Disclaimer: Joss is Boss. Just playing in his sandbox.
A/N: I'll stop screwin' around with Mal and Inara soon, I promise. This was hard, mainly because so much of Inara's voice is one that I had a lot of difficulty with. She's a tough cookie that woman. Anyway, this is Inara's PoV, Very Post-BDM, MalInara, follow up to Foretelling though you don't really need to read that to get this. Italics equal flashback, though they aren't generally in order. Read, enjoy, let me know what you think.
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For the first time Inara feels dirty.
Her skin is too tight and her bones are as heavy as her heart and she feels as though every inch of her being were covered with a thin layer of ash or dust that leaves a bitter taste on her tongue.
He was exactly the sort of client she had missed during her long dormant months out in the Black.
Young, pleasant, well mannered, not at all unattractive, she had known him for years.
He smiled as she walked towards him and she thought it could have been a scene out of a Cortex film, the beautiful woman walking up the rose lined path, bird-songs echoing in the distance, breaking the silence of the sun filled morning. It was almost enough to make her want to smirk.
She chose to smile instead.
The bay is empty upon her return to the ship and she can't help the feeling of relief that swells from within. The walk to her shuttle seems endless and she has never known her steps to feels as heavy as they do now, nor as slow, even the maroon silk around her body is a burden, chafing against her in a way it never has before. Her legs shake and her mouth trembles even as she steps into the relative safety of her shuttle.
The lake side was beautiful, vaguely reminding her of the training house she had left behind. Summer tress bent gracefully on the water banks and the breeze, carrying the scent of the gardens below, swept into the open room.
"I had forgotten how lovely your home is." She said her voice light and up lifting, fitting the easy atmosphere of the sunlit room.
"Pity," he said a small smile on his features that forewarned his compliment, "For I have not forgotten how beautiful you are."
'Mal is always so difficult to read.' She thought without warning. Some thing in her chest constricted and she found herself silent almost a second too long.
She laughed lightly and thanked him. She focused on the view a bit longer.
The water is hot as she stands beneath the showerhead. She can see her skin grow red beneath the stream but she does not adjust the temperature. Outside her clothing lies in a disorganized pile, her jewelry, so normally stored away upon removal, was tossed onto her mattress, forgotten like the like the great basin that tradition called for after meeting with a client.
She works vigorously now; hands lathered with the generic soap the rest of the crew uses—she ran out of her normal toiletries sometime ago.
"It ain't so bad." He said absentmindedly, fingers tracing a path from her shoulder to her elbow.
"What is?" she asked, voice somewhat muffled against his shoulder.
"You, being all normal and the like. Man could get used to not being upstaged by his woman…"
She laughed.
"Hey, I was talkin' serious here. Don't gotta go laughing at me!" he was trying to sound authoritative and indignant, the effect was ruined somewhat by the look of him, sleepy eyes and mussed hair. She laughed harder, the sound filling the dim lit corners of her shuttle.
"Stop that now 'Nara or I'll have to pull rank."
When that failed he decided to kiss her into submission. He was met with little resistance.
She works it through her hair, up and down her arms, everywhere; until the bar is gone and the water is cold, yet even then the smell of sweat, jasmine and wine is persist.
He chose the scent.
Walking in uninvited as usual, quiet and serious, he picked the purple bottle from her vanity and opened it. His face was set with a sort of determination that couldn't go unnoticed and something is inside of her ached. She could make out the little lines around his eyes, the faint scar that ran just below his hairline, the sternness of his mouth—he looked weary and noble and she kissed him, partly in thanks, partly in disbelief.
"Always liked this one on you." He said simply when he pulled away, his voice unwavering, and took her hand.
She can think only of one other occasion when this feeling has taken so strong a hold of her that she abandons all decorum. It was morning she met him coming out of Nandi's room, when he cracked her heart cleanly in two, and reduced her to nothing more than a woman, heartbroken and forlorn on the floor of her room.
The only difference is that now she has brought the feeling on herself and it is a thousand times worse, a kind of pain she has not known in its entirety in the sum of her years—something deep and unmoving, something that has striped from her some great foundation and everything inside of her is as turned about now as Mal always claimed she makes him.
Something was wrong.
She could smile and laugh accordingly, but he kissed her and something inside of her protested, revolted, demanded she'd put a stop to it at once. She didn't.
He kissed her and she forced her eyes shut, forced her body to relax, forced herself to remember that this was no different than any other client before Miranda (before Mal).
But he kissed her, his hand on her cheek, and she couldn't help but notice that his palms were soft.
She not sure when the tears come, but they do. There was never really any doubt they would but it still surprises her when she looks in the gilded mirror on the far side of her shuttle and sees them.
Again she thinks of the Cortex romance, the weeping lover with twin trails of glistening tears, though it is by no means the image she sees. Instead she sees a fragile creature, red eyes and a red nose, tears that fall in unpredictable patterns down her face, which looks haggard and pinched in her eyes. She sees none of the great beauty that is so often praised, though she is sure it was there once.
There are shadows under her eyes, a harsh shade in the middle of the warm hued silks that adorn her shuttle.
She's not sure how the candle holder comes to be in her hand but it is. And though she can't be sure she threw it, she is mesmerized by the sound it makes as it strikes the mirror, creating spider web cracks throughout.
She doubted she would ever know who it was the initiated the first kiss. All she would ever know was that it took place on the cat walk, while all of Serenity slept, and he tasted of Kaylee's homemade wine (in all truth they both did, but that detail did not demand much attention in her memory).
She didn't remember what he smelled like or what the conversation had been prior to the kiss, except for the most random mention of River and Jayne acting odd.
What she did remember was simple: his hand caught in her hair, his fingers against her throat, the coarseness of his shirt beneath her hands.
Something has changed.
Her skin is tight and the smell of sex persists in her nostrils and she can't stop the shaking in her body.
She is filled with the sense of betrayal, against Mal, against herself and the feeling twists and turns inside her stomach.
All around her are memories of what she is has been all her life and who she has become. There are memories of a thousand clients and hundreds of nights spent with him and something inside of her wishes he had fought her when she first told him she was going back to work.
There's something in her that hates him for allowing this to happen almost as much as it hates him for causing it.
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End
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Feedback is Love