Even So, Mei Miao
Chapter Four
Di di: little brother
Dong ma: understand?
Mei miao: beautiful (art)
Yao jing: evil spirit/alluring woman
Jie you xiang si fou,
Ying wu bu wu shi.
Whether the willow can love or not,
Never a time when it does not dance.
- Li Shang-yin
Fess was exploring the kitchen and preparing to make dinner, and River was working on her picture. Mal had all his guns laid out on the table again and he was cleaning them. Fess thought he looked rather busy and didn't distract him. Then Zoë and little Hoban came in and sat down at the table.
"Hey, little Ban," said Mal. "Zoë, you think maybe you should keep the little one away from here right at this moment?"
"Don't worry, sir. I know what I'm doing."
"Okay then," said Mal, and inched the nearest gun away from the child, then went back to cleaning.
"All right, Banny," said Zoë, "I'm gonna teach you about guns today."
"Awuight, Mommy."
River put down her picture and went to watch.
"Guns are important. They're for protecting people. Mal takes good care of his guns. See how careful he is with them?"
"Yeah," said Banny. "Like how Kaylee takes good caor of Seuenity, wruight?"
"Yeah. Just like that. You have to love and respect a gun and it won't let you down."
"Okay."
"Now on a normal day, when we wake up and we work and we play and we eat and we see the people that we know on the boat, I don't want you to ever touch a gun."
"Okay."
"No touching guns," muttered River. "Output to the input feed."
"And when Mommy's doing work and there are strange people here, even if bad things happen, stay away from the strange people and don't touch any guns."
"Okay."
"The only time it's okay to touch a gun is when someone's trying to hurt you. If somebody tries to hurt you, you shoot him."
"Mmm, okay."
Zoë took her own gun out of its holster. "Most of the guns on Serenity are loaded. I'm gonna take the bullets out of this one, which makes it safe to hold right now. But right now is special. It's not gonna happen again. Feel how heavy it is? With bullets it's a little heavier. Here's the safety; you have to move it like this before you use it. Then you aim, and you pull here."
"It's cold."
"That it is, Banny. Mommy's gonna take it back now."
"Okay."
"Now remember, don't touch any of these unless someone tries to hurt you. That probably won't happen. And the best way to keep it from happening is to stay out of the way when Mommy's working, even if it doesn't seem dangerous. Dong ma?"
"Okay."
"Come on, honey. Time to go wash up for supper." Zoë left with her son in tow.
Fess looked at River. "It's hard for me to imagine growing up in a place where a child needs to be told that. But I guess kids are born everywhere. It happens where there's love, and there's love here."
River took hold of his hand and placed it against Serenity's wall. "Here the only thing that separates us from the black is cold steel. Life and death walk close together. There's a beauty in it, to see that line clearly. It's what draws us to this life. The captain likes to say that the woods are the only place he can see a clear path. Safety is an illusion."
"You're quite a poet. That's one of the things I've missed in my life. My father is not a real appreciator of beauty. And not just because he lives on a planet covered in mud. I'm sure a poet like you could find beauty anywhere."
"Zoë is beautiful when she's with Banny. Mothers make everything make sense. It's easier to put the pieces together when you have someone to explain. Even if it looks like you're too old to need it." River kissed Fess on the cheek, grinned, stole a piece of the carrot he had been cutting, and ran away.
Eventually Mal finished what he was doing and went to put away all the shiny guns.
Fess was finishing up making dinner when Inara came in. "Hello, Inara," he said.
"Hello, Fess." She nodded to him with a carefully neutral look on her face, and seeing that he was the only one there, she walked on to the opposite door.
"Wait. I'd like to talk to you."
She smiled. "I'm glad. I'd enjoy having a conversation with you."
"I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate what you did for me. Back home on Higgins Moon."
"You're very welcome. But is this going to be awkward for you? Being on Serenity with me?"
"I don't think it will. I thought it might be at first, but some things have happened since then. Would it be strange of me to say that you were more like a mother to me than anything else?"
"I think it's safe to say that while your father requested that I come for a very specific reason, that wasn't the part of the experience that was most important to you."
"That's very true. I suppose it's not in my father's nature to appreciate the company of a woman for her skill in conversation."
"Now that is a great pity."
"Yes, it is. If he did, I might have had a mother to grow up with, to teach me some of the things you did." He paused. "Did I make things difficult with you and the captain?"
"Don't worry, he's all right. …He knows it hurts me as much as him to remember how I used to live my life. So many people, and I didn't realize how lonely I was. But Serenity's always felt like home. I just had to let go and let myself feel it. Realize that it didn't make me weak that I couldn't live without someone."
They all had dinner together around the table. Although the family still missed its lost pieces, it was growing again.
At one end of the table Fess, River, Simon and Inara were talking about art or something intelligent, while at the other end Jayne, Kaylee, Mal and Zoe were busy introducing Banny to Monty, who were both amazed at the size difference involved. But then they all joined in the discussion of what had happened after Bridget had been kicked off Monty's ship, and how Inara had saved the day. Monty laughed quite hard when he heard about the naked part. Inara even blushed a little.
Everyone told Fess how good the food was, although Jayne muttered something about "anything would be better than when it's Mal's turn to cook."
Inara was annoyed. Three guesses who with.
Sometimes she wondered why she agreed to marry him. But really, looking at him, she knew.
Inara wanted Mal so much it hurt.
And Serenity was home. All these people were family. More than anyone else had ever been.
She related best to Simon in a way…they came from similar worlds, were used to certain comforts. Like knowing you weren't going to be in jail tomorrow. But then he got to talking about how happy Kaylee looks when she's elbow deep in engine parts and her face and hands are smudged with black grease.
And she thought of Mal coming back from a job where maybe everything didn't go right as planned but everyone's back home safe with enough to keep flying. And he's covered in dust and grinning and just radiating warmth.
And Inara feels this pull…
Never felt it before, not like this.
She remembers, once:
"Inara, will you stoop to bein' on my arm?"
"Will you wash it first?" she had said.
But you don't clean Mal up. Don't brush off the dust and try and make him look civilized. The dust is part of him. Part of what makes her, unaccountably, want him.
And really the dust has an honest dry cleanness to it that the city never had. Her put together glamour didn't always mean that she felt that way.
What was it the Shepherd had once told her? It's more important that the inside of the cup be clean, than the outside.
He does take life seriously….what's right. What I chose to take seriously turned out not to be as important. So stubborn…both of us. One had to bend enough to admit that they might be wrong. And I was wrong.
He was what she wanted, wanted more than anything, flaws and all. No matter how complicated that made things for both of them, she couldn't make it stop.
She sighed. "Whatever we decide, it'll be beautiful. Even if we get married in the middle of the desert. But I'd prefer at least someplace with a floor."
He said, "Dammit, woman, stop doin' that to my neck. You're makin' my head all fuzzy." But he said it softly.
She whispered in his ear, "Only fair. You do the same to me."
He raised his eyebrows and leaned away from her. "Inara, sometimes, I swear, you're worse than Saffron."
She was starting to be annoyed again. "If you keep bringing up that…that…yao jing…Mal, I'll douse you with perfume, don't think I won't."
"Inara, I'm marrying you on purpose. There is not one part of me that regrets leaving her shut up in that dumpster. No call to be jealous." Mal looked at her with his gently mocking smile that had so much warmth behind it. "It's just sometimes I get nervous about all this training of yours….same training she used, and she almost killed me and all o' mine without firing a shot."
He shook his head with mock sorrow. "And what scares me is I think it's working…all right, you win. Buddhist temple it is."
She smiled. Maybe he's bending a bit too.
Walking gently on the rough with the bare feet, walking mindfully. Part says there should be a planet underneath, but Serenity has a little soul of a mother-world. She nurtures with no dirt, warms best she can with no sun. Only her metal walls and her engines. Walk gently anyway. You learn things, through the skin….
River felt Fess watching her. She ignored him, listening to Serenity for a minute longer. Di di was sleeping. Good, healing. So is the mother. (Mother in the mother-world. She's broken up plenty, but she'll fly true…protect all the children.)
Fess was close behind her now.
"Jie you xiang si fou/Ying wu bu wu shi."
"Such a strange willow, her roots twined in deck plates. But jie you xiang si fou? I do. I love all of them." River's hand rested against the wall. "All of Serenity's children."
Fess took her hand away from the wall and held it in his. "I mean, can you leave them for a moment, and be with just me?"
River took a breath. She had to be sure….Yes. Sure, steady. Her legs were long enough to touch the ground, even from way out here in the black. She wanted this. She nodded.
He kissed her, more intensely than before. And again.
I remember feelings like this…like the ocean swaying…from the mother, Zoe. Deep ocean. Dark waves on a sandy shore. Wash, they wash, he felt them break. Constant. Forceful. Like Zoe…but this is different.
Then they were in his bunk…the getting there part was fuzzy. No shoes for her to take off, good, but his…that had to be done. Quickly. But not without interruption.
It's being River. The rushing of water is in her ears. It flows, always moves…splash your feet in it, never the same River twice. Can't follow her. –Oh –h ….but no one has swum in her before. Being carried away, and the River with it, the water, the water is the River, and him being carried away with it….
Take off your shoes or you'll drown, she laughed.
And then even her constantly shifting brain had thought ripped from it by waves of feeling.
…
They lay curled in his bunk. River's head was on his shoulder.
River put her graceful hand over Fess's heart. She looked into his eyes. "Now I own your soul."
He looked at her perfectly solemn face, and remembered her power, her strangeness. "What? Are you some kind of ghost? What have I done?"
She laughed, loudly, with mischievous joy. "Everyone always believes her when she says things like that."
Fess laughed too. "You're crazy."
"Say River is crazy – everyone does. But I know how you mean it."
They were silent for a minute.
River spoke first. "You're thinking it's different than with Inara."
"It is – completely different. That time – it wasn't exactly my choice. I am glad that it happened. It made me realize a lot of things. But this time…it was better."
River just smiled.
"Inara studied all this. It's like an art form to her, I suppose. She practices to get better at what she does. But with you, everything seemed natural, like it was just supposed to happen that way. It was amazing."
She whispered. "I feel…everything. I feel what you feel. For the first time my gift is exactly what I want. To feel everything." She laughed. "Even you feeling awkward. It makes me feel less awkward."
"You felt awkward? It didn't seem like it."
"I've never done this before."
"Oh," he said. He looked at her. "Even so, mei miao."
Author's notes:
I've been reading some fan fiction to prepare for this. A couple of things I noticed: in future fics people are more often to write Simon/Kaylee marriage and baby but I think this is actually more likely. Mal and Inara are actually quite similar and when they decide to love each other they'll do it all at once with their whole hearts. But I think Simon and Kaylee actually have more differences they'll have to work through.
Another thing is there's lots of Rayne-fics (shudder). River would not sleep with Jayne. Many of them are very well written and can even be enjoyable but it's my opinion most people can't write her properly. But being in her head can be quite disorienting. They don't always understand the difference between her out of control states where something is fundamentally wrong with her vision of the situation, and the way she acts when she is mostly there, a combination of not making an effort to be clearer and having fun with people. Her brain runs too fast, her brain runs amuck, not room to put words to all concepts produced. Like mine but hurt sharply rather than muffled. Perhaps I see different things, she sees more things and can only register some? Fragmented in any case.
I'm not that similar to River in terms of personality without the mental symptoms. I'm like what would happen if the government experimented on Kaylee. A fractured round-elfin-world with yellow walls. I am very high-function autistic and don't get things sometimes and I say cryptic things and sometimes hug people randomly. Like food. More comfortable around machines to some extent. To get River's rebuilding of self rather than my own into this story I had to try to pick up the differences between her true personality and mine, but hers is hard to find. I did find the R. Tam sessions during my research so that gave me one solid clip. She's also more sharply mischievous than me. I don't tell people things are poison. I scare them by dyeing my hair fire engine red.
I can't, and wouldn't want to, be in Jayne's head (as Inara commented, few like the idea) and I accept that I don't understand him and my portrayal may be a bit off. But I tried to understand him better and the result is the newest scene with Kaylee. I'm still missing stuff though. Let me know how I'm doing.
One of my major motivations in writing this is it seemed to me that Zoe and Wash's baby ought to exist. People have written of many ways to deal with her loneliness but this made the most sense to me.
In this newest cleaned up version I have changed the kid's name to Hoban Jr., as so many people have named him. Let me know if you find a stray Benjamin - I might have left one or two accidentally.