( continues...) better than the rest of us, don't you? With your fancy education, and your shiny buttons. But the truth is, you're a failure. The rest of us are doing the best we can, we're scrabbling up the ladder. You? You've fallen so far down already that your own mamma wouldn't recognise you. Commodore.” He leans back again, and laces his fingers together on the table. “So – you screwed up, and the goods just became worthless.” And Badger names a sum which is a tiny fraction of the sum he had mentioned at this same table a few days earlier.

There is a pause.

“Right,” says Mal conversationally. “We could accept that offer. Or we could just keep the booty, shoot you in the face, and take this here plate of delicious fruit, along with whatever small change you happen to have in your pockets.”

One of Badger's hired thugs draws a dagger from his belt and starts sharpening its edge on a whetstone, whistling softly under his breath. The other, evidently of a rather less subtle turn of mind, draws his pistol and levels it at Mal. And suddenly Jayne's pistol is levelled, in turn, at the thug, and Zoe's is pointing right at Badger.

Badger tosses the remains of his chickenbone towards the fire, and picks up an apple. “Is this the part where you try to intimidated me?” he says, sounding bored.

“We did the job. So now we get paid.”

Badger shakes his head pityingly. “I've got news for you, Commodore. You're an independent contractor now, and nobody owes you a blessed thing. You don't work for the King, and you don't work for me – you work for yourself.” He glances at Zoe and Jayne, and then looks back at Mal. “So here's the situation: you have some goods for sale, but their value has just dropped like a stone. You don't like hearing that? Well, it's no skin off my nose, friend. sell 'em some place else.” His gaze wanders back to Zoe, and his expression shifts. He licks the chickengrease off his lips, and his voice takes on a more speculative note. “ 'Course, you do have other goods you might turn a profit on, if you've a mind to.”

Mal's eyes narrow, and his hand does finally drop to the butt of his pistol.

“Permission to shoot this treacherous, malodorous bilge rat in the face, Cap'n?” says Zoe, and her voice might have a very tiny shake to it, but her hand is steady as a rock and her eyes are cold as the Atlantic Ocean.

Mal draws a breath to answer, and for a moment it appears that the evening is going to take a turn for the messy, until Mistress Serra strolls up to the table with a bottle of rum and a smile sweet enough to break a man's heart at twenty paces.

“What's this I hear about you acquiring a collection of fine fabrics, Mr Brocklehurst?” she says, her voice low and sweet and far too refined for a place such as this, and she's smiling at Badger like there aren't cocked pistols and unsheathed blades on every side. “Why, that must be the best news I've heard in weeks! To be sure, my girls are in desperate need of new finery to help display their charms, and we've dyes a-plenty if the colours aren't to our liking! I should have known that we could count on a resourceful gentleman such as yourself to be thinking selflessly of our – needs.” She drops her eyes modestly, and then looks up at Badger through her lowered lashes, and he's mesmerised in spite of himself. Mal grits his teeth. Inara glances at him with an expression of disinterest, and then turns her attention back to Badger. “But you must forgive me – I see that you gentlemen are still conducting your business! How inappropriate of me to interupt! Please accept this little gift on the house, to make your transaction go a little smoother.” She leans closer to Badger, her dark curls swinging gently, and Badger's gaze slides inevitably down to her plunging decolletage. Mistress Serra never does go with customers herself, but she has a way of leading a man to hope that possibly, just possibly, she might be prepared to make an exception in his case. Badger swallows, and Captain Mal Reynolds crushes the remains of the orange in his hand (continued...)

( continues...) into a pulp. Inara licks her lips very daintily, and smiles at Badger like he's not some treacherous, malodorous bilge-rat at all. “And when you're finished, Mr Brocklehurst, you must come over and see me. Acquisition of such supplies is a positive act of charity, and I'm sure that my girls and I will be very, very grateful.”

There is a rather stunned and deeply appreciative silence for several moments after Mistress Serra walks away, leaving the rum and a lingering scent of jasmin behind her. Zoe rolls her eyes.

Badger is the first one to speak, and he looks decidedly sheepish as he names a figure considerably more generous than the one before.

* * *

“I still think we should've shot him,” grumbles Jayne, as they make their way back to the dock. The sky overhead is pure blue and cloudless, but there's a sweet enough wind blowing to set flags a-fluttering. Mal has taken off his coat, at Zoe's polite – if forceful – recommendation, and has it rolled up under his arm. Zoe is carrying their payment. Badger's big, strapping minions are strolling along behind them to oversee the collection of the bales of fabric and the spices. The silver, however, and the fancy decorative china, Badger has refused steadfastly to touch. “Could've sold the cloth ourselves, cut out the middle man.”

“Shooting Badger would be bad for business,” says Zoe, but there's an edge to her voice that indicates that she regrets this rather a lot.

“It would,” agrees Mal, glancing sidelong at his quartermaster for some clue to her feelings. “But one of these days that ain't going to be an adquate reason to hold back.” He bites his lip, studying her profile. She does not appear, on the surface, to be unduly upset. “We could always go back and shoot him in the head right now, if you like?” he offers, and although his tone is light, he is perfectly serious.

Zoe looks at him for a long quiet moment, apparently turning this idea over in her mind. “Not today, Captain,” she says at last. “Although I do appreciate the offer. Wouldn't be precisely subtle, though, would it?”

They round the corner and the sea appears before them, shockingly bright. Mal smiles at the sight of his ship. “Subtlety has never really been one of my strong points,” he says, pulling his coat back on.

“Really Captain?” says Zoe, dryly. “I never would have noticed.”

* * *

Mal's mood lightens considerably once he has the deck under his feet once more.

“Cap'n? Cap'n?”

Mal turns away from the beckoning horizon to survey the ship's carpenter, who is hopping from foot to foot with an expression of considerable distress. Mal glances over at Badger's men, who are in the process of lugging bales of silk and barrels of spices down the gangplank. “Is there a problem, Master Frye?”

“It's the first mate, Cap'n,” says Master Frye, looking miserable. “He's gone and scarpered with the silver.”

Mal's mouth drops open slightly, and then he turns to Zoe, with a smile trembling on his lips. “D'you hear that? Tracey's run off with the silver.”

“Is that so?” Zoe looks down at her boots, unable to contain her amusement. “You owe me ten pieces of eight, Cap'n. I said he'd jump ship soon as we made harbour.”

“Was it ten? I though we said eight?”

“Ten, Cap'n,” says Zoe, mildly. “I have a head for figures.”

“That you do,” acknowledges Mal, sadly, and he rummages in his pocket for some coins.

Master Frye looks relieved that his bad news hasnt been the cause of any greater distress, and he draws a deep breath and makes a clean breast of it all. “And the plate, Cap'n – all those fancy plates with the daffodils and lillies on 'em, what were so pretty and distinctive like. He said he were unloadin' em for you, and I were busy talkin' to the passenger, but now he's gone, and the silver's gone, and the plate an' all, and I think he's done a runner, sir.”

“This is what you call looking after the ship in my absence, Master Frye?”

“Sorry, sir.” The carpenter sounds thoroughly guilt stricken. Mal ruffles his (continued...)

( continues...) hair, and the boy looks up with an expression of surprise.

“Oh, don't apologise, lad. Tracey's done us a favour, the damn fool. Boy never did have the sense to come in out of the rain. Turns out them goods weren't quite as saleable as we thought – reckon he's going to be regretting he ever laid eyes on 'em, before too very long. But that's his problem.” Mal's eyes narrow. “And he's just cost me ten pieces of eight, so I'm not much minded to feel sorry for the blighter. Now, let's go back to where you mentioned – did I hear you say something about a passenger, Master Frye?”

Master Frye has the grace to blush a little, but he sticks his chin out and squares his shoulders. “I know it's not customary, Cap'n, but he asked real nice, and he had a whole big pile of gold ready to pay us for our troubles. Said there'd be more at the end, if'n we took him where he wanted to go. An' I thought, since we didn't have no particular plans for our next voyage – 'cause we didn't have no particular plans, did we, Cap'n?”

“We did not.”

“Well then, I thought you'd at least want to talk to him.”

“Did you now?”

Master Frye grins. “I did, sir.”

“He wouldn't happen to be an uncommonly decorative sort, now, would he, this potential passenger of ours?” asks Mal, without looking at the ship's carpenter.

“He's awful pretty,” Master Frye admits, without a whit of shame. “And you should see the clothes on him! And the nice manners! And he's a doctor. And you know how much we could use a proper ship's doctor – 'cause Lord knows I've done my best, but I'm more use for sawing wood than sawing limbs, and I don't know the first thing about making up tonics and tinctures. But Mister Tam here is a surgeon, Cap'n. An honest-to-God surgeon, from Harley Street, in London, if you can believe it. And he says if we give him passage, he'll help out as ship's doctor, if the need should arise. Lend us his expertise, kind of thing.”

Mal glances over at his quartermaster. “That would be useful,” he says, and she nods. Mal's expression grows thoughtful. “Say, Zoe, how'd you like to become Acting First Mate of 'Serenity'?”

“Quartermaster's plenty work enough for me, Cap'n,” she says, shrugging. “I don't take real kindly to being at any man's beck and call.”

“You're at my beck and call,” Mal says, sounding slightly wounded.

“You keep right on telling yourself that, Cap'n,” says Zoe in an equitable tone, and strolls off to find the sailing master.

More please? Thank you kindly.

::sits down to wait::

So, I'm not quite sure I'm clear on "fusion." Is it a crossover? Are we going to be seeing characters from a different story (looks like maybe PotC, here, eventually?)Or just plopping the characters into an AU situation? Fusion seems an unnecessarily high-falutin' term for something that already exists.

They're all very much in character, but somehow I'm missing the feeling of the speech vernacualr found in Firefly. Of course, if this is 18th century Caribbean days, they wouldn't be speaking like that. My brain is just slightly confused at this point. But, I am enjoying this! Do not think this is a complaint or a criticism. I'm just kinda rolling the flavor of the story around in my head and speaking out loud.

A fusion is taking characters from one universe and putting them in another universe, where they always existed. So the Firefly people have always lived in the 18th century -- they're not somehow displaced there.

It's a type of AU, basically. AU is such a broad term that it doesn't always convey specific information about the type of story.

Aha, got it.

Yeah - I'd never heard of it before. Rheanna handily linked me to trinityofone's rather lovely SGA/HDM fusion Daemonology, and I went: "Aha!"

(I could probably use this story for the Historical AU square on my bingo card, either, but I do plan to include magical elements, and some things & characters specifically taken from the PotC 'verse. Plus, PotC isn't actually set at any specific date - it's all wibblywobbly timeywimey contradictionpants anachronisms, so I'm going with that. Although if I decide to write Captain Jack Sparrow and co in the Firefly 'verse [which is also very tempting] then I WILL stick this on the Historical AU square, and the hell with it)