Property

By Mona

Rating: R, for violence and some gore.

Spoilers: Nothing in particular.

A/N: 1) This was inspired by a visual of Zoe from The Message. I think you’ll figure out which one. . .

2) I also assumed that the Mudders in Jaynestown were pretty much the norm for slaves/indentured servants (the line seems blurry in the Firefly ‘verse) and considered a possible reason that Mal does not have Zoe come with them. . .

3) Zoe is the only crew member whose last name we never know and who never talks about her life before the war. . .

4) Raiden is the Japanese god of lightning. I know it’s not Chinese but I couldn’t resist the image and figured that many Asian cultures were assimilated into the Firefly world.

Feedback is my lifeblood!!!! (mona1347@livejournal.com)

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Their masters didn’t provide nearly enough food for their "indentured workers” and her momma was gettin’ too old to work so hard all day at the Lightning Plant and then try to find a way to make sure her children got enough. That’s why Zoe was out hunting in the brush for that night’s dinner under the jagged white electric light crisscrossing the sky when Alliance soldiers, fresh from a successful battle with the taste of blood still on their lips, swept into the backwater slave-town and blazed their way through the populace. Apparently someone got a report of Independent activity on Raiden. For the Alliance, it was enough to justify the bodies in the streets.

Zoe doesn’t remember much of what happened between then and when she rose up from Raiden for the first and last time, terrified of the deadly electricity slicing through the air around the ship. The Alliance didn’t much care what happened to a 19 year old slave-girl with a dirty face and calloused hands and no family left or even a last name. No one was looking for her. No one missed her or claimed her.

The owners wrote off the whole town as a loss and played nice with the Alliance. Anyone who survived got Off-World as soon as possible. So s