Moira was a Companion.

She had no real memory of her life before Sihnon. Just flashes of a dusty existence - a woman crying, a man with a bag of silver, and a long space flight.

Her name hadn't been Moira then, but none lived who might recall it. Moira she became, her red hair making some whisper about the Irish on Earth That Was. She never knew what Irish was, and she didn't much care. History did not interest her; the future did.

She was a Companion, a member of the Guild, trained to mystify and seduce. She was beguiling, entrancing, obedient...respectable.

She got tired of it. Downright sickened by the spangles and satin. She didn't want to sit through another tea ceremony or practice her dance any longer.

She left the central planets, where war talk was all the rage and no one really missed her. Her graduating class at the Academy had been the largest the Guild had ever certified, or would certify until the Unification War ended.

She was restless, anxious to put her skills to some use besides the endless transactions between man and woman, woman and woman. She knew she could live a life of excitement and still have something of the Companion about her. After all, what did they teach at the Academy but artful deceit?

She changed her name, something simple and sweet. Maria.

She traveled and learned how to use different kinds of weapons, learned how to disable communications systems, learned that she liked homemade whiskey and that she didn't like the fancier stuff.

She met dozens of men, and far fewer women. She intrigued the gunmen and pilots who were never in charge, and all she had to do with their captains was rub against them to make them do what she wanted.

She stopped on a border planet where the terraforming had been successful but the
merchant class hadn't. It was a rural planet with sparse population, which Maria had chosen precisely for its obscurity. She let the ship leave without her because she found a mark she couldn't pass up.

Maria married Trevin Quenan. The bride wore white and the groom blushed. It was the social event of the season, though the bride's side was a bit...bare.

They lived in Trevin's "palace," called such because of the extra two rooms (none of the locals had more than two rooms). He was from the "rich" family, called such because they had two horses and forty cattle. The locals told her it was called Shadow.

Trevin died of unknown causes. Unknown, anyway, to the local "medic."

Maria became Rachel.

Rachel met Evan at New Melbourne, when she stopped there with a salvage crew she met on Verbena. Verbena had been flourishing then, a thriving hub of Independents being trained, shipped out, wined, dined - until the Alliance invaded, it was thought that Verbena could be the capital planet of a new system. New Melbourne had none of that, it was just a way station for disreputable types and a decent hiding place for Independents training for the war.

Evan was training as a pilot, a rather elite ambition during the early part of the war. He was young and oh, he was pretty. In his uniform and out of it.

He happened to come from a wealthy family on Ariel, and had emptied his personal accounts into cash when he ran off to join the Independents. Rachel found that out and attached herself to Evan's side whenever possible.

Rachel didn't marry Evan. Evan kissed her and it turned out she used too much lipstick or something. Anaphylactic shock, she learned later. Oh well.

It was about that time that she first heard bu huihen de pofu in reference to herself.

Rachel took the money and changed her name to Elsa. Elsa dyed her hair blonde and wooed Alliance officers on leave on Osiris.

Siobhan, a freed slave girl on a border moon. Siobhan acted the shepherdess maiden, bedding four or five duped bumpkins and scoring money off illegal livestock trades with each of them.

Alicia, who killed three men in a raid and nearly lost her foot to a shot gun spray.

Rainbow, who caused another casualty, this time a woman. Something about adultery.

Fiona, who slept with half of a monastery and survived an Alliance air raid.

She tripped through the universe as one woman after another, each name meaning a new
personality, a new past, and a refreshed future.

She was Simone, Antonia, Trudy, Genevieve.

----

And finally Yolanda.

Yolanda ended up on Bellerophon just as the Unification War ended and the 'verse seemed to
settle some. She was tired, ready to put her feet up for a bit and not worry about the next
mark. She had enough to last her a good spell, and if she was smart she could play this part for quite some time.

She was at a party, a soiree celebrating Unification (one of the endless parties conceived
just for that reason; Yolanda found herself yearning a bit for independence again just so she
wouldn't have to smile, curtsy, or blush at another one of these things).

Durran Haymer was rumored to be as classy as he looked, but also as cruel as the men in
his class who often had such a reputation. Yolanda didn't much care; she'd been handled by cruel men and she had defeated them. Hell, she sometimes thought if she had a reputation
herself, it could be for cruelty, too.

He asked her to dance and stepped on her toes twice. If he had a cruel streak, it likely didn't eclipse his clumsiness, she thought. He didn't blush when she looked up at him, just let a ghost of a smile trace his lips and gripped her waist tighter.

He brought her champagne and asked to see her again when the night ended. His voice was
hesitant, but his eyes were bold. He wanted her and had already begun to revere her.

She accepted the date, but didn't open her legs the first night, or the fifth, or the
twentieth.

Sure'n he was rich and handsome to boot, but he was also kind; he looked at her like she was a goddess on a pedestal, and not just a piece of meat. If she could have remembered it, she would be reminded of the way her father had looked at her mother. No man had done that with Yolanda.

Durran whispered to her that he would protect her, worship her. Under the brilliant night sky on Bellerophon, she could almost believe him. She let him kiss her and kissed him back.

He proposed on a winter day, in harsh sunlight filtered through a cold atmosphere. His eyes
bored into hers. "Bao bei, be mine. Let no one come between us for the rest of our
lives. Marry me, Yolanda."

She asked him to give her time. She went to her own modest home and spent the night cataloging all the reasons she should refuse, move on, take a new name and become someone else. She had no real reason to stay, after all.

Except...his eyes. His voice. His arms around her and his lips pressed to hers. The way he
pulled out her chair at meals, the way he warned her about puddles or icy steps. She tried
to think of being cooped up in a cage, tried to imagine what it would be like to never see the
'verse from the business end of a gun again, and defeat the one who foolishly pointed it at her.

She wanted to be independent and free.

But what would that life be like, after witnessing pure happiness? Only Buddha knew. Yolanda
did not want to find out.

She looked in the mirror and scrunched up her face, pulled at her lips. Tried to envision a
different person. She had, however, become Yolanda, and she loved Durran Haymer.

So she married him.

Bliss was Bellerophon, and its beautiful oceans. Water as far as the eye could see, and
floating cities that surpassed anything she'd seen on the central planets. It reminded
her in its tranquility of Sihnon, which may have been what led to the end of her time there.
After all, she had escaped Sihnon and its rules, regulations, lifestyles.

She lasted as long as she could. Durran was worth trying for, she told herself in the moments
that were the worst for her, days when she could not just get in a ship and fly to the next star in the sky (and those days were legion). He did as he promised and worshipped her. Somehow, it was never enough - she wanted more than his devotion, wanted more than to be his goddess.

One might have said she wanted to be his companion.

In the end she planned an elaborate escape, made to look like a kidnapping.

"You are the stars to me, bao bei, but I need more," she whispered in Durran's ear while
he slept that final night.

She flew off into the night, with a bodyguard named Heinrich.

Who died by other hands than hers.

-----

She didn't take a name the next time. Next time she just wooed and wiled her way into the
arms of dupe after dupe. Rutting fools, all of 'em.

Infinite possibilities in an endless 'verse. That was the motto she'd heard in a class back at the Academy (a place she was sometimes sure was only a dream). She intended to sample
as many as she could before....

Before....

She didn't finish the thought.

A year passed and she finally chose a name. She was Elizabeth for a spell, Ziyi, Samantha.

The woman who had once been Yolanda found work with some men who flew a salvage freighter. She told them her name was Saffron. Real pretty, one of them said, as his hands cupped her ass. Like she hadn't heard that before.

One after another, men met her, fell for her, and fell at her feet. Did it matter if she let them
all get up or not?

She never would have thought that ensnaring Malcolm Reynolds would end with her in a gou cao de trash bin on the last planet she ever wanted to come back to.

-----

Inara had been wrong; the Feds never came for her, and she was stuck breathing rancid air that was quickly depleting while she felt around for wires to pull or a panel to disable.

Wo cao, she thought, biting back the words so as not to waste the air. She was fumbling
and feeling nothing but cold, slimy steel. Until her nails caught on a hinge, and she pulled,
and she yanked the wires. No finesse in this job, clearly.

She fell back from the force of it, and it was such a relief to lie down that she didn't move.
When she came to, the bin was open above her and the starry night sky mocked her. She climbed out, now free of the bin, but at a loss for her next move.

In a desert, far from civilization, but not from Durran.

"Hello Yolanda."

She knew she was out of it, she hadn't heard his footsteps or even the mechanical whirring of a ship approaching.

"Is that actually your name?" He laughed caustically under his breath. "I suppose it isn't.
I should have known, but then, I think we were both too careless the last time."

He walked over and knelt next to her. Stroked her cheek and brushed her hair from her face.

"Bao bei, I want to take you away from all this. I want to take you home and care for
you."

Her eyes filled with tears as he spoke and she resisted the urge to spit at him. Not that she had the spit to do it, or really the strength.

He pressed his lips to her forehead and sighed. "I've heard so many stories, so many tales about you.
You're quite the infamous tramp, did you know?"

She coughed, trying to say something to him, trying one last time to seduce him. She smelled like the inside of that trash bin but it was worth a shot, right?

"I want you still, Yolanda. To wrap you in my arms and feel the sun on our faces. I want you on Bellerophon, with me."

She thought of the pedestal he'd once had her on. Oh, how are the mighty fallen.

"But I cannot trust you, and that's a deal breaker."

She struggled to speak and her voice cracked as she tried to plead with him. "Durran, please...."

"No, don't beg. It's so unbecoming."

The lights went out, and her Companion training, her years amongst the stars flashed in the darkness. She could hear Malcolm Reynolds telling her, if someone tries to kill you, do the same.

Then she heard no more.

Durran Haymer took his Yolanda home.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

THE END

Chinese from:
http://emungere.compromisingpositions.net/firefly/firefly_dictionary.html

(please pardon my crudity - I used only expressions from the show)

Bu huihen de pofu - "Remorseless harridan"
Gou cao de - "dog f-ing"
Wo cao - "I'm f-ed"
Bao bei - "treasure"