Disclaimer: See chapter one.

A/N: Happy reading.

Brompton Cocktail

Chapter Four

"…you're huntin' slime, ya gotta be able ta go where they's at. 'S why I do what I do. Tried just bein'…" Jayne trailed off, once again searching for the right words, then made a vague motion with his hands. "Well. Ya know what I'm tryin' ta get at, I'm sure."

Zoë wasn't completely sure what Jayne had tried to be at first, but could imagine it nonetheless; a young kid trying hard to find the men who'd destroyed his life. The merc's tale had left her with an odd feeling. She still felt scooped hollow, worse than at any time during the war, but… It was still just as intense, just as paralyzing, but there was this gossamer-thin veneer to it now. Might have just been knowing Jayne's words from earlier were truth – she wasn't the only one to ever lose someone. If anyone had asked her before what had happened at Mr. Universe's, she would have angrily asserted that she'd known loss before. Loss of her father, though he'd run off with a skinny bit of pretty when she'd been a kid, and last she knew was still alive out there somewhere. Loss of her mother because the Alliance hadn't seen fit to make sure there were adequate medicines available on the rim. Loss of fellow soldiers during the war. None of that had prepared her for losing Wash, though. And none of it could compare to what Jayne had been through. It's no wonder he stayed out of the war. He was already fighting one.

Jayne suddenly stood, startling Zoë out of her thoughts. He strode over to where she sat at his desk and rummaged in the lowermost drawer for a moment, then came up with a battered capture film. Before the drawer got slammed shut, Zoë caught sight of a faded yellow page of the drawing paper she vaguely recalled from her own childhood, covered in crayon scribbles. She dragged her attention to the plastic sheet Jayne held. It was an old model, the only parts that were transparent were the bits that didn't have anything printed on it. Three of the four corners were jagged and worn away. The fourth was folded flat and mostly torn off. A crease neatly bisected the sheet, separating the two opaque rectangles on either side.

Jayne's eyes seemed to be staring through whatever was printed on the film. Zoë barely breathed, wondering what he was seeing in his mind, and noting that his expression bore almost no resemblance to the man she'd seen every day since meeting him. No humor of any sort, be it ghastly, grim, dirty, or otherwise wholly inappropriate, sparked across its surface. He could be carved of granite, for all he's showing right now. A memory of her own whipped through her mind: They'd just finished the job on Lilac, the one where the reavers had shown up. She'd been standing on the catwalk over the cargo bay, watching Jayne and Kaylee as they cleaned up the mess. Kaylee was only a little more subdued than her typical cheerful self, and had said, 'Shepherd Book said they was men that reached the edge of space, saw a vasty nothingness and just went bibbledy over it.' Jayne had replied in his typical way, 'Hell, I been to the edge. Just looked like more space.'

If that really is true, Zoë shifted a little, the thought as uncomfortable as wet leather britches. Might be it just looked like space because that 'vasty nothingness' was what was looking out, not being looked at.

Her slight shifting in her seat made Jayne's eyes dart her direction. What Zoë saw in them gave credence to her thoughts. They were flat, dark, like a doll's eyes, but deep back there was this low-burning rage, held in check by force of will alone. Wordlessly, Jayne handed her the battered capture, then slid back to his previous position, sitting on his bunk.

Zoë turned the battered sheet of plastic around and looked at it. It consisted of a pair of still photos. The one on the right showed a family of six. The man was exceedingly tall, blonde, and built like Jayne, with a similar cast to his features. The woman was also tall, but slender, with black hair and the same piercing blue eyes as her eldest son. The four kids in the photo ranged in age from about seven to seventeen. All three boys were tall for their ages, but she had to peer closely at the oldest – he bore little resemblance to the mercenary she knew, consisting of floppy, shaggy dark hair, and knees'n'elbows. The only one of the children that shared their father's fair coloring was the little girl.

The photo on the left was obviously taken later. The lanky kid had grown up a few years, layered on a few pounds of muscle that took away the gawky look of a half-grown colt, though he still sported the same shaggy hair and was nowhere near as bulky as he'd eventually become. Sitting on his shoulders was a chubby little boy wearing bib overalls and teeny boots, fists clenching tufts of his daddy's hair. Tucked up against her husband's side was a stunningly beautiful woman in a yellow sundress with hair like crow feathers and laughing almond-shaped eyes. She almost looked like a child standing next to the Jayne in the photo, were it not for her obviously-pregnant state. Zoë's fingertips traced the bulge and wished that the 'let's have a baby' argument was one she'd not managed to lose.

"Did you get them?" she asked, her voice quiet, but packed with the emotion Jayne had eschewed in the telling of his tale.

"Of the six what came after me an' mine, three been counted. First was the one I managed ta shoot that day. Second wound up gettin' his durin' the war." A faint echo of satisfaction trickled into Jayne's voice.

"And the third?" Zoë asked.

A feral grin split Jayne's face. "He got his. Three times over, he got what was comin' to him."

"Do I want to know?"

"Ask Kaylee or Mal or even the doc, if he remembers it." Jayne's grin muted a little into something tinged with nostalgia. Noticing the confusion on Zoë's face – the expression actually fully there, not repressed or hidden, for the first time since Wash died – Jayne felt some small shred of relief that the hell he'd just put himself through, reliving the worst day of his life, actually did manage to help in some way. He clarified, "Remember Higgins' Moon?"

Zoë wasn't like to forget that particular job. Even with everything she'd learned about the merc, the weirdest thing ever was how that little community of indentures thought of him as their hero. She nodded.

"Anyone ever tell you what really happened?"

"Only that the money they wound up with was done by accident."

Jayne cocked his head to the side for a moment, then nodded decisively. "That tracks. Ain't the whole story, though. I'd found out one o' Stitch's crew'd been there that day. Got m'self hired on. Found their crew was just Stitch an' Jarkey. Knew the man I wanted had ta be one of them, but I didn't know which. So I kept my ears open, talked a lot 'bout other jobs I been on, got them ta do likewise. Six months I kept at 'em an' nothin'. Not 'til we robbed the magistrate. Jarkey was off, mindin' our ship. Me an' Stitch got in, grabbed the cash, an' got out, real clean-like. So's we thought. Didn't know Higgins had a silent alarm. Our plane got hit by an anti-air blast. We was goin' down, fast. Tossed ev'ry damn thing we could. Stitch runnin' off at the mouth the whole damn while, dunno what-all about. We was about thirty seconds from crashin' an' then he says, 'This ain't so bad, though – had a harder time liftin' from Silverhold. Managed ta take out that gorram marshal's fambly, but had a helluva time gettin' off-world. Had to drop the life-support, but we did it.' He was sayin' all this while unboltin' our own life-support. I'd just about been ready to toss the take when he said that. I changed m'mind and tossed him instead. O' course, didn't much matter. Plane was still too heavy, so's I wound up tossin' the money anyways. Plane still wasn't light enough, so's I wound up jumpin', too, an' walkin' the last few miles back to Jarkey. Thought that was the end o' Stitch. Then we wound up back on Higgins' an' I find out he was still alive. Spent four years in a hot-box for the heist, though."

That would make two. Being tossed from the plane and left for dead is one, the box is two. Didn't Mal mention Jayne beat the guy to death? Zoë was certain someone else would be disturbed by the cold manic glee on the merc's face as he told the story, but knowing the history behind Jayne's actions… Zoë just smiled a little.

"Four years weren't long enough, not by a long shot, but it had ta be enough. We was leavin' an' somehow I don't think the cap'n woulda wanted that hundan aboard, pa'ticularly not with what I had planned. Think Kaylee woulda wanted ta help some, just for how Stitch'd beat up the doc, an' that weren't gonna be kosherfied neither. Pro'ly best I did for 'im right there."

"What about the last three?"

Jayne shook his head. "Words an' whispers here an' there. Nothin' solid yet. Heard-tell one's doin' time in the 'Liance prison on Jiangyin."

One of Zoë's eyebrows crept up a little higher than the other. "So that's why you push harder for off-time on Jiangyin than just about anywhere else." She smirked. "I'd just figured it was a favorite brothel that had your attention."

Jayne gave Zoë a faint reflection of her smirk. "'S what you're s'posed ta think."

"So all the time you go on and on about not getting any trim's just a cover?"

Jayne shook his head. "Nope. Not 'tall. A body's got needs. Don't see to 'em, like ta be a weapon what ain't been cleaned in a while an' jam up when it's really needed."

Zoë's smirk faded. That makes a surprising amount of sense. Explains why he doesn't turn down food, and why he spends so much of his free time using those weights down in the cargo bay. I've seen how he cares for his guns, for his knives. Would make sense he takes care of himself in the same manner.

Any further conversation was halted by an announcement over the loudspeaker. "Would my first mate and the hired gun kindly join us for supper? Ain't gonna hold off no more an' I dunno about the others, but I don't plan ta save none if y'all don't show."

A/N2: When I originally had the idea for this fic, I'd wanted River to be the one who gets Jayne to talk about his past. However, that just didn't work – Jayne has too powerful an aversion to her reading ability for it to work well. Zoë winding up in this role is what surprised me.

Anyway, remember to let me know your thoughts and opinions. Thanks.

Edit 01/17/2013: Spotted a sentence with a forgotten word. Corrected it to read properly.