Twelve Stops And Home

Posted on Sat Feb 25th, 2023 @ 6:26pm by Cooper O'Reilly & Arlo & Audley & Daiyu

Mission: Home Sweet Wonderful Home
Location: Fortune's Echo - Drake's Estate - Three Hills
Timeline: November 16, 2517 - Simultaneous time with the hostage exchange

It took him all the way back to his first few years as a Shepherd - no further back still - to being home on Triumph, on the homestead. He'd made a great many mugs, cups and flasks of tea since those youthful years being part of a big family, listened to great many tales of woe, troubles and strife, ill-luck and bad judgement, but tea? Tea always started a conversation, tea was communal, tea helped in good times and bad. It felt both a little odd and yet utterly routine in the circumstances.

"Brew?" Cooper offered rather than asked, as he walked into engineering to hand two non-matching mugs to Drake's two men.

Audley and Arlo had been helping with Echo's repairs, trying to get things fixed faster than expected so that they could rush into the rescue as needed. So far, it looked hopeful, it not exactly promising. Cooper had chosen to stay with Daiyu on the old Firefly, even before Whit or Alden had asked him. It was, he told his brother Shepherd Whit, his turn to come to the rescue if such was needed, and besides, still healing from his wounds he made a better back-up plan and protector for one troubled young woman right now than a cog in the main event.

Arlo took the mug with a grin and gratitude, but Audley, his head and torso under a console, waved off the offer of refreshments for the moment muttering something about electrics and complications.

"Daiyu and I made some cookies," added Cooper, as he waited for the young woman to walk the last section of metal walkway to join them.

"There were more but Cooper ate them," Daiyu said wanly with a bowl in hand, "so help yourself."

Coop's cheeks pinked with an unexpected blush which made Arlo chuckle.

"Quality control, right?" Drake's engineer suggested and helped himself from the offered bowl. He took a moment to study Daiyu, really notice her, those scars and the way she presented herself to the world and then that contemplative expression shifted to one of gratitude. "Thanks for these," Arlo noted. "Me and Audley don't get home-baked goods that often."

"I baked them in the dirty oven in the galley," Daiyu said with flat candor. "I'm glad you like them."

Arlo spat the mouthful of cookie into his own palm and regarded the young woman with thoughtful concern. "Dirty?" He queried. "How dirty?"

"Dirty from the first batch that I burned to a cinder." Daiyu's almond eyes never blinked. "That's when Cooper insisted on helping me with the next batch. Do you like them?"

There was an embarrassed laugh and Arlo put the cookie bits back into his mouth. "Well, wouldn't be the first cooking accident in the Verse, lil lady," he noted. "I ain't a chef, neither. Audley here," he indicated his fellow worker. "Can muster up some pretty decent casserole though. Master of those fancy little cakes too. The ones that go in paper wrappers."

Some muttering emanated from beneath the console, but nothing coherently offered. Cooper gave the pair of boots a swift kick of a nudge, picking up on the undercurrent of cursing.

"I do like them," Arlo answered Daiyu properly then. "Thank you kindly, lil lady." He looked from the shepherd to the young woman and went fishing. "So you're crew on this here boat?" He asked. "What's your specialty?"

"I grow things and I kill people," Daiyu said plainly. "Sometimes it's not always appreciated."

"Imagine the killing less so than the growing things," Audley chimed in gruffly as he slid out from under the console to regard them all from his position, prone on the floor. "Though I guess that depends on if said folks are trying to kill you."

Daiyu shrugged. "Nobody seems to care much about that. They get scared either way."

Cooper took up a serious expression and a casual lean against the furthest, least used console in the corner. Back-up engineering for when everyone was stuck up here in the console, and patched heavily into the strung-together network by a long line of previous Echo engineers. Probably needed a refit, but there was never enough time or good enough skillset aboard lately for long enough. 'Besides, it works, right?' Seemed to be the go-to.

"Changes of state make folks scared," said Arlo in response to Daiyu. "Most of 'em like to tow some emotional line somewhere in the midsection, not too happy, not too sad. Definitely not too dead," he stated with a wry smile. "Me, I don't worry too much bout scared, but my pulse still quickens in a fight. I just don't show that on the outside." He picked up another cookie, watched Audley pull himself back under the console and then looked again to Daiyu.

"It ain't always a bad thing to make people feel a little afraid," Arlo pointed out. "Depending on what you want from them." A short pause, a cant of his head and, despite noting the dark frown brewing on Cooper's face, Arlo asked the young woman outright. "D'you ever get scared?"

A shadow fell across Daiyu's face as her dark almond eyes turned stone cold. "Not for myself..." A mirthless smirk ticked up the corners of her mouth. "Sometimes she becomes scared, though, and then..." An ominous, airy chuckle. "... it is others who become scared."

"She?" Asked Arlo, eyebrow raised.

"Best not to ask," came the muttered advice from Audley under the work station.

"So..." Arlo changed tack swiftly. "You grow things?"

Daiyu nodded. "Father Johns said I have the greenest thumb he'd ever seen." The mention of his name brought sorrowful emotions to her otherwise stone-cold face.

"Ah, a monastery?" Arlo noted the change of expression and took a leap of judgement that the good father was either dead or lost to the distant tailights of a certain Firefly transport. "Okay, so you're a gardener. You the one set up the hydroponics?" He'd noticed the bits of kit when he and Audley had been stripping down the coolant pipes. "We could help you set something up if you like."

"No, I did the aeroponics," Daiyu said with a shake of her head. "Chloe did the piping for the hydro. I... I just tend to them." Her lips pursed together into a frown. "For some reason... plants speak to me. I don't know why. They make more sense than people do. Than I do."

"Animals for me," interjected Audley. "Making more sense than people," he added by meagre way of further explanation.

"Understanding plants is a good gift to have," said Arlo, truthfully. "Anyone who keep veggies alive and well out there in the Black deserves all kinda of praise in my view." He grinned. "Me and Audley here can keep folks flying, but those folks are gonna get real hungry real fast if they don't have food to eat."

Daiyu shook her head. "Catalytic oxidation of the interior atmosphere is the most important function of spaceborne botany. Edible food is only an added perk." Confusion slowly crept over her face, though, as her words played back into her own ears. Had they come out of her mouth or someone else's?

"So more than just a gardener," Arlo noted with a casual intrigue. "Sounds like you can science some too, lil lady."

"Maybe so..." Daiyu looked as surprised as anyone. "I don't remember where I come from."

"Matters more where you're going than where you came from," said Cooper, breaking his silence for that epiphany.

Arlo raised an eyebrow, looked from Shepherd to botanist-monk-scientist and smiled. "Well, wherever it was, somebody taught you some science at some point during," he noted. "I'd call that a good thing, little miss. Like you rightly say, keeping the air breathable is a fine skill to be learning in this Verse. Well-paying one too, if you get the employer right."

"Captain Alden doesn't pay me..." It wasn't a complaint, just a statement of fact. "He keeps me fed and buys me gifts sometimes. But not like a Companion. He won't sleep with me."

"Room and board's a good place to start," noted Arlo, affably. Then quirked his tone around the next question. "Unless you're a Companion, sex doesn't normally come with the employment." He chuckled as Audley bumped his head on the console and muttered some cursewords. "Not usually."

Daiyu jumped at the loud bump. "Does Drake pay you for sex? I don't think he is a good man. He has darkness in his eyes."

"No," Drake's engineer and odd-job man answered, sounding far more entertained than irritated. "He doesn't pay us for sex. Not sure he needs to pay anyone." Arlo's expression was coloured with curiosity at Daiyu's last statement though. He smiled. "We all of us have darkness in us," he said, simply. "Sometimes we need that to survive in this world."

"Companions are the only ones get paid for sexing," Audley interjected, sliding himself out and up into a seated position, cross-legged on the bridge floor. "If you want that, y'all already have a Companion you can ask for her services. Mighty fine one too," he added, with sincerity.

"You think I should ask Kindra to lie with me?" Daiyu asked, looking confused. "I don't think she would. Only bad men try to and she isn't a bad man."

Arlo and Audley exchanged a short burst of expressions that said everything the two needed to trade between them. Then Audley exhaled softly and moved to check the next console panel, wires dangling messily from it as he worked down the line of the fault. Arlo addressed Daiyu with a calm tone.

"It's not up to me whether you should or not," Arlo said. "What I'm saying is that Companions take on clients - men, women - their choice, and they get paid to entertain those folks however they want to be entertained. So, if you wanted to," he paused and changed his initial mental phrasing to match Daiyu's own. "Lie with someone, then Kindra would be a safe person to ask. It's literally her job, and you could pay her, so as there's no awkwardness, see? You're not stealing that cuddle like the bad men do, you'd be agreeing a cuddle in advance and paying for it. Make sense?"

Daiyu furrowed her brow at Arlo. "I know how prostitution works. I'm not a child." She looked at Cooper. "Tell him what Shepherds think of prostitutes."

At her contrite response, Arlo burst into geniunely entertained laughter. "Fair enough," he told Daiyu. "My apologies then, young lady."

Cooper looked momentarily uncomfortable at his inclusion in the matter though. The good book said a lot of things about prostitution and most of it suggested said profession ended in hellfire, unforgiven and damned. He chose a verse that seemed to suit the moment and his desire to keep death, damnation and those firey hells away from Daiyu's mind for the moment. "'It is God’s will that you keep away from sexual sin as a mark of your devotion to him. Each of you should know that finding a husband or wife for yourself is to be done in a holy and honorable way'," Coop said, intoning the words clearly and respectfully.

Looking away from Cooper and back to Arlo, Daiyu said, "I don't know if I believe that anymore..." Her words trailed off as her voice turned shaky. "Holy... honorable... husband..." And then she covered her face with both hands to hide her crying face.

Internally and a little spilling out into murmured Chinese, Cooper cursed quietly and looked awkward.

Arlo, however, was intrigued by this turn of events and gently poked with a verbal prod for more information. "You've been married before, lil lady?" He asked outright. He'd clearly figured Daiyu all wrong here, guessing her age to be far younger than perhaps she truly was. Or maybe the Verse to have treated her more than unkindly at a tender age, the truth was only known to the woman herself.

"She was," Daiyu said, her voice both stoic and lilting without a hint of tears. "But he died. Killed by monsters."

Despite the fact Cooper was emphatically shaking his head, Audley asked. "Monsters?"

Her eyes were nearly feral now with the recollection. "She does not remember the monsters. She goes away whenever they come back. Her husband screamed for mercy. But monsters don't know mercy. Only anger, pain, passion." When she looked at Audley, there was very little human that was currently behind those eyes. "Have you never seen a monster?"

The warning signs were clear, loud and bold and screaming at them all from those eyes, and Audley froze. He'd just received a far deeper insight into Daiyu's troubled past that he'd ever wanted, and his guess hadn't landed far from the mark, though he didn't know it here and now. Arlo, however, was catching the underlying drift just fine simply from the combination of Cooper's demeanour and Daiyu's shift in pronouns.

"No miss," stated Audley, moving only when Arlo shoved him and then only too content to oblige in breaking the eye contact. Cooper meanwhile, was standing protectively besides the young woman with a ready mind to grab and hold if the need arose.

"I've seen what monsters can do," Arlo said, tone even, but eyes cold. "And if she can't remember them, I'd say that's a good thing. Sorry you lost him," he added, emotion barely wrapping the words. "But you - she - you're both safe here. No monsters."

Daiyu shook her head long and slow. "That's the thing about monsters," she said eerily. "You don't know they're there until it's too late."


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