He watched the twin vines of smoke rise from the ground, seemingly lifting the tiny ship up into the cobalt sky. It reminded him of Jack and the Beanstalk, only instead of riding the huge growth into the clouds, these vines were taking his father away, leaving him behind like the magic beans pressed into the earth.

I was seven years old.

The ship was both clunky and elegant. Her twin thrusters, mounted on either side of a swollen midsection, always reminded him of a grasshopper. Outside of that it was nothing more than a series of sharp-angled boxes welded onto an old Batson 229 frame. It was something thrown together more out of necessity and deep desire to be rid of the ground.

Many years later, he would see a Firefly planted with her cargo doors open, and a pretty girl spinning a parasol and he would remember this scene.

By the time the blossom of dust and debris from the take-off pelted the wooden deck, the ship was nothing more than a blip in the sky. He blinked into sun, unable to shake the same feeling he had months earlier when a balloon slipped from his fingers.

"You’re going to be just fine here," a voice said from behind him.

The memory started failing here. He remembered turning to face the speaker, but when he tried to resolve his face, it was nothing more than an outline. A fleeting sensory leftover revealing just a big white grin and skin four shades darker than his own.

"What’s your name, son?"

How could I forget that face?

"My name?"

"Yes. Your name. Everyone has a name don’t they?"

****

"Paulie? Is that you?"

Hodges looked the same: like a walking skeleton. A big jacket weighed on his shoulders like a comforter hung out to dry. His eyes, sullen and dark, were set deep into his skull. His prominent jaw and cheekbones seemed only to prop up the tanned, but loose skin on his face. Thin, pale lips that did not part enough to bare teeth framed his smile.

"Hodges," Book returned.

"Cold here. Me, I always like to land on the sunny side you know?"

"I know."

He tried to force a smile and relax. Hodges was just like him. Trained to pick apart the casual glance or a subtle shift of weight the way a scientist would stare down an amoeba from a microscope. He knew what he was going to do from the moment he’d set the beacon in the shuttle, to help Serenity find it if he didn’t return. And he couldn’t let that show.

Hodges took a seat across from Book after giving the crowded bar a final glance.

"This isn’t where I figured we’d be doing this. Hell, wasn’t even sure you’d show. You seemed not yourself when we last spoke."

Book gave Hodges a look, downing the rest of his drink. The brown liquor burned his throat. It had been a long time since he’d had the taste of it in his mouth.

"I like people," he said motioning for another drink from the bar.

"Sure, Book. That’s exactly what I remember about you," Hodges relaxed, kicking a dirty boot up onto the table. "It’s been what now, four, five years?"

"Six. I’m not here to swap Christmas cards, Hodges. I’m not sure you would even know how to do that."

Hodges finally smiled, his big gums framed a smile quite practiced at causing discomfort. "I heard you went and found religion after Serenity Valley. As a matter of fact, I know a lot of things about you. Now."

"That so?"

"Sure. I get this call out of the middle of nowhere and it’s my old pal, only we haven’t spoken in a long time. Actually he’s supposed to not even exist any more. Disappeared, written off the books. But there he is, on my screen, and he comes to me with the biggest bounty prize in the ’verse. It made me curious, to say the least."

"So you looked me up. I would have done the same," Book said, accepting his new drink from the barmaid. "And based on what you found, I am rather surprised you still decided to come alone."

Hodges smiled. "Who says I did that?"

"I do. As a matter of fact, I was counting on it."

"Paul is it?" the faceless man said to him. "Colonel Carver’s son?"

"Yes."

The big grin grew wider still. "He’s a good man. He believes very much in what we do here, you know. You wouldn’t be here if he didn’t." A giant hand grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. "I’m sorry about your mother. Those border worlds can be hostile."

He turned away from the big man, peering into the sun-filled sky. He was alone and felt the tears reaching from deep within his chest. "I’m not supposed to cry."

There was a deep, but friendly laugh behind him, "No, huh? Well, cry if you want to. I won’t tell. We’re going to be family now. Alliance takes care of its own, and this is a special school, Paul. A very special place. You’re going to meet some wonderful people here."

Hodges shifted in his seat, uncomfortable for the first time. "I guess that’s what the years will buy you then, huh? Familiarity. Maybe that’s why they ultimately decided to keep us all apart."

"Maybe. Maybe they knew they made a mistake with us."

Hodges ordered a beer and waited for the barmaid to leave. "Only mistake they made was kicking me out and letting you go."

Book sipped his drink, fighting to keep his other hand steady on his thigh."I didn’t give them a choice. And you didn’t leave them one from what I hear."

Hodges laughed this off. "They came after me for sure, you know. It wasn’t like it was easy for me. Not like you."

Book felt something old and mean begin to wake up in him. He could feel the whiskey grow heavy and warm in his stomach.

"You cost them a lot of money and people. That’s not usually something they forgive easily."

"Heh. Well, we’ve all got our problems. Imaging the looks on their faces if they saw the two of us here. Two fellows of the school as it were. There’s more secrets between us at this table then between here and Osiris."

"Doubt that." Book could not help the smile. Hodges’s specialty was always his charm. People seemed to want to believe in him even when they knew he was lying, even when he was putting the barrel to their temples.

Hodges accepted his beer, tossing two coins onto the barmaid’s tray: one for the drink and another, thicker one, to keep them coming. He downed half the beer in two big gulps and wiped his mouth with his hand in disgust. "Gorram rim crap. Mostly water--hopefully water, I guess. How you’ve been living on this go se out here for all these years, I’ll never know."

"It’s simple. I like it."

Hodges leaned forward, slapping a gloved hand on the table, staring Book in the eyes. "Gorramit, Paul, you haven’t done anything but spit back these cute little phrases since I got here. If I had wanted pillow talk, I wouldn’t have shot the last bitch. Dong ma?"

Book finished his drink, slowly putting the empty glass on the table, never letting his own stare leave Hodges. "That so?"

The stink of the place was a mystery given it had supposedly only been here for a few years. Somewhere later in time, Paul would face that smell again in Jayne’s room and recognize it immediately. The place smelled of boys; boys who had been worked hard and put to bed with the sweat still on their brow. Boys who were older than Paul, tanned, strong boys with hair in all the places he didn’t have and deep, angry voices.

It hadn’t taken him very long to come to hate the place. Even now, when the cooler air of night blew through the open windows and the room was silent except for some heavy breathing and the squeak of tired bodies shifting on their beds; even when the days had somehow gotten easier for him, when his muscles didn’t ache as much., when his mind had started to accept their lessons with increasing and alarming ease.

He tried not to think of his father. When he did, he realized that he was starting to lose the image of him in his head. It became blurry and often turned into the face of an instructor or of Jim, the big man who had met him that day at the landing field. Sometimes it would not even be a face he saw, but rather towers of dust. Even now, two years later, whenever he felt a hot breeze on the back of his neck he had to fight the urge to wish it was his father’s ship, returning for him.

He doesn’t know why he has a hard time thinking about his mother.

"Paul? You awake?"

"Yeah."

Billy’s voice was steady. "That was some weird stuff we learned today, huh?"

"I suppose."

Billy’s laugh was short and mocking. "How come you never really say anything, Paulie? You ever think maybe if you weren’t so quiet all the time the others wouldn’t pick on you so much?"

"I don’t care about them."

"Whatever."

"I don’t. I’m not going to be here forever."

"Paul you don’t get it, do you? You’re not going anywhere. Your dad is never coming back for you. None of our parents are."

Paul felt the anger fill his lungs. He wanted to jump down from his bunk and smash Billy’s face into the floor. He fought the anger and the tears with the techniques they’d been learning.

"Bullshit."

"Suit yourself, zhuang. But the teachers are right, you know. We’re the only family we got now. I don’t mind it much. I don’t even miss my parents. They can burn on the rim for all I care. I mean what kind of parents just dump you off and never come back, huh?"

Paul stared into the low metal ceiling, unable to close his eyes. Billy’s words were sinking in deeper than he wanted them to and he knew unless he focused they were going to break him down again.

"I don’t know," he offered.

"You and your short little answers, Paulie. How are we supposed to be friends if all you ever say is nothing?"

"I guess some people are never going to change." Hodges leaned back into his chair.

"I’ve changed in many ways. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be breathing right now."

Hodges laughed the threat away. "Aww hell, Paulie. I guess that would be something to see. So if things change so much, then why are we still here alone? Where’s our posse? No, we haven’t changed a bit."

"Maybe. But if things don’t change, then why do we fight?"

Hodges finished the rest of his beer, held his hand in the air and snapped his fingers several times. "Ideologies my friend. Economics. Religion. Hell, I don’t know, seems like even if we didn’t have these, we’d go and invent some symbol just for the purpose of excluding others and then killing them."

"Like the Alliance?"

This made Hodges’ smile widen. "I picked my flag, that’s all. I’d have sworn you did, too."

"I’m not about flags any more."

"Of course not, Shepherd."

The blow nearly took him off his feet. He had tried to roll with it at the last moment, but the kid was faster than his big frame led him to believe. Paul felt his left eye go numb as it filled with blood. Panic seized him as he rolled away from the big boy’s foot crashing near his head. He spun and twisted his body to come to a squating position, holding his injured arm against his side to avoid the sickening pain he felt when the bones grinded into each other.

The big boy had already begun his pursuit, and Paul knew he only had a moment to act. He launched himself into the boy’s attack, ducked a quick, panicky swing from him and jabbed with everything he had left into the boy’s groin. It was crude, but effective. The big boy dove head first into the dirt, a cloud of dry dust rising around him as he did.

Paul rolled onto his good arm, forcing himself to his feet. He caught sight of Billy, nursing his own damaged leg off to his right.

"You okay?" he asked Billy.

"Hell, no."

"You need to stop jumping in my fights."

"There were four of them. I thought I was doing you a favor."

Paul smiled. "Four? That all? You’ve known me six years now. When can’t I handle four?"

Billy smiled then grimaced. "Don’t make laugh, zhuang. I only came up to watch when that little one tried to bring a knife into the mix. What was I supposed to do?"

"Fair enough. You going to make me walk back to the infirmary alone?"

"Nah, I’ll hop with you. Big one’s getting up again, incidentally."

"I hear him."

Paul walked over to the big boy and, without pausing to reflect or ask for surrender, kicked hard into the boy’s knee. He heard the sound of ligaments popping as the boy tumbled back down into the dirt.

"Don’t get up again," he warned him.

"I think you want back in," Hodges said, accepting the new beer from a tray held before of him. "I think you’re finally tired of whatever the hell it is you’ve been doing out here, and you want to come back to the family."

"You can think whatever you want," Book replied, shifting his weight in the small chair until he could feel his hidden pistol rub against his side.

"Well, why the hell else would you be calling me? You come across the bounty of the century and you don’t just turn her in yourself?"

"It couldn’t be that easy. You know that."

"I do. I do indeed. Think that’s why you called me. Why I think you want back in. I may be somewhat gray in their books, but you know I still have plenty of contacts."

"Yes."

"And you know I want back in the mix more than anything. This scraping by on the edge of nothing might be fine for you, but I can’t stand it. You know this could be my ticket back into their good graces." Hodges’s face was eager.

Book felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. "I’m thinking that is exactly why I called you that night."

Hodges visibly relaxed into his chair, bringing the second beer up to his lips. "Only one thing I can’t get my head wrapped around here. From what I’ve been able to piece together since that call, you’ve been with this crew for a while now. Why did you wait so long? Were they on to you or something?"

"On to me?" Book echoed, without meaning to. "No, they were never on to me. No one has ever been on to me."

Continue to part two