Rating: PG

Pairing: Mal/Inara

Disclaimer: The characters belong to Joss. I only want them to love each other.

Timeframe: about a month before the movie

Spoilers: Shindig and a tiny one from a missing scene from the movie.

http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=13384>Part 4 - Of Captains And Desires

Somethings Gotta Give: Part -5 - Heartbound

By

Lattelady

Inara looked out over the valley below the Training House and shivered as the evening breeze blew across her skin and through her hair. It had been over two months since she’d left Serenity. Golden high summer had given way to the beginnings of fall. Nights were cooler and there was the smell of frost in the air. It had been a long time since she’d been planet bound and had never spent a winter on one that hadn’t had environmental controls.

When the sun slipped behind the highest mountain peek, it shrouded everything below in shadows. “Like my life,” murmured Inara. She tried to tell herself that it was the thought of the long cold season ahead that caused her to tremble, not the searing loneliness that came out each night to torment her.

She was caught in a trap she hadn’t seen coming, but it held her in its grasp as tightly as an Alliance force field. She had hopped that by leaving the Firefly class ship where she’d lived for almost a year, it would break the spell its Captain had unintentionally woven around her, but she was as firmly caught now as she had been two months earlier. Keeping active helping her friend Sheydra, teach in the first Companion Training House on the Rim, only occupied her mind during the day.

She closed her eyes and pictured herself standing outside a door in Serenity’s guest dorm. It had been when Simon and River were new, only hours after Kaylee had been shot. Zoe had been explaining to the doctor about Serenity Valley and the significance it had in the Captain’s life. Inara had known even then that she shouldn’t have been eavesdropping,