“It’s Inara.” Mal hadn’t noticed the man’s reaction, hadn’t heard whatever Simon said after: it’d all seemed jumbled and confused. He’d stared at the screen but hadn’t understood any of it after that: “It’s Inara.” Hadn’t understood that, either; didn’t know what he was supposed to feel: understanding? relief? anger?

So as the Cortex screen froze up (Simon caught in still, just as he was reaching up to pull off them gorram glasses) then went to snow, he made up his mind not to think about it – and went instead to find Jayne.

***

In those early days after Miranda, after he’d told her she’d go (to go?), he’d taken to avoiding them all. Didn’t want none of Simon and Kaylee’s romancing; didn’t know what to say to ease Zoe’s grieving; didn’t know how to stop River remembering or Inara leaving. The only one out of them who he felt he could manage was Jayne. Jayne was something simple. Did his job; took his pay; didn’t try to make things more complicated than what they were. So, a couple days after he’d fought with her, when he still hadn’t seen her again, he wandered down to the cargo hold to see what the merc was up to. (Fact that he could just about see the door of the shuttle from the middle of the hold’s floor had nothing to do with it, he told himself, and near about believed it.)

The big man lay stomach-down on the floor of the hold, upper body disappearing through a hatch in the flooring (looking at wiring or somesuch) as Mal sidled up. Cleared his throat, and the man pulled himself out of the floor and looked at him, grease marking his forehead. Quirking an eyebrow: “Somethin’ I can do for you, Mal?”

Rocked back on his heels. “Just seeing how things’re coming along. On my ship.” He talked to Jayne, but his eyes kept darting upwards toward the catwalk.

Jayne snorted. “For a fella so concerned ‘bout his ship, you ain’t been doin’ too much fixin’ on it.”

He huffed with feigned indignation (eyes still darting up every now and again). “I’m overseeing! Has to be someone to oversee, doesn’t there?”

With a cocked eyebrow: “For a fella overseein’, you don’t know much ‘bout how the fixin’s going.”

Threw up his hands. “Aiya! All right, all right!”

Eyes up one last time and Jayne grunted, standing up, and followed his eyes up. Shaking his head: “Hell, you ain’t even payin’ attention. You didn’t come here to see ‘bout the fixin’ at all. An’ here I was thinkin’ I was special, you comin’ to see me an’ all.”

The hatch to the shuttle cracked open, and Mal was waving Jayne quiet. But she didn’t come out of the shuttle alone; his first mate, tall and regal, her chin down, her thumbs tucked in the pockets of her pants, came out ahead of her, and then turned around to face her, still standing in the doorway. He couldn’t see much – as it was, he could only just see them through the bars of the catwalk, metal and more metal – but he saw Zoe’s hand in hers, just for an instant, then drop to her side, and he saw the Companion nod, just once, a small smile on her face, before Zoe turned and walked away.

Thought to himself then maybe she was right. Maybe he didn’t know what Zoe needed. But she was wrong too, because asking wouldn’t do a damned bit of good. Whatever it was Zoe needed, it just wasn’t something he had to give.

***

He found Jayne in his bunk, groggy and just coming to. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the hatch as the merc slowly sat up. “You know, the girl wouldn’t’ve knocked you out again if you’d had the good sense to notice I’d been drugged.”

On the edge of his bed, Jayne rubbed his head and glared at him. “Right. ‘Cause me figurin’ out quicker that your bein’ tired wasn’t on account of you bein’ up three days woulda done a whole heap of good once you were already out for the count.” He waved his arm. “And you’re one to talk ‘bout gettin’ knocked out. You’re the one got knocked on your ass by a fella wears a necktie, drugs or not.” A beat as Jayne’s face scrunched up in thought. “Where is he, anyhow?”

He held his breath, trying to figure just how much to say. “Gone. But you and I have to get off this rock now, with or without him. We wait here, I conjure we won’t much like the outcome of events.”

He turned and ducked out of the merc’s bunk then and made his way to the bridge. Trusted the big man would be on his heels, and he was: “You think we’re in trouble?”

A glance back. “I think she is.”

***

Then, in another time, when he had just found out in a mighty way what trouble was – but not where she was concerned – on another planet, Persephone, some time after he’d seen her reaching out to Zoe, squeezing her hand –

He stood on the ground beside Serenity, far below where she was perched on a bit of scaffolding, packing up paints. Behind her, his boat’s name gleamed in front of a sunset of red and orange. He watched her for a time as she gathered up her skirts and paint-pots and worked her way down the ladder she’d gone up on, graceful even around the awkwardness of it all.

Three rungs from the bottom and she still hadn’t noticed him. As one slippered foot left the rung that’d held it, he spoke. “Leavin’ your mark on my boat, I see. Reckon you would have anyway.”

As she swung her head around toward him, foot still extended into midair, he could see plain as day what was about to happen, though he never was quite sure what had caused it.

The expression on her face shifted from annoyance to surprise as the hand that held the rung by her head lost its purchase on the ladder. For a second, she was falling backward, and before he knew it he was under her and catching her, her foot still on the ladder rung, her back against his chest, his arms wrapped around her waist, her head in his left shoulder.

He tilted his chin down toward his chest, away from her, following her arm with his eyes to where her right hand still held tight to the paints. “Coulda just dropped those, you know. Most folks’d find that preferable to falling.”

He didn’t see but felt her turning her head toward him – felt her nose and forehead scrape over his cheek and jaw until her lips were just by his neck. Her voice was softer than normal, just a whisper, really, almost timid; it mostly relieved his fear she’d be carrying around anger from the fight they’d had last time he’d seen her. “Are you going to let me down?” Her breath puffed, warm, against his neck. He wondered if she could feel him shiver.

He swallowed; wasn’t sure if his joke came out forced, what with how thick it felt on his tongue. “How’m I supposed to know you’re not just gonna fall again? You start making this a habit, may be easier just to hold on to you.”

Wrong thing to say, and then she was reaching out with her feet to find the ground and pulling away from him. Before he knew it, she was a safe few feet away, turned half-away from him, standing tall and still (almost too much on both counts, like she was concentrating on her posture). He’d given too much away, he reckoned, more than she wanted. Like always, she’d had to remind him.

Changing the subject: “It looks good.”

She started, turned her head sharply toward him. “What?” (A question not in response to his, not, “What looks good?” but something else, just a breath, like she hadn’t heard him properly, like she’d thought he might’ve said something he hadn’t. Her eyes were wide.)

He nodded up to Serenity’s hull. “The branding you did up there. Looks good. Makes her look like something that maybe belongs out there, after all.”

A little sigh from her, and he turned to look at her, her hair bundled on top of her head, her arms hugging her robe around her, like to ward off the cold. A vision marred just barely by a little smear of yellow paint across a cheek.

She wasn’t looking back – just out at the black, like she did those late nights on the bridge, wistful-like. Another whisper: “We all belong out there.”

He felt his brow furrow, and he’d have given just about all of it to know what she was thinking just then (though in retrospect it seemed clear enough). A deep breath of his own, and he followed her gaze out into the sky: “You’re right. ‘Bout a lot of things, I conjure, but about that especially.” And then he swallowed and asked the question he’d had a mind to since he saw her up there. “Noticed you’ve been spending some time with Zoe of late.”

She seemed to bristle somewhat, pulled her eyes back down to his and her wrap around her shoulders more tightly. “Yes, she’s visited me. To talk.”

Shook his head, quick, to keep her from thinking he meant things he didn’t. “No – I don’t mean to put you on edge. I’m grateful, truth be told. How is she?”

She inhaled slow, nodding and thinking. “She’s doing better than I would have – thought.” Pause. “Mal, if you were Zoe –”

Her words brought back their last fight, and he cut her off, his voice sharp. “I’m not Zoe. Think we’ve established that fairly well.”

She closed her eyes, whether trying to calm herself or steel herself he couldn’t tell. “What I mean is –” Lashes came off cheeks as she opened her eyes again and held his. “If you were in her – situation – do you think you might wish you’d never... never met him?”

He cocked his head, not quite sure what she wanted to know. “You reckon she does?”

She pulled her eyes down from his, down to the paints she still held in her hand. “No – no. I don’t. But I wondered. About how a – how a person would feel.”

He shrugged, trying and failing to guess her meaning. He spoke careful, wanting her to know he was trying. Trying to give her whatever it was she wanted. “I don’t conjure anyone could know until it happened to them.” A beat. “So if Zoe says she’s glad at having spent the time she did with him, I expect that’s your answer.”

Then her eyes were on his again, and her lips were parted just slightly. And the outside around him felt so big, and he felt so small, hanging on whatever she was about to say. “Mal, there’s something I need to –”

He wanted to hear whatever that thing she needed was as much as he wanted to breathe, but one of the Operative’s men was behind him, just then (timing!), at attention and conveying to him (for the Operative) a schedule of repairs.

When he turned back around, she was gone.

***

“What kind of trouble?”

Jayne stood behind him while he worked Grace’s controls – not even trying to get her to fly, just to respond. But the instrument panel was dark. “Damn it!”

“I can’t let you leave.”

The voice was all around him. The man behind him groaned; muttered: “How many times’ve I said she was trouble...”

He took a breath. “River? We need to go. We need to get her away from here.”

The voice: “I can’t let you leave.”

His fists clenched at his sides; tried his best to keep his anger out of his voice. “Because your brother said not to? He doesn’t always know what’s best. He doesn’t always do what’s right. You know that, little one, better’n anyone.”

“It’s for the best.”

He couldn’t take it anymore. Lifted his chin toward the sky, arms spread wide, and yelled with everything in him: “What is?”

From across the ship, the sound of the main hatch sliding open, and the voice, calm as ever: “This.”

***

(Much, much later, when it was all over, they would sit by themselves in the common room outside of Serenity’s infirmary, both of them staring blankly down at now-cold cups of coffee, and Simon would tell him of the moment he first met her.

“I was four. Just barely old enough to be able to remember it now. It’s one of the only things I remember from before River was born.

“She was there – he had brought her home, to our estate. ‘Simon,’ he’d said to me when he walked her in. ‘This is Inara.’ It was the only time he said her name. She didn’t speak to me. She sat across from me in the playroom in a kimono, black ringlets held back by cloisonné clips, black slippers over white tights, watching the ground. She looked very delicate. I remember I was worried she might not like playing pirates. She didn’t look like she would. And then I remember wondering what she thought of the necktie my father made me wear.

“They were arguing – my parents – in the parlor next door. Sometimes their voices were very loud, and her lip would quiver.

“She was an orphan, he was saying to my mother. He wanted to take her, to raise her with me. I remember that my mother told him that the Guild would keep her – because that’s what the Guild did, she said, watch after its bastards. Then a door slammed, and he came back to us. His face was hard, and I thought he might yell. But he didn’t. He picked her up, and as she wrapped her arms around his neck he whispered to her that they were going back to Sihnon and that she didn’t have to worry about anything. That he’d always keep her safe.

“And what I remember most is – is being glad when he took her away, because she’d caused them to be angry.

“A year later River was born, and it wasn’t until many years later that I thought of her again. And later than that that it became important to me to find her. Because of River. Because River needed me to. But by then I’d forgotten her name.”)

***

“Can someone explain to me what, in the name of all that’s holy, is going on around here?”

Barely glanced back over his shoulder as he made his way in a couple strides to the infirmary, just long enough to ask the merc a question: “You have a gun?”

The other man rolled his eyes. “Mal, I always got a gun.”

He’d just gotten to her bedside when Simon came into the room. (A hand on her cheek, just for an instant, maybe to reassure himself she was still alive, before he turned to stand wide before the bed, like a shield.) The boy’s eyes were dark and fierce as they angled toward Mal. Not so different in aspect to any of the other standoffs he’d had in his life. The difference was underneath the look of it: this time, the stakes of it mattered to him.

And behind Simon, the man from the Cortex screen, dressed as formal as he’d been in the wave, a cravat peeking out the top of his Sihnonian robe.

Beside him, Jayne stiffened, drew his weapon. “And just who the hell is this?”

Simon, his eyes still focused on Mal’s, voice hard-edged: “This is my father.”

Behind the doctor, the man tilted his head just a bit. “Captain Reynolds, I presume. I’m here to –”

“Your boy can speak for himself. Though I don’t reckon there’s much he can say for himself.”

Simon’s voice hard, insistent. Demeaning. “She needs help, Mal. You need to understand that. She needs more help than you can give her.”

He didn’t flinch. “You lied to me.”

A slight nod. “About some things.”

“About everything.”

“I didn’t tell you the whole truth. There’s a difference.”

“Did you tell her?” Silence, and he knew he’d caught the tail of something. One step forward. “I don’t think you did. I don’t think she knows.”

(A shift beside him, and he could tell Jayne’s gun arm had dropped – just a hair, but enough. “She don’t know what, Mal? What the hell’s going on?”)

“You’ve been lying to her, too.” Another step forward. “She thinks you’re her friend, but you’ve just been using her. For years.”

The boy’s eyes sparked, and he bristled. “I’ve never lied to her.”

A sharp laugh. “No. You just didn’t tell her the whole truth.”

“So what is this, Mal? You want to keep me away from her? You want to sacrifice her to prove a point?”

“No. I want you to do what we came for. We brought her here so you could figure out how to help her. But that don’t explain to me why you felt cause to drug me and incapacitate my ship, and it sure as hell don’t explain to me what he’s doing here.”

Silence, stretching out. Probably just for a second but it felt interminable.

When the doctor finally spoke, it was with some mix of deliberation and, worse, resignation: “Mal, I can’t help her. I never thought I could. But there are resources here. There’s money here. There are scientists and hospitals. If there’s any chance for her, it’s here.” A beat; the boy took a breath, and another; his brow wrinkled as he held Mal’s eyes, like this was something he needed him to understand. “Mal, we brought her here to leave her here. On Osiris. With her father.”

***

end chapter 16