Simon sometimes wonders where he’d be if he hadn’t stumbled across Serenity that first day on Persephone. Dead, his sister tells him, her blunt honesty the same as before the Academy, but different too.

He isn’t so sure he’d be dead, but he figures he wouldn’t be this happy either.

He has River safe and Kaylee to warm his blood and his bed. His career may be gone, but he’s useful still. On Osiris, he saved lives, hundreds of them. Though it’s not the reason he became a doctor, he reveled in the power. Bodies came to him on the threshold of Death’s door, and he brought them back.

But they were bodies and not people.

On Serenity he saves people. People he eats with and laughs with and fights with. People he knows. People he cares for.

It is thrilling in a way the ER never could be. There, he may have been the most brilliant trauma surgeon in residence, but there were a dozen others just a step behind him. Any one of them could fill his shoes. On Serenity, it is just him.

Mal might deny it, and Jayne outright refute it, but that makes him the most valuable member of the crew. Zoe and Mal would be dead a dozen times over, if not for him.

Somehow, Jayne always got by with just minor injuries.

Not that Simon likes to see them hurt. It’s just that the black can be a tedious place and he feels out of sorts surrounded by renegades and thieves. The only place he is really, truly himself is elbow deep in blood. He craves the challenge and the purpose, that feeling of fulfillment.

Kneeling in the cargo bay, he can feel Mal’s blood, slick between the fingers of his gloves as he’s probing the wound on his thigh. The Captain winces, the ship shaking as it’s breaking atmo as fast as River can fly, causing Simon’s fingers to dig deeper than he intended.

There. He can feel it. The bullet lodged tight up against the femur.

“You’ll be fine, Captain.” He assures his patient, ignoring the way Mal rolls his eyes.

“Always am. Zoe?” Mal looks to his first mate standing nearby, waiting for o