Disclaimer: Thankyou Joss Whedon for creating “Firefly” and these fabulous characters. Thankyou Mutant Enemy and cast for bringing them to beautiful life. And thankyou Fox for airing the show and making the DVD, even if you didn't have the sense to commission more episodes.

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FEELING

The shortage of water for washing on Serenity had never irked her as much as it did today. A meagre sponge bath was simply not enough to wash away all that she was feeling. Idiotic, needy, weak.

She applied more soap and scrubbed furiously with the loofah, even though she wouldn't be able to rinse it all off. But even had she been in one of the most luxurious bathing houses on Sihnon, she wouldn't have been able to make herself feel properly clean.

Because today she had broken Guild Law. She'd set off in her shuttle to meet her client without the proper preparations. The syringe had remained in its box, unused. For the first time since becoming a Companion, she had decided to feel. Experience for herself the sensation of skin on skin, flesh in flesh and understand the strange craving that led otherwise sensible men and women to abandon reason and throw caution to the wind.

She couldn't get the image of Mal emerging from Nandi's room out of her head. The memory of him doing up his shirt buttons and pulling up his suspenders. Although he was embarassed at her seeing him there, he was far from unhappy. He was glowing with the warmth of satiation. And it stung like a slap in the face.

She didn't know who she was angrier with, Mal or Nandi. If she'd lived long enough it might have been with Nandi. For bedding the man Inara had slowly fallen so deeply in love with. And for feeling all that should have been hers. As a mere whore Nandi didn't have access to the numbing agent. It must have left her system years ago. No, she would have felt ... what? The sad truth was Inara didn't know.

Nandi had had it all. The feel of him, the taste of him. His smell, his warmth. Sensations Inara longed for but could not begin to imagine. And if that were the case, why did she want them so badly? In all the time she had known Mal, they had hardly ever touched. He put a hand on her shoulder once to urge her to be ready to leave Serenity in case the Reavers attacked. He had held her when the danced at the ball. And he had leant on her on their way back to the ship after the duel. He had tried to tend the broken lip Early had given her.... On each of these occasions he had felt the weight of contact but nothing more. Diyu! She hadn't felt any more than that when she had kissed him out of sheer relief that Saffron hadn't killed him.

And what was Mal's excuse for his tumble with Nandi? He claimed to disapprove of whores. Inara had promised to pay him out of her own money for helping her friend so there had been no need for him to take payment in Nandi's trade. Inara fought back a tear. She knew that wasn't what he'd been doing. He'd taken to bed with Nandi out of desire. In response to an irresistible demand from blood and flesh for sensation, for feeling.

Her initial response to their betrayal had been to announce she was leaving Serenity, but Mal had taken a series of jobs that had put them way beyond the reaches of civilization. She suspected he was trying to control her. So instead of getting mad, she figured it would be better to get even. By not using the syringe. It hadn't been a mistake. She'd done it deliberately. And if the build-up of the drug in her system would still dull her senses a little, at least she would feel something. And part of her wanted to tell Mal that. Make him suffer the kind of pain he'd caused her. There, another bit of Guild Law to break. Because no-one outside the Guild was supposed to know about the numbing agent. Clients wanted to believe that when a Companion made those little moans and whimpers and louder cries, she was doing it out of genuine feeling, not artifice. It was a flattery they paid handsomely for.

Cheng Wesson was a fine looking, well-made man. And he was not without charm. She'd met him several times before and liked him well enough. He was certainly her best option. He was civilized, polite and had no peculiar tastes. Yes, she'd be safe enough with him. Even in this vulnerable state.

When he entered her shuttle she was surprised to feel a flutter of nervousness, but she smiled politely and concentrated on making tea and performing the welcoming ceremony. The age-old ritual helped her nerves subside.

She took a seat beside Cheng on the couch and they talked a little. But it was hard to keep her mind on the conversation. She kept noticing the strangest little details about him. Details that troubled her. She found she didn't like the shape of his ear, nor the way spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth as her spoke. And she was more than a little revolted by the curly black hairs on his wrist that showed whenever he pushed back his cuffs.

When the tea-drinking was over, she took his hand – a suprisingly damp, flabby hand - and led him to the bed where he stretched out luxuriously, closing his eyes in delicious anticipation of being pleasured by someone so skilled.

As she leant over him, the smell of him filled her nostrils, making her a little panicky. He was getting through to her, to the core of her and it felt like an invasion. She tried to put it out of her mind as she set about caressing and kissing him, but his odour evoked an instinctive urge in her to flee. But money had changed hands, a contract had been made. Guild Law had to be followed....

The whole thing was a complete disaster. When he touched her, her mind seemed to fragment, each little piece going off in a separate direction. Most of them rapidly reaching disgust, revulsion and humiliation. A few finding little oases of pleasing sensation. And these were the ones that worried her most. What had happened to her legendary self-control? After all she had only skipped one injection and here she was falling apart!

Somehow she managed to complete the task but she knew she'd done it badly. Cheng's expression as he dressed was one of concerned disappointment. Normally keen to fix another appointment, he was unusually quiet. When she forced herself to ask if he would like to see her again when she was next in this quadrant he mumbled something about not knowing how long he would be staying. It was quite improper of him, as they both knew. A Companion's client was expected to play the part of an eager lover, not that of a ship's Captain who'd just had his vessel serviced. But Inara couldn't blame him. She'd been so tense, so tight, it was a wonder anything had been achieved at all.

She was so glad to close the shuttle door behind him and to switch on the ignition. The flight that took her back to Serenity seemed to take forever. It was only when she had finally docked that the full import of what she'd done hit her and she broke down in tears.

How stupid she had been. Her feeble attempt at revenge had only made her hurt more. She brushed the tears from her cheeks angrily and set about the cleansing ritual. Then she dressed in her most sombre robe – a wrap of black silk - and took the syringe from its box. She fastened the little leather strap around her upper arm and tightened it, waiting for the veins to show. With a sigh of relief, she pulled back the plunger and put the needle to her skin. She couldn't wait for the drug to take effect, for it to push back the tide of physical sensation and emotion rising in her.

“What the hell is this?” She jumped at the unexpected sound of his voice, dropping the syringe to the floor. She scrabbled to pick it up but he was across the room in a few long strides and had seized it before she had chance to conceal it.

He was standing so close to her they were almost touching. He held the syringe in a clenched fist close to her face, his eyes blazing. “What the hell is this?”

“None of your business,” she managed to snap, making a grab for the syringe, but he lifted it out of her reach.

His eyes narrowed dangerously and he gripped her by one shoulder, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh. “You wanna shed some light on this? Cos it's lookin' all manner of unseemly to me.”

His hands were warm and dry and strong and she was amazed to find she liked his holding her with such intensity. It meant something, although her senses were too overloaded with his heat and scent for her to be quite sure what. “It's not what you think....”

“Oh, ain't it?” She watched his lips move as he spat the words out and inappropriately – given they seemed to be fighting - thought how beautiful they were. How the corners were simply perfect.

He grabbed her other shoulder and shook her slightly. “I figure it's gotta be one of three things.” He relaxed his grip a little, but still held onto her tightly. But even had he let go, she would have been transfixed by his eyes which were boring into hers. “Either you're takin' – what do they call it? - 'drops'. Which makes you a danger to yourself an' my crew. Or you're sick an' ain't told none of us – which ain't hardly a kindness....”

“No, it's neither of those, Mal...” she began saying earnestly before he cut her off with the darkest glower she had ever seen.

“So. That's your game, is it?” He dropped his hands and turned away from her. The set of his shoulders told her he was really angry now. “Never figured you for a coward, Inara.”

“What?!”

He flung the syringe down onto the bed. “Always thought you had more about you than that. Did you stop to think what it might do to the rest of us?” He paused and she searched his face for some clue as to his meaning. “What it might do to *me* to find you....” With this the fury seemed to drain out of him and was replaced by sorrow and despair. When he looked at her again, the dark blue of his eyes was shimmering with pain. “Were you gonna leave a note?”

Ta ma de! He thought she was going to kill herself. She looked at her funereal garb, the size of the syringe and the colour of the serum and realized with a jolt that it was a reasonable assumption. He thought it was a suicide kit. If only he had burst into her shuttle unannounced ten minutes later she would have been filled with the drug-induced calm that might have helped her deal with this. Then again, he wouldn't have seen anything. She wouldn't have been so exposed.

He was sitting down now, staring straight ahead, his head in his hands. She thought she had never seen anyone look so miserable. Inara had always been better at coping with her own pain than with other people's. It was part of what made her such a special Companion. She crouched down in front of him and took his hands in hers, holding on even though he tried to pull away. “Mal...”

“Saw a whole world of death in the war, 'Nara. Men and women slaughtered in the most sickenin' ways. Riddled with bullets, skewered on bayonets, blown to pieces of rottin' meat by bombs.” He eyes clouded over at the memory and for a moment the hideous picture floated between them. Then he blinked it away fiercely and stared intently into her face. “So I want you to understand me when I say that findin' you ... gone... would've been the worst thing I'd ever seen.”

“I'm not going anywhere, Mal.” Tears were pricking behind her eyes. “The syringe..I'm not supposed to tell you this... it's part of a Companion's equipment.” For a heartbeat his expression was blank, then he raised a querying eyebrow as she went on, all in a rush, “It blocks the senses, Mal. Stops me from feeling. Anything. Only you mustn't tell anyone about this. I mean it. I could lose my licence.”

“So.. when you're with a client...” She watched the wheels in his mind turn. “When a Companion's with a client, she ain't really with him? An' they don't know nothin' about it? Well ain't that interesting!” She could tell by his sudden smirk he was thinking back to one client in particular. “Poor old Ath! Never really had you, even with all that money changin' hands!” To Mal, this secret triumph felt almost as good as stabbing the pompous dandy with a sword. Better even. He flashed Inara one of his warmest smiles.

She ought to have been angry with him for turning a moment of intimacy between them, a moment of real connection, into a victory over a long beaten rival, but she was simply happy to see his pain evaporate. And his smile had always made her knees inexplicably weak. She was smiling back at him, glad that things were back to normal when the penny suddenly dropped.

He stood up and walked over to the bed where the syringe still lay. He picked it up and rolled it from one hand to the other pensively. “Stops you from feelin', you say?” he said softly, more to himself than to her. Then, brightly, almost conversationally: “Di'n't you have an appointment with a client today?”

She nodded slowly, taking a small step backwards as he moved towards her. “An' I'd be thinkin' that in the usual way of things you'd be takin' this” he waved the syringe in front of her “before an appointment? That right?”

She nodded again, more warily. Where was he going with this?

“So. You di'n't wanna not feel today? Why was that Inara? Was he 'special'?” The rush of jealousy coursing through Mal was making him tetchy. He smiled again, but coldly, nastily. “Feel good, did it?”

“None of your damn business,” Inara hissed through gritted teeth. She was exhausted Emotionally wrung out. It had been a hell of a day. And her control was in shreds. “Not after what you and Nandi put me through....” She couldn't believe she'd said it. She clapped her hands over her mouth in disbelief, but the words were already out.

Mal looked stunned. “Thought you were OK with that,” he said after a moment's hesitation. “That's what you told me. Said you were glad I'd been with her on her....”

“Oh, for goodness sake Mal! We both say things we don't mean. We do it all the time! We're forever playing games with each other. Hiding what we really want.” She really wanted him to leave now, before she started crying again. Because the sense of loss she felt at this realization was agonizing.

“Well then,” he said slowly, placing one hand on the small of her back to pull her in close against him and lifting her chin up with the other. “How about we don't play games no more. What is it that you really want, Inara?”

She looked him steadily in the eye so that he would understand her full meaning when she finally replied.

“I want to feel Mal.”

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