A/N: This little piece has been brewing in my mind for a while now, and I've just now gotten it onto paper…er, computer.
Summary: A letter left in the bottom of Inara's box on Serenity.
Disclaimer: Still don't own it. Surprised? I'm not.
Keep Flying
I used to think that the people who fought and died in the war were the ones who should be mourned. I was wrong. The ones who survive the onslaught of war and terror, they are more broken than their bloodied companions who lay buried in the ground. The survivors are the ones who are shattered, who see what is left when their entire hope is destroyed. They are left broken-hearted, empty, bereft. They have nothing and no one. They are shattered into a thousand million pieces, and it is almost impossible to repair them.
You taught me that. Until I met you, I truly believed that the Alliance was right, that Unification was the right thing. I learned better, from you and Zoe and later from Simon and River. All of you were destroyed by the thing that I had treasured most: the order and authority of the Alliance.
For several months after I first met you – after I first began traveling with your crew – I was not sure what to make of you. It was frustrating to me that I could not comprehend you. You were so complex and so sure of yourself and so utterly unlike anyone or anything I had ever encountered. Your manners were unsophisticated at best, and I must admit that your insistence on calling me a "whore" did not improve my opinion of you. As time passed, however, you grew on me, and I slowly learned the reasons for your crude ways. It was not that you were unlearned or that you did not know any better; it was that you had become bitter toward anything that reminded you of your losses. I realize now that I was one of those things.
Of course, it did not help that you were attracted to me – something that scared both you and me more than anything else. I think it encouraged you to belittle me. You were afraid of allowing any emotion aside from anger to be directed at an object of the Alliance. And I was afraid you let you.
It is not because of Nandi that I have decided to leave Serenity. I want you to know that. What happened at the Heart of Gold – it made me realize a few things. I became far too dependent on you, and it frightened me. I asked you to commit a crime for a friend of mine, for me. I should not have done that; it is not befitting a Companion. For that, I leave. I need to leave before I become more involved in your life. I have already become too involved with you and with the crew.
I will miss you, Mal Reynolds, you and your crew and your ship.
Keep Flying,
Inara
