Inara watched him sleeping, and wondered yet again at herself. I've been on this ship for so long, I thought I’d seen everything. But he’s here, asleep in my shuttle. She shook her head. And he looks like a little boy.

She sat down on the sofa, far enough away from him not to wake him, but close enough to study him. Perversely glad his eyes were closed, she could still summon their blue from memory, the way they darkened when he was mad at her, when they were arguing over some little nothing that had blown up out of all proportion. Like those dolls. People love those! She smiled. Oh, Mal, you have no taste whatsoever.

His hair needed a cut, she could see that. Perhaps she should offer. Although whether it would be possible to make him sit still long enough to even put the towel around his neck, let along get close to him with a pair of sharp scissors … well, that was something she’d have to plan. Perhaps get Kaylee involved. If she could be dragged away from the young doctor.

Right now, though, his bangs were falling into his eyes. More than once she’d seen him push them back, mostly when they were running for their lives from someone determined to end them, but once in a while when he thought no-one was looking.

She was always looking, but not when he could see. Does he know I watch him?

He mumbled in his sleep, turning his body a little so she could see his back. Such a strong back. With that curve down to … She remembered seeing it in its entirety in the desert, when Saffron had abandoned him, and although she didn’t say, would never say, it compared very favourably to many she’d seen. A few more scars, perhaps … and there are more now. And scars mental, too.

He didn’t talk about Wash. Not surprising, when you consider what they’d been through. How did they survive? When he won’t tell me what happened, that it was so bad, how did they come out in relatively one piece? When Zoe came back with Wash, and just that bit of