Intervention

Chapter 1

"Reckon it wouldn't hurt for you to be getting some shut-eye, doctor."

Simon raised his head from the imager, rubbed his eyes and turned his back on the endless checking and double-checking of hand-scanner readings that had been, from the start, all too starkly clear.

"After all - " Something as much a wince as an amused smile flickered across Mal's face, the captain hunched in the infirmary doorway, not quite sitting but definitely not standing, no sign of whoever had helped him to get there. "Not like we're working against a clock here. Ain't like this is gonna change any for better or worse if you delay for rest." He ruefully slapped a palm against his bent-up knee.

Simon gave him a sceptical survey, brows raised, though he gentled his voice as he said, "I had imagined you'd prefer a solution sooner rather than later."

"That's got no bearing on my one and only doctor wearing himself out for no good need. Been damn near twelve hours now, and I don't even know you've left this room. Everyone else to a man is rested. Consider this me ordering you to get some sleep."

Simon sighed, ran his palms up and down his thighs, and slowly stepped over to the door to sink down opposite the captain, leaning his back upon the wall and folding his arms atop his knees. "I thought, maybe... if there was something I'd missed... another diagnosis that might not be so..." Impractical.

"Find anything?"

Simon shook his head. "I've gone over everything ten times over. The truth is, I couldn't have slept anyway. Not until I was sure."

Mal frowned, and he had the distinct impression the man was studying him with focus. "Reckon you could sleep now."

"That's... possible." He scraped his hands over his face, and stared intently back at the captain, who'd relaxed somewhat in his necessarily hunched posture. "How did you get here? Where's Inara?"

Typically, the man ignored the question entirely. "I know you must be concerned 'bout the idea you might not have a solution for this. But there ain't no need for haste. I can take my knocks. Been laid up a stretch of weeks many a time before."

"I'm aware of that," Simon said. "Captain, you're a terrible patient. Which factor, I might add, is more than enough reason in itself to want this over and done with as soon as possible. How did you get here? Where's Inara? Or Book?"

"My faithful guardian angels got things of their own to do. 'Sides, it ain't so bad, now. That shot you gave me took away the nausea some."

"The point was to make you more comfortable while taking it easy, not allow you to push yourself until you vomit again," Simon pointed out, annoyed.

The captain stalled him with a raised hand, reminding him once again why he hated having Mal as a patient. Which was especially aggravating considering the man's mission in life seemed to be to hospitalise himself as often as possible. "Let's just pretend for a moment that's up to me, doctor, and that I'm like to be all kinds of extra difficult a patient if you won't let me get around on my own."

Simon gave a small cough of laughter.

"So if we can agree that you ain't gonna harp at me 'less I'm in danger of real damage, and then I'll be sure and listen when you do... well, most probably I will."

Simon rolled his head back, shut his eyes and very slowly beat the back of his head against the wall.

"...That an arrangement we can both live with?"

"All right," he conceded irritably, with the distinct feeling there really was no other choice. "Let's re-write the rules of patient-physician relationships." He threw up his hands. "After all, you re-write the rules of everything else."

"So we're understood. Good," Mal grunted, with a smart nod.

"Fine, we're understood." Telling himself he could always sedate the captain if it came to that, and feeling acutely sorry for Inara, although she did have weapons in her arsenal that he did not. He dragged himself upright, feeling the protest of limbs that had started to sleep already themselves once at rest. Mal might not be wrong... if he was his own patient, he'd done plenty of scolding already before now. Considering their conversation just gone, he did appreciate the irony.

"Best give me a lift over to the kitchen, 'fore you go for that nap," Mal said, raising an arm ready in the assumption of the help requested.

And the simple request put Simon's mind at rest in all kinds of ways, and he supposed that was why his doctorly instincts had accepted with such comparative ease... because it wasn't bravado or pride. Inara and Book had been busy, or elsewhere. Mal wasn't taking the problem lightly, but he wasn't going to be stopped. He had a ship of folk to take care of, too.

The amount of the captain's weight that dragged on his shoulder itself informed him that balance while vertical was nigh impossible. It was a delicate and complex system that allowed the human body to support itself on two legs and a spindly frame defiant in the face of gravity. That Alliance weapon had done Mal's significant damage.

Book was, in fact, in the kitchen, cooking. He looked up as Simon poured Mal into one of the more comfortable chairs in the recess, which were lower to the floor and less of a chore to maintain position in. "Good morning, captain. Doctor."

"Hey," said Mal, through that dazed look Simon was beginning to recognise meant things were bad and the world proving difficult to settle. He watched the captain's face closely, and things appeared to calm.

"Shepherd Book," Simon acknowledged, late. "Keep an eye on this one for me, won't you? Make sure he stays out of trouble."

Book smiled. "Inasmuch as that's ever possible."

The captain chose to deal with the conversation by ignoring it. He sniffed, and his chin raised a fraction, betraying interest. "That wouldn't be fresh produce cooking I smell, would it?"

"It would. We did manage to seize a few bargains in the market while on Persephone. Tomatoes, and eggs, captain."

"Well, I'd best..." Simon wavered, his eyes straying to the cooking.

"Best go tell everyone breakfast's in the offing," Mal supplied. "Guess there'll be time for sleeping later."

"Right." He still hesitated, arms swinging loosely at his sides, unsure, before he left the kitchen.

Laughed embarrassedly as he bumped into Kaylee, on her way in, and blushed as they slid on past each other. Unfazed by the collision, but with reddened eyes from the trials of the past twenty-four hours, she managed a smile for him. "Good mornin'."

Flustered, he hurried away. Aside from his assigned duty, he hadn't had opportunity to check upon River in far too long, he reminded himself. And given that she was with Badger and Jayne, he really should have been more concerned about ensuring he did that.

He could hear Reynolds' voice long before he walked into the little kitchen. It carried, especially in a tin box like his little cargo boat. Could just tell the man loved to give orders. Badger'd seen every evidence he'd had it right the first time - man never stopped being a sergeant, even with the war lost and his Browncoats gone and all he commanded now a smuggler's rustbucket and its ragtag scatter of would-be crew.

" - Vanu, over here. Don't that have some form of a private-owned set-up? Folks there not too keen to live under Alliance thumb, neither. Fought hard in the war."

"A good reason why Alliance security there will be especially tight." The deep, resonant voice of the shepherd was speaking as Badger turned through into the kitchen and saw them clustered around the little seating area tucked into the corner. Reynolds, his doctor, and his first mate were pouring over a mess of charts and a battered hand-held cortex link on the table between them. The preacher was leaned over Zoe's chair with a tea towel between his hands while something sizzled unattended on the stove. That cute little engineer was sitting alone at the big table, looking like she was off in a world of her own.

Zoe craned her head 'round, nodded slightly at the preacher, a considering expression on her face.

"Also the reason Vanu's still half a ruin," Simon emphasized. "Even if we could get inside for treatment there, I doubt they'd have adequate facilities."

"Mornin'," Badger interrupted pointedly. He jerked his head toward the stove. "Something smells crispy."

Book straightened. "Oh, my." He turned, tossing the towel onto the counter and hurrying to salvage his cooking.

Reynolds leaned back, surreptitious about relaxing the grip of his fingers upon the plush edge of the chair as he did. "Breakfast," he said. "Reckon we need to call a get-together after, throw this open and see if anyone has any ideas of their own, now everyone's up and rested. " Though he frowned at Simon on that last part. "Where's everyone at, doctor? Got us so sidetracked, I never thought to ask."

"Wash was making some minor course alterations to keep us off the radar," Zoe said, getting up and going to the table, pulling out the chair at its head. "He'll be along."

"Inara said she was in the middle of something but she wouldn't be long. Jayne and River were just finishing a game of Bannu." Doctor looked real amused on that point.

"Jayne was playing - ?" Zoe laughed. "Tell me not for money."

"Losing badly," Simon provided.

Badger cleared his throat, loudly.

"Something on your mind?" Reynolds asked, finally looking his way.

"Only what's been on it ever since I woke up on your puddle of niao ship. Like maybe when you people are gonna start talking about returning these feet of mine back to solid home ground."

Reynolds rubbed his forehead with his fingers and nodded to himself a few times, giving all the appearance of a man thinking. He jerked a hand, calling Badger to step closer, which he cautiously did and, bearing in mind that careful grasp on the seat's edge, stayed just a pace out of reach. Reynolds' lips compressed to a thin line, noticing.

"Can't go back to Persephone," he said. "Told you that. Got the law on our tail on account of shooting a whole heap of Alliance personnel and I'm thinking that's not something they'll take to kindly. Don't know how much the Alliance have or on who. True enough, we were all a mite distracted when the girl pulled you aboard, but I'm thinking it's entirely possible she did you one hell of a good turn."

"Now listen here." Badger jabbed a finger in his face. Nobody close except that effete doctor, and the first mate made no move. "I don't give a fart about the gorram Alliance. I got my own people. I'm a reasonable man, captain, and not unappreciative of that whole daring and dashing rescue stunt you pulled back there, but this niu se high-handed abduction is starting to piss me off. I'm telling you nice - get this ship turned around right now."

"You're telling me," Reynolds repeated flatly.

There was a beat, where Badger started to say something and at the same time his body started thinking about retreat, but Reynolds moved hella fast for a man couldn't stand up without falling right back over. Before Badger could do anything, there were rough hands twisting in the fabric of his jacket, compressing the collar hard into his throat. Reynolds' weight dragged him down as, leaning forward beyond his own centre of gravity, he used his grip on Badger to stabilize himself.

None of his crew reacted much at all. In the background, there were a few 'clinks' as Book handed Zoe salt and herb pots over the counter, and she set them down on the table. Even Simon just occupied his gaze elsewhere.

Reynolds said, "Hate to point it out - well, no, granted that's not entirely true - but right now it's you who's on my territory for a change, and those goons of yours that do your muscling for you are way behind us on Persephone. You might want to think about that some, 'fore you start pushing your weight around."

Badger nodded quickly, trying to breathe. Bloody Malcolm Reynolds. Man couldn't stop being physically imposing even after some Alliance toy chewed him up and spat him out. As opposed to those folks never were set up with that advantage in the first place.

Reynolds shoved him as he loosed his grip, giving himself the momentum to fall easy back into his seat at the same time as sending Badger half-falling over the seat behind (the doctor just scooted out of the way in time). Badger straightened; straightened his neck tie as well. "That's grand. Glad we had this chat," he said hoarsely, shoving down his anger because Zoe's eyes were on him now and the big merc had just entered the room, too, River trailing after, and one thing he had ample proof on was that Reynolds' crew were loyal.

Jayne went straight to the stove and stole something out of the pan right under the preacher's nose, before coming back around to the table, chased by a rebuke, to heavily plant himself opposite Kaylee.

Simon brushed past Badger to go claim the chair next to her, and Reynolds said, without any particular inflection of hostility, "If you're eating with us, best get sat down. Otherwise, there'll be plenty of unembellished protein around if you'd rather leave it 'til later."

Badger belligerently took the chair the other side of Kaylee, and held the one next to it out invitingly for River, who stood by the door staring at nothing. "Saved you the best spot, doll." She gave him a look he couldn't fathom, but came to take up the offer, and what more mattered, really? As for the whole kidnapping issue, well, maybe he should overlook that for the sake of having one semi-ally on the ship, however dodgy in the brainpan.

"Zoe?" Reynolds said.

The first mate didn't need any more than that vague prompt. She crossed to his side and helped him negotiate the short distance to the chair she'd readied earlier, offloaded him into it and helped shove it back up to the table, businesslike, before turning up towards the bridge. "Best go collect that layabout man of mine."

Wash must have been on his way already, because it was only seconds before they returned on each others arm. He still had a nice collection of bruises, the usual souvenirs of civilised Alliance law. "It's always nice when the food actually is food," he said chirpily, sniffing the air as he and his wife sat down.

"Just waiting for Inara now," said Book, looking like he was itching to be dishing the food out onto plates.

"I'm thinking Inara can take her chances," Jayne said. "Rest of us 're hungry, and she obviously ain't all that much."

"Yeah," Wash agreed, rubbing his hands together.

"Oh, we're not starting without her," Kaylee said, starting to rise. "I'll go make sure she knows - "

"No need." Reynolds waved her back down, and addressed the door. "Glad you could finally make it."

"Mal," the companion in the doorway acknowledged with a small smile, and Badger swallowed hard at the sight of the red dress she was wearing. She carried a chair, clearly having the presence of mind to realise they were one extra. She set it at the foot of the table, opposite the captain, and composed herself decorously within it.

"Well, since everyone's here..." The preacher began laying down the loaded plates, Jayne stealing tidbits from everyone else's 'til he got his own, and even after, oblivious to Wash taking from his while he did so.

Book lay the last plate in front of the final empty chair, and sank down himself behind it to complete the table, curtailing the dining for a brief silent grace - which, since the captain ignored, Badger did too.

"Don't go leavin'," Mal said loudly as breakfast was drawing to a close. "Got some talking to be done." He quieted again, unworried by the lack of acknowledgement, and waited until those last few still eating had finished and Jayne had stopped pinching leftovers, then finally until Kaylee cleared all the distractsome clutter from the table.

The thought of ousting Badger from the gathering did strike, for all of a second, before he discarded it as all kinds of impractical in the actual enforcing; plus, if all this worked out all right, they might want to be keeping doing business with the man, and treating him like a prisoner 'stead of - albeit some stretch of the imagination - temporary crew, didn't seem the way to go about keeping that possibility open.

Spreading his arms out and planting both hands at the corners of the narrow table, he said, "Guess you all know by now I got me some troublesome sort or hangover from that hit I took on Persephone. Zoe and the doctor and me, been doing some figuring, trying to pin down our options... with a little help from the preacher, there." He included Book in the tally with a nod. The theme was old and familiar enough by now there wasn't even anything of irony left in the gesture. "What we're gonna do is throw it open, let you all know what we've got and see if we can't come up with some improvement with all our heads working together... Simon? Zoe?"

Zoe stood, and briefly detoured across to the small table for all their charts and information. She brought them back to the main table and didn't sit again once she'd placed them down, even though it wasn't her turn for speaking.

"The device that was used on the captain apparently caused damage that will, in the absence of surgical intervention, have an irreparable impairment of balance and coordination," Simon began.

"What?" Kaylee interrupted with a small gasp. "No - " He saw her look around, and saw with her the grimness of the crew, but no special surprise among the faces present. Ever the optimist among their number, he wouldn't change her, but he sighed as she chewed her lip and asked, "But it's fixable, right, Simon? You can fix it."

"It's fixable - "

Jayne interrupted, an interested gleam in his eye and a snort in his voice as the tension broke, not giving Simon chance to finish. "Well, then. What in hell was that thing they hit him with anyhow, doc? I ain't never seen any kind of weapon like that before, not anywhere, and I sure - " He faltered, glanced between Simon and Mal and caught onto the fact that the prevailing mood was hardly yet celebratory, and added a recalcitrant, "What'd it do to him?"

Simon ground his teeth with impatience, but it was surely a valid question, and he gave in as he saw near everyone present had responded to it with interest. "My best guess is that the weapon projects a sonic beam - a vibration that would swell the blood vessels in the body, causing multiple aneurysms. The blood we saw was from ruptured capillaries... not anything to be concerned about in itself, given the brevity of the captain's exposure..."

"So what's wrong with him?" Jayne demanded impatiently. "Man can't stand up without falling over, I'd say we got ourselves something to be concerned - "

"The inner ear," Simon overrode him irritably. "You have a system of fragile organs extremely sensitive to vibration, all of which is tied into the human body's sense of balance. Any damage to that system and you have a problem. In the captain's case, the vibrations appear to have destroyed the statoconia in the inner ear - pebbles of calcium carbonate that react to movement and essentially provide the body with its sense of space. Balance is nonexistent without them, and they will not re-form spontaneously."

He looked around them all and continued, "What the captain needs is a good Alliance hospital with decent supplies and facilities to treat this to a satisfactory level. Unfortunately, he's not going to get it, certainly not anytime soon. The damage of the sonic weapon is... distinctive. As recognisable as a gunshot, in its own way, and gunshots in Alliance hospitals are going to do more than just arouse suspicion. We can't do this openly - even supposing we could find some way to pay for the treatment in the first place."

"Well, hey, you know," Wash said, waving a hand in easy relief. "Breaking into Alliance hospitals... wacky hijinks. Been there, done that, right? You know what you're doing, doctor."

Zoe's eyes slid aside and her fingers compressed her husband's shoulder slightly.

"Of course, it's not that simple..." he backtracked, face falling.

Simon cleared his throat, and said apologetically, "This isn't like Ariel. This is a procedure, not a scan. A relatively simple procedure in comparison with any surgical means I might ever have to use to help River - " he looked down " - but this isn't a snatch-and-grab. The captain needs proper care and treatment. The procedure itself cannot be rushed, and requires specialist equipment and preparations that take time to set up. Time, too, for recovery afterward. One solar day would be pushing the boundaries of the impossible. Two, perhaps. It certainly isn't something we're going to be able to accomplish in an operation of the kind we undertook on Ariel."

"Therein lies the problem," said Zoe. She reached over Wash's shoulder to spread the charts out for clearer view on the table, and he moved to help, which made it one pair of hands working between them, discounting the ones they had held together, Wash having clasped hers where it rested on his shoulder. "Viable locations, most of them Alliance hospitals, on each of the marked planets. Now, unless someone among us knows something that might give us an inside or some other extra edge, or can offer any other ideas, we'll have to start looking at each one and trying to pin down our best chance."

"Maybe have a better chance with the private ones," Jayne said. "Didn't much like the security on Ariel for the gorram quick little job."

Mal gave him a sharp glance, and it didn't escape him that Simon did too. He stored the fact for later.

"The truth is, it doesn't make a lot of practical difference," Simon said. "The Alliance has eyes everywhere. The private hospitals are probably, if anything, under more pressure to report anything unusual, even if the symptoms aren't flagged up automatically under a security alert on their systems. The broader damage under even a hand scanner is obviously unique... it would be reported."

"Some mighty smart black market sawbones out there," Jayne said, determined not to be beat.

"And if we tried to cross 'em, we'd all end up as organ parts in a dozen different of their paying customers," Mal said firmly. "Going up against the Alliance is bad enough, but that's another kettle of fish entirely." He ignored Badger, in the background, rolling his eyes.

There was a short stretch of silence of people thinking. Into it, Inara said slowly, "It doesn't have to be, strictly speaking, a public hospital. There are other types of facilities that could provide what we need, that aren't dedicated to medical care alone."

"Military, for example," Book said, backing her up.

"If we were insane," Wash said, a startled Jayne nodding along with him.

"No..." Simon rubbed fingers across closed eyes. "They have something here. Training academies, perhaps. And - " He paused, and looked at Kaylee, who was hovering on the edge of talk.

"Research," she said.

At the end of the table, Inara's face stretched in a silent smile. Mal frowned at her, thinking she'd seemed mighty spry ever since walking in, compared to the rest of the times he'd seen her since their quick exit from Persephone. Thinking, in fact, that she'd had that suggestion in mind long before either Simon or Kaylee had voiced it.

"Well," he said, smiling a mite more grimly himself. "Why don't you tell us all whatever it is you're dyin' to share. Research, huh?"

The others looked at him and, startled, followed the direction of his gaze 'til Inara was a veritable centre of attention.

"It's a possibility," she said. "I've been trying to track down an old friend. He's a medical research scientist. And he was a client... a regular client... for a long time, back on Sihnon. I haven't seen him since he relocated to a major research centre out on Riarden."

"Riarden?" Wash prompted, curious. "I never heard of it."

Inara gave an almost imperceptible sigh. "It's a moon, on the outer edge of the core. It used to be extremely well known."

Jayne snapped his fingers, looking excessively smug. "Riarden. Knew I knew that gorram name," he said to the sea of blank faces. "Used to be real big shit, back in the time of the first colonies, 'til it all got used up."

"That's right." Inara's agreement had a certain astounded air. "It's an old mining colony... the original mining colony, in fact. Now it's a cluster of scientific facilities and businesses that need a base in the core but can't afford a location on the central planets. When Hoyle left Sihnon, it was looked upon as very much a step down."

"Much like yourself taking a berth on a nowhere boat sneaking contraband around the rim," Mal remarked gruffly, ducking his head.

" - but it was what he wanted to do," she added, hard.

"Look." Awkwardly, Mal tried to meet her eye and ended up skittering between that steadily more annoyed gaze and the charts on the table. "There's no call for you to involve yourself in this, Inara. We've not yet exhausted the options. Things ain't so critical we'd be needing to drag you into any illegality."

"He's on their board of directors, Mal, as well as being maybe their most senior researcher. He can help us. And I trust him. It's better than anything else you'll come up with."

"I don't want you involved in this."

"And what if I want to be involved in this?" She came to her feet, the chair scratching back. His automatic impulse to match her almost landed him on the floor. She gestured, something faintly desperate and helpless in that elegant lift of her hand. "Mal. Do you want to stay like this?"

"I said no." He turned to Zoe, pointedly ignoring Inara, still standing. "I like that academy idea. Host of dumb rich kids sounds a better option than Alliance security." He glanced at Simon, who reluctantly nodded, a twist to his mouth at the indirect slur. "Lets take a look at the options. See if we can't come up with something doesn't involve an inside man." He looked back at Zoe, whose eyes slid dubiously to Inara. "Zoe!"

"Yes, sir." A hard note to that acknowledgement told him he was probably catching hell next time she got him alone - but not in front of the crew, not here.

There was an angry swish of cloth as Inara turned and left the room.

"Nice job," Kaylee told him sourly, and shoved back her chair to follow.

"Hell." Mal stared after them both as Zoe blandly rustled the charts in her too-focused study of them, and everyone else, bar Badger, at least made the attempt not to look as though their attention was upon him.

She was talking quietly with Kaylee about none of the things uppermost in her thoughts when she heard a small sound from the door and looked up to see Mal there, supported on Simon's arm. From what she could gather, the sound that had alerted her was Mal shaking his head and indicating to go straight in when Simon made to knock.

"What is it, Mal?" she asked impatiently, unhappily aware that his current condition necessitated that she wouldn't for once be able to throw him out of her shuttle when he became excessively annoying.

"Need to talk." Simon lowered him onto the settee, not looking entirely comfortable with it all, and hesitated indecisively when Mal said, "Go get some sleep, doctor. You sure as hell need it by now if you didn't before."

Kaylee looked askance at Inara, who responded with a weary nod, then stood and took the doctor's arm on her way out. "C'mon, Simon. You look 'bout ready to drop of exhaustion. Mean old cap'n been wearing you out, I'll bet..."

When they were gone, Inara looked across at Mal and folded her hands together unapproachably in her lap. "I don't appreciate being treated like a child, Mal. I don't need your protection. Believe it or not, I happen not to be completely helpless or innocent of the big bad world, and I can function in it and make my own decisions just as capably as anyone."

"Never said you couldn't." He shifted on the settee, and she wondered if he was getting tired of sitting. Her consistent impression of him was always of force and movement, action and reaction. There weren't too many times she could call to mind of him still. "Inara, you may trust this man, but that ain't the same as asking someone to break the law."

"Asking him to help someone, Mal. To help my... friend, if that's even remotely the word." She gauged her tone, letting him hear her aggravation. "I know him. He'll do it. It's why he is what he is."

"I'm not happy with any plan involves placing you in the front line."

"And I'm not happy with the way you seem to think that's for you to choose. This may be your ship, but I don't work for you, I don't sleep with you - I don't even rent from you now. You don't have any kind of hold on my decisions."

"That's kind of what I'm talking about," he said agitatedly. "You can't - "

"Would you have let me help you on Icarus, if you'd known it in advance?" she asked sharply. "Or would you have thrown that back in my face as well?"

He laughed a little bitterly. "On Icarus? I'd have taken any thread as offered itself. You didn't see me then. This isn't that bad."

She blinked back moisture defiantly, and tried not to crush her fingers in her own grip. "How can you say that?"

Mal tried to lean forward, sincerity on his face, but screwed-up balance held him back. "Because it's true. Even if it turns out there's nothing can be done to fix this... if this is all we end up paying, after what we scraped through down there, then we're still luckier than any of us got any right to be. We took on the Alliance in the next best thing to all-out warfare - "

"And you'd know about that, wouldn't you?"

"By rights we should be dead or caught," he said bluntly. "Anything upwards of that is a bonus. We didn't lose anybody, Inara. We didn't incur any losses we can't live with."

"But you don't need to live with it! Mal, this is senseless. I'm so tired of fighting this battle. It never seems to end! I lay down bridges, you push them aside. If I don't, you'll beat yourself bloody against the battlements. Like it or not, I am a part of this ship. Let me be a part of this ship." She rose, but realised quickly that towering above him while they argued only made her feel awkward, and seated herself back down nearer him as though it had been her intention.

"I have power, Mal. Maybe it isn't like yours, all guns blazing, but it exists, and I'm willing and ready to bring it to bear - for the good of the ship. For you. For all of them... how will they feel if you let this stick? A crippled captain can't be good for morale."

He winced. "Let's be avoiding the use of that word, for the time being... So let's say you did help. What then? Where does it end? Whole heap of rich clients you got the lowdown on, f'r instance. A line has to be drawn somewhere, Inara. I'm drawing it."

She slapped him. "I can't believe you're this thick-headed. How much unnecessary risk will you put this crew to, to spare me? I know what you think of my profession. Why does it offend you so much to think of me coming down to your level? Their level." She cast her hand toward the door. "Damn it, Mal, Kaylee works on your heists."

"They chose this life."

"So did I!"

He belatedly raised a hand to his face, touched where she'd slapped him and frowned at his fingers vaguely. "I'm not paying you for thieving and smuggling, Inara. I'm not paying you at all! Hell, you've paid me... you keep paying... I already owe you too much."

Inara quickly drew in breath, as he faltered and his eyes turned down. "Is that what this is really about?"

"No, it's... I guess maybe it's a..."

"I suppose accepting help from me damages your masculine pride," she remarked scathingly.

"No! That's not - don't turn this around. You know I'll take what I have to, for all I don't like being beholden. But you - it ain't right, is all." He reached for her, but she'd moved back enough that his hand fell inches short. His fingers sketched along the line of her cheek. She felt a lump in her throat.

"Let me help you," she said softly, raising her own hand to clasp his. His fingers felt solid, rough and callused and utterly unlike the many others she'd had more frequent and intimate contact with. "I want to help you... For all the things I can't afford to give."

Chapter 2

Everyone else was busy worrying about the captain, but she still had enough of his pain echoing inside her head, even thirteen-point-four-five hours later. So it was just her left to listen to the sad, deposed king, fidgeting in his fear and nerves, sad brain longing for his lost kingdom.

She leaned into the curve of the wall and pretended to be a part of it; limbs, flesh and blood, bone and hair melting into the lightweight fibre of the hull, watching him while she felt the soft, cold silence of the shuttle's metallic heart.

"It won't work," she said, as he figured out, on the second try, how to seal the door. "Besides, I can't let you take the shuttle. The captain and Simon need it. And I know you don't want to die out there, gasping for breath that won't come, surrounded by the Black."

He'd given a yell as he heard her, and spun. Now, he tried to compose himself. "I didn't see you there, love." Tugging at his jacket, straightening his hat. With pause for thinking, his unease only grew. "What you said there, about dying and suchlike... you don't know that, right? I mean, you couldn't. It's not real - 's just words."

She rolled her eyes and pushed off from the wall, hesitated briefly as her feet distracted her with the presence of the floor, then told him, "I'll forgive you for not believing me. None of the others really do. Not really." She drifted to the controls, felt him tense inside and out as she brushed close past him, and trailed her hands over the panels. The shuttle told her which buttons to depress.

"I don't want to die out here." He took a step back, nervously. "That much nothing, I always said it ain't healthy for a man. Like my feet kept firm on the ground. To be buried in good honest dirt."

"That's okay," River said. "I've locked the controls. You can't take the shuttle now."

"You - " His anger faded as quickly into confusion. He half believed. Enough to be afraid.

"We should go back inside Serenity. The captain will lock you up if he finds out you were in here." She turned and crossed to open the door and step through, not looking back at him. His frustration trailed after her down the walkways to the hold, with a jaunty swing determinedly affected in its step.

She saw Jayne, very briefly, as he emerged out onto the opposing walkway, then a fleeting look of alarm crossed his face as he saw her and he turned right back and vanished. Still sore about a card game...

Badger was breathing hard as he came down onto the floor of the hold. "Little boat's bigger than it looks, eh?" he excused, taking his hat off to fan himself and try to look dapper. He'd seen it on a vidcast once...

She almost drifted away in him, caught in the sprawling patchwork and rough string and spiky thorns and mass of wire and nails that held him all together. Blinked furiously and raised her chin to tell him, "Stop it."

He blinked back at her, hat stilled, mouth agape. "What precisely am I stopping, now?"

River shook her head, frustrated, and went to the secret space behind the panels, shoving the loose one aside to crawl in and closing it off behind her, as though shutting out his body could shut out the whole of him. It was hard enough keeping track of eight she knew. "Go away!" She caught the panel as it started to be pulled back aside, wresting the edges together again. "You're too loud!"

"This what they meant by all that 'crazy' talk?" He stopped pulling and she hunched back into the recess. Stared sullenly at the captain's box of old grenades nailed above her head. Hugged her arms about her knees. A moment later, the panel slid back and Badger hesitated, surprised he'd been able to move it. Then he peered through at her and she giggled at him knocking his hat backwards off his head, both hands shooting up too late to grab his stubby naked hair. "Glad we're funny," he rasped, and she felt again the ebb and flow and ebb of his irritation, replaced by something else less familiar. "Thought about you, you know. Since after I saw you that first time."

"I know," she said.

"Thought you was really something." He wasn't much bigger than her, but older; more worn, less nimble. He had a hard time crawling inside. "'Course, I didn't know anything then about all the crazy, nor the Alliance on your tail. But then so far, you haven't seemed so crazy as all that, far as I can see."

"That's part of the problem," River told him, nodding sincerely. She scooted forward on her knees 'til their foreheads were almost butting, hunched down in the cramped space, and she raised her hand... but the gesture stalled when her eyes caught on it, and she knew there really was no way to vocalise. "See - " She'd started to say. She curled her fingers up around the index finger she'd extended. "See," she mumbled.

He curled his hand around hers. His fingers felt almost as rough as the captain's and she saw him kill a man with them, untidily and brutally and ineptly, and with something of a craziness of his own; heard him brag about it. But death wasn't a thing he was drenched in, not like Early. There hadn't been many others. He reached with his other hand and cupped her face.

She jerked back. "You deal in slaving," she said.

"Have done. Dealt in a bit of everything," he said, with ease. "I'm a businessman, sweetheart. Pretty much means of necessity I ain't a nice man."

"Prostitution."

"Whoring's just another kind of work. Hell, got a fancy whore all of your own travelling on this boat, ain't you? Sometimes it's the only thing a girl has to trade off, but ain't safe trade for a girl alone. I never set one on wasn't willing for the work. They come to me desperate - everyone wants to eat, wants to feed their family. Me, I'm the magician can make it happen."

"They're afraid because you can hurt them." She hunched up again, taking herself out of his reach.

"Hey, now," he said angrily, his turn to retreat. "I don't take advantage... don't gorram need to, for a start. Got my natural charm workin', see? What kind of a man do you think I am? I got principles. Maybe not so many as your fancy captain - "

"You envy him," River said, smiling.

"That's not - I do not envy Malcolm stinking Reynolds!" In his outrage, his head crashed back against the cargo hold wall, and he cursed.

"You tell yourself it's just business, it's not you. Over and over and over until it feels like the truth, but it isn't the truth. You compromised yourself, again and again... and you want to know... you want to know the secret. How he can stay so clean. How they can love him. Nobody loves you."

"Malcolm Reynolds," Badger spat, "is a killer and a cheat and a liar. What claim does he have to any kind of gorram honour? Man of principle? Piece of crap smuggler, scraping off the bottom of the pile... killed more'n I ever did, that's for sure. Me, I deal in living."

"That's all true," she reassured him.

He nodded, satisfied like she was agreeing with him. "This ship... this ship's a joke, you know that? Anyone would think he was hauling a family around in this tin can. You got bleedin' plants painted on the wall!"

River laughed, the emotion bubbling over, impossible to keep caged, and she quite lost herself in it. Until the loud 'thud' of Jayne's fist shook the side of the crawlspace and made Badger jump, and a second later Jayne's face appeared at the opened panel.

"Hey! What the hell you two doin' in there? Out, 'fore the doctor catches you gettin' overfriendly with moonbrain and the cap'n decides that's another thing he can add to the list of things are Jayne's fault. Get!" He bashed on the wall until they did.

"He's such a big 'fraidy-cat," she leaned over and whispered as they were shoo-ed away, loud enough for Jayne to hear.

The moon as seen from the bridge was a distant speck little different to the eye than any of the far more distant stars. The yellow-orange gas giant behind it was far more imposing, huge by any reckoning.

"Now, there's a sight," Mal said, temporarily having ousted Wash from the pilot's chair. Wash leaned over him to fiddle with the controls.

"Pretty as a picture," Zoe agreed. "Someone should get Kaylee up here, let her admire the view."

"Oh, she'll have time enough," Mal said. "Gonna be hanging about this system a handful of days at the least, by Simon's account."

"You haven't been out this way before?" Inara's hand was rested gently on his shoulder, and she'd shown no sign of being particularly conscious of it, nor aware of how she was making things more awkward still for Wash, but Mal had no intention of pointing it out.

"It's a cul-de-sac," Wash said. "Nothing but a scatter of old colonies in decline on a bunch of moons barely terraformed on the way to the back corner of nowhere. Flew a supply run out here once. Wasn't too memorable - 'cept for the pretty," he added flippantly, conscious of his wife's eyes on the spectacle.

"It certainly doesn't feel like part of the core," Book remarked.

"I suppose it's only really that in name." A slight tightening of Inara's grip betrayed something of nervousness.

"Yeah, I'm guessing folks mostly come here for the fancy address," Mal said, dismissive, better things to discuss. "These little moons..." He ran his finger over them on the display of the smaller, nearer nav screen. "What are we looking at there? Those stats don't look like nothing but rock? There are colonies? People?"

"Early terraforming, never improved," Inara supplied. "They have an oxygen atmosphere, though it's getting progressively choked up without any natural means to restock, which is why most people will have their own atmospheric system in their homes and businesses. These worlds are dying, Mal. The Alliance ships everything in that keeps them alive, those resources that used to be of value are worn-out or outdated, and now all they have to offer is, as you say, their proximity to the core."

"Still, there might be work to be had. Passengers, maybe, looking to relocate cheaper'n the Alliance's fares, 'specially if nobody but nobody comes this way. Or maybe folks in need of a couple of decent gun hands, or a mechanic."

"I think I see what you're getting at," Zoe said, and added, "It's not generally what I think of as keeping a low profile, sir."

"Nope. But when we set down to this research centre, it'll be just Simon and myself. Already going to have Inara down there. No need risking more than necessary, and everyone extra only increases the risk. That means I got a near complete crew full of bored folk left kicking their heels with nothing good to do, and there's no point you all keeping a low profile if we're set to run out of food 'cause we never did get our advance on Sir Warwick's cattle before rabbitting from Persephone."

Zoe nodded. "I see."

"So while we're down there, you'll take Jayne and Kaylee, figure which of these moons might be the best shot at some decent business, and see what you can't drum up between the three of yourselves, and for a run back Persephone way."

"We are going back, then?" Wash asked, sounding relieved. "You think we're out of the woods with the feds?"

"Don't think anything 'cept that there's no point in planning for what we do if the worst happens, 'cause our options then will be precisely none." He relented. "It's been long enough. I would've expected something to have come up on the cortex by now if we were tagged. Still, nothing's certain."

"I hear you, Mal." Wash craned forward to hit a switch, squinting at the readings. "How do you keep so happy and positive all the time, captain, sir?"

"It's a skill." He watched the reflections of the raging gas storms in the shifting colours of the planet's surface, so minute at this distance it took some staring to see the movement with the eye. "How long before we're in shuttle range?"

"Anytime now."

Mal nodded. "Now, since there's no shortage of fed presence on Riarden, by all accounts, and still that chance all our details and Serenity's might show up on the cortex, I'm thinking we keep Serenity tucked out of sight. We dock anywhere, we got no false papers - they'll know we're here or we've been here for sure. These class of shuttles run with a good number of different types of boat, and a ship's a hell of a bigger thing for attracting attention anyhow. Since Inara's taking her shuttle down first, we'll need shuttle 2 to get Simon and myself to the research centre. Zoe, you'll fly us down, bring the shuttle back after. Then you, Jayne and Kaylee can take off to whichever of those other moons it happens we're choosing and, Wash - you'll take Serenity away and keep her out of sight a while. Not so far away either of us can't buzz you if there's trouble and we need pulling out. Should be possible to set in an orbit 'round the gas planet to keep it between you and the most of these moons, right? Render the Alliance's sensors useless should they have any reason to be looking."

Wash's lips dragged back over bared teeth as he set them in a rictus grin and forced a crazy kind of a laugh. "Should be perfectly possible for any self-respecting space genius, captain," he quipped with false cheer.

Mal rolled his eyes. "Do your best."

There was a small flurry of activity as Simon entered the bridge and folk turned his way. He cleared his throat and said, "I need to talk to Book about River's medication..." He cast his gaze around, looking uncomfortable for having interrupted.

The shepherd nodded. "Of course." Mal jerked his head, indicating he should go... and told himself he needed to start remembering not to do that, as he fought the resulting vertigo.

When they'd gone, he said to Wash, "That leaves you with the boat. There'll be River and Badger to deal with... Book should have a handle on the girl if there's any trouble there, and I can't say I'm forseeing any problem barring the odd bit more damage to the good book... Don't trust Badger. There won't be any shuttles, so we won't have any repeat of the kind of insanity what River apparently stopped him doing yesterday, but he needs you to fly this ship. I'm not saying he'll do anything, but... stay armed and stay alert."

Wash nodded slowly, straightening with a sigh. "Right," he said, and Zoe gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. "More fun."

"I've told Shepherd Book everything he should need to know about administering your medication," Simon said to River, where she sat cross-legged on his bed while he tucked items into an overnight bag at its foot. "You've stayed with Book before, and you're much better now than you were then, so everything should be fine. Wash will be here as well..."

"Simon," River chided, her hands idly stretching out to play with her bare feet. "I'll be fine."

"I don't like leaving you." He cast his eye up and down her form and tried to quash irritation and the conviction, whatever she said, that she really did need him around - if not, perhaps, as a brother, then as a doctor. Her medications could produce erratic results at times. Her moods could swing so easily. It was so difficult to predict, and only he could deal with a situation that required anything outside the routine. "You know I wouldn't go if it wasn't - "

"I understand you have to do this, Simon. You promised the captain." She frowned and extracted a sock from under her thigh; leaned out to brush it over his nose cheekily and then tossed it into the bag to join its pair and retreated. "He came back. He always comes back. And you're his doctor as well."

"Yes." Simon sat down next to the bag and focused intently on its contents, his back all but turned on her, tiredly running through what else he might need. Inara could call back within hours. He'd have to be ready. "It's only for a few days, River. We should be all right."

"You're not listening." She tapped his cheek twice with just the ends of her fingers, not quite slaps. "It's what I keep telling you." He hitched a knee up onto the bed and turned around as she tugged on his vest. "You looked after me a long time, Simon, and don't think I'm not grateful. But things are changing. Maybe I don't need to be looked after so much any more."

Simon grimaced, reminded suddenly. "Be that as it may, the captain doesn't want you alone with Badger. Jayne says you've been spending a lot of time with him... is that true?" A not-so-unlikely doubt of Jayne's honesty had crossed his thoughts.

"He's more interesting on the inside," River defended earnestly. "He sees me, Simon."

"That's... nice..." He narrowed his eyes, suddenly terrified at the potential of what that meant, and she laughed at him and kicked him in the buttock. "All right, but I'm not entirely sure myself that I'm happy about you being around him too much. The captain says he's a very bad man... and, well, if it's Mal saying that..."

River giggled. "I know that, you goof." More soberly all of a sudden in that disconcerting way she had, she added, "He is a very bad man. Not so bad as Jubal Early, but... I can feel him, in here." She raised her fingers and rested them, all four and a thumb, by the tips to the side of her head. "Like Jubal. Different. He isn't family," she stressed.

Simon puzzled over that one, and finally said slowly, "You're not used to strangers... I'm sorry. I didn't think. We should have left him on Persephone."

"If we'd left him, he would have sold us out," she insisted. "I'm worth too much. More than a percentage in a hundred Serenitys full of illegal cows."

"If you know he'd betray you..." Simon reached over behind him blindly to snap the catches on his bag. "Why would you want to spend time with him, mei mei? I don't understand."

"It's who he is. He knows no better. Nobody gave him opportunity for knowing. Just knives in the dark and a fist in the gut in daylight and if you don't put them down hard first, if you don't, before they can do it to you... the way of the world, little girl, been turning like that centuries and it ain't like to stop for you and me." Badger's accent rose gradually again in her voice, 'til it was present loud as clear as she wound up.

"Surely you don't..." Simon cringed at even the thought of saying the words. "You don't actually like the man?"

"He likes me." She said it as though it was an answer rather than an evasion.

"I'm still at a loss as to how that's a good thing in any 'verse." He slid the case off the bed and, standing, tucked it out of the way at the foot.

"Oh, it isn't," she said confidently. "It's just the reason why. Simon..."

He paid closer attention at the abrupt change in her voice. "River?"

"Before... I felt it... I felt him start to disintegrate, and the other... watching, enjoying it... It made my head feel unclean. I washed it away..." She was almost whispering as she finished.

"Is this about the captain?" Simon asked. He remembered her panic at the Alliance installation. Too much had happened too quickly for him to address it, but she'd known something was wrong with Mal, had sent them back... Mal had said enough to imply the Alliance weapon had hurt a great deal. Damn it, had she felt that?

"You'll help him, won't you?" And suddenly she was just a concerned girl. He'd seen her cup a broken-winged bird in her hand with that expression on her face, when she was a child, before she left for the academy and it all fell apart. Petitioning to him, the physician, to help. "He came back for me. Just like you came for me."

"I know." Simon touched his hand to the top of her head. "I know. And I will, mei mei. I'll do everything in my power."

"Your realise them all takin' off means I'm gonna have to holler for Jayne to come haul me back once you're out of here," Mal said to Inara as Kaylee, the last to disappear around the corner, raised her hand in a tiny wave. His laugh smacked of nerves, a little too high and weak. His fingers tightened where he half held himself up against the wall, and she could see he was determined to stay on his feet. "Speaking of which - " Distractedly, he craned his head back again. "You reckon they reckon there's something going on between the two of us?"

"I think," Inara said dryly, "That they think I managed to put the damper on your thick-headedness last time. Maybe they're still not convinced you're sold on this plan, and might need some last minute browbeating."

He regarded her archly. "Is that the case?" And, with playful aggression, "I still could stop you going."

She backed off a pace with a smile, cruelly setting herself out of his reach as she hit the switch to open up the doors to her shuttle. "So stop me," she suggested, arms held out defenceless.

"This is just 'cause you're wanting to see me fall flat again," Mal said. "I can see through your vile and fiendish ploy, woman." He awkwardly raised a finger to wave it in the air, ticking her off.

The instinct was automatic to lunge forward and catch him as he lost balance and slid down the wall.

He swore and they tried to disentangle, but he was all rough cloth and skin to her touch, and solid beneath that, and she felt almost dizzy, with her face pressed close to him, breathing him in. His chin butted her head as she tried to get him balanced against Serenity's wall once more. His hair brushed her cheek as he sagged into a position he could maintain.

"Are you all right?" she asked, hearing her own voice emerge sounding almost intoxicated. Her hand was caught in the strap of his suspenders, and between his back and the wall besides.

"Yes," he murmured.

He tipped his head minutely, so that the side of his face brushed hers, and she was supposed to have more control than this -

He ran his hand around to the back of her neck, and stole the kiss quickly, like it was something dishonest, breaking the spell. Inara wrenched her hand free but didn't pull away entirely until she'd let him catch his balance. She didn't need to say anything. "I'll send word soon," she promised as she stepped back inside the shuttle.

"Inara - "

"I'll be fine." Forcing a smile to her face, and turning aside. She didn't look his way again, as she closed the door on him and Serenity. Didn't know what he shouted as the hollow sound of its closing echoed around the shuttle's interior, though it seemed likely that all she'd need do was to ask anyone else aboard ship.

She blinked furiously as she seated herself in the pilot's chair. "Am I clear to go?" she asked the bridge, voice hoarse, thumb jabbing down hard on the comm.

"You're clear, Inara," Wash responded. "Good luck."

She uncoupled from the ship and flew free. Saw Serenity behind her as she came around, and then the ship was nothing more than a reading on the nav systems as she guided the shuttle away toward the distant moon, dwarfed by the gas planet it orbited.

Riarden was further from Serenity's position than she was ordinarily called upon to fly in the shuttle, but even so, the long stretch of nothingness felt inadequate to compose her mind, even armed with the relaxation techniques learned at the academy. Caught between the daunting memories of both the man behind her and the one in front, calm was the furthest thing from her mind. It took all of her training to pull herself even halfway together by the time the curve of the grey rock moon was close enough to challenge the gas giant over which should dominate the vista. She guided the small ship down into the atmosphere.

Riarden did have a small tangle of dedicated docks operational, although a wasteland sprawl covered the area where, in its heyday, it was clear they had continued for miles. Some of the ground had been redeveloped over and between the old lines, with squarish buildings - cheap facilities for administrative business bases enamoured of that all-important core address. In any case, Inara had no need of the docks, and only paid them close inspection in her fly-by out of the long-standing curiosity that this place held for her, described but never before seen.

A small craft like her shuttle could be set down safely in any sufficiently cleared flat space with little ado. Hoyle had recommended to her an area just off the main street of the town - if the settlement she could see below her even technically merited that name - and outside the block of government owned apartments that housed the quasi-Alliance employees of the research centre. In which Professor Sherwin had lived, she thought, these past three years. And she had once promised to visit, though they'd both known she wasn't speaking the truth.

She supposed now she proved them both wrong, after all.

The gravity of the moon was much lighter than she was accustomed to, and she felt the difference in the tug on the shuttle setting down. Planets and moons terraformed later had been more universally close to the Earth norm, which still passed as the most comfortable parameters for human habitation. As she stepped outside and closed up the shuttle, she felt the thinness of the air she was breathing like a constriction in the back of her throat.

Her feet sounded loud as she walked across the grey slabs that coated the ground, and the yellow dress she'd chosen to wear made her feel like she was the only splash of colour in the whole place. She marvelled at its monotones. There weren't many people out in the street - Riarden's main settlement fit too well the name of 'ghost town' - but those who were around had attention only, openly, for her. They didn't see strangers often. Registered companions... probably never at all. Though she was not unused to attracting attention, she was glad not to have far to walk.

The apartments had an automated intercom system on the door. Glitches hiccupped its metallic voice as she fed her details into it and then waited for it to relay them to their target audience: Professor Hoyle Sherwin, late of Sihnon, more initials than she could repeat after his name, who shouldn't be living out his latter years in a soulless box like this, out on a dead, cold, near-airless rock.

The autosystem fed his acknowledgement back to her in turn and slid open the door, relaying directions to his rooms. She was halfway across the harsh-lit interior foyer before an elevator opened at the end and the familiar figure stepped out.

"Inara," he said. His voice... exactly as she remembered. Wonder in it. Such wonder... "I wasn't sure whether I could really believe that it would be you, after all this time."

"Hoyle," she said. She wanted to smile. All her training tried. And the edges of her mouth tugged down, defying the falseness of trained display.

Despite her intentions, they met each other halfway in an entirely indecorous embrace.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," he admitted a short while later, pouring out the tea while Inara sat on the edge of a plush reddish-brown chair a little worn in the arms. She followed his movements as he carefully slid the cup across the table to her, memory and present perception mingling. "What are you doing out here, Inara?"

"I took residence in a ship," she said, with a smile, leaning forward to pick up the cup. "I talked about it, once, if you remember such a small conversation such a long way back."

He blinked at her. "The liners don't come out this way." A cough of laughter. "Truth is, nothing much does."

"Serenity's not a liner." She almost laughed herself, imagining Mal's face. "I shipped out from Sihnon on a cargo vessel, about eighteen months ago now. She isn't what you might call high class, but the captain and I set up an arrangement, and they're good people on board."

Hoyle seemed to take a few moments recovering from his surprise. Taking his own cup of tea in hand, he sank down into the chair opposite her. He shook his head slowly. "I find it hard to imagine you living that kind of life."

"You'd be surprised. The truth is, I haven't regretted it. Quite the contrary, in fact - it's provided some of the happiest experiences of my life. I've seen things, done things, met people... that I never would have, otherwise." At his slow nod of understanding, she cast her eyes about the government-owned apartment, in its state of hurriedly-tidied disarray. Some of the furnishings were antiques far too rich for their mundane surround. It was barely possible to see them beneath the clutter. "How about you, Hoyle? Regrets?"

He followed her gaze around distractedly, not seeing what she was, whatever it was he might be seeing. "I like the quiet here. And the research is what I wanted to do. There are none of the frustrations of the university on Sihnon here, no students in the way, nobody poking their nose in complaining about the application of resources - though it has a very lengthy catalogue of frustrations of its own, of course. Half the time it seems we have no resources for anyone to be complaining about the misapplication of. It hasn't been easy to keep the place up and running and our work alive. Sometimes I think the Alliance have lost all interest in my projects." He sipped at his tea, causing Inara to remember her own. "But you didn't come out here to swap tales, Inara. You asked about the facilities at the centre when you contacted me earlier, and you implied what you needed wasn't entirely... safe. Now, you know I'd help you out any time, though I don't see how it approaches danger..."

"It's not for me," Inara said quickly. "Serenity's captain, Mal... Captain Reynolds, was injured. Our doctor's qualified to treat him, but he needs access to more sophisticated medical equipment. That's all we need. That, and the time and anonymity to fix the trouble."

"Anonymity?" Hoyle fielded.

She compressed her lips and nodded. "Not everything the people I travel with are involved in is legal, Hoyle. These are hard times. After the war... a lot of people were left without many options; I know you understood that. They're good people, I promise you - I wouldn't be with them still after all this time if I didn't believe it - but there are complications." She took a breath. "The damage was done by Alliance weapon tech. Something I've never heard of before, nor our doctor. That's why we can't take this openly to any hospital."

"Well, now." Hoyle sat back, drink forgotten, and ran his eyes over her speculatively. "Here's a turn-up. The lady who never had a doubt in her head about all the carnage over that Unification nonsense, working on the other side of the law."

Inara smiled wryly. "Maybe that lady's seen a little more of the 'verse than she had back then."

"This captain of yours, your 'arrangement' with him - "

"Not that kind." And for someone trained in nuance, she well knew that came out far too quick, too defensive. "A business arrangement. We agreed I should rent one of Serenity's shuttles as my home and as a base to work from. Mal's a... difficult man, at times, but barring the occasional hiccup, it has worked quite well all around."

"It's obvious he means a great deal to you," Hoyle said gently.

"In a way," she conceded, bowing her head. "A very odd way, frequently. We agreed that nothing should ever interfere with the business arrangement and, well, it hasn't. But - "

"He's a friend," Hoyle filled in. "I understand. And I'll help you, Inara, and any friend of yours. Of course I will. You knew that."

"I knew." She smiled her best smile and reached over the table to set her hand on top of his. "Thank you."

Chapter 3

"Guess this is where we find out if Inara ain't got herself busted and those co-ordinates she sent up don't lead us straight into the arms of the Alliance," Mal said, frowning out over the grey landscape lit up hellishly in the gas giant's orangish light. Place had an air of abandonment that was hard to mistake. He'd seen a few times, out on the rim, colonies that just didn't take - some of them where nobody was even sure how everyone had died, just showed up one day expecting a township and found only empty homes and bones. Either reavers got 'em, or the food ran out, or they got struck by some pestilence already taken all trace of itself away along with its victims. A few, like Riarden, economic corpses, with stragglers left behind to cling.

He'd never expected to see their like right next door to the Core.

"You're uncharacteristically positive lately, sir," Zoe remarked, not looking up from her piloting as she guided them down to the world.

"You've noticed it too?" Simon dead-panned distractedly from the back of the shuttle, and his actually joining in surprised Zoe enough that Mal caught her almost tossing a smile the doctor's way, before she pressed her lips closed and turned back to the task at hand.

"If that's the case, might be it's the fault of whatever you're dosing me with," Mal offered, and dismissed the pointless banter in favour of a return to pointless worrying. "You think Inara sounded rightly normal, over the comm?"

"No, but there are other explanations for that, sir."

Something in Zoe's voice awoke Mal's suspicions. "She talk to you any about this professor fellow of hers? Big client back in the day on Sihnon was all she told me... hey, you do know something, don't you?"

Zoe gave an awkward exhalation. "It's not for me to tell, captain."

"She said they were friends," Simon commented vaguely over their shoulders. "If she's been removed from her home planet and those she knew there for over a year, surely it's not beyond all reason that she'd be emotional about seeing him again?"

The shuttle descended the last dozen of so feet into a near-empty landing pad with a smooth motion. Zoe cut the engine and swung about to face Mal. "See, sir? Now you have Simon advising you on the basic workings of human emotion. Cut your losses and back out while you can."

"Hey - "

Mal said, "I know an evasion when I hear it, Zoe - "

"It's Inara's business. That means it's not yours." She followed up her stony response by standing and moving to plant him on his feet as well, her arm slipping easily around his shoulders... and he was getting more than a little tired of being hauled around like so much baggage. Even when it was Zoe doing the hauling, who'd carried his dead weight plenty times before. "Why don't you ask her yourself when you see her?"

Simon already had hit the door, the doctor dressed his most respectable, and it had to be said that seeing him like that did strike home how much the boy had relaxed in his own skin since their very first meet. Now, he took the lead with a professional sort of stiffness, and Zoe and Mal exited the shuttle in his wake.

Across the pad, a handful of figures were already crossing to them, Inara immediately possible to pick out as the splash of colour in their midst. She wore the yellow dress she'd left Serenity wearing hours before, and pushed an empty wheelchair in front of her. As he watched, she pressed forward of those folks accompanying her, setting a stride that left them in the dust.

"What's this?" Mal asked with something of a laugh as she trundled the chair up and parked it deliberately in front of him.

Her eyes rolled. "Just sit in it and for once in your life resist the urge to be awkward, Mal."

"Yes, ma'am." He mock-saluted and almost overbalanced. Between them, Zoe and Inara got him secure in the damn chair. Inara kept a hold on the back of it, and something passed between the two women, because Zoe nodded smartly and turned to Mal.

She said, "I'll get back to the ship."

It was almost a request, so he nodded, although he was finding ever more tiresome the assumption that just because he was down he was also out. Simon's meds weren't addling him that much. "Happy huntin'."

"Good luck, sir." She turned and climbed back into the shuttle, and the rest of them retreated to avoid the shift of air as it lifted off. A moment after, it was a vanishing speck in the sky.

"Incidentally - " Inara hunched down, all but setting her lips to his ear as he watched the last of the shuttle " - your name is Mallory Hardesty."

"Mallory?"

"Because it's obviously so much greater a stigma than 'Malcolm'," she hissed, and pulled herself up straight before he could comment she seemed a mite tetchy, belatedly making the effort not to look suspicious as the rest of her party caught up to them and Simon strode forward, taking the helm.

"Ah, Doctor Barrett," said the older man among the group, before Simon could speak. "I received all the papers that were forwarded to me. Everything's in order, I'm pleased to say. You should have no trouble completing your work here as planned." After they'd shaken hands, grandpa handed over a roll of electronic paper.

"Professor... Sherwin?" Simon said, haltingly, and Mal blinked as the old man nodded, then looked again at the two he had with him, both of them fresh-faced youngsters, and grasped Simon's reasoning. "It's a... pleasure to meet you. I've heard great things."

Mal craned his head around to look up at Inara, whose eyes were on grandpa - Hoyle - and the kind of strain in her face that might be expected, considering the subterfuge and all. He looked back at Hoyle. If this fellow had been more than just a client... well, when he'd thought about Inara looking for a rich man to keep her, grandpa there wasn't exactly where he'd been thinking her tastes might run. She must have had to exercise some caution against killing the fellow dead from happy in their exploits.

Agitated, he played with the wheels of the chair, and discovered they gave him a measure of control over his own mobility when he nearly ran over Inara's foot. It didn't take away the vertigo that motion still brought on, but it did make it far less likely he'd end up on the floor. He wheeled himself up closer to Simon and the Professor, aware of Inara's steps falling in behind him.

"And this must be Mr Hardesty," Hoyle said, as Simon looked to Mal and quite visibly faltered.

"That's right," Mal replied, more swagger coming out in his voice than he could reasonably justify, as he stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, prof." He could practically feel Inara's glare burning the back of his skull. Hoyle's hand was frail and withered in his grip and he felt suddenly at a loss.

Hoyle broke the deadlock, turning back to Simon. "Doctor. Allow me to show you to our facilities. I hope the rooms I've set aside for you prove adequate."

"I'm sure they will, professor."

They started off toward the low, flat cluster of buildings at the edge of the grey expanse, and Mal followed. Inara took a hold on the back of his chair an instant after, skinning his fingertips on the wheels as she started to push and no doubt garnering herself a satisfying bite of revenge.

At least Reynolds was gone. The bright point, Badger reflected, was that at least Reynolds had gone.

The less-than-bright point was, so had everyone else. The shuttle had scooted off a half-hour since, and he wasn't especially regretting the absence of the imposing folk, but it left a man feeling all kinds of overlooked to be consigned to ship with the crazy girl, the preacher and the wisecracking pilot while all the useful people headed off about their business. Did his pride an injury.

He wasn't sure what precisely he was meant to be doing, apart from kicking his heels. Excess baggage, plain and simple, and not much for him in the way of options to alter the situation otherwise. Reynolds and his folk didn't trust him, account of fobbing them off and threatening to turn them in to the feds that one time - they were picky sorts, that way - and he sure as hell didn't trust them, but seemingly for the moment they were stuck with each other.

Without the greater component of its crew, Serenity felt a mite more fitting of its name than he'd come to be aware it usually was. Badger'd lost track when people peeled off after seeing out the shuttle for the second time, and now he walked the ship end to end looking for a sign of life. Found it finally on the bridge, though the pilot wasn't his first choice of company on the boat. Preferable to the preacher, though, who according to Reynolds was collecting heathens for his personal mission. Two days on the ship had apparently been enough for him to add Badger to the list, second only to the captain himself.

"What's going on?" Badger ventured, seeing Wash's hands dance over the controls.

"Gaaaah!" And the man all but jumped out of his skin, throwing his arms up.

"Jumpy," Badger remarked, as Wash recovered and shook himself with a disgusted noise.

"Wo de tian a! Would you please not sneak around? We've enough people on board do that already."

"Sorry." He wasn't much inclined to play down the amusement he was feeling. "Quiet ship right now. Kind of unsettling, you might say. Was trying to figure where everyone had got to, myself."

"That's because everyone has work to do," Wash emphasized without much in the way of patience. He looked down to his console, glanced back up again at Badger still waiting, and conceded, "Shepherd Book is seeing that River has all her meds present and correct, since we're all eager to avoid the kind of wacky fun-filled hijinks that ensue when she hasn't. That considered, I'd imagine they're probably both in the infirmary. I'm making some alterations to our orbit to keep the ship undetected, since our esteemed captain wants me to accomplish the impossible today. Those would be very precise and critical alterations that don't require any distractions, yes, thank you."

Irritably, Badger glared, but stayed quiet and let him to it as he set his head back down to work. A few minutes later, he felt the lazy shift of the ship drifting into a different orbit, and Wash sat back, shooting a grimace over his shoulder, well aware the unwelcome company never had left.

"I'm thinking a more personable sort of approach wouldn't hurt, if your captain's fixing to do business with me and mine again," Badger critiqued.

"Yes." Wash clapped his hands on his knees in mock go-to exuberance. "I'm sure you were thinking about how personable we all are when you gave us up to the feds on Persephone."

Badger snorted. "That what all this is about? We got out okay, didn't we?"

"We got out 'okay' because the captain - who, may I remind you again, you betrayed - showed up all guns blazing in a crazy near-suicidal raid to drag us out. At all too evident personal cost."

"Grow up, friend," Badger growled. He relaxed himself, smirked and brushed down his lapels fastidiously. "They were gonna kill me. Note I don't use the phrase 'threaten to kill'. Now, much as I might value doing business with you folks, we ain't friends. Alliance man sticks a gun to my head, I ain't gonna let him pull the trigger just to save Malcolm Reynolds' hide. Reynolds would have done the same. He plays with serious people, and he knows when people are playing serious."

Wash went all tight-lipped rather than leaping to his captain's defence, by which Badger took it he wasn't too sure what Reynolds would or wouldn't do. Mind, it was nice to know Reynolds was as unpredictable to his own people.

"You, now," he told the pilot. "You're not like me an' him. You want to stand your ground. Be the hero. Would've held out to those feds, right? Would've gotten your head blown clean off so's your precious cap'n would have nothing left to rescue by the time he'd finished chargin' in."

"Ni ta ma de!" Wash smashed a fist into the console and rose to his feet to confront Badger with more an air of threat than a beat-up, out of shape guy in a Hawaiian shirt had any right to. "When are you going to get it into your head that Mal's not like you? Maybe he would sell you out, yes, but that would be entirely because you're a worthless piece of lese that's gone back on his word and dumped us in it no shortage of times. Mal wouldn't sell out any of us, and none of the crew would sell him out. Even Jayne..." He faltered a little on that, and then said more positively, "Even Jayne."

"Because Malcolm Reynolds is such a salt-of-the-earth sort of a fellow." Badger held up his hands, mocking.

"No, generally he's an unremitting bastard," Wash said, with sarcastic patience. "But he deals with people fairly, and he - gorram it, Badger, why are we talking about this? You want a heart-to-heart with Mal over big tough criminal morality, talk to him when he gets back." Something wistful crossed the man's face. "No, really, please talk to him. Wind him up enough, and he'll toss you out the airlock himself, business or no business. Now... get the hell off my bridge and let me play with my dinosaurs in peace."

"Dinosaurs?"

"Yes. Dinosaurs." As Badger stared blankly, Wash produced from under the console two plastic critters and planted them on top of the radar, then pointed at the door. "Gun ququ."

"Charming," Badger muttered, shaking his head as he turned to go. Far as he was concerned, Reynolds' crew were the whole lot of them insane. Good match for their captain.

"And if you're thinking of going sniffing after River again," Wash called helpfully behind him, "You might want to consider that one time she stuck a knife in Jayne... I don't know if anyone's told you that fun story yet? Not to mention a few other choice adventures I could, well, I could mention..."

"Don't mention," Badger grunted, stomping off the bridge and regretting acutely the fact vacuum-seal doors didn't slam.

Gorram spaceships.

"I'm sorry about Mal," Inara said. "He doesn't like anyone with a social standing higher than dirt as a matter of course. Plus, he seems to have this insane notion that he's required to defend my honour at every turn, whether it's necessary or not... I did mention the swordfight, didn't I?"

Hoyle chuckled. "You did. And don't worry - I won't hold it against any man who takes it into his head to defend your honour. You're worth defending."

She rolled her eyes. "Please. The last thing I need right now is another testosterone match."

"I'm a little beyond anything of the sort." He paused a moment before adding, self-indulgently, "Too old and wise for such nonsense. And my swordplay's too rusty, besides."

"So we should all live to be," Inara murmured. "He'll be grateful, I promise, when he remembers to be." She didn't add that he wouldn't have to worry a bit about his swordplay, however rusty, considering what she'd seen of Mal's. She wrapped her arms closer around herself and wished she'd brought a shawl, and he pulled her into his side with ease, sharing his warmth with her as they walked. The gas planet that had earlier taken up half the sky was down to a thin slice on the very horizon. Since it never gave out as much light as a sun even in the height of day, the colony around them was already very dim, and the air chilling quickly. The sunset had an odd greenish quality in amongst the orange-yellow shades, which showed up in light flares and where it reflected off the blocky line of one of Riarden's inelegant buildings. "You know, it's almost pretty, in an odd way," she said.

"You couldn't have lived here." His hand on her shoulder gave a small squeeze.

"I beg your pardon?" The change of subject startled her, and she wasn't sure if the assumption implicit in the remark wasn't a reason for anger in itself.

"If you're thinking of having regrets," Hoyle said, "Don't. I hadn't been here more than a week before I knew. I couldn't have asked you to stay here with me. And I was glad, then, for your answer. If I'd had to choose between my work here, and losing you... I'm not sure that's a choice I could have lived with. I was glad you made it for me. This place is dead and cold, and... there's nothing here for you, Inara."

She told him, "My regrets were exorcised long before now. I made my decision. I don't look back. I've made... others."

"Atherton Wing?"

"Among the rest. You were the first... and by far the hardest to refuse." She smiled. "Back then, I could barely contemplate my life without you in it. Saying no... But now, I would find it hardest of all to contemplate a life without Serenity. If there's anything I regret, it's that I didn't visit you more, those last weeks before you went away. I should have made the most of our time, instead of burying myself in bitterness and regrets. I was young."

"You're still young."

She leaned her head against his shoulder, relaxing into him, though not heavily enough to be a burden. "Love is the hazard of my vocation for all concerned."

The 'town' area of the settlement was barely a crossroads, an intersection of two industrial roads mapped out to government grid plans, where the last half dozen buildings on each branch had been minimally altered to make stores, a few eating houses, and a club whose very lights and music seemed to become greyish and subdued as they hit the street.

Hoyle led her inside one of the eating houses - not the one she'd have chosen first, from their frontages - and into a room where the whir of the atmo unit warred with the recorded sitar music being piped in. The air-starved tightness in the back of her throat ceased after a few minutes, and they ate real fish and real strawberries surrounded by the hushed conversation and occasional laughter of the few other couples and parties dining within.

The street was dark when they spilled back out onto it some time later, the gas planet fallen out of sight beyond the horizon and the sky bereft in its lack. All of the shops had closed and most of the eating houses were closing. Even the discordant jangle of the music from the club had a hushed, guilty air.

"We should get back," Hoyle said, as a half-dozen young men in Alliance uniform, clearly on downtime, brushed past them heading into the club. He followed her eyes, trailing in their wake. "There's a garrison here. They're as bored as everyone else."

"Everyone except you." Inara smiled. "You're actually happy here, aren't you? You have your research, and the quiet... and that is what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Happiness is never absolute," he said, and offered his arm. "Don't worry. I won't ask you to stay with me again."

Later, she lay beside him in the big bed that hadn't housed more than one during his tenure, listening to his breathing and feeling the rise and fall of his chest in the faint stir of the sheets against both of their skin. And she tried to connect where she'd been three years ago to who she was now. Hauling Mal out of detention on some border planet... holding her breath with the rest while reavers passed near enough almost to touch... holding a gun upon a girl who was a liar and a thief. The dislocation of it weighted her.

And this... was this payment, or indulgence, and shouldn't it matter that she couldn't and hadn't made that distinction? All she knew was that it had been inevitable, without discussion or thought, that she would be staying here with Hoyle while she was on Riarden.

A companion had of necessity to draw strict lines and abide by them. No good could ever come from letting them start to blur.

She hoped that Simon was taking good care of Mal.

"No, not like... no! I can't work with these constant hassles and interruptions. Get out! I'll do it myself - no, leave that. Out!" Simon flapped his hands at the two assistants until they scuttled from the lab, then checked the door was securely closed after them and the sounds of their feet faded satisfactorily down the corridor. He leaned his aching head against the door, shut his eyes and muffled a groan.

"Nice job," Mal commented. "Anyone'd think you really were a tight-assed fancy core doctor with a mighty big bee in your bonnet. Think you chased 'em off for good?"

"I hope so." Simon turned around with a sigh, leaning his back upon the door instead so he could face the captain. "Though the truth is, I could use the help. It's been a long time since I used any of this... very specialised equipment. But it's too big a risk."

"I don't know why grandpa set you the help on you. Sure Inara must've told him this is work needs doing secret-like." Suspicion in Mal's voice, alongside the usual trace of rebellion and the hostility engendered by whatever was going on between the captain and Inara these days.

"It's nothing to worry about," Simon said quickly. "Professor Sherwin told me - it would look suspicious if he didn't loan out his own staff with the facilities. He's protecting our alias. He said to chase them off if things were too sensitive. Apparently independent researchers can be moody and difficult types." Along with other independent types, Simon thought, watching Mal carefully manoeuvre the chair around so he could reach another array of cold-stored vials that he proceeded to poke through. "Please don't play with things. Those need to be maintained at very specific temperatures, and I'll never find my way around this lab if you switch everything out of its proper order."

"I'm not - " Mal held up both empty palms, giving in. "Just wonderin' if any of this gear is worth anything, is all. Got us a pretty packet out of the business on Ariel, for all we didn't get to keep it long."

"We're not stealing anything here!" Simon lowered his voice to a hiss, shocked by the suggestion, hurrying over. "This facility has done some very crucial work, on exceedingly tight funding as it is. And before you think of pocketing anything, those are just synthesised tissue and they are useless if contaminated or interfered with." He carefully set the unit far enough back on its counter to be out of Mal's reach in the chair, and only afterward realised how very patronising a gesture that had been in current circumstances. He stuttered, trying to recover his ground. "I'm not about to make a career of helping you steal from Alliance medical facilities."

"And I wasn't about to ask you to, doctor. Too much risk involved, for one. You keep doing the same crime the same way, and they will catch you for it sooner or later, specially if the fellow providing your specialised know-how is a tagged fugitive." Mal frowned at the out-of-reach vials. "Man can't help wondering, is all."

"I'm sorry. I don't... fare very well with all this secrecy and subterfuge. You know that."

"Plenty of stress to go 'round, doctor." Mal toyed with the wheels of the chair, executing a cautious spin. He was only saved by Simon impatiently slamming the back of the chair down as it began to tip over, but apparently the near-spill left him unfazed. "Say, these things are kind of fun." He scooted about the lab, after the last few days enjoying even this limited mobility. Simon, with one eye on Mal, resumed the checking of the equipment that the two lab assistants had been engaged in before he'd sent them away. "What do you reckon to Inara's friend, doc?"

"I think he's taking a very great risk to help us out." It was with some relief that he found everything intact and familiar and concluded that he had everything necessary to successfully repair the captain, provided there were no abnormalities beyond what he had already noted that would rule the procedure non-viable or indicate further damage. That left only the immediate concern of scanning Mal using the more effective equipment the research centre had on hand.

"There are some investigations I'd like to complete before we both find some sleep." It was getting late, both in terms of ship time and the current time on Riarden. He stalled Mal's protest. "I need more information than a hand-scanner report if I'm going to do this right. We'll need to head back down the corridor that way - " Simon pointed vaguely, trying to remember what Professor Sherwin had said as he'd shown them around. Simon had the distinct impression the man was more distracted by Inara, indeed even as the captain was, than engaged with the dangerous subterfuge they were all a part of.

Ironically enough, it was a scanning device similar to the one he'd once paid Captain Reynolds to help him access in order to treat River that they now required.

"Oh, hey," Mal said distractedly. "Here's that file the prof handed you. Didn't he say something as he was going 'bout not leaving it lying around?" He picked it up and made to wheel the chair toward Simon - faltered, dumped it in his lap, and used both hands to wheel himself over.

Simon took the file with a nod, idly flicked through it with his thumb, and froze. "This - " He opened it up wide; studied closer the chart it had fallen open on, and swallowed hard.

"What's wrong?" Mal asked sharply.

"This information... I'm looking at a very detailed study of... a particular pattern of cell breakdown... it's... it's what we need. I mean, everything so far has been guesswork... we don't know what this weapon is... what it does... but this file... With this, I can make sure we have everything covered." Simon shook his head, flicking over more pages, barely able to believe what he held in his hands.

"And that's... bad."

He heard the catch in Mal's voice as the captain caught on even as he spoke. Saw the captain's mouth bunch up, hard and determined. "Doesn't matter, doctor."

"It doesn't matter? I am wondering how we're going to tell Inara that her 'friend' is involved in working on the weapon tech that caused this. At the very least he knows far more about it than he has any right to, for anyone whose research work is supposed to be benign!" He realised he was all but shaking in his anger, and tried to calm himself - and lower his voice. Mal reached up and gripped his wrist.

"We're not," he said.

"What?"

"We're not going to tell her. He's Alliance. We knew that. Be poor reward for the man helping us out. And he is helping us out, Simon. He gave you this. Didn't have to. We didn't ask for it, couldn't know about it. Even if Inara asked him to help us, this was above and beyond. Took hell of a risk, probably breaking a whole heap of laws Alliance don't look too kindly upon his sort going and breaking. So we're not telling and we're not panicking - right, doctor?"

He took a breath and jerked his head convulsively in what passed for a nod, and Mal let go his arm.

"Best keep that file with us." The captain kept his hand held out, expectant, until Simon passed the file back into it. "Still doing the thing?" Mal doubled back on himself, stalling with the file still held awkwardly in the air.

"Ye-es. The tests first," Simon confirmed slowly. He had to keep sight of what they'd come here to do. "I'll look through that... later."

He took the back of the chair and rolled Mal out of the room, the file held securely across the captain's knees.

"You're sure it was this way?" Simon asked dubiously. "I don't recognise any of this." Kid was slowing down, which meant Mal was slowing down, given Simon had the back of his chair.

" - and going at a crawling pace won't likely make it any less the right way," Mal insisted. "This - this corner, I definitely remember. Was just around there." All looked like a brace of corridors to him in truth, but he was clear enough on his sense of space and direction and what it told him.

"Around this corner, then." Simon still sounded no shortage of unconvinced.

Most of the centre was darkened and empty. They'd seen one labcoat working late, and a couple of security fellows kicking a football around one of the more out of the way corridors. The security men had stopped and looked guilty in response to a hard glare from Simon which, granted, didn't do their cover any harm, irony aside. All the doctor's tests were done and finished now, leaving himself in some gorram awful hospital tunic and pants looked every bit like girls' pyjamas, on account of how the buckles and buttons in his regular clothes messed with that fancy scanner. Time was skulking around the vicinity of midnight on the dead-end colony.

All things considered, Mal was as eager as the doctor was to find the room near where they'd started off, which Professor Sherwin had shown them earlier to the tune of a "There are pull-out beds in here where I sometimes sleep if I get sidetracked working late on something - no reason you shouldn't." They could have had accommodation provided as suited their cover, but it seemed safer on the whole to move 'round less and keep out of sight.

"Mal," said Simon, as they both stared down the corridor beyond that next corner, and he enunciated, unnecessarily, "We. Are. Lost."

"Okay." One corridor might be much like another, but barred doors was definitely new. "What am I looking at, Simon?"

"I don't..." The doctor seemed drawn to investigate, no matter if he forgot all about pushing the chair in the process. Mal balanced the prof's file and his own clothes across his knees carefully and hauled on the wheels. And almost toppled the chair when the occupant of the nearest barred room hurled himself against the door as he was wheeling past. Saw Simon fall back too, then twist away with a cry as a hand clawed between the bars behind him and tried to fasten itself to his face.

Mal swore. "What the hell kind of research are they doing here?"

The eyes of the fellow who'd pasted himself to the door next to him made River look a picture of sanity. Something most assuredly creepifying in the way the fellow clung to the door like he was trying to seep through it by sheer force of concentration, to get to the freedom - and the people - on the other side. Those mad eyes seemed to stare right through a man.

"They've done work on repairing damage to the human brain..." Simon faltered, casting his unnerved gaze front of them. Eyes all down the corridor, watching through the gaps between bars. "Maybe these people are test subjects... waiting to be helped."

"I'm thinking even the Alliance treats its patients a mite more humane," Mal said grimly. "How'd you like it if they tossed that sister of yours in a cell like this?"

"I wouldn't - " Simon began faintly.

"Pretty, pretty..." gibbered the fellow nearest. "Crazy moonbeam girl. Call down the sun. She's not screaming now... no more... she's not screaming."

"That's real nice," Mal told him blandly. "You happen to talk any other language but nonsense? Like, say, what you might be doing here behind these bars?"

"Running River..." the crazy guy said. "All running away..."

Frowning, Mal edged the chair closer. "Come again?" But the fellow only retreated, shaking his head and avoiding Mal's eyes like his attention had hurt him, muttering something over and over about guns and mud and explosions lighting up the dark.

" - Simon?" He half-turned to the doctor, deeply disturbed.

"Captain." Simon's voice was dead, entirely without inflection.

"Reckon this here crazy fellow just read my mind."

"Yes," Simon murmured, sounding numb. "I... reckon that might very well be the case."

Chapter 4

"What the hell am I looking at, Simon?" Mal asked again.

The doctor paused, one hand held up, fingers splayed before his part-open lips. He didn't speak at all for several long seconds, and then he said slowly, "This is an asylum... the cells, this set-up... these people... whatever they're doing to them, they're keeping them here long-term."

"Not 'whatever they're doing'. Mind-reading, doctor. You heard well as I. Alliance been poking into these poor folks brains just like they did your sister's."

"We don't know that. It could be a coincidence. It would be... a remarkable coincidence, for just the place where we decided to come to actually be involved in - "

"No big coincidence. We needed someplace had the facilities... No coincidence. Look at him." Mal pointed to the occupant of the cell, hunching and cowering like a man only had a pile of sandbags between himself and enemy fire. "Look at him. First he picks your sister right out of our heads, now he's having gorram flashbacks to Serenity Valley, and... what the hell?"

Inside the cell, the man had started clawing at his own face like he was fixing to tear it clean off his skull.

"No - " Simon went for the door and, little surprise, found it locked. There was no bolt, no sign of easy-accessible keys. He looked around, growing frantic. "They should be supervised. You can't just lock them away and leave them like this. River would - " He grabbed onto the bars of the cell with both hands and called through, "Stop! You don't need to hurt yourself... you don't want to do that... take deep breaths...count them with me... try to calm down... One..."

"Uh, Simon." Mal reached up to drag on his sleeve.

"What the hell are you people doing down here?" A voice barked out, more strained than angry. A man in a security uniform was marching down the long corridor, another on his heels. "You can't be here."

"I'm sorry," Simon said. "We were lost. But this man seems to be in some distress - "

The security fellow blanched as he came into view of the cell, and dived for a set of keys on his belt and, in the holster next to his gun, a tranq gun. He and his fellow had the door open and the man within doped inside a couple of seconds. "Got to keep strangers away from the inmates. Look at this." He was addressing mostly his companion or himself with that last, looking down at the blood on the crazy man's face and under his nails.

"I'm a doctor," Simon began. "I could - "

"You've done enough," the guard growled. "Get out of here. This corridor's out of bounds, 'less I have word from the board otherwise."

Simon persisted, though. "What's wrong with these people?"

"I don't know and I never want to know. Before I got here... and none of your business, anyhow."

"S-Steven," Mal said warningly, just remembering their need for aliases in time. "Best do as the man suggests. Like he says, ain't any of ours."

The doctor swallowed and nodded, and clear as it was that it pained him to walk away from the unconscious patient, walk he did.

Temporarily forgotten, Mal wheeled cautiously in his wake.

"According to the man I was talking to this morning, that security guard we spoke to last night has been here longer than he has - that makes it over four years," Simon murmured, leaning down close to Mal. The morning had brought with it an influx of life to the facility, and it seemed people were heading back and forth along the corridor outside or wandering in and apologising every other minute. Though all the bustle recalled sharply to him a life in more comfortable times, he was nervous of being surrounded by so much activity. "Those people have been kept here like that for - "

Mal took a hold of his wrist, where he'd gripped the edge of the surgical bed upon which the captain lay, stalling him. "Right pleased as I am to see how you're brushing up on your people skills in all this investigating - we already talked about this last night, Great Detective." The sea of machinery rigged above and around Mal seemed to shrink the captain in his unfamiliar white hospital tunic and pants, but the irascible air of authority wasn't showing any signs of going anywhere. Although his eyes did keep drifting off up and to the side of the rig, betraying nerves. "Even saying these folks are victim of the same experiments the Alliance done to River, you don't know if anything we might learn here's gonna help her and we don't want folks here getting suspicious. We deal with what's in front of us, what we know we can fix. Have to confess I got me a personal bias toward that end, but either way - "

"It's what we came here to do, yes, and I fully intend to do it, captain," Simon said, hearing it come out harder than he'd meant. He took a breath, snapped closed his eyes briefly, and seized back his control; reminded himself that he owed the captain for going back for River - without which action they wouldn't be here, and Mal wouldn't be effectively crippled. And of course Mal wanted this over, he couldn't walk... No, Simon thought, they had come here for the captain, and everything necessary for the operation was good as laid out before him now. But he said cautiously, "I might find something here to help River. If similar work was done here, even if it's not recent... they may have records, especially considering that the subjects are still here. And knowing what they did, what they were trying to do, having access to that specific information - "

Mal dipped his head in a covert but distinct nod. "I know you want to help your sister. Won't help her any though if your digging gets us caught - gets you caught, specifically, who might I point out she's reliant upon more than a little. Ain't none of us would know what to do to help her should her meds take another turn for the wacky, and fancy core doctors not too mindful of the law don't grow on trees."

"I know that." Simon extracted his wrist.

"There's times I don't think you do. Whatever she has of a life right now - and I know it's not nothing; I see her laughing, see her playing with Kaylee, see her saving the whole gorram ship from feng le bounty hunters - it's not so bad in need of fixing that you need to risk her losing you, or landing her back in that place."

"What are you saying, captain?"

"All I'm saying is, Badger aside, girl's doing okay. Maybe she ain't right, but what she is now, it's something she can grow with. No cause dragging her and us down trying to hit a reset button that may not exist and... and may not even be the right thing to do," he finished with a certain awkwardness.

Simon stared at him blankly a moment before responding, crisply, "I think I know what's the right thing for my sister."

"How about I know what's best for my crew?" Mal shot back. "Been doing this a while now, one fashion or another. You get a feeling about people you're responsible for, and lately my feeling is that that sister of yours is fitting in happier and smoother than you are. I mention this, Simon, 'cause I'm full aware my control of this situation ends the moment you put me out on this table. Don't jeopardise my crew unless there's call to do so." The captain held him with a hard gaze, until those eyes slid past him, the flint going out of them. "Inara."

"Hello, Mal." She glided in, wearing green today, bright and blazing as though it were a shield against the backdrop of rock and monochrome. The green set off her velvet dark hair, pressed flat but curling into remnant little ringlets at the end. Simon noticed Mal being rather obvious about not noticing.

Professor Sherwin was a half-step behind, and from Mal's expression he'd have been all too happy not noticing him at all.

"Professor," Simon greeted, straightening formally.

Inara went across to Mal's bedside immediately, and Simon peeled away, trying not to look too intently at the professor, who had after all only been on Riarden three years, theoretically ruling him out of any direct involvement in this at least.

Instead he said, "I looked through the file you gave me last night," neutrally, letting his eyes drift over to Inara.

The professor blanched, and tried to cover it.

"Thank you," Simon said - forced himself to say. "The information was very helpful. I've made all the notes I need. I'm finished with it now." He crossed to the counter where it lay and returned to press it back into the professor's hands.

"Will your captain recover?" Hoyle inquired, and nobody not knowing what to look for would have noted his relief.

"If this treatment is successful, I should be able to combat any more generalised long-term damage. If it isn't..." He faltered, watching Mal argue animatedly with Inara even while flat on his back. "Well, I should still be able to do as much, but - "

Hoyle nodded. "Inara seems unwilling to tell me precisely how it was that your captain managed to put himself in the way of a piece of high-level weapon-tech in the first place. It seems to me an ambitious way for a small-time illegal cargo-runner to get himself incapacitated."

Simon checked a laugh. "It's not terrorism, if that's what you're worrying about. But it's probably best you don't know." And added as he saw the reluctance with which the professor received that evasion, "Just as there are things it's probably best Inara doesn't know."

There was a short silence.

"So... you have everything ready that you need?" the professor asked neutrally.

"Yes. We're all set to go. I was just waiting for Inara." He grimaced, looking across at the two, reminded that if anything went wrong he wouldn't just be failing Mal. "She wanted to see him before he went under."

"I swear, these things are meant as a cruelty," Mal said, when Inara commented upon the pyjamas with a smirk in her eyes and a sideways twisted smile, a catch in her voice as it tried to bubble up into a laugh. "Feel like I should be auditioning for your kind of work."

She rolled her eyes. "You couldn't cut it in my kind of work."

"Too gorram ugly?" he posited.

Inara shook her head, smiling for real. "A companion needs to maintain a certain... objectivity. You'd want to be the knight in shining armour to each and every one of... the clients you didn't outright insult or punch out," she finished with irony.

"Objectivity like with you and grandpa over there?"

She followed his gesture automatically, and Simon and Hoyle broke in their discussion, noting the extra attention. When she swung back around, her face was tight with anger. "Mal." She paused and took in an audible breath, and he watched her features calm again. "This isn't the time," she said, pitching her voice very low. "Surely even you can see that this isn't the time?"

"No," he conceded. "No, it's not. I'm a mite jittery right now, I'll hand you."

"Simon's performed surgery on you before and you lived to tell the tale," she pointed out, setting her hands on the edge of the bed and leaning more at ease over him.

"Yes. Getting shot up and knifed is nothing new. This is kinda near the brainpan for comfort... one slip and I guess I'm gonna be talking crazy like River, huh? Though at least that means the girl gets a playmate a mite more savoury than Badger." He might have more confidence if it looked like his surgeon had had a night's sleep sometime in the past week. He scratched his ear reflexively, recalling Simon's dry explanation; "We need to inject a precisely synthesized calcium carbonate solution into the right area of the inner ear. Tricky, but relatively simple with the equipment here. There are a number of ways I can try to stimulate the formation of replacement statoconia from the solution in situ. Don't look so worried. It should work." He brought his hands down to clasp them together over his midriff as he realised what he was doing. The room rotated at the sudden motion, and even though he wasn't like to fall over while laid out flat, it still felt like a definite possibility.

Inara unfolded his hands to take hold of his right hand in hers, letting their fingers interlace. "There's nothing to be jittery about," she said. "I know the kind of medical care you're used to dealing with, but this isn't some frontier world. It's Alliance, it's the best... there's very little that they can't fix."

"Or break, huh?" He scowled pensively. "Guess I must look like a real dumb hick to you at times." He laughed, keen to divert the subject somehow.

"All the time," she said, that mock flat tone to her voice meant he'd said something she considered eminently stupid. "You're a brainless, backwater thug. It's your most charming feature."

"I'm wounded." He held his free hand to his head, wincing, and noticed that, over the other side of the room, Simon and Hoyle were winding down whatever they'd been discussing. Simon looked like he was edging to set to work. "So..." He caught her eye. "...There's not much these fancy Alliance surgeons can't do, huh? Guess that means there's no point making any passionate and tearful goodbyes, just in case."

"No point at all," Inara agreed with a touch of aggravation, her attention straying again over her shoulder to Hoyle. "Although I'm sure I could dig deep into my companion training and muster up some small show of emotion, if you'd really prefer."

"No, no." He flashed his empty palm at her, fingers spread, conceding. "I will forbear."

"Simon," Inara said, raising her voice, exasperation clear. "Put him out?"

From the way Simon seemed to be trying not to look amused as he came across, they'd had a couple of eavesdroppers for a while. "We can start," he allowed, and frowned down at Mal. "I'm going to have to sedate and nerve-block you for the duration, as I explained, captain. This is a precision procedure - we can't afford any possibility of autonomic movement. You'll be out for several hours, and you should be able to move normally by the time you wake up, but I should warn you, there may some traces of the block still in place."

"How many hours is 'several hours'?" Mal asked, and didn't think there was any blaming him for being a mite untrusting. He had only the doctor's word on what measures were required, after all, and the doc was pretty much known for putting people down a few hours if they seemed like to get in the way.

"Six to eight." Simon prepped the dope gun on the small table next to the machine rig, and from the edge in his voice the boy had a good idea of the thoughts behind the question. "Your body will need that time to start it on the road to recovery. After you wake, we'll see how much time it seems wise to give before we move."

Mal followed the movements of the dope gun uneasily, slid his gaze to Inara, at Simon's side, her hand still laced in his. Couldn't say a word to her, obviously. And damn it, it was futile to pretend Simon wasn't going to try help his sister no matter what, or that he could exert any control over that, in current circumstance. Maybe it was only futile to worry about the inevitable on top of all else he had to be worrying about. Speaking of which... "You've done this before, Simon, right? Successfully?"

"I've done similar. Yours is not what I would call a common problem. It should be fine. Besides, it won't really be me doing the work."

Mal glanced between he, Hoyle, and Inara, and didn't see any other potential surgeon among them. "Come again?"

Simon swung the main part of the rig of the machine in over Mal's head, intensifying the unpleasant feel of being stuck inside a metal box. He pointed up into it. "In here, there's a very advanced computer. I've input all the data from yesterday to thoroughly map the area we're working with. The computer itself will perform the operation, matching the details of its own less complex but still highly sophisticated sensors to the map. I program in the raw facts of what needs doing, and - "

"It sticks a bunch of needles in my head to do this thing for you," Mal finished up, his voice pitching higher than its norm. He swallowed.

"Essentially, yes," Simon said, perturbed.

"I don't know, doc. I think I'd rather have you picking around in my head than some Alliance machine."

Simon said, with a slow, patronising candour that must have made him just the darling of all his rich patients back on Osiris, "The machine is about a hundred times more accurate than the very best human surgeon, Mal, and I'm not a specialist on the inner ear. Believe me, you want the machine. In any case, I'll be watching it work on the monitor here in case any human corrections are necessary - which they won't be." He tapped the display screen at the side of the rig.

"Okay..." He tried without success to quash his nervous laugh.

Inara squeezed his hand tighter and looked daggers at Simon. "It will be all right," she said, and, "You really have cultivated that bedside manner, Simon."

The doctor held the dope gun ready, switching on the machine so that lights blinked in its overhanging bulk, and started up a dim electronic whir barely on the edge of hearing. He made to start forward, but Inara got in his way, interposing her body to lean closer over Mal.

"I know you're afraid - "

"Hell, yes."

She smiled at his candour, and her hand brushed gently across his forehead. "Don't be." They held that look a long moment.

"Inara," Simon prompted gently, and she let him move her aside, though she retained her grip on Mal's hand even as the doctor set the dope gun to his neck and depressed its trigger.

Mal felt the faint sting, and the spreading numbness. Inara's fingers felt small and delicate in his, but her grip was hella tight. He blinked up, managed to find and focus on Simon's face. Saw enough there to know...

"Be careful," he told the doctor thickly, not talking about surgery. Then his thoughts surrendered to the Black.

Simon was so far away he didn't feel like Simon any more, barely a wisp of him left on the edge of concentration, distances of the Black between. The absence set her off-balance, reeling like the captain, her internal direction all turned amiss. River turned over the thought of Simon as her Pole Star. Thought of finding the real Pole Star, piecing it from old charts out of Earth-That-Was. She might download such charts from the cortex. Maybe it could help them all to find their way...

But unlike the captain, her sense of the floor under her feet behaved, in a non-metaphorical way, so she followed her feet along the corridor, taking advantage of that. She knew he'd be there as she turned in to the engine room, and saw him then with her eyes as well as without. Saw him looking at some pretty, slender, small thing that was her, but wasn't really her.

"Wondered where you were at," Badger said. "Good at hiding out on this boat, ain't you?"

He was sprawled in amongst Kaylee's things, and she paused, looking down at it all. "That's Kaylee's."

"Well, Kaylee ain't here to be missing it. Let her have it back all pristine-like soon as she is. No harm, no foul. See?"

"I see." She could see he was sad again. Missing his kingdom ever more now, with all the ways home blocked. He didn't like being at the mercy of others; had no faith in others' mercy. Missed the people to tell what to do, the people who had to pretend to like and respect him so he could fool himself by pretending it wasn't pretend. He was even beginning to wish the captain was back, a little, because the captain was a part of his world the way Book and Wash (those stubborn and unfriendly peasants) weren't; at least he and the captain moderately understood each other, spoke the language, knew how things should work. "No harm, no foul." She added, with a smirk, "It's pink. And there are flowers." And watched him shift uncomfortably, rocking Kaylee's hammock, reaching up quickly to keep his hat in place.

Cast a final quick study around the corner. "All right." Irritation all over him as he swung out of the hammock. "Rutting uncomfortable gorram device anyhow, you ask me."

She laughed at him, and he didn't mind, because he liked to watch her laugh. She lost herself in being the girl he watched, and leaned back against the bulk of the engine, and only returned to herself when he caught her arm and she looked up to realise him close enough to do so, standing so as almost to corner her. She smiled up at him, surrounded by the warm glow of his regard.

"You really set upon that big merc with a knife?" he asked.

"He's got a scar." She ran a finger down the rough edge of Badger's lapel. The fabric was coarse and felt more like a rag for scrubbing than clothes. It - he - smelled fusty. Of smoke and incense, legal and otherwise, of animals and streets and alcohol and the thousand different scents of Persephone's markets. And he wasn't a gentle man, and he wasn't a good man, but she was used to the presence of others who were plenty of neither. "He ruined a T-shirt. I remember cutting it. I don't recall what I was feeling when I did. Simon's changed my medication since then. He knows how to help me better now. I won't cut you."

"Wasn't worrying about it, love." But his nervous laugh on its own would have been enough to whisper her the lie.

He was more familiar now, her mind adjusted to his presence, and she'd found there was room to squeeze in one more, after all, without reducing her further. He set his hand to his breast, trapping her fingers that were already there, flattening her palm to the coarse lapel, and she stared at their hands, one over the other, and remembered other touches, pieces and snapshots of other lives. Wash and Zoe, in their cabin, on the ship. That night in the shiny silver whorehouse. "Well now, sweetheart," he said, gentleness and want.

"Your intentions are dishonourable," she told him, frowning, inclining her head. It was good that they should both understand where they stood.

"They are, at that. Just a little bit, mind."

"Do you want to kiss me?" she asked him. She felt her heart pick up because his did, and felt a thrill and a fear. She'd never done this inside her own skin.

"Happy to oblige." And he was surprised; had expected a struggle, to have to persuade. Silver tongue and all that... that's silver in more ways than one, my love.

River stood on her tip-toes and closed her eyes; parted her lips a fraction to meet his, and bumped her forehead upon his hat. The contact made her retreat in surprise, and he swept it off his head, tossing it aside to land in the pink hammock instead, and bowed a small apology. She grinned and stepped up to try again.

His face was rough (rougher than Wash's, much rougher than Zoe's, or Nandi's, or Inara's lily-livered rich boys, or even the boy at the parts yard on Vandeen that Kaylee never told Simon about) and its roughness abraded her cheek almost pleasantly. Scratch-scratch, and beneath the scratch, a cautious mouth, not hard, not gentle, and on it she tasted all the scents of his jacket. He told her silently that she tasted like antiseptic... neutral, surgical... and that that was all right. His hands didn't stray from their rest on her hand and her arm. When they parted, it was a soft leavetaking, by mutual concession.

River blinked, carried back to herself by the ebb of the tide. She swayed in the reality of the present and its inexorable future. Badger's thoughts scratched at the edge of hers like stubble against her cheek.

He said, "That was - " And she pressed a finger to his mouth, silencing him.

"It can't work," she told him earnestly.

"What?" Disappointment in a faint, not-quite-believing laugh.

She explained patiently, "You have to go back to Persephone, and Persephone isn't safe for me and Simon, even if we could stop running, which we can't - and besides, the captain and Simon would hurt you."

"I'm not one for caring about - " He saw it in her face, changed tack. "Could always not tell them. We'll always have the right now. Seize the moment, so they do say..."

River shook her head. "I couldn't hide it from them." She reached up and held both his lapels, smiling, trying to make him understand. "Sometimes the world crashes in and I can't control what I'm saying, and... it's all very confusing. Besides, Simon's my doctor, silly. You have to tell your doctor."

He backed off, a swift pull of his hands detaching hers from his jacket, not roughly. Just a step back for distance while a maelstrom in his head confused her. His eyes studied her, and she saw herself change, reshape, become some other new reflection. Badger leaned to retrieve his hat.

He self-consciously set it on her head, and tweaked a loose strand of her hair with his fingers. Brushed her shoulders off as if he were ashamed what he might have left of himself there.

"Ah, well," he said, matter-of-fact. "Like they say: best to throw the little ones back. Can always catch 'em again, later."

He left the engine room without looking back, and turned down into the cargo bay, disappearing away from her.

Frowning, River adjusted the hat on her head. Then she took it off, and watched it turn slowly in her hands.

"And it went well? So... he'll be all right, won't he?" Inara persisted, following Simon as he cleaned up, washing and wiping his hands.

"There were no complications. Everything went as well as it could, and he should be fine. He'll stay out for another four hours, perhaps - "

"Yes." She looked back at Mal on the table - which, with the machine body cranked up and to the side again out of the way and the platform lowered, looked almost like an ordinary bed. "He looks... so quiet and still."

"Well... in a short while, he'll be awake, insulting you and yelling at me again, and very likely complaining loudly to be fed and watered," Simon told her.

"And he'll be able to walk?"

"I've seen no reason why the treatment shouldn't take. All indications are that the crystallisation of the calcium carbonate solution is progressing well; the new statoconia should be fully solid well before the sedative wears off. But for the final proof we can only wait and see. If it takes, he should feel the effects as soon as he wakes up. We could be away from here very quickly." He didn't sound, Inara noted, entirely enamoured with that latter thought. Odd. Her own feelings, courtesy of Hoyle, were more complicated, but Simon... Simon should be impatient to get out of there, to get back to his sister.

"Inara, I have an alarm hooked up to the machines that are monitoring his stats," Simon said, "But it would probably help to have someone here sitting by, especially when he wakes up... to keep him still if he wakes early, if nothing else... and there are some things that I should do while I'm here. Would you stay?"

"Yes," she breathed, and saw it immediately reflected in his face that she had revealed too much. But he said nothing, merely gave a professional nod. A moment after, it occurred to her to question what he'd said. "What other things should you be doing? Surely you ought to be the one to stay here, in case anything happens. What if he needs help quickly?"

"It's a minimal risk. And... there are some things I can look up while we're here." His voice had lowered considerably. "They might help River... The captain knows."

Inara nodded. "Of course. And yes, I'll stay. I was... considering it anyway."

Simon hurried along the corridor, trying to look busy and not out of place. He was self-conscious with the fear of discovery, and all too aware he had not been around the research facility long enough to have absorbed its moods and rhythms, or have a sense of how its staff acted normally. Somewhere like this, he would normally expect to be able to fade into the background, but they did not get many strangers or visitors out on Riarden, and he was a novelty. Should there be trouble, they would remember they had seen him, and where.

"Excuse me." He snagged a focused-looking intern. "Have you seen Professor Sherwin?"

"Not since this morning. He was working in lab 4." The intern shrugged an apology and hurried on.

It hadn't been that long since the professor had left their company, near the end of the treatment, the incriminating file under his arm. There must be somewhere in the research centre where all of the files were kept, and while Simon might not be able to ask where that was without drawing suspicion upon himself, there was every chance he would happen upon someone whose last sight of the professor had been as he headed there.

A tall woman he recognised as one of the senior researchers introduced to him in the canteen that morning was just turning out of a room a little way ahead. He sped his own steps to catch up to her.

"Excuse me! I'm looking for Professor Sherwin. Could you tell me where I might find him?"

"Oh." The woman looked surprised, and a vague sort of puzzlement crossed her face as she thought it over. "Oh, yes. He said he was going down to Files and Records. It's at the end of corridor 6A. Just past the synthetic tissue labs."

Inara looked sharply toward the bed as she heard Mal stir; heard a soft sound almost a groan. She saw his eyelashes flutter, moved closer to watch him while he tried to climb out of the anaesthetic, not quite able.

"Mal," she said, and touched his arm, giving him something to focus on. And again, as his head moved slightly, eyelids stirring over eyes still not yet open, "Mal."

"You been... here all this time?" he murmured sluggishly, so quiet she had to pick the most of it up from the movements of his lips. "How's your professor feel about that one?"

"He's working," Inara said, finding herself unable to muster too much irritation when he was barely even coherent yet. His eyes finally opened a crack and his head turned fractionally her way. "How do you feel?"

"At the moment, don't feel much of anything," he slurred, and halted, premature, as though he'd have said more. His head turned experimentally, one side to another. "Huh. How about that? Gorram room's staying put." He turned back to her, blinking several times quickly. "Guess that means it worked."

"I guess it does." Her skin felt too tight for her face, and her smile threatened to split it, as she blinked moisture from her own eyes.

His next question surprised her, or at least the concern in it did. "Where's Simon?"

"He's around... He said he had to look up something that might help River, while we were here... Mal, wait!" She pressed him back down into the bed as he tried to swing up only to end up lurching, almost falling. "The sedative will take time to fully wear off. You can't just start dashing about. Is something wrong? Do you need Simon?" She heard the concern ring through in her own voice.

"No," he said, and shook his head minutely, maybe distracted by nausea or the residual weakness from the drugs. He sank back into the bed, and she noted how his limbs flopped boneless in relaxation. "No call for that. I'm good, Inara. One thing you can say about Simon, he knows his doctoring." He grimaced, frowned around the room, and slowly eased himself into more comfortable a position. "Doesn't look like I'll be going anywhere a while... how long was I out, anyway?"

"It's been a little over seven hours. I have to confess, I don't think I've ever seen you stay still for quite so long." She took her hands from him, seeing him settled back, and perched on the edge of the wheelchair still at the side of the bed. "I'm sure Simon will be back soon, and then we can start talking about returning to Serenity."

"Your professor so keen to see you go?" he prodded.

Of course, Mal being Mal, he wouldn't be able to resist making some comment. "He knows we can't risk lingering," she said. "Hoyle and I, Mal... it's - "

"What? Complicated? Old news? Speaking of old news... I'll say. Must be a tough job not to get him so wound up he don't drop dead on the spot, so to speak. Can't say it ain't a hell of a way to go, but... that guy? Seriously, Inara, you must've been practically a kid when you and he were... Right?"

She folded her arms, annoyed. "Not that it's any of your business, but I'll service clients of any legal age. That's been true since I left the academy. I don't see what it has to do with anything, but why don't you go ahead and say whatever it is you're going to say, Mal? I can tell you've been itching to since we arrived here."

He laughed that higher-pitched, off-balance laugh that was usually a sign to tread softly. Inara had been trained well in the art of setting men off-balance, but Mal in those circumstances tended to act more unpredictably than most. "So, you and grandpa..." She sighed inwardly. "You're telling me this was a normal companion-client relationship?"

"He asked me to stay with him once, it's true."

"Inara - half your gorram client base asks you to stay with them. Some more than the once. I never saw any of them short of Atherton you were fixing to accept."

"Luckily there are men in the 'verse with more charm and personal integrity than Atherton Wing," Inara told him fiercely. "I could have accepted. He had the money, back then. And even if he hadn't..." She all but choked on the words, and glared at Mal to pass the time until her voice came back. "No, it wasn't a normal companion-client relationship. We were friends. We've always... seemed to fit together."

"So you were... close." He put an uncommon amount of emphasis on that last word. "And this guy asks you to stay - for as short a time as that would be. I mean, come on, Inara, by the time you were forty, he'd be dead - "

She fixed him with a cold look. "Even if that's the truth, anyone with a heart would have refrained from speaking it."

"Ain't got no heart, is the general consensus. Got an itty bitty chip of hard, cold rock. You know that," he chided mockingly. "Anyway, this guy asks you to stay... and you don't. So why didn't you? Stay?"

Inara looked down at her hands; realised she'd curled them up together, white knuckles betraying emotion, and loosed them and spread them on her knees. "Bad timing," she merely said. His eye-roll forced her to elaboration. "His offer to settle down came at the time I was looking to start moving. Which isn't to say I haven't ever regretted not taking it, especially in those early days. It took me a long while to find a ship I felt safe on." She frowned at him meaningfully.

"Serenity. You know, I've always wondered what in the hell made you pick my boat."

"You didn't feel like a bunch of brainless brigands," she told him sourly. "Of course, first impressions can be so wrong."

"No, really - " He reached over and touched the arm of the wheelchair. "What was it made you pick my boat? Even saying you wanted to travel on a small ship, and the why and how of that is something I've long given up asking... plenty more of those around."

She sighed and stood, pacing away from the chair. By the time she turned back, his hands had retreated to his sides. "It felt like a home - I mean, look at your crew, Mal. Even back then, you had a slip of a girl and a married couple, before picking up the rest of your strays. And you do have a habit of... collecting people."

He clicked his fingers and held one up, stalling her. "If this is about to get onto how it was my innate charm... why, I might just cry." And the bitterness that came through in that unbalanced her. "So that's why you joined. Why'd you come back?"

"I told you why." She turned her back on him again, unwilling to watch his face. "Serenity feels like home to me, now more than ever. I missed her. I missed Kaylee, and Zoe, and Book... maybe I even missed you, a little." She cast a glare over her shoulder, making doubly sure he could not miss the sarcasm.

"I didn't expect you to." His helpless reply was softer, more awkward than anticipated, and drew her to turn around fully. "I mean, when you said you were leaving, I really thought you meant it."

Inara tried to hold his gaze unflinching. "So did I. When I said it, I did mean it. "

There was a long pause, where he looked as at sea in the conversation as she felt herself, and they searched each others faces more in hopes of finding an absence than the confirmation that, as always, they did find.

"So why did you really - "

"Because I was weak," she snapped, despite the feeling he was only trying to break the mood by annoying her.

"Well." He swallowed and flashed a forced smile and looked decidedly ticked. "That's real nice. And it's glad I am you came back... not only for the bribing-mine-officials thing neither, mind, 'cause, well... not to say it ain't like there was no-one to argue with, lacking you aboard - hell, we both know that's one thing can always be found on my boat - but it just weren't..." He pulled a face and shook his head, making a frustrated sound. "I guess there's just something you might call real special about these arguments 'tween you and me just can't take no substitute."

"Like their frequency, for one," Inara said.

Mal nodded; a curt jerk of his head. "Fact almost every discussion we have turns into one."

"Yes. Certainly. And they're... very punctual, too. I've often considered setting my hourglass by the five o' clock shouting match." She'd started to raise her voice, but was increasingly aware of the smirk trying to break through his very deliberately black frown, and the fact she was herself growing nearer to laughter than shouting.

They both broke at the same time and he reached out to her, laughing, and she batted his hand away.

"Inara - " he began, as they both quieted.

She swallowed and shook her head, and what came out was far too choked and hushed to be her own voice. "Even if everything else... were right, Mal - and it isn't, and it can't be - you would demand of me that I give up a part of who I am, and I don't know if I could do that. I don't even know if I should do that... if it would be... fair."

"Fair?" he repeated, almost as quiet. "We're talking about 'fair' now?"

She looked down at her hands, then back to him. "You have no idea."

"Guess I never do give you enough credit for that ability to say 'no', after all," Mal said, as she turned her head. "Inara."

She didn't look his way.

"Inara." There was something harder in his voice this time that cut through her resolve. Different. Not right. His eyes drifted to the door and he'd pulled himself up to sitting. "Want you to go take a look around, see if you can't find Simon."

It took her a moment to recover speech, to wonder how much she'd said that hadn't been necessary at all. "You think something's wrong?"

"I think he's been a long while. Could be there's a reason for that. You know how the doctor is for finding trouble."

She nodded, half relieved for the excuse to leave him, but at the same time... disappointed, despite herself. "I'll find him, yes. We can always argue later. We really should leave here as soon as we can."

"Good girl." He nodded back, and since she was already all but out of the door, she didn't waste too much time in feeling patronised by that comment.

She was several corridors away when Hoyle, turning a corner, practically ran into her, his breathing so laboured she could actively worry about Mal's uncharitable quip.

"What's the matter?" It was all too obvious that something was.

"Your doctor friend - he's set off any number of system alerts picking through our data files," Hoyle said, anger as well as urgency underlying. "Security picked him up. You have to take your captain and get out of here, Inara. You have to go now."

Chapter 5

"Hoyle..." Her protest faltered as she searched his face, and she resisted when he tried to steer her the way she'd just come, back toward Mal. "Simon wouldn't, I'm sure. He said there were a few things he needed to look up while he was here, but he can't have meant to - it must be a mistake."

Her thoughts were racing. Mal, she decided angrily. Mal had known something he had not shared with her. He'd known Simon would have reason to be in trouble. And Simon - Simon had been so odd, earlier. Then he'd mentioned River and she'd accepted it as though all her training counted for nothing.

"You don't bypass security barriers to access restricted files by 'mistake', Inara." He released her arm uncertainly. "What are you intending to do?"

"I - " She knew this man. She trusted him. She took a long breath. "I have to get Simon out. He can't be taken into Alliance custody. He's tagged, Hoyle."

"There isn't a way," he responded instantly, barrelling through his shock. "Security have him detained. They might not get much to do out here, but there are still too many of them, and they're hardly going to let you walk in and take him." He saw her expression and added defensively, "You know I want to help you. I didn't expect it to get so complicated."

"I'm sorry." She bowed her head. "I didn't intend to bring trouble down on you. I'm sure Simon can't have meant... it must have been something very important, for him to do this."

"You still maintain these are good people?" he asked; something of doubt in his voice, but also a gentle note of tease.

"They've been all but family for a year and a half," she told him with passion. "Hoyle, I need you to do something for me. I need you to go to Mal - to the captain. He'll need to know what's going on, and he'll need help. Get him on his feet if you can - " She briefly clutched his shoulders with both hands.

He caught her wrists as she withdrew. "There's no time. You both need to get out of here quickly. Your captain will be under suspicion, and maybe you as well once they've had time to do some digging. You can't rescue... Simon, but right now there's still a chance for the two of you."

"I'm not leaving him behind. If they take him, they take us all, Hoyle. That's how it works. It... isn't just concern for a comrade. Please, just... do as I ask."

"What have you involved yourself in?" He caught her shoulder as she turned away. "What will you be doing?"

"I need some things from my shuttle."

"Take my ground-car." A code-key pressed into her palm.

Inara silently nodded her thanks, then hurried away.

It didn't take long to get from the research centre into the landing pad outside Hoyle's apartment block in the vehicle. She parked it up clumsily in the low gravity and all but ran across the hard ground to her own shuttle.

Inside, she beamed a hasty message up to Serenity. "Wash, we need pick-up. Simon's got himself taken in by security. We'll try to get him out and get away in the shuttle, but we'll need you to meet us." The shuttle could not carry them fast enough nor far enough to avoid scout ships should the local Alliance policing forces be alerted. But Serenity could be out of there faster than it would take the Alliance to prepare their more powerful, long-range vessels. "Wash?" There was no reply, but they would get the message, hopefully sooner rather than later. "We'll see you in a few hours."

Silence and static, and she cut communication; her body sagged a moment in the chair before she could force herself back to action. They had left all weapons inside her shuttle - Mal could hardly go armed into the facility, but there had always been the possibility they'd have to fight their way out. Now, Inara strapped Mal's gunbelt on and hid her own tiny pistol in the folds of her dress. Finally, she pulled on a shawl and let its heavy fabric hide Mal's pistol at her hip.

She lifted off the shuttle, and guided it the short distance back to the research facility.

"Inara said she was coming back?" Mal asked, a disbelieving - or perhaps just despairing - laugh escaping him, as he yanked the edge of his shirt from Professor Sherwin's grasp and started clumsily fastening the buttons. Gorram fingers still felt like they belonged to someone else, and didn't it just top off his whole week having grandpa help him dress?

"Yes," the old man said crisply, and one thing at least, he wasn't sounding any happier than Mal felt about having Inara in the thick of all this.

Mal swore in Chinese and abandoned the buttons, figuring half was plenty enough for decency. He let the professor guide him to perch on the edge of the bed while he helped him on with his boots, leaning over still not being a plan of the recommended variety. Most movement still peppered his head with sparks, and it was as though after four days not being able to stand straight his body had forgotten quite how to manage it, even if it had all the parts required to do so. He watched the professor, the strain that showed in his lined face.

"Look, Prof, about the doc - "

"You don't need to explain anything."

And weren't that the most cynical... Mal dug his fingers into the man's shoulder, making him look up and pay attention. "We didn't set out to cause you trouble. Know you helped us and all. Helped Inara. Simon's... just trying to help someone that he cares about. Thought he could find the answer in your files."

"There's nothing in those except old research that has so many security codes slapped in place I've never even seen most of it," the professor snapped. "And from what I know of the history of this facility, it's hard to see how that information could help anyone, except yourselves to pocket the proceeds from selling Alliance weapon technology on the black market."

"'Cause obviously it'll only see safe and responsible use in Alliance hands - " Mal started, and cut himself off. "No, gorram it." He shoved the professor away and managed to get stood on his own two feet. Tottered the short distance over to the wall next to the door, as much for leaning on as to be ready for any security uniforms felt like bursting in. "We didn't come here to steal. Didn't set out planning to abuse your trust and, hell, even if I'm not so much for caring on that score, I certainly didn't set out to abuse Inara's."

Professor Sherwin was quiet a moment. Mal took the time to pull his suspenders up onto his shoulders. Stopped stone dead with the last one half-raised as the professor said, "You do care for her, don't you?"

"That's kind of complicated," Mal said cagily, setting the suspender in place and rearranging his shirt. "Reckon you know what I mean."

"Inara's a free spirit." And that statement was all kinds of bland, but he wondered, all the same, if all of Inara's wiles could catch the frustration - even anger - under there, or if there wasn't a point she became too close, wiles or no wiles.

As to whether you'd call that a flash of sympathy among the resentment... well, Mal wasn't about to over-analyse, though it did occur to him that if Hoyle could read him as clear then evasion was an exercise in pointlessness. "It's one way to put it. Plus, I ain't so keen on the whoring, and - like I said, complicated."

The professor coughed and looked mighty uncomfortable at the 'w' word, and asked in faint disbelief, "Yet you rent out a shuttle to her, and she... stays? She claims she's happy..."

Mal shot him a put-out glare. "Inara's just fine on my boat, don't you concern yourself. Woman can give good as she gets, else I wouldn't never... you know."

The door slid open, and he was halfway to either catching her in a stranglehold or landing himself in a heap at her feet - a toss-up as to which - when she said, "Wouldn't what, Mal?"

He caught himself against the wall. "Professor and me just talking."

She rolled her eyes and reached into the folds of her shawl to unclip something from around her waist. Moment later she dumped his gunbelt in his hands. "'Just talk' while you put that on, then."

He wasn't oblivious to her angry eyes on him as he awkwardly fastened the belt into place and experimentally drew. Slower'n hell, hands a mass of thumbs. Good enough. Staying on his feet would be the trickier part.

"When were you planning to tell me, Mal?" Inara asked.

"What - ?" he looked up, caught off guard, and saw her looking mighty pissed.

"Simon," she stressed. "He found something, didn't he? And there is only one thing that could make him take such a risk - "

She silenced as his eyes slipped over to Hoyle. Her outrage dissipated as she cottoned on that it was as much a matter of protection as trust. But Inara turned to the professor with betrayal in her face. "What are you involved in?" she breathed.

Mal opened his mouth to tell her it wasn't like that, this was all long before the fellow had even come to the facility, but Hoyle's face said otherwise, and he remembered the information he'd passed to Simon. Alliance was using this research centre to either develop or study the nastier of their weapon tech, and grandpa... grandpa was in it up to his neck.

"Inara," Hoyle said brokenly, hands reaching out but never connecting. "It was the compromise I had to make... to do the work I wanted to do. The funding, after that first year, it was... I was failing. I had to start looking at the options I'd ruled out. I couldn't run this place the way I'd envisioned. All those old thoughts proved... unrealistic."

"Is that why you'd have 'lost me'?" Inara demanded.

Mal caught her as she took a confrontational step toward the professor, and set her back a pace. "We don't have time for this right now."

"There won't ever be another time," Inara said, shaking him off.

He caught her again. "The professor provided Simon the information to let him sort this mischief of mine once and for all, so far as I'm concerned he gets the benefit of a doubt with me, and we don't have time for this, Inara. We need to get Simon and get out." He turned to the professor. "You know where they're keeping him?"

Grandpa nodded. Not much in the way of hesitation, and Mal guessed he was looking to redeem himself with Inara now.

And Mal wasn't averse to taking advantage. "That case, we need you to lay out the ground for us," he said. "We got to formulate ourselves a plan."

The light in the office felt somehow like a harsher glare, though was the same he'd been working under the past forty-eight hours. Simon clasped his hands together and kept them still on the table top in front of him, trying not to move at all. Perhaps it was the very fact they tended not to get many security situations on this far-flung moon that seemed to be making his guards so jumpy.

Even so, they'd taken a break in their inept questioning and just one of them was holding a gun on him now, while the second poured out three coffees and the flush of a toilet beyond the door at the back of the office advertised the whereabouts of the third.

These were civilian security personnel, not Alliance, but he knew the Alliance had been called, and Inara had mentioned there was no shortage of soldiers garrisoned on Riarden. Once the Alliance ran his genetic profile, they'd find out he was tagged and working under an alias...

The burlier of the guards walked behind him with the coffee and he stiffened, half-expecting another knee in the kidneys or some other such delightful trick. But as he came around and set the mugs down there was a tap on the door. The guard who'd just emerged from the back incautiously went over to key in the security code.

"Thank you." Simon tried to stifle his reaction when he heard Inara's voice. He blinked rapidly as the companion stepped over the threshold, security too astonished to stop her. Her green dress made her glitter like a jewel in their midst, and it seemed nobody could form words or react. "Steven," she greeted Simon, with a sober nod, and looked around at the guards with indignation. "Would you care to tell me what precisely is the meaning of this? I was most distraught to discover my friend had been arrested, of all things."

"I - we - that is - " The security man she'd rounded on - the one with his gun out to cover Simon - stammered, and his arm wavered. Inara was half blocking his aim, but faced with her swirl of finery and sexuality and, overwhelmingly, anger, he could neither edge away nor muster protest. "He's not arrested, ma'am. We don't have the authority - but the Alliance are on their way. You'll need to talk to Lieutenant Amner when he arrives."

Inara's gaze swept disparagingly over the small, shabby office and those present in it, the three security men still stuck at the gawping stage. And Simon did not miss the very deliberate catch in her eyes as she slid them from Simon to the guard who stood almost at his side.

He barely stopped himself from acting the moment the gesture sank in. There was still a gun upon him. There would be a moment for action - Inara's plan was surely to create one. Doubts ate at him as he made himself remain stationary. Even if they caught them by surprise, he and Inara could not take on three armed men and hope to win.

Inara had turned back to the guard she'd marked out as her own, and she railed in his face, "I have no intention of waiting for Lieutenant Amner to arrive! This is some wretched mistake on the part of you people. You took my friend in, and you can let him loose. I'll have you know, I can have you tossed out of this job in a second." Her voice rose to a painfully shrill level. His gun hand wavered, and then Inara's body was blocking his shot completely.

The guard next to Simon proved they weren't completely inept by way of the hand reaching for his weapon, but by that time Simon was already moving, praying he'd judged the signal and the timing right. He tackled the guard, throwing all his weight into the move, and for a moment was afraid he'd failed ridiculously as the heavier man staggered but kept his balance. Then the two of them were in a pile on the floor, the guard still trying to draw his gun as Simon desperately ploughed his fists into the man's face, trying to gain himself chance to find the pressure point at the neck that would send his opponent down quietly.

"Stop!" Inara's voice rang out. Simon looked up even as the struggles of the man beneath his grasp faded. Inara had drawn a tiny gun from... somewhere, and she held it up under the chin of the guard she'd marked. As for the remaining man...

Mal leaned against the wall by the door, looking very much as though he needed that support to stay upright. The pistol in his hand might not be completely steady, but the expression on his face provided threat enough.

Nobody moved. Then, slowly, Simon hauled himself up from the floor, taking the unconscious man's gun from its holster on the way, feeling the aches of his bruises.

"...Big damn heroes?" he asked weakly, looking between the barely-upright captain and the glitter of finery that was Inara.

"Absolutely," said Mal. "If you've got a minute, doctor, reckon you could find a hole in your schedule for a spot of daring escape?"

"Right," Simon said slowly. "How did you...?"

Mal took a half-dozen determined steps, and delivered a solid pinch that knocked down the third security man, wavered, landed on hands and knees on top of the unconscious man, and had to drag himself up again. A sound caught Simon's attention and he turned to see Inara standing over a final limp form. He couldn't guess at what she'd done, although he'd long been aware she was by no means defenceless.

"Prof came through for us," Mal supplied, head turning to the door and back, the pistol in his hand adjusting to cover the entrance.

"Where is - ?" Simon faltered as he realised how acid a glare Inara was directing toward Mal at the mere subject.

Mal rolled his eyes and looked defensive. His hands moved in the air in vague protest. "I knocked him out, okay? Seemed the thing to do, 'less you want him tarred with the same brush as the rest of us in this here escapade. Least this way, the man has a chance of slipping under Alliance radar for his little piece of treachery in helping us out."

"Oh." Simon frowned and glanced furtively at Inara.

She said, "We could have used his help."

"And I got no time for this discussion. We need to make tracks. Run now, gripe later." He waved them ahead of him out the door with the gun.

Simon only got a dozen feet before he realised nobody was following after. Inara had turned around in the doorway, and as he started back himself, he heard her say, softly appalled, "Mal, no."

"No... what?" Simon posed slowly, looking 'round the edge of the door. Saw only Mal on his knees by the nearest of the guards. "Captain?"

He turned and pinned Inara with his stare, ignoring Simon completely. "I'm not letting you take the fall for this," Mal said. "They've all seen you hold a gun on them. You used your real name here, damn it!" Simon couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the captain so harsh and bleak. Maybe those early days, when Kaylee lay dying, and he was living under threat of being tossed out the airlock.

"It's not worth it," Inara said, very softly. "Please. It's not... maybe Hoyle can cover for me..."

"Professor will have hard enough a time covering for himself, mess we're leaving him with."

"It'll be harder if there's murder involved. He may choose not to cover for any of us at all. You're not killing these men for me, Mal." They held that stare. Simon might have not been there at all. "If you kill them, then I will leave. And I won't be coming back."

"All right." Mal pulled himself upright furiously, reeling on his feet when he reached them, arms flailing in a manner almost drunken, though his expression was anything but funny. "Your choice." Simon's heart sank at that look on the captain's face, like she'd just sealed her fate. Despite Mal's hostility, Inara went to him and caught his arm and from there practically manhandled him out the door under cover of providing support. Mal turned his glare onto Simon. "Hope you found something useful, doctor. Looks like it might prove expensive."

"I - " Simon began, and stopped, realising it was not the time. "I think we should get out of here and back to the shuttle before this facility is set on full alert, captain," he finished.

Badger barged up onto the bridge. "What's going on?"

Wash shot a peevish glance his way and answered, with very apparent reluctance, "Message from Inara. They've got trouble, need us to fly in and pick them up. We didn't bother telling you on account of that you not being a member of this crew issue. You recall that one?"

Biting short a snarl, Badger glared out at the Black. Gorram monster of a planet still filling most of the view, the angle of it and the patterns on its bulk visibly altering as Serenity's position moved relative to it. He'd been down in the cargo deck when he felt the changes of the ship's motion - 'felt' in this case being something of an understatement, given she'd banked near hard enough to topple him off one of the walkways.

"What about the rest?" If they were headed into trouble, he'd be happier not to be in the company of a girl, a preacher and a clown.

"No time. We'll come back around for them later. Might have to double back, if we head out of here in a hurry. It's cool. We've done this before." Wash glanced up; eyed him as though asking 'why are you still here?'

Badger stayed anyway, eyes ahead on the void they traversed. After a while the pilot either forgot he was there or pretended to do so with an unusual degree of conviction. A while after that, the preacher came back, and Wash looked up and looked sharp. "Any joy?"

Book nodded. "Alliance radio traffic is... energetic. I'm not sure I'd call it 'joyful'."

Wash returned the nod, the set of his face tightening to something like grimness, and called up a bunch of readings on various screens and dials were only so much gibberish far as Badger was concerned. Frowned at one in particular, and tapped it so that Book leaned over and promptly took on a similarly downbeat sort of demeanour. "There they are."

"Who?" Badger asked. "What?"

The two of them wasted a moment exchanging looks before Wash turned and opened his mouth - then delivered a string of curses in Chinese as a series of jolts rocked the ship. "That!" he snapped, clawing at the instrumentation.

Everyone was already grabbing onto something when a jolt turned into practically a bounce and spin. Sparks fizzled in the control deck, and Badger lost sight of what was happening with everything else as he fought to cling onto a locker that was bolted to wall and floor and threatening to come away from both, preventing himself being batted clear from wall to wall by the convulsive motion.

When the ship righted itself again, Book had a handhold forward of the pilot's console, arms locked like he wasn't figuring letting go for anything. It was ironically Wash, only gorram one of them with a seat, who hadn't been so lucky. Man was flat out under his console, softly moaning. Badger looked around nervously. The view outside the ship caught his eye as something bright flared past them and popped in an explosion that looked tiny in the mass of space.

Book barked a curse in Chinese that good lecturing Shepherds shouldn't ought to use and sprang to the unconscious pilot's side, a force and energy in his motion that belied his age. Once there, he proceeded in having no luck at all reviving the man. A glance showed Wash had a gash on his head to go with his fading Alliance-issue bruises. Badger snapped at the preacher, "Can you fly this gorram ship?"

Even as Book shook his head, Serenity shuddered again as though in empathy. "The captain knows a little, but Wash is - "

"Ohhhh, we are so very, very dead," Badger assessed.

More shudders. He could see the shapes of their pursuers on one of the readout screens. Book followed his gaze.

"ZN33s," the preacher said. "Older model scout ships. Hornets. They'd have to hit us a whole lot, or else have some uncommonly lucky targeting, before they could cripple a robust cargo hauler like Serenity."

"Newsflash for you - given we got precisely nobody to fly this thing, I'm thinking they're gonna get that opportunity, no trouble." A thought struck him all a sudden and he swallowed. A last look at the unconscious pilot - "Where's River?"

"She was in the passenger quarters - "

Badger didn't wait, careening out of the bridge and ricocheting off the walls of the corridor beyond as he worked his way down the ship, through the kitchen and along past the infirmary to the passenger dorms. "River!" he yelled, and almost collapsed with relief when she stuck her head around a door and beratingly accused him of being very loud.

He grabbed her hand. "C'mon, girl. Need you up on the bridge."

She met his eyes a moment, and he had the distinct feeling she was ingesting every bit of what he knew. She nodded once and let him pull her along with him, back the whole length of the gorram long bloody ship.

Book looked bewildered as he pushed her in front of him onto the bridge and pointed her at the controls. "River can't fly the ship," he said. "She's never - "

"Yes, she can," Badger insisted, looking at the girl.

Who slowly raised her hand and with it flicked a button, the result of which was that the ride smoothed out noticeably. Nodding, smiling to herself, her hands running over the controls in a 'getting to know you' kind of caress, River sank down onto the edge of Wash's empty chair.

"I do apologise, Badger," the preacher said. "It seems she can. How ever did you - "

Badger shook his head. He wasn't about to own up about the events with the shuttle.

"She wants silence to work," River said, flat but oddly melodic. Her hands were a dance.

"Good girl," Badger said. "Get us out of here."

"We're not leaving," Book said, and his calm didn't completely obscure an impression of steely threat in that statement.

"I've found the shuttle," River provided, still robotic. "They're too close. Can't run. Caught in the eye of the swarm..." She did something to the controls that had the effect of turning the ship sharply, manoeuvring it out of a hail of fire that sparked away into the black, and bringing into their view the distant speck of the shuttle, limned in the twice-reflected light from the gas planet. "Too close..." The hornets surrounded the shuttle already, trying to herd it back down to Riarden's surface. Someone on board was taking issue with that plan. Of all the suicidal... "Engine room not manned. Rules out all category N manoeuvres," River stated, starting to do something, then stalling and taking her hands elsewhere on the controls.

Serenity juddered under another salvo. Badger swore. "We don't get out of here now, we won't be able to run."

Book was giving him that significant, preacherly look again. "I know you have it in you to rise above such thoughts... Badger. To do the right thing."

"Nine times out of ten, the right thing gets you nothing but dead," Badger told him. He gripped the girl's shoulder. "We need to be burning gas out of here, love."

She barely looked at him, attention pinned on the battle and... something else. More fire directed to the shuttle. River's hands rose to her head and she screamed. "No! Simon...!" She clawed at herself, collapsing into a mass of incoherent talk. On the screen, the shuttle listed, wobbling in its flight, trailing sparks.

"Another hit like that and they'll be crippled," Book said, helpless. "Maybe dead."

"I'm thinking maybe they already are. In which case, no reason at all for us to stay."

"They're not dead yet," River said. "Simon's not - " Her hands reached for buttons, stalled halfway, ruled out by an ever-more-desperate denial. "No..."

Something in the way she'd said her brother's name tugged at Badger's insides unpleasantly. The affection there, the need... and it occurred to him the girl wouldn't have much in the way of chances for a life at all without that brother of hers around - her doctor, her keeper, the schmuck to watch over her... And the way she said they weren't dead yet... well, it seemed to him, given the abilities she'd proved so far, that it was all too clear they were about to be.

Gorram it. "We're close," Badger said. "Must be something we can do. Alls they need is to get into position to dock..." He was thinking furiously.

"Can't - too many - " River insisted. "The controls are - they talk to me but it's all too - too much, too new, and - death... fire and death and - "

"Shhh." Badger set his hand on her shoulder, held tight. Okay, so the girl wasn't going anywhere without her brother, and they weren't going anywhere without the girl. All they needed was to get the shuttle into position to dock... or get themselves into it. He swallowed; took a breath. "All right. Move us. Put us between them all."

"What?" Book asked.

Badger ignored him, concentrated only on River. "Bring us around. This ship can do that, right? Firefly's a heap of junk with all kinds of manoeuvring power. So stick us in the way and bring her round for them to dock with us. Cut off that fire from the shuttle."

"Serenity's taken a lot of hits," the preacher said, though it seemed more a warning than a protest. "And she's a lot bigger a target than a shuttle." His gaze slid doubtfully down to River. "It's also a very precision manoeuvre."

Badger didn't need to respond that she could do it - girl already was. Maybe she'd picked the idea from his head 'fore he even said it, maybe she'd just come to the same conclusions. Trail of fire making a sound like ripping all along the ship's belly and the view reeled, even if the grav system made sure they didn't. Shook like crazy with the impact of those shots, had Badger's heart in his mouth, but somehow they all held together, and River calming beneath his touch surely had to be a good sign.

"We got them," she said, even as a wall of static fuzzed in over the comm and somewhere in the depths of it all Inara's voice said, "Shuttle two commencing docking - "

Another hit rocked Serenity. Bad moment for it... bad moment. "Are they in?" Badger asked. "Are they safe? We're gorram sitting ducks here!"

"They're in," River said, gleeful, laughing. "They're alive."

"Then hit it," Badger breathed. "Get us the rutting hell out of here."

"Aye, aye, cap'n!"

He could've sworn the girl was laughing at more'n their survival issue as she muffled a giggle accompanying the salute and the trite reply.

Badger, River and Book were still on the bridge when Mal made his way back up there. Had seemed for the best River stay, given the possibility of more attention from the Alliance, and that Book stay given the possibility of, well, craziness. God alone knew what Badger was doing up there, but from what he'd heard it had been almost what you might call fortunate he had been, a while back.

"How we doing?" Mal asked. Gas planet filled the top half of their view, reflecting Serenity's changed position, and the lack of Alliance space hardware in that view was a definite improvement.

"Keeping out of sight, captain," Book supplied. "We've established contact with Zoe and we're on our way now to pick them up, staying under Alliance radar."

River looked engrossed with her task of manning the helm, concentration on her face like she was communing with the ship itself, expression a very picture of serenity. Mal watched her a moment before dragging his gaze aside. "Damned if there ain't anything that girl can't do," he muttered to himself with... well, perhaps a trace of resentment. Weren't like he'd ever gone and wasted hours on end trying to get Wash to drum the knack of flying into him, back when.

"How about surgery, captain?" Book suggested mildly. "It's good to see you up and about."

"Good to be up and about." Mal patted the preacher's arm appreciatively, and since all seemed well on the bridge, turned to leave. In turning, happened to catch his eye on Badger, and memory gave him reason to pause. "Hear you been makin' yourself useful having a play at captain in my absence?"

"Screw you, Reynolds," Badger shot back, unhelpful.

Mal pressed his lips together and nodded consideringly. "Nothing's come up on the cortex," he supplied, "so we'll be headed back to Persephone after picking up the shuttle. All's well and we can be trusting you to keep your mouth shut - " he glanced toward River, but she was otherwise engrossed " - you'll get off there. Shouldn't take more'n forty-eight hours in all 'til we have you back on home soil."

Badger only looked mighty sour and Mal, unruffled, turned and headed out down the steps, taking it a mite more careful than usual true enough, but all-in-all feeling restored. He made his way down through the kitchen and along to the infirmary.

Wash was conscious and sitting up complaining that the verse had some kind of universal conspiracy against him as Mal entered. He stared out bemused from under the arch of Simon's arm, the doctor engaged in dealing with his head wound, before raising his hand in a weak wave. Simon carried out a fairly acrobatic manoeuvre to swap hands over and twist around to Wash's other side without taking the surgical pad off the wound. "You're on your feet," Wash said with the giddy content of the concussed.

"That I am." Mal looked to Simon. "He gonna be all right?"

"He'll be fine."

"Simon claims his crazy sister's flyin' the ship," Wash told Mal, conspiratorially, as though passing on a funny joke. "How about that?"

"That'd be because his crazy sister's flyin' the ship," Mal responded, deadpan. "You need anything passed over, doctor?"

Simon pointed, and he carried over the items indicated, then retreated to lean against a counter while the doctor worked.

"How come nobody told me River could fly the ship?" Wash asked, accusingly.

"Girl's like a sponge," Mal said. "Picks up all sorts. Knifing. Gunplay..."

Simon protested, "I thought we weren't dwelling on that any more?"

"Best hope she didn't spend too much time with Badger. Wouldn't like to think the sorts of things she'd be picking up from him."

"It's kind of sweet, in a... wholly revolting way," Wash reflected. "Okay, so not sweet, then. But something. Definitely something. There may not be a word for it, but that's definitely what it..."

"Yes, Wash," Mal cut him off, and addressed Simon. "Now that we're all secure, doctor, you got any cares to tell me precisely what you had to go running off to find down on that facility?" He didn't make a particular effort to keep the hostility from his voice, and Wash's eyes tracked between the two of them in surprise. Simon halted and his mouth hung open a moment, silenced.

Then he shook his head, his eyes drifting down, and his lips worked another few seconds before it seemed he was able to make the words come. "They did some work there... a long time ago. A decade, at least, and before... the information was old. Some of it, it looked like they've been working on for longer than I've been alive. The prototypes... the men we found... They used criminals, the insane... disposable minds. But it didn't work, they couldn't control them. The conclusions I saw before security came in were pointing out the next step as to be using only the very best. Talking about..." Wash was forgotten; his hands waved, empty, helpless, through air. "Breeding programs. Tests. Schools. Filtering methods, to find minds they might use."

"And they were trying to make readers? Psychics?"

"Oh, yes. 'Human weapons', was a phrase I saw used. A weapon." He looked away, and laughed bitterly. "My sister's a weapon. No, I didn't find anything useful. I didn't find anything I don't wish I hadn't found at all."

Mal just nodded grimly, and turned to head out, before he said anything he'd regret. Be time aplenty for recriminations later, when the situation in front of them was dealt with. But the internal comm chimed its cent's-worth, stopping him in the doorway. "Shuttle's coming to dock, captain," Book's voice said.

Mal left in chase of the message. Spent a few minutes waiting outside the shuttle dock before he heard the grind of mechanics that signalled they were being pulled in tight. Another short stretch of waiting and the door slid back.

"Captain!" Kaylee's face was one big smile all over at the sight of him. "You're walking!" She hurled herself into his arms as though to make a point of his shiny new stability, and near made a lie of it. Nonetheless, he tugged her to him and returned the hug 'til Zoe stepped out and diverted his attention.

"Sir." She smiled, and kneaded his shoulder with a familiar hand. Something arch and suspicious, though, in the way she queried him, "You sure you're meant to be up and about? Why, you can't have been off the table more than twenty-four hours."

"I'm good," he said, not about to tell her it was close to half that. "Doc fixed me up right fine. Just like he said. Spot of unrelated bother, but there's no call for dragging out the details here and now. How've things been with yourselves?"

"I did a job," Kaylee said excitedly. "Fellow needed his XNT7 fixin'. Got us some credit in, cap'n. Couple of crates need taking over to Nelson, too, ain't more'n a few hours past Persephone, and half paid up-front."

"Sounds shiny."

"'Shiny', he says. Ain't like you had to spend two days trolling the gorram armpit of the 'verse." Jayne's familiar griping preceded the man himself out of the shuttle. Once emerged, he gave Mal's upright state a once-over and nodded, apparently satisfied to let it pass without comment.

"No," Mal said, with Jayne-baiting sarcasm. "I just spent them flat on my back getting needles poked into my skull. You got the short end of that deal all right."

"Best let him be, sir," Zoe said with amusement. "Poor baby. He had a depressing time."

"You shouldn't pick on him," Kaylee berated her, a certain gush in her voice. Jayne very visibly winced and shrank away from the two women.

"You ladies been intimidating our muscle-man here? I'm shocked you would do such a thing." Mal shook his head at them. "Shocked, plain and simple."

"Gorram it, Mal..." Jayne ducked back into the shuttle and picked up a crate; stomped off with it down toward the cargo deck. The steps shook with every over-hard footfall.

Zoe and Kaylee exchanged a look and made what seemed a mighty effort not to burst out with their giggles. Then Zoe sobered and, looking around, asked, "Where's that straying husband of mine?"

"Wash is in the infirmary - nothing serious, just took a tumble in a slice of trouble we had. Reckon he'd be mighty glad to see you, too," he added. She was already heading down into the ship, away from him. He looked at Kaylee. "Simon's there too, doing the patching."

"Lookin' to get shot of me, captain?"

"No, I - "

Kaylee laughed at him, too, and he swiped a hand through her hair, comprehensively mussing it by way of retaliation. "Xie-xie, cap'n. I'll go down there now and... say hi to Simon." She set off as she spoke, near walking backwards, trying to look like she weren't in any kind of hurry at all.

More slowly, Mal crossed the width of the ship and paused a while outside the closed door of Inara's shuttle before finally scraping up the resolve to raise his hand and knock.

"Come in, Mal," her dry voice said from within.

He opened the door on a back view of her shrugging into a black and silver robe, and averted his eyes. "Had enough psychics on board, so I thought, with 'em numbering just the one," he said. "Expecting me?"

"To tell the truth, I didn't think you'd wait so long as this." Facing him, she fastened the cord on the front of her robe with a brisk tug, and let her hands fall to her sides. "Are you going to lecture me now on my choices?" The faintest hint of retreat, of uncertainty in her face, anticipating fending off his rage.

"I'm angry with Simon," Mal emphasised. "You're... what's done is done. This is..." And he faltered. Looked around the shuttle, the fancy accoutrements, the rich living. Trinkets and threads from a thousand different men and a hundred different worlds. "What will you do?" he asked, hearing his voice crack.

"What will I do?" Inara sat herself down and fussed with teacups and a teapot on a tray - he wasn't convinced there was any water in the pot, nor nothing but an excuse for distraction, and he wasn't used to seeing her off-balance enough to telegraph so blatantly. After a moment she gave up, folding her hands tight over her knees.

"Worst comes to the worst," he elaborated. "Which it's like to do, you surely must see."

"If it happens, I'll deal with it," she said. "It was my choice, Mal. You don't have to shoulder any blame, or add to that tiresome 'weight of the world' complex of yours. And..." She met his eyes. "I can't say I'm not a little angry with Simon myself. But I also can't say I'm surprised. He simply... acted according to his nature. As do we all."

"Maybe." Mal grimaced, and shook his head, more to clear it than in any denial of Inara's piece. He wasn't thinking about Simon just now. Other things had better priority on his mind. "You'll always have a place here. Don't matter what happens. Wanted you to know that. Hell, you already know that, and here's me - "

"Thank you," she said sincerely.

He was uncomfortable under that gaze. Too much going on, he thought, to be talking on this now. "Well. Since that's all spoke - probably best I get going, give you some quiet."

"Yes." Her chin dipped. "You should get some rest. Being dragged from a hospital bed into the thick of firefights... I imagine it's long past due."

"Yeah..." He turned to go, stopped midway, swung back. "Call me crazy, but is there something else we're not talking on here? Is this about your professor?"

She sighed and stood and crossed to the other side of the room to fuss with something there, almost obscured out of sight in the dimness among the fancy drapes. Mal waited out the unwelcoming vibes 'til she was forced to speak. "I didn't get to say goodbye. I didn't get to... talk things out. And now I never will."

"He'll be safe, if he plays it right," Mal said stiffly. "That's a hell of a lot better'n closure."

She swore at him violently in Chinese. "You think I don't know that? It doesn't make it easier, Mal. I don't even know... if he was the same man I knew anymore. The man I knew would never have worked on developing tools of slaughter."

"We all change," he said. "We all have to."

Inara shook her head. Not a contradiction so much as an unwillingness to hear. "Please go," she told him, sinking down on the edge of her bed with her back to him. "Tomorrow, we'll talk. Right now I have to be alone."

Mal started to nod, slowly, then curtailed the gesture she couldn't see. Feeling uncommonly heavy, he turned and left the shuttle, closing the door behind him.

Alone, he headed back to his quarters, dragging an aching body felt like the most part of it was already asleep, dreaming gorram lousy dreams.

Epilogue

"I will never understand what that girl is seeing in him," Mal said, shaking his head. Across the intervening dust and occasional sauntering vagrant of Eavesdown Docks, River and Badger spoke animatedly.

He queried Wash and Jayne, watching similarly, and they looked just as bemused. The hot sun seemed to intensify, and Mal reached up a hand to shade his eyes. Jayne wafted a hat through the air, trying to create himself a spot of a breeze. The three of them leaned against the mule, parked where it had been in the shade of Serenity not long since, but shaded no longer now the sun had reached its zenith.

"Herself," Inara interjected quietly, surprising all of them given that Inara wasn't having much to say of anything, of late. Mal looked askance at her where she was perched on the charred seat of the mule in clothes dialled down a level from her usual grandeur, browns and creams that wouldn't be amiss on any spacefaring gal of, she had assured him at least, inordinately impeccable taste. She held a parasol borrowed from Kaylee, and Mal was considering taking all abandonment of his hard-earned manly image for the sake of joining her under there.

Under all their questioning attention, Inara carefully elaborated, "River's brain has been altered - somehow - to sense the thoughts and feelings of others. That much we know. Badger... he sees her. He desires her. We all want to be given that kind of rebirth through another's eyes. Every girl wants to be seen as beautiful... and for River, I would imagine, whole. It's only... a little more literal, in this case, than ordinarily."

She shrugged, and turned away from their stares. The parasol obscured her face.

"Is this going to happen every time someone takes a shine to the girl?" Wash asked, laughing, his voice raising its pitch in incredulity.

"Maybe." Inara's voice was sarcastic, beneath the parasol. "But it was also new, and... I don't think it can be so easy, to find someone who really does care purely enough that the experience wouldn't be... repellent, in a way."

"Badger and pure?" Mal quipped. "Strikes me something about that theory just don't sit right."

"You don't have to be a saint to love," Inara said. She tipped the parasol back and swept her eyes around them all. "After all, even Jayne loves his mother," she finished dryly.

"Hey!" Jayne protested.

Mal laughed, and after a moment quietened, returning himself to watching the two. "It's a tale of forbidden romance, broken dreams and woe, all right," he murmured, folding his arms. "They start exchanging tokens or kissing, and I may just cry."

Wash dug an elbow in his ribs, and leaned over to advise, with a tip of his head toward Inara, "The chicks won't love you for that kind of talk, sir. Take it from the married guy."

"Yes, Wash," she said. "Because my illusions of the captain as a romantic and considerate soul are in severe danger of being shattered."

Across the dust, Badger and River broke apart, and Badger strode off hatless into the chaos of the market. Mal watched him corner a couple of his men who'd been sniffing around a while in the shadows. Words were exchanged, then they meekly fell in behind him as Badger walked away, his back becoming lost among the crowds.

"Well, looks like we don't need to be having no worries on account of Badger." Mal glanced between Jayne and Wash. "Not that we were having worries on account of Badger." And maybe it wasn't the most sensitive of things in the world to let River walk back into the midst of a round of raucous laughter.

He quieted, and asked her, "You sure you're sure we can trust him not to sell us out to the feds first chance he gets?"

"I'm sure." She craned her head, looking into the crowd, focusing on nothing. She didn't seem unhappy. More like... distant. "He won't betray us. Too afraid... too involved, now."

Mal followed her vague gaze, then switched to Inara, then back to River. "I guess we can trust that."

"You know it," River said, and delivered a slap to his rump as she walked around him and on up into the ship.

For a moment, as the whole bunch of them stared after her, there was silence. Wasn't to anyone's surprise Jayne being the first to start up laughing again, nor that the other two followed him prompt when he did. Mal had enough on his plate with staring.

"Reckon you can let go of your backside now, captain," Wash said, uncharitably gleeful. "At least, I don't think she's coming back to assault you again."

Inara was laughing so hard she all but fell off the mule.

"Little girl's growin' up," Jayne said, leering, then a bit more uneasy, "What the hell do we do iffen the next turns out to be one she wants to keep?"

"Worry," Mal supplied. "Worry for all we're worth."

"Heck, that's real unromantic of you, Mal."

"Believe we got that one covered already. Don't care for romance. Care for keeping my fugitives hid and my ship running, and no gorram complications in between."

There was a whisper of shifting cloth as Inara slid off the mule and followed River inside, and he watched her slim, graceful figure disappear into the shade of the hold, which was so dark in contrast to the sunlight that once past the threshold she couldn't be made out at all.

"Maybe we should go join them," Wash said, looking over his shoulder too. "Might be that Harrow's responded to your wave by now."

"No hurry." Mal leaned against the mule next to Wash and Jayne in the discomfort and the heat of the sun, breathing the dust stirred up on the air by feet and hooves and wheels, the noise of Persephone in his ears, standing and sunning in a stolen moment midst the sure-to-be-fast-returning chaos. Stayed there 'til Kaylee walked down from the ship to tell them Harrow's message had come in.

Sir Warwick met him in the grounds after the crisply hostile gate guards were through making him wait an uncivil long while. Didn't escape Mal's notice that the fellow was going armed, and he was given to recollect that since Sir Warwick had figured to second him against Atherton in that gorram duel, he must be fair confident of his ability to stand up to criminals and smugglers should a situation turn ugly.

Did make him wonder why Sir Warwick had so very much reason to believe this was a situation would turn ugly. He'd come armed himself, but that was no more than habit. "Reckon you're a mite less than happy right now, 'bout us tailing out - " Mal began.

"You break dock with no warning, no message? Show a blatant disregard for all our prior arrangements? I'd say that's a reason to be more than a 'mite' unhappy, Captain Reynolds," Sir Warwick said, with irritation. Of course, he usually sounded irritated, which did make the situation a fraction hard to gauge.

Either way, they'd halted their walking less than thirty yards from the gate, and Harrow had his hands at his sides and Mal had his folded over his chest.

"Granted, and if you'll just let me explain - "

"Please do." Sir Warwick swept a hand between them, inviting.

Which made Mal feel all kinds of uneasy and on-the-spot and was no doubt supposed to, feelings he tried to shove aside for the sake of speaking his piece. "Short version. Got ourselves a peck of trouble with the local Alliance. Had to cut loose, didn't know if we'd been tagged. Any message we could've sent ran the risk of implicating you. Figured we wouldn't want to set the law on our favourite customer. Kaylee'd miss the fancy meals too much." He bit off any more, reached over and brushed down Harrow's shoulders placatingly, and got his hands slapped away for his trouble.

Sir Warwick turned aside, taking a few steps further along the path, looking thoughtful. "It shows forethought. And professionalism - if you're telling the truth, of course."

"I'm telling the truth," Mal said, hard. "Don't ask me to elaborate. You don't want no part of the other business."

"But your Companion, Inara, did - or so I hear."

Mal froze. He took a careful breath, and counted a bit, 'fore he said, quite calm, "You heard about that here?"

Sir Warwick's brows twisted up in something almost amusement. "She's an adjunct to Persephone's high society, captain. Of course we heard about it. If one of their over-powdered and perfumed number wears the wrong dress, it's known by all within an hour. If one becomes a tagged Alliance fugitive... well, let's just say Atherton Wing isn't going to stop gloating for a while."

Mal swore, comprehensively, in any language that came to hand. Took him a while to work his way back around to coherent speech. "Gorram it. Last thing I wanted was Inara involved. She never was meant to be a part of it. Just renting space, is all. Not one of the crew, so much. Not one of the crew at all." He stared over the lush, green grounds, stretching for miles. Not his world. Inara's world. And now not hers any more. "Ruined her, is what I've done."

"I'm sure that's not what happened." Sir Warwick's response was brisk. "If for no other reason, Captain Reynolds, than that I severely doubt any claim that Inara would make a decision in ignorance or under duress. In any case, please deliver to her my regards, since it seems we will not be meeting this year at the ball."

"Right," Mal said numbly. "I'll do that."

"I'd suggest you take care on Persephone, captain," Sir Warwick added. "After last year's events, there are too many people here who know of Inara's Serra's association with you."

He nodded slowly, no words to speak.

"And if I have your assurance that your ship will, this time, be there..." Harrow frowned in a way made sure Mal knew he was still harbouring no shortage of irritation. "You can expect my cattle by the end of the afternoon. Business, after all," he added, "is still running."

END

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