rivendellrose | and another!

No, I'm not really on this much of a roll tonight, I just thought I'd posted this and realized this evening that I hadn't.

Title: "The Black of Night"
Fandom: Firefly
Summary: Set post-series (and thus pre-Serenity, but it was written before I saw the movie, so I think I can safely say no spoilers), Inara ponders the night and the way it takes her back to the people she's left behind.
Comments: No warnings to speak of, except spoilers for 'Heart of Gold' and 'Objects in Space.'

From the surface of most Core planets, the stars couldn’t be seen clearly - there were too many lights, too many people. Glittering in the black like jewels lit from within, planets like Persephone and Ariel were too luminous with life to let the distant stars show their faces, and the darkness above looked bleak and empty. Much as she loved to visit them, beautiful as they were, Inara had never been comfortable on those worlds.

Sihnon was different. Smaller, more controlled, and more focused on simplicity, the cities on Sihnon were careful to control their levels of light pollution, retaining a faded view of the cosmos even in the largest cities. House Madrassa took this a step further, setting up their home outside the reaches of the city. From a business perspective, it led customers to view them as something special, something beyond the reaches of the hustle and bustle, and the companions themselves worked hard to retain that illusion within house and temple. Tradition, balance, and peace were the watch-words within the house, easing the customers into a sacred mindset entirely separated from their daily life in the city.

And late at night, after her customers were gone and her ritual duties completed, Inara could escape her rooms and watch the stars from her terrace.

The scent of jasmine and gardenia on the night wind carried her out there most nights, to sit on the stone ledge and watch the blackness and the patterns in the stars, the moon that brought back childhood memories, but she was ashamed to admit even to the night that her thoughts were rarely of family and young days before her companion training, or even her early days in the house, when training to be a companion was a childhood dream fulfilled. The distant stars shining above brought back other memories, of a ship far out in the blackness, and a crew of which she’d tried so hard not to become a part.

When the lights of a ship passed overhead, she smiled and thought of Kaylee, and wondered what the other woman would have said of that make and type of ship. To Inara, they were all the same, but she knew that to Kaylee they had individual personalities and quirks, soothed and cajoled into working in whatever way the sweet mechanic wished, like a small child teasing a puppy into learning a new trick. When an innocent young man walked into the temple, she saw echoes of Simon Tam in his overly-stiff walk and proud, nervous speech. When she saw a young woman flirting shamelessly in the city, or chattering with her friends with the careless abandon of youth, she thought of River, and mourned for the childhood that had been stolen from her, and hoped for all their sakes that Simon had made progress in healing her mind. And when she prayed to the ancestors and lit incense on the altars at night, she remembered Shepherd Book and his quiet, good-humored wisdom, and silently added each of her former friends to her prayers.

But among all the others, there was one name that came to her mind so often she felt it was written there in the stars, in black ink that only she could read. Every memory carried her back to Malcolm Reynolds, every star in the night sky might be the one he was bound for on another of his mad plots of petty crime, every wisp of incense curved toward the sky seemed to be seeking him. And if a customer arriving at the temple had his ear-length brown hair, his blue eyes, an echo of his devilish smile, Inara turned away, politely suggesting another of her sisters for their pleasure. To touch would be to dream, and to dream that would bring madness along with pain.

It was better here, she told herself - here his voice didn’t haunt her footsteps, here his eyes didn’t chase hers, here his scent didn’t linger in rooms. And yet she thought she caught it, sometimes - earth and musk amid the lighter scents of tea and incense and flowers - and she woke late at night sweating from dreams a controlled, proper companion shouldn’t have.

She tried not to give in, especially on those nights, but the stars would eventually call her out to the terrace, where the air was clear and she could breath freely, even though that freedom brought the memories of life out in the black.