On Board Serenity

Somewhere in the Black

Mal stood on the bridge in the middle of the night, staring out at the stars. Serenity had fallen silent, finally, giving Mal a chance to be alone. With as many people on board Serenity as there were now, he found it harder and harder to have a moment of peace. Not that anyone else was sleeping peacefully, not with everything that had happened on Shadow, not with Kaylee gone.

Now, after nearly a week on Shadow repairing Serenity, they were sailing through the black, without so much as a single idea between them all of how to find Kaylee. The only one who might have had an idea of where the blue-gloved man had taken his engineer was River, but she hadn’t spoken a single word since Mal cried with her. She spent all her days in the infirmary now, sitting in the corner, staring at nothing in particular, only getting up long enough to use the bathroom.

Mal finally sat down himself, dropping into Wash’s chair and setting his feet up on the console. He didn’t feel like relaxing, but his body was beginning to react from his lack of sleep. He had had nothing but nightmares every time he closed his eyes. Either about Kaylee, and finding her dead and mutilated, or about his mother crawling out of her grave, her deteriorated body ambling towards him, calling his name-

“Mal?”

Mal jumped in his seat, and then cursed under his breath.

“Not a good idea to sneak up on someone in the dark like that,” he said, his heart racing.

“I didn’t mean to sneak,” Inara said as she stepped into the bridge. “I just…”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Mal finished.

“Yes.”

Mal turned in the chair as Inara sat down across from him. Pain flashed across her features for a second, but as soon as it came, it was gone. She was wearing one of her colorful nightgowns, but Mal knew what she hid. Simon had taken out the bullet from her upper chest, but the bullet had just missed her heart, miraculously doing as little damage as a bullet could before lodging itself in near her spine. She could move a