Enough Light

Part I

Title and summary from Mosca's "Like Describing the Alphabet".

When she jumps, she flies and keeps on flying. Her body hits the ground, sure, and, mourning, her friends bury her, but *she*, soul or spirit or what have you, keeps on flying.

The portal needed the key; when it gets the slayer, the blood is the same but the energy is different. It expected the guardian, but it receives a warrior.

So she flies through a maelstrom of worlds, changing and inhabiting each one, layers of soul peeling off as she passes. She fights monsters, dances over ice, marries, remains untouched, keeps flying on.

Her friends will call her back, and when they do, she will only remember the last world, where the air is warm and there is peace all around her.

But this is a story about a world just before the warm peace. Nearly out at the edge of everything, where she knows more fighting under an endless sky, where she is, as she is everywhere, still herself.

Only, of course, *different*.

*

When Inara comes floating down the stairs, her gold dress catches the light and dazzles. Kaylee plucks at her own cotton sack and tries to give the wolf-whistle Jayne taught her.

It comes out like a mouth fart and River laughs at her.

"That's some dress," Kaylee says. "River, ain't that a dress?"

River glances up from where she's squatting among the crates, drawing pictures in the air with a chopstick. "Dresses are costumes and costumes are disguises and --" Off Kaylee's look, she smiles politely. She's trying so hard to be nice that it's just about enough to break Kaylee's heart. "You look very pretty. Like fire eating air."

"Thank you," Inara says, linking her arm in Kaylee's. "Are we ready?"

For a second, Kaylee doesn't want to go out. The docking bay on the other, empty shuttle's acting up, loose and unreliable, and it's worrisome. Plus, Simon's hiding in the infirmary and maybe he's got the right idea, maybe she should just go hide with the engine, back where she knows what to do and it don't matter none what she looks like next to Inara.

Then she comes back to herself and nods. "Ready."

"Beware the jabberwock!" River calls from the bay as they depart. "And also pickpockets. Privateers and pernicious --"

Either River falls silent or they're far enough away, getting swallowed up by the Cheapside crowds, but Kaylee can't hear the rest.

*

All Annie needs is a ship.

Just a ride, anywhere away from here. Michael's dead on the other side of this algae-choked rock and his scow might as well be dead. Probably couldn't break atmo with it and she never was any good at piloting to begin with. She paces the docks, evaluating her chances, but the pickings are slim. There's a nice old Firefly-class, but it's dark inside and doesn't look to be taking on any passengers. Shame.

The first mate on a Reuter gets too close, sour breath making her retch, and she breaks his wrist and kicks in his ribs before hurrying away.

Stinking, horrid planet. She's got shiny-new, nearly foolproof new identification and nothing to keep her here and everything to run from, but there's no point in having a new name and both shares of cargo if she can't rutting *travel*.

*

Hespera's Cheapside, hard by the docks, is a teeming rundown place, a warren of alleyways and open-air bars, bazaars for legal trade and bazaars where they'll take your hand if you so much as offer them Alliance credits. It is never quite dark here; the skyplexes reel through the sky, glinting during the day, glowing smokily at night.

It's night now, not that you'd ordinarily notice. The stalls are as busy as they ever are, the crowds haggling and hustling, jabbering on in Thai and Neo-Cantonese and Hespera's own archaic East Midlands dialect.

"I just don't understand it --" Kaylee's so caught up in her ranting that she barely notices the press of the crowd, just raises her voice above the chatter and ducks out of the way of a fire-eater, drawing closer to Inara. "It's not that he's *stupid*, far from it. He's --"

"Simon's very bright," Inara says, linking her arm in Kaylee's and pulling her against the wall so a rickshaw, its driver bent double under the weight of the fare, can creak on through.

Kaylee sighs heavily and turns sideways to follow Inara. "Top three percent. So where's his *mind*, is what I want to know. A whole night's leave planetside, and what does he do?"

"He decides to inventory his infirmary," Inara says with the tone of one who's heard *that* particular statement more times than she count. "Here, honey. Sit."

Somehow -- Kaylee doesn't know *how*, it's just Inara's way, graceful and calm -- Inara has found the only empty table in this raucous bar. "Confounding as all get out, is what he is." Kaylee shakes her head, looking around for a barmaid, but Inara's already found her, and a pitcher of tea and two half-liters of rice gin appear on the table as if by magic. Inara raises her glass and, belatedly, looking around for the barmaid who's already vanished into the crowd, Kaylee follows suit. "How do you *do* that?"

"How do you know when the engine's about to cough out a gas cloud?"

Kaylee drinks down a long gulp of gin and shrugs. "That's different."

When Inara smiles, Kaylee gets poetical. She can't help it, not with the way the smile takes half of forever to stretch across Inara's face, and she tips down her head, then looks up at Kaylee through her lashes, and her mouth's red but her face is cream and black tea and pink and she has curls brushing over her cheeks.

"Well, it is," Kaylee adds, finishing off her drink. "Machines and ships, those are sensible. People --" She waves her hand, then picks up Inara's half-liter and takes a swig. "They're not. Sense-making. Not hardly."

Annie watches the two women from the archway into the next mews. She holds her coat tight around her -- she lost the buttons three rocks ago, but it's a good coat and she won't be letting it go any time soon -- with the collar turned up around her jaw. They look happy, the girls, inclining towards each other like something magnetic's sitting in the middle of the table.

She's got every reason *not* to be nostalgic, but she can't seem to help it.

The darker one's noticed her, Annie knows that much. Big black eyes sweeping over the crowd, keeping Annie in sight, but all she'll be able to see is another woman, blonde hair done up in skinny dreadlocks and pulled back off her face. Just another face in the crowd. A face that might be watching them a little closely, sure, but that wasn't troublesome.

They look nice together. Happy, barking out laughter and teasing each other. Touching, a lot of touching, fingertips skimming up and down bare arms, and it's been a long time since Annie got close enough to anyone to feel that kind of touch. She and Michael fell out long before she had to kill him. Her throat gets hot at that thought, hot and scratchy, and she's got nobody to blame for getting all sorrowful but herself.

"Well, that's it," Kaylee announces. She tries to sweep out her arms to drive her point home, but it's crowded in here and she just ends up whacking a not particularly friendly-looking type. "Sorry! But that's it. If I'm nothing more than a gorram babysitter and rube off the last rock before forever to him, then -- then --"

Inara pushes the jug of tea toward Kaylee. Four rice gins and the girl's shaking harder than a leaf, vibrating, almost. Her cheeks are stained pink, damp with sweat, and her eyes are shining.

"Then I don't need him," Kaylee finishes and ignores the tea. She thinks she sees something in Inara's face, doubt, maybe, or amusement, so she adds, "I *don't*."

Inara takes the time to pour herself a cupful of cold tea and have three sips before she puts her hand atop Kaylee's and says as lightly as she can, "No, baobei. You don't."

Kaylee nods fiercely. "See, and if you say it, and you know all about men and their strangeness and the hearts they pretend to carry around in their chests when actually all they've got is a big empty cage of ribs, if *you* say so, then it's true and I'm right and I don't need Mr. Doctor High and Mighty, oh how *do* you do? Simon Pi Gu Yan Tam."

Inara's laughing before she quite knows it. "Yes, precisely."

"Yes!" Kaylee says, nearly cracking her glass when she sets it down. "Yes and yes again."

"You're very drunk," Inara says when her giggles slow down.

Kaylee nods, her eyes widening, and just then, Inara feels someone squeeze her shoulder. The stranger scrapes a third chair over to the table and swings around to straddle it,

"Hello there!" Kaylee says brightly.

"Buffy --" The woman offers her hand, first to Kaylee, then to Inara, who squeezes the fingertips and smiles politely. She finds the women out here marvelous, rough and sharply angled; they would intimidate her if she had anything to fear. As she does not, she settles for curiosity and wonder.

Kaylee stumbles through the introductions. "K-Kaylee, and this here's Miss Inara Serra, she's an honest-to-God duly registered --"

"Kaylee, ssshh," Inara says.

"-- *Companion*!"

"Companion, huh?" Buffy's gaze flicks over Inara's face, then down to her breasts. "All the way out here."

"Yes. All the way out here." Inara is careful to keep her voice measured and polite, inconsequentially and untraceably rude. "And you? You're not from around here. What do you do?"

Buffy twists in her seat, hailing the barmaid. When she replies, she parrots Inara's tone. "Little of this, little of that."

Buffy's small-boned and deeply tanned. When she reaches for her full-liter of rice gin, her coatsleeve slips down her arm and the blonde hair stands out like motes in the sunlight. Watching this, Kaylee feels twice as warm as she did a moment ago. Buffy's blonde hair, Inara's gold dress: it's all so bright and warm, all a reflection of how Kaylee feels. She can't stop smiling -- her cheeks hurt and burn -- and the din of the crowd peters down to the roar of her heartbeat.

She really is drunk. It's shiny.

Folding her arms and leaning forward, Buffy asks, "Dance?"

Oh, they'd look so *pretty* together -- Kaylee grins encouragingly at Inara, who lifts one shoulder, then looks away, murmuring, "No, thank you."

"Asking her," Buffy says and offers her hand to Kaylee. "As a matter of fact."

Kaylee can't take her eyes from Inara's face. Inara's eyebrows are up, but her gaze is lowered slightly, off-center and hidden. Kaylee says, "Me? But I'm -- I'm not -- well, there were those few times, but -- Me?"

Cocking her head and rising, Buffy grins. "Ain't a companion, but I know a fair number of moves. Try me."

"Go on," Inara says softly, smiling and straightening her back. She fixes her cloak across her chest and pats Kaylee's arm. "I'll be right here."

"Okay!" Kaylee's knee catches the underside of the table and her chair rattles in her hurry to rise, but Buffy is there, hand on her elbow. She squeaks when Buffy's arm slips around her waist, but then her feet are a couple centimeters off the floor and she's floating and there's a *girl* in her arms. Such a pretty girl, too, so strong and small she might as well be made out of metal, except she's soft to the touch and her big green eyes, thickly rimmed with smudged kohl, are fixed on Kaylee's face, watching and smiling as they dip and twirl. Like she made a wish and it came true right away. Giving up Simon, shaking her silly hopes loose, and now there's a *girl*.

Her thoughts are spinning faster than their dance.

"Another tea, thank you," Inara tells the barmaid, shifting in her seat so she can keep an eye on Kaylee. Inara doesn't trust the blonde, though she can't say why. There's nothing so obvious about her, nothing like Mal's accidental wife, but she is...off.

Kaylee looks happy, however, her grin spreading as wide as the sky as she shakes back her hair. And the blonde -- Buffy, ridiculous name -- is quite a good dancer. Confident and loose-limbed, leading Kaylee around the crowded dance floor, hand on the small of Kaylee's back.

Right now, Kaylee can do anything. Nothing's impossible, not when she feels this warm and good -- dancing with a beautiful girl, telling her all about Serenity, keeping track of her floating feet.

"What's his name again?" Buffy asks and Kaylee closes her eyes. Buffy's voice vibrates right through her, speeding the dance, banking the heat inside her chest.

"Mal. Mal Reynolds, he's the --" Kaylee trails off, distracted by the smell of Buffy's hair, all light and pine needles.

Somehow, they end up in the archway, off the main floor, and Buffy's hands slide up and down Kaylee's sides, then cup her face and Kaylee spins, backing Buffy up against the wall and kissing her hard. Open mouth, roving lips, and she feels Buffy shiver against her, her coat falling open and head tipping back, meeting the kiss, hands coming around to Kaylee's ass, fingers digging in.

"You want to show me this ship of yours?" Buffy says into Kaylee's ear, nipping down on the lobe and the hinge of her jaw until Kaylee's quivering and now she really can't find her feet. "Like to see it."

Giggling, remembering how Bester lured her onto Serenity with stories just like the ones she's been telling, Kaylee pitches forward. Her forehead smacks the wall next to Buffy's head and Buffy holds her steady around the waist.

"Oh, I'd like to, sure thing --" Kaylee says, trying to clear her head. What could be the harm in that? No harm except on account of them transporting fugitives *and* illicit cargo from their last job back on Phaeton and she's sure as anything that Mal would frown on her using Serenity to bed the ladies. "But I can't."

They seem to be dancing again, or maybe just swaying -- no, dancing, back into the room, Buffy's mouth still pressed against Kaylee's neck. "Shame. Maybe you want to stay here?"

"Want to but can't," Kaylee says. She blinks hard and wonders where she's getting such reasonableness to draw on. "Got people relying on me."

"Loyal."

"Well, of course! But that isn't to say --"

"Lucky," Buffy says. Her eyes aren't quite so green any longer. Narrower, and lines are setting in around her mouth, and those eyes are all bruised-up.

"Oh, yeah," Kaylee says. She's mussed up this whole situation and she can't exactly figure how they went from dancing and shiny, shiny kissing to disappointment and bruised eyes. "I am, see, because --"

"Not you. Them."

"Oh." She doesn't know what to say to that. "Don't see how that works, but thank you."

"Kaylee --" Inara's warm arm settles around Kaylee's shoulder and draws her back. "We should get back."

"Already? But --" Kaylee's head is spinning in a different direction than her feet are. "I'm having *fun*."

She turns, and turns again. When she finally finds Inara, Buffy is gone. At least her touch is, leaving just the memory of her hands and the taste of her mouth on Kaylee's lips.

"I'm going to put you to bed," Inara says, drawing her close and kissing the top of her head.

"Shiny," Kaylee says thickly. All the dancing and rice gin have poured out the bottom of her feet and she can barely keep her eyes open. But every so often, thoughts strafe across her mind and she clutches Inara's arm. "I danced with a pretty girl."

"You certainly did."

"Yes. It was real nice."

"I'm glad," Inara says soothingly and helps Kaylee up to Serenity's cargo door. Kaylee doesn't remember walking, but here they are, so they must have. Inara's skilled like that, body and soul.

*

Annie -- Buffy now, she has to remember that, and forget what her other name sounded like in Michael's throat, concentrate instead on these new syllables, think about how the girl with thick hair and big smile looked when she said "Buffy" -- straps herself into the scow's cockpit and checks the dials.

Barely more than a spoonful of fuel, a rotted-out air line, and she'll just float if she gets this up. Float away like she should've a long time ago.

Course, all this is assuming she can get it back in the air.

And she'll float away, on and on, alone.

Kaylee, that was her name -- how come her new identikit couldn't have a pretty name like *that*? -- called her ship a girl. Simple, if a ship's a girl, like paper boats floating down a river.

"She's a real good ship. Strong. The captain, he takes real good care of her," Kaylee'd said.

"Sound like they're married," Buffy had replied and made Kaylee laugh.

"Near as I reckon, they are."

Maybe it's thinking about a girl who loves a ship that's married to a man, but Buffy gets the scow to cough awake, then lumber upward, shaking so hard she might as well be riding a pig's bladder on a string. But upward, the scow's blunt nose tilting to the horizon, then past, that's good.

Upward, and breaking atmo nearly tears her teeth out of her head, but she's up and flying.

Now all she's gotta do is float. Float, and try to keep her patience.

"Got some adultery to do," she says, then shakes her head when she realizes she's taken to talking to herself.

She hates being alone more than just about anything.

*

Kaylee falls asleep on Inara's bed, gasping awake when morning comes up and Wash takes off. Inara sleeps on her side like a statue, arm draped over her hip, breasts spilling out onto the sheet, her face slack and angelic. Next to her, Kaylee feels grubby and clumsy, coated with old sweat and sour-mouthed. Hard to leave the wide, soft space, but Mal gets all kinds of tetchy if she spends the whole night with Inara. So she kisses Inara's forehead, feels the skin pucker as Inara frowns, and then stumbles back to her bunk.

She thinks she'll sleep again, but she's got gin-head something fierce and lying down just makes it worse. She wants to retch, but at the same time, she wants to eat seven sticks of protein and drink cup after cup of Shepherd Book's strong black tea.

"Mornin'," Jayne says around a mouthful of something that, judging by the smell in the kitchen, he cooked himself. All salt and fat and nothing natural.

Kaylee's stomach roils at the stink and she decides to grab a liter of water and go back to bed.

Swallowing loudly, Jayne leans back in his chair and grins at her. When she tries to pass, he kicks out his leg, blocking her way.

Kaylee grabs the back of the nearest chair for balance. "Shenme?"

"Looks to me like little Kaylee got into some big trouble last night."

"Nah," she says. "Just too much rice gin. And dancing. There was dancing."

"You and Inara, huh?" Jayne rubs his chin, his grin getting even bigger. "Purty."

"No --" She squeezes her eyes shut. *Did* she and Inara--? No, she'd sure as hell remember that. As it is, her head is full to bursting with memories of Buffy and sharp teeth and golden hair radiating out like sticks, dancing like Kaylee had Inara's skill with bodies and touch. It feels wrong, though, to think of them as memories; they're too new for that.

New, but over, so she supposes they'll have to be memories.

Jayne clears his throat all meaningfully.

"No," she says, opening her eyes. "Nothing like that. Fun, though." She starts to smile, but it feels like that's fixing to split open her skull. Wincing, she adds, "Too much fun."

"Ain't nothing that's too much fun," Jayne says and pulls his leg back. "That's what you'd call a logical impossibility."

After shaking the bottle, looking like she's just discharging the sanitizer capsule, Kaylee sprays some water on his arm. "I'd call *you* a logical impossibility, yet here you are, day in and day out."

"Hun dan!" he mutters without much heat, shaking off his hand and slapping her ass she passes. He's still spluttering when she's out of the room, yelling after her, "No more spirits for you, get you all devilled up."

After that, she feels good enough to check in on the engine room. Serenity's running sweet and smooth, so she lies back in her hammock and drinks her water. Some days she misses the well-water back home, cold and tasting like rocks; this stuff's just an approximation of wet and not much more.

When the bottle's empty, she lines it up on the shelf and wraps her arms around herself, letting the memories in her head sink down and replay again and again. She savors the memory of that dance, lets the engine's hum be the voice of the crowd, and she sways a little, swishing back and forth, remembering Buffy's narrow waist and hot skin under Kaylee's restless hands.

Hard to keep remembering, though, when Wash's voice crackles over the loudspeaker. "Captain? A visit to the bridge'd be a kindness. Round about, oh. *Now*."

He doesn't sound upset -- when Wash is upset, his voice goes flat and higher -- but there's an urgency there that makes Kaylee sit up. Mal's feet thunder somewhere overhead, that quick loping gait she'd recognize anywhere. It reminds her of a quarter horse she used to know, once upon.

"Never a dull moment," she says to Serenity. The engine hums happily in response.

She's awake now. Might as well see to that docking problem in the empty shuttle.

*

River finds Simon in the infirmary, sorting out weaves and tape into small piles on the gurney. She floats past the open drawers, her head tipped back, fingertips dancing against her legs.

"River?" he asks and looks up, a line of tubing looped around his neck. "What's wrong?"

"They're coming for me," she says, but she sounds perfectly unconcerned. She might as well have announced that her boot has a hole in the sole -- which it does, and which she refuses to patch, as it lets the light in. Simon stands up, reaching for her hand, but River pirouettes out of reach, her hair lifting in a dark curtain behind her.

"They're not," he says, though he knows it's probably far from the truth. But Early, at least, is long gone, cartwheeling through space. "River --"

"Two by two, Simon. One plus one is two and everyone needs the picture in the mirror." She smiles at him, blazingly, beatifically. Ever since reading the Shepherd's holy book, River has become obsessed with pairs, with sets of two; Simon would find it charming -- and, truly, he does -- if it wasn't quite so difficult to bear the knowledge that no one is like River. She has no match, and he does as well as he can as a substitute, but that can lead to problems.

He cannot kiss his sister. No matter how beautiful she is, never mind how happy it would make her.

Simon grasps her hand across the gurney and interlaces their fingers. "Two by two, then."

Pulling free, River laughs at him. "Not *you*, you're not broken!"

Strange, then, if that's true. He feels shattered.

*

"What've you got?" Mal asks when he gets to the cockpit. One easy jump, that's all he was hoping for, Hespera over to Cyrus, nothing to worry about.

Hopes are fei hua, he ought to know that by now.

"Damnedest thing," Wash says, peering out the window like if he just looks hard enough, the sky'll start making perfect sense. "Picked up a distress call, thought nothing of it, then --"

Zoe does her Zoe-thing, appearing next to Mal like she rearranges the air to get where she's going. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Wash says. "Well, not nothing. Little bit of something. Distress call from an old cargo scow, running on fumes it looks like. Cold in the sky. Thing is, it's using *Serenity*'s frequency."

Mal shifts his weight and resists the urge to crack his knuckles in frustration. "Want to be using some words that make sense here?"

"Distress calls go out on a general frequency," Wash says. "Normally."

"So why ain't the skyplexes picking up?" Zoe asks.

"Because it ain't a distress call. We're being hailed," Wash says. "Only *looks* to be a distress." He leans in again, twisting one of his mysterious dials, all business and barely restrained confusion. Doesn't even seem to notice when Zoe lays a hand comfortingly on his shoulder. "Yep. Definitely being hailed. Someone knows we're out here."

In Mal's estimation, that's all sorts of not-so-good. He likes to fly as far as he can without interference; the less folks know where to find him -- know, even, that he's out here -- the better.

"Got a visual?" Mal asks.

"Deng yi miao--" Wash hums a jaunty little ditty, punches a series of buttons, and the viz-wave screen crackles to life. "Yeah. Want to make nice with the nice stranger?"

"Might as well," Mal says and edges closer to the cockpit dash. Behind him, he can hear the strap on Zoe's holster easing open as her hand settles on the butt of her gun.

*

Buffy has floated a good distance from the last skyplex; the scow screeched to a halt and the power cut out about an hour ago. She's breathing warm, recycled air, patching her distress call straight through to Reynolds' ship.

Finally her wave screen beeps dully and she sits up straighter.

The screen shakes like quicksilver, and then, finally, a half-forgotten face is scowling at her in 256 dim colors. "Mind telling me who you are and what you want with my ship and me and mine?"

"Malcolm Reynolds," Buffy says. "I need your help."

"Ain't an ambulance vessel, nor in the business of samaritan efforts," he says. "Who in tian xiao are you?"

"I got sixty kilos of good Hesperian bacalao, salted for long haul flights. Another thirty of fed credits, nonsequential, and some assorted drygoods. They're yours, if'n --"

Reynolds says something over his shoulder to someone out of camera range, waits for their response, then turns back to the screen. "There's some who'd say this is one of those situations that just might be too good to be true."

Buffy nods. "But they'd be wrong."

"And what'd you'd be wanting for bestowing such riches on us?"

"Passage," Buffy says. "Not to mention the pleasure of your company."

Mal's eyes narrow. "You sayin' I know you?"

*

Kaylee's on her back, squeezed into the slip of space between the empty shuttle and Serenity's docking bank, wiggling wires and cursing. She curses to keep herself focused, and although sometimes she worries she's scaring the ship with the blue language, it's the best way she knows how to get the job done.

There's nothing blocking the dock mechanism. Even better, the sensors all seem to be working.

It just looks like there's extra space here. She's reluctant to say the shuttle's riding loose because of bad design, but it's the only explanation. Inara's shuttle fits more snug, probably, because it's loaded down with all her possessions.

If she squints, she can see all the way down to the engine room, and that ain't good.

"Qing wa cao," she says as she pulls herself free. A wire's latch catches on the edge of her shirt and snags the knit, unraveling it faster the more she tries to work free.

Then Serenity gives a great big gulp and goes still, hanging in the air. Not entirely still -- everything's still running, so the constant tremor keeps running through Kaylee's body, the tremor she misses when she's rockside -- but there's no reason to be stopping.

"You okay?" she asks, laying her palm on the floor, checking the rate of tremor.

Everything *feels* all right. She should stop fretting.

*

River's to stay in her room; Simon *knows* this, but she will not. Not usually, but now, with the ship gone still and a strange silence settling over everything, she pads away to the dormitory without him even having to suggest it.

The sight of her, compliant, head bowed and shoulders tilting, is more disturbing than her worst truculence.

"I'll stay with you," Simon says and hurries after her.

River draws herself over into the corner of her bunk. "White and black, dark and light, Simon. Won't be long now til all the colors come."

In his alarm at the ship stopping, he barely hears her. "Stay here, River. I'll be right back."

He runs to the bridge, his feet smacking the metal floors. They've come so far, nearly all the way across the verse, deep in the black, and he cannot afford to let himself grow complacent. He cannot lose River.

"Why did we stop?" he calls when he's still several paces away. He can hear Mal's laughter and the familiar resentful bile edges up the back of Simon's throat. "Don't laugh at me --"

Mal looms in the cockpit threshold. "That you, doc?"

"You know very well --" Simon stops and schools himself. "Why have we stopped?"

"You taking up captaining now?" Mal calls. "Hey, Wash. Might want to watch your position. Doc's got it in his mind to *fly*."

"I must insist you --"

Mal turns away. Over his shoulder, he says, "Insist all you like, son. We're picking up someone in need. That's the *civilized* thing, ain't it?"

Simon grips the railing and feels the white blaze of frustrated anger sweep through him. It would be just like Reynolds to endanger River without giving it a second thought.

*

"Good gor*ram*, I'll be a rutting milkmaid," Mal says, the doctor instantly forgotten. He spreads his arms, laughing. "Go on, Zoe, dress me up in one'a Kaylee's pretty frocks and call me Curly Sue."

Leaning back, loose and pleased, against the wall, Zoe squints at him. Wash'd like to know how she *does* that, just lounges and ends up looking more beautiful and powerful than ever. Probably witchery. "You'd be needing a perm for that, sir."

"Gimme a perm, then. Hell, paint my lips a nice cherry red and blacken my lashes."

Wash spins in his chair, shaking his head. "Still not understanding the details of this situation." He pauses, then stresses the next word. "*Captain*."

"Get the airlock ready for a little stroll in the sky --" Mal claps him on the shoulder and strides down off the bridge. His laughter barks and echoes off the walls. "I'll be in the bay, welcoming our guest."

"He's a very strange man," Wash mutters, not expecting much of a response. All he got from Mal's brief wave convo was something about the war -- it's always the war with him and Zoe, always going to be and Wash has made his peace with that -- and a girl name of Goldie and then Mal started laughing and bouncing on his heels and here they are, ready to take on a passenger in the middle of the black.

"That he is," Zoe says, dropping a kiss on the back of Wash's neck. Just the right spot, of course, seeing as how his wife is nothing but tactical and thoughtful, the spot that makes Wash gooey inside and shaking in his britches. "I'll head on down to the bay. See you there."

Wash wants to mutter something about standing by your man, but that's exactly what Zoe's doing. What he needs to put into words is the strong feeling that if someone wants to breed with you, someone says she wants to have your nearsighted redhaired babies, then that person ought to do things like, say, *explain* why her captain-sergeant-friend's barmy as a barn owl on the prairie and maybe even drop in a couple details about what the gorram hell's going on.

*

Inara has packed away most of her gowns, all of her books, and several stacks of paper credits. Her shuttle would not look bare to the untrained eye, but she knows that it is drawing in on itself, losing her decorations, returning to the cold metal and cloudy plastic it originally was.

When Serenity stops, she is refolding a long blue shawl, the fringe falling thick and heavy through her fingers. She should just pack it away, but it's one of Kaylee's favorites. She'd be sure to notice its absence.

*

In the middle of the bay, Mal's rocking back and forth on his heels, a grin plastered over his face as he swings his arms, clapping his hands in front, then behind of him.

Zoe stands a few paces away, leaning on the stairway's banister, her hair fixed back.

"What's going on?" Wash asks, taking the stairs two at a time. "Your lock's all set, Mal." He hits the bottom of the stairs and sits down, looping his arms around his knees, and adds wistfully, "Be nice to know who we're letting on, wife of mine. Warrior of my heart. Keepin' secrets the fastest way down the slippery slope to despair and aching hearts."

Zoe strokes his neck. "Girl me and Mal used to know."

"Tzao gao," Wash says. "Not again. Not another beloved war buddy --"

"I'm with the little man," Jayne says, emerging from the very back of the hold, where the containers are stacked higher than his head. "Had near enough of your buddies abusin' our hospitality and making free with our good nature."

"You don't have a good nature," Zoe tells Jayne, then moves closer to Mal. "Maybe you ought to shed a little light, sir."

"Be glad to," Mal says. "In half a sec --"

He grins as something bumps Serenity gently from the outside and Jayne makes a move for the knife in his belt.

"Now, Jayne. None'a that," Mal says, stepping forward and easing up the lever for the air lock. He winks at Zoe, rolls his shoulders, and punches the button for the cargo door. "Wei, wei! Welcome!"

A spacesuit, legs turning like an old-fashioned eggbeater, stumbles inside, followed by three wide containers, each of them easily far heavier and bigger than the person in the suit. As Mal eases closed the door, then releases the airlock, Wash notes that the suit's a good one. Light chainmail-mesh over carbon weave, the kind Fed pilots get requisitioned with. It don't belong on a garbage scow.

Then again, neither does this girl who's emerging from the suit's neck, unscrewing the helmet and shaking out her hair. Pretty and delicate, heavy black kohl around her eyes and a flush in her cheeks. No more than Kaylee's age and *pretty* -- not Wash's type, of course, he has to remind himself -- but easy on the eyes.

"It's *Goldie*!" Mal says, arm around the girl's shoulders, leading her over to the crew. "Goldie. Little Goldie! C'mon, you folks all know the song -- Pretty Lil' Goldie in the Big Brown Coat? Led the children and showed them way?" He hums something, searching their faces.

The girl looks a little embarrassed. "Hey, Zoe."

"She's a *hero*," Mal says, a little subdued. Wash can see the excitement fixing to drain out of him. "There's the ballad and the stories and --"

"I got a song," Jayne mutters.

"Yes, but your song was stupid," Wash says and stands up. "Hi, Goldie. Wash. I'm --"

"My husband," Zoe says. She links her arm through Wash's and even with the railing in their way, he feels immediately calmer with her so close and warm.

Goldie grins and looks back and forth between them. "That's *great*. Wow. Zoe settling down."

"*Goldie*," Mal insists to no one in particular. "Zoe, back me up here."

Goldie unzips the top part of her space suit and pulls her arms free. Touches Mal's hand and says, "It's actually --"

"*Buffy*?" Kaylee, up a level and a half, hanging over the railing.

The girl, whatever her name is, waves enthusiastically. "Buffy, yeah. Hi!"

"You know her?" Jayne asks. "Why does everyone know her?"

Kaylee clatters down the stairs, tugging at the unraveling hem of her shirt. "What're you doing here?"

"Ran into some trouble after take-off," Buffy says. Wash thinks of the scow she was trying to fly and marvels that it got into the air at all. "Set to floating when I remembered you said something about Mal having his own ship."

"So what's this about a new name?" Mal asks, eyeing how Kaylee and Buffy are holding hands, shutting the rest of them out. "And how're you familiar with my mechanic?"

"Not to mention," Wash says and grins. "Exactly *how* familiar are you two?"

Kaylee rolls her eyes. "Inara's gonna be so happy! Barely had time to get to talk to her --"

"Talk to whom?" Inara asks, appearing at the very top of the catwalk. The shadows fill out her blue shawl, make her part of the scenery. "Oh, Buffy. What a pleasure."

Her tone makes it sound, to Walsh anyway, that it's anything *but* a pleasure, but no one else seems to notice. Wash feels a bit like Jayne, just a gaping onlooker, but since Zoe's smiling and relaxed, he feels safe enough. Just another strange day on the sky's oddest ship.

Mal claps his hands again and drapes his arm around Buffy's shoulder.

"You're welcome aboard," he says. "Anything you need, you just let us know."

Correction, Wash thinks: strange day, odd ship, totally loopy captain, moodier than a rabid goose. Silent and tortured most of the time, giddy as a girl with a pretty new wa.

"A shower," Buffy says, ducking her head slightly. "Feel --"

"Well, a *shower*," Mal says, looking at Zoe while Jayne barks with laughter. "Well, then. Got the cold chemical spray, don't suppose that'd do the trick?"

"Come to my shuttle," Inara calls down. "I can warm some water for you."

When Buffy climbs up to the top level, Mal and Jayne unpack her cargo and Jayne whistles long and low at the sight of all the bundled credits. Kaylee perches on the steps, legs kicked out and a happy grin on her face and Zoe sees to pulling together a bunk for the girl.

In the crew's quarters, not the passenger dorm, which Wash'd think was notable, only now he can smell fish. *Real* fish, cod it looks like, long as Jayne's armspan, silvered and thick as ropes.

"That ain't what I think it is?" Wash comes closer, poking at what he's sure has to be an illusion. "Cod."

"Bacalao," Mal confirms. "This is --" He pauses, the weight of the fish pulling down his shoulders. "This is how protein *oughta* be packaged."

"You ever had this?" Wash asks Kaylee.

"Fish? Some koi, once or twice."

"No," Wash says. "That was water vermin. *This* is fish."

There're few things nicer and brighter in the world than Miss Kaylee's laugh, and it's even better with Jayne humping around, credits in his meaty fists, and Mal loose and happy.

If Wash was a gloomy man, which is something he leaves to folks like Mal and Simon, he might be thinking of this later as the calm before the storm, brightness heading before fear.

But he's not and he's fixing to have real Basque-battered salt cod for supper, if Book lends him some of his precious pepper and frozen eggs, and there's little else in the verse outside of Zoe's arms that could make him quite so happy.

*

Buffy strips while Inara heats the wide, shallow basin. Glad to unwind the breeches and pull off her mesh jumper, she stretches gratefully, each joint cracking in turn, making Inara wince.

"Sorry," Buffy says. "Flying does things to your bones."

"Yes," Inara says. She motions Buffy to sit on the floor before the basin and kneels beside her, gently nudging Buffy's arms until she unfolds them and bares herself to Inara.

She trusts this girl even less than she did last night -- turning up out of the black, just happening upon their ship: these are things that Mal, in his childlike giddiness, seems to have missed, but Inara has not. Her lack of trust, however, is neither here nor there. She has bathed any number of clients she liked much less than Buffy, and the girl could certainly do with a thorough scrubbing.

What's more, there is a grace, a certain honor and restfulness in the most simple of gestures. Inara cultivates her practice wherever the opportunity arises.

Drawing the sponge over Buffy's arms, down her back, running the soap lightly over her jutting bones, Inara lets her mind open to the emptiness of universal light. Trust is an inconsequential thing, after all. Buffy is just a slip of a girl, growing prettier and prettier, brighter with the flush of the water's warmth, the cleaner she becomes. Inara pushes the sponge in wide swathes across Buffy's back and sides, letting the water trickle through the soap's lather, cleaning away the grime. Then she holds a wide handkerchief in both hands and scrubs Buffy's skin clean.

The girl has bruises and scars on her, old and new, to rival those on any military official Inara has known. She shivers under Inara's touch, a constant, barely-perceptible tremor, as if she has to keep herself from bolting.

Inara practices kindness the way Zoe and Jayne do target practice. Kindness, like shooting, is never outside of its performance, does not exist anywhere but in the moment of its emergence.

When she draws wet fingers up the nape of Buffy's neck, around the knot of hair there, Buffy shies, then quiets. Inara draws her back against herself, fingers slipping over Buffy's shoulders, massaging away the slabs of tension set just over the girl's breasts.

Buffy's hair, golden sticks, is impossible to clean, but Inara works the soap over Buffy's scalp, then lets water pour from her cupped hand, rinsing it away.

While nudity carries no intrinsic honesty -- Inara, of all people, knows that perfectly well -- there are indeed secrets to descry and provisional trusts to be built that come more easily when clothes are shed. Naked, pink and shining, Buffy is hardly threatening. She is, in fact, lovely, her face bare of makeup and unguarded. When Inara tips up Buffy's chin to dry her face, Buffy closes her eyes and her lips purse together.

Desire is both profession and vocation for Inara; she is blessed for this to be the case. There is little she can do to resist Buffy's sweetly expectant expression.

The kiss they share is hesitant but very warm, and it is Inara's vocational heart, rather than her professionally analytic mind, that wonders, for the length of time that it lasts, whether this is the kind of kiss Kaylee experienced last night.

"Towels!" Kaylee calls, backing into the shuttle. Inara goes still and Buffy yanks herself away. "Oh -- *oh*. Ai ya, la duzi -- Sorry, I thought --"

"Kaylee," Inara says, sitting back, twisting the handkerchief in her lap.

"Goushi. *Goushi*. I'll go. I'm so sorry, I don't -- I'm sorry." But Kaylee is frozen to the spot, more towels than everyone onboard could use in a week piled in her arms. She looks away, to the side, up to the ceiling, across the bed, anywhere but at them. Her face feels hot, prickled over with a slow-crawling itch.

In a single flashing motion, easy as someone else might wave hello, Buffy is on her feet, striding toward Kaylee, holding her fast by the elbow. She's naked and now Kaylee has nowhere to look but at her.

"Stay," Buffy says.

Kaylee feels like if she opens her mouth, horrible, hysterical laughter is going to come out. She shakes her head and says between gritted teeth, "I *can't*."

Buffy holds Kaylee's arm so firmly that Kaylee can feel her bones starting to bend. She thinks of Wash, praising the strength of warrior women, rhapsodizing about their secret reservoirs of power and hunger, and finally, because she has nothing else to say, Kaylee meets Buffy's eyes. She wants to try it.

"Stay."

Buffy is clean now, scrubbed a deep rosy pink, but those are the eyes that Kaylee saw in Cheapside. Green, but bruised inside, jangled and needy, broken kaleidoscopes.

"All right," Kaylee says and sneaks a look at Inara. Sure, she's seen Inara naked plenty of times, but never like this, not in the middle of -- of -- whatever secret, glamorous thing they were in the middle of, whatever it is that Kaylee stomped into, interrupted, like a crazy cow breaking through the fences in Daddy's side pasture.

Inara looks more beautiful, naked like this, than in any of her gorgeous dresses. Her hair is loose around her shoulders and when she smiles at Kaylee, gently and encouragingly, Kaylee feels something give way inside of her.

After lifting the towels out of her arms, Buffy leads Kaylee over to the edge of the bed, then sits next to her, cool arm around Kaylee's sweaty back.

"Feel a mite overdressed," Kaylee says. Her voice is alien in her own head, squeaky and strange. She smoothes out the wrinkles in the knees of her work pants. "My, my."

Chuckling, Buffy starts tugging Kaylee's sweater over her head, its hem trailing yarn. When her head comes free, and she's sitting there, topless and flashing hot, then cold, then hot again, she finds Inara kneeling just in front of her, holding her by the waist as Buffy kisses the side of her neck.

"Inara, you -- *Oh*, oh, my," Kaylee says. Buffy's skin feels like fruit under Kaylee's touch, soft and firm, as she sweeps her hand up and down Buffy's back. "Oh, honey, oh --" She turns her head and Buffy is waiting to kiss her, parted lips and darkening eyes, and Kaylee gets very warm very fast, twining her arm around Buffy's waist, pulling her down onto the bed, rocking closer, knee going between Buffy's bare legs.

Buffy kisses all the air out of Kaylee's lungs and then some, and it takes forever for Kaylee to remember there's something that she needs to say.

"Inara," she gasps, pushing herself up on one elbow, shushing Buffy, who's nosing and nudging at her chest. "Inara, you can't -- you're not allowed -- it's against the rules."

Inara stands up, naked, the color of peaches and old ivory, her hair dark and mysterious, loose around her face, neat between her legs. She arches one brow, questioning, before leaning over, lowering herself over Kaylee's side, kissing her ear. "What's against the rules?"

Kaylee rolls onto her back, Inara settling on her like a blanket, and brings Buffy with her, tangling her hands on soft scarred skin and softer unmarred skin, and she wants so much right now, she has little mind left for language.

"You. This," she tries to say. "You're not allowed to service the crew. Captain said."

Buffy's laughing, somewhere to Kaylee's left, and Inara laughs, too, tasting the fresh sweetness of Kaylee's mouth, then the salt of her skin. "Is that so?"

"Mal *said* --"

"Tiansha de tama de hundan," Inara mutters and Kaylee's eyes fly open, shocked at the crudity. "You call this *servicing*?"

Somehow, she's unlatched Kaylee's pants and she slips her hand inside, cupping Kaylee right where she's burning, her thumb unerringly finding the sharpest, sweetest spot.

"Looks to be something else entirely," Buffy says, worming her leg around Kaylee's back and pulling her up, running her palms around the underside of Kaylee's breasts. Her own breasts ride small and firm against Kaylee's back.

"Besides," Inara adds, licking down Kaylee's shoulder and closing her mouth briefly around the knob of her shoulder, "It's not Mal's rule. It's mine."

"Oh," Kaylee says dreamily. "Oh, well, okay then."

Kaylee knows that she isn't glamorous and cultured like Simon and Inara. Nor is she brave, nothing like Mal or Zoe or even Jayne. She is, however, herself, and she doesn't mind being around those who are better at other things; she admires them, and feels a constant, warm pride at what they're able to achieve. She does know how to have a good time, how to feel good, then better, then even better, closing in on best, and she gives herself over to that, twisting up and around to kiss Buffy as her hips rock and fall against Inara's smooth white perfect hand.

Kissing Buffy again banishes the sadness of memories, makes everything real and present, and Kaylee has no idea why a girl like this -- a girl *Mal* admires -- would possibly be interested in her, but she is. And Jesu knows, Kaylee is interested right back. Murmuring impatiently, she pulls on the knot of Buffy's hair, loosens those twigs until they crowd the kiss, as heat banks, then spreads in long, twisting flares across the bed, out from their skin, wrapping them up.

Whenever she's thought about doing this with Inara, whatever this is -- not making love, certainly, but it isn't rutting, either -- Kaylee tended to imagine a lot of incense and low candles, lipstick that tasted of strawberries and much arching of the neck and long, drawn-out sighs.

This is much faster than those imaginings, much deeper, especially when Inara crooks two fingers inside her and laughs throatily at the guttural gasp Kaylee gives as she screws herself back, bringing Buffy with her, dipping her head down and biting her way down Buffy's taut, scarred belly. Tian shun, Kaylee reminds herself, using the title of one of Jayne's porno books she fished out of the trash, tian shun, tian shun. Lick and suck, and she doesn't even need to remember that. Her mouth's doing just fine on its own.

There's a glamour, kind of-sort of, right here, in the lean ropes of Buffy's muscles and the sweat springing out over her skin and the dusky, heady taste of her, and in Kaylee's throbbing head, her heartbeat breaking out all over her body, and *Inara*, murmuring and soothing and stoking higher.

*

River looks up at the ceiling, smiling to herself. "It's getting brighter."

"Hmm?" Simon asks.

Stretching like a cat, arms over head and back arching, River sighs contentedly.

He tries again. "What is it?"

When River finally looks at him, her cheeks are dark and her mouth looks nearly swollen. He worries for a moment that she has invented a new nervous habit of chewing on her lips, but then she grins like the child she used to be.

"Sometimes it's more than two," she says, sliding off the edge of the bed and reaching for her favorite sweater, an old fatigue jumper of Mal's, spinning around as she pulls it on. "But that's just an aberration in the usual set theory. Nothing permanent."

"All right," he says carefully. "Where are you going?"

She doesn't pause as she passes through the doorway. "Dinner. Big night."

"Already?" He stands up, realizing he has not eaten all day. "Are you sure?"

River doesn't reply.

*

When Inara leaves -- though as time passes, perhaps it would be more accurate to say *if* she leaves -- Kaylee will be alone. Inara does not think so highly of herself that she can believe Kaylee will be bereft, or even lonely. But she owes the girl *some* measure of apology, if she does leave.

*When*. She has packed away most of her belongings and she will leave. It's only a matter of time.

In her absence, Kaylee will need someone. She is friendly with everyone, of course -- she is Kaylee, after all -- but she needs, and she certainly deserves, more than that.

For a short while, Inara had hoped that Simon could be that person. Anyone, especially Simon, would be lucky to feel the full radiance of Kaylee's love. The girl sees more, fixes more, than anyone else, and all unthinkingly; she exists in a slightly more brilliant dimension than the rest of them. What Inara has spent hours, days, weeks and years of her life practicing to achieve -- though formless, the grace would be something like the crystal stupas, refracting rainbows across the world, that Milarepa's wife saw in a dream -- Kaylee can garner with a smile and shrug.

In her lower moments, when Mal has driven her to dry-mouth frustration and enraged distraction, Inara believes that Kaylee's far too good for this ship, this world, *especially* a whore like herself.

She cleans herself quickly, wraps an old shift around her body, and leaves the girls to sleep together in the middle of the bed. On the floor of the shuttle's cockpit, she folds her legs in the lotus and closes her eyes.

Someday, some radiance will visit her.

*

"Ohhhh --" Kaylee breathes out the sound. The sweat has dried down to stickiness across her skin and Buffy lies beside her, similarly coated and open-mouthed. "Nihao?"

Buffy stretches, then collapses back against Kaylee's warm solid curves. This close, Kaylee's face looks like the edge of a world, backlit by a rising moon. "Qing lian," she whispers and Kaylee smiles, the skin folding up around her eyes, turning them into little crescents of dark light.

"Hardly," she whispers back. "Dark out there. And no clouds."

It had rained when Michael rose from their bed, and Buffy realizes she half-expects to hear the drumbeat on the roof of Inara's shuttle. She let herself get carried away just now, so eager to join the intimacy that Inara and Kaylee seem to share without being aware of it that she opened her mouth, her legs, moved her hands, joined and now, now, she is caught.

Happily caught. She hopes happily.

If not happy, then at least not painfully. She's had about enough pain to last several roundtrips across the verse.

Sighing, more heavily this time, Kaylee rolls onto her side and traces the line of Buffy's eyebrow with her index finger. Her breath is warm and heavy on Buffy's face. "What's -- what're you thinking?"

She could lie. Say "nothing" and pull Kaylee closer, kiss her all over again and make her forget ever wondering.

Trouble is, Kaylee would believe her. And Buffy's sick of lying.

"Hate being alone," she says, slow, choosing her words carefully, after a long time quiet. "But having friends, I --"

"Easier than it looks from the outside," Kaylee says. Grinning, she pinches Buffy's hip and drops a quick kiss on her forehead. "'sides, I'd say you're doing real well already."

*

Zoe's trying to stop laughing, but she can't, not with Wash singing his new offkey rendition of the Ballad of Goldie. "It's hard to believe," he croons, "there's no way to prove, but it's truer than true. Four was their number, infinite their brave. When the Fed poked up, they shot him straight down dead. Took his head to bed, shocked it full'a lead --"

"Not like that," Zoe says when Wash pauses for breath and she stuffs a big bite of cod into his mouth. "But they were brave, no two ways. Why, I recall Goldie pretending to kiss up to the Alliance general in those parts, name of Walsh, only to break Walsh's neck when the time was right."

"Way I heard it," Jayne says, shovelling half the serving bowl of rice onto his own plate, "is there was this hill, dong ma? Right on the coast, above a whole gorram network of tunnels. And the kids, they defended that hill for *years*. Never lost a soul before they blew it to kingdom come."

"Well, that would be unlikely," Book says, passing the platter of fried-up bacalao to Simon. "I'm sure some lives were lost."

Jayne stabs his fork into the air. "Said souls, didn't I, preacher? Not lives. Lives, they're cheap, ain't they?"

"Wouldn't be surprised if that was the case," Mal says serenely, helping himself to a tangle of rice noodles and shaking out liberal amounts of ersatz soy sauce. "But if you want to hear what really happened, you might just ask Buffy."

"Planning on it," Jayne says around the food in his mouth. "Soon as the girls show 'emselves."

"You be polite," Mal reminds him and River nods in agreement. "And if you can't manage that, you shut your mouth."

"Don't be mean," River explains and Jayne shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

"Where are they, anyway?"

Mal indicates generally in the direction of Inara's shuttle. "You know women. Taking their own sweet -- OW!"

"Sorry, sir," Zoe says. "Knife musta slipped."

Simon has not touched his food. Book elbows him gently, but Simon keeps looking around the table, disbelief all over his face.

"You don't all believe this, do you?"

They look back at him, even River, as if he just broke out into song.

"Shepherd, you're a reasonable man," Simon says. "You can't possibly --"

Book rolls his eyes in pleasure as he finishes off his fish. When he has swallowed and patted clean his mouth, he cocks his head. "I can't possibly what?"

At a loss for words, Simon shakes his head.

Book shrugs and pours himself more juice. "I've heard of the girl and her friends, of course." At Zoe's snort of surprise, he smiles. "Yes, even in the abbey we monks were not unaware of the struggle you folks found yourselves in."

"All comes from Shaolin," River says, poking at her fish. "Except this. This used to be aswim."

"Yes," Book says directly to River as if they are the only ones in the room. Then, clearing his throat, he addresses the rest of the crew. "The monks were -- well, let us say, peace has many practices. At any rate, this girl -- we knew her as Ju Ahn -- liberated, then safeguarded, an area known as Diyu De Wen with the help of, among others, a wupo named Liu, a sentient goat, and Michael, angel-general of the heavenly host."

The preacher's got a way about him, Jayne's been noticing, where he looks most serious-like, serious as the grave, exactly when he's telling a joke. Mal and Zoe crack up, Wash coughs up his tea, and Jayne throws back his head in delight.

Simon's smile becomes very thin, very quickly. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. This is all, all --" Stammering, he throws up his hands. "All fictive. The worst sort of popular entertainment, vulgar and unreliable --"

"You talkin' about Inara?" Buffy asks, striding into the kitchen. She wears, unbelievably to Mal's eyes, a pair of Kaylee's shapeless brown trousers and one of Inara's sparkly, dazzlingly intricate corsets. She's no longer a little girl, Mal realizes with a start, not with that bosom and the swagger in her step. "Ke wu, now *that's* a spread'a food."

She slides onto the bench beside River and grins at her. "Shui-shui, you gonna to finish that?"

Mal exhales, realizing now that the moment's past that he's been worried as to how his own resident fengkuang de wa would handle a new arrival. But River seems happy enough, pushing her plate toward Buffy so she can play with Buffy's hair.

Kaylee joins her on the other side while Inara hangs back behind the counter, fixing herself some of her cosmo-tea, more expensive for a hundred grams than half of Mal's own weapons.

"Grace us with your presence?" he asks over his shoulder, giving off the air of not really caring one way or t'other. She smirks at him and if he didn't know better, he'd think that she looks a tad down in the mouth. But that'd mean she's got feelings, and Mal's not thoroughly convinced of that fact.

"There's cod!" Wash tells Inara. "Figure you've had better, but I did my manly best with the batter and seasonings."

"Thank you, it smells delicious," Inara says, picking up her skirts and joining Zoe on the bench.

"Sorry we're late," Kaylee says a little too loudly. She seems nervous for no reason at all. "Got to talkin', don't know where the time went."

At that, River giggles; near as Mal can figure, she's reading jokes written on Buffy's scalp.

"As a matter of fact, so were we," Mal says, taking a third helping of fish and winking at Buffy. "Simon here, Mr. School-Learning, can't seem to believe you did half of what you did."

Simon looks suitably embarrassed, hemming and hawing, going red in the face and Mal can't hide his own smile. The doctor squints down at his plate. "I didn't say that, I said --"

"Yes, you did," River says, using one of Buffy's dreadlocks to point at him. "You said the stories were lies."

Poor man looks shocked at his sister's betrayal and Zoe coughs politely. "What you said, doc, was that --"

"Stories ain't true," River says decisively and, strangely for her, looks around the table, meeting everyone's gaze. "Simon hates stories. But he should listen better."

"Well, I'm very sorry," Simon says, lifting his chin and putting on the snob face, all tight around the eyes and thin through the lips. Kaylee's sorry to see its return. "But you must all admit that it's hard to believe. There are different names, entirely contradictory accounts, tropes borrowed from other legends, and somehow -- forgive me --" He inclines toward Buffy a moment before raising his voice again. "Somehow she's survived *everything*. I merely suggested that --"

"What other legends?" Inara asks mildly.

Simon's mouth opens and closes.

"Yeah," Jayne says, getting interested again. Nothing like seeing the fancypants squirm. "What others?"

Glaring at him, Simon says as if the required patience pains him. "Ju Ahn liberating a land with the assistance of angels? No one else is reminded of Jeanne d'Arc?" No one replies and he adds, "On Earth-that-Was. She heard voices, including --" He turns to Book. "Michael the archangel's. They told her to fight the English."

"Don't see nothing wrong with that," Mal says and Zoe nods.

"All that tea and cricket," Wash observes. "Make any rightminded gal ornery."

"Jeanne was accompanied by Gilles de Rais, the bluebeard," Book says.

River gags on her water and Buffy pounds on her back. When River can breathe again, she relaxes against Buffy's side and Kaylee smiles. She *knew* Buffy'd fit in. She doesn't know why Simon has to be so stuck-up about all this. If River likes her, that ought to be enough for him.

"You see?" Mal says when it's quiet again. "Bluebeard, goat. It's all the same, really. Clear as mud that it's all made up."

Wash laughs and Jayne smirks.

Simon makes a fist that Jayne's sure he doesn't know how to use and swallows audibly. "Not to mention this children's crusade --"

"She's not a child," River says, leaning in very close to Buffy's hair. "Older than the sky. Ancient."

Simon looks pained and says to Buffy. "I'm sorry. My sister gets these ideas into her head --"

River scowls but Buffy laughs. "Not a problem."

"So you're calling her a liar?" Jayne asks Simon. "How come your sister's allowed to spout all kinds of --"

"Jayne," Mal says.

"I never said *she* was a liar," Simon says. "I was speaking of the *stories*, not those who tell them. The content of the stories -- well. You'll forgive me if I laugh."

"Sure I'll forgive you," Buffy says quietly, picking up the last few pieces of rice and flakes of fish with her chopsticks. She raises her gaze and smiles at Simon. "But Michael and the Goat, now. You leave 'em out of this."

"Shide di," River murmurs like it's the chorus to a song only she can hear. "Don't speak ill of the dead, Simon. It's rude."

Sagging backward, running both hands over his face, Simon doesn't say anything else.

"Way I see it," Book says, "stories like this, they go a long way toward making us what we are. Human." He raises his glass toward Buffy and River. "All those versions, the fact that they exist must mean something in itself."

Passing the pitcher of juice, Zoe nods. "My aunt used to say travelers paid for hospitality by bringing in new stories."

"Yes," Book says. "What do you think, Simon?"

Simon stays quiet. Never says another word, not for the rest of dinner, nor the long, happy time afterward. Jayne polishes his boots while Zoe, River and Buffy lean over the parcheesi board that Wash made for River. Kaylee curls up on the couch next to Buffy, wondering how close she can remain without drawing undue attention.

Inara sits like an eagle on a chair, haughty and still, and Kaylee kicks her lightly. "Hey, pretty."

Inara smiles at her, clasping her ankle and squeezing. Kaylee shivers under her touch, remembering everything else those hands, that mouth, showed her just a couple hours ago. "How do you feel?"

"Mmm?" Kaylee blinks, suddenly drowsy with the sense-memories of heat and aches. "Shenme?"

"That answers my question," Inara says lowly, so only the two of them can hear. She slides her hand up under Kaylee's trousers, stroking her shinbone. Kaylee doesn't know it, but Inara can see, plain as anything, clear as crystal, how Kaylee is inclining toward Buffy, rarely looking away. And Buffy, strange as she is, seems to be returning the unconscious, affectionate propinquity. Sex rarely *solves* anything, but it smooths some situations out beautifully. "Happy for you, baobei. So happy."

Kaylee smiles, her eyelids drooping. Buffy leans against the back of the couch, arm around Kaylee's shoulders.

Inara need not worry any longer. If she must leave, Kaylee won't be alone, and she will leave. She knows that now; if she should stay, she'd lose Kaylee sooner rather than later.

Attachment is the simplest and most deadly threat to any who would emulate the blue dakini. If she let herself love Kaylee, really love her, not only would she never leave, she'd lose all her work.

Better for the both of them to recede and, eventually, vanish.

*

Mal pets Kaylee's sleeping head as he leans across the couch. Most everyone's cleared out of the dining room; just he, Zoe, Buffy and River are left. And little Kaylee, but she's out like a light. Jayne's lurking over by the stove, shoveling cold fish and rice into his gullet.

"We got some work coming up on Cyrus," he says, keeping quiet as he can. "Looks to be an easy job, drop in and grab the goods."

"Sounds good," Buffy whispers back.

"Our contact sank the stuff down a mineshaft. Narrow little thing. Could use your help, if you're interested."

Buffy strokes Kaylee's hair for a moment before looking back at Mal. "Wouldn't miss it."

A plate clatters to the floor behind them and Kaylee mutters but doesn't wake. "Quiet time, Jayne," Mal says without turning. "Keep it down."

"You ain't thinking of using *her*?" Jayne says, voice booming in the dusk. River grimaces over the cat's cradle she's been weaving between her fingers. "But she's -- she's --"

"What is she?" Zoe asks.

"Not on account of her being a female," Jayne says, and Mal can just about perfectly picture him hastily gulping in the air. "Just that she's -- she's *tiny*, Mal."

"Job could use that," Mal says. "Might've escaped your usually eagle-like powers of observation, but you, me, and Zoe here, we're larger people."

Buffy smiles as she straightens up, stretching her arms out in front of her. "Count me in."

"Give you a share, of course," Mal says as Buffy stands up, then leans over to shake Kaylee awake. Funny, to think that this is the same girl who nearly disemboweled an Alliance general and cut the hearts out of any number of grunts. Same hands, but so gentle.

"Hope so," Buffy says, helping Kaylee to her feet. She pauses and shakes Mal's hand. "Going to bed now, but --" She sucks in her cheek, gazing up at him. "Thank you."

"Welcome," he says after several beats, watching the girls make their slowly away. They sure look comfortable together; girls are weird that way, how they bond so quick and fast. Like glue, only softer. "Any time."

*

At the door to Kaylee's bunk, Buffy blinks against the twinkling lights and kisses her softly.

"Night," she whispers against Kaylee's cheek.

"You ain't coming in?" Kaylee asks. She's so tired, everything feels *heavy*, words included. But this is important and she shakes herself to stay awake.

"Bad dreams," Buffy tells her. "Wouldn't want to --"

"Not a bother," Kaylee says, opening the door. "C'mon."

When Early broke in and terrorized her, Kaylee hadn't been with anyone for so long that for several horrible seconds, her body responded. Crackled awake, set to yearning, and only then caught up with her mind and felt the fear. Afterward, she was certain it would be another long time, maybe even decades, before she let herself touch anyone again.

She says Simon's too stuck up for her, but if she's honest, like she is now, curled around Buffy in the close, comforting dark of her bunk, that wasn't the only problem. She hates feeling him look down on her, but more than that, she hates the thought of him touching her. Clinically or passionately, the thought of either makes her shudder and want to retch.

She thought being with a girl would be all soft. Glamorous, soft, nothing like sex, but better.

She was wrong and she's glad of that fact. Buffy's soft, sure, but there's hardness, too, the span of pelvic bone and tension inside, the harsh gasps and flashing eyes, nails in Kaylee's waist and teeth in her mouth. Not soft, not entirely.

*

Zoe finds, as a general rule, that men are far more obtuse than seems, really, humanly possible. For all their talk about instinct and sex drives, they're naive. Almost stomach-churningly so, really. Mal, Jayne, Simon and the preacher, even her beloved husband -- none of them seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary about Buffy and Kaylee.

This despite the fact that the girls are in each other's laps every chance they get, giggling and playing with each other's hair and holding hands and pecking each other on the cheek.

"Xiao," Wash says when she mentions it to him. "Very sweet."

"Girls," Jayne huffs and polishes Vera more vigorously. "Never pretended to understand the workings of the feminine persuasion."

"Huh?" Mal asks. "Hand me that box, would you?"

Zoe does not care how Kaylee's finding joy, except as to how none of the men seem to have noticed. She shakes her head and passes the box of cartridges to Mal.

*

Cyrus is one of those shale- and granite-covered worlds where the terraforming tipped all the way into rock and forgot about little things like water and vegetation. Mal squints out at the landscape -- and it's mere politeness, calling that array of rough plateaus a "landscape" -- and wonders how it is people can *live* here.

"Hard place, sir," Zoe says from across the entrance to the mine.

Just a plastic tarp covers the hole in the rock. Anyone could stumble inside and never come out. Mal's gladder than he lets on that he's not the one to crawl down that hole.

"That it is," he says. "Still -- funny how folks can make anything a home."

Jayne's positioned several meters away behind an outcropping, but his voice comes in loud and clear over the comm bud in Mal's ear. "This ain't living. Not unless you're some kind'a trilobite."

"Impressive vocabulary," Zoe says into her mic. "Any sign of Buchloh?"

"Nah," Jane says. "Telling you, this job's a bust. Call the canary up."

Mal turns, checking the horizon one more time, schooling the urge to check down the shaft. Buffy crawled away less than an hour ago, her belt loaded up with grapples and magnets to retrieve the booty. No comm equipment could penetrate through this rock, so she's out of range, silent. He don't like that one bit.

"She can handle herself," he says, more to himself than anything else, but Zoe nods and Jayne's derisive snort explodes in his ear.

Mal knows, in his *head*, that a female can handle herself just as well as any man in any situation. Zoe's living, breathing, statuesque proof of that proposition. But in his heart, he has doubts. They're chivalrous in nature, he's sure of that, though some others, beginning with Inara, might have other names for them.

It's Goldie, though; he reminds himself of that fact. Little Buffy, braver than half his own battalion put together. He's got nothing whatsoever to fret about.

Except -- except, by the same logic, if this is any kind of logic -- if *he's* still got aftershocks from the war running through him, how much more worse is it for her?

Zoe adjusts her holster and catches his eye. Covering the mic on her lapel with one hand, shading her eyes with the other, she says so only Mal can hear, "She'll be up soon, sir."

"Yeah," Mal says. "Yeah, a'course."

*

Alone in the dark, pebbles grinding into her hands and belly and scraping up the length of her legs, Buffy grits her teeth and keeps crawling forward.

Michael told her how he lived in the sewers under Ariel's capital city for years, until his eyes adjusted so well he could identify the rats individually.

Being alone does things to a person's mind. Everything gets sharper and the quiet roars inside your skull.

*

Buffy wasn't kidding about her bad dreams. She screams herself awake most nights, white in the face, hands curled into fists. Kaylee's offered to get some meds from Simon, things to help her sleep, to calm the awful pictures in her mind, but Buffy's refused it.

Just now Kaylee's wishing she had some of those meds to calm *herself*. She and Wash are tossing darts at Jayne's board, their aim completely off, and anxiety's hovering around them like a cloud of mean mosquitoes.

"What's the time?" Wash asks, working a dart free from the wall.

"Five minutes past the last time you asked," Kaylee says.

Wash hands her a dart and grins sheepishly. "Never gonna get used to this."

"Losing?"

He shoulders her, hard. "Waiting."

"Yeah," Kaylee says, dropping the dart and clambering up onto a crate. "Don't get easier, does it?"

Wash lifts himself up and rocks against her, then away. "Nope."

"Kuangzhe de," she mutters and he slings his arm around her.

Their feet kick restlessly against the side of the crate and that's the only sound to be heard.

*

Rock all around her, pressing down and up and in. This gorram hole could *swallow* her and no one'd be the wiser.

As she crawls, there are faces glimmering on the crumbling walls around her. Painted on the shaft floor, hovering in the darkness ahead of her. The Goat's, kindly and lined; and Liu's, eyes rolling black and mouth screaming magic; Michael's expression of surprise when she drove the knife into his heart and let him fall.

Ghosts, that's all they are. Just ghosts and regrets. They dwell in dark, gloomy places like this, waiting for her.

Like her dreams, but there are more faces in her dreams, places she has never been. Scythes and aquatic monsters, sunny days crowded with children, trains underground, lights flashing on and off, staying dark.

She has to keep it together. Do this job, get the loot, and she'll be back on the ship before she knows it.

She knows she's at the bottom when her palms flatten on bare rock and the ghosts around her hold their breath.

Just two crates down here, far less than Mal said, but she hooks up the magnetic pulley, then lies on her back for a moment to catch her breath.

The top of the hole is a tiny light, high above her, pale. Insubstantial, nothing to believe in.

If she closes her eyes, it would be gone. She'd be gone and there'd be no more regret, nothing but blessed dark and stillness.

*

"Stay away from that girl," Simon tells River. She is lying on her stomach, drawing a picture of Buffy in a long white dress, carefully shading in each and every fold of the skirt. "She's not --"

"Neither am I," River mumbles, selecting a yellow pencil to color in the hair and sticking the black pen behind her ear. "So we're even."

"River --"

"*Simon*," she says, not looking up.

She is so small, so brilliant. Simon cups the back of River's head and gently tips up her chin. Her eyes are wide and dark, locked on his. "For me?" he asks. "Be safe for me."

River screws up her face, grimacing and sticking out her tongue. Simon withdraws his hand, then folds it in his lap.

*

"No sign of Buchloh," Jayne says. "Mal, you there?"

More silence, the kind of quiet that makes Jayne's muscles twitch and itch. He can't see Mal and Zoe down by the hole, because he's flat on his belly behind this rock, looking out over the pass for their contact.

"Mal --" he says again and just then, a roaring fills the air, mechanical and consuming, the air beating out in shards. Copter, sonic-powered, and he scrambles back, shouting into his mic. "Mal!"

"Heard it," Mal says shortly. "You get back to the ship."

Jayne doesn't need to be told twice. Fed pigs are closing in, no wonder Buchloh didn't show, and he sprints up the ridge, knife in his mouth, heading back to Serenity. Rock dust clings to his sweaty face and arms and he can hardly breathe for wheezing by the time he pounds up the cargo dock.

"Get 'er up! Get --"

Wash and Kaylee look at him, open mouths like beached fish, blinking.

"Go on, *get* --" He shoves Wash up the stairs. "Feds're coming."

From somewhere past the infirmary, River screams.

Kaylee clutches at the sleeve of Jayne's shirt. "But -- the cap and --"

"They'll be along," Jayne tells her, trying to shut out the crazy girl's shrieks. "Gotta get her out of that hole, don't they?"

Stumbling backward, Kaylee looks like she did when she got shot. White as the preacher's paper, not quite human. Jayne catches her under the arm and pushes her toward the infirmary. "You see to River, dong ma? Keep her quiet."

"But --"

"Just see to her," Jayne says. Kaylee's no good in a fight, and he's glad of that, seeing as how that keeps her out of the worst kind of danger. "I'll be down here, shooting anyone I don't know."

*

Wash has the controls in hand, everything ready for a fast-burning takeoff, and he's been calling over the comm line for his wife, for Mal, even for Buffy. No one's answering.

Try as he might, he can't see a gorram thing through the windshield, just rocks and more rocks. Makes sense, since Serenity's pointing the wrong way 'round from the rendezvous spot, but he can't help trying.

*

Buffy could stay down here, alone and cold, and she'd be safe.

Safe, but alone with her ghosts, and that's no way to live. That isn't even living, not really.

*

River's scream is long, unending, constant. Like water or air, it just *is*, so fully there and loud that life without it is unimaginable.

Kaylee finds River hunched in the corner of her room, hands over her head and Simon next to her, hair sweaty and mouth twisting with worry. She hasn't hardly talked to Simon since Buffy came aboard and showing up now makes her feel -- stupid. Stupid and clumsy and gorram ben zhuo.

"Hi," Kaylee says. "I came to see --"

River looks up, her face red as sunset and her screaming mouth a black hole. After a long moment, she clamps her mouth shut, stopping the scream and Kaylee moves a little forward.

River launches herself against Kaylee, pushing her onto the bed and curling up in her lap. Surprised, Kaylee glances at Simon, but he looks about ready to topple over and just shrugs.

"They come for you, high and low. Holes and sky, it doesn't matter," River says, then rolls onto her back, looking up at Kaylee as Kaylee strokes her hair. "We keep running, though."

"Always flying," Kaylee assures her. "Don't know how to live elsewise."

*

"This is a pickle," Mal says, surveying the seven Fed cops surrounding them, guns drawn and cocked. They come any closer and either he or Zoe is falling right into the hole. "Zoe?"

"Something of a pickle, sir."

The head one -- you can tell who he is, his uniform's blacker and meaner and his helmet's all kinds of shiny -- sneers. "You are bound by law to --. Drop that weapon."

Mal makes to obey, when the head cop decides to help and shoots it out of Mal's hand, the bullet going right through his wrist. Grunting at the shattering pain, Mal stumbles but does not fall.

"Sir?" Zoe raises her hands, keeping her back to Mal and stepping back. She doesn't dare check over her shoulder.

"Stings a bit," Mal says. "Liked that hand."

"Your best friend, most nights," she says. The cops are getting restless, drawing closer, and she says to them, "Let's be sensible here. Just the two of us, lots'a you --"

"You are in violation of several sections of the Cyrus planetary mining regulations. You appear to be indulging in criminal salvage and --" The head one's circling her and Mal. She hates with every fiber of her body his smug self-assurance, how the law tumbles off his lips like it's his own personal code when all it is, is something for him to hide behind. "You are currently transporting a fugitive."

Just the one? she thinks when Buffy springs out of the hole to Zoe's right, rocketing forward, landing in a crouch. Confused, the cops start to scatter, then regroup a pace away and Zoe grabs her gun, shooting the smuggest one in the leg twice until he falls.

"Glad you dropped in," she calls to Buffy, knocking the next cop unconscious while Buffy swings the two crates at three cops, clocking two together, their skulls ringing, then catching the third on the backswing.

"Told you I wouldn't miss it," Buffy says, dropping one crate and helping Mal up. "You good to walk, sergeant?"

"Captain now," Mal says, stubborn as ever, so Zoe knows he's fine. "Good to walk. Good to kick --" He draws back his leg and kicks the head cop several times in the ribs. He grins at Buffy. "Maybe even dance."

Zoe grabs the dropped crate. Tucking it under her arm, she sweeps her gun's sight across the array of fallen cops.

"We'll be taking your weapons now," she tells them. "I'd appreciate it if you'd just lay quiet."

And then they're bounding up the ridge, running flat out toward the ship. Mal's got his arm folded across his chest, the hand hanging funny, but he's yelling joyfully into the mic at Wash to prepare for take-off and get the doctor down to cargo. Buffy and Zoe have got the crates they came for, plus a cache of shiny new guns.

Works out to a win in Zoe's ledger.

*

Buffy beats both Mal and Zoe back to the ship, dropping the crate and several guns she's been hauling, turning in the middle of the bay, calling Kaylee's name.

She can't be alone and she's come too far, run and run and floated, and now she needs to fly.

"That's it, folks," Wash says over the intercom as Mal and Zoe hit the bay and the door shudders up to close. "Off this rock in --"

Kaylee runs down the stairs, into Buffy, nearly tackling her, and Serenity is lifting off as Buffy wraps her arms around Kaylee's waist, kissing her full and wide on the mouth while Jayne, Zoe, and Mal stand around.

Kaylee's never tasted a kiss like this, like laughing, like rain pouring out a summer sky, her hands on Buffy's ass, pulling and squeezing, clinging.

"C'mon," Buffy says, the energy of the fight, the blaze of victory, all lighting her from the inside, desperate to share it. She grabs Kaylee's hand and drags her up the stairs, toward the empty shuttle.

Mal clears his throat. Jayne's standing there, mouth hanging open, eyes nearly falling out his head.

"Zoe?" Mal croaks. "Did I just see what I think I saw?"

Zoe's wearing her calm, pleased smile. "You did, sir. Why don't we get you to the doc?"

"But --" Mal looks up the stairs after Buffy and Kaylee.

"Yes," Zoe says.

"You knew?"

"Hard to miss, sir."

*

Buffy's pushing Kaylee against the wall of the empty shuttle, their voices resounding and echoing in the space. Her hands are wild on Kaylee's body and Kaylee's so happy, happier than seems possible, that she's wild, too, grabbing at Buffy's shirt as Buffy yanks open Kaylee's overalls.

"Thought you were --"

"-- thought I was, too --"

"But you're not --"

"-- and you're here."

"Here," they say together and roll across the floor, elbows knocking the walls and teeth biting chins, necks, breasts as their bodies buck and rock together. Wet, and sweaty, heat everywhere but not nearly enough, and the kisses are just tastes compared to what Kaylee *needs*, what she knows Buffy can give her, and they suck the life and the heat out of each other, hands on each other, fingers probing and stroking and sweet Buddha, this isn't soft or glamorous but it's better than both those, and Kaylee's coming fast, thighs clenching around Buffy's hand, teeth closing in her neck. So bright and hot when she comes, peaks and then higher peaks, skyplexes spinning her out farther and farther. Gasping, crying out, she shoves Buffy onto her back, spreads her legs and pushes her face in between, tongue pressing inside, nose riding the swollen clit, and it's fast and hard and *hot*, stabbing her tongue, rolling her face, and when Buffy comes, she screams in joy and lifts halfway off the floor.

*

"So you're safe, then?" Kaylee asks afterward, combing out Buffy's hair. She itches and stings all over her body, a bruise blooming on her back, her elbow numb from catching the wall.

"Nah," Buffy says. "Happy, though."

The ship's flying on. Kaylee can feel its rhythm inside her bones, all its shakes and grunts and sweet music. She runs her palm down Buffy's belly and tickles the top of her pubic hair.

"Glad you came back," Kaylee says. "Gladder you're happy."

"Me, too," Buffy says, sitting up and pulling Kaylee up with her. "They'll keep coming, though."

"Feds?" Kaylee asks and Buffy nods. "What for, though?"

"Me and River," Buffy says. Her grip tightens around Kaylee's waist. "Rest of us reavers."

Continued in Part 2