A/N: All your base are belong to Whedon. The ages in this fic are approximate.
Coin
-irishais-
He'd grown up on a rim planet, the son of parents who had to scrape and scavenge just to put food on the table every day, and fourteen-year-old Jayne Cobb had promised himself that he wasn't gonna turn out like that, no way. There was gonna be plenty of money, and he'd come back and put his folks up somewhere nice. Get 'em off that gorram rim planet.
Ma told him he shouldn't say "gorram," not at the table, and so Jayne had apologized lickety-split. There weren't nothing that Ma Cobb didn't catch. Pa just told him to leave be. Said there was no point in wasting life lookin' for riches.
Jayne had always been real good with his hands, buildin' his Ma some nice new chair for her birthday or helping his Pa put the roof back together. His brother went down in the mines three years 'fore Jayne took off for the "better life," and Jayne, fifteen years old and strong as an ox, had already promised himself that he wasn't gonna go down there. Not in that pit where men didn't come back out right. He'd get off-planet, go somewhere where the work paid good and he maybe got to build things.
Didn't like it much when his Pa made him take apart a fence they'd put up a few years back. Takin' things apart had never sat quite right with Jayne.
Then, 'course, Pa passed on Jayne's seventeenth birthday, and Jayne had to promise Ma he'd do whatever he could to make more money for them, so he found himself at the mouth of the mine, gussied up in a hard hat and a lantern clung in one hand. It was for Ma; he'd do it if he had to.
His brother showed him the ropes, taught him how to mine real efficient-like, and Jayne wasn't half-bad. He tried not to think about it too hard when his brother's words were punctuated with wet coughs. Tried to ignore the tickle in the back of his own throat, and concentrated on getting that pickaxe into the ore and load up that cart.
xx
A ship set down right next to the minefield two days after Jayne turned eighteen, just as he got out of the hole, covered in pitch and smelling like gou shi. He didn't pay it much mind, used to the off-worlders who came looking for some good ore, since that was all that the planet seemed good for.
It was the shooting that really caught his attention, the rat-ta-tat of a machine gun, the double cracks that a shotgun made in retaliation. Now, Jayne Cobb never was one for hittin' a man when he didn't deserve it, but he considered starting a ruckus on his rim planet more than enough of a reason to crack one of the guys over the head with the butt of his pickaxe and smashing his lantern in the face of another. Two more came hightailing it out of the supervisor's office, a lockbox swinging between them, and Jayne found himself at the business end of a nasty piece of machinery.
"You ain't bad. Want a job?"
"Got a job," Jayne found himself saying, though he knew he was probably gonna get himself shot for it, and then who was gonna take care of Ma?
"This ain't a job. You come with Stitch Higgins and his crew, and that's a job. Get paid plenty." The fella at the other end of the gun smirked. "Take care of yer family better, anyway." He cocked the hammer on the gun. "What'd ya say?"
"Y'all are crooks."
"Might say that. At least we're clean about it."
In the end, it weren't much of a choice for Jayne. His Pa said money was what made Earth-that-was go out like it did. It was a disease. All those shiny coins did things to a man. Powerful things.
He got a gun and a narrow bunk, and made himself a vow to send some of that coin straight home to Ma.
xx
Twenty-eight years old, and Jayne shot a man in his leg for a bunk of his own and more than seven percent of the cut. Hadn't taken him much thought, either, sort of like the time that he threw Higgins out of the ship cause it wasn't flying level enough. Hadn't taken a whole lot of thinking on his part that time, either. Just a push and a shove and he was alone in his ship with crates of cash.
Course, the cash had gone flying, too, but that weren't no fault of his, no way.
"My own bunk?" he asked suspiciously, and Captain Mal Reynolds had agreed. So, Jayne came aboard a ship called "Serenity," and weren't that appropriate and funereal-like?
He didn't care. He got to shove some more money into a package for his Ma the next stop they made, and that--alongside the bein' able to afford to go whoring and drinking a little more often--was really all that mattered.
Besides, Mal and Zoe fought in the War for Independence, with all the emphasis on the capital letters, and so Jayne got to hit a lot more people who deserved it, and most of them were Alliance.
Couldn't beat that.
xx
This wasn't a way for a man to die, getting spaced.
Thirty years old, and gonna get killed over money. Seemed right ironic, when he thought real hard about it, since his whole job was killin' other folk for coin.
He didn't see what the big deal was, until Mal had hit him with a wrench and threatened to make Jayne break atmo just like Serenity. Didn't gorram see why it mattered. She was just a moonbrained girl and her gorram overprotective hardheaded doc of a brother.
Weren't really crew, anyway, just a couple of fugitives who happened to be useful once in a while.
They weren't family or anything, and the money was too good.
Seemed like the money was always too good, and Pa had always said coin did funny things to a man.