"and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder and begrimed with the loading of guns"
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
--------

before

They're a week out of Canton when Mal announces they'll be setting down on a small moon for resupplying soon. He makes it clear that they're only going to be in the world long enough for him and Kaylee to go into town. It sounds good to Jayne – he's been feeling itchy and restless ever since... Well, for about a week now.

The night before they land, at dinner, he starts to ask Mal if he can tag along but can't get the words past his throat. He don't really want to go into town, anyways. It's a dry moon, not a bar or tavern on the whole gorram rock, and he can't even work up the energy to get excited at the prospect of getting some trim.

– rough skin and hands messy hair breath on his neck m'hero she slurs –

That makes him feel even more itchy, like his skin don't fit right anymore, so he just keeps shovelling protein mash in his mouth while everybody else talks about what they need from the stores. The doctor passes a list to the captain with a bunch of them medicinal names on it and Mal tells him that that sort of thing is pretty scarce round these parts. Wash and Kaylee have their heads bent together, talking about a bunch of parts they want, all with big names like protoaccelerator and transmogrifier or whatever. It don't make no sense to Jayne but it sounds awful gāo jià. Book, Inara and Zoe all throw out a few things they want – mostly foodstuffs. That moonbrain just sits there grinning at everybody after she tells 'em she wants a "ledger for the reckoning", whatever the hell that means, and colorin' pencils.

Jayne finishes eating before anybody else and stomps over to dump his plate on the counter. It's his turn to clear up the mess but he ain't gonna wait for them all to finish. Being around all them people is making him start to feel crowded.

Mal catches his eye as he passes by the table again and lifts an eyebrow. Jayne just grunts something back at him. He's not sure what he said and he don't much care either, but it must've been all right 'cause Mal just nods and turns back to arguing with the doc.

Jayne can feel all their eyes on him as he goes into the hallway, eyes pressing down on the back of his neck. He starts walking faster and ducks down the first ladder he comes to. He was gonna go to his bunk, maybe write a letter to his ma or something, but right now he just wants to get away from them eyes. As far away as he can in this ruttin' guàn tou anyways.

– big eyes under a mess of blonde hair big wide trusting staring –

He wanders around the ship a while – making sure cabinets are closed and locked, that the straps holding down the mule are tight enough, that everything's as it should be exceptin' for that gou shi they got in Canton, he ain't going near that stuff unless he has to – until the voices start getting louder and closer. He waits down by the Infirmary until he hears a couple of bunk-hatches open and close and figures that everybody's finally done eating, so he heads up to the galley to finish his chores. He passes Book on the way there and the preacher looks like he's gearing up to say something but Jayne just keeps walking.

The lights are off in the galley so he walks through the dim room until he's close enough to the counter to flip on the lights there. He knows they're low on fuel cells and he doesn't see the sense in lighting up the whole room when he's only gotta clean up the kitchen. He scrapes leftovers into a dish, then covers it tight and puts it in the icebox. Somebody's already stacked up the empty plates, so he pitches them in the disposer along with all the wrappers Kaylee left spread out all over the counter. He gathers up the knives and forks in a loose fist and rattles them around. The tinkling sound reminds him of home, suddenly, Pa playing spoons on the porch on one of the rare nights he wasn't drinking half his pay down at the bar.

– stood up to the Man and he gave him what for –

Jayne shakes his head to clear out the memories that are crowding in all sudden-like. He never was much for mooning over the past. What's done is done and there ain't nothing nobody can do about it, just like his momma used to say. He finishes wiping down the counter and hangs the wet rag on the little rack by the sink, flips the light off and makes his way through the dark room once more.

Lifting weights 'til he can't hardly keep his eyes open seems like a right smart idea. Push up the bar and push back the voices all them eyes that gorram statue yuben de kids bleeding into the mud eyes staring up up up...

He never dreams no more. Or maybe he does but he don't remember 'em but that's thinking kinda stuff and Jayne Cobb don't do that.

He can't do that.

--

Jayne's sitting cross-legged on a small patch of scrubby grass just underneath Serenity's port ion jet, some of his girls spread out on a cloth in front of him, when he hears something behind him. It's soft, quiet-like, but it don't sound threatening, so he ignores it. Probably just some little critter looking for lunch. He picks up the Buhnder – he ain't got around to naming this one yet, seeing's as he liberated it from that hún dàn back on New Canaan right before they made the pickup on Higgins' moon and he's been a mite bit distractible since then.

Checking over the gun carefully, he looks for anything he might've missed when he stowed it in his locker. Some folk just don't take care of their weapons like they ought. He notes a few small scratches along the barrel, a missing screw in the grip and a hell of a lot of gou shi clogging up the barrel. He only brought out the small cleaning kit and she's gonna need a lot more time than he thought, so he sets her back down with the others. Plus, there's something that just don't sit right with him about breaking her down before he knows what to call her.

He doesn't pick up another weapon right away. Instead, he skims his hands over their hard bellies, stroking along barrels and sights like he's gonna learn 'em all by touch. They feel cool under his fingertips, but they'll warm up soon enough – the light on this moon is bright and hot on account of the two suns shining down. There's a cool breeze that snakes under the ship's belly, ruffling his pant legs a little and flapping up one edge of the cloth on the ground.

He slides one of the rifles – Myra – off to the side to hold the cloth down and sits back. None of his girls really needs cleaning, anyways, 'sides the Buhnder. He takes good care of 'em. Too much polishing – that's about all they need – and he'll wear out the finish, have to find a good smith to reblue 'em. Money's starting to get awful tight lately and he don't much like the idea of not having everything to hand when he needs it. Ever since they picked up the doc and his sāng xīn bìng kuáng of a sister, they've run into more trouble than they'd normally see in a month of Sundays.

Not that he minds that sort of thing, he thinks with a ghost of grin. Nothing like a good fight to take the edge off. It's been a while, too, since the last one. Jayne doesn't count what happened in Canton; that was just anger or some such boiling over and it left a bone-deep weariness that he can't seem to shake. He feels off-balance deep-down, like some of his innards shifted position. He's never been much for sitting around with the rest of the crew, but lately he can barely even stand to sit at the same table with 'em for meals. So here he is, sitting out on the grass, waiting for the captain and Kaylee to come back from town like some ruttin' kid waiting for his folks to tell him what to do next.

Everybody's been giving him these long, weird looks outta the corners of their eyes when they think he don't see 'em – well, everybody except the moonbrain. She just straight-up stares at him whenever they're within 50 paces of each other. Hell, sometimes he thinks he can feel her eyes on him when they're on opposite sides of the ship with all them bulkheads between 'em. It's gorram creepifying, he ain't ashamed to say. When that little girl locks them big eyes on him, it feels like she's crawling around inside his skin.

The rest of 'em are just as bad as her with the staring, even if they at least try to hide it a little. None of 'em got the sense God gave a goat when it comes to letting things alone. He said his piece to Mal when they got back to the boat after Canton and that's that. They ain't really tried talking to him about what happened but he knows they're talking about it when he's not around. If they ain't, then maybe there's something he should be worried about 'cause conversing comes to a halt whenever he walks into a room. And all them looks seem to slide into something else when they've got his attention. Preacher keeps offering to talk with him. Zoë just sits and watches him, but her hand's never been farther from her gun than it has been the past week.

Kaylee's the worst of the lot. Her face goes all soft when she thinks he ain't looking, like somebody just tore the legs off her favorite wobbly-headed doll. She keeps finding reasons to corner him and touch him and stuff. Nothing like what Jayne might want from a girl as cute as her, just pats on his arm like he's the family pet. Not that he wants that other kinda touching from Kaylee, really. When he first got on Serenity, sure, he entertained a thought or two about tussling with the girl. Awful hard not to notice all them curves and that sweet face underneath all that grease. Be damn near impossible to keep her body out of his head on them nights when the black starts to creep in around the edges – not that he'd ever admit to such a thing. Most of the time he thinks of her like a little sister. Hell, even when he does start thinking about putting his hands on her, parts of him is disgusted by it. She's all sweetness and ruffles and pretties – too gentle and soft for hands and ways as rough and dirty as his.

Jayne waves off a fly who's fixing to land on the barrel of his favorite piece. She's a genuine Wéi Le Mat revolver and the oldest of his girls. She belonged to his grammy years before he was born and was just about the only thing he took with him when he left that cháo shī piece of rock. That gun – Lenore, he calls her, after his grammy – has got him out of more than a few tight spots and he don't go hardly anywhere without her strapped to his thigh.

He picks up Lenore and her weathered grip slides into the crease in his palm like she was made to be there. She's worn a place in his hand that always seems to fight his other guns a little bit, like maybe she's jealous of 'em or something. He squints up one eye and checks the sight, then turns the gun from side to side to check for any new scratches or dings. There's a bit of grass clinging to the barrel and he blows it off, then licks his thumb so he can rub off the little bit of dust that's left behind. The tang of gun oil floats on his tongue.

Satisfied with how she looks, he stretches out his legs and settles on his back, Lenore cradled on his chest. He stares up at the bulk of the ion-jet and the bright blue sky beyond. Some clouds drift by and a fuzzy memory floats around the back of his mind – him and Matty watching the shapes tumble across the sky. He suddenly remembers that he hasn't heard from his ma in a while and sends up a half-forgotten prayer that they're all doing okay.

The soft, cool breeze whispers over his body and around his head and his eyes start getting all droopy. He fights it for a while, wants to stay alert, make sure nothing's creeping up on 'em even on this bù máo moon. He tightens his grip on Lenore and puts his thumb right on her safety in case of something does happen even though Zoë's probably no more than two dozen paces away he looks up to the sky again his eyes are drifting closed the weariness is spreading out from his bones...

He tumbles into sleep.

tbc...

Translations:
gāo jià - expensive
guàn tou - tin can
gou shi - crap
yuben de - stupid
hún dàn - bastard
sāng xīn bìng kuáng - lunatic
cháo shī - damp
bù máo - barren