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

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**Mousing over the Chinese should reveal the English translations on most browsers. If not, translations follow the story.

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Mal sat in the infirmary, as he had done so much lately, just staring at Alex. He needed so many things to happen, but nothing was happening at all.

He needed the test results to come back.

He needed Alex’s limbo state to end.

He needed to make things right—or at least better—with Inara before she disembarked, which was going to happen sooner than he cared to think about.

He needed to make things right with his crew—which he couldn’t do before he figured out what to do about the rest.

So he sat. When he wasn’t sitting, he paced the corridors. When he did that, he overheard what his crew was really thinking.

As much as he hated to admit it, he wondered if maybe Jayne was right. Maybe he’d gone looking for trouble he didn’t need to own. Maybe he should have left well enough alone.

It certainly would have saved him a world of worry and hurt. All that was required of him once he had Alex on board was to deliver her home. How to do that had been resolved when her mother ‘waved.

If only Simon hadn’t dangled the damn test in front of him....

He had been thinking of Alex’s mother when he told Simon to go ahead with it. He wanted to have answers for her.

But what sort of answers could he realistically give her? Even if it gave the baby’s father a face, it wouldn’t change the fact that what he’d had with her daughter amounted to a one-night stand. They had parted ways and never expected to see each other again. Certainly, they had felt something for each other, and Mal cared enough to want to help her when she got into trouble at the prison; but it wasn’t the kind of relationship that would put a mother’s mind at ease.

And what about his own feelings?