"What happened to her?" Kaylee asked, her voice a quiet hush against the whinings of the engine. Zoë shook her head.

"The doctor and the captain are talking now," she explained. "But so far, it looks like she was drugged...and..." She couldn't go on once Kaylee looked away.

"Poor 'Nara," Kaylee whispered, sinking to the steps. Zoë sat next to her, quietly wrapping her arm around the mechanic's shoulders. The two women sat in silence, each lost in her own thoughts; each thinking about Inara.

***

"She'll wake up soon," Shepherd Book explained to River in the kitchen. "But we're not sure what she'll need. If she wants her privacy, you need to let her have it."

"She doesn't want privacy," River said, still watching Zoë comfort River in the doorway of the engine room. "She wants it to have been a dream, so that it wasn't real."

"River," Book tried again. "She may need some space...we can't be sure of what happened in there."

River looked at the Shepherd with dead eyes.

"I can," she whispered.

***

"It just ain't right," Jayne grunted, pulling a crate from its hiding place. Wash looked up from the other side of the crate.

"The drugging a registered Companion or the kidnapping a Companion?" he asked, slightly out of breath. "Or could it be the parts we don't know about?"

"Well, that, too," Jayne admitted. "I meant the leavin' that wormy piece a'garbage livin' in the lap of luxury after gettin' her out. What was Mal thinkin'? Just blowin' some holes in bushes ain't gonna teach that hun dan a lesson."

"Well, who knows," Wash said, stretching his back as they went to retrieve another crate. "Maybe the Captain will have me fly us back there again so we can all take turns beating him with whatever comes to mind."

"That ain't such a bad idea," Jayne approved. "But I say we kill him, too."

Jayne glanced back in the direction of the infirmary, remembering how fragile Inara had looked when Mal brought her in.

"Slow and painful," he added. "Real slow."

*