A/N: This is cross-posted at fanficiton.net. Please leave me reviews, I have no idea if I should bother keeping this story going, I know it's not much yet, but if you think this is pointless and you don't want to read more. Um. Let me know in a nice way. If you think it needs tweaking or something let me know that too, it's my first piece of Firefly FanFic, so you can't expect perfection!!

Chapter 1

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"If you don't hold still, this is only going to hurt more." Simon said to his squirming patient.

"Yeah, I'm sure you'd be likely to enjoy that Doc." Jayne responded cradling his hand.

"Jayne, really, it's just a splinter."

"Well, it might just be a splinter to you, but it's got to be 2 inches long, and since when is wood a danger on this ship? I thought it was all metal."

"The dining room table, has rarely been seen as an immediate threat to the safety of my crew." Mal leaned against the sick-bay doors eyeing Jayne in the chair.

Simon pinned down Jayne's hand, and carefully extracted the centimeter long sliver of wood. He rinsed the pin prick with some salinated water. "I think this is going to need stitches."

"Stitches??" Jayne nearly squeaked, and pulled his hand back looking at the void where the splinter once was. Mal and Simon started laughing. "You might think this is real funny, but when it's you with a piece of that table juttin' out of yer hand, I'll be the one laughing!" Jayne said as he got off of the chair, affixed his orange knit hat and charged past Mal. "I'll be in my bunk."

"Captain, I've been meaning to seek you out. I need to discuss something with you." Simon said while cleaning up the tools of his trade. As Mal walked into the bay, Simon closed the doors.

"What's on your mind? River being crazy again?"

"No, River seems to be, adjusting, since her encounter with that bounty hunter, she's been a bit better. It's not her. It's more like what's not in my supplies."

"Pardon?"

"On Ariel I made sure we took a good deal of pain killers. Vidocaine, Novarol, and several others. These were not to be sold, and from what I can tell, they weren't."

"I've got a ship to run, if you've got a problem Simon, it'd be in your best interest to spit it out."

"A few vials have gone missing. Twelve to be exact. I know what you're thinking, no River isn't squirreling them away, I've searched all of her things."

"I don't know if squirrelin's a word I would of used, but I understand your point. What about a few weeks back, didn't we leave some supplies with the whore house?"

"I took those out of the inventory, they aren't a part of the missing vials."

"Well, this is a might bit suspicious indeed. The only ones with access to this room are crew, and I ain't noticed a one of them actin' like they were on the drops."

"I just thought I would bring this to your attention. I have locked the remainder up in that cabinet, here is a key for it, only you and I have this key. This should prevent any further theft."

"Good, we'll see if we can find out who's been doin' this, but I've got to say, I've got no mind for who it could be."

"Likewise." Simon nodded. Mal made his way back out of the bay, Simon busied himself straightening up.

"The doll's broken." River said as she snuck into the room, when she spoke it made Simon jump.

"You don't have a doll, River."

"She's broken, it's hurts on the inside, the parts you cannot see."

"River, are you okay? Are you experiencing any side-effects from your new regime?" River seemed to be drifting in and out of reality, something that was not uncommon at this point, in fact it was almost soothing.

She looked around the room as if she was seeing a ghost move through the space. "She can't feel, she can't, if she feels she'll know. If she feels he'll know."

"River you're safe here, calm down."

"I'm not talking about me." She looked him dead in the eye, lucid as he was. "It's metaphor dummy." With a huff River left the room, rolling her eyes at her brother. Simon hated how at the drop of a hat she could not only become clear headed, but could also make him feel about 2 feet tall.

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Mal immediately suspected Jayne had been sellin' the vials on the side. It wasn't the sort of thing he'd put past Jayne, but seein' as Jayne wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer he doubted he could have hidden it this long. Book always seemed suspicious, but drug dealer? Only if it meant he was givin' away them vials to the poor, and they hadn't been on the ground long enough anywhere for Book to have done such a thing. Kaylee? Zoe? Wash? All three were a bust. Simon had told him River wasn't responsible, and against all sense he had to trust him. That only left Inara. But she made the kind of money that could have afforded her to just buy such things. Not like a companion had a need for painkillers. He decided that he would let the situation work itself out. The doc would let him know if something came up, and well, he just couldn't lay suspicion on his crew, they were good people and if any of them were behind it, they had to have had some sort of excuse.

Still, at dinner he had eyed them all up. Of course he did it in a stealthy way, didn't want to draw too much attention. But none of them were actin' strange.

"Mal?" Inara startled him, "After dinner I need to have a word with you."

"Sure, yeah, no problem." He was obviously brought back to reality by her.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, just thinkin' Captain-y stuff. You know."

"Okay." She raised an eyebrow and walked out of the room. Waltzed was a better word, she didn't walk she sort of floated about like dancin' but without music. Gettin' involved with crew was against his tenents of bein' captain. That and never take on board mysterious passengers, for you might get more than you bargained for. That rule came about after his last batch of passengers ended up a Shepard, a doctor, a frozen crazy girl, and an Alliance spy. That wasn't a rule likely to be broken. Those rules didn't stop Inara from bein' the prettiest thing he ever laid eyes on.

He looked down and realized his plate was empty, somehow he had eaten the moulded protein and hadn't consciously known it. That was probably for the best. He excused himself and went to find Inara. She was in her shuttle, and for near to the first time in his life, he knocked before he entered. She ushered him in.

"He knocks. Are you feeling alright?" She asked in jest.

"'m fine. What do you need to talk about?" He didn't want to get involved in small talk, he knew it would devolve into him calling her a whore and her looking at him with needle eyes.

"Do you plan on passing by a somewhat civilized planet, or do you intend to dump me on some goh-se backwater moon to find my way back to the core?"

"Excuse me?"

"I'm leaving, but I can't exactly be expected to get off on some planet that I can't even find work on. I know that these remote regions are good for your smuggling, but they aren't exactly the sort of place I'd like to stay."

"Well'n maybe you shouldn't leave."

"I'm leaving Mal."

"Your decision not mine. I'd rather you stayed."

"Why? Because I give your merry band of petty thieves some semblance of respectability?"

"Petty thieves? We ain't petty, we pulled the job of the year on Ariel!"

"I'm trying to get work on a luxury liner, but if I can't board it, I can't work there, they don't exactly take off from the outer rim."

"You'd prefer to work for the upfront sort of theives then?" Mal was losing his patience, and he could feel his pride tugging. "Cos that's what they are, theives. Murderers, scoundrels, all sorts of badness, but they are legitimate cos they got an Alliance stamp on 'em and I don't? That's it ain't it?"

He could see she was shaken. She seemed to lose her blance, and quickly sat down. "Leave." She said harshly.

"No, this ain't over, tell me Inara, is that what the lot of us are to you? A bunch of losers floatin' through space? I bet you get a big kick out of it when you're with Mr. Fancy Pants Customer." He was getting angry and he could feel the heat rising up in his chest as he spoke louder and louder.

"I said leave." Her voice was weaker than usual, but Mal figured she was just tired of the fighting.

"And I said no."

"Please." She looked up and pleaded with him her eyes seemed wet. Mal backed off, he knew she didn't see them like that, well at least not the others. He was never sure what she saw when she looked at him.

"I'll talk to Wash, see what we can swing. Maybe we can get back to Persephone or some place of less ill repute." He lowered his eyes and looked at the complicated Oriental rug on the floor. He wondered if it was children who weaved such brilliance. "We really don't want you to leave."

"You told the others?"

"No, but I know you're likely to kill Kaylee with the thought. The rest of 'em too."

"And what about you? Do you want me to leave?"

"What do you think?" He asked her in a tone that gave her the answer. Sometimes she thought that these were moments when she got to see the man Mal was before the war. It was like finding pieces of confetti on a ball room floor, and knowing they were once a piece of paper, just not being able to see the whole sheet. He didn't want her to leave, but he also didn't want to tell her what to do. If there was one thing Malcolm Reynolds didn't do it was interfere in other people's lives, well as much as he couldn't, sometimes even when he should.

"Don't tell them until I am gone."

"I don't think that's fair to them. They see you like family, family don't just walk out on each other. Plus you just can't go missin' one day."

"Sometimes you have to walk away, and I'd appreciate it if you got out of my shuttle. I'll pay you for a few extra months in case you have troubles getting renters."

"Don't bother, I won't be rentin' it out again." He said it colder than he meant, and turned to go. "I can't endanger my crew with unfamiliars."

"Tell them I'm sorry."

"Tell 'em yourself." He walked out of the shuttle and as the door closed behind him Inara doubled over. Tears of pain and anger ran down her face. This was turning out be harder than she had planned. He was right of course, he always was.

Mal had slowly fascinated her. Mostly because he seemed immune to her feminine wiles. For a while she figured him sly, but one night Zoe confirmed that Mal truely was a ladies man, even though he may not act it. Apparently after a minor victory on some anonymous moon, there was celebration. And Mal was right in the middle of it, enjoying every second of it, with a girl that Zoe only knew as 'the nurse.' That was about all Zoe could tell her, for Zoe had her fun that night too, and her memory of the events were just as spotty as the Captain's. Not that Inara would ever ask him about 'the nurse'. She remembered the sadness in Zoe's eyes as she claimed that, that night had been the last time she had seen Mal actually happy. It was just a few weeks before the battle of Serenity valley, when the old Mal died, not physically, but spirtually. That was until Serenity, the ship, took on its strangest cargo to date, namely the motley crew of passengers-cum-crew. And then only once had Inara seen him laugh the way she assumed he used to, the night of Simon's birthday. The night Serenity ran out of gas.

Mal never fell for a bit of the act she put on. He had a way of tearing things down to their simplest parts, much the way Kaylee could take apart that engine, strip off all the uselessness and make it function even better. Sometimes she wondered if she let Mal strip all those pieces of her away if there would be anything left to work with. Maybe all she was was the guise she put on. Maybe there wasn't anything inside of her anymore.

"Stuck in your throat." River's words tinkled in the air as she slowly moved inside of the shuttle. The girl was like a cat, barely perceptible movements accompanied by a creeping suspicion that she knew too much. "But it's not really how you see it. It's broken not empty. You have to let someone fix it."

Inara looked at the girl, and could have sworn her eyes were pools of blackness, small black holes sucking in everything around her and spitting it back out.

"Lies won't save you, and running never will. They won't take you back, she told you so. She's not your family anymore."

"Stop it River, get out of here." Inara turned away.

"You keep them, in the bottom of your jewlery box. He never gave up, he fought for you. Now all he is are pieces of shrapnel wrapped in silks." River's barefoot feet flexed with every step, the way that Inara had once been taught to dance, had taught her to walk that way. She wondered how River learned.

"River, please, go back to your brother, I'm sure he's worried sick about you."

"Busy, he has girls on the brain." She nearly whispered, sharing her secret. "You can't leave. You're job here isn't done."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Inara laughed her off.

"Have you gotten sick of being called whore?" Inara was shocked when Ling's words came back, River even sounded like Ling for a second. When Inara looked up River was gone.