Chapter 7:

Mal walked past the police tape surrounding St. Paul's Church. Upon entering, he spotted Detectives Ryan and Esposito in the aisles taking statements from witnesses. Mal went down the nave to where Kate Beckett and the medical examiner Lanie Parish were standing by the pulpit in front of the altar.

"What've we got here?" he asked, noticing the corpse slumped over the pulpit.

"Reverend Timothy Douglas," said Kate without any flourish.

"Victim was stabbed multiple times to the chest with a sharp, thin blade," added Lanie, who was observing Douglas' corpse. "What's interesting, though, is that he cut around the heart, circling it, but never touching the heart itself."

"Huh," was all Mal remarked.

"What?" chided Beckett. "No snarky comments?"

"A man of god was murdered in a place that's supposed to provide a feeling of peace and safety," he said.

"I never knew you were a religious man, Castle."

"I'm not," he said bluntly, too quickly to ignore if there hadn't been other pressing matters.

It was then that Ryan and Esposito joined them. "A local newsstand owner witnessed a tall hooded figure leave the church at about a quarter past eight," Ryan explained, reading from his notebook. "He said that he remembered thinking it was odd that the guy was running and even banged into a streetlight because he wasn't looking. But he didn't think much of it since so many people come in and out all the time."

"A lot of homeless and junkies like to come here for a safe haven," Esposito explained. "Other witnesses also corroborate that they saw the same guy at around the same time and that he was the last one to come in or leave until the victim was found."

"But what's the point of taking the effort to stab so many times, when one quick one to the heart would have done the trick?" asked Kate.

"Maybe he wanted the reverend to feel it longer, to suffer?" said Mal.

"Then why so careful not to touch the heart itself?" she said.

"What if," said Castle, taking a moment to think. "What if the murderer wasn't just using the knife to stab him, what if he was trying to cut the victim's heart out?"

"Okay, let's let forensics finish up here," said Kate. "We'll head back to the station and piece together everything we know about this guy."

Castle nodded in silence. And as he turned to leave with her, all he could think was: Shouldn't have been you.

And a familiar voice echoed back to him: Coming from you, that means almost nothing.


When Simon returned to Serenity, he found everyone in the kitchen.

"You're back," greeted Kaylee. "What happened?"

"He, uh, he said he wasn't going to come," said Simon.

"I already told you," said Zoe. "He doesn't want to come."

"That's not what he said," said Simon, with more surety this time. "He just said he wouldn't. But I think he wants to... It's just that Alexis-"

"Who's Alexis?" asked Inara.

"His daughter," said Simon. "He doesn't want to hurt her, for her to know he's been lying to her."

"His daughter?" Inara repeated slowly.

"I met her for a second," he said. "She's nice. In her late teens by the look of her." He paused for a moment, remembering he was holding something. "He told me to give you these," he told Kaylee, handing her the container of strawberries.

She took them silently, holding back the tears in her eyes. Suddenly strawberries didn't seem so appetizing right now. "Wait," she said, realizing what her husband had just told them. "So he does want to come back?"

"I think that if we persuaded him, then he would come. I think he's afraid."

"What would he have to be afraid of?" asked Inara.

"The same thing that I was afraid of after I saved River from the Alliance," Simon said, looking intently at his sister who sat quietly before him. "Losing her again."

"I think the question is," said Kai, looking around the room. "Do you guys even want him back after all this? Why go to all this trouble to convince him if he's so against the idea?"

Everyone in the room was silent for a moment. Then Zoe spoke, surprising everyone. "Because he's a good man," she said. "He's been there was for us time and time again. And when he finally needed us, we let him down. And now he's lost; and it's our job to get him to stop running away and to help him find his way again."

Kai nodded. He knew that Mal and his mother had been through a lot together. He was her sergeant in the war against the Alliance, a war so bloody and with so many innocent lives lost. And when the fighting was over, they were all just left there, wounded and sick and dying. Kai once asked his mother how someone could name his ship after something that brought him so much pain. She told him, "Once you've been in Serenity, you never leave. You just learn to live there." But he knew that Zoe lived there just as much as Mal did; and if it wasn't for the captain, she would have been lost in it the same as so many others.

"So what's the plan?" Kai asked.


A/N: Zoe's answer to Kai about why Mal named the ship Serenity was taken from an unaired scene from the pilot episode in a conversation between Zoe and Simon.

And for those who don't remember or know, the familiar voice that Mal heard was Shepherd Book from a conversation they had in the movie.