Here's another chapter. Hope you like. Feedback welcome, posting on a another site is welcome if I get proper credit.

THE JOB (PartIV)

He wasn’t sleeping well. After the third nightmare that night, he decided to go sit on the bridge and look at the stars. If it was this bad already, how was he going to last the six months he was committed to this run? Every time he closed his eyes, he saw visions of all the people he loved burning in the fiery inferno that used to be their home. Maybe he’d better get something from the Doc to help him sleep. ‘Course that’d mean he’d have to tell him why he wanted it. And Malcolm Reynolds was a private man; he didn’t much fancy passing his troubles on to someone else. A man should be able to deal with his own problems.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t hear her approach. "Having trouble sleeping?"

He jumped, startled by the unexpected voice. "What are you doing up this late?"

"Couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d come look at the stars." Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true, but Inara had figured he would be having nightmares and she knew he often came up here when he did. This was actually the third time that night that she had checked to see if he was there.

They both stared at the stars for a few minutes, neither one sure exactly what to say to the other.

Inara got up her courage and spoke first. "This job is tearing you apart, isn’t it?"

"I’m fine. It’s just another place."

"Mal, you know you’re not fine. I know you’re not fine. Gorramit, even Jayne knows you’re not fine. I want to help. Please, Mal, let me help."

"It’s good of you to offer and don’t think I don’t appreciate it, Inara. But there ain’t really nothing as can help right now."

Well that was progress of a sort. At least the stubborn man had finally admitted he was hurting. "Mal, do you believe I know my job and that I’m pretty good at it?"

"Well, I don’t expect they’d sent you out to Companion if the Guild didn’t think you knew your business. What’s that got to do with it?"

"Then trust me Mal. As a Companion, I’ve been trained to help people. I can help, truly."

"I’m not really in the mood for sex right now. Don’t really have much need for a whore."

Good, if he was sniping at her about being a whore, that was a good sign. Wouldn’t be for most people, but Mal hadn’t made a single nasty crack since he’d taken this job. This was more like his usual self. Inara almost smiled, but caught herself in time. She decided the best thing to do was to snap back.

"You gorram idiot, I wasn’t offering sex. I was offering help. But if you’d rather sit here feeling sorry for yourself…."

The way everybody had been tiptoeing around him lately, the last thing he’d expected was to get yelled at. It felt good-like an ordinary day. "So what exactly did you have in mind?"

"I thought I’d start with a massage to get rid of that tension in your neck. That’ll probably get rid of your headache too. Then I have some special herbal teas to help you relax and we could sit and talk. You could tell me about your nightmares. I’m a good listener, Mal, and I won’t tell anyone else."

How the hell did she know he had a headache? Maybe there was more to this Companion stuff than sex. But stubborn man that he was, he didn’t give up that easily. "I ain’t having nightmares."

"Right Mal. You just like to come look at the stars at 3:30 in the morning."

"I do." Long pause. "I really don’t want to talk about them. No sense giving you nightmares, too," he said very softly.

She decide to play her trump card. "Please Mal. Let me try. It hurts me to see you like this when I can help." Let him weasel out of that one.

He gave her a long piercing look as if he was measuring her strength. She let him see both pain and resolve. But she carefully hid the love she felt. He wasn’t ready to see that yet.

"All right." She smiled at him relieved. Maybe this would work after all.

Six hours later Mal finally slept. It had taken all the skill she possessed to get him to talk and keep talking. And three massages before the tension headache was gone for good. Dear God she knew he’d had some bad experiences, but she hadn’t imagined how bad they really were. She knew in her heart that he had never discussed these feelings with another soul, not even Zoe. It was a miracle the man was functioning at all.

She was committed to the path now. A Companion was, first of all, a healer of emotions. And she had never met anyone who needed healing more than Mal. She understood her attraction to him now. At the Academy they had told her that one day she would meet the person she was meant to heal. The one person in the universe who could only be helped by her and no one else. She hadn’t believed it then. But she believed it now.