Warning for mincingbeast: there is reference to Jayne's body hair. Sorry mate.

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If it was meant as a way of showing the prisoners where they stood, it didn’t matter: Yan and his men ran hollering towards the cow dip tank that had been prepared for them as a bath, stripped off their clothes, dropped them on the edge, and jumped in. Affected by their high spirits, Jayne, Mal and the other overseers followed suit. The prospect of a way off of Highgate reminded them at just the right time – when the meaning of it was starting to erode – that they were a body of soldiers, and for the moment the desire among some of them to return to the Core was subsumed in the camaraderie inspired by a good plan.

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Lucy, hearing about the bath and knowing that Jayne would be in it, spied an opportunity. On the pretext of exchanging the men’s dirty clothing for clean blankets, she made her way to the dip tank in the cart she owned with her brother.

She dropped a blanket next to each pile of clothes, keeping an eye on Jayne’s dark head, waiting to see what his reaction would be when he turned around and caught sight of her. She had found her normal routine disturbed by burning recollections of their last encounter and a powerful longing for another that left her heavy and longing to be taken. She wasn’t disappointed: turning, Jayne stared at her while a smile full of sexual intent spread across his face. One or two of the Alliance soldiers glanced in her direction to see what had inspired Jayne’s look, and snatching her gaze from his she returned to the cart to fetch another pile of blankets. She hated moving along the edge of the tank away from him, almost feared that something would happen to break the promise they had just made. When she had finished gathering up the dust-caked clothes reeking of sweat and smoke and dumped them in the back of the cart, she sought out his gaze again. Immediately his eyes found hers and she felt him watching her as she made her way past the tank and into a hay barn nearby.

Some of the men laughed again when Jayne pulled himself out of the tank and stood on the edge with his chest puffed out slightly and the beginnings of an erection. Water dripped off of his elbows and streamed from the hair on his chest and under his arms as he bent to pick up his blanket and, without bothering to put it on, strode after Lucy.

When he found her, leaning against a tall stack of hay bales, she lifted up one side of her long skirt and tucked it into her waistband. She was completely naked underneath her dress but for a pair of black boots, and Jayne stopped in his tracks and goggled. Encouraged by his response she moved so that she was sitting on a lower bale, leaning back on her hands with her legs open. Jayne threw down the blanket he was still carrying and rushed for her. Her body pulsed with lust. What was she doing? She had never acted like this before, didn’t even know she was capable of it. But she had never met a man that she wanted so much and loved not at all. All she wanted from him was that he wanted her. The certainty that she would never love him freed her from giving any thought to what would happen next, other than the hope of doing more of what they were doing now. ________________________________________________________

Coming straight from a fraught conversation with Thomas and the three other settlers who had taken up a seemingly casual presence near the entrance to their mine, Susan looked for Mal among the Alliance men. They were shivering inside their blankets now. This, and the realization that they were expected back to Olsen’s barn about a mile away made them fiercely glad that their imprisonment might soon be over.

“Do you know a man called Leech? And Grote?” Susan asked Mal, with barely suppressed alarm. Mal shook his head. “They went to the mine. Wanted to go inside; wanted to know what it was.”

“You must’ve seen this coming.”

“Well, we honestly” – Susan put a hand in her hair. “They didn’t get off their horses. Sat there with their rifles pointing at Thomas.”

“’s what I’d do, I was moving in on someone else’s mine.”

Susan looked genuinely shocked. “But – how can they do that? How can they exploit our misfortune” –

“This is the Rim,” Mal said resolutely.

Susan wavered, feeling as she never had before how out of place she and her fellow settlers were. They had managed to avoid violence so far; imagined they had found a way of co-existing with Warminger that allowed them to pursue their own particular goal of political freedom. “They said the town wanted compensation, for the air contamination caused by the explosion, and for the trouble of cleaning up the wreckage of the Alliance vessels. That was their pretext for trying to get into the mine – seeing how we were going to ‘make good on our obligations’.”

“They got a point.”

“Whose side are you on?” Susan burst out, fearing abandonment by the only man there was to turn to.

“No one’s!” Mal snapped back. Then a little more gently: “Just – there’s a way of doing this folks don’t get hurt. And we all get what we need to just – go on our ways.”

Susan moved her hand to her brow, almost covered her eyes. “Well, tell me then. Tell me what it is.”

“Just walk away.”

Susan stared. “That’s it?”

“Make a deal. The soldiers will stand with us. They got an awful lot to lose by hanging around here. We can use their ship. Suits them too. They want to get to Meridian, you’re heading to Coldstone. Find a way to buy yourself time, load the ship with as much bicarium as she’ll carry. Say you’ll give them whatever they want for their compensation so long as they give you the time you need.”

Susan was searching Mal’s face, disbelieving. “You mean – leave the mine?”

Mal nodded again.

“But – that’s our future!”

“Guess the future must have seemed okay before you found it, else you wouldn’t have set yourselves up here. Mine was just a bonus, I figure.”

It was true. They hadn’t believed their luck, had known that it would run out soon enough. And yet they had become accustomed to building their plans for the future around the mine, had established Cornelius far earlier than they would otherwise have been able to do.

“We’ve become greedy,” Susan said flatly. “As bad as them.”

Mal understood that she was referring to the Core’s political and economic elite. He made a demurring expression. “’s understandable you don’t want to leave it. But the Alliance vessel’s a big one. Can carry enough for what you need.”

“That was all we wanted when we left Londinium: what we needed.” Susan paused. “I’ll have to discuss it with the others.” She turned to go, turned back. “And we’ll pay you.” She smiled almost mischievously. “We’ll pay you what you need.”

“My crew” –

“Of course. Will you be coming with us? Will you stay on Cornelius?”

Mal shrugged. “Don’t know.”