All comments and disclaimers in full in Ch 1 (Simon), it's the usual fare: not mine. Comment or send feedback, wily_one24@yahoo.com.au

It figures Mal would be the most stubborn out of all of them.

***

"That's the way it's always been.

It all comes down to creating time.

We don't always have to make it right.

We'll all drive by in our hybrid lives.

Chances are... chances are...

We'll make it back."

- Sheryl Crow.

***

Superstition is an ugly word when you’re responsible for peoples’ lives, he knew it, yet he’d never been able to shake the belief that there was a balance and the good times were always paid for with bad, but he had never questioned himself as to who paid and who gained and whether it was worth it in the end.

“Tea?”

He barely needed to ask, he knew she would say yes and he knew that as soon as he started making it, Inara would smile to herself, walk up next to him and gently take over. He knew that she knew it, too.

Sometimes her hand would linger on his arm or shoulder and sometimes he would brush her finger when he took the cup she offered and sometimes, just sometimes, it would make them both jittery and breathless.

“Are we still on course to land at eleven?”

“Far as I know.” He shrugged and sat down at the table. “I haven’t been told otherwise.”

Their words, sparse as they were, stopped for a while as Mal’s finger traced the pattern of the wood on the table. There were little things he tried not to see, like the fact that they no longer needed that extra stool to fit people at the table when they ate. That the chair next to Zoe was always left empty and the chairs next to Kaylee, Simon, Inara and himself never were. That Jayne sometimes lifted weights alone and with a viciousness that was almost foolhardy.

He didn’t ask her what she had to do on Aberdeen and she didn’t offer, but the knowledge of it hung heavy between them, waiting.

“Morning, Sir, Inara.”

He looked up to see Zoe in the doorway and, before he could stop himself, his eyes