozy…” he repeated. “Like bunnies?”

Zoe smirked. “How do you feel about a trip down south?” she asked with heavy implication.

“South,” Wash responded, “is one of my four favorite directions.”

She kissed him hard on the lips, drawing him closer to her until Wash was afraid that their skin would fuse together and they would become one person. Her hands caressed his body, fingers dueling scratching and tickling his back as her other hand combed through his hair. In the midst of passion, Wash vowed that somehow, some way, he would find something for Zoe. By the end of the week, she would know just how special she was to him.

~*~

Mal paced uncomfortably in the cargo hold. His pants felt too tight. He had never taken well to dressing up all formal. Sitting on the stairs behind him was Gilbert Crane, Inara’s “client” who seemed equally uncomfortable. Mal rubbed his eyes with a sigh. He hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and he knew exactly who to blame it on.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Mal saw Gilbert Crane jump to his feet. The shuttle door had opened. Inara stepped out first wearing the orange dress she’d last worn when he’d taken her to the opera. She walked quickly down the stairs and to Gilbert, refusing to meet Mal’s eyes. Heather Zagorska stepped out after her, wearing the gold dress with long sleeves that Inara had worn the day they’d found Tracey…

Heather walked straight to him, her smile golden, and laced her arm through his. “Let’s dance,” she said with a smirk, as she led Mal to her mule.

. . . . . . Translations: Fó shuì mián shé… Buddha’s sleeping serpent Shào nián è zuò jù… lit. Juvenile mischief; in context: teenage prank

Thanks again for all the reviews! keep 'em coming...

Before I post any more, there are a few things I should say. When I imagined this story, my intention was to have flashbacks to both Mal and Inara's pre-Serenity lives (this was implied in the description of the fic). However, for various reasons, I've decided just to focus on Inara's story. (For more about this, see my blog entry.)

In the next chapter... While Mal and Inara play nice in front of Senator Woo and Mayor Kentdale, Zoe and co. prepare to perform acts of sabotage, and River..