Jayne is an incredibly fucked-up individual.
That is a fact.
Accept it and shut up about it before he shoots you in the face.
Though admittedly shooting you in the face isn't really his style. He'd be more likely to bash your head in with the non-firing end, or just beat you with a chair until you stop moving. Plus, just now he's surrounded by alcohol, which means his perpetually shaky judgment is currently slightly less coherent than usual. There he sits, at the other end of the bar, surrounded by bottles and bottles of strange types of booze that you, the naïve barely-legal chit of a girl that you are, can barely understand.
In his drunken stupor, another thing that is slightly more than common when the crew of the ship he now travels with is allowed to make port at any place that's within roughly thirty miles of a large public or private source of alcohol, he's muttering about old things. Old crews, old ships, old people. Something about a girl named River. She was on the vids once, she saved the verse or something. You can't quite remember. It was a really, really long time ago.
The bartender notices you staring and pours you another glass of the weak ale you were drinking to prove it was possible for you to do such a thing. "He came through here once, you know," she says. "Drank all the gut rot he could get his hands on and told the strangest stories about a planet where all the people were dead and a crazy girl who'd been in love with him." The woman, whose nametag reads Serena, chuckles a little and continues with bar-tender-y activities, such as cleaning glasses and refilling dishes of bar nuts and wiping down counters, though in this as in every place that only succeeds in smearing things around a little. The nuts here are good, though. Salty and extra-crunchy and real-tasting, even if they're made out of soy and engine fuel, which they probably are.
She continues a little bit later. "I took a hologram of him, like I do for everybody who comes through here, because you never know who's famous or who's going to be famous or who's just likely to bring in money as an attraction of sorts. He stayed for a week and then got back on a ship, different one than the one he came on, as far as I know."
You vaguely remember, in a way that hurts the back of your mind because it was such a long time ago it's mixed up in memories of being four years old and crazy about dolls and horses, everyone getting into a tizzy about a certain ship landing right in this city. What was it called—Tranquility? Serena?
"Serenity," she confirms, watching you puzzle over it. "It was Serenity, all right. I guess that girl of his wanted him back so bad she came right in here to get him." An unladylike snort, or more of a reverse giggle. "Came right in this very bar—River Tam, it was. Tried to take a hologram of her too but she disabled my systems in the first three seconds. Good thing, too, with all the carrying-on they got up to right fast. The one you're watchin' isn't from then, though. It's from the night before."
It ends, suddenly, and with it ends the reason for your being at this miniscule bar in the middle of nothingness. Jayne's been huge here since then. Every girl's in love with him. Every boy that isn't in love with him as well wants to be him. It was curiosity, mostly, that dragged you out here to watch what he was like in as close to real life as you could ever get. But seeing him this close does remind you of something.
You pay for your drink and stumble out the front door. You've never been able to hold your alcohol. And the next day, you get a job being violent for the crew of the fastest-exiting spaceship.
One day, that capture she took of you is going to be worth something. Thanks to Jayne.
