CHAPTER NINE

Mal stayed in the infirmary with River, and Simon didn't argue with it, to his credit. Simon kept watch over River for a while, till Kaylee dragged him to the couch outside the infirmary and insisted he get some sleep.

Mal dozed off on the bench by the wall, and woke to the sound of River weeping. His eyes snapped open, and he saw that Simon was already there, sitting beside River on the bed, holding her and smoothing her hair back. River was curled on her side, crying into the side of Simon's leg, and Mal could just make out her words. "…had to do it, had to, they were going to kill them all. Too many, Simon, there were too many. I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. I dad to do it. I have to end it."

"Shh, shh. It's all right. Mei guanxi, you did what you had to do, River. You saved them. It's all right, shh…"

"I can still hear them. I had to do it and I would do it again, but I don't want them, they're not mine and they are mine…" River's voice trailed off into more weeping, and Mal sat up, torn between anger and sorrow. After trying so hard for so long to avoid killing anyone, hating what the Alliance had tried to make her, River had been pushed into making that choice. He just hoped it hadn't tipped her into a breakdown.

Simon looked over at him, his expression unreadable. He continued to hold River, until her crying subsided and she slept again. He sat by her side for a few more minutes, and then carefully settled her back into the bed and retreated to the couch without saying a word to Mal.

Mal stood and walked around the bed so he could see River's face. It was streaked from her tears, and she suddenly looked small, so small and fragile. It was hard to believe sometimes that so much strength was packed into her. To think of everything that she had survived, when so many others would have been crushed.

He reached out and brushed the back of his hand across her cheek, aware that Simon was watching his every move with hard eyes. "Duibuqi, River." He sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. "Damn, but we always do seem to land ourselves in the awful messes, don't we?" He dragged over a chair and sat in it, holding one of her hands in his. He'd been doing a lot of thinking the past while, and there were some conclusions he'd come to—conclusions he'd already known, but that meant entirely different things now, given the direction his relationship with River was going. Life was short, and Mal didn't want to waste what time he had left. Not now, not after everything he had finally allowed himself to find with River.

So much had been echoing through his head—some, like Book's warning of a 'special' hell, which made him chuckle to recall. Some, like the words Simon had thrown in his face—"You do this right"—which he would have liked to ignore but found he couldn't. And some were his own words to River—"You deserve to have and hold."

He wanted to do this right, and the ironic thing was, he wasn't even completely sure what that meant. He just knew that he wanted to give River whatever was left of him to give.

:-:-:

When River woke next, Kaylee was the only one in the infirmary, sitting beside River and holding her hand. River's back felt on fire, and she vaguely wondered if that was what had awakened her. Despite the pain, she felt a lot more oriented than she had since running into the fray to save Mal, Zoe, and Jayne.

Oh, dear God…I killed them. This made her feel horribly pained and strangely hollow all at once. She had meant what she had said to Simon—she knew she'd had to do it. She knew that Bones and his men had been going to kill Mal, Zoe, and Jayne, and then come find her to kill her, and they would have killed Simon, and Kaylee, and Ren. She'd had to shoot—there had been too many of them, too spread out.

She still wished there had been another way, but the fact was, what was done was done. She couldn't turn the clock backwards. She'd just been so overwhelmed when it first happened…she vaguely remembered sobbing to Simon about it, and she knew Mal had been there—she'd heard him in her head—but it felt like a dream.

"Hey!" Kaylee noticed that her eyes were open and smiled gently at her. "How you doin', sweetie?"

"Hurt," River whispered, not sure if she meant in her spirit or body.

"I'll get Simon." Kaylee started to get to her feet, but River shook her head.

"Not yet. He's sleeping. We should let him rest his burdens for a time." River swallowed. "Mal?"

"I'll get him," Kaylee said quickly. She gave River's hand a squeeze and hurried out of the infirmary.

River closed her eyes and didn't open them again until she felt Mal's presence in the room. She opened her eyes and saw him standing beside her. Kaylee was at the door, and gave her a quick smile before disappearing back up the stairs.

Mal took both of her hands in his and rubbed his thumbs across them. River heard a lot in his mind as he looked at her—felt his remorse that she'd been pushed into killing, his anger at what had happened, his worry over her state of being. "I'm all right," she murmured. Mal's eyebrows twitched in slight disbelief, and she amended. "I'll be all right. Really." She swallowed again and her hands tightened in his. "I need to finish this. I found Savannah Elliot. I saw it in his mind—Bones. He knew. He sold her."

Mal took a deep breath. "Where?"

"Here. On Greenleaf." River closed her eyes, the image still so clear in her mind. "A factory—factory one forty-three. I need to tell Agent Burnham. They're using child laborers in the factory, more than one factory here—illegal. Alliance jurisdiction. Need to tell her how to get in touch with Rina Duncan—they might be able to trace the line. Bones…he didn't know where she was, but he had a way to contact her and I saw that."

Mal nodded slightly. "You'll really be okay." It was a half-question, half-statement, and River gave a nod of her own.

"I just want this to stop," she whispered, opening her eyes. She wanted to just be back to normal jobs, wanted to get better, wanted nothing more than just to be with Mal and to pilot Serenity. She looked at him, studying his eyes and the thoughts behind them. He was a deep well, her Malcolm Reynolds, and he'd dragged a lot of things to the surface. "Just a little longer," she murmured, squeezing his fingers gently. "A little longer."

:-:-:

It turned out that Agent Burnham was only a couple hours outside of Greenleaf, heading for another world, but she rerouted when she heard River's news. Her plan was to get her agents together with the local law enforcement, to shut down the factory and see if they could find Savannah Elliot. After that, Mal was sure the Alliance was going to have their hands full searching all of the factories on Greenleaf to find which ones were legitimate and which ones were using slaves.

It was sometime during the morning, a day after the failed meeting with Bones, when he got his first sight of Savannah Elliot—a little girl with dark blonde hair, freckles, and a missing tooth. Agent Burnham herself brought her to Serenity, to talk to River and to ask Mal if he would take Savannah back to her mother. "We were very fortunate—first that she was alive; the conditions at that factory…" She shook her head angrily. "We were also fortunate in that we found the bracelet River mentioned—Savannah hid it so it wouldn't be taken from her." Burnham pulled a little bracelet out of her pocket. It was set with what looked like little plastic beads. "This—" she pointed at one of the beads "—has a chip in it. We scanned it, but it contains a code—we've been trying to break it all morning. I thought River might want to have a crack at it."

Mal sighed and motioned Burnham aboard his ship. "She'd probably love to. And I'll get Kaylee to find somethin' for Savannah to do."

Savannah's face was gaunt and she shrank back from Mal every time he got near her. Kaylee came to the cargo bay and finally managed to lure her away with the promise of food. Burnham watched them disappear, and shook her head. "That factory was a mess. Some of the children were as young as five and six. It's going to take quite a while to sort this all out, try to figure out which ones have families and which don't. Not to mention the effect all of this is going to have on Greenleaf's economy."

Mal eyed the bracelet in Burnham's hand as he led her toward the infirmary. "What about Duncan? If that's evidence to put her away, it won't do no good if you don't got her."

"We're using the information River gave us to wave her and see if we can keep her on the line long enough to get a trace. My agents are working on that right now."

They stopped outside the infirmary. Simon was inside, talking quietly to River, who was sitting up. River's eyes went to Mal and Burnham, then dropped to the bracelet. A small, grim smile crossed her face, and before Burnham could even ask, she said, "Yes. I'll do my best."

:-:-:

River's best was considerable. She scanned the code to her computer pad and set to work, and it took her less than an hour to crack it. It turned out to contain not only a list of shipments—of slaves and other illegal goods—signed and authorized by Rina Duncan, but an actual clip of video feed between Rina Duncan and several leaders of border planets, discussing the way they would trade slave importation for cooperation to the Alliance regime. Ollie Elliot had done his homework, probably hoping it would be enough blackmail to get him out of the slaving business, but he had apparently underestimated Rina Duncan's ruthlessness.

"This will be enough to put Duncan away for several lifetimes," Burnham said. "The Alliance will make sure of it."

"If you can find her," Mal said pointedly. He knew that regardless of whether she was caught or not, the Alliance was going to have their hands full dealing with the border worlds who wouldn't take kindly to their slave trade being cut off.

"Yes," Burnham agreed. "If we can find her. And on that note, I'm going to go see what my agents have come up with. Thank you for taking the Elliot girl, and I'll be in touch."

After that, Mal had Zoe set the ship back toward the safe house so they could deliver Savannah to her family. He and his crew had more than done their part in this, and now there was nothing they could do but wait and see if that ta ma de hun dan Duncan was caught.

They dropped Savannah off to her overjoyed family, and then spent the next week just sailing. Wasn't often they had the money to just sail, but after the drama of the past while, and the results of his last attempt to get a job, Mal thought he'd best wait a spell before he searched for something else. The last thing Mal wanted was for River to somehow mess up her injury again.

The third day in, Agent Burnham waved to say they had found and arrested Rina Duncan, which was some of the best news Mal had heard in a long time. She had caused the whole gorram 'verse a heap of trouble, and he would be happy to never hear of her again. And he didn't—not a wisp of a mention of her hit the newswaves. The Alliance might have put her out of commission, but they had far too much on their plates to want the story of yet another corrupt government member to get out to the public.

River slowly regained her health. She slept a great deal of the time, but was able to get up and move around the ship after a while, under Simon's watchful eye more often than not. Mal really knew she was on her way to recovery when he found her alone in the cockpit in the middle of the night, staring out at the stars as she so often did when the rest of the crew was asleep. She swiveled her chair sideways and reached out her hand toward him, and he approached, clasping her hand in his and slowly pulling her to her feet. He put his arms carefully around her, no longer hesitant, no longer questioning at all. As she tucked her head under his chin and sighed into his neck, he knew that he'd never felt more at home.

He didn't even know how long they stood like that, not talking, not moving, just resting in each other's company, before he broke the silence. "So what now, River?"

"Can we go to New Canaan?"

Mal drew back a little and frowned slightly at her. "Why d'you wanna go there? You almost died last time we were there, if you'll remember."

"Yes," River said, her dark eyes intense. "But that's also where we started to live."

"That still don't explain why you wanna go there."

"Because that's where I want to get married."

That certainly caught Mal off guard. He made a half-strangled, choked noise. "You—what? I didn't say nothin' about—"

"No," River agreed. "But you've been thinking about it." She stepped up onto his boots, stretching up on her bare toes and coiling one arm around his neck. "You have," she murmured, dropping small kisses on his neck and jaw.

Mal closed his eyes with a small groan, wondering, not for the first time, what the hell he'd ever done in his life to deserve this woman. "Been thinkin' about it," he breathed in concurrence. River's lips met his, and he buried a hand in her hair, pulling her as close as he could without hurting her healing body, wanting to feel her closer, and knowing that he wanted that as long as they both drew breath. Wanted to be the only man that she was ever with, to give her his name and tell the rest of the 'verse that she was his and he was hers. Wanted to be her captain, her friend, her lover, and yes, her husband, the one who would have and hold her for the rest of her life. Because truly, that's what she deserved, and how could he offer her anything less? It was something he could give to her that he'd never given to anyone else.

Well, intentionally.

River leaned back slightly, sliding her arms off of his neck and clutching his shoulders instead. "Heard that."

Mal drew a deep breath. "You really think you're ready for that, darlin'?"

"Yes. Been ready for a while. No reason not to. I want everyone to know." A slow, mischievous smile crossed her face. "Besides, then Simon can't try to kill you for…anything." She slid smoothly out of his arms, twirling to sit gracefully in her seat, grinning up at him.

That drew a chuckle out of him. "Might be right about that one." A smile played at his lips. "New Canaan, hmm? That ain't too far from here."

"I know." River's eyes danced with barely-contained delight. "I've been piloting."

Mal laughed. "Sometimes I think you know too much for your own good."

River just smiled at him. "Probably."