Close Enough
Kaylee made no bones about the fact that she was glad that Inara had joined their ragtag crew, as much as she still held herself apart from it. Before Inara’s arrival, the only one she had to talk to about girl stuff with Zoe, and frankly, she got a more attentive audience from Jayne. Zoe just didn’t have time for that sort of thing.
Inara always had time to talk about hair and shop for clothes and make tea and give Kaylee advice. But for all that, she was not a particularly outgoing person. She continued to remain aloof around the others. Kaylee didn’t mind. The ‘verse was full of different types of people. But it did lead her to an interesting question.
“Hey, why’d you become a Companion anyway?” she asked. “I mean, you don’t really like to be close to people, to let them get to know you. So why pick a job where you’re always close to someone?”
Inara just smiled her somewhat mysterious smile and said that it was sort of complicated, then deflected with a gentle joke: “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
Kaylee laughed and didn’t ask again, because she knew a desire for privacy when she saw it, and in the end it really was none of her business.
But she wondered, really, if Inara even knew the answer herself.