desireearmfeldt

I (Inara)

Inara didn’t take anything with her when she left Serenity.  Nothing she hadn’t brought with her.  Nothing that wasn’t hers.  Nothing but her memories.

She didn’t even keep images of her fellow-travelers.  It would have been too much like the way she keeps a memento—a record—of each of her clients.  She didn’t want to think of them that way, she told herself.  Besides, a picture or even a vid never truly captures all the complexity and contradictions of a human soul.  Look at a portrait too often, and you remember the person in only one way.  Inara prefers the subtle intricacy of memory.

She took no keepsakes.  Her purpose was not to maintain ties across time and space, but to break them.  It would have been worse than foolish to undercut herself that way.

She didn’t take anything intentionally.  But as she unpacked her things in her new living quarters, she came across a blue hair-ribbon, slightly frayed at the edges.  Kaylee must have dropped or discarded it in Inara’s shuttle on some occasion when she came to have Inara do her hair and chat, woman to woman, about unimportant/important matters.

If the object had belonged to Mal, she would have thrown it away immediately.  But Kaylee. . .there was no harm in Kaylee.  No sharp edges or uncomfortable silences or traps or temptations.  To throw away this little scrap of cloth because it once touched her hair would be a ridiculous emotional overreaction.  Also, mean.

So the ribbon lies along the edge of the drawer in Inara’s jewelry box where her rings and other small things live.  A little faded, a little tattered.  A brave little bright blue smile.

II (Mal)

Inara didn’t leave a trace of herself behind when she left Serenity.  Easy for her to do, Mal realized, because she’d never left her mark on the ship in the first place.  She’d owned more far more bits and bobs than any two crew members put together, but she kept it all in her shuttle.  You’d never catch her leaving a book or a shawl just laying about the common room.  She never shed so much as a hairpin.  Easy, then, for her to disappear for good.

Or so you might think, but you’d be wrong.  Her voice, her bright clothes, her sharp wit, her gentle touch—those were soaked through and through his ship, his crew, like bloodstains only not so gruesome.  She was part of them, and leaving couldn’t erase her from their hearts.

He reckons that means she couldn’t scrub Serenity out of her own mind so easy, either.  Even if she wanted to, which is a question he’s never been able to make up his mind about.

He tries not to ponder it, though; especially not in the dog-watches when the emptiness of Black gets to seeming more hungry than peaceful.

Sometimes, though, he can’t help himself.  He pries open the little treasure-hole at the back wall of his bed and reaches out the one thing of Inara’s she didn’t take with her.  A hairstick: one of a pair, but he just lifted the one from her dressing-table, one time when he came by her shuttle to. . .talk, taunt, tease, test, he doesn’t even know.  He never did figure out how to talk to Inara, and in her bower it was always worse between them.

The hairstick is worth a decent bit of money, or the set would be, anyway: decorated with bits of gold and shinies, real delicately made, most likely all the way from Sihnon.  Probably there are people out there who’d pay for the fact that it’s touched Inara’s hair, which is ridiculous and creepifying, except he’s maybe not one to talk on that point.

He never meant to keep it, though.  He took it partly to prove he could, but mostly because he knew she’d know where it had gone.  He’d been looking forward to finding out what she’d do about it. . .but she did nothing, which is about the last thing he’d expected.  He was disappointed not to get a chance to spar over it, but he couldn’t just give the gorram thing back, because that would have turned the whole thing from a game into a. . .some kind of thing he ought never to have done in the first place.

He almost did give it back to her the day she left, but he was trying so hard not to let any bitterness creep into her send-off.  No call to start a fight, not then.  Besides, he’d left it lying out in plain sight in his cabin all day the day before, while he made sure everyone knew he was down in the engines getting a lesson from Kaylee.

If Inara had wanted her own back, she would have taken it.

That’s what he’s got to believe.