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It had been nearly four decades since she'd considered The Rim her home and major region of business, but whenever Inara had the good fortune of stepping into a charming pub or general store in a dusty little town, a tiny part of her felt like that young woman again, off on a desperate adventure and clinging to every Companion guideline by the skin of her teeth. Half of the appeal was the rush of having admiring eyes on her—one did not enter this career without wanting a little bit of attention—but the other half was the nostalgia. The memories of hand carved ducks and tacky porcelain plates and the thrill of dipping a toe into less than legal activities.
The clients she took these days liked that about her; liked that she just lifted the hem of her dress to step over the mud and followed them into towns where they conducted business for their cattle transport empires or mining operations or agricultural corporations. Most of them were men who had grown up on the Rim, made fortunes out of their home planets, and been breaking their backs in fields or mineshafts during the years their contemporaries on the Core were attending balls and contracting Companions. They were the directors of those enterprises now, and could now reap the rewards offered to rich men, but often still had a hand in the day to day of their companies and liked to bring Inara along and see her shine on their homeworlds. It was a rare skill for Companions, still, despite the Training Houses springing up on the Rim. The Companions who found themselves renowned for their composure in the rougher towns of the 'Verse were almost all personally trained by Inara herself.
She ordered a bowl of stew and an iced tea at the counter and cooed appropriately at the pastries available.
“Maybe after lunch,” she said with a smile to the girl working the register, and stepped away to let the next customer order.
The diner wasn't too busy—it was late afternoon in the middle of the week, after all, and Inara scanned the room for a nice quiet seat. By the window? She did like people watching in towns like this, but…
Sitting at a small round table by the wall, tucking in to a plate of rarebit, and dressed in a navy work shirt and familiar tan pants with suspenders like she'd stepped back in time, was Malcolm Reynolds.
Maybe she shouldn't have been so certain so quickly, but she knew it was him despite the years gone by. She'd not seen him since the day Serenity had dropped her and all her trunks off at the Training House, with the crew standing on the ramp. She couldn't think too much about that day without seeing Kaylee's tears in her mind. Even Simon had risked the exposure to say goodbye, standing near the door controls and leaning on his crutch, still recovering from the bullet wound in his thigh.
Mal's hair had gone gray, but she would have been more surprised if it hadn't; he'd never struck her as someone to cling to youth via hair dye. Judging from the position of a strap around his head, one eye had been lost along the way, but all in all, the last thirty something years had been kind to him, considering that they could have had him dead in a ditch decades earlier. Otherwise, he looked near about the same as he had that departure day, though that could have been chalked up to his unchanging wardrobe.
“Mal?”
He jumped, one hand went to a gun that wasn't there, and then he turned his head to fix her with his good eye, whereupon his mouth dropped open.
“Inara! I—uh…hello. Uhm—”
“Can I join you?” She pointed at the other chair.
“Sure, sure,” he gestured towards it and made a move like he was thinking about getting up and pulling the chair out but decided against it.
“It's been a while,” she said once she was seated. He snorted.
“You could put it that way.”
A staff member brought Inara's iced hibiscus tea to her, even though it was clear that orders were usually picked up at the counter. Inara thanked her and sipped at it mindlessly. She could hardly even tell if it was good or bad; the fact she'd stumbled upon Malcolm Reynolds in a diner was overshadowing everything else.
“You're in town on business?” Inara asked as he continued eating. He shook his head and she waited for him to finish chewing.
“No, I live on this rock these days.”
“You? Settled down planetside?”
“Well, I sure ain't shooting like I used to.” He tapped the leather of his eyepatch and she noticed it was tooled, with a few embossed stars scattered across the surface.
“The wound pushed you into retirement?”
“Not exactly. Just one thing in a long run of bad luck.” He paused. “Well, not all bad.”
“Oh?”
“I lost the eye and then Zoe got pregnant with her and Wash's first critter and the engine started shaking in a way that sounded real terrible and wouldn't stop all in about half a year, so it seemed like our flying time was running out. I could still hold my own in a gunfight but it's harder to get away with things if every witness can say oh, yeah, there was a fella missing an eyeball.”
“That makes sense.”
“Yeah. It felt better not to tempt fate too much, and Haven was good a place as any to land.” He'd clearly long come to terms with his lot. “And you? What brings you out here?”
“A client.”
“You're still seeing clients?”
“Yes?”
“Didn't think the career lasted that long, is all.”
“It changes,” she admitted. There are always clients who want something different than the average. Widowers and divorcees who aren't actually interested in sharing a bed with a woman their daughters' age. I do longer term engagements now. I've spent most of the last two years with my current client.”
“Huh. Seems like you really gotta make sure you like the guy,” Mal said.
“I do. It's a wonderful arrangement, and not so tiring as I get older. I don't have to stay out late quite as often as I did when I was younger. But it doesn't always work out, of course.”
“Of course,” Mal echoed.
“Dare I ask you how you lost the eye?”
“Dunno. Sounds like the sorta question you're taught not to ask in polite society.”
“I suppose that's true.”
Inara's order of stew arrived, accompanied by two thick slices of crusty bread.
“Good pick,” Mal said, pointing at her meal with his fork. “They know what they're doing here.”
“So, what does Mr. Malcolm Reynolds do on Haven? Sherriff?”
He shot her a very brief but shockingly intense look of rage.
“Never worked for the law, never will. But I have taken care of things for folks on occasion.”
“Things like…?”
“Haven's got plenty of people on it who torment whoever they want, same as any other place. Someone has to take care of that when necessary.”
“That sure sounds like your brand of justice,” Inara said drily. “Does it pay the bills?”
“Huh? Of course it don't. That's an evening activity.”
“Of course.”
“I got a ranch now. 300 head.”
She pointed down at her stew.
“This yours?”
“Could be!” He laughed. “Haven's got ranching and mining, and ranching was something I knew how to do and had the coin to start doing.”
“It's hard work; I know that.”
“Hard work, money's always tight, people trying to undercut you all the time, got people working for you who need housing and feeding. Felt familiar, most days.”
“But there's a roof over your head, right?”
“More roof than a man needs! Frankly, the house didn't need to be all that big, but I got people who don't live with me in and out of my space, bothering me at all hours, and they need places to sleep if they gab until it's dark out.”
“Sounds like a real hardship,” Inara said, grinning.
“Go on, eat your stew while it's hot.”
He wasn't kidding about the diner doing a good job, and Inara let herself enjoy the food and the quiet company.
“It was a grenade,” Mal said suddenly after a lull in the conversation. She almost asked what he was talking about. “One of them fancy type Glücklich Jiā FlashKills on a remote detonator. We scooped up the outer canister on our way back to the ship and Kaylee makes signal jammers for 'em now. But we didn't have that then. It shot Zoe's hearing to hell and tore Jayne's left arm clean off, too. Sent a few bits through my leg, for good measure.”
“Even Simon couldn't fix you three?”
“He's a genius but he ain't a miracle worker. Way he tells it, I'm lucky it only took my eye and not parts of my brain. You never saw something like it, Inara. It was the sort of thing you see in war. Jayne's arm just came right apart…like…pulled pork.”
“Mal, please. We're eating.”
“Jayne was so captivated with lookin' at it that I think he didn't even have time to go into shock.”
“Mal—”
“Sorry, sorry. Just…thinking of what I need to tell you. Book's gone. Not from the grenade. Peaceful-like, in his sleep.”
“Oh. I…I guess…I guess I expected that.”
“He must've been 'round eighty,” Mal told her. “But he never really told us anything about himself, right up to the end. You shoulda seen that funeral service. They gave the miners the whole day off for it.”
“Well…that's sweet. I'm glad he had such a community at the end. A flock, I guess.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Well, we all settled fine. No one went buggy over living planetside, not even Zoe.”
“Everyone's on Haven? No one…went off with another crew or back to their homeworlds?”
“Nope. Well…sometimes someone would take a job offworld now and then. Not anymore, but it used to happen. Aside from that, I've had to deal with all of them for the past forty years, more or less.”
Mal finished his rarebit and Inara finally asked what she'd been wanting to know for nearly forty years.
“Were you in love with me?”
“I think I was.”
“You let me leave,” she reminded him. He sighed.
“You were set on leavin'.”
“You didn't ask me to stay.”
“Would you have stayed, if I'd'a asked?”
“I don't know,” Inara admitted. Mal nodded like he'd known she would say that. He probably had. “Is there a chance now? For us?” She wondered.
He hesitated for so long that it began to feel like he was working out the logistics of their potential relationship in his head. Instead he took another swig of his drink and shook his head.
“I'm a married man now.”
“Oh!”
“On purpose, this time,” he said with a smile. “If you remember—”
“I remember,” she said, managing to huff out a laugh. “Well, congratulations.”
“Thanks. Book insisted he be the one to officiate. Frankly, I think he used every illness he ever had to try and guilt us into tying the knot before he passed. But it ain't been so bad.”
“Any children?”
“None of our own. We needed all hands on deck to wrangle the Washburnes, never mind the Cobbs.”
“I assume the Tams were perfect angels.”
“No Tams,” Mal said immediately. “No such thing as a Tam on this rock.” He said it with the flat firmness that told her there were definitely Tams down the street.
“Ah.”
“Got a few absolute hellion Fryes running around, though,” he admitted after a moment, and that did shake a real laugh out of her.
“I'd love to hear more about them one day, but…if you have some place to be…”
“Work never stops,” Mal acknowledged. “You staying planetside for long?”
“I hadn't planned to,” Inara admitted. “Tobias—the client—doesn't like spending time on Haven if he doesn't have to.”
“His loss,” Mal said with a shrug. “We've got good people here. But if you're heading offworld, you might want to swing by the other rocks in this system. See the girls. Petaline is still running that house.”
“I heard.”
“That planet's pretty nice now. Jonah's the sheriff.”
“I'll see if I can swing a trip over there,” Inara said.
Mal nodded and stood with some difficulty and a grimace and Inara was startled to remember that despite the familiarity, it still had been half a lifetime since they'd last seen each other. He was an old man now, no matter that he dressed like he had in his 30s or seemed to act the same. She wasn't young anymore either, as the two separate stints as House Priestess and the older client base proved. She wasn't sure if she wanted to cry or ask him to sit back down. Was he waiting for her to ask? Did he think about that brief time when a Companion rented his shuttle and wonder if she’d loved him too? Had she passed through his mind on his wedding day? Part of her selfishly hoped so, but a larger part truly hoped she hadn’t.
“Well, I ain't going anywhere,” he told her. “And you know where to find me, now. There's always a guest room with fresh sheets at the K64 Ranch.”
“I'll remember.”
“You can come see Book. He's under a nice old tree.”
“I'd like that.”
“If you can't remember the name, it's the ranch with the old Firefly out in a pasture.”
“Of course it is.”