Zoe focused on the altar in their--her--bunk. The smoke from the incense in front of Wash's picture curled up in tight gray spirals. Her gaze was hot, tearless. She burned. She felt that the skin on her hands, pressed, fisted, to her thighs, was too taut. She felt as though she would split, down the back, emerge something bloody, dark, held together by only its own willpower. She wanted blood. Wash's face smiled at her, blank from behind the glass. If he'd been alive she'd have killed him. Everyone treated her as though she were behind the glass, she thought. Normally she was above such thoughts... Normal, she thought with a tight, aching bitterness. Nothing was normal. She wanted blood--she wanted her own...Her eyes burned, her fists tightened. The rage grew. She had to hurt, had to kill...had to...it was something, it grew like a cloud over her until she split, split a thousand times, but the tears did not come, nothing came, and she waited... she was waiting... she wanted it... she wanted something to take her, something to hurt her, something she could hurt...

Inara raised her head from her hands. Mal was gone; it was, Inara realized vaguely, better that way-- She was alone, and that, too, was better. The fights. They made sex hotter, she realized with the same external part of her brain that had acknowledged the necessity of his leaving. He had taken his crew (his family, she thought, and jealousy left a slight undertaste in her mouth) to dinner; she loved his generosity. He was a mystery; she loved his mystery. She loved his touch. Her body acknowledged this; she shoved the acknowledgment away almost forcibly. She stood, her arms skimming the peach silk of her dress. Her eyes half-closed--something in the touch of skin against fabric--touched her... She shook her head, her curls brushing the nape of her neck in a disturbing fashion. Maybe a cup of tea would calm her...nerves. Or she could raid Jayne's bunk for some jiu. Anything to make her system forget Mal. It couldn't be serious. It was anything but serious, she thought, opening the door of her shuttle. Seriously, she thought, trying to infuse her inner soliloquy with a bit of humor. It fell flat. She felt like an idiot. She should have gone with Mal to dinner...

Zoe's bunk door was open. Inara suspected that Zoe assumed everyone had left. She bit her lip slightly, self forgotten in pity. Zoe could probably use Jayne's liquor more than she could, Inara thought, and bypassed the door to Zoe's bunk. The hatch to Jayne's bunk was open. She climbed down the ladder into his home-away-from-home, and was just lifting the curtain over the wall to reveal his artful conglomerate of weapons and pinups in search for something alcoholic whe she heard steps in the hall. She looked up. Zoe was walking by. Inara could see only shadows: a flash of boots, a sway of hips... She wanted something for herself, suddenly. It was a defense, a reaction deep in her gut. She ignored it but hard. Jayne's liquor--a near-full bottle of a surprisingly good scotch--sat under the gun called Vera. Inara took it. It was cool and neat in her hand. "Zoe?" she called gently. The pacing stopped. Zoe was out of sight, but still in the hall; after a moment her voice relayed back to Inara, quiet, infinite in its calm. "Inara?" "I'm in Jayne's bunk." Zoe's head appeared at the door hatch. She had on a cool smile. "Why?" she asked. Inara held up the bottle silently, a quiet look of acceptance on her face. The look was one of the 12 Masks of Rest; Inara had internalized them so far that to put on the expression hardly even felt like a show. She never bothered, usually, to think about the dichotomies between show and reality--hence the distinction bothered her. Zoe felt her face smile slightly. With the clunk of travel boots, she climbed down into Jayne's bunk. "Thanks," she said, quiet, and took a swig of scotch, seating herself on Jayne's bunk. The moment--and it had always been like this, Zoe realized, feeling the scotch take her system like a warm ocean current takes the bathing body--she came into contact with anyone else, her own feelings drew into herself, as though emotions were like the fronds of anemones, waiting for any excuse to curl into tight, glutinous stumps. She handed the bottle back to Inara, attempting to read her face. The taut lips were gentle, the eyes soft and wise. "You didn't go to dinner?" she asked. "You?" Zoe said. Inara's face expressed a social wryness. She took a swig of Jayne's scotch and sat down next to Zoe, soft, compliant, and yet playing a part, Zoe realized, and the harshness stirred within her at the realization. "Pretty stupid," Inara acknowledged. "Of me, at least. How are you?" Zoe smiled, taking a drink. Her usual response came naturally to her lips: "It will pass," she said, sounding, she knew, wise beyond her years, her life, her experience, even. The wisdom was in fact entirely made up. Why do I bother, she thought, when these people care so much for me? Why do I hide? Why can't I just let it go? Inara was studying her. Doubtless she found more in Zoe's face than Zoe had found in her's... Zoe drank more. "Will it?" Inara asked softly. She took the scotch from Zoe's offering hand. "Zoe," she said quietly, "there's a ritual..." Zoe looked harder at her. The chocolate brown eyes were melted, slightly. There was force in Inara's pity, Zoe realized, a force of fright, and understanding. Zoe hated it. "For what?" Zoe asked. "To heal," Inara said quietly. "Through the body. It is a symbol, much like the tea ceremony--" "A symbol?" Zoe asked, lip curling. She was cruel, suddenly; her head pounded. It was wrong, Zoe knew. It was wrong. "Of loss," Inara explained, mouth tightening slightly, sympathetically. "Of...healing. I..." Zoe had, she herself realized, lost control. It was a subtle process, one she was not accustomed to. "You are, what, the instrument?" Inara bowed her head in acceptance. "Take what you will from me. The offer is an open one." Something rose in Zoe's throat. It was greedy and desperate. It was horny, also. Zoe was past thought. If she was to survive this pain she needed...something, she thought, and almost laughed. A symbol? A metaphor? Inara's body, curving in peach silk? She chuckled, a low and savage sound. Inara's Companion chin was smooth in her hand. Zoe brushed the skin in rough circles, holding Inara's jaw steady, compelling her gaze with Zoe's own. "And what is it for you, 'Nara?" she asked, theatrical, she knew, and didn't care. "Escape?" "Escape," Inara agreed, trained enough to know how to look past the bullshit of most everyday interaction. Her eyes were solemn, sweet, giving--Zoe delved further. There was a spark in them, of defiance, fear, hurt... Zoe saw... Zoe kissed the neck. She brought her hand down to where it could force the jaw up, the skin pulsing smooth beneath her touch. Inara's breath stirred the curls at Zoe's ear slightly. The skin was firm, soft--Zoe bit harder. Inara whimpered, as though she did not mean to. This touch of abandon was enough for Zoe. She bit the earlobe. The skin under her lips was warm, and soft as a summer evening--breasts pressed against her own. Her hands pressed a waist, the sides of a ribcage--the peach silk, so inviting to the uninvolved eye, became soft and lingering torture. Zoe stripped Inara of it. Each stitch in its seam popped like skin, like the tearing of a throat, like a small death, away from this Zoe Zoe knew and lived within, down into another darkness, hot and wet... Her breasts were soft. Zoe did not know what they looked like. She barely heard Inara's soft cries, lost as she was in Inara's mouth, the contours of her eyelids, the smell of her hair, the arch of her neck and the hard perfection of her nipples, all new to this new Zoe, and yet so old, so perfect...She mapped a new reality onto this soft golden pelt, this new-world expanse of seamless skin, this dark world fed by pain, yet floating uneasy and free atop its red and its black. Inara's waist, the smooth soft abdominal muscles, the sweetness of wet dark hair between her thighs, so right, so perfect, uncharted, unmastered... Zoe put mouth and teeth to Inara's cunt. It was eating sea-fruit, she thought, voracious, almost everything but sensation gone. Salt and the taste of sweet fruit. Sweet and plump and tight...wet and hot... and her hands on Inara's thighs, the smooth live skin of her inner thighs, the curve of her butt, waiting for anchoring hands, the pelvic bones, delicate and concave...everything lost in a chorus of sea-sounds from out Inara's mouth, of sea-tastes, of sweetness and darkness... Zoe's fingers found their way into Inara. It was an act of posession. Inara's cries were indecent. That was proper, Zoe thought, or barely thought, fucking, lost in a rhythm as of waves. And Inara bent so sweetly, her voracious cunt sucking and begging, thick wet and hot. Loud sounds cries as of the wind over waves. Legs clutched legs. A melding of lips, tongues reaching further and further, purely salt and sweet and sweat... Zoe buried her face in Inara's hair. She was not yet back to being Zoe. She was lost in a place with air, and the sound of waves. Inara was crying; Zoe held her, gentle now. Her hair smelled of flowers.

Inara cried, lost. What would Mal say? what could he do? Where had her love gone--where had this ritual taken her-- She pressed into Zoe's arms, afraid of what the next minute might unfold to her, and thought vainly, it's a ritual, only, a ritual, as of loss...it's a ritual...