AN: I'd forgotten how hostile FFnet is to formatting... Formatting on the previous chapter has been fixed, as well as for the other fics I posted this week. I can't seem to get the spaces between paragraphs back no matter what I do, but at least I put linebreaks where the paragraph breaks used to be.


"Clear," he says. Again. And again. A patient's life hangs in the balance, until it doesn't.

He peels off the stained gloves and tosses them in the trash, scrubs his hands clean in the sink, up to the elbow. Lathered and thorough, not cutting corners, not for the thousandth, millionth time he does it.

He dries his hands thoroughly. Peels on a fresh pair.

Detonated bomb, collapsed building. There's variety to the injuries. Broken limbs and head trauma and shrapnel and crushed ribs. The first thing he did was help them set up triage. The critical cases are coming in first, and they haven't stopped yet. He doesn't know how long it's been. Fourteen patients. He knows that much. An indirect measurement of time.

Their next patient has a length of rebar going through his thigh, has been waiting for his surgery for hours. He directs the surgeons and nurses around him with measured words. They cling to those words like shrink foil, like static, and move around him in precise harmony. Voices, beeping monitors, the clatter of equipment. Controlled cacophony.

He doesn't feel tired. The senses are fickle that way.

When it's been too long - when he knows it's been too long - he slips into the side room, stretches out on the cot, and sets precisely three hours on the old battery-powered timer next to it. His head hits the musty old pillow and he throws a forearm over his face to blot out the light.

What seems like seconds later, the timer is ringing off and he's clambering back to his feet, refreshed. Two full sleep cycles complete. Functional.

He's done that twice so far.

The second time he ever lost a patient, he'd stayed awake and lucid - or so he thought - through a 48-hour shift. Believed himself invincible, above the limitations of his body. He's learned from that mistake.

He makes sure the others under his command get their scheduled sleep, too. Keeps track of it somewhere in the recesses of his mind, along with the names and roles and relative skill levels he absorbed as inevitably as soap spreading through the smallest folds and crevices of skin.

They haven't lost anyone yet, but he knows it's only a matter of time.


The Alliance has yet to set foot here - it seems they're more interested in confirming the cause of the explosion than helping to deal with any fallout.

And that fills him with bitterness, until some distant part of him aware of the concept of self-preservation reminds him it's for the best.

The woman next to him, a middle-aged nurse named Constance, swears under her breath about blood transfusions, and all the supplies that an Alliance luxury cruiser is surely sitting on that it has no urgent use for it.

And it's back to bitterness again.


Simon nearly topples into a door before he catches himself, blinking dizzy spots out of his vision. The mundanity of the problem, once he identifies it, nearly makes him laugh. So many needs to keep track of - and he thought he was doing so well.

Felicia pushes him out of the makeshift surgical theater and makes him take off the gloves, makes him sit on a chair, shoves a sandwich into his hands and doesn't leave him alone until he's taken a bite of it he can't even taste. "Steady hands," she tells him sternly, and in that moment she almost sounds like River.

He squashes down the surge of worry and guilt and shame and destroys the sandwich like it owes him a blood debt.

He stopped fearing that Mal would simply leave them behind months ago.

He has to believe that still stands.


Mal stares hard through the bridge window as Bermuda looms close again.

The refuelling trip to Boros went off without a hitch, but Mal knows better by now than to count his chickens before the winter.

River would meet his eyes sometimes and give him a proud, smug sort of look, like she doesn't just know what he's thinking but can make better sense of it than he could.

Her near-lucid streaks can last for days now, so he's done what he could so's not to set her off. Tried not to go thinking too hard about the thrashing he'll be sure to give her brother, for one thing.

And then her lucid streak ended, left them scrambling to pick up the pieces, and he let himself dwell on how keelhauling might be a mite too kind to him.

"Well, the cruiser's still here, but it looks like most of their shuttles are docked rather than planetside," Wash is muttering under his breath as he goes through the scans. "Docks seem clear enough. I'll start us up on breaking atmo."

Mal nods shortly. "Sounds good. Right, let's go and get ourselves our doctor back. Zoë, meet me on the deck in ten. We get in and out and grab him without making a ruckus. Better hope he still be there, is all."

"Don't ya want me with ya? Never know, could be trouble," Jayne asks, peeking his head into the bridge, and probably hankering to get the doc in a headlock again.


Mal and Zoë enter the hospital discreetly enough through the front door. The reception area resembles nothing so much as one of those makeshift hospitals on rim worlds during the war, gurneys and stretchers and improvised stretchers on just about every inch of free space, including the waiting room. Which explains the pale-faced, anxious people outside, at least.

It doesn't take much to wait for a distraction and slip past the clerk and deeper into the building.

"Place still looks busy, sir," Zoë says quietly, as they make their way through corridors doing their best to look like they belong. "Starting to think we should have brought the tranq gun."

Mal starts answering her only to cross the next door and instinctively shrink into cover behind a tall stack of supplies as the grey of an Alliance uniform comes into sight.

He's arguing about something with a woman in scrubs that Mal can tell from her voice is their earlier client. And as he's straining his ears to eavesdrop, a man joins her, splatters of blood still fresh on his own uniform and latex gloves.

Mal doesn't recognise him until he speaks up, and when he does, he swears to himself in all manner of colourful words.

"We definitely should have brought the tranq gun," Zoë deadpans.


There is a zen kind of peace to it, his mind so full of drug concentrations and pulse rates not his own that there is space for very little else in it. It might be the sleep deprivation talking, but it's as if the trauma ward and all its noise and bustle have wrapped him in a stainless steel embrace, made him part of something larger and yet somehow made him whole again. He feels... invulnerable, invincible. Ain't no force in the verse can stop me. He's heard that before, somewhere...

That must be why he's now staring down an Alliance officer with only a very distant sense of fear. Simon Tam the fugitive is shouting out a warning but is buried too many layers deep. Simon Tam the surgeon, meanwhile, watches the uniformed man with barely concealed impatience. The man showed up at the hospital as a formality, days after the disaster had passed - and not to ask whether they required any assistance but to get the current tally of their dead and injured and take down details about the nature of the bomb that exploded. Felicia, to her credit, has latched onto the chance to ask for a fair bit more than that and hasn't been quick to let go.

"We don't have the infrastructure for a coordinated blood donation drive," he hears his own voice say. "much less the time to carry it through. Donation drives require medical personnel. You may notice said personnel are needed elsewhere right now."

There's a haughty, impatient bite to his words and he gets a small thrill from watching the man cower. If his Core-bred demeanour is still good for something, let it for putting people in their place who have learned to fear the rich and powerful, even if he no longer fits in either of those categories, and is fairly certain he wants to keep it that way.

He feels invulnerable with the trauma ward at his back, but Simon Tam the fugitive is all too quick to remind him in a smothered echo how fragile that might be.

Distantly, he remembers that he forgot to remove his mask and eye protection after the last surgery. The hair cap, too, is still hugging his scalp, absent-mindedness disguised as serendipity. Gloves on his hands, splattered in blood and interstitial fluid - he'd stepped out of the post-op routines and run to the side of Felicia to insert himself into the argument, masked and nearly faceless. After almost a year on the run, he should be able to take credit for this foresight. He can't.

"Dr. Gordon," he answers impatiently, as if the question after his name, his credentials, is nothing more than an inconsequential annoyance.

"Our Head of Surgery," Felicia interjects with no small amount of pride. Distantly, he is aware that he is not their Head of Surgery, who recently got drafted into an Alliance platoon. He has only worked at this hospital for two... three... four days, and presumably can't have been officially contracted and promoted when he wasn't looking. Felicia is lying for him, and he doesn't know why, though the fact that she can connect him to their ship fills him with enough remembered unease.

Regardless, they're both closer to getting what they want if the Alliance officer thinks Simon is someone he ought to listen to. The man never even asks to see his badge, must think it hidden under the grimy scrubs.

"Section five, paragraph fourteen of the Alliance Code clearly states that any non-military vessel in orbit of a planet experiencing a medical shortage is obliged to render aid with manpower and supplies," Simon rattles off the quote, clear as the day he memorised it, and watches the officer shrink back further. "Failure to do so is a court martial-worthy offense. If you are unaware of this, I can assure you that your superior is not."

By the time the conversation is done, he has somehow secured his hospital - the hospital, he has to remind himself - ten gallons of high-end synthetic blood, two nurses on loan from the cruiser, two crates worth of essential medication and a verbal agreement to evacuate the surplus post-op patients to well-staffed hospitals on nearby worlds. All without ending up in cuffs. He doesn't trust this luck of his, it never comes cheap.

The adrenaline is starting to wear him hollow.


Mal only fully relaxes the grip on his gun when the Alliance dog walks out the way he came, nearly stumbling over his feet.

Simon stares after him as if briefly unsure what to do next, then gives an almost comical little shake of the head and turns around, to return to the trauma ward.

Mal leaves their cover and puts himself in Simon's path.

"Enjoy your little outing, doc?" he asks with a pleasant little smile.

Simon looks at him for a long moment, expression almost inscrutable behind the goggles and mask. He blinks. "You shouldn't be here," he says urgently, with a note of admonishment. "This area is for medical personnel only." And for a second Mal thinks the doc's lost the last of his brain cells - a not unlikely scenario considering that earlier display, really - but then he steps closer ever so slightly and lowers his voice. "Are there- any medical emergencies on board? Is River alright?"

Oh no, he don't get to play it like that. Mal widens his smile, all tight lips and honeyed edges. "No emergencies, everyone's shiny. Sis doing fine, though not for lack of tantrumin'. Any estimate on how much longer we'll be playing babysitter? Wouldn't wanna impose," he asks dryly, but Simon either doesn't notice the tone or chooses to ignore it.

"I have two more patients awaiting surgery that I need to help with, and then I can go. Now Mal - waiting room - please. You're in the way here."

Despite the 'please', the steely tone it's spoken in is unmistakably one of ordering him, not asking, and Mal's jaw tightens at that. He digs in his heels and-

A gurney nearly knocks him over and he staggers out of the path of a nurse and an EMT. Simon's eyes flash at him with a warning - 'out', he mouths - before he's turning to the patient, a middle-aged woman whose leg is a bleeding, broken mess.

Mal clenches his jaw and lets Zoë pull him aside.

"Don't reckon we can carry him off without making a scene," he mutters, not liking one bit that he showed up here with intent to bring the doc in and is somehow left waiting at the steps like a bride at church. "I'll head back to the ship. You make sure he leaves, okay?"

"Tranq gun," she repeats, still deadpan and yet as close to sing-song as he's ever heard from Zoë.

Mal gives her a wry smile followed by a dark look in the doc's direction, but he's already lost sight of Simon among the indistinguishable blue-clad figures.

"He make us wait again, I'll make sure to bring you one."


To his and Jayne's immense disappointment, the doc doesn't end up needing the tranq gun after all and shows up at the ship seven hours later, shepherded by Zoë.

Simon is walking up the ramp, medical bag in hand, and Mal gets a good look at him for the first time in days - no scrubs, no mask, no cap and goggles. He looks like- well. He looks fresh from a warzone, is what Mal thinks with a nasty lurch. Hair unkempt, a startling growth of stubble on his jaw, his eyes rimmed with translucent blue shadows but somehow no less flinty and focused for it. A patch of dried blood just below his ear - not his own.

He trails to a stop when he sees Mal. Zoë follows him up the ramp, shoots Mal a significant look he can't decipher, and moves on to the business of closing down the airlock.

"Nice of you to grace us with your presence again, doc," Mal says, coming to a stand in front of the doctor. Nothing nice about his voice.

Simon simply looks back at him. There's a frightening, fearless serenity in his eyes, the look of a man who knows exactly where he ought to be and has sprouted roots of titanium in that very spot. He looks dead on his feet and unstoppable and defiant.

Mal punches him. The cargo bay goes dead quiet around them.

Simon's on the floor, facing away. He prods gingerly - surgically - at his face. Mal waits, lightly bouncing on his feet, fingers clenching and unclenching in case the doc needs another. Even if the gesture feels foolish, desperate; the last resort of a man who's failed to attain respect any other way.

Simon eventually staggers upright, slow and deliberate, and turns back to face him. Mal doesn't wait for him to fully stand but fists a hand in his vest and pulls him close, and the smell of blood and antiseptic on him is thick enough to gag on. Simon stills.

The look in his eyes is almost unchanged. Almost. There's a low flicker of something new there, and it's not the deference Mal was hoping to put into the boy. It's disappointment.

It shouldn't sting the way it does.

Mal ignores it and pushes on.

"Now let me take a shot at getting this through your head one more time, doc. You're on my ship, on my crew, you follow my rules. When I say jump, you jump. And when I say hey, Alliance cruiser coming in, best get us all off-world mighty quick, you shut your mouth and you do as I say. Not run off to play doctor. Dong ma?"

Simon's still looking back at him, uncowed by the grip on his vest or the punch or the clear promise of another. He tilts his head as if he can't quite understand what Mal is saying, and Mal thinks to himself that maybe two punches won't be good enough either.

"You said there were no emergencies while I was gone." Simon's voice is curt, seeking. Boy's got himself a mind to argue. Used to be, he'd take the gorram punch and shut up. Not today.

"Ain't not the point, doc. Could have been. You sign onto this crew, you've got a responsibility, and I'm not keen on makin' this a gorram discussion."

"Fifty injured in that explosion. That's actual patients, Mal, not potential ones. Fifty people with critical injuries, and an understaffed hospital. I don't play at being a doctor, Mal. You know perfectly well that I am."

"You're my medic first if I say you are," Mal growls.

"Yours?"

"The ship's."

"I didn't realise I was supposed to exclusively service crew," Simon hisses, an acidic bite to the words that call back something Mal might have sneered at Inara one time or another, and who knew the doc's learned to fight dirty in more ways than one?

Mal gives him a hard look, unruffled. "You talked to a fed. Hell, I had to stand there and watch you lecture him. You think he's gonna forget that in a hurry?"

Simon briefly closes his eyes and for a moment looks like he about to fall asleep right there. "He didn't see my face. He doesn't know who I am."

"He don't know who you are now," Mal all but snarls. "He start looking you up, how long do you reckon it'll take him to figure out there ain't no 'Dr. Gordon' working there and ain't never was? Hell - someone with actual proper brains takes a look at his report, how long d'you reckon it'll take them to put two and two together and work out that a miracle surgeon don't just appear outta nowhere, don't disappear again just as quick? How long till someone comes back there, waving your photo around? You think your new friends at the hospital will stick up for you then?" Mal takes a breath, blood pulsing in his temple, eyes fixed on Simon's as the doc keeps quiet. There's a flash of something in there that's not quite shame, but it's close enough for his liking.

Simon licks his lips - dry, parched, and cracking - sighs, eyes dropping for the first time in the conversation. "Mal-" he starts, voice too damn soft and imploring for his liking.

"Don't you 'Mal' me," he snarls. "Get a touch too familiar, forget your place on this boat. It's 'captain' to you, and no more than that. I'm willing to take 'sir' in a pinch. Now, you better hope you're right, boy. Because if you've brought down even more trouble on us instead of doing as you're damn told, ain't no amount of doctorin' the crew is gonna make up for it."

Simon looks back up, eyes seeking his. "What are you saying?"

Still no captain in there.

Mal swallows.

"You pull a stunt like that again, you're off my boat," Mal grinds out.

That shuts him up.

Simon's looking at him like he's never seen him before, and he's got an inkling as to why. Been months since he's thrown a punch at him last. Been a while longer still since he's threatened to throw him off and meant it.

Let himself get too damn soft.

Simon's still watching him like he's waiting for Mal to change his mind. Take those words back.

No way that he will. Not that he could. And even if he wanted to - ain't no way in hell he can do it now. Not while he's captain. He's not allowed heat of the moment - he says something out loud, it gotta stay final, or there'll be only chaos on this boat. Mal crosses his arms and stares him down.

Simon exhales softly, looks away and suddenly looks very, very tired. He inclines his head very slightly.

He picks up his medical bag, brushes past Mal, and walks away without another word.