Inara walked down the path to the lake, stopping at the end of the small jetty. She could see Mr Boden had been busy, cutting back the undergrowth, and it looked as if the boathouse had finally been repaired. A bird called mournfully from across the water, answered by another further away, and the sound echoed in her heart.

“Inara –“ Sam stopped a dozen feet from her.

“I thought we’d said all there was to say.”

He shook his head. “No. There’s lifetimes of things I’d like to say to you, but right now, I just want to tell you that I'm sorry.”

She didn’t look at him. “Fine. You’re sorry. Well, now you’ve said it you can turn around and go back to Ariel and your sanitised life.”

“Sanitised. Yes. It is that.” He looked down. “I've never had to get these hands dirty. Not once.”

“Something to be proud of.”

“Is it?”

“No.” She turned on him. “How can you even consider treating people when you’re so insular? When you’ve never experienced life?”

“I've been married, Inara. I have a daughter. I call that having a life. And I'm very successful at what I do. You know that.” He was trying to maintain his calm.

“Yes. And you helped me. And I am grateful. But the first spark of something against your sensibilities and you leave.”

“They killed those men, Inara. No matter that it was legal. They just hanged them as if they were so much meat.” There was something in his eyes now, something she hadn’t seen before, and it almost frightened her.

“And they’d killed a lot more. It was justice.” She looked back across the lake, not wanting to see him angry.

“It was barbaric.”

“That’s what life can be out here. And leaving when things get tough doesn’t change anything.”

Sam’s mind went back to that day not so very long ago when he’d walked out of Serenity on Jiangyin, determined to return to Ariel.

“That life you’re talking about turns on a pin out here,” Mal had said quietly. “One moment it’s all sweetness and light, the next someone’s trying to kill