I would like to start out with: Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa
That being said, I'm finding it harder and harder to write and find inspiration – despite my best efforts. I have, in the intervening period since I last posted a chapter, been trying to write this…it was neither a rapid, nor especially productive, process. When progress did come it was of the 'inspirational' variety and it came in fits and starts.
I think, it is for that reason, why some of this feels a bit disjointed (of course some of it is bloody brilliant too: at least I still have my modesty).
I have, as of late, beta-ed this myself, so any mistakes picked up are the fault of the reader…unless it's really bad, in which case I'll blame the wife.
As always, I thank (those of you left) for reading my (semi)-humble offering. If you have the time, please leave a review, they are greatly appreciated.
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
-- C.G. Jung
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard
of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than
to be false and to incur my own abhorrence.
- Frederick Douglass
Never be afraid to tell the world who you are.
-- Anonymous
Some things are not meant to be: the Bumble Bee was not meant to fly, man was not meant to build a tower to Heaven, the bad guy was not supposed to win the day (and get the girl) and, sure as chickens lay potatoes, Jayne Cobb was not meant to wear a suit. Ever. Even at his own funeral. Admittedly, the likelihood that someone would actually take the time to bury the mercenary was pretty unlikely, so the thought of him gettin' all gussied up simply to be stuck in a hole in the ground somewhere was pretty remote.
However, boards of education, wherever they may be – and no matter how disconnected from civilisation (and reality) - have rules; and one of those rules: Section 4: Paragraph 37: Sub Paragraph 49: Line 16 – stated thus:
Verily, all those who come amongst the children in the manner of educator must demonstrate their professionalism and dedication to being a role-model for those whom have been placed under their pastoral and educative care. To that end, all those who come forth as educators must be suitably attired. Suitable attire is, in the interests of utility, a negotiable position, whereas negotiable (for gentlemen educators) constitutes a suit, which may, in the immortal words of Henry Ford, be any colour, so long as it is black.
Section 4: Paragraph 97: Sub-paragraph 75: Line 1 – stated:
We don't know who Henry Ford was, but as he was clearly a man of taste and breeding we are applying his dictates where appropriate.
Latterly, someone had scribbled a note in the margin: 'Board seeks clarification of precise function of horn in apparel, will investigate.'
The long and short of the rules, however, was simple, Jayne Cobb would be wearing a suit.
Of course, the mercenary didn't have a suit; in fact, the closest the man came to having a suit was having a best gun, the shiny – in the polished sense of the word – one that he took along on jobs when Mal wanted him to appear to be a higher class of killer. That the actual weapon was a useless piece of hwo-dahn meant nothing, it looked pretty and fulfilled its primary function; that of ostentatiously looking like a weapon. The fact that Jayne usually carried at least five other weapons on his person at a given time – including grenades, for reasons the mercenary wouldn't let Mal forget – generally meant that the pretty gun wasn't called upon do actually do any killing.
[Now, through the wonders of time-lapse authorial review, we'll take you back to the action as it occurred
"I ain't wearing a suit."
"Yes," explained the captain, patiently, "you are."
"I ain't no gorram core-poof. The only people as wear suits are them lily-livered, wannabes who ain't got no balls so as they get all gussified up and try to beat you to death with lawyers. I have my dignity"
"You?" sneered the doctor, who could hardly resist this opportunity to reinforce to the mercenary just how far he, in the grand scheme of things, was down the evolutionary chain. "You have as much dignity as a rutting boar in a wallow. You are the epitome of a classless, graceless oaf; a mutt who's sole genetic purpose is to provide a warning to others on the dangers of sex without contraception. Without question, you are nothing more than a collection of primal drives corralled together solely to remind all decent folk what they left behind when they dragged themselves out of the primordial ooze and into a civilized environment. You are a fecund, base-born example of everything that is wrong with the human condition and an exemplar of everything medical science has tried to breed-out, eradicate or simply forget. You don't have a suit, you can't wear a suit and you're not fit for a suit; clothes may indeed make the man, but in your case, all you'd be fit for is a chimpanzees' tea party."
The captain hurried to intervene; worried that Simon's declaration may have instantly eradicated what little tolerance Jayne retained for the doctor's gentrified ways. In normal times, Mal was under no illusion as to the mercenary's barely restrained desire to throttle the man (hell, the doctor got under his skin and he was a mite more controlled than Jayne) but that he restrained himself as the doctor was crew and the crew were inviolate – Jayne has been heard to mutter on occasion something about how you can neither choose, nor kill, your family – which, considering Jayne's profession, and some of the anecdotes he'd related with regards to his family, showed a degree of professional (and personal) self-control that was to be admired. In this instance, however, the Captain was fairly certain the 'Good Doctor Tam' had overstepped all recognised boundaries of civilised behaviour and that Jayne was going to render his constituent components into something that Jackson Pollack would have been proud of.
Further still, it didn't look like any of the crew, including Kaylee, were going to intercede on the Simon's behalf.
While, at the best if times, the crew were passing unlikely members of the Jayne Cobb fan club, they no longer regarded him as something likely to be found on the bottom of one's work boots. While it had taken a goodly amount of time, they had, firstly, come to respect his abilities – stopping the bad guy shooting them in the back tended to have such an effect - and secondly, they appreciated fact that he was loyal and honest – in his own, mercenary, killing kind-of way – towards them and theirs; Jayne usually passed it off as him 'it gave him something to do while waiting for a better offer to come along' …
…And all the Captain could think about was who the hell was Jackson Pollack…
Valiantly, he sought to return to the topic at hand, the impending demise of his doctor…well, that is, he tried. "Now Jayne, I'm sure the doctor didn't mean every word he said…"
"…It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong…"
"…You're not helping, River…"
"Off with his head?" Even the girl seemed confused by her brother's words. "Methinks my brother has hit rock-bottom and started digging…How's the view, Simon?"
"…I mean you're 'really' not helping…"
"S'alright, Mal, I'm well aware of the doctor's opinion of me."
The aggravation and – honestly – trepidation the man had felt at the prospect of being so thoroughly out of his comfort zone, both literally, with the incipient donning of, he thought ironically, a monkey suit - which undermined the chimpanzee's tea-party idea as everyone knew they were apes – and metaphorically, with him entering the hallowed halls of academia, had been replaced with a measuring glance and the intense, focused scrutiny that had marked Jayne's dealings with all and sundry of late. Regarding the doctor appraisingly – and with the professional disdain of one used to measuring and casting aside one's adversaries – the mercenary merely raised an inquiring eyebrow indicating he recognised the words, and even the species making use of the relevant vocal patterns but other than that he was either unable, or unwilling, to attribute value, sentience or rational thought to the 'person' in front of him.
"…It's life Jim, but not as…."
"River. Shut. Up".
The doctor, for his part, had the grace to look somewhat subdued; although it was unclear whether his sudden oratorical reticence was borne of fear, or was the result of a fit of upper-class dismay at his sudden display of such poor manners and ill-bred behaviour. After all, sneering at the lower classes was something one was supposed to do in the privacy of one's own sitting room over a snifter of fine cognac, not announce from the highest parapet like a muezzin calling the faithful to worship.
"The rest of y'all can relax too. Doctor can rant and rave all he wants about my breedin' an' all, but least evolution saw fit to give me a chin – can't ask for more'n that now, can we?" The mercenary then turned his glance to the doctor's sister. "Chesterton, girl? Don't matter how damn moon-crazy you are, you've got good taste even if I still don't know where you get it," Jayne cast a withering glance at her brother, "it sure as hell ain't genetic."
River smiled primly at the big mercenary, "It was one of our secret assassin weapons, something about lulling people into a false sense of security before we whipped out our knives and slashed their throats…" the last was announced with a degree of unwholesome glee completely at odds with the image of the young coquette she had presented a moment earlier.
As one – with the exception of Jayne and Zoë – the crew blanched.
"…So I take it that you don't want to hear about what we did with the blood once it had gushed from the wound, painting the walls in lurid washes of arterial red and venous purple…"
"No River, that's fine, thank you."
"But Shepherd."
"Don't make me bring out 'the hair', child."
"Yes, Shepherd," and where there had, a moment ago, been animation, there was now nothing but a crude simulacra of a girl, a change more horrifying than any simple description of gore and viscera and, which more than anything, was an even starker reminder of just what River had been designed to be.
"You didn't have to threaten her with 'the hair', Shepherd," noted Zoë, "you know how she feels about the hair."
Shepherd Book shrugged, "Perhaps you're correct, Zoë, but consider also that River needs to learn that some things are best left in the shadows of one's mind…"
"River has neither the control over her mind or, more correctly, the way her mind edits her memories to account for the needs and taste requirements of general consumption," noted Inara, in counterpoint to the other woman. "Of all of us, Shepherd, I would expect you to appreciate that, and" she added, somewhat acerbically. "While you may have no inclination to reveal your past indiscretions, it is not your place to decide what is appropriate. I'm fairly certain your precious holy book mentions something about 'Judge not…' etc, so-on- and-so-forth, isn't that what you tell Jayne, Mal and Zoë each time they want to shoot someone?"
Book acknowledged Inara's point with a nod and would probably have segued into a rendition of one of his homespun - and well-worn – homilies but for Jayne's snide remark that the reality of the situation was that the Shepherd's annoyance was more to do with the girl's editing of his beloved holy book rather than any perceived social infraction, and that threatening River with his hair was simply his holy-roller way of keeping the girl under control without resorting to the more secular mechanisms favoured by the less biblically inclined.
Anyway, he disagreed with the companion; the girl may well have been a right pain in the arse on occasion (as well as being as mad as a bag of hammers); but that didn't make her stupid…or out of control…or wrong…
…Usually…
…Alliance advertising notwithstanding…
…And even then, old prissy bitches had the off switch…
"Don't under-estimate the girl; 'member, she's the one flyin' this here bucket of bolts while Wash'n his missus are off not makin' babies. Serenity don't fly herself none either. Truth be, takes a fair amount of that thinkin' thing you're not gracin' her with to do that; or had you forgotten?"
"It's not the same thing, Jayne…" amended Book, his expression pained - more by the man's descent into the hillbilly patois he favoured when he had decided his audience were idiots, than he was by the actual content of the statement. "One series of actions, those you've just described, relates to a set of technical procedures; the others, well I suppose you could argue that the 'Alliance Guide to Assassination' does indeed constitute a technical manual of sorts but not one, I would think, that's appropriate for general conversation and dissemination; however, if you wish to discuss the intricacies of your trade with River then, by all means, do so, but please, in your own time."
Jayne continued on, apparently unaffected by the Shepherd's comments, more than likely because he was ignoring them. "As for her memory; seems to me she's more sortin' out what's rightly hers and what's rightly not amongst the flotsam and jetsam that's floatin' loose up there along with the ghosts and the demons. What we've got is a problem of context; that is, we're not sharing her context, which don't, to my mind, make her wrong." Jayne paused a moment to assure himself that he had everyone's attention, "It's a bit like Inara telling everyone what they used to do at whore school, we get the general gist 'cause the words are all prettified with them BBC vowels, but it don't mean we rightly know what the hell she's actually goin' on about seein' as how we're not all whores and all…"
"…Thank you for that, Jayne; it's bad enough that the captain keeps calling me a whore without you adding your own particular slant on things..."
"That's alright, Inara, I'm sure you retain enough of your whore-school superiority complex to see you through. Now," and Jayne metaphorically girded his loins, straightened the set of his shoulders and surrendered to the inevitable, "let's talk about this damn suit I'll be wearin'."
River really wasn't helping.
While Jayne was prepared to defend her intelligence, her martial prowess and even her predilection for choosing wildly obscure quotes, a couturier she was not.
A blind, religious zealot with a hair-shirt fetish would have provided saner fashion advice.
For some reason, River was determined that Jayne's suit would be blue – despite the explicit regulation to the effect that it be black – and that he would wear a top hat with a tag proclaiming 10/6; she also mentioned something about acquiring the mercenary a rabbit so he wouldn't be late, but that went completely over even Jayne's head
Fortunately, much to River's chagrin, and Jayne's eternal relief, sanity (such as it was on Serenity) prevailed.
Strange twists of causality – those that comprise the generation of situational irony - were hard at work in the construction of Jayne's suit insofar as the design, implementation and manufacture, of the project came down to a collaborative effort between Simon and Inara. Between them, the pair retained an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of fashion, social convention and the nuances that connected the two; it also helped that Inara, amongst her varied skills, was a talented – although, not to the professional standard of a qualified tailor - seamstress, an ability she had acquired during her companion training; Jayne had, somewhat petulantly, noted that 'How To Make Your Own Whore-wear' was probably a core component of the Companion curriculum. The irony began to extend icy tendrils into the perverse world of alternate realities when Simon was heard to exclaim that he was quite enjoying the exercise, although, as River was head to whisper to Kaylee, the doctor was probably deriving a degree of sadistic pleasure from imagining Jayne coping with the intricacies of double-Windsor knots and the evil that was the buttoned-down fly. Of course, Jayne got a measure of revenge, albeit inadvertently, when it came to the process of fitting the garment, for if the doctor had thought the mercenary to be a bad patient it was nothing on his performance as a mannequin.
"I'm not a gorram pincushion holder, get that dammed thing outta my butt."
"Then hold still you recalcitrant gorilla. The whole point of this exercise is to make sure the suit fits you correctly, if you continue to move around like a Bantha in heat then all I'm prepared to guarantee is that what you'll end up wearing will bear a slightly higher resemblance to several pieces of clothing than a series of poorly connected fabric bags…but only just."
To suggest, therefore, that Simon was becoming frustrated was a fairly accurate assessment of the situation. While the doctor may have been tempted to treat the mercenary as the physical manifestation of the Jayne-shaped voodoo doll he had nailed to the wall of his cabin (a concept that became increasingly opaque the closer you looked at it as, literally speaking, at this moment, Jayne was the very personification of such) he was also a person who took far too much pride in his work – be it medicine or tailoring - to allow himself to become distracted by petty rivalry…
…"OUCH!!!"…
…Usually…
…That being said, there was a lot of satisfaction to be gained from the occasional, and wholly inadvertent – he added innocently in an attempt to assuage any potentially negative karmic implications - application of various pins, needles and sharp-edged fasteners.
"Jayne, if you don't hold still I'm going to ask Kaylee for the loan of her riveter, the high-speed, gas-compression riveter, and if I do, we won't have to worry about fit, but you will have to worry about your setting off every goddamned metal detector in every goddamned corner of the galaxy; in which case we might as well space you and leave you for a mining consortium to collect later."
And so it continued.
It was probably just as well for all concerned that current, formal fashion was of a relatively clean line and simplistic cut inasmuch as, while Simon and Inara's skills were formidable, neither were professional garment manufacturers and thus, the lack of necessity to present something that would have to tread the runways of Chiffon, the core world at the hub of the Alliance fashion industry, engendered feelings of relief; a suit was one thing, haute couture was something else again.
From Jayne's perspective, complicated and tricky wasn't a problem, he could handle complicated and tricky, as his role was simply to wear the aggravating get-up – albeit in front of a under-tall crowd of juvenile malcontents. The mercenary's main concern, however, had been directed more towards the potential for current fashion being of an avant-garde persuasion, irrespective of the fact that the official 'teacher-wear' guide explicitly delineated a black suit as the ONLY appropriate attire (with the additional inference that anyone, especially a teacher, who came near the school attired in anything else, would be summarily gunned down).
The school governors had not been, were not currently and, apparently, never would be, advocates for anything approaching flexibility.
Of course a knowledge of the reality of a given situation and the opportunity to indulge a completely irrational fear have never been - and never will be - equal sparring partners and, as such Jayne's imagination ran wild. In the large man's mind was the fear that he was going to appear as an even bigger idiot that he was already feeling and that if he had had to don one of the lurid plastic kilts that were currently all the rage on the Caledonian influenced planets the ensuing tantrum wouldn't have been pretty.
Nevertheless, when all was said, done and stitched, Jayne had to admit that he looked good, and more, that he felt good, thus giving truth to, not only, the truism that the clothes make the man but that you can't beat a hand-tailored and fitted suit for comfort.
"Damn, I look fine."
"Even if you do say so yourself," Wash noted mildly from his position at the galley table.
Eventually, the entire crew had converged to admire Simon and Inara's handiwork and, more subtly – although it was about as patently subtle as a train wreck - to see how their tame mercenary cleaned up. While it was true that Jayne, of late, had done a fair job in bludgeoning the fact that his intellect was something stratospheric into their collective consciousness, his appearance had continued to resemble the result of a wholly indiscriminate mating between a combine harvester and the Salvation Army's used-clothing appeal. It wasn't that Jayne was – despite the doctor's firmly held belief – unwashed; Jayne's mother had spent far too many an evening summarily drowning the recalcitrant wretch in the wooden half-barrel that did double duty as the Cobb family laundry and bathtub for the mercenary not to understand the concept of cleanliness, it was just that his concept of cleanliness didn't extend to the clothes he wore…continually. In fact, so disreputable was the general state of the meenary's apparel that even the most indiscriminate of vagabonds would have turned their nose up at the choice of prêt-a-porte on offer…
…As would most fleas and, if Wash was to be believed, matronly dung beetles had been seen scurrying in the other direction their antennae waving in consternation.
It was the captain who broke the, somewhat stunned, silence. "Well, you've done a mighty fine job here, Doctor, Inara. If I didn't know him, I'd swear Jayne was respectable."
"Thank you, captain," acknowledged the doctor; "still, it seems a waste to use such fine material in such a fashion. I'm certain that, given the time, we could have found a burlap sack and configured something far more appropriate to the model; probably involving the use of a bell and a sign about lepers, but, alas, we did what we were asked."
The comment caused Inara to cast a somewhat jaundiced eye at her fellow designer. While it was true that she wasn't Jayne's greatest fan she was prepared to admit that, in this instance, one where his patience must have been tried in the extreme, the mercenary had been a model of restraint (by Jayne's standards, anyway); certainly, if positions were reversed, couldn't see the doctor putting himself in such an obvious state of disease.
Admittedly, the likelihood of the doctor being called on to assume any role other than that of medicine man (or, perhaps, over-pretty rent boy – as many of the male companions at the motherhouse couldn't compare with Simon's effete beauty) were extremely unlikely, as his performance, at what had come to be known as 'Jayne's Town', had convinced all and sundry that the doctor didn't have a single thespian-oriented bone in his body. Jayne, on the other hand, had had everybody convinced that he was little more than a semi-intelligent piece of beef for several years a testament to the fact that he 'could' act.
The fact that he hadn't shot, or even threatened to shoot, the doctor also demonstrated that Jayne retained the correct temperament for working in a demanding environment and, Inara quietly chuckled to herself, you didn't get much more demanding an environment than a school for younglings. On consideration, Inara hoped that the mercenary's evidenced restraint extended to the children, for while shooting the doctor may have been an unlawful, if wholly justified (in some circumstances) act, the same could not be said for shooting children; for some reason, children were regarded as innocents, which, to the Companion's mind, was obviously a belief fostered by those who neither had, nor interacted with, children.
It was, inevitably, River, who broke the semi-reverent silence that had descended upon the crew as they meditated on their ugly duckling made, if not good, then, at least, less ugly.
"He's just like a flamingo, a tall, black flamingo…and he's right-side up and not pink. How will you get the ball through the hoop if you're not pink, Mister Teacher? More importantly, Mister Teacher, can you teach, or are you going to be a black-flamingo statue made of stone."
"You know," Shepherd Book, noted, "she makes a good point, can Jayne actually teach? We know he's not stupid…"
"…Standing right here thank you, Shepherd…"
"…But teaching isn't about whether or not the teacher is actually intelligent…"
"I don't know about that, Shepherd", kibitzed Wash. "Seems to me that it's probably a good idea that the teacher knows something, otherwise they could end up like…" The pilot's eyes desperately scanned the room as he realised that his, once, obvious target was a target no more "…ummm, like Badger."
"Good save, Husband;" noted Zoë, to her profusely sweating mate.
The captain regarded his mercenary with a sense of proprietary concern as his mind wrestled with the implications for their mission of a their fake teacher not being able to – as it were – fake teaching. "Well, Jayne, will the teaching be a problem?"
The mercenary shrugged, "Well captain, it's like Theodore Roosevelt used to say, 'Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it'. Looks like I'm going to be busy." He cast a wry grin in River's direction, "any volunteers to play teachers and students?"