In Sunshine and in Shadow Part 2
"Dros fy nghrogi!" yelled Owain. "Sides, it won't be mine, it'll be your'n."
Owain Thomas was giving some kind of pep talk to his two remaining and extremely sullen gun hands.
Mal stood back and let his friend bring his men to order. It was kind of comforting to watch another man be argued at by his crew. The bar had cleared out after the fight, only the serious drinkers lurked in the corners.
Jayne appeared at his elbow, one of his fly buttons undone, his girl still hanging off his shoulder, a bottle hanging loosely from her hand.
"Did I miss a tussle? There's a whole lotta blood out front."
Mal took a look at the girl, her hair was a mess, her buttons were done up wrong and part of her skirt seemed to be tucked in her underwear. She had the misty look of the well plastered or the well…something else.
"Yep you missed it."
"Gorram it!" Jayne let go of his girl sharply, she slumped to the floor giggling inanely. "A fight could'a just finished the day off right. You could'a called me!"
"It was over an' done too quick, 'sides looks like you were busy…" Mal paused and frowned down at the helpless bundle on the floor, "Am I gonna have some angry father chasing us with a gun?"
Jayne looked down at the girl who was making some spirited but ineffective efforts to get up. She wasn't giggling anymore, in fact she was starting to look quite green.
"Ain't gonna happen, she's a biǎo zi, didn't gorram tell me 'till I got her outside, I could've saved a whole lot of coin on drinks."
Mal sighed, bent down and hauled the girl up by her armpits. She hung like meat on a hook. "Hey Barkeep, where can this one sleep it off?"
The bar owner displayed a weary lack of surprise.
"Has your fella done right and paid her proper?" Mal looked at Jayne.
"Sure I have," growled Jayne, offended, "she's gotta purse round her waist, damn thing got in the way."
The Barkeep came round and took the dead weight out of Mal's arms. "She's got a room here. I'll put her to bed, leave her a bucket, same as I do most nights."
Mal watched them go with his face all bleak, some things just got him down.
Jayne not being one to worry about the rights and wrongs of life as long as his itches where being scratched watched Owain. Both Bravo's where still mightily pissed off but the yelling had stopped and Jayne regretfully concluded that there would be no more fights today.
Mal tapped Owain on the shoulder, "Can I talk to you for a minute."
"Sure ffrind, what time do we eat?"
"There's the thing, that girl your men are so all fired up about is now a passenger on my ship as far as Whitefall. Question is can I stay here long enough for us to have dinner, or will there be the law or your fella's trying to storm my boat?"
"The heddlu, such as it is an' that ain't much, won't be interested. No right minded person's gonna complain. I'll see to that, same as I'll see to it that you get no personal trouble…. Did you say Whitefall?"
"That's where she wants to go and she's got the coin."
"Whitefall's where we're headed, got a job lined up." Owain snorted, "Y ffasiwn beth! Black's smaller than ya think… Tell the girl to watch her back and keep her head down, Whitefall's gonna get more than interesting pretty soon. I'll tell y'all about it at dinner, eight o'clock ok?"
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Some time earlier Mal had asked his new passenger her name.
"Alana Baedillion- Maguire."
Mal's eyebrows flew up, "Well that sure is some kinda mouthful."
"There's some that call me Alabama, but all in all I gotta preference for Al."
"Alabama? What's an Alabama?" Mal looked at Zoe all puzzled, Zoe just shrugged.
"It was a state in the United States of America, Earth that was." Mal and Zoe continued to look blank, Al sighed, "First three letters of Alana, first two letters of Baedillion, first two letters of Maguire. It was Johnny Diamond's idea of a joke."
Zoe's face showed she twigged, Mal got there after moving his lips fast. He shook his head. "Al it is then."
Al was now aboard Serenity, she'd walked back with Zoë stopping on the way to pick up her pack and do some shopping at the post office and general store. After eight months she was going home, she knew what her fare would be and how much coin that left her. For eight months she had spent barely enough to keep her alive, she had used her savings and sold almost everything that she had of value to catch the men that murdered Johnny Diamond.
She threw off the subdued hard wearing clothes that had carried her across a lot of planets and moons, rammed them in the garbage chute and slapped the evac. button. She felt giddy and kind of grey.
Next stop was the showers and the heady pleasure of washing in soap that didn't smell totally of rendered animal fat, of having actual shampoo in her hair.
She'd brought some new 'sensible' clothing in the General Store, but sensible was not what she was after tonight.
Right in the bottom of her pack was the only other set of clothes she had brought with her on her journey. It was what Johnny Diamond had called her party dress, brought for her on her eighteenth birthday with a whole month of his winnings. If she had had to she would have sold it, but she was glad she had this thing left, it spoke to her of better times when the ugly hat lying on her bunk sat on top of a decent and honourable man.
It was actually a little on the loose side, but not too bad. High to the throat with lots of tiny buttons down the back and a skirt that went right down to her ankles. Unlike many 'Chinese' dresses this had no embroidery, Johhny had spent the money on real high quality plain jade green silk and good classic tailoring plus a killer pair of matching green silk shoes. It was a damn fine dress.
"Ai-yah. Tyen-ah, zhou ma kou!" It was a damn fine dress with lots of tiny buttons at the back that she couldn't reach. She kicked the wall hard. "Ai you tong!"
There was a muffled knocking noise from her hatch door.
"Can I help you with anything?" It was a female voice, soft and warm, even through the door. Not one that Al could identify. She didn't answer, just yanked the hatch open and looked straight into the most beautiful face she had ever seen. Suddenly all her efforts to make herself fine seemed such a waste of time.
Kaylee was disposed to like the new passenger. Zoe had come into the galley where she and Simon where sharing a cup of coffee, (that being the least athletic and dirty of their activities that afternoon) and dumped a bag on the table.
"New passenger brought them. Old friend of the Captain's coming to dinner, fella by the name of Owain Thomas. Think you can do some Kaylee magic?"
Kaylee opened up the sack and cooed with joy. Dried meat, some dried and some fresh vegetables, herbs and spices and dumpling mix could be seen at the top. She dug down some more and found…
"A melon, Simon we got a melon! Oranges, apples too! I love our new passenger!"
Kaylee's workboots clattered on the deck as she ran to her bunk in search of her grandmother's cookbook.
"Who is our new passenger?" Simon asked Zoë bemused.
"Ain't rightly decided Doc, could be a stone cold killer, could be something entirely different. Spect' we'll be findin' out before long."
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
She was in a pretty room, in a pretty house on the less than pretty moon of Whitefall.
She remembered Patience walking her into this room for the first time, so proud at what she had achieved. It was an oasis of gentility.
Patience had showed her every hanging, every fitted cupboard, every piece of carving, every little part of the room with pride. Happy to have done something nice for her daughter in law. She remembers Patience talking in that gruff matter of fact way of hers.
"Marie, I din't have a notion what to do for ya'. So I got a spiffy decorator to design it and some fella's from town to set it up. I reckon it's as good a room as you'll see on any core world." Patience looked Marie straight in the face her hands on her hips. "I ain't one to say it much but I gotta a world of value for ya', this room's about the best I can do."
Marie had loved it, because she had loved Patience.
The room hadn't changed as such.
Marie sat in her pretty room with two black eyes, a broken finger and a cracked rib. He was kind enough to bring the Doctor to her. The Doctor had given her some ointment for the bruises, splinted the finger and suggested that she rest to allow the cracked rib to heal. The Doctor, a woman she had known all her life and had thought was her friend was silently sympathetic but scared out of her mind.
So here she sat, a woman that had once looked good for her age. Here she was in her pretty room with the blue hangings, looking with longing at the gaps on her wall where her guns used to be.
Her hair was still neat and pretty, blonde and soft. She was still clean and well dressed because her pride wouldn't let her be anything else.
At first she had remained upright and breathing because he had taken her guns away and placed a constant watch on her. She was upright and breathing now because her belly was five months full of baby and not any hell she went through was more important than that.
He saw her pregnancy as a lever, another way to keep her subdued. However he didn't care about the child so badly that he wouldn't beat her to get what he wanted right now, he just avoided her stomach, as a rule.
And now he was back, talking to her from the shadows of the room, talking to her using lines that could've come out of some trashy melodrama. She would have, could have laughed at the clichés four, maybe five months ago but now she was alone and sick; sick to her stomach with fear at the sight and sound of him.
"It's best that you answer me honestly. Your first husband and your mother in law are gone. You must look to the future and shed the shackles of the past. Tell me…" He walked into the light and looked down at her with the cold fire in his eyes. "Where can I find your son?"
She knew she was shaking, every muscle in her body screamed in agony from trying to stop, from keeping upright when she wanted to curl into a ball, from keeping her food down when it was pressing at her throat.
She looked him in the eye, she'd be damned if she didn't.
"I don't know."
He hit her again.
Welsh Translations
Dros fy nghrogi-Over my dead body
Heddlu-Police
Y ffasiwn beth!-Such a thing!
Chinese Translations (to the best of my knowledge)
Ai-yah. Tyen-ah – Merciless Hells
zhou ma -Damn
kou-Button
biao zi-Whore, Prostitute