He continued pacing, working scenarios out in his mind.

Rejecting this one, and then that one. The first was too bald, too harsh. The second too long and drawn out.

She was so terse, so controlled.

Even when she had lost control back when they had held she hadn’t screamed or raved.

Not like he would have had their positions been reversed.

And if she cried for him she did it in private.

She kept going on, not living precisely. But surviving.

He was amazed by her strength, her ability to keep living even with all she had lost.

He was afraid to destroy her fragile sanity.

She had tried to commit suicide. Jayne (Of all people) had pulled her from the brink.

But no one, not even the captain knew if she still hovered near it.

Or what it would take to push her over it.

Well, if River knew she wasn’t talking.

When he asked, she told him that it was his quandary to solve.

His choice to make.

“Doc?”

Simon nearly jumped out of his skin. He had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t heard anyone approach. Considering the clamor that simply walking created; he usually heard when anyone approached. He turned to face the door, awkwardly, nearly falling. Zoë stood there, face calm, one eyebrow raised leaning against the doorframe she was the last person he wanted to see just now.

He stared at her, momentarily lost for words, wondering what she could possibly be doing here. He had come to think, no one bothered him in the infirmary unless there was bleeding involved. And there was rarely any blood letting once they were in the black (though now that he thought that he suddenly recalled several incidents where bloodshed, injury and near death had resulted only AFTER they had gained the supposed safety of space.) He cleared his throat, and did his best to make his voice come out calmly “Zoë is there something I can help you with?”

He was actually proud of how even and calm his voice came out. She raised the other eyebrow saying “Captain and I were wondering if there was a problem. After all you’ve been down here nearly every day just pacing. Captain is of the opinion that it is a problem ‘tween you and Kaylee and that it will go away on its own.”

Simon felt himself blushing, remembering how Zoë had walked into the common room this morning and found him and Kaylee…occupied.

“Figure you want to talk about it?”

Sighing he rubbed his face with his hands. There was no easy way to do it, so best to feel his way along as he went. That was the best advice he had ever gotten, and though it had been from a professor on breaking the news of a loved one’s death it was apt for most anything he had ever come across.

And his own personal mantra for living out here.

Of course he wasn’t much good at feeling his way along.

“Uhm actually, I don’t want to talk about it. I would like nothing more than for it to have never happened. I’d like to forget about it, I wish I’d never agreed, never made the promise…but I did. And I have been racking my brains for a good way to bring it up, to keep the promise. Trying to decide if I was even going to keep the promise.”

He turned and walked to the back counter, three long steps, and opened a drawer. Reaching into the drawer he tripped a switch, releasing the false bottom. He lifted the bottom out, setting it on the counter with one hand he picked up the cloth bag that nestled beneath it with the other.

Turning back he crossed the infirmary, sixteen small steps and handed the bag to Zoë.

She gave him a puzzled look, as the faint sound of glass upon glass came from the bag, then reached in and drew out one of the test tubes. Turning it this way and that in the light she looked at it with no comprehension, finally she looked at him. And waited for him to explain.

“After the Heart of Gold job, Wash…came and asked me to do him a favor. Make him a promise. He was afraid that he might die before he and you could build a family. So he had me take the sperm and store it for him just in case. He made me promise that if he died, before you, to give that to you. He asked me to make sure you could have the children that you wanted. Even if he wasn’t there to give them to you.”

He had done it badly; Kaylee would have done it better. Inara would have done it better, but he did the best he could. He had kept his promise.

He waited for her to say something, to do something; he was shocked to see a tear roll down her cheek. She looked at the tube, and then looked into the bag, at the other tubes nestled there; carefully, reverently she placed the tube back into the bag. She closed the bag just as carefully and then gave it back to Simon.

“Hold them for me for a little longer, Dong Ma?”

She turned on her heel and walked away.

He put the bag away, replaced the drawer’s false bottom and wondered if he had broken her hold on her sanity.