Past, Present and Future

Mal had called a crew meeting the second they were out of atmo, he was practically jumping with excitement. The rest of the crew ranged from complete ignorance to well Jayne who had to know the most.

“We have a job, providing I can trust her” he said as he gestured towards Cassidy who had discarded her robe and held her head high determined not to hide a thing. “Everyone I would like to introduce Mrs. Jayne Cobb”

He might have just announced he was going to sell Serenity for parts and get a job working for the alliance, it got the same reaction. Wash shouldn’t have been leaning back in his chair if the loud crash was any indication.

“Once again captain, my name is Cassidy and I would appreciate being called that, if you have some distaste to the name you can call me Cass but that is the only liberty I’m going to allow with what to call me. As for trusting me you can ask Jayne about that but I am not here to harm anyone, I just need help” Her voice had an edge of iron to it and Jayne found himself smiling if only because he was relieved that that hadn’t changed about her.

Mal knew she was trustworthy otherwise he wouldn’t have called a full crew meeting, complete with their renegade doctor and his sister, he just wanted to hear her say it. That and it helped that she didn’t appear to recognize any of them from wanted pictures, that or she just didn’t care. Either way was fine with him.

“Why Jayne you never told us you were married…not to mention” the shepherd tried to continue but was interrupted

“Not to mention you’re not exactly a husbandly type” Kaylee continued. She was amazed that the pretty lady sitting at their table was married to the giant of a man leaning against the wall oddly silent. She was trying to count how many times she had known Jayne to be with other women…it wasn’t a happy thought.

“Married….first he gets a town and now he has a wife” Simon wondered aloud hoping he would wake up from this nightmare soon.

“Of course he’s married, but she wasn’t supposed to come back after leaving and he wasn’t supposed to come to the rescue…or maybe they were” River mused to herself knowing that no one was paying her any attention.

“I didn’t figure it was any of yours business!” Jayne snapped from his corner.

Zoe was prepared so she just helped her sputtering husband up from the floor waiting for him to be able to form a coherent thought. Inara was really the only one who paid any attention to Cassidy. She stood walked around the table and kneeled beside Cassidy while reaching for her hand. “My name is Inara and it is a pleasure to meet you Cassidy. I must apologize for Mal here who turned this announcement into a spectacle hoping to get just this reaction, not caring for your feelings on the matter. I have known your husband for almost a year now and some of these people longer and I’m sorry to say that he never mentioned being married so you must forgive our reaction and help us to understand.”

Cassidy was grateful for this beautiful woman beside her and saw so much understanding in her eyes she almost wanted to believe they could be friends…almost. “I do not fault Jayne for not mentioning me, our marriage isn’t exactly a conventional one.” She directed her gaze to Mal, “Captain if you don’t mind I am willing to answer your questions now.”

Jayne felt the shepard glaring daggers at him, so he glared back and the man just slowly shook his head at him like he had done something wrong. Why the hell was everyone turning against him and taking her side before they have even heard the story? They knew him longer gorram it they should have more loyalty, but he knew how it looked…hell if he was in their position he would probably be thinking the same thing. Here’s a lovely young thing that this mercenary got lucky with at an auction and when things got tough he left her to rough it out on her own. Well they were wrong, he wasn’t the one that left.

Cassidy felt all eyes on her and she was never one to dance around a subject so she leaned forward and looked straight up at the captain, “I have hired you to help me retrieve my son.” And here they all thought it couldn’t get any more shocking.

“Where’s Evan?” Jayne roared as he jumped towards the table and turned her chair so it was facing him to continue, “where’s our son?” His voice had quieted but it still was going to take Cassidy some more time to completely get used to his rough man-handling ways again. Jayne’s mind was reeling, not seeing Evan with Cass he just assumed he was left planet-side while she dealt with whatever trouble she had stumbled across, but now…well he didn’t want to think of the possibilities.

“Did he just say their son?” Mal said to no one and in truth no one could answer him due to the state of shock they all were in, “He did just say son right? Now it’s not just a wife but a gorram son?” He was almost laughing at the absurdity half not believing until he saw the confirmation in Zoes eyes.

“Why does he get everything?” Simon could barely be heard with his head face down against the table.

“Excuse me I’m still trying to reconcile the fact that Jayne, our Jayne has a wife, A wife that looks perfectly normal and non-roboty and now you add this whole family thing into it and my brains going to explode so can we just slow down for a minute?” Wash suddenly felt that he was the only sane one in the room. “Maybe he kidnapped her or tricked her or like with Mal…”

“Honey…your thinking out loud” Zoe interrupted her husband.

She had it! Kaylee finally understood why this whole thing seemed kinda familiar “They’re the ones in the picture, Captain…”and just as quickly she realized she had an audience and trailed off unsure how they would react to the knowledge that she was looking through Jaynes stuff.

When Cassidy noticed the young grease smeared girl wasn’t going to continue she looked up at Jayne ready to give him her worst glare so that he would release her but then she saw the look in his eyes. He was in a near panic and suddenly she was contrite, despite all the anger they might feel for each other Evan was the one thing that they could love consistently together and agree on. She reached out her hand and put it over his and whispered, “He’s ok…for now, you know our Evan. He can handle a lot, we’ll find him.” She felt absurd reassuring this giant that they were going to find him when it really wasn’t up to her but him…well and his crew.

“Yes we will” Malcolm announced embarrassing Cassidy because she thought she had been quite enough not to be overheard. Apparently this crew didn’t avoid eavesdropping. “Unless any of you have better ideas, or a better paying job” he punctuated his statement by throwing the bag of money onto the table but was disappointed by the lack of response, his crew were through with surprises it seemed.

Kaylee was still watching Jayne and Cassidy feeling all warm inside after the special moment they had just shared. She was thinking all sorts of romantic heart breaking possibilities. She was determined to try her best and help those two to make it work, after all why couldn’t they? He had a picture of her and their son under his mattress, surely that had to mean something…

“Why don’t we all let Cassidy here tell us what it is we’re dealing with?” The captain grabbed a mug of coffee and sat, he knew it was going to be awhile.

“Evan at the moment is with a good friend who is responsible for caring for him and protecting him as best she can, both of their lives however are in the hands of men that are not new enemies of mine,” she looked up at Jayne and then away, “or ours.” She recited a story she had memorized in her head, all of it the truth. “One man can be very dangerous when he has the right weapons working for him. They call themselves the Divine Right.”

Jayne was following the story lost in the same memories. His relief at hearing Evan was in good hands was short lived. They were in the hands of Marcus Crater, or that’s the only name he knew him as, and he had died a violent death long ago, a death not even Cassidy completely knew about, but people like him tend to leave a legacy of enraged men. Bryant had warned Jayne that the Divine Right would make themselves known again but with no appearances or whispers Jayne had assumed they really had gotten them all, apparently it was a bad assumption.

“Their hatred began small scale with my brother and a few of his close friends but it soon escaladed out of control.”

Small scale…was it ever small scale? Jayne could only remember the look in Marcus’s eyes when Bryant punched him in the face and spit on him…right before he was shot. Maybe she was calling small scale the night Marcus explained the need Cassidy had to be married to him, but even that was stretching it, needless to say they had a history. A history so long that escaladed out of control was an understatement. Jayne wasn’t naïve to the violence of the world but he never thought it would turn so ugly so fast. Even after all these years he heard in her voice the quiver, and why not? She had escaped and had to live with the memory of what happened to the rest of her family.

“Evan isn’t really my son…or Jayne’s. He was my brothers. I inherited him when he was killed since I was the only family member living and I swore that I would do everything in my power to protect him.”

No, Evan wasn’t their boy but hell they had spent so much time with him he called them mommy and daddy. Jayne shifted just thinking about how much he considered him his own flesh and blood. Sure Bryant was Evans father but Bryant was Jaynes best friend and a boy shouldn’t be without a father, he even fostered ideas that he would legally adopt the boy…or so he thought before the choice was taken away from him when Cassidy left.

“I kept my promise until the courts were turned against me. I was told that I would have to marry and prove that I could provide a stable home for Evan or he would be taken away from me.”

Marcus paid the courts to turn against her and made a sweet deal, either force her to marry him out of necessity or she gives up the child to the courts where Marcus could sweep him away, along with his fortune of an inheritance. His ultimate goal was to ruin both him and Cassidy and that was step number one.

“That’s where Jayne came in.” Mal knew all sorts of details were being left out but he could see that she was on autopilot and didn’t want to force her but he did need her confirmation that he was following all right.

“Yes, Jayne was already doing so much for us…he was my brother’s best friend and he took on the duty of watching over us.”

Like hell duty, Jayne felt responsible…it was not something so honorable as duty.

“I didn’t want to force him so I scoured my options and came up empty handed. Our marriage was out of necessity, neither one of us was willing to let Evan go and we needed to protect him.”

She had brought home several viable options; men that seemed like good choices to Cassidy but could never pass Jayne’s judgment. Jayne wasn’t ashamed that he found something wrong with every single damn option, it wasn’t his fault that she found men that lacked. None of them could have protected her and Evan as well as him anyways.

“I took Evan to the market and when I stepped into the street we were grabbed from behind, I fought but there were six men and they quickly overwhelmed me.”

“You left a big part out of your story there Cass,” Jayne announced. Why couldn’t she admit that she had left him? Sure they hadn’t married for love or some other fanciful notion but they were making it work and were even getting closer than they ever had to something, anything hell she even took Evan away from him and that was all he had left. Then it hit him…she said they were both attacked, together. She was here though and Evan wasn’t, his breath quickened when he tried not to imagine what had gone on in the moments she wasn’t describing. What she must have done or gone through to make her way here for help. He tried to act unaffected with his next statement, “we need to know where you were when you were attacked.”

“I was in Mallox.”

“LIKE HELL!” Jayne was furious. Did she just out right lie? No, she needed to tell them the complete truth for them to be of any help, but she hadn’t been in Mallox, she couldn’t have been in the very town they had set up their home, she had left him! Why would she lie? Could she have a different motive? No, Jayne trusted her with his life but if she wasn’t lying then…. “When were you taken?” Jayne asked in a much calmer voice aware that his audience wasn’t going to let him get away with much more loud interruptions. He was scared of the answer and its implications but he had to know.

“The day Evan and I never made it home.” She was staring right at him, she understood his confusion but didn’t want to admit her part in it. She wasn’t the only one to blame for this whole mess and she wasn’t through being mad at him.

“That’s impossible. You kept saying it was only temporary, that it was only a matter of time. You made good on your word, wrote me a line of nice knowing ya and left me there!” Jayne knew he was rambling but at the moment he could manage no better.

It was all true, she knew. No matter how she wished otherwise she remembered ever time telling him that once they were a little more stable they wouldn’t have to be married any more. She thought she was reassuring him of his soon to be freedom but now it sounded like she was counting down until she would be rid of him. For the first time since the beginning of their exchange she looked around the table at the rest of the people sitting there, the people she was asking to risk their lives. They could die, all of them. Who was she to ask it of them? The only person she could have rightly asked for help was Jayne and she had tried to avoid him at all costs…apparently the verse was smaller than she thought. When they had married she knew she was tying him to a woman and child and he would never leave them hanging because of his honor and friendship with her brother. In truth, she liked living with him it was almost like they were rebuilding the family she lost…that they could be a new family. She didn’t want to leave but she knew she had to give him his life back so as much as possible she voiced the idea that it was temporary, that they would soon be on their way just as much to remind herself as to remind him. She thought that she couldn’t afford to become too attached but wondered if that was such a bad thing. She felt despair when they forced her to write the letter to Jayne while they held a knife to Evan. She knew he would think they had finally left, but she didn’t know it would have affected him this way, after all it’s not like he ever came after them.

“Evan and I were held captive, they only wanted the money they kept saying. I wrote the letter to you to appease them and to keep you away then we left. The only reason I’m sure Evan is safe is because I made an ironclad agreement with their leader for my cooperation. Of course they didn’t realize until later that Evan needs to be of a certain age to get the money and that the only way to get those funds released earlier is not only for him and me to be there but you as well. That is the only reason I have been released. I am supposed to find Jayne Cobb and by accident that is exactly what I have done.”

Jayne didn’t know if the crew was silent or not, his ears had developed a buzzing. This whole time…..she was with them. He knew the appetites of Divine Right. No wonder the light was gone in her eyes. And even now Evan was in their control, he felt the tremor in his hands as he gripped them in front of him. When was the last time he felt this scared? All this and she still hadn’t come to him…in fact she was out right wishing that she had never run into him.

“The last time I knew of Evan and his captor’s whereabouts was when they were on Destiny in the town of Dillon, maybe we should start there. Excuse me.” She stood and made an exit, she didn’t know where to go but she found a quite ledge away from everyone and sat to pray.