"Why did you leave?"

"Why didn't you ask me not to?"

Mal hadn't answered her, as usual when his conversations with Inara turned too close to home he changed the subject, he walked away. But her question hadn't gone away, it just hung there, like a bad dream he couldn't shake. Then everything went from a bad dream to full blown night terrors filled with so much pain, and blood, and loss. They all went kinda numb afterwards, and chose to focus on Serenity and getting her back in the air.

"Ready to get back to civilized life?"

"I don't know."

"Good answer."

And it was a good answer, better than he had hoped for. It made him smile. It tempered the nightmares somewhat. It let him sleep. But he still didn't have an answer to her question, least ways, not an answer he could articulate. But he kept thinking on it. He thought about it when they all sat down to eat together. He thought about it to avoid thinking about the empty chairs and the holes in the conversation where they could all imagine Wash poking fun at Jayne. (Mal coulda swore he felt Wash's frustration when they failed to fill those holes for him.) He thought about it while drinking with Zoe later in the evening, coaxing her out of herself a little.

Zoe.

There was a world of hurt she was holding onto in there, but he knew it had good company. He knew better than anyone that she could and would deal with this new pain. She would take it and place it on a shelf in her heart, next to all her other broken pieces. For a time she would touch it so often that it would shine, red and raw. But after a while, perhaps a good long while, she would let it develop a fine layer of dust. And it would become just a part of the background of her. But it would always be there; everything new built upon the knowledge of what filled that shelf.

"Once you've been in Serenity, you never leave."

Yeah, and wounds you can walk on never fully heal. If it was true, what they used to say back in Basic, that pain was weakness leaving th