Title: The Shattered Facade
Rating: G (K)
Pairings: good implied Mal/Inara
Genres: Drabble, Romance
A/N: Well, I don't have much to say but... REVIEW!
The Shattered Facade
She couldn't say for certain when the first time it happened was. It had happened so many times in the past year, she couldn't even say she remembered it ever actually happening most of the times. But there were those times when she noticed her slip and immediately covered over.
Inara was a Companion. That's what she did: cover things.
While it was never actually orally taught to the Companions when they were in training, it was an unspoken common knowledge that they were to show no emotion to anyone but a client, and even then it was to be false. Emotion was merely a tool.
Feelings were kept on the innermost chamber of the heart, never to be seen.
It was a simple task of using one's mind to call up the firmly instilled training that was absolutely essential to life as a Companion. And from the very youngest age, they were taught to always live by the rules of the mind, not of the heart. Living with the heart was what others did, and living instead by use of the mind was what set Companions apart from the rest of the people in the galaxy.
All that needed to be done was to call up the fine steely mask to hide feelings behind its impenetrable wall.
But Inara Serra's finely crafted mask had been broken time and again.
And she couldn't recall when the first time was.
She had no idea for the longest time that it had ever even happened to begin with.
Oh, but it had. And now, that troubled her beyond the use of words. It ate at her soul that anything in this galaxy had been able to eat through the carefully structured, impassable wall that she had firmly raised since she began Companion training.
But the worst part was that he was what had broken it.
Of all of the things in this whole wide universe that could have been the shrapnel that finally pierced through her wall, it had to be that man. That one man that drove her to insanity and back again—and insanity was a place no Companion ever went, whether it be on the inside of their mask or not.
He made her go places that in her line of work, with her long years of training, she had no right to go.
And she argued with him.
Companions didn't argue.
She got angry with him.
Companions did not anger like that in front of anyone.
She fought with him.
Companions did not fight.
He made her doubt.
Companions never doubted.
And he had even caused her to get so frustrated she swore.
Companions did not swear.
He caused her to feel want and desire.
Companions desired nothing; they made themselves the object of desire.
And that was the worst of things: Inara found herself craving his attention and something more from him than just arguments and insults. The one time when he had really touched her, just the softest of touches on her cheek, she had to run and hide for the wild emotions it sparked and the sheer fire in his touch.
A simple caress turned her entire world upside down and inside on its axis.
Malcolm Reynolds had shattered her finely woven mask time and again, and if the universe had its way, he would continue to do so.
Because something about Mal Reynolds had just always seemed to break through every wall that had surrounded Inara Serra and touch and stir the places in her mind and heart that were supposed to be non-existent. But she was sure she would have no other man do the same.
THE END