A/N: Kudos to my beta badkarma00. Thanks for all the help!

Things had been going so well, Mal thought, and now we're having another gorram fight.

It had started innocently enough. He had come to ask her not to leave, tell her he didn't want her to... and why. But, like always, he fumbled over his words. She jabbed he jabbed back, and then pretty soon they were yelling.

“Look, I don’t see what the prob-” she started, but he didn’t let her finish.

“I just don’t get why you gotta go back to train the next generation of whores at that house!” he yelled. The second the words were out of his mouth, he wished, as he had many times in the past, as well as many times already in this conversation, that he could start this over.

Her jaw dropped open as she immediately turned away, but not before he saw her eyes welling with tears. He watched in anguish as her shoulders heaved slightly with silent sobs.

“Inara, I didn’t mean-” he started, this time he got interrupted.

“Mal, please, just go,” she pleaded, her voice shaking.

God, he hated to see her like this… he also knew he couldn’t leave it at this. He knew if he did, she would leave, and he would never see her again, and he couldn’t live with that.

He walked over to her slowly, gently grabbing her shoulders and turning her to face him as he gathered her into his arms, finally acknowledging why it tore his shredded soul so much when he saw her cry like this, him usually being the cause.

“Inara, come here,” he said. She resisted for a moment and he thought he had already blown his last chance to tell her how he felt. He gave a silent sigh of relief when she relented and sank into his embrace.

“Inara, I’m sorry I said that the way I did, but I meant the implied statement. I… the last time you left, I could never stop myself from replaying that scene, and what led up to it, in my mind. Knowing there was somthin’ I should’a done different, but not knowing what it was. Then I realized what caused it… walls.” She had remained silent w