"Simon!" Mal called out, shaking his head. "We gotta talk to Simon, 'Nara, he'll know what to do."

"Mal, I -"

"No!" Mal said, standing up. "I ain't gonna accept this. No god damned way am I gonna sit here an' take it! I lost my best friend, 'Nara, I can't lose the woman I love. It ain't right. It ain't fair! Simon!"

"No," Inara agreed, the tears in her eyes spilling over and trailing down her cheeks. "It's not. I... I had accepted it. I'd come to terms with it, but damn you, Mal! You had to go and give me something to live for."

"SIMON!" Mal bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Where the hell is that dai dai gan mei yong yi sheng?"

"In bed," Inara said quietly. "With his wife. Sleeping. Mal, you're going to wake the whole ship."

Not anymore, Mal thought as he heard the door in the passenger dorm open. "Well he oughta be in here, fixin' mine, damn it."

The door to Mal's bunk clanged open. "Mal? What is it?"

"Get your scrawny ass down here," Mal said icily. "You're a god damned doctor, wei le ji du, do your job."

"He doesn't understand," Inara told Simon as he descended the ladder. "He thinks you can just make it better, but -"

"Inara Serra, you will have my children," Mal told her. "And I will see what you look like with gray hair an' wrinkles an' a grandbaby in your lap. Ain't no two ways about it. Doc, do what it is I pay you for."

~*~

"Woke us up, right in the middle o' the night," Kaylee said. "Y'all didn't hear him?"

"We heard 'im," Jayne said. "But he weren't callin' for neither of us, so we went back to... sleep."

River snorted, but continued eating her oatmeal.

"I was on the bridge all night," Wash admitted. "But I must have dozed off, because I didn't hear a peep."

Kate didn't look up from her bowl, despite the fact that she could feel every eye in the room on her. She hadn't said a word yet that morning, and Kaylee was starting to worry. She frowned, then continued with her story. "'Nara's sick, or somethin'. Simon says she's had whatever it is for a long tim