Actually Shieldmaid's "Shying Away" series is up to 5 parts now. Makes me glad because I've really enjoyed it, but I've stayed off the site ever since the RPG group I was with slacked off.
I know some of the fics are kind of amateur, maybe I just got lucky 'cause I like Jayne. But check out this excerpt from part 4
And if he didn’t know better, he’d have believed the praise made her blush a little. “It isn’t anything, really. Just seeing if I recall how to do it. Kaylee, though, she made me these clever stretchers right handy out of something she had--blown valve collars, she said, or some damn thing. And the preacher gave me a needle and colored thread from his sewing kit and rustled up some cloth for practice.” She held up the scrap again and chuckled. “I think this is a piece of his pillowcase.” But then the humor drained right out of her face. “The captain thinks I might be able to get work with a tailor or a seamstress or something, if I can remember how to work a needle.”
Jayne waited for her to go on, but she said nothing more. Instead, she sat silent and still within his arm around her, looking down at her handful of thread flowers. Didn’t take a rutting magistrate to name the sadness that had settled into her face for what it was. Sadness, and fear as well. And Jayne felt the same thing trying to refashion his expression as well so he frowned instead. “It’ll beat the gos se out of humping fuel jockeys for some pissant hwundan like Gustin, I conjure.” The sudden, unbidden image of Shy humping some guy—any guy--for money or pure whimsy made his chest hurt bad, bad enough to threaten him with a right ugly mood. And whether that guy made her weep or sing didn’t enter into it one iota. But he didn’t say any of that.
This author uses Firefly speak to spin a great story and to take someone like Jayne Cobb and make him look like he cares...that's just talent.
TEEEEEEJ
