GOING HOME

Firefly and all related elements, characters and indicia © Mutant Enemy Productions and 20th Century Fox Television, 2003. All Rights Reserved. All characters and situations—save those created by the authors for use solely on this website—are copyright Mutant Enemy Productions and 20th Century Fox Television.

Abject gratitude to Tara O’Shea/LJC for her incredibly useful Mandarin glossary and for being such a damned good writer.

ONE

He was home.

After years of blood and dirt on a dozen battlefields; after nine weeks in an Alliance holding camp being “processed for release” (nice words for crowded holding cells, pointless debriefings, long hours in the dark thinking about what might have been and what was); after a hard two months hitching rides on any ship that would let him work off passage, he was finally back on Shadow, back at the ranch. Home.

It was the same as when he’d left, and yet everything was different.

He stood in the doorway of the old house, hand resting against the rough wood of the door frame. He could feel the layers of paint against the skin of his palm, reminders of the times his ma had ordered him to whitewash the trim on the doors and windows—“Keeping it fresh-lookin’,” she’d said, “So folks won’t think we’re no `count fèhuà as don’t care about the upkeep of the place.” What she’d say now, if she could see the dust and cobwebs . . . . He could imagine her, fists against her hips and arms akimbo, shaking her head in disgust. “Men is pigs,” she’d have muttered and gone off for a mop and pail.

The long hallway back to the kitchen was dark and quiet. So too was the kitchen, its broad table covered with a layer of dust that told how long it’d been since it had fed a dozen hungry ranch hands. His boots made a cold hard sound on the wood floor as he walked slowly up the narrow staircase, first to his old room—bed made, things put away by his ma after he’d flown off in his hurry to fight for Independence—and then to his ma’s. Someone had stripped the sh