Author’s Note: This was supposed to be a short snippet, but the Muses laughed at me. This is for Phaedra, who doesn’t know me from Adam (or Eve, for that matter) but who I think will appreciate a little gratuitous angst and whose storytelling I admire, and also for a very dear friend in Real Life who taught me that family doesn't always mean blood and that home doesn't always mean a place.

Oh, and there is a brief reference to DesertDragon's Violent Heart series, which everyone should read if they want to become better humans. And I wrote this while listening to the new Coldplay X & Y album, though I pride myself on having used no lyrics, so kudos to anyone who can figure out which song inspired this story the most. If you guess right, you'll get a big...shiny...congratulations? :)

Summary: Five years after Inara says goodbye to the crew of Serenity, she wonders if choosing the life of a Companion is worth everything she lost along the way.

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Exile Part One: A Year and A Day by ShinyBug There was peace here, a forgetting. She had designed it that way, of course. Everything about this had been perfectly planned.

Lethe, fourth moon from Stygia. A terraformed planet that exemplified the process of terraforming; water-covered, from one axis straight to the other, with only one continent to mar the smooth blue marble's surface. A small continent, relatively speaking, but one with a flawless balance between green hills and rivers, land and water. Life flowing constantly and changelessly.

Lethe had only one city, but it encompassed nearly the whole continent. On a clear day from the hill in the center of the city, the highest point anywhere on Lethe, you could just barely make out the edges of where city met sea, but you could easily see where the five rivers met and converged to the south, making one concerted push for the open water. The five rivers carved the city into miniature islands, and gondolas traversed the channels between islands. The little lanterns on their prows swung like fireflies in the evening, or so it seemed from high above on the hill, at the Oubliette.

And that, Inara mused to herself, was not something she had counted on. Little gold lights far below, innocently swaying across the water to the barely heard strains of the singing gondoliers, somehow reminding her. Little lights like fireflies.

As twilight deepened over her city, and the breeze shifted direction bringing jasmine from the south instead of cherry blossoms from the west, Inara walked the hanging gardens of her manse, a cobweb-light shawl around her shoulders to keep off the summer wind. This was a good place, she thought, fingering the ceremonial gold key to the Oubliette that she wore on a chain around her throat. She felt safe here, unthreatened by politics or danger or emotional ties. After all, Inara had been careful to avoid all political situations, benign though most of them were, all possibility of illicit or clandestine behavior, and any human connection beyond that of the physical, the cordially polite, and the financial transaction.

Lethe had been from its humble terraformed beginnings a place of forgetting, of peace. The rich and powerful came here, to this tiny moon just outside the Core, when their various chosen vocations in the service of the Union of Allied Planets had worn them down to the width of a quill. All used up, and most still in their prime, they came here to forget, to start anew. The city on Lethe may have had a name, in the beginning, but no one used it and now no one remembered it. Now it was just The City.

The City was where you came to forget, and to be forgotten.

Inara had found, upon first visiting Lethe, that there was an almost inherent appreciation for the pleasures of life in The City. Like the Venice of Earth-That-Was, The City enjoyed its wine, women, and song. The nobles and the nouveau-riche alike clamored for Companions, and mostly settled for well-trained whores. Inara's arrival in The City had been cause for open celebration, for although there was already a good House-worth of Companions in residence, the ratio of customers to Companions was relatively daunting to both sides. And Inara had found, to her dubious pleasure, that her name and reputation had preceded her in whispers of gossip, as the high-ranking Companion of House Madrassa who'd gone rogue from Sihnon and went to sail the black.

Inara moved to the hill, set up shop, and with the proceeds built her Oubliette, which could be seen at night for miles and miles like a beacon on the hill for gondoliers to set their compasses by. She had a steady and pleasant stream of customers, and every opportunity to use her arts and allurements. There were balls of course, and masques and banquets and fetes and ceremonies, enough to more than fill a schedule. Inara worked hard for her money, and not all of it, as an old acquaintance from out in the black might believe, on her back.

Still. There were moments, fragmented as they were among all the placid moments and the bustling ones, strung out across a day like a constellation, moments of remembering despite it all. Sometimes sitting at a banquet table in low candlelight among a few of the gathered elite, Inara would hear in the space of a blink, behind closed lids, the laughter of true companions around a rustic dining room table. The metallic scrape of a fork across a tin plate. The earthy noise of a mercenary chewing with his mouth open. The quiet hum of an engine, heard all around, encapsulating security, serenity. Serenity. Then she would open her eyelids and they would disappear, the vision melting implacably into perfectly tailored clothing, fine bone china, crystal goblets worth more than, say, an entire mid-bulk transport ship straight off the lot. Inara watched as the stars came out, the myriad stars in constellations only Letheans could see, but which Inara had once sailed through without a thought beyond those spaces between the lights. She watched her city descend into night, knowing that it was in fact her city, more than Sihnon had ever been or Persephone ever could have been, knowing that she held sway here, and was respected, knowing that even now some gondolier below was probably singing “In the Midnight of Her Hair” in her tribute.

And still she felt cold inside.

“Inara.”

There was a soft touch on her shoulder. Inara glanced around. It was Essa, holding a candle in one hand and a gold shawl in the other. Essa Sangwyn was her one concession to needing anything resembling a family.

“I thought you might like a warmer one. You were shivering,” the young Companion explained as she offered forth the shawl, eyeing the one Inara already wore with some worry. “Was I? That’s strange. It’s quite warm out,” Inara replied with a frown, but wrapped the second shawl around her shoulders all the same. She looked at her young friend’s face in the underlit glow of the single candle, and registered that Essa was frowning slightly at her, an expression that Inara had seen often of late, usually directed at her. “You know, frowning causes wrinkles,” Inara reminded her with a small smile, reaching to smoothe the line away with her thumb. “Wrinkles are a deficit in our line of work.”

Essa caught her hand in her own and kissed Inara’s knuckles. “If you would stop standing out here every chance you get, staring off into the distance and shivering in summer, I would frown at you less. What are you waiting for?” Inara’s muscles stiffened momentarily in the act of shifting the shawl on her shoulders, and Essa, similarly trained as a Companion to be observant, narrowed her eyes at the slight movement. “I’m not waiting for anything,” Inara said, schooling her voice into one of unruffled serenity, for all the good it did.

The breeze picked up, skirling through the hanging gardens, pulling leaves and blossoms in its wake, tossing Essa’s tight mahogany curls and Inara’s looser black ones. But for that there was no movement as the two Companions faced each other, one probing for a weakness that the other was attempting to camouflage.

“Cai guai,” Essa finally retorted softly, shaking her head, a hint of a friendly warning in her voice.

Inara arched a dark eyebrow, but other than that made no other answer.

“I know how to improve your mood,” Essa said after a moment, and took Inara’s arm in hers and led her through the maze of gardens that surrounded the Oubliette on all sides up the pathway that ended in the house itself.

The Oubliette was built entirely in the round, a shining golden dome, a temple-like house designed to the exaltation of the farce of love and the pursuit of forgetting the reality of love. Inara had designed the interior like a nautilus shell, one long corridor winding inward on itself, chambers branching off at intervals. The only way to get to the center was to start at the outside and work your way in, past the entry hall and the ballroom and the dining hall and the kitchens, past the servants quarters and the guest quarters to the inner sanctum, Inara’s chambers at the heart of it all. To circumvent the problem of offering windows to the inner chambers, Inara had designed a continuous skylight of curved glass to follow the corridor around to the center, to let in light in the day and the stars at night. In any season, any time of day, the Oubliette gave the impression of being pleasantly lost, of wandering and forgetting.

The Oubliette had been for the last five years the favorite location for The City’s Midsummer Masque, and it made Inara proud to have created something that gave so many people pleasure, and not only in her inner sanctum. Midsummer was tomorrow night, and servants bustled through the corridor to ready the Oubliette for the accommodation of hundreds of guests.

The walls of the corridor and many of the rooms were painted with murals by artists of The City, only too happy to be paid in trade by the recently arrived Companion. So it was that the Oubliette reflected the universe around it, in a melding of the visions of dozens of artists, portraying the heavens, the mythology of angels and fantastical creatures, of the changing of the seasons, of the sea and its depths, and of animals of earth and air.

When Inara’s favorite artist had, unwittingly, painted an exquisite scene of a verdant forest at night on the walls of her inner sanctum, complete with the delicate glowing of thousands of painted fireflies, Inara had not had the heart to ask him to paint over them. And if Inara wept during their time together in payment for services rendered, well then the young man must have thought she was weeping at the beauty of the painting. Inara followed her friend reluctantly down the corridor to her chambers, quelling a peculiar urge to drag her feet--not because following Essa’s whim held any kind of unpleasantness, but because the thought of being in the same rooms she entertained clients in was suddenly disconcerting. It gave her an uncomfortableness. The phrase surfaced from some depth best left unplumbed, and Inara shrugged it away.

The round chamber held at the very center of it, the heart of the Oubliette, not a bed (which was situated against a wall) but a circular bathing pool. Inara gave a helpless laugh to see that the pool had been prepared with steaming water, candles all around, and jasmine petals floating on the surface.

“Essa, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me,” Inara said mildly, turning to her friend.

“Call it a much needed relaxation session between friends,” Essa replied with a faint smile. “With no clothes on.” “With no clothes on,” Essa agreed.

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A short while later Inara was inhaling fragrant steam, immersed to the shoulders in water and flower petals, while Essa sat one step higher behind her, slowly washing Inara’s hair with deft fingers. It had been a long while since she’d felt this relaxed, even in a city whose foundations were built on luxury. She leaned her head back on Essa’s knee and let the young woman comb through her hair with her fingers.

“So who are you waiting for?” Inara’s head came up, only to be gently shoved back down. She registered that Essa had changed her phrasing to ‘who’ from ‘what.’ The uncomfortableness returned.

“Do you know why I call this place ‘The Oubliette’? Because this is my place of forgetting. If you brought me here to pry into my past I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you.”

Essa, sounding stung, replied, “I wasn’t intending to pry. I was under the impression that we were the kind of friends who could share our thoughts with each other. You’re having thoughts lately, and you’re not sharing them with me. You seem...troubled.” Inara sighed and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.” “You never talk to me. You've mentored me here for two years, and yet I feel as though I’m no closer to you at heart than the day we met.” Essa leaned down to press her lips against Inara’s damp head, smoothing her temples with her palms. “Though we became considerably close that day.” Inara smiled briefly and reached up to touch her friend’s hand. “It’s only...I know there’s caring between us, and kinship. But it’s more feeling than substance. Surely you see that too. Inara.” Essa paused, as if choosing her words carefully. “I only want to help.” They were silent for a few minutes, the only sounds the water lapping gently as Inara’s hair trailed and moved on the surface of the water under Essa’s fingers. Inara sighed again, feeling foolish, and also feeling somehow as though she were about to step over a precipice she could not see. Inara half turned, raising her arm to rest it across Essa’s thighs. She regarded the young woman for a long moment, gaze wandering over her short damp ringlets which curled impossibly tight in the steam, her tilted green eyes, her elfin features, her small breasts with nipples like currant berries. Essa carried all the immortal self-assurance of youth, but the ten year difference in age between the two of them didn’t alter the fact that they had been kindred spirits from the moment that they met.

“Why did you choose Lethe...choose me?” Inara asked softly.

Essa cupped warm water in her hands and let it stream down Inara’s midnight hair. “I’ve always felt part Gypsy, wanting to forge ahead beyond where I was told to go. After the Academy, after they handed me my Companion’s license, the only thing I wanted to do was get as far away from Sihnon as a transport ship could take me and still be safe in the light of the Alliance. I chose you for my mentor because you'd obviously done the same.” Inara was likely the only person who would have noted the mildly caustic tonal quality the young woman gave to the word ‘Alliance.’

“Funny, it took me years to come to the point of desiring exile over the comforts of Sihnon,” Inara mused. “And then it took me another year to find Lethe after I left House Madrassa.” “I took a more direct route. I asked a young man at the docks where a girl might go to find some high quality entertainment with minimal corporate interference.” “And he suggested Lethe?” Essa snorted delicately. “Only after I revised my request. Apparently he misunderstood at first, and he suggested a charming establishment on Outpost 10 called The Slaughtered Lamb.” “I’ve heard of it,” Inara said with an ill-repressed shudder. “I can only assume his version of high quality entertainment differs sharply from yours, and any other well-bred human’s, for that matter. “That seemed to be the way of it, yes. At least he had the good grace to blush when I explained that was not quite what I had in mind, and he was quick to suggest Lethe after that. I made a few more inquiries, then booked passage on a small transport ship. Three weeks later I found myself on the shores of The City, staring up the hill at a gleaming golden dome, flashing like a lighthouse in the sunset.”

“You have an adventurous outlook on life,” Inara commented, leaning her head into the scalp massage she was receiving. Essa had been well trained when it came to the bathing ritual, and it had been a very, very long time since anyone had performed it on her. “And you don’t?”

The question was followed by pointed silence. Essa cleared her throat delicately. “It’s your turn. I answered your question, now you have to answer mine.” Her fingers slid down the nape of Inara’s neck, making Inara seriously consider telling Essa anything in the world she wanted to know. Her head lolled, and Essa braced her up with one hand while the other worked the tension from her neck.

“Have you ever been in love?” Inara asked, and it was a moment before she realized that she had been the one to ask the question, not Essa.

“You’re supposed to offer me answers, not questions,” Essa reminded her. “No. I haven’t. At least I don’t think I have.”

Inara smiled. “If you had, you’d know.”

“Why, are there butterflies and sunshowers in your belly?” The young woman teased.

“No. Fireflies and razorblades,” Inara murmured. She tilted her head back at the soft pressure of Essa’s fingers and looked up through the skylight high above at the winking stars, at the little lights moving through the spaces between them.

“That’s morbid.” Fingers moved down to knead Inara’s shoulders.

“Yes. I suppose it was.”

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She had wanted to get the goodbyes over as quickly as possible. Didn’t want to drag it out. Rather than waiting for everyone to gather in the cargo bay to see her off, she instead sought them out individually in their own corners of the ship. On the bridge, Wash gave her a surprisingly tight hug and his tyrannosaurus rex, to protect her from bad guys, he said. Zoe was stoic but sincere, and clasped her hand hard.

Book was reading in the lounge near the infirmary, and stood when she entered. She let him say a prayer for her, his hand pressed to her bowed forehead. In the infirmary Simon kissed her cheek in a gesture of both respect and kindred affection, having been brought up in the same world she had been, and was now returning to.

Kaylee was a weeping disaster in the engine room, and no amount of consoling could make her stop crying. Inara nearly lost her composure with Kaylee, saying goodbye to the closest thing to a sister she’d ever found. After she firmly set Kaylee away from her and turned to leave she heard Kaylee’s flip-flops pounding a hasty retreat down the corridor in the direction of the infirmary.

Jayne was, of course, Jayne, and couldn’t let their moment in the kitchen pass without a leer and an inappropriate comment. When all was said and done though, he pecked her cheek almost--almost--chastely and offered to bring Vera to her defense should she ever need it. Inara thought that was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard come out of Jayne Cobb’s mouth.

River found her, rather than the other way around, which seemed fitting to Inara. She was standing in the empty, darkened shuttle taking one last look when she felt eyes on her. Expecting it to be someone else, she turned quickly, heart in her throat, and stopped when she saw River leaning around the doorway.

“Imbue. That’s the word. A room is just a thing, no purpose to it.” Inara shook her head, weary beyond words. “I don’t understand.” River tilted her head knowingly, as if to say, ‘yes, you do.’ Then she said, “It’s not a place you’re running from. Or to.” Inara opened her mouth to say, “I’m not running,” but the lie stuck in her throat, and she had the feeling that River would have known it for a lie anyway. “Goodbye, River,” was what came out. “I hope you find your own serenity.” River smiled a little, sadly, lucidly. “You can walk thousand miles, you know, and wear the soles out of your shoes, and still find yourself back where you started.” She squeezed the doorframe once and then ghosted away on silent feet. Inara had wondered if River’s parting comment had been advice or psychic prediction. Slipping Wash’s plastic dinosaur into the pocket of her silk traveling coat, Inara had descended the scaffolding to the cargo hold one more time, not going anywhere else because somehow she knew he’d be waiting for her there. He was standing by the last of her bags on the open ramp, thumbs hooked with studied negligence in his beltloops. Inara took a moment to appreciate how his pants hugged his hips just so, a little tightly, how his boots were hopelessly scuffed, and were still the same pair he’d had when she’d met him a year ago. How his broad shoulders stretched his shirt and had worn the fabric thin and shiny in places.

How his eyes warily watched her every move from under sand-colored hair falling over his forehead. How his mouth was set in a thin line, how his expressive nostrils were flared slightly in displeasure, something she had seen so often, and usually directed at her. How his chest rose and fell unevenly. All these things a Companion looks for, these little betrayals of character, these things that lay a person out on a table to be deciphered. Oh no, Inara thought. Please don’t do this. Please don’t. She begged him with her eyes, and his eyes replied that she could go piss up a rope if she wanted, but he would stand his ground.

She came to stand in front of him, close enough to touch easily, within his personal space. She was nothing, Inara told herself, if not brave. The observed each other gravely, while at the bottom of the ramp a hired mule waited with a driver and most of her belongings. The fragrant air of New Melbourne wafted into the cargo hold on the breeze, bringing a reminder of the ‘fish-related activities’ awaiting her below. She had the brief and idle thought that she just might not stay in New Melbourne long.

Inara took a breath. “Mal,” she said, proud of how firm and unwavering her voice was.

“Don’t go,” he blurted, but only looked vaguely chagrined before plunging onward. “I’m askin’ you. ‘Nara.” And just like that, he broke her. Her heart skipped three beats and then rocked itself hard in her chest, painfully. There were knives inside her lungs, she was sure of it. Every breath sliced. “And what would you have me do, Mal?” she gasped between slices. “I gave it a year and a day on your ship. A year and a day. I can’t do it anymore.”

His adam’s apple worked up and down. “What, live in my world?” he asked in a low voice, scornfully.

She closed her eyes, tears leaking out the sides to roll hotly down her cheeks. “Yes, Mal. Live in your world.” Just not for the reasons you’re thinking.

“Well. Fine. It’s been real...real, Inara.” His manner was brusque now, and he stepped aside for her to descend the plank. “I wish you great luck in your business enterprises--” “Oh stop it, Mal!” she cried out, stretched to the limits with despair. “Can’t we just--just, for once, be civilized to each other? Be genuine? Can’t we say goodbye with dignity?” She held one hand out to him beseechingly. He stared at her hand for a moment, then her face, and the tears on her face, which he then touched with his fingertips, and then his palm, until she was turning her cheek and pressing her lips to his wrist, grabbing his hand in hers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered against his skin. “I’m sorry.” Mal muttered something unintelligible and yanked her forward to kiss her. She stumbled into him, and so it happened that their only real kiss was neither planned nor graceful, nor romantic, using none of the subtle arts to which Inara was trained. His teeth clacked briefly against hers as they struggled against each other for a better angle, and Inara tasted what up until now had only been the scent of Mal, laced lightly with something bittersweet and alcoholic, stronger than inter-engine fermented wine.

The taste went straight to her brain, buzzing along nerve endings, misfiring synapses and destroying her equilibrium. She clutched at his shirt collar while he fisted one hand in her hair and tugged back, and she spared a thought that no one had ever kissed her like this, as though she was a woman, and not a trained lover.

Which was the worst possible thing Mal could have done. When he let her go abruptly she staggered, her natural grace gone, and steadied herself against the bags piled beside her. She wasn’t sure what expression her own face held exactly, but she assumed it was something like his: exalted, astral, dumbstruck. Horrified. Anguished. When she tried to gather the shreds of her dignity she found there were none left, and so with bruised lips and the last of her resolve she picked up a bag in each hand and stumbled down the ramp to the muddy dock, and to the mule waiting there. She flung her last two bags on top of the pile and collapsed on the seat next to the driver, who could have been purple and furry for all she had eyes to notice.

Her gaze was focused on Serenity, growing smaller in the distance as they motored away down the docks. The golden light of her open bay illuminated the man still standing there at the top of the plank, motionless, watching her leave. Inara watched back until she couldn’t see him anymore, until Serenity was only a burnished glow in the night. Then they turned a corner, and she faced forward, put her hand in her pocket to clutch a plastic dinosaur, and wept until she was numb.

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There was wetness on Inara’s cheeks that had nothing to do with steam or bathwater, and she realized that she was weeping again, and that Essa had moved down behind her to wrap both arms and legs around her, to brace her up while she cried. Inara leaned back against the warmth of her friend’s slick skin, suddenly cold despite the maintained heat of the bathing pool.

By the swollen feel of her throat and eyes she’d been crying for a while. She raised her hands to grip the thin forearms crossing over her breasts, and leaned her head back to rest on Essa’s shoulder, pressing her cheek to Essa’s, tears still rolling down to mix with the bathwater.

“I’m sorry,” Inara began. “I just...” “Will you stop apologizing? I’ve heard that saltwater baths are very good for the skin.” Essa rocked her gently, her body a surprisingly strong comfort to Inara for being so slight in frame. “You never spoke about them before.” “I couldn’t. I had to forget.” “Yes, I can see that worked marvelously,” Essa commented dryly, but not without kindness.

“Little things remind me. Foolish things. The lanterns on the gondolas, the fireflies in the mural. Even you, sometimes. You have pieces of them. Zoe’s bluntness. Kaylee’s optimism. Mal’s honor.” Essa was quiet for a moment. “They were your family.” “They were, for a year and a day.” “Then let me ask you this. Why did you run away?” Inara let the question sink in, accepting for the first time that she had, in fact, run away. That she had been running away since Sihnon. A thousand miles, and never get anywhere. “They were so strong, all of them. They were a single unit, often dysfunctional, but solid. Interdependent. For all their talk of independence. It’s a dangerous thing.” “That’s your answer?” Essa shook her head. “The way I see it, Inara, that’s a reason to grab on with both hands and never let go.” Inara felt as though she had been slapped--she felt not the pain but the physical blow. “But...don’t you see? It tied me to them. It took everything I had to be strong enough to break away with my own self intact. My own...sovereignty.” “And yet here I am, with you, which makes me think you need people more than you can admit to yourself.”

Inara frowned, a pain in her head to match the one in her chest. “And don’t think I wanted to need you, either...oh, I’m sorry, that came out all...I didn’t mean I don’t want you here...”

Essa disentangled their limbs to move around in front of her, taking Inara’s face in her hands and searching her eyes. She looked for a long time, until Inara dropped her gaze to the surface of the water. She felt somehow foolish, as though this young woman, so much younger than she, was finding fault with her decisions and actions, with her very philosophy.

“I think I understand you, finally,” Essa said slowly. “Why you hold yourself apart. I might not have known your circumstances, but I know you, Inara. I watch you. I see you, in a way that all your adoring masses don’t. And I think you’re a fool.” Inara blinked. Essa leaned forward to press a soft kiss to Inara’s lips, lingering and full of love, and deference.

“Come on,” Essa said firmly, taking Inara’s hand and leading her from the bath. “We’re both pruney, and you need to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow, and you don’t want puffy eyes for the Masque.” Inara was docile as Essa dried her with a towel, then combed and braided her long hair for her and coerced her into bed. When Essa slid in beside her she didn’t object, though it was not a common occurrence for them. She let Essa’s hands drift over her body, light as air, and her lips pay reverent homage to her flesh, and though the heart-racing passion was missing Inara found she didn’t mind, and Essa seemed to know and didn’t mind either. It was an appreciation of each other, a distraction. It was something true, without artifice or excuse.

And when Inara drifted off to sleep, limbs tangled with Essa’s, her ear pressed to Essa’s breast, she allowed herself the aching luxury of admitting that it was someone else’s heartbeat she wanted, but she was glad of Essa’s all the same.

In her dreams, Serenity flew through the black, and Inara flew with her. ~End Part One~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ feedback is shiny!