Simon has been courting death for a year, but never as insistently as the gutshot that nearly does him in on Miranda.
By the time he wakes in an Alliance hospital, alive and breathing and miraculously un-handcuffed, he wonders if their luck has turned.
By the time another week has passed and River has still not been in to see him, he knows it hasn't.
"I'm going after her," he announces to the crew, when he's steady enough on his feet to express sentiments more specific than despair and rage and how could you let them take her, after everything we've been through.
They don't try to talk him out of it. And they don't volunteer their support. Neither comes as a surprise.
Mal only looks at him, unseeing, and shakes his head. Whatever was once left of the man who'd risk his crew for the sake of two people has long been decimated by doing just that.
They're a week from Osiris.
Jayne has picked out a gun for him, taught him how to clean and disassemble it, and handed it off to him with all the ceremonious air of a tearful father giving away the bride. He tells Simon her name is Annabel. They set up mats and targets in the cargo bay and Simon learns to shoot straight, or at least in a statistically more acceptable general direction.
When he's mastered the gun - here defined as being more likely to shoot his target than shoot himself in the foot - Jayne shows him more guns, less ceremoniously, and Simon learns to handle those, as well.
"You're really going, then?" Kaylee's voice is small. She finds him in the galley - not so much the infirmary these days - where he's cleaning Annabel. Simon nods and ignores the way his chest knots up at the ensuing noises.
"We've already lost folk, Simon," Kaylee mouths to him through a film of tears, her words so tentative that she cannot fail to realise she is treading on a minefield. "Already lost so many. Can't you just-"
"Just what, Kaylee?" he asks, sharper than he intended. He has never truly blamed the crew, but it's oh so tempting now, when faced with the one who deserves it least.
River saved your lives , he wants to scream. She killed them all after you nearly cast her out for being a weapon and you won't even-
"I'm sorry," he mouths, cold composure slotting into the same cavity that's reserved for fear, and shame, and everything in-between. "I have to."
Kaylee nods and cries and gives him their first kiss as if she thinks it might make him stay. She knows it won't.
He lets her, anyway.
"And the grenades," Simon adds much later, in response to the small pile of weaponry laid out on the dinner table that Jayne has graciously volunteered to part with. A small price for being rid of him for good, he suspects.
Jayne bristles. "Ain't no gorram way you're getting the grenades, boy. Need them myself. You wouldn't know how to use 'em anyhow."
"You can still teach me. We'll be moonside to refuel soon. Plenty of space for it there."
"Like I ain't got better things to do than waste ammo on a gorram suicide run-"
"You owe me," Simon says calmly. And then, into the silence, "You owe me, after Ariel."
Jayne looks like he's swallowed his own tongue. He casts his eyes about guiltily, mindful of Zoë and Kaylee, who are now studying him with disparate expressions. Mal glowers at each of them in turn, but Simon doesn't take his eyes off the merc.
"Fine. I'll teach you. Just take what you want and git. Sooner you're gone the better off we'll all be. Blow yourself up if that's what suits ya," Jayne grumbles, but the words are too tinged with guilt to have as much bite as they used to.
Simon doesn't answer.
It's not as if Jayne is wrong, after all.
"We'll be on Osiris in two days," Mal tells him matter-of-factly, on the bridge. He makes it sound like another job, another drop-off, for which he's eminently grateful. "Should have no issues docking, seeing as the warrant on you is cleared and all." A twitch, an echo of a wry smile in acknowledgement of that absurdity.
"Thank you, Captain," Simon says simply.
"Don't thank me," Mal mutters, but says no more.
Simon returns to his bunk and begins to pack.
For a woman of her grace, Inara looks frayed at the edges, all corroded wood finish and weather-beaten silk. Her eyes are red-rimmed, though her head held high.
He opens the small plain box she has handed him without thinking. And stares, uncomprehending.
"Inara," he frowns. "This is..." He starts to reject it out of habit, that old compulsion that is the sum of his etiquette and social mores, but the knowledge of what this could mean for River won't quite let him.
"It's yours," she says firmly. "I have a steady source of income, Simon. It will be a while yet before my savings are relevant to me."
The amount is dizzying. It has nothing on the fortune he blew in that first reckless search for leads, but then, few things would. With any luck, he has better sense for how to use that money than he did three years ago.
"I..." Simon has been doing this too long to be easily affected. Between Book's death, and Wash, and Miranda, and losing River all over again, he thought himself hollowed dry like a decrepit old well. But now, his throat is closing up.
He hides the tears against the soft black cushion of her hair as he pulls her close - or maybe she has pulled him close, he's not quite sure. Simon holds her and is held in turn and lets himself shake a little, dredge up the final few slivers of emotion, like a fine coating of dust in an abandoned infirmary. Leave what remains in its wake pristine, and sterile, and unfeeling.
"This is a lot more than forty pounds," he points out, taking comfort in the fact that some old references must be too oblique even to a well-read Companion.
Inara bursts into tears and clutches at him a little tighter.
Kaylee's eyes are dry and brave this time as she hands him a much messier wad of cash. He wonders if Inara put her up to it but chooses not to ask.
Zoë barely looks at him as she wanders past, but one minute the table was empty and the next, there is a box of ammo on it that would suit Annabel.
"Tip jar for a gorram suicide," Mal mutters under his breath, and turns his back.
But then, he has already given the two of them too much.
"You got a plan, doc?" Zoë asks, the next time they're alone in the infirmary.
Simon swallows and the readings on the med scanner briefly swim before his eyes. He never expected her to try to talk him out of it. But this is worse, somehow. As long as he clings to the destination, not the journey, he can cling onto sanity, skirting around the jagged edges of everything that stands between here and the concept of River, safe.
Simon has been courting fear for so long that it has become the nagging spouse, the background radiation of his life - he wouldn't quite know what to do with himself if he woke up one day to find it missing. Like a flash photograph taken at the wrong time, Zoë's question pulls into stark relief an ugliness he has simply learned to take for granted.
"Pieces of it," he answers eventually. "Locate my old contacts, the people who helped me sneak her out in the first place. The Alliance has had its hands full after Miranda, suppressing uprisings. Their attention is split. And River is more capable than she used to be. If I can get her to a point where she can assist in her own escape..." He trails off. He is getting dizzy just thinking about it, cold lead in his stomach. He knows how low their odds are. He has never not known that.
He resumes the examination in silence. He already has an inkling, but waits until the medscanner results are conclusive before breaking it to her.
"You're pregnant," he tells her, and watches her heartbeat spike on the monitor. Lets her feel the emotion on both their behalf. For her sake, he smiles at her anyway. "Congratulations."
It's fitting, in a way, that his final act of medicine involves bringing new life into the 'verse, however indirectly.
He won't delude himself into thinking that it will balance the scales.
They dock on Osiris. Simon cleans out his bunk. He has fewer personal effects than he did when he first came on board, and much of it is now weaponry. He leaves most of his clothing behind. He already knows that most of his sense of self has died here on this ship.
One way or another, the crew has gathered in the cargo bay to watch him leave.
Mal doesn't wish him luck, or try to talk him out of it - and why would he? - which begs the question of why he's here at all. He stands with his arms folded, a scowl etched deep into his face, like knife marks on expensive redwood that are never coming out, no matter how much sanding and varnish you apply. Not for the first time, Simon is struck with a compulsive urge to run his fingers along those grooves, imprint them into memory.
He might have been embarrassed, once upon a time, with the entire crew - all that remains of it - gathered around, and watching him. But now...
Simon steps close - close enough to share Mal's breath, and then seal it in his mouth as he steals a taste of the forbidden. And pulls away.
There's a spark of something in Mal's eyes that makes him tense in anticipation of one last parting gift, but he receives neither punch nor return kiss for his efforts, and so his final theft goes unpunished.
"Goodbye, Mal," Simon says simply.
He steps around the Captain and leaves Serenity behind.
Money and luck.
He has a stab at it, with Inara's fortune.
They've learned from their past failures, from every security breach they've incurred between now and then. But neither is Simon as wet-behind-the-ears as he used to be.
And River-
River waded into a sea of Reavers and emerged unscathed. No matter what's been done to her since, if he can set her free, help her access even a smidgen of that power, she'll be okay.
She has to be.
Weeks turn to months. Simon is in a haze, that same old nagging spouse screaming him down until he's turned a deaf ear to it. His old contacts take one look at him and embrace him with open arms, and he wonders what it is about him that has changed so clearly. He sleeps with Annabel under his pillow. Sometimes he doctors, but he is under no illusions that he's still a doctor.
With money, and luck, and the kind of transgression that his past self would have spat at and condemned as terrorism, they stage enough of a diversion that the Academy is guarded by a skeleton crew, however briefly. River is far from the only target, this time.
Simon doesn't remember the team that clears the path for him, or the scientist he threatens for a full list of River's verbal codes - or the bullet he looses at the reinforcement, somehow missing the mark in spite of the stakes, in spite of Jayne's best efforts. He feels the hot, heavy pressure of impact as it tears through his protective vest at short range. The next bullet he fires finds its target, but he already knows it is too late for him. He doesn't see the blood, or when the light slips from the man's eyes.
All he sees is River, awake and tear-streaked when her pulls her free.
I knew you'd come for me and You shouldn't have come for me are fighting a turf war on her babbling lips but Simon hushes her and tells her the exfiltration plan.
"You need to go, mei-mei," he's whispering to her. The gun, the earplugs, his wallet with the cash and the list of commands - he presses all three into her hands. She's stammering and crying and shaking her head but knows better than to argue with him.
River pulls him close and he squeezes her tight for a long, selfish moment. When she pulls away, something in her face changes. She looks down at the gun, and becomes a weapon.
And then she's gone, and Simon is alone once more.
He slumps back against the wall, pain gouging him and yet somehow a better companion to him than that old leaden weight of fear has been. He keeps his eyes fixed on that distant point in the corridor when he saw River last, as if to capture the image in his retinas. He presses a hand against the gushing wound out of habit, before he thinks better of it.
When he hears them closing in, he throws a grenade down the hall, sending glass and metal and delicate lab equipment flying in shards. Then another, once the dust has cleared. He does this every so often when the reinforcements come near, until the grenade belt is nearly empty.
It's turning dark. There are still footsteps approaching, shouting voices. He is fading, but not quick enough. Not quick enough for the wonders of modern medicine.
Without meaning to, they've used one Tam to lure another. He's going to make sure they can never pull that trick again.
He has one last grenade left.
He waits until the footsteps round the corner.
She's standing in the middle of the cargo bay, just one small figure in a heavy coat and a hood that nearly hides her face, the fabric and her stringy hair both wet with rain. She's had it cut into a bob, the way it frames her features just different enough to escape notice. The makeup on her skin makes her look older than she is. They've trained her to assassinate, and to evade capture. After Miranda, a part of her can finally sort out the jumbled attic of her mind enough to think, and tap into the training. Enough to disappear.
The airlock door is sealed by the time anyone has noticed that she's slipped inside. And then all movement around her freezes to a stop.
Kaylee gasps. Mal's stunned silence can be heard across the room. Jayne drops something heavy on his foot and starts cursing up a storm.
River crosses the room to him, dainty steps and heavy boots. She reaches into one of her large pockets and he stiffens.
She hands him back Annabel. Jayne takes the gun back like it's cursed, or perhaps liable to crumble into someone's ashes at a moment's notice. River steps past him, purposeful as always, and seeks out Mal.
The Captain's silence burns. He gives the cargo bay a single look, past her shoulder and pointed, checking for any more stowaways. For a particular stowaway. But she is alone, and they both know it.
"Welcome back, lil' Albatross," he mutters, when she's near enough to whisper to.
Biting back her tears, River presses her face against his chest, and holds, and is held in turn.