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"Personally, I love to answer all the stupid questions people ask me about being trans. It's fun to watch them get smarter. I swear they smell different after that."
—Anabel Campos (she/her), trans comedian who always gives discounted tickets to anyone under twenty years old.
Serenity's on her way to Harvest on a job when Kaylee gets curious about the crates they're transporting. She pries one open and is disconcerted when she can't identify the machine packed inside—she's Kaylee, after all, machines are her trade and her lifeblood. But Sonia sees three pointy metal legs, like a crab, and runs to get the others.
Turns out their client smuggles instruments of torture. Pleasant.
Mal orders them to toss it all out the airlock. Sonia says to wait a moment, then asks him and Wash to point out which machines they remember Niska owning. She sets those aside to examine later—getting several "you're gorram creepy" looks for her trouble—and the rest of it goes into the black.
Sonia discovers that several of the devices have a chemical element, usually injected in liquid form. She uses a syringe to transfer the liquids to various empty bottles, labeling each in enormous, bright red letters. To be safe, she also locks them up, since if a crew member mistook one for headache meds, the consequences would hardly bear thinking of.
Later, she finds River trying to convince Book that his brains would be safer if he cut off his hair. Her meimei looks up and remarks that "you want me to help develop an immunization process against agonizing nerve stimulants. Niska is a scorpion with a teddy bear mask, but we're teddy bears with scorpion claws. Should be possible. Take a picture of his face for me."
After several days of chemical analysis, the two of them have written up a list of the drugs they'd need to counteract the influence of the more complex torture machines. It won't help against a straight-up knife or whip, but anything to even the odds. The crew hasn't had many dealings with drug runners, but most of what they want is actually legal, so Inara offers to put them in contact with an influential friend.
Sonia has made another decision during the analysis as well. So when the face of Inara's friend flashes up on the wave screen and they've exchanged pleasantries, she tells him: "We've run afoul of a crime lord, so we're in need of certain drugs to immunize us against chemical torture—I've made a list. Also, supplies for hormone replacement therapy. Ms. Serra told me you know people who stock estrogen, for example."
He does, and appears not a bit disconcerted by either request.
After some thought, Sonia decides that given the overall personality of Serenity's crew, bluntness is her best option. So, over a dull-as-normal protein dinner, she announces that over the next year or so, she'll be starting hormone replacement therapy—HRT. Her body will be changing shape—breasts, larger hips, loss of some muscle mass, and so on. She keeps her voice as calm as possible, hoping desperately that if she doesn't make a big deal out of this, nobody else will either.
Unfortunately for Sonia, River apparently read some book once upon a time on how HRT worked on Earth-That-Was, and decides it's time to fill everyone in. This leads to an question from Kaylee about possible blood clots, a question from Jayne about whether Sonia will still grow facial hair, a question from Mal about whether it does anything to your voice, a question from Zoe about whether this is all physical or if it does something to your brain too, and an order from Inara for them all to stop interfering in what's not their business.
However, Sonia's already decided that she'll meet any questions head on, respectful or not. So, in her most pragmatic-doctor tone of voice, she tells Kaylee that since HRT was first developed, the risk of blood clots has been reduced by eighty percent. She informs Jayne that unlike the original HRT, the hormones she will be taking do stop the growth of most facial hair. She tells Mal that HRT can't change a trans woman's voice—that takes expensive surgery that wouldn't be practical for a transport ship's medic. And to Zoe, she says that yes, HRT often changes the sensitivity of a person's emotions, but it's different for every person and she won't know what will happen for her until she starts.
Over her first few days of HRT, Sonia catches the crew giving her worried sidelong glances, as if they expect her to vanish and be replaced by a stranger. Once it becomes apparent that this is not going to happen—that it will, in fact, be quite a while before anyone notices the changes—the glances go away. Sonia isn't sure what it will be like when her body does change in a noticeable way, but she tries not to fret about it.
She trusts, because she must, that breasts and hips are less important to Serenity's crew, than the hands that have saved their lives countless times.
"Our corporal gave away his last protein packets. The best part of that wasn't the food. It was knowing he was still thinking beyond just survival for himself."
—Georgios Makri (he/him), trans Independence veteran, the only one in his battalion to survive Serenity Valley.
Ever since the truth about Miranda went to the eyes and ears of the 'verse, there's been discontent and mutterings against the Alliance nearly everywhere Serenity lands. Sonia isn't sure it'll amount to anything—all the clamor and noise doesn't necessarily equal real action—but it's making the Feds paranoid. Zoe and Mal have gotten a wave from an old war buddy of theirs asking for help retrieving a few veterans who've been snatched up and are marked for transport to a secure facility. As risky as a prison breakout is, pay has been promised, and old friends are old friends.
The encyclopedia's definition of daredevil probably has a picture of Serenity's crew under it, and that shows in the plan they devise. (Actually, it shows in every plan they've ever devised.) The best moment for rescue is right before the actual transport. The veterans won't be shut in cells, and hopefully the Feds will be too worried about their prisoners taking advantage of the moment to think much about an attack coming from the outside. Put a few credits in the right hands to get the right doors left open and the right monitors turned off, and then it's good old-fashioned let-our-guns-do-the-talking.
Of course, it doesn't go smoothly. It never goes smoothly, but this is about as non-smooth as a cracked sidewalk covered with porcupine quills and broken glass. In retrospect, Sonia wishes she'd expressed more skepticism about the strategy, instead of just inoculating everyone against the planet's recent outbreak of Yelzu's Virus—a nasty and horribly contagious relative of Earth-That-Was smallpox.
Inara has a client, so that leaves Book, Kaylee, Wash, and Sonia to sit on the bridge, trying to pretend they're not all imagining exactly what could go wrong. For a while there's a cheery, forced conversation about whether Jayne might buy them another crate of apples with his cut, but the rendezvous time inches by—the others are five minutes late, then ten minutes. Wash is just reaching for the com to contact them when the cargo bay doors slide open.
Book and Kaylee and Sonia bolt down the stairs to see River supporting a blood-covered and half-unconscious Jayne. She's screaming that they have to fly or they'll die, die writhing on the floor. Wash comes running out with a com in his hand, and Zoe's voice through it is ordering them to go, now, I love you, now go.
Wash yells that he can't, that he won't leave them, and then River pulls her gun and tells him to get Serenity in the air or she'll shoot him and do it herself. Sonia has never seen so much raw heartbreak in anyone's face as she does in Wash's when he gets in the pilot seat and steers the ship away.
For the first hour, all Sonia can think about is stitching up Jayne—the multiple lacerations have already brought him near death. In any hospital, they'd set three surgeons to operating on a man wounded this badly, but of course she has to do it all herself. No one on board has Jayne's blood type, so he needs a transfusion from Wash, who, being O negative, is a universal donor.
When Sonia goes to get him, he punches her in the face.
She could have ducked or blocked the blow, but she doesn't. Because she's the one who knows the safe-word, the phrase she used the first time River was triggered, that puts her to sleep. If she'd used it, her sister couldn't have forced Wash to fly away from Zoe, leaving her and Mal behind to face who knows what. But Sonia, in a moment of panic, fell back on logic by instinct. She added the pluses and subtracted the minuses and saw seven crew members who could still be saved versus two who might be dead already, and she kept her mouth shut. It may or may not have been the right thing to do, but regardless, shame and pure grief are threatening to swamp her.
They land in the shadow of a rocky cliff. Jayne's still strung out on painkillers and will be for some time. Kaylee is crying, huge choking sobs and tears flowing down her cheeks and soaking her coveralls. River has shrunken from steel warrior to devastated girl and is muttering, foolish, so foolish, I dropped the marbles and they rolled away, who will gather them up again? Book has his Bible out, whispering the words as he reads them: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation, can separate us from the love of God." After providing the blood transfusion, Wash goes back to the bridge, and everyone knows better than to try and offer comfort.
Sonia wishes she were strung out on painkillers, but she's not. She wishes tears would come, but they don't. She'd mutter, but she has no words. She'd pray, but she has no faith. Except that's not true. No god she's read of, or heard of, inspires any belief. But she does believe. She believes in them, in those two soldiers who lost a war but kept fighting. When you can't run, you crawl, they say, and when you can't do that...
Leaving Book with instructions to call her if Jayne gets worse, Sonia goes to the kitchen. Kaylee's in one chair, River's in another. She kneels down to look straight in her meimei's face, and asks if there is any chance Mal and Zoe are still alive.
River says yes.
When you can't run, you crawl, and when you can't do that, you find someone to carry you. Mal and Zoe have carried her, since she landed on their ship with a fragile, agonized River and next to zero knowledge of how border life worked. Now, Sonia is going to carry them, if it kills her. Which it very well might.
"We're getting them back."
"We read history and admire great leaders. We forget that those leaders would have been the failures and the villains if they hadn't won. And we forget that they knew it, and that they were afraid."
—Leslie Spotted Eagle (they/them), nonbinary executive director of a border planets nonprofit that raises money so workers can feed their families while they strike.
Sonia has never felt so small in the face of her ambition as she does in the next few days. At least when she was trying to rescue River, she had Core doctor money, and her enemy was an organization that wanted her sister alive and physically whole. Now, all she has is a smuggling ship's budget and the terrifying knowledge that the Feds who have Mal and Zoe will happily work them to death, use them in experiments, sell them to slavers or brothels, or just plain murder them. Sonia is already having nightmares about the shape her captain and first mate might be in, if the rest of the crew locates them at all.
The only thing she has, in the face of a federal prison system a hundred planets wide, is her self-appointed status as protector.
What Sonia develops first is less a plan than a list of information she'll need in order to form one. Obviously the premium bit of data is where Mal and Zoe are now, and she expects this will be the most difficult thing to find out. As it happens, she's wrong. Inara vanishes into her shuttle and returns two hours later to announce they've been taken to Penal Moon 32 in the White Sun system, and are doing hard labor in Colony 67. Jayne, incredulous, asks if she's gone and blackmailed some official who don't want his politics messed up. Inara replies that yes, there's an delicate election in his constituency and he'd prefer his bedroom tastes to remain private, but that they'll have to work fast now, in case he gets up the nerve to alert the Feds.
Sonia then sits down with Book and instructs him to tell her everything, absolutely everything, that he knows about how penal moons operate. As such, she spends hours listening to descriptions of key cards for overseers, identification for supply ships, techniques to break troublesome prisoners—a flood of data. It's hard to keep her courage in the face of such daunting facts, especially when Book tells her frankly that of the successful prison outbreaks in the last decade, the vast majority of them ended in the former prisoners dying later. The Alliance apparently has an unfortunate practice of surgically inserting small detonators directly next to the spines of convicts. If anyone escapes, the detonators can be set off from afar and acid destroys vital nerves.
Out of all the information, Sonia constructs eight plans, then picks the best. It's horribly dangerous, but there's approximately sixty percent chance of it working, up from the next best, where there is forty percent.
Is trying this logical? Hardly. Heroic? Maybe, if it works.
At first she hopes River might pull some solution out of thin air, but since the day of disaster River's acted lost, muttering about peacock feathers and how you can't play chess without a king to protect, and clinging to Sonia in a way she hasn't for almost two years. And as Sonia works out their strategy, she catches the rest of the crew watching her with a frightening degree of faith, faith that she'll somehow get them out of this.
More than that, with every step they take towards action, they do what she asks, without arguing. Even Wash, who sleeps in an empty bunk every night now, even Book and Inara, who know how long the odds are, even Jayne, who never liked her and still doesn't, even Kaylee, who clearly feels stripped of her two greatest protectors—they seem to have decided, as one, that Sonia is their temporary captain.
Sonia could be flattered, but mostly she's just scared out of her wits. She's not Mal. All she can try to do is be as much of an anchor, as much of a mosaic maker, as he's always been, and try not to snap under the pressure. Which seems more difficult every day.
But everything she has in the 'verse is or was on Serenity, and though she sometimes wonders if she's going completely mad, she knows she'll never give up as long as Zoe and Mal are still alive.
Sonia doesn't know this and never will, but the doctor who tried to shape River into glory's image also speculated that she was insane, due to the life she gave up for her sister. And the Operative to which he spoke said no, it wasn't madness, it was something a good deal more dangerous.
Love.
"Until you start HRT, you don't know exactly what's going to happen to you. You also don't know when it will happen. I'd given up on growing sizeable breasts, and then I did—in the middle of six months doing undercover reporting on human rights violations."
—Elizabet Csizmadia (she/her), trans journalist whose reporting has taken down three slaving rings that had secret government support.
There are three working wave screens on Serenity. One is on the bridge, and primarily used for jobs. The second is in Inara's shuttle, so she can speak to her clients. The other shuttle and the bunks also have them, but the only one that still works is in Mal's.
It's the bridge screen that Sonia uses at first, to re-contact the underground movement who helped her rescue River. She knows these particular rebels will appreciate a good prison breakout, especially of Independence veterans, so what they charge will be affordable, though it certainly isn't free. It helps that she's come up with the whole plan beforehand, but what she wants from them is substantially risky—though the people taking the most risks will be those on Serenity's crew. Sonia herself will be in the most danger, not because she wants it that way, but because the actual infiltrator has to be a top-three-percent surgeon.
The rebels, who have spies inside most penal moons, will be able to tell when there's a good opening for said infiltration, which hasn't happened yet. But it could happen any time, and the tension, plus the worry that the crew will run out of coin or supplies, plus the fear that if they stay in orbit near the penal moons too long someone will notice, is driving everyone on Serenity a touch wild, though they try not to show it.
Book prays. Kaylee checks every part in the engine room twice over. Jayne, still under orders not to strain himself by weight-lifting, oils his guns. River invents some kind of game that involves using her colored pencils to sketch skeletons wearing bonnets and slinky dresses. And Sonia? Well, she tries to organize the infirmary, but keeps dashing up to check for messages. Nights are awful—she can't rest for fear she'll miss a wave.
She actually considers dragging a blanket and pillow up to the bridge and sleeping there, but the bridge is becoming Wash's refuge—it seems he can't stand his empty bunk. And though Inara would no doubt welcome her, the Companion needs a refuge of her own. They all do. So Sonia just starts sleeping in Mal's bunk.
Why not? It has a wave screen.
Sonia knows the stress is affecting her, but she's also pretty sure the HRT has chosen this month to start seriously kicking in, because she's experiencing what feels like a crazy rainbow of emotions. She'd thought she knew what feelings were, but the intense specificity of these shock her. Vivid joy, intense shame, spine-straightening pride, crash of disappointment, more—she knows now that what she's called emotions for most of her life were muted and relatively inaccessible.
She's torn between wishing it could have waited a bit, and an enormous relief that she has actual access to these feelings, for they feel right and true. She cries every night as she sits in Mal's bunk and watches the empty wave screen, and the tears feel like poison is leaving her body. For the majority of her life, Sonia couldn't cry even when she wanted to, and getting to do so now, no matter the inconvenient timing, sparks a kind of euphoria.
I will survive this, Sonia vows. I will rescue my friends, and I will survive. I'm not going to die when I've just started to figure out what life could mean for me.
"Sooner or later, a soldier in your unit is gonna be bleeding out, and that's when you find out what you're made of. 'Cause facing your own death ain't the same as watching your buddy die, and if you freeze up then, it don't matter how much you know about anatomy."
—Faruq Abdullah (he/they), genderqueer Independence medic turned family medicine doctor and peace activist.
Three months and four days after the disastrous breakout attempt, Serenity's crew gets the message that the underground workers have spotted the opportunity they need to infiltrate, and the plan gears up into motion so fast that no one has time for doubts or prayers or even much rational thought. Before she knows it, Sonia is curled up in a seven by three foot metal compartment, blackness pressing on her eyes, fervently wishing she had a gun. An impossible wish—the checkpoint they'll have to pass through has excellent firearm sensors.
Truthfully, that's the only reason she can be smuggled in at all. If the Feds didn't trust that their sensors would pick up trouble, they'd be far more careful about what, or who, might be hiding in a shuttle that's supposedly transporting food to the colony. As it is, any organic matter is allowed to pass undisturbed, and human bodies are organic matter. The authorities don't care—they're more concerned with keeping prisoners from getting out, than they are with keeping unarmed people from getting in.
But Sonia knows that if the Feds guess her purpose, they will arrest her, shoot her, or even worse, and she's not much practiced in controlling her wild rainbow of new emotions. For a few minutes there in the metal compartment, tears pour down her face. She lets herself cry, deciding it's better to get it out before she actually has to play her part in the plan. Luckily, the tears clear up and her heart steadies.
It's ironic that those of Serenity's crew who really want to be part of the actual rescue aren't here. Wash demanded that he be the one to fly the shuttle, but he couldn't—if the Feds pursue Serenity, he needs to be ready to do the tricky maneuvering required to outpace them. And Sonia pulled her temporary-captain status and told everyone they weren't going to take such a risk unless their presence on the penal moon would actually be useful. Since guns won't be allowed in, and because there are too many guards to be defeated if it comes to a real fight, that eliminates Book and Jayne, though both of them are itching for action. Instead, Inara is piloting, Sonia is in the compartment, and River is masquerading as a mechanic with Kaylee's coaching. All of them would vastly prefer to be back on Serenity, but the plan calls for psychic, surgeon, and makeup mistress, so here they are.
Almost before Sonia knows it, she's out of the shuttle, River having used her psychic abilities to confirm that the infiltrator guide is not leading them into a trap. Sonia firmly focuses on nothing but the role she's practiced until the guide drops her at the prison hospital door, ready to play the part of substitute doctor. One of the resident doctors has just "gotten sick" (no doubt brought on by the credits recently transferred to his account and the blackmail on top of that) and needs a replacement. A replacement that, with wrangling and system hacking and a bit of bribery, they've arranged to be her.
Sonia is promptly calmed by the medical atmosphere, though she shouldn't be. The list of crimes against humanity at this so-called hospital is longer than Jayne's range with a sniper rifle. Dozens of experiments on prisoners without any kind of consent—injecting them with possibly-toxic compounds, forcing them to electrocute each other to measure the effects on their psyches, draining their blood and removing their organs for Core hospitals. But hospitals are Sonia's home ground, and truly it's an advantage she's not nervous.
A small surgery, she announces, waving the medical papers Book helped her forge. Fifty percent chance of fatality, but it's all for the advancement of science, and she'll send the bodies off-world for analysis in any case. Yes, she'd like to look at the files and choose; the experiment requires specific characteristics. Yes, these two will do very nicely.
She almost can't believe they fall for it. But two hours—two wrenching, nightmarish, white-knuckled hours later—an intern calls that her "subjects" have been anesthetized and prepared for surgery. Sonia's calm nearly cracks when she sees Mal and Zoe unconscious on the operating tables. Three months of hard labor and mistreatment have turned them into malnourished, exhausted skeletons.
When the room is clear, she takes a slow, steadying breath. Those detonators embedded in their spines have to be removed, without setting them off and without damaging their nerves, and she has to manage the surgery unassisted. Twice. On patients from which she has precisely no emotional distance.
Top three percent. I can do this.
"People have pulled off amazing acts of rebellion with almost no resources. What you need is not more money or supporters or bombs, but the intelligence to use what you have to change the 'verse."
—Shanice Barlow (she/her), trans hacker, steals funds from millionaires who don't pay living wages, no charges against her have been proven.
The official checking the medical shuttle on its way out of the penal moon's orbit is clearly nettled. Yes, he has to view the corpses, it's in regulations, doctors have tried to smuggle live prisoners out in the past so he needs to make sure these are dead, so stop shoving those papers in my face and—
What the—get them out of here, now! Why didn't you say they died of Yelzu's Virus? You're probably all infected with it! Fly this gorram shuttle out of the quadrant and don't come back!
(Later, to a skeptical colleague: No, I didn't check for cardiac-suspending drugs. That requires getting a blood sample. Don't you know what Yelzu's Virus does to a person? Not interested in dying for a couple of convicts, thanks.
And even later, to an investigating agent: Oh, come on. Even the best surgeon on Osiris couldn't remove the detonators so fast. And what do you mean, any talented Companion could fake Yelzu's with wax and makeup powder?)
"People who have been through trauma sometimes have trouble valuing themselves. They may react in unexpected ways when you show them how much you value them."
—Mei Chang (he/him), trans therapist, one of the very few mental health professionals known to be able to help people who survived Reaver attacks.
Book has informed Mal and Zoe—mostly Mal, because Zoe has sense—that if they try to get up before the doctor says it's alright, he'll damage their kneecaps and then read them Biblical passages on leprosy. Sonia isn't planning on saying it's alright anytime soon, because it takes time to recover from delicate spinal surgery, not to mention from hard labor combined with almost-literal starvation, and if she lets them up, there will be overexertion. Serenity's crew seems to add the addendum "if you feel like it" to the end of most medical advice.
Also because Mal is just a bit angry at her. Well, perhaps more than just a bit. Perhaps more than angry. Possibly incensed. Livid. Fit to be tied, up in arms, seeing all kinds of red. His first words, after confirmation that yes, he really was alive and back on his ship, were: "Doc, what the hell did you think you were doing?" Sonia, having no idea how he knew she'd come up with the plan, hadn't even gotten the opportunity to defend herself before Mal's diatribe began in earnest.
It seems the captain had not wanted his crew imperiled. He had wanted them far away, on the other side of the 'verse from penal moons and Feds and all such dangers, not mounting utterly outrageous rescue attempts. (Actually, he didn't say utterly outrageous, he said several offensive things that made Inara threaten to scrub his mouth with soap.) And even though Wash was never going to abandon his wife and Inara did the initial blackmailing and Book gave out the info and River is the resident genius, apparently Sonia gets all the blame, because:
- You came up with the plan, which your darling sister just told me had a thirty-five percent chance of getting you all arrested. And makeup? You had better be joking. Makeup was supposed to fool 'em into thinking we had Yelzu's Virus?
- You should've talked everyone out of this, because you're supposed to be sharp up there in the brainpan, sharp enough to know how crazy it was and sharp enough to realize what would happen to, say, a girl like Kaylee if she landed on a penal moon.
- None of 'em would've dared to try it, they've never broken no one out of anywhere before, but you did, with River, and you're so gorram trustworthy that of course they'll go along with it, so don't put blame on them, 'cause I know whose fault it is.
This was all yelled very loudly while Sonia attempted to adjust Mal's neck brace without any damage to either his spine or her fingers. Her responses included:
- River didn't say thirty-five percent to me, she said twenty percent. Don't bite my thumb! And the makeup worked, didn't it?
- I told everyone, including Kaylee, all the risks, and they made their own decisions. Stop that! Human bites get infected!
- Now I have to get disinfectant—wait. Did you just call me trustworthy? Hey! Don't move or you'll have permanent nerve damage!
This goes on until River sashays in a few days later and informs Mal that if he doesn't refrain she will "go talk to the Christmas tree. Pretty Christmas tree with glittery tinsel and candy canes and bright shiny presents. Tell the Christmas tree what you look like with your clothes off."
Zoe's lips twitch, just once. Mal shuts up after that. Mostly.
Sonia doesn't particularly care about appreciation anyway. Now that she has her friends back, even the dullest moments seem splendid, especially with her rainbow of emotions. Having to wash nine plates and nine pairs of chopsticks instead of seven on her night for dishes. Running up to the bridge only to encounter Wash and Zoe kissing, and trying to scrub the vision off her eyes. Landing hard on the mat on the floor while Mal teaches her to fight, dodging and weaving and trying not to get any more bruised. And eventually, after one of those sessions, Sonia gets up the courage to ask how Mal knew she came up with the plan. No one ever told him, and it could have been any of them, really.
Mal just shrugs. "You're the one they'd look to. With me and Zoe not around. If you'd decided it were a lost cause, they'd agree with you. I thought you were going to, even when Zoe was telling me we just had to hold on."
"You and Zoe carried me," Sonia says, unexpectedly angry. "Did you really think I wouldn't do the same for you? Did you think I didn't care about you, or that I'm not capable?"
"Doc," Mal says with a very odd smile, "you're too capable for your own good. If I didn't know you can barely land a punch, I'd be scared of you. And when it comes to caring, you care enough to rip stars out of the sky. You tangle things up, but I guess I can't wish you didn't." He turned and walked away, leaving Sonia rather more puzzled than before.
"Okay, okay, my hair looks great. I love the gorram flowers. But don't you dare try and get me in a skirt. Cargo pants to the end."
—Lubanzi Sobukwe (they/them), genderqueer romance author whose sex scenes were rated "Volcano-Hot" by the Cortex page We're Here, We're Queer, We're Shiny.
Despite Badger's very fine hat, there are a lot of other rodents he resembles much more than his namesake, in Sonia's opinion. Rat. Weasel. Sewer rat. Skunk. Rat with plague-ridden fleas. None of them take kindly to the man after he ordered his goons to keep them on Serenity so they couldn't rescue Mal from himself on the sword-fighting field, but apparently he has a job for them. In order that Sonia not accidentally mention her thoughts on Badger's rodent status, she takes herself away as soon as he shows up in the cargo bay.
It's just their luck that said job involves another fancy party.
At least Inara won't be there—her new Persephone client wants her all to himself in the most literal sense that evening. And at least they're not supposed to act respectably this time. Respectably enough to be admitted, yes, but once inside, the idea is to cause a diversion. The bigger and messier the better, so aforementioned goons can grab a few priceless antiques. It's the getting admitted part that will be the issue. Badger's gotten them invites, but if they don't look appropriately moneyed, some excuse will likely be made to keep them out. Kaylee's frilly pink dress, as charming as it looks on her, won't pass muster.
So Inara, newly armed with the coin a vexed Badger handed over for the purpose, is taking them clothes shopping. River, Mal, and Zoe are Team Diversion, so they actually need outfits, but Wash is going because he will never miss the chance to watch his deadly autumn flower try on fancy anything, and Kaylee is going because Inara promised her a new dress on her birthday, and Sonia is going because her brat of a sister is threatening all kinds of direness if she doesn't.
Said brat of a sister has also decided this whole excursion is less an aggravating duty of the job than it is an excuse to have "girl time" and that they all need to look "like birds of paradise with diamond eyes" before they step off Serenity. River can be very persuasive when she wants, and so Inara's shuttle now contains many, many open containers of face powder and foundation and lipstick and kohl and mascara, plus all kinds of hair ornaments. Kaylee has dangling curls put up with emerald pins and is bouncing with excitement. Zoe has fine gold paint lining her eyes and an amused-but-tolerant expression. And River, with audacious red lipstick she chose herself, is sitting on Sonia to keep her from running off.
Yes, she's curious what she'd look like with makeup on. Deeply so. But the whole giggle-and-glitter-and-makeover atmosphere is getting to her. She's wishing for a wound to stitch. A syringe to inject. Or even a brawling practice session. Anything, really. But River, as usual, prevails, and Sonia finds herself being painted and powdered and combed and scrutinized…Please just get me out of this alive. It takes forever, but finally everyone pronounces themselves satisfied and Kaylee pulls Sonia over to Inara's mirror.
She smiles.
The difference isn't radical, which is a relief in a way. She doesn't want to look in the mirror and see a complete stranger's face. Nobody's going to think she's a cisgender woman—not that they would anyway; the hormones have wrought change, but nothing that's visible when covered up by multiple layers of shirt and vest and jacket. But it's closer to how Sonia thinks of herself, closer to the elegance she's practiced in her movements and voice for so long.
And the style Inara's done with her hair—a kind of twist with a comb and curls dangling down and a few peacock feathers—is amazing.
Mal is shouting at them to get the hell down here so they can finish this lunatic shopping tangle, and Jayne starts to complain about how slow they are (even though he's not actually going) until he sees Sonia and drops the weight he's lifting in utter shock. Book, who's spotting him, grabs it and makes some gallant comment about how very pretty everyone looks, though of course it's all just "to gild refinéd gold, to paint the lily" etc. River immediately begins expostulating on how King John, the source of the quote, is one of the most vastly underrated of Shakespeare's histories, and starts analyzing its major themes.
Wash's response is less words than a garbled string of syllables with Zoe's name in there at least three times. Jayne shakes his head as if he has water in his ears, then demands if Sonia is seriously going to walk around like that, made up like a woman and all. Mal rolls his eyes and tells Jayne that she walks around like a woman every day, paint or not, ain't you noticed, and we've got Badger's coin to waste, so everyone hurry up.
As much as a small part of Sonia appreciates Kaylee and River and Inara exclaiming over how lovely she looks, she honestly prefers Wash being distracted by his wife, Book's all-inclusive compliment, Mal's casual acceptance. She doesn't want to be some kind of show. She just wants to be Dr. Sonia Tam, who likes a few pretty things, yes, but is at her best when treating laser burns and extracting bullets and giving vaccines.
Inara shows her a few ways to do her own makeup and hair, and after a few weeks of the new styles appearing daily, she has her wish. Serenity's crew doesn't notice anymore, not even Jayne. They just yell at her for headache meds and chat with her about engine parts and guns and the current job and try to cheat her at cards so they won't have to clean the septic system.
She grins, and cheats right back.
"We love our fellow humans, who could die at any moment, will someday die no matter what, and might abandon us or turn on us. We can push this knowledge away or face it. Love demands either denial or heroism."
—Rachel Red Leaf (she/her), trans philosophy major who leads vigils every night outside her university's main offices, in protest of their refusal to condemn recent hate crimes.
Sonia's in the infirmary a few months later as they fly through the black, adjusting the formula with which she and River came up to counteract the influence of Niska's torture machines, when Zoe comes in and declares she needs a physical. It's unexpected, seeing as she got an examination to confirm her non-injured status just three days ago when a complicated (read: dangerous) job was completed. Concerned, Sonia asks if she suspects a medical problem.
Zoe says no, but she thinks she might be pregnant.
She is. Serenity explodes. Almost literally.
Wash is kissing her about every five seconds and already planning the exact dinosaurs he'll buy next time they're dirtside, because even his collection is not yet fit for their child-to-be. Kaylee is squealing with delight loudly enough to counteract the notion that there's no sound in space. Mal appears exactly as if he's been hit on the back of the head with a flying wrench and isn't past the shock stage yet. River (who knew already) is reciting long strings of poetry by an Earth-That-Was author named Hafiz. Book is clapping both future parents on the shoulder and can't seem to remove the smile from his face. Jayne dropped his weight again upon hearing the news. Inara is applauding, dancing, laughing like a little girl.
And Sonia is panicking. Inwardly.
What if she can't find the right drugs for prenatal care the next planet they land on? Sometimes the medical supplies are so rudimentary. What if there are complications with the pregnancy? It's not as if she's an obstetrician/gynecologist by specialty. What if Zoe has to go out on a job, there's trouble, and she ends up losing the child? It would be devastating.
But then she remembers River's birth, how stunned and awed her ten-year-old self was at watching the tiny baby with the huge wondering eyes take her first breath and begin to cry. And she knows there are some things logic doesn't quite explain, and that heroic, messy, absurd love is one of them. The love she knows each member of the crew already has for Zoe and Wash's child, even though it's smaller than a blueberry at the moment.
For a few minutes, alone in the infirmary, Sonia lets herself weep for sheer joy.
And then she shows her own love in Dr. Tam-fashion—she begins making a list of the prenatal drugs and vitamin supplements they'll need to pick up for Zoe at their next stop.