Author’s Notes: This scene was written specifically with reference to one of the deleted scenes in “Serenity.” If you haven't seen it, you must! :)

Mal sits on the bridge and stares out into the black. He hasn’t altered course; they will be on Bena as planned by mid-afternoon tomorrow. The words echo in his mind; the question he’d been unable to hold back any longer, followed by Inara’s reply, as gorram inscrutable ever. Giving him nothing. Twisting him up inside.

Why did you leave?

Why didn’t you ask me not to?

Months later, he still doesn’t know -- or what to do differently this time. She’d been uncharacteristically at a loss for words when he’d broached the subject earlier and the thing of it is, now he’d got hopeful. Because it isn’t true that he wishes her elsewhere. Because this time, if she leaves, she’ll take that gorram trunk with her.

They’d been near enough to Bena they could have stopped to leave the trunk like to half a dozen times, but he’d always found some excuse why it wasn’t the right time.

Damn sure wasn’t the right time now either.

He gets up, heads toward Inara’s shuttle. All the months she’d been gone, they still called it that. It will always be her shuttle, even if she never returns to it on a permanent basis, but he hopes there’s something he can say ... Truth is, he’d never got used to the look of the shuttle since she’d left, stripped bare of all the hangings and her fine furnishings. Might just have been his imagination, but it always seemed a hint of scent remained, like a memory, of the incense she’d used to burn.

The door is closed, but he enters anyway before he can think better of it. Inara’s back is toward him and he can see she’s made up a bed for the night and is laying something inside her trunk.

So, she’s packing.

“Inara. We can drop you back on Bena tomorrow, back with your girls, but if you were lookin’ for a change ...” he clears his throat. “You know, you could stay. Hav