A/N and disclaimer: Joss Whedon is their master, not me. Set just after "Heart of Gold." Here goes my first foray into TV fanfic - writing...
Truthfully, it would not take her very long to pack. Most of her dresses and supplies were already stowed away in one cupboard or another, to be pulled out only when she or a client required them. But right now, Inara needed the distraction of sorting through her possessions, and a last-minute inventory never hurt. Rim-raised space pirate or not, Mal was too much of a gentleman to steal anything from her, but the Companion had seen the way Jayne's eyes lingered upon some of her jewelry.
She didn't even intend to take all of it. Her decision with Mal applied to little things as well. No attachments, no keepsakes, no bonds, no chains. Nirvana did not require any of such things.
Inara turned a silver-backed hairbrush in her hands. Perhaps she would give it to Kaylee. Who knew how many hours the two women had spent doing one another's hair, talking, laughing, and making plans for their futures?
"You think it looks all right?" Kaylee reached up to touch the mass of curls.
Inara considered their reflections in the mirror, laying the brush delicately upon the counter. "I think I know what's missing." She reached into the vanity drawer and pulled out a long, silken pink bow. Kaylee's smile glowed, reflecting its warmth a thousandfold in the mirror.
No, Mal would not be the only attachment she was walking away from. Maybe she would even leave Jayne a bit of shiny, since he seemed to have behaved himself. Then, there was Shepherd Book.
Out of all the people to step aboard Serenity, he was one of the last that Inara would have expected to have had a pleasant relationship with, but Inara heard more about fire and brimstone from Malcolm Reynolds than the priest. Book's presence was a hidden scented candle aboard the ship: simple, soothing, - perhaps unexpected, but very welcome. The older man might well appreciate some of the incense she used in her meditations.
"What the gorram hell died in here?" Jayne wrinkled his nose as they entered the Companion's shuttle.
"It's incense," Inara snapped, wrapping her shawl tighter about her. "It's an essential part of many ancient cleansing rituals. Not that I'd expect you to recognize any of them."
"It stinks," the big merc maintained, his eyes hungrily taking inventory of the lush quarters. Book put a hand to his arm, letting Kaylee and Inara by.
"I find it calming," Book said. "There's something hopeful about it."
"Makes ya hopeful that you'll get away from it." Jayne straightened the collar of his jacket, maintaining as much cocky dignity as a man in a floppy green aviator's cap could in the chilled surroundings.
Book laughed, and offered Inara a wink. "I'm sure you will, Jayne." Despite the cold and the none-too-smooth takeoff, Inara's hand steadied as she lit her candles, providing the light and the scent of hope.
Inara opened another storage locker, revealing the oddly shaped, carefully wrapped and padded casings. The corner of her mouth twitched, and her hands eased the locker shut again, cases unopened. Now was not the time to look through those.
Like any Companion, Inara had received training with the flute, the dulcimer, the violin, and various types of percussion instruments. She had never displayed more than a middling skill with any, but had kept the dulcimer and flute, as she found she enjoyed practicing them. Part of the reason for her affection for the dulcimer was for the memories she associated with the instrument. Any community in the Rim might boast a fiddle-player, or a musician with a set of pipes, but only the highest circles of Core society were known to host a Companion-trained dulcimer performer. The Guild took this honor seriously, and the teachers took pains to insure that their students were at least aware of the great tradition and prestige of the ancient instruments. It had not rubbed off on everyone, though, Inara remembered with a wistful half-smile.
They had sat towards the back, kneeling in the third from the front of the precise rows curved about the music master. It was not so far back that he would take notice of them out of sheer pique, but far enough from Marzi the Prodigy and Zhang-mei the Overachiever that his attention would not accidentally be drawn their way, either. Zhang-mei and Marzi would always be the teacher's favorites, but Inara lacked a natural ear for the stringed wooden instrument and Nandi was bored stiff by the lessons. It was a pity, Inara thought. If her friend would ever bother to practice, she could have been at least as good as Zhang-mei. Nandi had certainly showed as much passion and precision as any instructor might wish when she smashed the instrument over her master's head. He had bled from that, like she had bled later – wounded by the things they loved most.
A soft knock at the entryway interrupted her thoughts. It wasn't Mal, then, at least. Mal would never learn to knock. "Come in," Inara called, rising and stepping away from the locker.
A head of long, straight, dark brown hair glided into the room backwards, the light cotton dress fluttering in counterpoint. The visitor spun, her hair and skirt billowing; catching the wind in her movements, even in the still satin-draped confines of Inara's shuttle. "It's too loud outside. Too many crying. Too much creaking. Water oxidizes the ship's metal and I'm out of oil for the hinges," River informed her, plunking herself down on the Companion's bed next to a pile of as-yet unsorted belongings. The girl swung her bare feet over the edge of the mattress, admiring the bejewelled sleeve of one of Inara's heavier gowns.
"I don't believe I have any lubricant of that sort. Maybe you ought to ask Kaylee," the older woman said. She could sympathize with wanting to get away from the fueneral atmosphere.
River's mouth flattened, and her large brown eyes narrowed cynically. "She's adding to the problem. You, at least, have stopped your individual output of saline."
"Everyone handles grief differently, River." Inara cleared a space on the couch to sit facing her odd visitor. The heavy table with its tea set and candles was comfortably solid between them.
"We run. Hurts too much." Dropping the sleeve, the girl wrapped her arms about herself. "Pulls me too tight." Inara could only nod in sympathy. River lept from the bed as impetuously as she had sat upon it. "Book reads, Jayne lies under his bars, Simon fiddles with his supplies, Wash sits at his controls, Cap cleans his gun, but I need movement. I need vibration of sound waves and wind on my face and room to fly." Arms wide, she twirled and twisted through the room, coming to an abrupt halt before the couch. "Otherwise I break again." Forgoing the graceful, wild port de bras that had accompanied her earlier movement, the girl dropped her hands to her sides, shoulders slumping. "Broken string's no good. Throws off the pitch."
"All of us could use a little fine-tuning, I suppose." Although she found it difficult to keep up with the twists and shifts of the expressive-faced dancer's chain of thought, Inara thought she got the gist of River's problem.
Truthfully, it was not so different from her own, save that this young one had already seen her great dream turn into a nightmare. "She wanted to go to the Academy," Simon had said. But once she had gotten there, her mind had only been the first of River's losses. Tempted by the chance to improve herself, blinded by her love of learning, the girl had gone willingly into the den of beasts that would have destroyed her, had her brother not come to her rescue.
"Don't know that there's enough left to tune." River shook out the long sleeves of her own baggy outfit. Although both Inara and Kaylee had offered to take her shopping in the smaller, quieter outposts along the Rim, the girl continued to favor swirling, shapeless skirts and oversized sweaters that threatened to swallow her thin frame whole. The final effect made River look even younger than her years, as if she had lost something of her body at the Academy, as well. "If I stretch much more, I'll snap, but if I don't, I'll fall off."
"Every now and then, it's okay to fall off, mei-mei," Inara said quietly, standing from the couch. "You can't keep something beautiful just right forever."
River looked around the room, taking in the velvet curtains pulled aside for storage and the sumptuous bedclothes buried under a pile of unsorted dresses, the gemmed sleeve that had caught her eye eariler twinkling in the chaos. "No," she said softly. "Sometimes it breaks anyway."
"And sometimes, you can put it away so that you can put it back together," Inara said firmly.
"Not in the same configuration. Entropy alone guarantees that. Still, better to consciously separate than break." The girl deftly avoided Inara as the Companion moved about the table, wandering about the room at a much graver pace than she had entered it. "We might fit somewhere else." The large doe-brown eyes belied her statement, examining the half-packed shuttle accusingly.
"You fit in with Serenity, River. We may not all be smuggling con-men like Mal, but both of us have found our places on this ship." Inara's lips twisted, her smile somewhat forced. "When we need to, we'll find our places out there, too."
"You need to do so now." River nodded, understanding. "Just don't find a place too far away. Captain's too quiet without you."
"I'm sure you'll give him something to fuss about." Her smile returned as she accompanied her guest to the door.
"Probably will," River acknowledged. "But wherever you go, take a bit of Serenity with you. She'll sing 'til you harmonize with her."