The bar was, for lack of a more genteel word, frightening. The moon they'd stopped on was just big enough to afford Inara some business, but just small enough that the local color was still in force wherever you looked. Local color, which in this case meant local thugs, who filled the seats at the bar and the few tables around it and looked askance at the strangers in their midst. It was her own fault, she supposed, for meeting them here instead of going back to Serenity, but she didn't think she really merited the amount of attention she was getting from the people in the bar.
"How do I always end up in these places with you?" she hissed to Mal as another dirty old cowboy whistled in her direction, taking his arm and steering him away. "And why do you never warn me it's going to be like this before I show up?" Jayne glanced up from the pool shot he was about to take and cackled. "I didn't ask you," she said, going to stand next to Kaylee.
Bombay, India
12 March 1898
3:30 pm
The carriage pulls up to the front of the colourful house and Will has to jiggle the door handle twice before it actually clicks open. Sighing heavily, he clambers out, dragging a satchel behind him, and holds the door for Rose to do the same. Flicking the brim of his fedora with his finger, he wrinkles his nose at the shower of dust that falls from it, confirming the suspicion that if he shook his coat out he'd leave a sizeable pile of dirt behind. Occupational hazard, he thinks ruefully, glad he's trained himself not to remember that the filth coating both of them is actually the dust of centuries-old bones and blood. "After you, luv," he murmurs, shouldering the bag and gesturing for his wife to precede him.
content