Disclaimers : Everything belongs to Joss, except for one character of my creation

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Haven lived up to its name. The small mining community was known for taking in the occasional Browncoat fugitive if the price was right. That included several of Mal and Zoë’s wartime associates. Those friends ‘waved them once in awhile if they needed a favor, usually transport for someone to or from the moon. Now, they were returning the favor to the crew of Serenity by loaning Simon use of their clinic for the tests he needed to run.

Haven would also serve as a place for the crew to get some down time. It would not be the leave time Mal had promised them, but it would be something. They could relax with friends while Simon assessed Alex’s condition and he and Mal figured out what to do.

For Mal it felt like anything but a haven. He couldn’t think of a time in his life that he had felt pulled in so many directions. He wondered how thin he was capable of being spread. Going to the prison in search of Alex held many unknowns; and he thought he had prepared himself for all the possibilities. He hoped they would find her alive, but he had steeled himself for the very real likelihood they would not. He knew there was a chance they might not find her at all. But THIS...never in three lifetimes had the situation in front of him entered his thoughts. The implications—no matter what the outcome—were so immense that he refused to even let his mind go there. Not until he had more information.

So he thought about the more immediate problems at hand.

He had made promises to his crew that he needed to keep—and to Inara as well. He had promised her she would be the first stop after Zargon, no matter what they found there. Now, here they were on Haven, nowhere near where Inara needed to be. One promise broken already, and who knew what lay ahead?

Inara had assured him she understood, that she would have it