Thanks to Byte for the once-over but more than that for the, I think, genius idea of Mal and the Reavers. She does it a lot better than I've done it here, but anyway, she let me borrow it, so here goes.
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Kneeling in the back room of the store, Inara attempted to meditate during Serenity’s departure from Pity, to overcome the compelling feeling that it was only by some mishap that she was not aboard and that if she were to wave the ship it would come back for her. She tried not to think about Mal at all. Minutes after the last vibration had ceased, when she knew that it would be impossible to see Serenity with the naked eye, she stepped outside to look up into the sky, to penetrate the clouds, past the blue and into the black.
“They’ve gone,” came a voice, and when she searched for its source she was astonished to see that, yes, it was Zoe, standing in the bare, dusty space in front of the store, her head tipped back, and face lifted towards the sky. Inara took hurried steps towards her.
“Zoe! What are you doing here?”
“Won’t be for much longer,” said Zoe, her tone more gentle than her words. “Got my stuff in that mule over there.” She pointed to an empty vehicle on the edge of the settlement, piled high at the back with baggage. “I’m heading out.”
They stood together, looking at each other in sorrowful connection. The time for ‘enough’ had come; they were both moving on.
“Where to?” Inara asked softly.
Tears came to Zoe’s eyes and she shook her head quickly against them. “Wash’s folks,” she said, staring out beyond the settlement into the quiet fields.
“I’m so glad,” Inara replied.
Zoe looked at her with freshly appraising – and appreciating – eyes. She smiled. “You got a real nice way of saying simple things,” she said. Inara smiled back. Zoe spoke softly now: “Even though God knows what happened with you and Mal.”
Inara looked down; looked up again with a quiet intensity borne of an attempt to suppress the urgency of her query: “Did you ever think – did you ever think it could work?” She didn’t know when she would see Zoe again; and in removing her person Zoe would take away a greater store of knowledge about Mal than was possessed by anybody else.
“Sometimes,” said Zoe simply. She didn’t know when she would see Inara again, didn’t want the responsibility of giving her a false sense of either hope or despair. “Especially lately. Thought it was working, truth be told.” She sighed. “Used to rile me something bad when you two was dancing around each other. Then it riled me when you got together. Thought it was distracting Mal from the job. Feel bad about that now.”
“You’ve got nothing to feel bad about. Only your loss to heal from.”
“Same for you, Inara. Only your illness to recover from.” Zoe lifted a hand to briefly touch Inara’s arm. “How you doing?”
“Thank you for asking. I’m well. I’m all right.”
“Simon checked you out, before he went.”
“Yes.”
“But not Mal.”
“No.”
“Must’ve been bad, whatever it was happened between you.”
“It was.”
“I thought following him, staying with him, would help. Would help him. But time’s come for him to do that on his own. Help himself.” Inara didn’t reply. Zoe looked away, gazing into the distance once again. “Was Wash helped me. But seems it won’t be like that for Mal.”
“You have hope for him? That he can do it on his own?”
Zoe sighed heavily. “Mal’s got an awful lot to get past.” She looked back at Inara. “He tell you about the retrieval ships?” Inara shook her head. After a moment Zoe shrugged. “Well, it ain’t for me to tell you.”
“No,” said Inara, alert to anything that might raise Mal in her estimation. “Tell me.”
Zoe paused. “You’re leaving too.”
Inara was startled. “Yes.”
“Saw Kaylee taking your stuff off the ship. And I don’t want to say anything that’s like to make you stay. Don’t want to put myself in the middle of you two at all.” For a second time tears threatened and Zoe lowered her voice so that she could speak steadily. “’Cause I love that man. I love Mal. And he loves you.”
Zoe had shown her devotion to Mal time and time again; but Inara saw that she had never spoken of it to him, and that it pained her somehow that she hadn’t. She waited for Zoe to continue.
“After the war, we was in a camp. Prisoner of war camp. Worst gorram planet in the Verse, sun never camp up. Mal got pulled out. Made the mistake of keeping his head up, showing how tough he was. So they put him on a retrieval ship, tracking Reavers from one random world to another. And he had to fight them, him and the others. Hand to hand. Shitty little ships they were, no speed and no defences, and the folks put on them had nothing more than whatever kit they’d managed to hold on to in the camps. Butter knives. Toothpicks. Just not wanting to die in any of the ways Reavers have you die.”
Zoe allowed Inara the silence she needed to take on board what she had just been told. Eventually Inara said: “So he knew about it. Before we got to Miranda.”
“No. They knew about it. He just knew Reavers existed. Knew it more than the rest of us. Didn’t know what had made them.”
Inara continued, thoughtfully and sadly, almost to herself, as though she was only half-listening to Zoe: “He was going back. To the source of a time of – great horror, and darkness.” She fell silent again. “Maybe he knew that. Maybe he felt it.”
Zoe’s response – “Yeah, Inara, we all felt it,” – provoked another long silence on both sides.
Inara was thinking about the time she first met Mal; how much she knew him now; and how little she knew him still. He’d offered her a home; wanted her; insulted her. All of that was in him. And death; death had been in him, and still was, holding his heart like a cruel hand. She had failed him, that she had not seen it, and failed herself, that she had not seen it soon enough.
“Did he ever tell you about his family?” Inara asked, breaking the silence.
“Father was an army man on Londinium. Was forced to take the fall for something. Choice was leave the planet or face execution. Said forever afterwards he should’ve taken the second option. Died of a heart-attack when Mal was two.”
“And his mother?”
“Never forgave him for it.”
“For going into exile?”
“For failing; for leaving; for dying.” Zoe shrugged.
Inara spoke after another silence. “I still have to go. I have things I have to do for myself too, on Sihnon. And it’s the same for him. He does – he has to help himself now.”
