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The first time Lucille saw Nandi, she was coming out of a Drops haze. The withdrawal chills were starting to cut through the warm staticky feeling that Lucille had become familiar with. She'd already had a few clients that day, and when she saw the newcomer with dark red hair, she figured she had the woman's number. Not an old divorcée or widow, not a young woman exploring the idea of touching another girl for the first time. A mother from town, Lucille thought. Probably ten years into her marriage and missing that spark she'd felt with her best school friend. Lucille knew exactly what to say to women like that.
And she would say it, too, if she could get a grip on the chills wracking her body.
"I've got you," said the newcomer, and Lucille could focus her eyes enough to see the needle, so she held out her arm and waited.
The needle went into her arm, but instead of the warm fuzz of another Drops dose, there was a slick cooling feeling that spread through her whole body. The newcomer stroked a hand over her forehead, and then Lucille lost consciousness.
Lucille learned two days later, through more chills and aches and what must have been the worst headache any human being had ever had, that the newcomer's name was Nandi, that she was from Sihnon, and that she had an entire crate of Para-Hyracycline alongside all of the trunks of gowns that made up her luggage.
Lucille had never heard of Para-Hyracycline before, but as Emma bundled her up in a blanket and helped Lucille's shaking hands guide water crackers into her mouth, she told Lucille what Nandi had told her.
"It's new medicine straight from Ariel," she murmured. "Nandi knows all the science, but I didn't really understand what she was saying. She told me all we have to know is that it's supposed to help stop Drops addiction and overdoses and help with withdrawal and she's going to give you as much of it as you need." She looked up at Lucille's face. "I'm supposed to go get her when I see your pupils shaking. I'll be right back."
The doses of anti-Drops medicine weren't miracles in vials, but they made sure that Lucille's body didn't entirely shut down as the drug left her system. She wasn't entirely conscious for a further two days, but Emma or Darren would help her feed herself and go to the bathroom and they sponged her off and went and fetched Nandi when they saw her pupils shaking.
Once she wasn't sweating through all her clothes within hours and could move a little on her own, Petaline brought her a new cotton robe fresh out of the packaging and brushed her hair and helped her walk through the hallways.
"Where's Liam?" Lucille whispered. Petaline grinned at her.
"Six feet under."
It was the first time Lucille felt like she was alive in months.
"No foolin'?"
"No foolin'!" Petaline said. "Darren and Helen took care of the body. Kye has already been out there to take a piss on the grave."
"How'd that happen?"
"Nandi," Petaline said as they made it to the stairs, turned around, and started walking back. Lucille couldn't manage stairs quite yet without her heartrate skyrocketing. "She visited about two months back. I don't remember that, but she had a drink and bought an hour with Helen but just talked with her about how the house ran, and then she came back with all her things and the medicine and a case full of guns. Liam wouldn't sell to her so she dropped him and took the house by rights."
"Anybody fight alongside him?"
"I think Belinda wanted to, but she's never been one for violence so she stepped back real quick."
"Figures."
Petaline ushered her back to her bed, because that walk did take a lot out of her, but she'd done it, and she fell asleep with a genuine sense of pride that she hadn't felt in years.
Lucille finally crept her way downstairs three weeks after Nandi had given her that first dose of Para-Hyracycline. Maybe Lucille didn't have the best mental picture of the downstairs with the bar and the lounges and the party room, but it all felt far brighter and cleaner.
"I feel like I can see everything," she said to Kye without thinking once she made it to the red couch where he was sitting.
"Nandi took down all the curtains and tapestries," he told her. "She's airing the place out right now, and then we'll decide what goes back up. How are you feeling?"
"Like a newborn lamb," Lucille admitted.
"Up for a look at the new gear?" He asked.
"In a minute," she promised.
"Samira and Leonie and Ming are going through the same thing," Kye told her. "Leonie's still going through the worst of it, but Samira managed to walk a whole loop through the house without help yesterday. Ming has exercises Nandi gave him to help with the shaking."
That meant there was hope. That meant that maybe Lucille would one day once again dance and repair dresses and help make beds and do the laundry with everyone else.
"I'm ready to see the new gear," she decided, and Kye helped her stand and walk into one of the little rooms on the first floor.
The new gear wasn't toys or outfits like usual, but a few severe looking pieces of equipment in no-nonsense white plastic and a shelf stocked with swabs and latex gloves and little plastic vials with screw tops.
"We're getting tested on the regular now," Kye said. "Nandi says twice a month to start out."
"She can afford it?"
"That's where the Drops money will go now," Kye told her. "And I'm off the market for the next two weeks at least, because that rash was something, even though Liam was just selling me anyway. Nandi brought the stuff to clear it up, though."
"Kye, why's she doing this? Who is she?"
"She's from Sihnon. Trained Companion, permanent spot at House Madrassa, she said. And…I think she wanted to do something…not important but…with weight? Something that would make a difference for a bunch of Rim kids and not just her rich clients."
"Do you think she…found religion? Or maybe got diagnosed with something terminal?"
"I don't think so," Kye admitted. "I think she wanted to carve out a life that she felt proud of and she's bringing us along with her."
Samira left once she was off Drops, and then Belinda left when Rance Burgess asked her to go with him one evening, but otherwise, everyone stayed with Nandi, even Lucille, though she didn't know if she was ready to confront what sex might be like now that she could actually feel her entire body all the time.
"I don't have anywhere to go," Lucille told Nandi after explaining all of her thoughts on the matter in what must have been the 'Verse's most rambling and emotional explanation. Nandi considered her for a long moment. Long enough that Lucille was about to insist she could work as a maid or that she could probably get over herself and take clients anyway and Nandi wouldn't have to worry about her. She wouldn't be any trouble.
"You could be the bartender," Nandi suggested. "If you don't want to take clients, you won't take clients."
"I'd like to do bartending," Lucille said quickly. "For a while at least, and then I can figure out where to go, or—"
"I won't kick you out," Nandi interrupted. "Not now, not ever. You find someplace you like better and you're free to go, but I won't see you head out of here just to keep struggling only this time without a roof over your head." She dug through a pile of stuff on the house's main table and pulled her Cortex tablet out. "Here. Better start reading up on cocktails."
Lucille spent her first two months sober tending bar and chatting with patrons. She taught herself how to toss bottles and started pouring blue blazers and flaming cinnamon whiskeys with the lights off so everyone could see the flames nice and clear. She got famous on the planet for her rum punch recipe (the secret was almond extract). She started dipping her toes back into sex work by doing a little bit of topless bartending and servicing clients who were looking for long cuddling sessions and heavy kissing. She felt pretty good doing that for a while before deciding how she felt about anything more physical.
She was sitting with Kye and Janine, disassembling old jewelry and picking gems off of encrusted corsets in order to make a full body jewelry piece for Emma to wear to a private party booked for that weekend, when Petaline came and sat down with them. She didn't pick up anything to work on, she didn't say anything, she just sat there quietly for a moment.
"Petaline?"
"I'm pregnant."
"What do you wanna do about it?" Janine asked.
"I'm keeping it," Petaline told them. "But I'm scared."
She was right to be.
From what Lucille knew of other courtesan workers, men hardly ever wanted anything to do with any babies that they might help make. Usually, the babies were left to the care of the workers, and that would have been fine. Petaline wanted her baby and Lucille would be there to support her and so would at least half of the house, and Nandi sent away for prenatal vitamins and tried her very best to give Petaline the sort of care she needed for her child. They had a good idea as to who the father was, and frankly, he was doing an absolute lè sè job of doing all that providing and protecting of his child and his child's mother and whatever else he preached when he spoke in the town center.
Lucille did her best to mix drinks and serve patrons and keep an eye out for anything Petaline might require and then finally she went to Nandi.
"Nandi?"
"Yes, Lucille?"
"When you came here, you had a standoff with Liam, right?"
"Sure did, hon."
"And then you shot him."
Nandi looked at her.
"That I did, Lucille. Why's this coming up now?"
"I want you to teach me how to shoot," Lucille said. "I'm worried Petaline's going to need defendin'."
Nandi took Lucille's hands in hers.
"I wouldn't ask that of you. You know that, right?"
"I know that," Lucille assured her. "But Petaline is my friend and this is my home."
And Nandi nodded.
She taught Lucille how to shoot a gun and how to clean one and tried her very best to tell Lucille what it felt like to kill a man.
"No matter how much I talk about it, you won't understand until you do it," Nandi told her. "It might be necessary. I truly hope it won't be, but if it happens, you'll be ready."
The skill only became necessary the week of Petaline's due date when Rance Burgess started creeping around the bordello and the situation became dire. This wasn’t Rance's baby. This was Petaline's baby. This was a baby that Lucille wanted to see being raised by Petaline and the rest of the workers.
And so this was Lucille's baby.
Nandi called some powerful woman from Sihnon to come help, and this woman brought a whole crew of black market smugglers with her, and they really did seem to know what they were doing. Lucille always did her best to not be impressed by a man with broad shoulders and a well-oiled gun, but she had to admit that the ones Nandi's friend brought along were efficient and well-intentioned.
Their stint at the house very quickly became the plans for a standoff, and Lucille dutifully told them that she knew how to shoot and was willing to do so. The spaceship captain positioned her on the second floor out one of the east windows, and Lucille waited.
Lucille had not ever killed a man before, but when she aimed her rifle towards one of Burgess's cronies and saw him go sprawling motionless to the ground, she found that she wasn’t horrified nor satisfied, but just saw a grim statistic at the corner of her vision.
One down. Keep going.
Darren took bullets in his shoulder and throat and Janine was shot right in her forehead and crumpled immediately and Leonie wailed when she got a bullet in her breast and Lucille just kept firing. She was somehow no longer a girl. She was no longer even a courtesan but a soldier, and this was a siege, and she knew she would die before she saw the bordello fall to Rance fucking Burgess and his band of flunkies who were so lacking for independent thought that they'd follow that sort of man into a battle where they died for him just because he thought he had rights to a little baby he didn't truly care about.
Lucille reloaded and fired and reloaded and fired and it was almost nine in the morning before Emma pried her fingers away from the trigger of her rifle.
"There are men out there—"
"Captain Reynolds is taking care of it," Emma said. "Lucy, you've been hit—"
"I'll be fine—"
"Lucy, you've got a bullet in you. You're just hopped up on the rush of the night. Come on…come with me before you keel over."
Lucille stood and walked with Emma and barely made it to the nearest room when she suddenly became extremely aware that she did in fact have a bullet in her ribs and Emma had to maneuver her onto the room's bed.
"It'll be okay," Emma told her. "We got the doctor and now that Petaline had her baby, he'll come and take care of you."
And Emma was right. It was pretty much no time at all before the transport crew's medic busted into the room.
"Any medical history I should know about?" The doctor must have been exhausted, staying up all night through Petaline's labor and now stitching up everyone after weathering the siege, but it didn't show in his face or the steadiness of his hands.
"Drops," Lucille managed to grit out as he cleaned the area around her wound and his weird little sister set up his supplies on the nightstand.
"Dydranyloxin," Emma added. "She had an addiction for almost two years and then she got off of it with the help of para…uh…"
"Para-Hyracycline," the doctor provided. "Okay, good to know," he said, quickly moving to inject the numbing. "I don't have a lot of options when it comes to painkillers so I'm afraid that with what's available, you'll experience a bit more mental fog due to your history, but it isn't permanent and it won't result in any long term damage."
They buried Nandi and the others the afternoon on the same day they died. It was for the best. Lucille would never argue that. Their friends didn't have to suffer the indignity of rotting in the heat, the motley crew of bandits didn't have to risk spending another day planetside, and everyone could focus on rebuilding.
It didn't change the fact that when Emma guided Lucille out to the burial site, Lucille was stumbling alongside her through the thick fog of the painkillers that the doctor generously gave her.
He didn't even ask for trade. Not a blowie or a kiss or even a cocktail or anything. He just stitched her up and gave those pills to her. Strictly allotted and counted, but freely given. With a smile, even.
She was grateful. She really was, but when she surfaced three days later, cleared to switch to the same painkillers they used for headaches and period cramps, and realized that she couldn't remember any details of the service: not Inara's prayer, not Emma's singing, not Kye's eulogy, Lucille wept.