THE TIE THAT BINDS

PART 1

“I don’t know,” she’d said. “I don’t know.”

As he lay in his bunk, her words were looping, almost audibly, in his ears. And in his mind, that smile of hers...

“Good answer,” he had replied to her. And then she smiled…that slow, unsure, radiant smile. She seemed child-like then, even mischievous, in the confrontation of the dilemma that faced her once again: to stay or to go. When last she was faced with this dilemma, she chose under no uncertain terms to leave Serenity, to the leave the crew, and to leave him.

Captain Malcolm Reynolds lay facing up in his bunk, eyes wide open; so unlike the usual facedown, prone, arm- hanging-off-the-side position his body normally took from flinging himself onto his bed because of both carelessness and exhaustion. But now, his mind was whirring with activity and he couldn’t be bothered to sleep, even though he’d left the helm of his beloved ship at the more than capable hands of River Tam.

His thoughts returned to the day she told him she was leaving. It was a strange and strained decision; at least it seemed to him. He didn’t understand why she came to such an abrupt conclusion but there was no mistake in the resolve that shone in Inara’s eyes as they stood on the ship’s walkway. She talked of family, being tied to people, and getting to a point where you can’t tear yourself away or even wanting to. He could only surmise that she was adverse to this. At the time, all he could do was recoil at her declaration and steel himself for her departure. And once she left, he did not see the point of speculating as to why. She was gone and there was nothing to be reasoned. But now, though he never liked to return to that moment she uttered the words, “I’m leaving,” he thought about the circumstances that led up to it.

It was certainly an emotional time. Inara’s meeting with Nandi, an old colleague and friend from her former Companion Training House, was fraught with memories of what once was and could have been. According to Nandi, Inara was next in li