He didn’t believe in violence.

As long as he could remember, Simon was always taught that violence was something never to be even considered. His parents would lecture him many times about how violence often caused more problems than solved them. That to use your intellect and your education to defeat your opponents is better than to use your fists. And that to use violence made you no better than the thugs that opposed you. During his time at the hospital, he had seen countless victims of random and not so random violence and the havoc it had on the human body. Sure there had been many times where Simon had been tempted to use violence-whenever he got beat up at school, whenever he was angry at the world, when there was a slacker med-student irritating him beyond measure- but he never once gave into his urges to even give a shove, let alone a punch. It just wasn’t his nature to be aggressive.

It was this that made one particular aspect of his new life out in the Black the hardest to adapt to. Being on the run, the anonymity, the closed environment, the hectic pace, not having a lot of the simpler pleasures in life, the crime and the general daily uncertainty he got used to fairly quickly. But it was the violence that was the hardest thing for him to deal with. The way how punches were used to end sentences. The way bullet wounds became as common as mosquito bites. The way how Mal, Zoe and Jayne were able to end another person’s life without even breaking stride, as Mal demonstrated with Dobson. The casual savagery that was almost a daily event is what bothered him the most. And for the longest time, he kept stalling. He knew that the time would come where one day, he would have to take a life. He would have to break the oath that he had dedicated his life to upholding.

He just didn’t think it would be today

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Doc! Incoming wounded. We need you now!!”

Simon bolted up from the couch where he was chatting with Kaylee. He rushed up to the cargo bay to see Ja