- 6 -

Inara waited for the water in her small tea kettle to boil as she went over the events of the last few days in her head. She had given in to her feeling for Mal. This alone both thrilled and frightened her beyond anything she had done before. She knew that starting an argument with him would still come far too easy. That’s why she had not said anything to him about the argument he had with Zoe. She had heard most of it from Mal’s bunk; he had left the door open. She wished he hadn’t. Complicating matters even more was the fact that Zoe had turned to her about it. Zoe rarely looked for advice regarding her relationships, at least not to Inara. This time however, she felt generally sorry for what she said to Mal and didn’t know how to approach him. She told Inara that she and Mal never really apologized to each other for arguments. They just went on. Inara was unsure what to tell Zoe because frankly that was very much the way her own relationship worked with him. Mal tended to blame himself, even if just internally, for most everything. This was going to be delicate she thought to herself as she headed to the bridge.

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Zoe often wondered if Mal thought about anything more that the job in front of him. If he did he might have realized that asking Zoe to play Jayne’s wife, or anyone’s wife, only months after her husband’s death could be considered cruel. Not to mention the fact that the job was going to require having children aboard ship. Children like the one she would never get to have with Wash.

Part of her knew both of those thoughts were unfair. Mal had not picked the job. Nor was he a man that would stand by while children were being hurt. Asking her to go with Jayne was, at this point, a necessity. He was right about them being the only people that had not been seen. They were the only two that had a possibility on not provoking much suspicion. In the end Mal was doing what he always did, what he had to.

As she thought Zoe looked over at Jayne as he guided the Mule