Fic: Gone (Firefly) (part 2/2)
Title: Gone
Author: bluflamingo
Fandom: Firefly
Pairings: Inara/Kaylee (Kaylee/Simon)
Characters: Kaylee, Inara, Zoe
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Post-movie
Word count: 15,951
Betas: latentfunction, present-pathos; also feedback fromskieswideopen
Summary: After Shepherd Book, after Miranda, after Wash... it seems to Inara as though the universe owes something to the crew of Serenity, some chance at happiness, or at least not any more misery. The universe itself might even agree, but the universe is populated with human beings who know nothing of what's owing to Serenity, and human beings don't concern themselves with the balance of the universe's scales.
Artwork: Here by kiki-miserychic
Part One
Inara bought the dress for Kaylee’s birthday, on a whim about a month before. It wasn’t like the pink and white monstrosity Kaylee’d had for the ball, or even like any of Inara’s own dresses, but she saw it and knew Kaylee would like it, from the curling gold threads in the bodice to the ruffled skirts.
“Oh, Inara,” Kaylee said when she opened the box, eyes wide and stunned. “It’s beautiful.”
Inara smiled, watching her, feeling over-exposed and glad she’d waited to give it to Kaylee in the privacy of her shuttle, rather than at dinner with everyone else looking on. “I promised you a dress, remember?”
Kaylee looked down, her smile dimming. “For Simon,” she said.
“For you,” Inara corrected. “If I wanted him to have a dress, I’d buy him one.”
Kaylee giggled. “Maybe I should lend him the dress the captain bought me.”
“I don’t think pink’s really his color,” Inara said, fighting to keep a straight face.
“Thank you,” Kaylee said, sudden and sincere. “It’s the finest thing I’ve ever owned.”
She came over to Inara to hug her, pressing close. Inara hugged back, wanting to turn her head and press her face into Kaylee’s hair. She pushed it aside, thought of Simon and the way he’d fed Kaylee birthday cake at dinner, laughed when Kaylee dotted frosting on his nose.
“Why don’t you try it on?” she suggested, pulling back, even when Kaylee resisted for a moment. “We can put your hair up, if you like.”
Kaylee nodded, but her smile was fading again. “A fool I’d look wearing it on Serenity,” she said. “Not like you, you always look like you’re just waiting to be whisked away to some fancy party. I’d look like I was just waiting to get my clothes torn and grease-stained.”
“Stay here,” Inara offered impulsively. No-one stayed overnight in her shuttle other than her. Even Kaylee, who often came by, knew better than to stay for more than an hour or two in Inara’s space.
“You can teach me something,” Kaylee said. “Something about being a Companion.” She smoothed the dress out at the foot of the bed, tracing the lines of gold thread with one finger, as though she’d break them if she pressed too hard, then bent to untie her boots.
“All right,” Inara said hesitantly. There was plenty she could teach Kaylee without going into things she shouldn’t be doing with Kaylee. The tea ceremony, maybe, or something about the art of conversation. Just imagining Kaylee putting on an upper class accent and pretending to be interested in the price of tea or the problems with keeping a good servant was enough to make her smile.
Kaylee had her back turned to Inara, her overalls pushed down to her waist as she tugged at the t-shirt she was wearing under them, pulling it over her head and shaking her hair loose. Inara couldn’t have placed her better if she’d tried, close enough to a candle for it to coat her skin in a soft glow that made it seem as though she was shining, but far enough away for the shadows to catch at the lines and curves of her body, turning her into something mysterious and alluring. If she hadn’t been wearing overalls, she could have passed, in that moment, for a Companion.
“You shouldn’t have spent so much money on a gift for me,” Kaylee said, half-turning her head to speak over her shoulder, her head still bent as she unfastened the final buttons on her overalls.
“I can afford it,” Inara assured her. “Besides, who else do I have to spend the money on?”
“The captain?” Kaylee suggested, laughter in her voice. “You could take him out. Somewhere nice, just the two of you.”
“I don’t think so,” Inara said. “He might get the wrong idea.”
“Oh,” Kaylee said softly, turning. The movement, or maybe the way her hands came up, was enough for her overalls to slip away, pooling at her feet. She blinked, seeming confused, and Inara felt herself flush, annoyed with herself for it. She had seen plenty of women wearing very little, or even less than Kaylee was now, more than enough to be used to it.
She stood hastily, reaching for the dress and gathering the skirts up. “Raise your arms,” she said quietly, stepping closer to Kaylee, who still hadn’t moved. “Kaylee.”
“Oh,” Kaylee said again, almost as though she was coming awake, and raised her arms. Inara kept her eyes firmly on Kaylee’s face, guiding her hands through the sleeves, and her head into the right place.
“Now turn around.” The dress had a row of tiny buttons in the back, the kind that needed someone else to fasten them. It could never be a Companion’s dress, just for that. Inara started at the bottom, her fingers feeling clumsy on the smooth buttons, brushing against the warmth of Kaylee’s skin. Kaylee held very, very still as she went, only moving to sweep her hair away a moment before Inara would have reached up to do it herself. The last button had a hook as well, on the inside of the dress, and Kaylee twitched, barely noticeably, when Inara fastened it.
“All done,” Inara said, pleased when her voice came out sounding normal. It should have been easy, but what was easy with clients so often wasn’t with other people. “Now turn around, let me see how you look.”
Kaylee turned, so close that Inara felt the full material of the dress’ skirt brush against her own clothing, and forced herself to take a step back. Kaylee was smiling uncertainly, her hair loose around her face, and over her pale shoulders; the dress fitted exactly, as Inara had expected it would, following the lines of her body until it flared into the skirt, long enough to cover her feet without any shoes. “How do I look?” Kaylee asked.
“Perfect.” Inara reached out, tweaking the right strap of the dress slightly higher onto Kaylee’s shoulder to match the other side. When she made to lift her hand away, Kaylee made a sharp, hurt sound, cut off so fast Inara was barely sure she’d heard it. “Kaylee?”
“I -“ Kaylee said. “I want to - Inara,” and then she was pressing close to Inara again, but not to hug her this time. Instead, to press her mouth against Inara’s, a clumsy, off-centre kiss.
Inara had dealt with far worse from clients - though it was still the kisses, the unexpected affection, that she found most difficult - and turning away a simple kiss from a confused friend shouldn’t have been difficult. There was no reason for her to return it, to open her mouth for Kaylee’s tongue sliding against hers.
There was no excuse for it being Kaylee who broke the kiss, ducking her head and stepping back. Her foot caught on the long skirt of her dress as she did, and Inara started forward to catch her elbow, keep her from falling, or ripping it.
Kaylee made a sharp, shocked sound, wrenching her elbow free and stumbling over to sit on the edge of Inara’s bed. Hunched into herself, wearing a glamorous dress with none of the accessories that should have gone with it, she looked too young, too vulnerable. Inara forced herself to take a step back instead of towards her, and sit on the low couch several feet from the bed.
“If you want to leave now,” she said softly, “I won’t mind. I won’t be upset.”
Kaylee shook her head. “Can I stay here for a while?” she asked, voice not quite trembling. “I need…”
“As long as you want to,” Inara said, keeping the endearment in her mouth where it belonged. She pressed her hands together in her lap, trying not to notice whether they were trembling. For a moment, she wondered if perhaps she should leave, allow Kaylee to collect herself with some privacy, but she stayed where she was. It wasn’t fair to leave Kaylee alone, when she had been just as complicit in the kiss as Kaylee - more so, maybe, knowing Kaylee’s concerns about her relationship with Simon. She should never have bought the dress for her; it was a lover’s gift, even between women, not a friend’s, especially given in private as she had, and she’d long known how Kaylee thought of the Companion lifestyle, how much she’d be taken with such a luxurious dress.
She’d been so proud of herself for finally leaving behind her feelings for Mal. How had she failed to notice the same feelings developing for Kaylee, while she was listening to Kaylee’s relationship troubles and telling herself it was as a friend that she felt so negatively towards Simon sometimes?
“Would you like to change back into your other clothes?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.
Kaylee looked up then, her eyes red, her face pale. “In a minute,” she said. Her fingers strayed to the skirt of the dress, worrying it between her fingers. “I want to -“ She cut herself off, shaking her head. “What will I tell Simon?”
“Whatever you feel comfortable with,” Inara said.
“I have to tell him the truth,” Kaylee said, almost a whisper. “We can’t keep this a secret.”
Inara leant forward automatically to touch her, offer comfort, pulling her hand back as soon as she noticed herself moving. They were too far apart, anyway. “I won’t say anything,” she said. She didn’t add that she knew how to keep secrets, was already keeping so many that one more would make no difference. It would be harder than usual to act as though what had happened had not, but she had done much more difficult things before.
“I know.” Kaylee smiled, watery but strong. “I know, but I don’t want to have to.”
“I don’t understand,” Inara said. “If you don’t want to tell him -“
Kaylee shook her head. “I don’t want to have to not say anything,” she said. “I want…” Her face fell suddenly. “Oh. I understand, you were just being nice. With the dress, and because it’s my birthday.” She stood up, twisting awkwardly, obviously trying to reach the buttons.
“Stop.” Inara took Kaylee’s hands in her own, drawing them back between their bodies. She’d always made it a rule not to get involved with anyone, particularly anyone she was as close to as she was to Kaylee. Even if the person didn’t feel as Mal did about her work, there was little chance of it not ending in disaster or disagreement. Breaking her own rule - especially for someone she was as close to as Kaylee, in so many ways - should have been the result of careful thought and consideration, for the sake of both of them. With Kaylee so close, though, trembling with the urge to flee, asking for that time would be as good as making the decision, whatever she chose later.
“Kaylee, look at me.” Kaylee did, holding Inara’s gaze steadily. Inara took a breath against the way her heart seemed to flutter in her chest, the vaguely queasy feeling in her stomach, the sense that she was about to take a step neither of them was quite ready for. “It wasn’t just because it’s your birthday,” she said. “And I wasn’t just being nice.” She risked a smile, watched Kaylee slowly smile back. “Although it was very nice.”
Kaylee’s smile grew, catching her eyes, and then she laughed, light and quick. “Truly?”
“Truly,” Inara promised. It was, she thought, her turn to move first. She pulled gently at Kaylee’s hands, bringing her closer, close enough to kiss, then ducked her head to do so. Kaylee was still smiling against Inara’s lips, and she made a pleased, happy sound into the kiss.
Inara had kissed clients over the years to whom she’d been truly attracted; had kissed women; had kissed people she considered friends, or cared for. Even so, it had been years since she’d kissed someone who was all three, and she feared she’d forgotten how it felt, how nice it was. Kaylee melted into her, sliding her hands from between Inara’s to wrap around her waist, holding onto her, and Inara moved her own hands up the bare skin of Kaylee’s back to rest on her shoulders. Kaylee’s skin was warm under her palms, smooth despite the rough work Kaylee did on Serenity, and her lips were soft, mobile under Inara’s.
It took her a few moments to realize that the clock which ran down in her head while she was with a client had started running, enough to make her draw back. Kaylee followed her for a moment before opening her eyes. “Inara? What is it?”
Inara shook her head, not wanting to explain. She was still in the circle of Kaylee’s arms, still close, but suddenly very aware of the rest of the crew on the other side of the shuttle door, of Simon, waiting, presumably, for Kaylee to return to him for the evening. “I think you should talk to Simon,” she said.
Kaylee’s face fell. “I still don’t know what to say,” she said, ducking her head to rest against Inara’s shoulder.
“What do you want to say to him?” Inara asked. She let her hands slide down Kaylee’s shoulders to fold gently together at the small of her back, feeling ridiculously intimate doing something she’d done with Kaylee before without thinking. Maybe it was something in the way she could still feel the phantom pressure of Kaylee’s mouth against hers.
“That I don’t want him to choose between me and River, and I think one day he’ll feel like he has to,” Kaylee murmured into Inara’s skin. Inara felt her own heart lurch at the words, the implication that Kaylee was choosing her simply because she couldn’t have Simon the way she wanted him. Perhaps Kaylee felt it too, because she added, as though she had always meant to, “That I think I might have been in love with my best friend since I met her, and now I think she might be in love with me as well.”
Inara kissed the top of Kaylee’s bent head, breathing in the smell of her shampoo. “What do you think he will say to that?”
“Probably nothing,” Kaylee said. “Whatever I tell him, I don’t think he’ll say much to it.”
“Do you think he’ll be relieved?” Inara asked softly, guessing, but not surprised when Kaylee nodded. “Oh, sweetheart.”
“I would be as well, if he came to me,” Kaylee said. She was still for a moment, then took a step back from Inara, her face composed and set. “Help me out of this?”
“You don’t think it would give him the right impression?” Inara teased.
Kaylee shook her head, turning round. Inara felt far less clumsy opening the buttons than she had fastening them, slowly revealing the smooth, pale skin of Kaylee’s back as she went. She couldn’t resist stroking her hand down the curve of Kaylee’s spine, feeling Kaylee shiver as she did so. She opened the final button and lowered her head to kiss Kaylee’s neck, just where it curved into her shoulder.
Kaylee made a low noise in the base of her throat, so Inara did it again, a little higher, then again, tracing the line of Kaylee’s neck with the very tip of her tongue, something that often worked wonders on her clients. Kaylee was no exception, tilting her head to offer Inara better access, her breathing speeding up. Inara sucked gently at the edge of her jaw, then reversed direction, tracing the same path of kisses back to Kaylee’s shoulder, then across, smoothing the straps of her dress away as she went.
“Don’t stop,” Kaylee murmured, lifting her arms slightly as Inara pushed the straps down and over her hands, baring Kaylee to the waist. “Feels nice.”
Inara kissed her way across Kaylee’s shoulder, one hand going to sweep her hair away, the other chastely on her waist, just where the bodice of the dress folded over the skirt, one finger stroking at the skin there, the others on folded material. Kaylee sighed a little and brought one hand down to cover Inara’s. With her other hand, she took Inara’s where it still rested against her neck and placed it over her breast, holding it there until Inara shifted her own hand, cupping Kaylee’s breast and stroking one thumb over the tight, hard nipple.
Kaylee gasped, pressing back into Inara. “Qi,” she said, her voice roughened. “Inara.”
Inara stroked her nipple again, pressing a little harder, and Kaylee dropped Inara’s hand to reach back and grip Inara’s hip instead. Inara kissed her neck again, then bit gently. Kaylee’s startled cry surprised her, as did the way Kaylee tensed against her. Unsure, she shifted her mouth, bit down again, then nibbled her way back up Kaylee’s neck. Kaylee shuddered, but all the tension flowed from her, melting her back even further against Inara’s body.
Inara smiled, pleased, and moved slightly, sucking gently on Kaylee’s ear lobe, then harder when Kaylee didn’t protest, thumb still moving over her breast. She could have been with one of her clients, each move practiced and familiar, but for the ache between her own legs, the warm rush of having Kaylee in her arms, open and wanting, moaning when Inara pinched at her nipple.
Kaylee’s head was turned just far enough for Inara to see the flush on her cheeks, the way her closed eyelids flickered, her mouth open slightly, breathing getting less and less steady. The hand still pressed over Inara’s tightened, relaxed, then tightened again, holding on. Inara waited, but Kaylee just shuddered, hand tightening a little more, a clear enough hint for something that Kaylee didn’t seem ready to ask for.
“Kaylee?” she asked softly. In all of Kaylee’s openness about sex, she’d never once mentioned another woman, and there was still Simon, plenty of reason for her to be hesitant.
Kaylee made a choked, breathless noise, pushing at Inara’s hand. “Keep going,” she said, no hesitation at all in her voice. “Inara, please.”
It was awkward to slide her hand under the fitted waist of Kaylee’s dress, even when Kaylee released her hand with a sigh of pleasure. Still, Inara managed, sliding her hand into Kaylee’s underwear, over hair damp with sweat, stroking a single finger over Kaylee’s cunt, already wet. Kaylee moaned, loud and gratified, then again when Inara slid two fingers between her labia, pressing firmly. Kaylee was relaxed enough, ready enough, that Inara thought she’d have no trouble penetrating her, but the angle was awkward, difficult, and she knew from experience that she’d struggle to make Kaylee feel as good as she could like this, thumb on Kaylee’s clit, fingers moving firmly over her.
Kaylee’s breath caught, and her hips shifted, hesitantly, then more assuredly, mirroring the movement of Inara’s fingers. Inara slowed the motion of her thumb on Kaylee’s breast, matching the rhythm between her legs, unable to take her eyes from Kaylee’s face, expression intense, almost strained. Even so, she didn’t seem as though she’d have trouble achieving orgasm, even less so when Inara adjusted her fingers slightly and Kaylee groaned, then again, until she was crying out with every press of Inara’s fingers against her, loud enough for Inara to hope no-one was passing by the shuttle, the sound unmistakable.
On a whim, almost, she ducked her head again, bit at the base of Kaylee’s neck, and Kaylee shouted, her thighs tightening on Inara’s hand as she shuddered and came, her whole body stiffening and releasing with it.
Inara stilled the hand on Kaylee’s breast, shifting her thumb to press against the inner curve of it, and slowed the hand between Kaylee’s legs, gentling her through it.
Kaylee groaned, hips still moving. “Don’t stop,” she said, breathless. “Oh, please.”
Inara bit back her own groan, the ache in her own groin drawing too much of her attention, and crooked her fingers, sliding a single one shallowly into Kaylee, rubbing firmly with the others. Kaylee’s hips jerked a handful of times, and she came again with a long, low groan, slumping back into Inara’s body as she finished.
Her face, when she turned her head to kiss Inara, was almost blissful; ecstatic. “That was nice,” she said.
“Just nice?” Inara asked. “I must be losing my touch.”
“Definitely not,” Kaylee said, her laughter turning into a gasp as Inara withdrew her hand, wrapping both arms round Kaylee. “Can I -“
Inara could feel the echo of her own pulse between her legs, but she could also hear movement beyond the door to her shuttle, a reminder of what Kaylee had been going to do. “Later,” she said.
Kaylee blinked, eye lashes fluttering against Inara’s cheek, and said, “Simon.”
“He should know first,” Inara said. It would have been better for him to know well before; she had no idea what had come over her, when she didn’t lose her control like that for anything or anyone, ever.
Kaylee nodded, stepping slowly away from Inara, turning to face her as she slipped the dress down over her hips. Her hair was tousled, her left nipple red from Inara’s fingers, and her underwear was almost translucent between her legs. Inara couldn’t be sure in the candlelight, but she thought bruises were beginning to form along Kaylee’s neck where she’d pressed her teeth.
If she was Simon, she wouldn’t need Kaylee to say anything, which was maybe a blessing for both of them.
Even dressed in overalls and shirt that covered some of the obvious signs, Kaylee still looked post-coital and rumpled. It didn’t help that her mouth, when she stepped closer for a parting kiss, was reddened, her lips faintly swollen. “Go on,” Inara said.
Kaylee nodded, kissing her one last time. “I’ll come back tonight,” she promised. “It’s your turn,” she added, her voice gone low with promise, enough to send a shiver chasing down Inara’s spine.
She waited a few minutes after Kaylee had left before going to the trunk in one corner of the shuttle, covered by a pink and gold cloth, and taking out the vibrator she kept in there for days when her clients had been good, but inappropriate for her to go so far with. She closed her eyes, thought of Kaylee shuddering and breathless against her, and came swiftly.
*
Kaylee didn’t come back that night, though Inara sat awake until long past the time she would usually have gone to bed. At first it was easy to find explanations for her absence, from Simon to Serenity.
By morning, Inara was cursing herself for her own behavior. Kaylee was a friend, and hadn’t she avoided any kind of entanglement with Mal for partly that same reason? After all the months of Kaylee talking of how much she wanted to be with Simon, Inara must surely have been crazy to think that Kaylee would give it up. She’d been flattered by Inara’s attention at the same time as she was struggling in her relationship with Simon, but more than that was hardly likely. They’d both been carried away by the moment.
Inara felt that she would have believed her own thoughts more easily were she not hiding out in her shuttle as the day wore on, listening to the sounds of footsteps passing by the shuttle door, unable to settle to anything as each set made her look up, waiting for a knock.
They landed on Fakar that evening, where the crew had plans that Inara had taken pains to avoid hearing about, half certain that they involved one of the two clients she had booked. She had no choice but to put her evening with Kaylee from her mind, and was almost successful. Enough, anyway, that it was a surprise to step from her shuttle when she returned to the ship two days later and find Kaylee waiting for her.
“I wanted to see you,” Kaylee said, before Inara could recover from her surprise and say something.
“Here I am,” Inara said.
Kaylee nodded, her expression strained, her eyes flickering to Inara then away. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back,” she said, looking down at her feet. Inara caught her breath, waiting for the rejection. “I had to talk to him, we both had… I wanted him to understand.” She looked up then back down, too fast for Inara to pick up her expression.
“I understand,” she said, hoping to let Kaylee off the hook, but Kaylee shook her head, sharp and swift.
“No. I wanted to come by in the morning, but I thought you’d think - and then you were gone.”
“I had clients to see.” Inara released her grip on the shuttle door, taking a single careful step towards Kaylee, unsure whether she was misreading her words.
“I know.” Kaylee looked up, and this time, her face was open, moving towards a smile. “I was worried you’d have a glamorous client who’d offer you untold riches and you’d decide to stay with him.”
“Only told riches,” Inara said, smiling back, feeling all the knots in her shoulders ease when Kaylee took a step towards her, reaching out to rest one hand on Inara’s wrist.
“So I don’t have much competition, then,” she said.
“Hardly any,” Inara agreed, allowing Kaylee to guide her back into the shuttle.
*
Simon, by Kaylee’s account at least, took the news reasonably well, though Inara found that they were rarely in a room alone together for the first few weeks, and even with others there, rarely sat besides or opposite each other. Still, it wasn’t a wholly unexpected reaction, all things being as they were.
Neither she nor Kaylee intended for it to be a secret amongst the rest of the crew, and yet it seemed to become one anyway. Inara was used to keeping her reserve in public, and even Serenity was still public, with Jayne’s lurid imagination and Zoë’s grief to make a romance seem something unsafe, to be hidden. There was River, of course, but perhaps someone had spoken to her, or she had simply picked up Simon’s feelings about the end of his relationship with Kaylee, whatever they were beneath the platonic friendship they seemed to have fallen into once more, because she said nothing.
“Do you want to tell them?” Inara asked one night, a little over two months after that first night. “You never mention it.” She’d been thinking about almost to the point of distraction it while she’d been on Davin, away from Kaylee to accompany a client to a party, thankfully this time without anyone getting involved in a brawl.
Kaylee removed the last of the silver clips she’d decorated Inara’s hair with before she’d left, and which Inara had replaced carefully that morning, an inexact match of the pattern Kaylee had made, to turn it into a gesture, rather than a lie. “I don’t know,” she said, reaching past Inara for her hairbrush. Her hands, carding through Inara’s hair to find any bad tangles, were gentle, for all that they were callused from her work, completely unlike a Companion’s hands as they curved to a Companion’s task. “Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Inara said. She caught Kaylee’s eye in the mirror, both of them smiling. “Maybe not yet.”
Kaylee bent to kiss her cheek. “I like you being my secret,” she said.
A week later, they landed on Athens, so that Mal, Zoë and Jayne could meet a potential contact, Inara could screen a potential client who happened to be passing through there, being a nomadic noble-man originally from Ariel, and Kaylee could go into the town to buy three parts they needed.
“Take Jayne with you,” Mal said over breakfast the day before they were due to land, when Kaylee mentioned her trip.
“Why’ve I gotta be her gorram babysitter?” Jayne grumbled. Inara, sat next to Zoë at the other end of the table, hoped that no-one would mention that it had been Wash’s job, for all that he lacked much skill with a weapon.
“Because I’m the captain and I say so,” Mal said. “And because we’d be stuck if we lost little Kaylee.”
“That aint ever going to happen,” Kaylee said, laughing. “You’ve met the trader before, he’s trustworthy.”
“Captain’s got a point,” Zoë put in. “Might know the trader, but Athens aint exactly the safest place in the ‘verse. Couldn’t hurt to have a decent bodyguard. Or, you know, Jayne.”
Jayne growled at her over his mug, making Kaylee poke him with a chopstick until he stopped.
“Zoë’s right,” Mal said.
“Captain!” Inara watched Kaylee turn her hurt little girl face on Mal, and sat back to watch him be forced into capitulating. “He won’t even trade with me if Jayne’s with me. He’ll think I brought him because I don’t trust him.”
“Let him think that,” Mal said.
“He’s the only person got what I need,” Kaylee protested. “Less you want Serenity falling out of the sky.”
“Girl’s got a point,” Jayne said, which made Kaylee beam, to Inara’s surprise. She hadn’t thought Kaylee cared what Jayne thought of her.
Mal looked at her for a long moment, Kaylee practically bouncing even under his scrutiny, then sighed. “Fine. But if you get carried off by Athens ruffians or some-such, don’t think we’ll be coming back for you.”
“You’ll always come back for me,” Kaylee said, confidence absolute after years of experience, and Inara thought that, as much as she hadn’t wanted it, Mal had come back for her, in a way, bringing her back to what should have been her life.
She felt, in that moment, like she was finally where she’d been waiting to be since she was a child, at the start of the rest of her life, looking into the future that was meant for her, at the path she was meant to be on. That for the first time, she was really there, not just thinking it until something came along to sweep that life away.
In retrospect, she should have read it as the sign it clearly was.
*
She knew something wasn’t right when it took her three tries to get anyone over the comms as she was flying back to Serenity, but she assumed it was normal job-gone-bad wrongness. It wasn’t until she finished docking and went to open the shuttle door to find Zoë waiting for her on the other side that she started to worry.
“I think you want to sit down,” Zoë said.
Inara’s fingers went cold. She wanted to reach for something to hold onto, and couldn’t move. “What’s happened?” It came out cracked, unlike her voice.
Zoë took a step closer, as though she was worried Inara might pass out. “Kaylee’s missing,” she said.
***
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Inara demanded, unsure who she felt more betrayed by, Zoë or Mal, for keeping it from her. They - more often Zoë than Mal, of late - had come to her with every lead, every possible person who could have taken Kaylee, every possible place she could be, every possible reason for her to have vanished, somewhere between the ship and the town. She’d shared in every false lead, every failure to find her, every tiny scrap of information they managed to scrape up, every contact with whom they left word for Kaylee, in case she somehow ended up in their hands.
“You said you were making contact with a client,” she said.
“We were,” Zoë said. Mal made an angry shushing sound, but Zoë kept going, speaking over him. “A message came through less than an hour ago, old comrade from the war. Says there’s a place other side of the world where there’s a good chance she might be.”
“I -“ Inara had to force down the hope threatening to choke her, the need to believe competing with the need not to. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked again.
“You want to come with us?” Jayne asked. “Maybe get shot, or taken as well?”
“Of course not,” Inara snapped. “But I don’t see why -“
“It’s been a year,” Zoë said, low and calm. “Didn’t want to get no-one’s hopes too high.”
“The same way you haven’t with your own,” Inara said, unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
“Shouldn’t all have to suffer with it,” Mal said, pushing past her to climb into the mule. “Best get going, wouldn’t want to keep your nice rich client waiting for you.”
“I won’t be going,” Inara told him, too angry to steady her voice. She should have walked out on that line, but she couldn’t do it, even when no-one looked back as the mule shot out into the bustle of Bernadette’s dock, the bay door closing behind it, presumably at Jiao’s hand.
The hollow clang of it sounded ominously final, to Inara’s ears. She wondered if Jiao knew where they were going, or who’d told them where to look. They were so few on the ship now, if they didn’t come home, who’d go after them? Jiao was a mechanic, a sometime pilot, not a fighter like the others. If these people really did have Kaylee - if they were the type of people who might - then they wouldn’t be won over by Inara’s Companion training, any more than they would by Jiao’s ability to coax open any door in the verse, and who would they go to on Bernadette, where the only people Inara knew were clients with little power and less influence.
“Stop it,” she told herself firmly. Mal and Zoë wouldn’t let Serenity go without a fight and Jayne wouldn’t pass on the opportunity *for* a fight. There was no reason to expect the worst.
Marcus Orvette took Inara’s apologetic cancellation of their appointment about as well as she had expected that he would, even when she promised to look for him the very moment she next set foot on Bernadette. It was one thing to be said for the poorer planets, she supposed, that there was rarely anyone with the power to drive a Companion’s reputation down to the point of being unable to book clients there, something which did happen, on occasion, though not close to as often as the reverse.
With no clients to see, Inara changed out of her warm clothes and coat, folding her clothes carefully away in their trunk. She felt as though she were putting them away for a long time, for a period of rest from work in favor of some other duty. A year, almost exactly to the day, and a contact whom Mal and Zoë both could trust, someone who wouldn’t lead them astray at the promise of money for information. They felt like signs, enough so to make the hope hard to fight against.
Her fingers scraped over something hard and smooth, and she knew what it was before she drew it out of the trunk. Not that she remembered moving it there from the cupboard, but there it was, tucked between a dark red shawl and a dress she had meant to pass to Kaylee, but never gotten to.
The capture wasn’t truly hers, though it had fallen into her possession, near enough. Kaylee had wanted to show her what she’d missed, being away from Serenity for all those months, and even after she’d transferred the videos to something more permanent, the capture had lingered in Inara’s shuttle, along with a handful of Kaylee’s other things, so that Inara had never quite felt able to ask if she wanted to take it back, instead adding it to the small drawer she kept for her personal things, every time she invited a client to the shuttle.
She hadn’t looked at the images, when Kaylee was there to offer to share them, if that was what she wanted with them. Even in the first few months, when they’d all been so sure they’d find Kaylee, bring her back to them, as Simon had with River, she’d left the capture mixed in with her own belongings, though she hadn’t needed to hide her things away, too caught up in searching to take on any clients.
She’d waited three months, skimming her hand over the capture the same way she sometimes did over Kaylee’s hairbrush, the shirt she’d once left behind, and when she’d finally closed the shuttle door and turned the capture to run, she’d tried not to think of funeral rites, of the candle she’d burned for Nandi, three months after the siege at her house, or for Shepherd Book and Wash, three months on from Miranda. She’d told herself it didn’t mean the same, but once she’d watched it once, she could hardly bear to turn it off, until the pictures were ingrained into her memory more strongly than any of her real memories of Kaylee.
She traced one finger slowly over the screen, too light to leave a smudge in its wake, then replaced the capture on her dresser.
She found Jiao up on the flight deck, where she usually was when the crew was out, cross-legged in the pilot’s chair, staring at the side of the large storage building they’d docked opposite. “Hello,” she said, not turning around.
“I came to see if you wanted tea,” Inara said, the lie springing fully-formed to her lips without thought.
“No.” Jiao pushed against the console, turning her chair without unfolding her legs. “Thank you. I should stay up here.”
“I can bring you something,” Inara offered.
She wasn’t surprised when Jiao shook her head again. She was more surprised when Jiao said, already turning back to the window, “If you want to wait with me here, you can.”
“Thank you,” Inara said, hesitating in the doorway. It wasn’t so unusual for her to be on the flight deck, but it wasn’t usual either, that being the crew’s space. Even as a paying tenant, she’d understood the line. With Jiao there, though, the line seemed to fade, and she settled herself carefully into the second seat, looking at the same nondescript view that Jiao had turned back to. The narrow stream running between them and the building kept people from slipping round that way, it seemed, and the view was far duller than Inara was used to at a dock.
“Do you know when the others are expected back?” Inara asked after a while, just to break the silence.
Jiao tilted her head just far enough to look at Inara from the corner of her eye, her face as unreadable as ever. “By nightfall,” she said. “According to the captain.”
“Of course.” Inara shook her head slightly. Gods forbid Mal be specific for once in his criminal career. “Did he at least say where they were going?”
“Yes,” Jiao said. She leaned forward, until Inara was half-sure she’d fall, and touched the screen in front of her, bringing up a map of the planet. She touched another button, and the planet slowly revolved to show a stationary dot on the far side of the world. “They’re already there.”
She was still leaning over the screen, but Inara thought she caught a flicker of wry amusement on Jiao’s face. “Does Mal know you bugged the mule?” she asked.
Jiao shook her head. “Probably not,” she said, sitting back calmly in her seat, the dot staying where it was on the screen. “He doesn’t like things that are for his own good.”
Inara laughed. “You know him well.”
“Not that well,” Jiao said, turning slightly away again. “But those like him. I knew a lot of them.”
There was something about her as she said it that made Inara think suddenly of Mal and Zoë, the times they’d sit and talk of people they’d fought with who were gone. Jiao didn’t seem old enough to have fought in the war, and yet Mal had chosen her for a reason, the day he’d brought her back to Serenity with barely a word, refusing to even look Inara’s way for a full week, even after she’d started trying to talk to Jiao.
“Are they back on your world?” she asked.
Jiao shook her head. “I doubt it.”
Inara knew an unwillingness to talk when she heard it, letting them lapse back into silence that, while no less comfortable, was also no more comfortable than it had been before. She didn’t carry a watch - it hardly gave the right impression for a Companion - and with the unchanging view, she felt that time had come to a stop, that they would sit there forever, waiting, until there was nothing of them left to wait.
It was Jiao who broke the silence, turning her chair back towards Inara. “Your friend, the one they’ve gone to find.”
Inara forced an encouraging smile that she was sure couldn’t seem real. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, I know it’s not my place to ask.”
“You may ask,” Inara suggested. “I can still choose not to answer.”
“Of course.” Jiao flashed a brief, flat smile. “Do you think she’ll want to come back?”
Inara opened her mouth to dismiss the question, to tell Jiao how inappropriate it was to ask, but the words wouldn’t come. They always spoke of Kaylee as taken, Athens being less than safe for a girl like Kaylee, alone and trusting, and yet… Kaylee would have had no trouble bargaining her way out of the world while their backs were turned, if she’d chosen it. It would explain why they never really came close to finding any trace of her.
But Kaylee - bright, loving Kaylee, who loved the ship more than she loved any person, who was always loyal - wouldn’t have left without telling someone. Inara found it hard to believe she would have left at all, given the choice.
The question remained whether she would, if she looked for them, be any more able to find them than they were her.
“I’m sorry,” Jiao said, breaking into her thoughts. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s all right,” Inara assured her, reaching out to touch the tips of her fingers to Jiao’s shoulder. “Yes, I think she’ll want to come back. I think she’s waiting for us somewhere.” She hesitated. “When we find her -“
Jiao held up one hand, sudden and sharp, turning back to the console. Inara followed her gaze. The little dot was moving.
“They’re coming back,” Jiao said needlessly.
Inara nodded, eyes fixed on the tiny dot. The resolution wasn’t good, making it appear to move in jumps rather than smoothly. “How long?” she asked.
“They’ve been there two hours,” Jiao said. “Well, a little more.”
“No.” Inara looked up, frustrated, to find Jiao still looking at the screen. “How long will it take them to get back to the ship?” She looked down again, surprised to see how far the mule’s dot had gone in the few seconds she’d been turned away.
“Soon,” Jiao said. She looked away from the screen, catching Inara’s eye for a brief moment, her gaze sad. “You should go down to meet them.”
Inara could read some of Jiao’s feelings on her face, her concern that Kaylee’s return would mean her departure, her worry for whether they would return with her or not, her own hope, a diluted version of the crew’s. None of it mattered in that moment - Inara was already on her feet, half-turned to the open doorway. “Thank you,” she said, for want of anything else to say.
“Wait for them to return first,” Jiao said, the words following Inara as she hurried through the ship, down the metal steps into the cargo bay. Her hand was shaking when she reached to touch the button to open the doors.
”Kaylee, please, put that capture down. No-one will want video of me brushing my hair.”
“Not you. A Companion. How many people can say they’ve seen a real, true Companion brushing her hair?”
“Plenty, if they get their hands on that capture.”
The dock, from where Inara stood on the ramp, hands pressed to her thighs to keep from wringing them together, was calmly bustling, several vehicles moving between the ships, obscuring her view of the direction from which the mule would come. The air was cold against her bare arms, making her wish for the wrap she’d left in the shuttle.
”When we land on Persephone, will you take me somewhere?”
“I have clients to see, mei-mei.”
“I could come with you.”
“To do what though?”
“’Nara! That’s not what you were saying last night.”
“Was I not? Perhaps you should refresh my memory…”
She was sure the dock was as noisy as most docks she’d stood on were, but the noise seemed far away. She didn’t believe in signs. It having been a year didn’t mean anything. It certainly didn’t mean that they’d come back with Kaylee, or even with a clue to where she was.
Even in her own head, it sounded hollow.
”And then this plugs in there…”
“I see.”
“Really?”
“No, not really, I’m sorry. But I like to watch you explain it.”
She would have said, before, that she had no idea what the difference was in the sound of the mule’s engine compared to the sound of any other vehicle’s, yet she turned her head at just the right moment to see it come speeding through the other vehicles, Mal at the wheel.
“Shen gei ji wo li liang,” Inara murmured, barely able to hear the words over the roaring in her own ears. Her fingers ached, wrapped suddenly round the edge of the doorframe as the mule slowed, coming to a halt at the back of the bay. She felt frozen there, unable to move, watching the three of them as the mule rocked to a halt.
“Was she -“ she started, too soft for anyone to hear.
Except maybe Mal had, because he swung himself over the side of the mule and out into the body of the ship without even looking at Inara.
When she turned from watching him go, Zoë was in front of her, eyes soft with disappointment. “I’m sorry, Inara. She wasn’t there.”
“Did they - did anyone -“ She stopped, unable to complete the sentence, unsure what she even meant for it to be.
Zoë shook her head. “If she was there, he don’t know of it.”
“Are you sure?” Inara persisted. “Are you sure he was telling the truth, you weren’t there for long, maybe -“
“We’re sure,” Jayne said, suddenly there by Zoë, dark and angry. He still had his gun in his right hand, though Inara hadn’t seen any sign of them being followed. “He’d have told me.”
Zoë nodded, eyeing Jayne worriedly from the corner of her eye. “I’ll tell Jiao we can leave.”
*
Back in the shuttle, lifting away from the dock, Inara picked up the capture, sitting on the foot of her bed with it. She took a deep breath, then turned it on.
It started with Mal, sitting at one end of the kitchen table with a mug of tea in both hands, watching Jayne at the other end, cleaning a gun. It took a few moments for him to look up and see Kaylee - and he didn’t even hear me coming, she’d said, narrating it to Inara later.
“Put that gorram thing away, before I confiscate it.” He stood up, taking his mug to the sink, then leaning on the counter.
“Aw, Captain. You wouldn’t even.”
“Do you really want to try me?” Mal asked, giving Kaylee his best threatening glare. On the edge of the picture, his back still to the capture, Jayne grunted out a laugh, though it wasn’t clear who he was laughing at.
“I’ll go on strike,” Kaylee promised.
Mal looked at Jayne. “You know, it might almost be worth falling out of the sky in exchange for five minutes without you getting that thing out. Shouldn’t have let you buy it in the first place.”
It was hard to tell with her out of the picture, but Kaylee didn’t seem to notice that Mal was moving gradually towards her. “Too late now,” she said brightly, and Mal leapt for her.
She jerked back, squealing in surprise, the picture abruptly shifting to show the ceiling, then the edge of Mal’s hand as he grabbed for it. “No!” Kaylee yelled. The image shifted again, jerky and jumping. “You wouldn’t dare! You wouldn’t -“
The picture shut off suddenly, then came back on Inara and Kaylee, sitting next to each other on the couch in the corner of the kitchen. Inara remembered River picking the capture up from the table where it had been left, turning it on the two of them, and she’d half-expected swooping camera effects when she’d watched it back later. It turned out that River had a very steady hand.
On the screen, Kaylee had her legs curled under her, and was pressed against Inara’s side, head on Inara’s shoulder, Inara’s arm around her. For all that they were so close, that Kaylee was smiling absently, that Inara had her head tilted to rest against Kaylee’s, Inara didn’t think they looked like lovers, though they were by the time of the images. They didn’t look any different from how they always had.
“-And you’ll have all the riches in the verse, because you’ll Companion for a rich man who leaves you an entire planet in his will,” Kaylee was saying, obviously well into her speech. “So you can have beautiful clothes, and a new shuttle.”
“I like my old shuttle,” Inara said mildly.
Kaylee raised the hand in Inara’s lap to wave her comment away. “Simon will have the most high tech medical surgery ever seen, and treat poor people for free. And River - what will you have, River?”
The camera shifted slightly as River shrugged. “She likes it here. She doesn’t want to leave.”
“Something you can have while you’re on the ship, then,” Kaylee said. “Music, or books…”
“What will you have?” Inara asked Kaylee. She remembered being worried that Kaylee would mention something that would upset River, though River had been doing so much better by then.
“New compression coil for Serenity,” Kaylee said immediately.
Inara laughed. “You wouldn’t want to replace the whole engine?”
“No!” Kaylee said, sounding horrified. “It’s Serenity’s heart, you couldn’t just rip it out.”
Inara on the screen laughed again, patting Kaylee’s hair, and Inara in the shuttle gasped and started to cry, like she hadn’t in an entire year, capture forgotten, hands pressed to her mouth to keep the sobs inside. She was afraid that if she didn’t, she might scream, just to get out everything inside her that felt like jagged pieces of glass, like a thousand needles pressing into her stomach.
She curled forwards, bent over against the pain - God, how badly it hurt, worse than anything she remembered. She couldn’t breathe, wanted to curl up and shake apart. It couldn’t be worse, it couldn’t, than a year of failing, a year of nothing, looking towards another year of exactly the same, dozens of years of nothing, never quite being able to stop hoping.
She nearly choked at the knock to the shuttle door, startled. “Inara?” Zoë’s voice called. “You in there?”
Inara pressed her hands harder across her face, trying to silence her sobs. Not that Zoë would be fooled for long, Serenity being so small, but it would be enough for Zoë to realize she didn’t want company.
“Inara?” Zoë called again, her tone shading into concern. There was a pause, then Zoë said, “I’m going to come in now.”
“No,” Inara said, but it came out cracked and broken, not really a word, and then Zoë was stepping into the shuttle, competent and together as always. “Please,” Inara whispered, fumbling blindly for a handkerchief. “Please, I’m fine, please leave me alone.”
“Fine people don’t look like you do,” Zoë said. She came over to the bed, sat down next to Inara and handed her a white handkerchief. “It’s new,” she said. “Haven’t even had to use it wipe up any blood yet.”
“Thank you.” Inara blew her nose, wiped her eyes, which were already starting to hurt from crying. It didn’t help much. The tears kept coming. “I just need a few minutes.”
Zoë didn’t say anything, just moved to lay her hand between Inara’s shoulder blades, warm and comforting.
“I’m sorry,” Inara said, wiping her eyes again. “This is hardly fair to you -“
“Let me judge that,” Zoë said, unmoving. “Blow your nose again.”
Inara complied, then took some deep breaths, feeling the tears begin to ease. “Thank you,” she said, turning to look at Zoë as she said it.
It was as sudden as the tears, her hand on Zoë’s face, Zoë looking at her, solemn and serious. Inara’s mouth against Zoë’s, tentative, then not so much so.
“Not a good idea,” Zoë said, but she was murmuring it against Inara’s mouth, not drawing away.
Inara kissed her again. “I know,” she said, and it was Zoë who leaned through the breath between them to kiss her, the third time.
Inara’s eyes burned when she closed them, dry and raw from crying, and she felt strange as she did it, too far removed from the world. When Zoë drew back, she couldn’t stop the half-sob from crawling out of her throat.
“Ssh.” Zoë kissed Inara’s left eye, then her right, soft pressure that made Inara want to blink. Zoë kissed the corner of her eye, her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth, her lips cool against Inara’s over-heated, tight skin, then kissed Inara gently on her mouth and pulled away. Inara opened her eyes to Zoë’s face, not too close, her eyes full of worry. Her hand was still on Inara’s back.
“It’s all right,” Inara said, not sure if she meant herself, or what they were doing, or whether she just wanted something to make Zoë stop looking like that. She lifted the hand not still clutching Zoë’s handkerchief to cup Zoë’s cheek, thumb stroking the soft, bruised skin under her eyes. Zoë was very still under her hand, the kind of calm Inara associated with the handful of times she’d seen Zoë defending the crew. “It’s all right,” she said again, meaning it a little more.
“Probably not,” Zoë said.
“Probably not,” Inara agreed. Maybe it didn’t matter any more. Zoë was there, the only person Inara talked to in any real way any more. Maybe that would have to be enough now. “Kiss me again,” she said.
Zoë drew her in with the hand on her back, Inara’s dress sliding against the silken material of her bedspread, both chosen for just that effect. It was a strange kiss, slow like they were familiar lovers, sad, as far as it was possible for a kiss to be, not enough to be the escape Inara would have expected from it, if she’d expected anything. If she’d thought of this at all.
She kept her hand on Zoë’s cheek, holding her in place as they kissed, chaste, only lips pressing together. She felt every slight movement Zoë made, right up to the slight twitch that signified she meant to pull away. Inara raised her free hand, taking advantage of the way Zoë’s movement broke the kiss to open the buttons of her shirt, rubbing her palm over the shape of Zoë’s breast under the vest she wore under the shirt, always behind layer and layer of clothes.
“Inara,” Zoë said.
Inara kissed her again, pushing the shirt away and slipping her hand under Zoë’s vest, feeling her skin, warm and tight across the muscles of her stomach. “Let me,” she said against Zoë’s mouth. “Just let me…”
Zoë leaned away from her a little, reaching up to curl her hand around Inara’s wrist. “Not like this,” she said. “You don’t want to do this.”
Inara tried to press closer again, held back by Zoë’s hand on her shoulder. “I just want to forget,” she said, hating how weak her voice sounded, how fragile. “I want to think of something else.”
Zoë looked away, and when she looked back, her eyes were dark and troubled, her face pained. “You’ll regret it in the morning,” she said. “Trust me.”
“Not with you,” Inara said. The words sounded true out loud, maybe true inside as well. She couldn’t tell any longer. She lifted her free hand, stroked one finger down the side of Zoë’s face, Zoë’s eyes flickering closed. “I wouldn’t regret anything I did with you.”
“Maybe I would,” Zoë said quietly. “Shouldn’t ought to start like this.”
“I -“ Inara started, and then the words caught up to her and she stopped. Zoë opened her eyes, looked right at her, and Inara felt herself flush with realization. She couldn’t look away, caught by Zoë’s intensity, by the meaning she’d never seen before. She wanted to ask what would happen when they found Kaylee, but the thought of what Zoë might say in response choked her. “Kiss me again,” she said instead.
Zoë didn’t say anything, but she let Inara slide the hand under her vest out and up to rest lightly on her shoulder, and when Inara pressed slightly, she swayed forward so Inara could kiss her again.
Zoë’s mouth was hesitant now, only opening gradually for Inara to slide her tongue inside, gentle and careful as she never would have imagined being with Zoë, if she’d imagined it at all. “Lie back,” she said.
Zoë shook her head.
“It’s all right,” Inara said. “I promise you.”
Zoë still looked uncertain, but she complied anyway, shifting until she was lying on her side and Inara could curl against her, relax into her body and kiss her, light, soft kisses. She let her eyes slide closed, feeling the warmth of Zoë’s body against hers, and thought she could lie there all day like that, until she fell away into a world where nothing existed by Zoë’s mouth against hers, forget about everything else for just a little while…
As she had with Kaylee, one long ride through empty space, with nothing for either of them to do but lie curled together, kissing and touching, filling the air with the smell of sweat and the sound of their own gasping breaths.
She was pulling away before she even thought to do so.
“What’s wrong?” Zoë asked, sitting up. Inara shook her head, mute, eyes burning all over again with tears, and Zoë’s eyes widened into understanding. “I might be best to go,” she said.
Inara grabbed for her arm, caught her wrist. “Please don’t,” she said, words mangled with tears wanting to fall. “I’m sorry, it’s not - I wanted this. I want you. I’m sorry.” She blinked, knocking the tears free to run into her hair.
Zoë looked away, barely moving, but suddenly not touching Inara at all. “Seems this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
Inara sat up, not quite facing Zoë but not quite faced away either, watching Zoë watch her, both of them looking from the corners of their eyes. “I wanted to,” she started, except she didn’t know any more what she’d wanted. Someone to comfort her. Someone to make her forget, or maybe someone to let her remember, just for a while, the things she didn’t let herself remember, not right when Kaylee was who knew where. The things she’d hidden in the back of her mind, like the way Kaylee would go down on her with enthusiasm before she picked up the skill as well, or how she’d walk around Inara’s shuttle unashamedly naked, where Inara would always put on at least her robe.
“Not to think of it,” Zoë suggested quietly, repeating Inara’s own words.
“Yes,” Inara agreed. She reached for Zoë’s hand, turning it carefully to hold in her own, half-expecting Zoë to pull away. “Is this what it was like for you?” Zoë made a small, questioning sound. “After Wash died, is this how you felt?”
“No,” Zoë said, curling her fingers a little more closely around Inara’s. “I knew he wasn’t coming back,” she added after a while.
Inara had nothing to say in response, and so they simply sat, moving through empty space, holding hands in silence.
***
The final scene on the capture ended with Kaylee resting her head on Inara’s bare shoulder, both of them sated, exhausted. After a few seconds, she started stroking Inara’s nipple with her thumb. “’Nara?”
“Yes,” Inara said, echoing Kaylee’s motions on Kaylee’s back.
“You won’t go back will you? To the training house?”
“No,” Inara said, certain, and kissed the top of Kaylee’s head.
“Good,” Kaylee said, sounding half asleep. “Don’t want you to leave me behind again.”
Author: bluflamingo
Fandom: Firefly
Pairings: Inara/Kaylee (Kaylee/Simon)
Characters: Kaylee, Inara, Zoe
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Post-movie
Word count: 15,951
Betas: latentfunction, present-pathos; also feedback fromskieswideopen
Summary: After Shepherd Book, after Miranda, after Wash... it seems to Inara as though the universe owes something to the crew of Serenity, some chance at happiness, or at least not any more misery. The universe itself might even agree, but the universe is populated with human beings who know nothing of what's owing to Serenity, and human beings don't concern themselves with the balance of the universe's scales.
Artwork: Here by kiki-miserychic
Part One
Inara bought the dress for Kaylee’s birthday, on a whim about a month before. It wasn’t like the pink and white monstrosity Kaylee’d had for the ball, or even like any of Inara’s own dresses, but she saw it and knew Kaylee would like it, from the curling gold threads in the bodice to the ruffled skirts.
“Oh, Inara,” Kaylee said when she opened the box, eyes wide and stunned. “It’s beautiful.”
Inara smiled, watching her, feeling over-exposed and glad she’d waited to give it to Kaylee in the privacy of her shuttle, rather than at dinner with everyone else looking on. “I promised you a dress, remember?”
Kaylee looked down, her smile dimming. “For Simon,” she said.
“For you,” Inara corrected. “If I wanted him to have a dress, I’d buy him one.”
Kaylee giggled. “Maybe I should lend him the dress the captain bought me.”
“I don’t think pink’s really his color,” Inara said, fighting to keep a straight face.
“Thank you,” Kaylee said, sudden and sincere. “It’s the finest thing I’ve ever owned.”
She came over to Inara to hug her, pressing close. Inara hugged back, wanting to turn her head and press her face into Kaylee’s hair. She pushed it aside, thought of Simon and the way he’d fed Kaylee birthday cake at dinner, laughed when Kaylee dotted frosting on his nose.
“Why don’t you try it on?” she suggested, pulling back, even when Kaylee resisted for a moment. “We can put your hair up, if you like.”
Kaylee nodded, but her smile was fading again. “A fool I’d look wearing it on Serenity,” she said. “Not like you, you always look like you’re just waiting to be whisked away to some fancy party. I’d look like I was just waiting to get my clothes torn and grease-stained.”
“Stay here,” Inara offered impulsively. No-one stayed overnight in her shuttle other than her. Even Kaylee, who often came by, knew better than to stay for more than an hour or two in Inara’s space.
“You can teach me something,” Kaylee said. “Something about being a Companion.” She smoothed the dress out at the foot of the bed, tracing the lines of gold thread with one finger, as though she’d break them if she pressed too hard, then bent to untie her boots.
“All right,” Inara said hesitantly. There was plenty she could teach Kaylee without going into things she shouldn’t be doing with Kaylee. The tea ceremony, maybe, or something about the art of conversation. Just imagining Kaylee putting on an upper class accent and pretending to be interested in the price of tea or the problems with keeping a good servant was enough to make her smile.
Kaylee had her back turned to Inara, her overalls pushed down to her waist as she tugged at the t-shirt she was wearing under them, pulling it over her head and shaking her hair loose. Inara couldn’t have placed her better if she’d tried, close enough to a candle for it to coat her skin in a soft glow that made it seem as though she was shining, but far enough away for the shadows to catch at the lines and curves of her body, turning her into something mysterious and alluring. If she hadn’t been wearing overalls, she could have passed, in that moment, for a Companion.
“You shouldn’t have spent so much money on a gift for me,” Kaylee said, half-turning her head to speak over her shoulder, her head still bent as she unfastened the final buttons on her overalls.
“I can afford it,” Inara assured her. “Besides, who else do I have to spend the money on?”
“The captain?” Kaylee suggested, laughter in her voice. “You could take him out. Somewhere nice, just the two of you.”
“I don’t think so,” Inara said. “He might get the wrong idea.”
“Oh,” Kaylee said softly, turning. The movement, or maybe the way her hands came up, was enough for her overalls to slip away, pooling at her feet. She blinked, seeming confused, and Inara felt herself flush, annoyed with herself for it. She had seen plenty of women wearing very little, or even less than Kaylee was now, more than enough to be used to it.
She stood hastily, reaching for the dress and gathering the skirts up. “Raise your arms,” she said quietly, stepping closer to Kaylee, who still hadn’t moved. “Kaylee.”
“Oh,” Kaylee said again, almost as though she was coming awake, and raised her arms. Inara kept her eyes firmly on Kaylee’s face, guiding her hands through the sleeves, and her head into the right place.
“Now turn around.” The dress had a row of tiny buttons in the back, the kind that needed someone else to fasten them. It could never be a Companion’s dress, just for that. Inara started at the bottom, her fingers feeling clumsy on the smooth buttons, brushing against the warmth of Kaylee’s skin. Kaylee held very, very still as she went, only moving to sweep her hair away a moment before Inara would have reached up to do it herself. The last button had a hook as well, on the inside of the dress, and Kaylee twitched, barely noticeably, when Inara fastened it.
“All done,” Inara said, pleased when her voice came out sounding normal. It should have been easy, but what was easy with clients so often wasn’t with other people. “Now turn around, let me see how you look.”
Kaylee turned, so close that Inara felt the full material of the dress’ skirt brush against her own clothing, and forced herself to take a step back. Kaylee was smiling uncertainly, her hair loose around her face, and over her pale shoulders; the dress fitted exactly, as Inara had expected it would, following the lines of her body until it flared into the skirt, long enough to cover her feet without any shoes. “How do I look?” Kaylee asked.
“Perfect.” Inara reached out, tweaking the right strap of the dress slightly higher onto Kaylee’s shoulder to match the other side. When she made to lift her hand away, Kaylee made a sharp, hurt sound, cut off so fast Inara was barely sure she’d heard it. “Kaylee?”
“I -“ Kaylee said. “I want to - Inara,” and then she was pressing close to Inara again, but not to hug her this time. Instead, to press her mouth against Inara’s, a clumsy, off-centre kiss.
Inara had dealt with far worse from clients - though it was still the kisses, the unexpected affection, that she found most difficult - and turning away a simple kiss from a confused friend shouldn’t have been difficult. There was no reason for her to return it, to open her mouth for Kaylee’s tongue sliding against hers.
There was no excuse for it being Kaylee who broke the kiss, ducking her head and stepping back. Her foot caught on the long skirt of her dress as she did, and Inara started forward to catch her elbow, keep her from falling, or ripping it.
Kaylee made a sharp, shocked sound, wrenching her elbow free and stumbling over to sit on the edge of Inara’s bed. Hunched into herself, wearing a glamorous dress with none of the accessories that should have gone with it, she looked too young, too vulnerable. Inara forced herself to take a step back instead of towards her, and sit on the low couch several feet from the bed.
“If you want to leave now,” she said softly, “I won’t mind. I won’t be upset.”
Kaylee shook her head. “Can I stay here for a while?” she asked, voice not quite trembling. “I need…”
“As long as you want to,” Inara said, keeping the endearment in her mouth where it belonged. She pressed her hands together in her lap, trying not to notice whether they were trembling. For a moment, she wondered if perhaps she should leave, allow Kaylee to collect herself with some privacy, but she stayed where she was. It wasn’t fair to leave Kaylee alone, when she had been just as complicit in the kiss as Kaylee - more so, maybe, knowing Kaylee’s concerns about her relationship with Simon. She should never have bought the dress for her; it was a lover’s gift, even between women, not a friend’s, especially given in private as she had, and she’d long known how Kaylee thought of the Companion lifestyle, how much she’d be taken with such a luxurious dress.
She’d been so proud of herself for finally leaving behind her feelings for Mal. How had she failed to notice the same feelings developing for Kaylee, while she was listening to Kaylee’s relationship troubles and telling herself it was as a friend that she felt so negatively towards Simon sometimes?
“Would you like to change back into your other clothes?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.
Kaylee looked up then, her eyes red, her face pale. “In a minute,” she said. Her fingers strayed to the skirt of the dress, worrying it between her fingers. “I want to -“ She cut herself off, shaking her head. “What will I tell Simon?”
“Whatever you feel comfortable with,” Inara said.
“I have to tell him the truth,” Kaylee said, almost a whisper. “We can’t keep this a secret.”
Inara leant forward automatically to touch her, offer comfort, pulling her hand back as soon as she noticed herself moving. They were too far apart, anyway. “I won’t say anything,” she said. She didn’t add that she knew how to keep secrets, was already keeping so many that one more would make no difference. It would be harder than usual to act as though what had happened had not, but she had done much more difficult things before.
“I know.” Kaylee smiled, watery but strong. “I know, but I don’t want to have to.”
“I don’t understand,” Inara said. “If you don’t want to tell him -“
Kaylee shook her head. “I don’t want to have to not say anything,” she said. “I want…” Her face fell suddenly. “Oh. I understand, you were just being nice. With the dress, and because it’s my birthday.” She stood up, twisting awkwardly, obviously trying to reach the buttons.
“Stop.” Inara took Kaylee’s hands in her own, drawing them back between their bodies. She’d always made it a rule not to get involved with anyone, particularly anyone she was as close to as she was to Kaylee. Even if the person didn’t feel as Mal did about her work, there was little chance of it not ending in disaster or disagreement. Breaking her own rule - especially for someone she was as close to as Kaylee, in so many ways - should have been the result of careful thought and consideration, for the sake of both of them. With Kaylee so close, though, trembling with the urge to flee, asking for that time would be as good as making the decision, whatever she chose later.
“Kaylee, look at me.” Kaylee did, holding Inara’s gaze steadily. Inara took a breath against the way her heart seemed to flutter in her chest, the vaguely queasy feeling in her stomach, the sense that she was about to take a step neither of them was quite ready for. “It wasn’t just because it’s your birthday,” she said. “And I wasn’t just being nice.” She risked a smile, watched Kaylee slowly smile back. “Although it was very nice.”
Kaylee’s smile grew, catching her eyes, and then she laughed, light and quick. “Truly?”
“Truly,” Inara promised. It was, she thought, her turn to move first. She pulled gently at Kaylee’s hands, bringing her closer, close enough to kiss, then ducked her head to do so. Kaylee was still smiling against Inara’s lips, and she made a pleased, happy sound into the kiss.
Inara had kissed clients over the years to whom she’d been truly attracted; had kissed women; had kissed people she considered friends, or cared for. Even so, it had been years since she’d kissed someone who was all three, and she feared she’d forgotten how it felt, how nice it was. Kaylee melted into her, sliding her hands from between Inara’s to wrap around her waist, holding onto her, and Inara moved her own hands up the bare skin of Kaylee’s back to rest on her shoulders. Kaylee’s skin was warm under her palms, smooth despite the rough work Kaylee did on Serenity, and her lips were soft, mobile under Inara’s.
It took her a few moments to realize that the clock which ran down in her head while she was with a client had started running, enough to make her draw back. Kaylee followed her for a moment before opening her eyes. “Inara? What is it?”
Inara shook her head, not wanting to explain. She was still in the circle of Kaylee’s arms, still close, but suddenly very aware of the rest of the crew on the other side of the shuttle door, of Simon, waiting, presumably, for Kaylee to return to him for the evening. “I think you should talk to Simon,” she said.
Kaylee’s face fell. “I still don’t know what to say,” she said, ducking her head to rest against Inara’s shoulder.
“What do you want to say to him?” Inara asked. She let her hands slide down Kaylee’s shoulders to fold gently together at the small of her back, feeling ridiculously intimate doing something she’d done with Kaylee before without thinking. Maybe it was something in the way she could still feel the phantom pressure of Kaylee’s mouth against hers.
“That I don’t want him to choose between me and River, and I think one day he’ll feel like he has to,” Kaylee murmured into Inara’s skin. Inara felt her own heart lurch at the words, the implication that Kaylee was choosing her simply because she couldn’t have Simon the way she wanted him. Perhaps Kaylee felt it too, because she added, as though she had always meant to, “That I think I might have been in love with my best friend since I met her, and now I think she might be in love with me as well.”
Inara kissed the top of Kaylee’s bent head, breathing in the smell of her shampoo. “What do you think he will say to that?”
“Probably nothing,” Kaylee said. “Whatever I tell him, I don’t think he’ll say much to it.”
“Do you think he’ll be relieved?” Inara asked softly, guessing, but not surprised when Kaylee nodded. “Oh, sweetheart.”
“I would be as well, if he came to me,” Kaylee said. She was still for a moment, then took a step back from Inara, her face composed and set. “Help me out of this?”
“You don’t think it would give him the right impression?” Inara teased.
Kaylee shook her head, turning round. Inara felt far less clumsy opening the buttons than she had fastening them, slowly revealing the smooth, pale skin of Kaylee’s back as she went. She couldn’t resist stroking her hand down the curve of Kaylee’s spine, feeling Kaylee shiver as she did so. She opened the final button and lowered her head to kiss Kaylee’s neck, just where it curved into her shoulder.
Kaylee made a low noise in the base of her throat, so Inara did it again, a little higher, then again, tracing the line of Kaylee’s neck with the very tip of her tongue, something that often worked wonders on her clients. Kaylee was no exception, tilting her head to offer Inara better access, her breathing speeding up. Inara sucked gently at the edge of her jaw, then reversed direction, tracing the same path of kisses back to Kaylee’s shoulder, then across, smoothing the straps of her dress away as she went.
“Don’t stop,” Kaylee murmured, lifting her arms slightly as Inara pushed the straps down and over her hands, baring Kaylee to the waist. “Feels nice.”
Inara kissed her way across Kaylee’s shoulder, one hand going to sweep her hair away, the other chastely on her waist, just where the bodice of the dress folded over the skirt, one finger stroking at the skin there, the others on folded material. Kaylee sighed a little and brought one hand down to cover Inara’s. With her other hand, she took Inara’s where it still rested against her neck and placed it over her breast, holding it there until Inara shifted her own hand, cupping Kaylee’s breast and stroking one thumb over the tight, hard nipple.
Kaylee gasped, pressing back into Inara. “Qi,” she said, her voice roughened. “Inara.”
Inara stroked her nipple again, pressing a little harder, and Kaylee dropped Inara’s hand to reach back and grip Inara’s hip instead. Inara kissed her neck again, then bit gently. Kaylee’s startled cry surprised her, as did the way Kaylee tensed against her. Unsure, she shifted her mouth, bit down again, then nibbled her way back up Kaylee’s neck. Kaylee shuddered, but all the tension flowed from her, melting her back even further against Inara’s body.
Inara smiled, pleased, and moved slightly, sucking gently on Kaylee’s ear lobe, then harder when Kaylee didn’t protest, thumb still moving over her breast. She could have been with one of her clients, each move practiced and familiar, but for the ache between her own legs, the warm rush of having Kaylee in her arms, open and wanting, moaning when Inara pinched at her nipple.
Kaylee’s head was turned just far enough for Inara to see the flush on her cheeks, the way her closed eyelids flickered, her mouth open slightly, breathing getting less and less steady. The hand still pressed over Inara’s tightened, relaxed, then tightened again, holding on. Inara waited, but Kaylee just shuddered, hand tightening a little more, a clear enough hint for something that Kaylee didn’t seem ready to ask for.
“Kaylee?” she asked softly. In all of Kaylee’s openness about sex, she’d never once mentioned another woman, and there was still Simon, plenty of reason for her to be hesitant.
Kaylee made a choked, breathless noise, pushing at Inara’s hand. “Keep going,” she said, no hesitation at all in her voice. “Inara, please.”
It was awkward to slide her hand under the fitted waist of Kaylee’s dress, even when Kaylee released her hand with a sigh of pleasure. Still, Inara managed, sliding her hand into Kaylee’s underwear, over hair damp with sweat, stroking a single finger over Kaylee’s cunt, already wet. Kaylee moaned, loud and gratified, then again when Inara slid two fingers between her labia, pressing firmly. Kaylee was relaxed enough, ready enough, that Inara thought she’d have no trouble penetrating her, but the angle was awkward, difficult, and she knew from experience that she’d struggle to make Kaylee feel as good as she could like this, thumb on Kaylee’s clit, fingers moving firmly over her.
Kaylee’s breath caught, and her hips shifted, hesitantly, then more assuredly, mirroring the movement of Inara’s fingers. Inara slowed the motion of her thumb on Kaylee’s breast, matching the rhythm between her legs, unable to take her eyes from Kaylee’s face, expression intense, almost strained. Even so, she didn’t seem as though she’d have trouble achieving orgasm, even less so when Inara adjusted her fingers slightly and Kaylee groaned, then again, until she was crying out with every press of Inara’s fingers against her, loud enough for Inara to hope no-one was passing by the shuttle, the sound unmistakable.
On a whim, almost, she ducked her head again, bit at the base of Kaylee’s neck, and Kaylee shouted, her thighs tightening on Inara’s hand as she shuddered and came, her whole body stiffening and releasing with it.
Inara stilled the hand on Kaylee’s breast, shifting her thumb to press against the inner curve of it, and slowed the hand between Kaylee’s legs, gentling her through it.
Kaylee groaned, hips still moving. “Don’t stop,” she said, breathless. “Oh, please.”
Inara bit back her own groan, the ache in her own groin drawing too much of her attention, and crooked her fingers, sliding a single one shallowly into Kaylee, rubbing firmly with the others. Kaylee’s hips jerked a handful of times, and she came again with a long, low groan, slumping back into Inara’s body as she finished.
Her face, when she turned her head to kiss Inara, was almost blissful; ecstatic. “That was nice,” she said.
“Just nice?” Inara asked. “I must be losing my touch.”
“Definitely not,” Kaylee said, her laughter turning into a gasp as Inara withdrew her hand, wrapping both arms round Kaylee. “Can I -“
Inara could feel the echo of her own pulse between her legs, but she could also hear movement beyond the door to her shuttle, a reminder of what Kaylee had been going to do. “Later,” she said.
Kaylee blinked, eye lashes fluttering against Inara’s cheek, and said, “Simon.”
“He should know first,” Inara said. It would have been better for him to know well before; she had no idea what had come over her, when she didn’t lose her control like that for anything or anyone, ever.
Kaylee nodded, stepping slowly away from Inara, turning to face her as she slipped the dress down over her hips. Her hair was tousled, her left nipple red from Inara’s fingers, and her underwear was almost translucent between her legs. Inara couldn’t be sure in the candlelight, but she thought bruises were beginning to form along Kaylee’s neck where she’d pressed her teeth.
If she was Simon, she wouldn’t need Kaylee to say anything, which was maybe a blessing for both of them.
Even dressed in overalls and shirt that covered some of the obvious signs, Kaylee still looked post-coital and rumpled. It didn’t help that her mouth, when she stepped closer for a parting kiss, was reddened, her lips faintly swollen. “Go on,” Inara said.
Kaylee nodded, kissing her one last time. “I’ll come back tonight,” she promised. “It’s your turn,” she added, her voice gone low with promise, enough to send a shiver chasing down Inara’s spine.
She waited a few minutes after Kaylee had left before going to the trunk in one corner of the shuttle, covered by a pink and gold cloth, and taking out the vibrator she kept in there for days when her clients had been good, but inappropriate for her to go so far with. She closed her eyes, thought of Kaylee shuddering and breathless against her, and came swiftly.
*
Kaylee didn’t come back that night, though Inara sat awake until long past the time she would usually have gone to bed. At first it was easy to find explanations for her absence, from Simon to Serenity.
By morning, Inara was cursing herself for her own behavior. Kaylee was a friend, and hadn’t she avoided any kind of entanglement with Mal for partly that same reason? After all the months of Kaylee talking of how much she wanted to be with Simon, Inara must surely have been crazy to think that Kaylee would give it up. She’d been flattered by Inara’s attention at the same time as she was struggling in her relationship with Simon, but more than that was hardly likely. They’d both been carried away by the moment.
Inara felt that she would have believed her own thoughts more easily were she not hiding out in her shuttle as the day wore on, listening to the sounds of footsteps passing by the shuttle door, unable to settle to anything as each set made her look up, waiting for a knock.
They landed on Fakar that evening, where the crew had plans that Inara had taken pains to avoid hearing about, half certain that they involved one of the two clients she had booked. She had no choice but to put her evening with Kaylee from her mind, and was almost successful. Enough, anyway, that it was a surprise to step from her shuttle when she returned to the ship two days later and find Kaylee waiting for her.
“I wanted to see you,” Kaylee said, before Inara could recover from her surprise and say something.
“Here I am,” Inara said.
Kaylee nodded, her expression strained, her eyes flickering to Inara then away. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back,” she said, looking down at her feet. Inara caught her breath, waiting for the rejection. “I had to talk to him, we both had… I wanted him to understand.” She looked up then back down, too fast for Inara to pick up her expression.
“I understand,” she said, hoping to let Kaylee off the hook, but Kaylee shook her head, sharp and swift.
“No. I wanted to come by in the morning, but I thought you’d think - and then you were gone.”
“I had clients to see.” Inara released her grip on the shuttle door, taking a single careful step towards Kaylee, unsure whether she was misreading her words.
“I know.” Kaylee looked up, and this time, her face was open, moving towards a smile. “I was worried you’d have a glamorous client who’d offer you untold riches and you’d decide to stay with him.”
“Only told riches,” Inara said, smiling back, feeling all the knots in her shoulders ease when Kaylee took a step towards her, reaching out to rest one hand on Inara’s wrist.
“So I don’t have much competition, then,” she said.
“Hardly any,” Inara agreed, allowing Kaylee to guide her back into the shuttle.
*
Simon, by Kaylee’s account at least, took the news reasonably well, though Inara found that they were rarely in a room alone together for the first few weeks, and even with others there, rarely sat besides or opposite each other. Still, it wasn’t a wholly unexpected reaction, all things being as they were.
Neither she nor Kaylee intended for it to be a secret amongst the rest of the crew, and yet it seemed to become one anyway. Inara was used to keeping her reserve in public, and even Serenity was still public, with Jayne’s lurid imagination and Zoë’s grief to make a romance seem something unsafe, to be hidden. There was River, of course, but perhaps someone had spoken to her, or she had simply picked up Simon’s feelings about the end of his relationship with Kaylee, whatever they were beneath the platonic friendship they seemed to have fallen into once more, because she said nothing.
“Do you want to tell them?” Inara asked one night, a little over two months after that first night. “You never mention it.” She’d been thinking about almost to the point of distraction it while she’d been on Davin, away from Kaylee to accompany a client to a party, thankfully this time without anyone getting involved in a brawl.
Kaylee removed the last of the silver clips she’d decorated Inara’s hair with before she’d left, and which Inara had replaced carefully that morning, an inexact match of the pattern Kaylee had made, to turn it into a gesture, rather than a lie. “I don’t know,” she said, reaching past Inara for her hairbrush. Her hands, carding through Inara’s hair to find any bad tangles, were gentle, for all that they were callused from her work, completely unlike a Companion’s hands as they curved to a Companion’s task. “Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Inara said. She caught Kaylee’s eye in the mirror, both of them smiling. “Maybe not yet.”
Kaylee bent to kiss her cheek. “I like you being my secret,” she said.
A week later, they landed on Athens, so that Mal, Zoë and Jayne could meet a potential contact, Inara could screen a potential client who happened to be passing through there, being a nomadic noble-man originally from Ariel, and Kaylee could go into the town to buy three parts they needed.
“Take Jayne with you,” Mal said over breakfast the day before they were due to land, when Kaylee mentioned her trip.
“Why’ve I gotta be her gorram babysitter?” Jayne grumbled. Inara, sat next to Zoë at the other end of the table, hoped that no-one would mention that it had been Wash’s job, for all that he lacked much skill with a weapon.
“Because I’m the captain and I say so,” Mal said. “And because we’d be stuck if we lost little Kaylee.”
“That aint ever going to happen,” Kaylee said, laughing. “You’ve met the trader before, he’s trustworthy.”
“Captain’s got a point,” Zoë put in. “Might know the trader, but Athens aint exactly the safest place in the ‘verse. Couldn’t hurt to have a decent bodyguard. Or, you know, Jayne.”
Jayne growled at her over his mug, making Kaylee poke him with a chopstick until he stopped.
“Zoë’s right,” Mal said.
“Captain!” Inara watched Kaylee turn her hurt little girl face on Mal, and sat back to watch him be forced into capitulating. “He won’t even trade with me if Jayne’s with me. He’ll think I brought him because I don’t trust him.”
“Let him think that,” Mal said.
“He’s the only person got what I need,” Kaylee protested. “Less you want Serenity falling out of the sky.”
“Girl’s got a point,” Jayne said, which made Kaylee beam, to Inara’s surprise. She hadn’t thought Kaylee cared what Jayne thought of her.
Mal looked at her for a long moment, Kaylee practically bouncing even under his scrutiny, then sighed. “Fine. But if you get carried off by Athens ruffians or some-such, don’t think we’ll be coming back for you.”
“You’ll always come back for me,” Kaylee said, confidence absolute after years of experience, and Inara thought that, as much as she hadn’t wanted it, Mal had come back for her, in a way, bringing her back to what should have been her life.
She felt, in that moment, like she was finally where she’d been waiting to be since she was a child, at the start of the rest of her life, looking into the future that was meant for her, at the path she was meant to be on. That for the first time, she was really there, not just thinking it until something came along to sweep that life away.
In retrospect, she should have read it as the sign it clearly was.
*
She knew something wasn’t right when it took her three tries to get anyone over the comms as she was flying back to Serenity, but she assumed it was normal job-gone-bad wrongness. It wasn’t until she finished docking and went to open the shuttle door to find Zoë waiting for her on the other side that she started to worry.
“I think you want to sit down,” Zoë said.
Inara’s fingers went cold. She wanted to reach for something to hold onto, and couldn’t move. “What’s happened?” It came out cracked, unlike her voice.
Zoë took a step closer, as though she was worried Inara might pass out. “Kaylee’s missing,” she said.
***
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Inara demanded, unsure who she felt more betrayed by, Zoë or Mal, for keeping it from her. They - more often Zoë than Mal, of late - had come to her with every lead, every possible person who could have taken Kaylee, every possible place she could be, every possible reason for her to have vanished, somewhere between the ship and the town. She’d shared in every false lead, every failure to find her, every tiny scrap of information they managed to scrape up, every contact with whom they left word for Kaylee, in case she somehow ended up in their hands.
“You said you were making contact with a client,” she said.
“We were,” Zoë said. Mal made an angry shushing sound, but Zoë kept going, speaking over him. “A message came through less than an hour ago, old comrade from the war. Says there’s a place other side of the world where there’s a good chance she might be.”
“I -“ Inara had to force down the hope threatening to choke her, the need to believe competing with the need not to. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked again.
“You want to come with us?” Jayne asked. “Maybe get shot, or taken as well?”
“Of course not,” Inara snapped. “But I don’t see why -“
“It’s been a year,” Zoë said, low and calm. “Didn’t want to get no-one’s hopes too high.”
“The same way you haven’t with your own,” Inara said, unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
“Shouldn’t all have to suffer with it,” Mal said, pushing past her to climb into the mule. “Best get going, wouldn’t want to keep your nice rich client waiting for you.”
“I won’t be going,” Inara told him, too angry to steady her voice. She should have walked out on that line, but she couldn’t do it, even when no-one looked back as the mule shot out into the bustle of Bernadette’s dock, the bay door closing behind it, presumably at Jiao’s hand.
The hollow clang of it sounded ominously final, to Inara’s ears. She wondered if Jiao knew where they were going, or who’d told them where to look. They were so few on the ship now, if they didn’t come home, who’d go after them? Jiao was a mechanic, a sometime pilot, not a fighter like the others. If these people really did have Kaylee - if they were the type of people who might - then they wouldn’t be won over by Inara’s Companion training, any more than they would by Jiao’s ability to coax open any door in the verse, and who would they go to on Bernadette, where the only people Inara knew were clients with little power and less influence.
“Stop it,” she told herself firmly. Mal and Zoë wouldn’t let Serenity go without a fight and Jayne wouldn’t pass on the opportunity *for* a fight. There was no reason to expect the worst.
Marcus Orvette took Inara’s apologetic cancellation of their appointment about as well as she had expected that he would, even when she promised to look for him the very moment she next set foot on Bernadette. It was one thing to be said for the poorer planets, she supposed, that there was rarely anyone with the power to drive a Companion’s reputation down to the point of being unable to book clients there, something which did happen, on occasion, though not close to as often as the reverse.
With no clients to see, Inara changed out of her warm clothes and coat, folding her clothes carefully away in their trunk. She felt as though she were putting them away for a long time, for a period of rest from work in favor of some other duty. A year, almost exactly to the day, and a contact whom Mal and Zoë both could trust, someone who wouldn’t lead them astray at the promise of money for information. They felt like signs, enough so to make the hope hard to fight against.
Her fingers scraped over something hard and smooth, and she knew what it was before she drew it out of the trunk. Not that she remembered moving it there from the cupboard, but there it was, tucked between a dark red shawl and a dress she had meant to pass to Kaylee, but never gotten to.
The capture wasn’t truly hers, though it had fallen into her possession, near enough. Kaylee had wanted to show her what she’d missed, being away from Serenity for all those months, and even after she’d transferred the videos to something more permanent, the capture had lingered in Inara’s shuttle, along with a handful of Kaylee’s other things, so that Inara had never quite felt able to ask if she wanted to take it back, instead adding it to the small drawer she kept for her personal things, every time she invited a client to the shuttle.
She hadn’t looked at the images, when Kaylee was there to offer to share them, if that was what she wanted with them. Even in the first few months, when they’d all been so sure they’d find Kaylee, bring her back to them, as Simon had with River, she’d left the capture mixed in with her own belongings, though she hadn’t needed to hide her things away, too caught up in searching to take on any clients.
She’d waited three months, skimming her hand over the capture the same way she sometimes did over Kaylee’s hairbrush, the shirt she’d once left behind, and when she’d finally closed the shuttle door and turned the capture to run, she’d tried not to think of funeral rites, of the candle she’d burned for Nandi, three months after the siege at her house, or for Shepherd Book and Wash, three months on from Miranda. She’d told herself it didn’t mean the same, but once she’d watched it once, she could hardly bear to turn it off, until the pictures were ingrained into her memory more strongly than any of her real memories of Kaylee.
She traced one finger slowly over the screen, too light to leave a smudge in its wake, then replaced the capture on her dresser.
She found Jiao up on the flight deck, where she usually was when the crew was out, cross-legged in the pilot’s chair, staring at the side of the large storage building they’d docked opposite. “Hello,” she said, not turning around.
“I came to see if you wanted tea,” Inara said, the lie springing fully-formed to her lips without thought.
“No.” Jiao pushed against the console, turning her chair without unfolding her legs. “Thank you. I should stay up here.”
“I can bring you something,” Inara offered.
She wasn’t surprised when Jiao shook her head again. She was more surprised when Jiao said, already turning back to the window, “If you want to wait with me here, you can.”
“Thank you,” Inara said, hesitating in the doorway. It wasn’t so unusual for her to be on the flight deck, but it wasn’t usual either, that being the crew’s space. Even as a paying tenant, she’d understood the line. With Jiao there, though, the line seemed to fade, and she settled herself carefully into the second seat, looking at the same nondescript view that Jiao had turned back to. The narrow stream running between them and the building kept people from slipping round that way, it seemed, and the view was far duller than Inara was used to at a dock.
“Do you know when the others are expected back?” Inara asked after a while, just to break the silence.
Jiao tilted her head just far enough to look at Inara from the corner of her eye, her face as unreadable as ever. “By nightfall,” she said. “According to the captain.”
“Of course.” Inara shook her head slightly. Gods forbid Mal be specific for once in his criminal career. “Did he at least say where they were going?”
“Yes,” Jiao said. She leaned forward, until Inara was half-sure she’d fall, and touched the screen in front of her, bringing up a map of the planet. She touched another button, and the planet slowly revolved to show a stationary dot on the far side of the world. “They’re already there.”
She was still leaning over the screen, but Inara thought she caught a flicker of wry amusement on Jiao’s face. “Does Mal know you bugged the mule?” she asked.
Jiao shook her head. “Probably not,” she said, sitting back calmly in her seat, the dot staying where it was on the screen. “He doesn’t like things that are for his own good.”
Inara laughed. “You know him well.”
“Not that well,” Jiao said, turning slightly away again. “But those like him. I knew a lot of them.”
There was something about her as she said it that made Inara think suddenly of Mal and Zoë, the times they’d sit and talk of people they’d fought with who were gone. Jiao didn’t seem old enough to have fought in the war, and yet Mal had chosen her for a reason, the day he’d brought her back to Serenity with barely a word, refusing to even look Inara’s way for a full week, even after she’d started trying to talk to Jiao.
“Are they back on your world?” she asked.
Jiao shook her head. “I doubt it.”
Inara knew an unwillingness to talk when she heard it, letting them lapse back into silence that, while no less comfortable, was also no more comfortable than it had been before. She didn’t carry a watch - it hardly gave the right impression for a Companion - and with the unchanging view, she felt that time had come to a stop, that they would sit there forever, waiting, until there was nothing of them left to wait.
It was Jiao who broke the silence, turning her chair back towards Inara. “Your friend, the one they’ve gone to find.”
Inara forced an encouraging smile that she was sure couldn’t seem real. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, I know it’s not my place to ask.”
“You may ask,” Inara suggested. “I can still choose not to answer.”
“Of course.” Jiao flashed a brief, flat smile. “Do you think she’ll want to come back?”
Inara opened her mouth to dismiss the question, to tell Jiao how inappropriate it was to ask, but the words wouldn’t come. They always spoke of Kaylee as taken, Athens being less than safe for a girl like Kaylee, alone and trusting, and yet… Kaylee would have had no trouble bargaining her way out of the world while their backs were turned, if she’d chosen it. It would explain why they never really came close to finding any trace of her.
But Kaylee - bright, loving Kaylee, who loved the ship more than she loved any person, who was always loyal - wouldn’t have left without telling someone. Inara found it hard to believe she would have left at all, given the choice.
The question remained whether she would, if she looked for them, be any more able to find them than they were her.
“I’m sorry,” Jiao said, breaking into her thoughts. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s all right,” Inara assured her, reaching out to touch the tips of her fingers to Jiao’s shoulder. “Yes, I think she’ll want to come back. I think she’s waiting for us somewhere.” She hesitated. “When we find her -“
Jiao held up one hand, sudden and sharp, turning back to the console. Inara followed her gaze. The little dot was moving.
“They’re coming back,” Jiao said needlessly.
Inara nodded, eyes fixed on the tiny dot. The resolution wasn’t good, making it appear to move in jumps rather than smoothly. “How long?” she asked.
“They’ve been there two hours,” Jiao said. “Well, a little more.”
“No.” Inara looked up, frustrated, to find Jiao still looking at the screen. “How long will it take them to get back to the ship?” She looked down again, surprised to see how far the mule’s dot had gone in the few seconds she’d been turned away.
“Soon,” Jiao said. She looked away from the screen, catching Inara’s eye for a brief moment, her gaze sad. “You should go down to meet them.”
Inara could read some of Jiao’s feelings on her face, her concern that Kaylee’s return would mean her departure, her worry for whether they would return with her or not, her own hope, a diluted version of the crew’s. None of it mattered in that moment - Inara was already on her feet, half-turned to the open doorway. “Thank you,” she said, for want of anything else to say.
“Wait for them to return first,” Jiao said, the words following Inara as she hurried through the ship, down the metal steps into the cargo bay. Her hand was shaking when she reached to touch the button to open the doors.
”Kaylee, please, put that capture down. No-one will want video of me brushing my hair.”
“Not you. A Companion. How many people can say they’ve seen a real, true Companion brushing her hair?”
“Plenty, if they get their hands on that capture.”
The dock, from where Inara stood on the ramp, hands pressed to her thighs to keep from wringing them together, was calmly bustling, several vehicles moving between the ships, obscuring her view of the direction from which the mule would come. The air was cold against her bare arms, making her wish for the wrap she’d left in the shuttle.
”When we land on Persephone, will you take me somewhere?”
“I have clients to see, mei-mei.”
“I could come with you.”
“To do what though?”
“’Nara! That’s not what you were saying last night.”
“Was I not? Perhaps you should refresh my memory…”
She was sure the dock was as noisy as most docks she’d stood on were, but the noise seemed far away. She didn’t believe in signs. It having been a year didn’t mean anything. It certainly didn’t mean that they’d come back with Kaylee, or even with a clue to where she was.
Even in her own head, it sounded hollow.
”And then this plugs in there…”
“I see.”
“Really?”
“No, not really, I’m sorry. But I like to watch you explain it.”
She would have said, before, that she had no idea what the difference was in the sound of the mule’s engine compared to the sound of any other vehicle’s, yet she turned her head at just the right moment to see it come speeding through the other vehicles, Mal at the wheel.
“Shen gei ji wo li liang,” Inara murmured, barely able to hear the words over the roaring in her own ears. Her fingers ached, wrapped suddenly round the edge of the doorframe as the mule slowed, coming to a halt at the back of the bay. She felt frozen there, unable to move, watching the three of them as the mule rocked to a halt.
“Was she -“ she started, too soft for anyone to hear.
Except maybe Mal had, because he swung himself over the side of the mule and out into the body of the ship without even looking at Inara.
When she turned from watching him go, Zoë was in front of her, eyes soft with disappointment. “I’m sorry, Inara. She wasn’t there.”
“Did they - did anyone -“ She stopped, unable to complete the sentence, unsure what she even meant for it to be.
Zoë shook her head. “If she was there, he don’t know of it.”
“Are you sure?” Inara persisted. “Are you sure he was telling the truth, you weren’t there for long, maybe -“
“We’re sure,” Jayne said, suddenly there by Zoë, dark and angry. He still had his gun in his right hand, though Inara hadn’t seen any sign of them being followed. “He’d have told me.”
Zoë nodded, eyeing Jayne worriedly from the corner of her eye. “I’ll tell Jiao we can leave.”
*
Back in the shuttle, lifting away from the dock, Inara picked up the capture, sitting on the foot of her bed with it. She took a deep breath, then turned it on.
It started with Mal, sitting at one end of the kitchen table with a mug of tea in both hands, watching Jayne at the other end, cleaning a gun. It took a few moments for him to look up and see Kaylee - and he didn’t even hear me coming, she’d said, narrating it to Inara later.
“Put that gorram thing away, before I confiscate it.” He stood up, taking his mug to the sink, then leaning on the counter.
“Aw, Captain. You wouldn’t even.”
“Do you really want to try me?” Mal asked, giving Kaylee his best threatening glare. On the edge of the picture, his back still to the capture, Jayne grunted out a laugh, though it wasn’t clear who he was laughing at.
“I’ll go on strike,” Kaylee promised.
Mal looked at Jayne. “You know, it might almost be worth falling out of the sky in exchange for five minutes without you getting that thing out. Shouldn’t have let you buy it in the first place.”
It was hard to tell with her out of the picture, but Kaylee didn’t seem to notice that Mal was moving gradually towards her. “Too late now,” she said brightly, and Mal leapt for her.
She jerked back, squealing in surprise, the picture abruptly shifting to show the ceiling, then the edge of Mal’s hand as he grabbed for it. “No!” Kaylee yelled. The image shifted again, jerky and jumping. “You wouldn’t dare! You wouldn’t -“
The picture shut off suddenly, then came back on Inara and Kaylee, sitting next to each other on the couch in the corner of the kitchen. Inara remembered River picking the capture up from the table where it had been left, turning it on the two of them, and she’d half-expected swooping camera effects when she’d watched it back later. It turned out that River had a very steady hand.
On the screen, Kaylee had her legs curled under her, and was pressed against Inara’s side, head on Inara’s shoulder, Inara’s arm around her. For all that they were so close, that Kaylee was smiling absently, that Inara had her head tilted to rest against Kaylee’s, Inara didn’t think they looked like lovers, though they were by the time of the images. They didn’t look any different from how they always had.
“-And you’ll have all the riches in the verse, because you’ll Companion for a rich man who leaves you an entire planet in his will,” Kaylee was saying, obviously well into her speech. “So you can have beautiful clothes, and a new shuttle.”
“I like my old shuttle,” Inara said mildly.
Kaylee raised the hand in Inara’s lap to wave her comment away. “Simon will have the most high tech medical surgery ever seen, and treat poor people for free. And River - what will you have, River?”
The camera shifted slightly as River shrugged. “She likes it here. She doesn’t want to leave.”
“Something you can have while you’re on the ship, then,” Kaylee said. “Music, or books…”
“What will you have?” Inara asked Kaylee. She remembered being worried that Kaylee would mention something that would upset River, though River had been doing so much better by then.
“New compression coil for Serenity,” Kaylee said immediately.
Inara laughed. “You wouldn’t want to replace the whole engine?”
“No!” Kaylee said, sounding horrified. “It’s Serenity’s heart, you couldn’t just rip it out.”
Inara on the screen laughed again, patting Kaylee’s hair, and Inara in the shuttle gasped and started to cry, like she hadn’t in an entire year, capture forgotten, hands pressed to her mouth to keep the sobs inside. She was afraid that if she didn’t, she might scream, just to get out everything inside her that felt like jagged pieces of glass, like a thousand needles pressing into her stomach.
She curled forwards, bent over against the pain - God, how badly it hurt, worse than anything she remembered. She couldn’t breathe, wanted to curl up and shake apart. It couldn’t be worse, it couldn’t, than a year of failing, a year of nothing, looking towards another year of exactly the same, dozens of years of nothing, never quite being able to stop hoping.
She nearly choked at the knock to the shuttle door, startled. “Inara?” Zoë’s voice called. “You in there?”
Inara pressed her hands harder across her face, trying to silence her sobs. Not that Zoë would be fooled for long, Serenity being so small, but it would be enough for Zoë to realize she didn’t want company.
“Inara?” Zoë called again, her tone shading into concern. There was a pause, then Zoë said, “I’m going to come in now.”
“No,” Inara said, but it came out cracked and broken, not really a word, and then Zoë was stepping into the shuttle, competent and together as always. “Please,” Inara whispered, fumbling blindly for a handkerchief. “Please, I’m fine, please leave me alone.”
“Fine people don’t look like you do,” Zoë said. She came over to the bed, sat down next to Inara and handed her a white handkerchief. “It’s new,” she said. “Haven’t even had to use it wipe up any blood yet.”
“Thank you.” Inara blew her nose, wiped her eyes, which were already starting to hurt from crying. It didn’t help much. The tears kept coming. “I just need a few minutes.”
Zoë didn’t say anything, just moved to lay her hand between Inara’s shoulder blades, warm and comforting.
“I’m sorry,” Inara said, wiping her eyes again. “This is hardly fair to you -“
“Let me judge that,” Zoë said, unmoving. “Blow your nose again.”
Inara complied, then took some deep breaths, feeling the tears begin to ease. “Thank you,” she said, turning to look at Zoë as she said it.
It was as sudden as the tears, her hand on Zoë’s face, Zoë looking at her, solemn and serious. Inara’s mouth against Zoë’s, tentative, then not so much so.
“Not a good idea,” Zoë said, but she was murmuring it against Inara’s mouth, not drawing away.
Inara kissed her again. “I know,” she said, and it was Zoë who leaned through the breath between them to kiss her, the third time.
Inara’s eyes burned when she closed them, dry and raw from crying, and she felt strange as she did it, too far removed from the world. When Zoë drew back, she couldn’t stop the half-sob from crawling out of her throat.
“Ssh.” Zoë kissed Inara’s left eye, then her right, soft pressure that made Inara want to blink. Zoë kissed the corner of her eye, her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth, her lips cool against Inara’s over-heated, tight skin, then kissed Inara gently on her mouth and pulled away. Inara opened her eyes to Zoë’s face, not too close, her eyes full of worry. Her hand was still on Inara’s back.
“It’s all right,” Inara said, not sure if she meant herself, or what they were doing, or whether she just wanted something to make Zoë stop looking like that. She lifted the hand not still clutching Zoë’s handkerchief to cup Zoë’s cheek, thumb stroking the soft, bruised skin under her eyes. Zoë was very still under her hand, the kind of calm Inara associated with the handful of times she’d seen Zoë defending the crew. “It’s all right,” she said again, meaning it a little more.
“Probably not,” Zoë said.
“Probably not,” Inara agreed. Maybe it didn’t matter any more. Zoë was there, the only person Inara talked to in any real way any more. Maybe that would have to be enough now. “Kiss me again,” she said.
Zoë drew her in with the hand on her back, Inara’s dress sliding against the silken material of her bedspread, both chosen for just that effect. It was a strange kiss, slow like they were familiar lovers, sad, as far as it was possible for a kiss to be, not enough to be the escape Inara would have expected from it, if she’d expected anything. If she’d thought of this at all.
She kept her hand on Zoë’s cheek, holding her in place as they kissed, chaste, only lips pressing together. She felt every slight movement Zoë made, right up to the slight twitch that signified she meant to pull away. Inara raised her free hand, taking advantage of the way Zoë’s movement broke the kiss to open the buttons of her shirt, rubbing her palm over the shape of Zoë’s breast under the vest she wore under the shirt, always behind layer and layer of clothes.
“Inara,” Zoë said.
Inara kissed her again, pushing the shirt away and slipping her hand under Zoë’s vest, feeling her skin, warm and tight across the muscles of her stomach. “Let me,” she said against Zoë’s mouth. “Just let me…”
Zoë leaned away from her a little, reaching up to curl her hand around Inara’s wrist. “Not like this,” she said. “You don’t want to do this.”
Inara tried to press closer again, held back by Zoë’s hand on her shoulder. “I just want to forget,” she said, hating how weak her voice sounded, how fragile. “I want to think of something else.”
Zoë looked away, and when she looked back, her eyes were dark and troubled, her face pained. “You’ll regret it in the morning,” she said. “Trust me.”
“Not with you,” Inara said. The words sounded true out loud, maybe true inside as well. She couldn’t tell any longer. She lifted her free hand, stroked one finger down the side of Zoë’s face, Zoë’s eyes flickering closed. “I wouldn’t regret anything I did with you.”
“Maybe I would,” Zoë said quietly. “Shouldn’t ought to start like this.”
“I -“ Inara started, and then the words caught up to her and she stopped. Zoë opened her eyes, looked right at her, and Inara felt herself flush with realization. She couldn’t look away, caught by Zoë’s intensity, by the meaning she’d never seen before. She wanted to ask what would happen when they found Kaylee, but the thought of what Zoë might say in response choked her. “Kiss me again,” she said instead.
Zoë didn’t say anything, but she let Inara slide the hand under her vest out and up to rest lightly on her shoulder, and when Inara pressed slightly, she swayed forward so Inara could kiss her again.
Zoë’s mouth was hesitant now, only opening gradually for Inara to slide her tongue inside, gentle and careful as she never would have imagined being with Zoë, if she’d imagined it at all. “Lie back,” she said.
Zoë shook her head.
“It’s all right,” Inara said. “I promise you.”
Zoë still looked uncertain, but she complied anyway, shifting until she was lying on her side and Inara could curl against her, relax into her body and kiss her, light, soft kisses. She let her eyes slide closed, feeling the warmth of Zoë’s body against hers, and thought she could lie there all day like that, until she fell away into a world where nothing existed by Zoë’s mouth against hers, forget about everything else for just a little while…
As she had with Kaylee, one long ride through empty space, with nothing for either of them to do but lie curled together, kissing and touching, filling the air with the smell of sweat and the sound of their own gasping breaths.
She was pulling away before she even thought to do so.
“What’s wrong?” Zoë asked, sitting up. Inara shook her head, mute, eyes burning all over again with tears, and Zoë’s eyes widened into understanding. “I might be best to go,” she said.
Inara grabbed for her arm, caught her wrist. “Please don’t,” she said, words mangled with tears wanting to fall. “I’m sorry, it’s not - I wanted this. I want you. I’m sorry.” She blinked, knocking the tears free to run into her hair.
Zoë looked away, barely moving, but suddenly not touching Inara at all. “Seems this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
Inara sat up, not quite facing Zoë but not quite faced away either, watching Zoë watch her, both of them looking from the corners of their eyes. “I wanted to,” she started, except she didn’t know any more what she’d wanted. Someone to comfort her. Someone to make her forget, or maybe someone to let her remember, just for a while, the things she didn’t let herself remember, not right when Kaylee was who knew where. The things she’d hidden in the back of her mind, like the way Kaylee would go down on her with enthusiasm before she picked up the skill as well, or how she’d walk around Inara’s shuttle unashamedly naked, where Inara would always put on at least her robe.
“Not to think of it,” Zoë suggested quietly, repeating Inara’s own words.
“Yes,” Inara agreed. She reached for Zoë’s hand, turning it carefully to hold in her own, half-expecting Zoë to pull away. “Is this what it was like for you?” Zoë made a small, questioning sound. “After Wash died, is this how you felt?”
“No,” Zoë said, curling her fingers a little more closely around Inara’s. “I knew he wasn’t coming back,” she added after a while.
Inara had nothing to say in response, and so they simply sat, moving through empty space, holding hands in silence.
***
The final scene on the capture ended with Kaylee resting her head on Inara’s bare shoulder, both of them sated, exhausted. After a few seconds, she started stroking Inara’s nipple with her thumb. “’Nara?”
“Yes,” Inara said, echoing Kaylee’s motions on Kaylee’s back.
“You won’t go back will you? To the training house?”
“No,” Inara said, certain, and kissed the top of Kaylee’s head.
“Good,” Kaylee said, sounding half asleep. “Don’t want you to leave me behind again.”