Disclaimer: Don't own this...

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Late in the night cycle, you lie awake, Kaylee curled into your front. You woke out of well honed habit, your body knowing your patient in the infirmary will need you even before the alarm you set goes off. But you have a few minutes still, so you turn the alarm off, grateful that you won't have to wake Kaylee and as you wait, enjoying her closeness (finally!), your thoughts turn to the crew.

Everyone on Serenity wants a thing or three. As ship's medic, you are in a unique position. Being the giver of annual exams, occasional smoothers, frequent weaves and far too often bullet removing surgeries (another Plan gone wrong) it allows you ample time to observe the members of the crew and put things together. While Jayne may argue that you sometimes have a hard time figuring out your own from a crack in the hull, the truth is you were always good at reading people. Once you figured out how rules in the Black were different (and that took you getting shot and beaten down a time or two), you're good at it out here, too.

Mal wants to make sure Serenity stays flying. He wants the next Perfect Plan to actually be perfect, for the crew to actually make good money and not be shot. He wants Miranda to mean more than it did to the rest of the 'verse, and he desperately wants to make sure that what's left of their little family stays together. It's that desperation that leads him to finally swallow his pride when Inara announces her intention to return to the Training House. He asks her to stay. She does.

Inara wants time. Time to live. Time to grow. Time to love. She finally tells you the secret of her death. When she makes the decision to stay with Serenity, to stay with her family, to stay with Mal, she needs you to know, to understand the disease that will steal her away and the demands she will eventually make on your infirmary, your time, your supplies. She arranges for her medicine to be deliver