Mal caught him red handed in the cargo bay, poking around the alcove of sorts where River and Kaylee sometimes retreated to play jacks. His voice was deceptively mild, Simon's first clue that he was in deep, deep trouble.
"Hey Doc. Looking for something?"
"Yes, actually," he said, keeping his head down, looking below the stairs.
"And what might that be?" Mal asked, heavy footfalls drawing closer by the second. Simon straightened up just as Mal drew near and found himself backed into the corner. Literally and figuratively, since Mal was for an answer and there really was no good way to say it.
"A... scalpel?" he answered, but his voice was more hesitant than he meant to make it.
"A scalpel."
Simon swallowed. "...Yes?"
"Yes or no, Doc, which is it?"
"Ah... yes."
Mal moved a shade closer, radiating slight and harmless curiosity. "You misplace it?"
"I... it's... just... lost."
"Lost," Mal said calmly.
"Yes. But River doesn't have it," Simon hastened to assure him.
Mal raised an eyebrow. "Well, I'm glad you seem sure of that."
"Yes. Not... right now, at any rate."
Mal smiled a little, and not in a friendly way. "Now, that do seem a mite different."
"But Zoe's keeping an eye on her until I find it."
Mal put one elbow up on the railing, crowding him a little. "Then you're gonna lock 'em up some, I imagine."
"Yes. Absolutely," Simon agreed. He'd have agreed to almost anything at this point, because Mal was very close and smiling very, very scarily.
"Even more than... previous."
"Yes. Absolutely."
Mal nodded. "So they were locked up then. Previous."
"Well...." Caught. "River is a very smart girl, and very..."
"Intuitive," Mal suggested.
"Intuitive. Yes."
"About locks, even, a person might... intuit."
Simon swallowed again, but it was harder this time. "Yes. Precisely."
"And it's not that the idea hadn't occurred to me before, as you say, precisely..."
"Captain....
"It's just that there's a difference between the knowing of something might happen, one day, and then the knowing that something did happen."
"Did...?"
"As, I imagine, there's a difference between knowing a scalpel's gone missing and actually seeing it--buried to the hilt in the very throat..."
Oh, God...
"Of one very, very dead..."
Oh, my God...
"Dinosaur."
...wait...
"...Dinosaur?"
"Now don't get me wrong Simon, there's no love lost between me and any of those pieces of fèhuà, but is an unsettling sight, I'm sure you will agree."
"You... yes."
"And Wash claims that that particular piece of fèhuà deserved it, but he seems a little, I don't know, stricken."
"Of course. I'll...."
"Now, there's a man you should be brushing up on your headshrinkin' texts about. You know what Zoe said?"
He shook his head.
"She says even the... whichit... is a manifestation of Wash. Can you believe that?"
"...Yes?"
"Woman used have her head on straight. Used to be trustable. Still trustable. Still. But... manifestations? Disturbin'."
"Yes, I...."
"Almost as disturbin' as walking onto my gorram bridge and finding a ruttin' dinosaur feet up with a scalpel right through it's gorram neck!"
In the following silence, somewhere down the ship, where Mal's voice was surely echoing, Simon could hear Jayne laughing. Uproariously. He closed his eyes. He could feel bile rising to the back of his throat and cursed every psychosomatic reaction in the book, all of which were threatening to swamp him at the thought of River. With a scalpel. And deadly intent. And Mal was talking again. Pleasantly.
"...be frank I hated those ruttin' things. Wash talks to 'em. Right inside that empty, empty head of his. With me right in the room. Can you believe that?"
He thought maybe he could speak. If he tried.
"And about me, too," Mal continued, from about six inches away, where he had been since mid-yell, but his tone was conversational again. "I'm sure of it. I get an itchy kinda feeling when folks are talking about me, and I know. Damn thing about this scalpel though."
At the word scalpel he again had Simon's full and complete attention.
"Serenity ain't no battle cruiser, but she's a fine ship. This scalpel of yours? Full inch into the metal."
Simon tried not to think about the force behind that kind of blow, in that slender arm.
"Pegged Jayne for it frankly, but he says if he wanted to kill one of Wash's ruttin toys he'd shoot the shit out of it. Sounds right to me." Mal's face split into an almost-friendly grin. "Besides," he added conspiratorially, "he's too scared a' Zoe."
Simon laughed without thinking, but he could hear the nervousness underneath. Mal was still standing much too close.
"That's a pretty fine scalpel, is what I think," Mal said.
"Best money can buy," Simon agreed, his voice strangled. Mal laughed and reached out and grabbed him with one hand, thumb on his ear and hand wrapped around the back of his head, and shook him in a rough but friendly fashion.
"Only the best for Serenity, eh Simon?" he says. Some agreement seemed to be called for so Simon managed an
"Only the best."
Mal was still grinning as he let him go.
"Supper's in five minutes. You got that long to learn to laugh about this, wouldn't want to set Kaylee or Wash to thinkin'."
Simon knew what that meant; it meant Zoe and Jayne were already thinking. But Mal was still smiling, not dangerous but... unsettling.
"Kaylee come in with the deed still done, never saw her so fit to bust a gut."
He's pretty sure that means Kaylee found it funny.
"Dinner in five," Mal said again. "And Wash's got the scalpel hanging in front of the viewport, damned if I know why."
"Thank you, Captain."
"Don't thank me, you're the poor liúmáng that has to do surgery on a plastic corpse. But Simon."
He looked up.
"Don't care how you do it, just make sure that damn thing doesn't 'get lost'... ever again."