Author’s Note: See I told you there was a 4th chapter coming in sooner rather than later! This chapter comes with a warning. While there is nothing explicitly SPOILERISH in this story, this story may allude to events that take place in the movie. Let’s call it Serenity Foreshadowing. This will not by any means ruin the film for you, as I do not allude to the actual results and circumstances of events in the film. I am just warning you, if you are that sensitive to the minor possibility that you may be reading a story that has something remotely to do with the movie, then stop now, and read this on the 1st of October.

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She was warm. It was a beautiful sunny day, a classic summer day on Artemis. She could feel the grass between her bare toes; it tickled the backs of her legs when she sat on it. Her sun-dress was roughly 5 shades lighter than the sky. She was happy.

He picked her up from behind and spun her around and around, feet flying through the air. Centrifugal force was pulling her feet to the sky. Her giggles filled the air; a child’s melody flowed out of her. She was free.

Her father had been a handsome man, with dark hair, and olive skin, but with eyes as blue as the second moon of Artemis. Those eyes usually held sorrow, a secret of things left unsaid. When he was with her they filled with pride and joy, she was the one thing he had done right in a lifetime full of wrong.

She was his little princess. She appeared as a near carbon copy of her mother, but with his personality traits, hard-headedness, perfectionism and feisty determination. He wished he could offer her more than this tiny planet in the middle of nowhere.

He had once been important. He had once made a home on one of the more civilized worlds. As he moved up the power chain from simple police man to Security Council member he traveled through all of the places where the finest men in the ‘verse lived. He was cruel, he was ruthless, and the system repaid him for every piece of it.

Jacob Serra had it all: money, power and status. Still he was so desperately alone. That was until he met her.

Beatrice Inara was the most perfectly beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. She was a companion, and one of the best and most popular. A companion may choose her clientele, but they also choose her. It took him months of waiting before she accepted his request to be a client.

He took her to a ball on Persephone. They danced all night, she laughed at all of his jokes, and she fed him strawberries. It was one of the most perfect nights of his life. He wasn’t sure if it was his credits in her account or if she actually enjoyed herself that night.

Jacob found out soon enough. Eventually they had weekly and then biweekly appointments. It wasn’t about the sex, as they rarely did that. It was about how she was beautiful on the inside and outside. It was 9 months before he took her as his personal companion, and barely another 3 before he proposed. She said yes.

Beatrice had given up her life of privilege and perfection for him. He knew what that meant. Shortly after they were wed he was moved into a military security position and was soon after assigned to the special project unit.

Meria Book was not a kind man, nor was he easy to work for. He was the head of the special military security projects division. The division was partially funded by the Anglo-Sino Alliance, and partially by the Blue Sun Corporation. Where the money came from didn’t really ever matter though. Meria demanded long hours, and complete devotion to the project. This left Jacob with little time for the honeymoon portion of his marriage. The strain this put on his relationship with Beatrice was palpable.

Jacob lost his job after asking the wrong question. He questioned the purity of intention of the development of a new research facility. They wanted to use a planet to test new ‘motivational substances.’ There had been rumblings on the outer rim. People sick of the Alliance trying to control their lives, but not giving them the bare necessitates for survival. There were rumors of militias. The Alliance didn’t want to go to war; they didn’t want to watch their sons die because a few backwater moons didn’t feel they were getting a fair shake.

Instead they wanted to infiltrate and assassinate, an intelligent man’s war. If the people were compliant it would be easier to go in, find out who had started these ideas, and eliminate them. Phase one of the plan was the ‘motivational substance’ the second phase though was far more unsettling, they wanted to use children. Not necessarily use children, but train them to go in, unnoticed and carry out military orders. No one would ever suspect a child. Of course the second phase was only to be enacted if the substance alone couldn’t quell the uprising. Jacob’s issue with all of this was the experimentation on human beings (they didn’t have time to test on animals, war could happen any day), and then that they wanted to steal childhoods to keep the blood off of their own hands.

Jacob had once seen the job he did as important, keeping people safe. Now his job had turned into one in which no one was safe, least of all him.

Beatrice had recently informed him that she was late. She was pregnant, that they were expecting a child. His paternal instincts had already kicked in when he heard about phase two.

Meria told him his opinion didn’t matter, that the projects would go on with or without his approval. These projects were more important than individual men; these were for the betterment of everyone. Then Meria told him to get off this planet or pay the price. He was told that if he ever spoke a word of the project or the possibility of its existence that they would hunt him down and slaughter Beatrice, they would force him to watch, and then cut his throat with shards of her broken bones.

Jacob understood what this meant. He feared that they would know about Beatrice’s condition and send for the child as the ultimate retribution. He paid off a man at the clinic to wipe her records clean. He cashed out his credits and got them on the next transport out. He explained to Beatrice that he couldn’t tell her why, but that they had to leave Sihnon, so their child could have a life, so their child wouldn’t have its childhood stolen.

They got off on the transport ship’s third stop, Artemis. It was a planet with three moons and barely as many towns. People were scattered about, it was a far cry from the life of luxury they had known. They bought a small house on the outskirts of Thanos. It had a yard with grass, real grass, something he hadn’t seen for years. All the grass in the core was modified and engineered to be perfect. This grass wasn’t and it was one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen.

Jacob became a deputy sheriff in Thanos. They were far enough out from the core that the Alliance wouldn’t even send a security unit here; the people were left to their own devices for lawfulness and security. They settled in nicely. The town’s people didn’t question the motivation of two city slickers moving out to the middle of nowhere.

It seemed everyday a transport ship stopped on this planet and dropped off even more settlers; people with barely the clothes on their backs and 25 credits to their name. The central planets sent away anyone who didn’t fit their mold of perfection. If you didn’t fit, you got a one-way, all expenses paid trip to the rim, with the hopes you would be either more productive there or die.

Beatrice gave birth six months later. She bled to death on the delivery table. The midwife said it was a common occurrence out here, women died everyday giving birth. Jacob wondered if his child would have known her mother if they had stayed in the core. He couldn’t bear to name her Beatrice, so he named her Inara in honor of her mother.

Inara knew none of this. During her waking hours she barely remembered her father, having blocked such memories from her mind a long time ago. She wiped out her childhood at the academy; it was just easier that way. But when she was asleep, she remembered laughing in her father’s arms. She remembered Katie, the chubby woman who took care of her while daddy was working in town, keeping people safe.

She also remembered the men who would gather in their kitchen or living room long after she was expected to be in bed. Meetings she would spy on, watching these men with guns talk of revolution, watching her father emphatically explain that if they were to act, it was to be soon. Her father was a man of guns and dreams, a born leader, a man of honor.

Mostly though, when she remembered him, she remembered him like this. Smiling, being her papa bear, making her giggle and looking at her with love and joy and promise.

She didn’t want to remember the day he packed her things and sent her to Sihnon, but sometimes these memories crept in like uninvited guests.

He didn’t even ride on the ship with her. When he said good-bye he could barely look at her, he told her he loved her, and held her for only a moment before walking away. He sent Katie to escort her, saying it was too risky for him to travel to the core. Daddy had a lot of secrets, this one being the one that hurt her the most.

Katie explained to Ling that it was just getting too dangerous for Inara to be on Artemis, or for her to be associated with her father. Inara screamed and cried like the child she was. She did not want to stay with some strange woman. She heard Ling swear under her breath.

“You tell Jacob, if he leaves her here, and doesn’t come back for her himself, he will never see her again. I won’t let her leave without him showing his face. Beatrice would still be alive if it weren’t for him and his back-moon dreams. I’m doing this for Beatrice so her daughter doesn’t end up some prairie whore.” Ling said. Ling was beautiful, with creamy skin and manicured fingernails. She didn’t look like the women on Artemis, women with tans and calloused hands, who were soft around the middle, but stronger than some men. To Inara though, she wasn’t family.

Katie nodded and said she would pass the message on to Jacob. She kissed the top of Inara’s head and promised to write. Inara continued to cry. Katie gave her a small handmade geisha doll; Inara clutched it to her chest, it smelled like prairie grasses, like Thanos, like Artemis, like home. She watched Katie leave the gardens of the academy. She didn’t know it was the academy yet, she just thought Ling had a very large and fancy house. Soon though she would understand, life in the core was not like the life she had known as a child, and never would be.

Inara’s father was her first great heartbreak, but not her last.