Inara had been scrubbing down her shuttle since their return as much to avoid the others as to get it clean. But no matter how hard she worked, no matter how much soap or oxidant she used, she couldn't scrub the death from her shuttle walls. It had lodged there as securely as any known stain.
The shaken Companion was still clothed only in her gold and red silk robe, but now her hair was pulled back, hands were gloved and she carried a look of determination as bristly as the scrub brush in her hand. When River arrived the lights were uncharacteristically bright and the fragrance was of ammonia and bleach instead of flowers or incense. Inara rose quickly from the floor at the knock at her shuttle door.
"Oh! River. It's you, Quing jin." She motioned the girl to come in with the brush while holding her beating heart with the other hand.
Inara looked almost as if she had been expecting someone else, hoping for someone else. Her eyes looked tired, desperate, her body frail. River started at the bruise marks on the Companion's neck and reached out tentatively to touch them as she entered. Inara instinctively snatched the girl's hand and held it firm.
"They'll be fine." Inara said as she led River, much more gently by the hand to the couch. "I'll be fine. Simon already said so."
"But what did Nandi say to you?" River asked, out of the blue.
Inara's eyes widened in shock and her knees buckled under her. She fell to the couch, next to River. Her face went pail as she stammered.
"H-how did you know?"
"She didn't come to you, like you think. You called her. Like I called Wash." The girl explained sincerely.
"W-What?"
"I know what she wanted to tell you. Wash told me the same thing and he was right." River sat beside Inara's now confused and shaking body. "Tell him that you love him."
"I – that I what?"
"Before it's too late and he is gone. Tell the captain, tell Mal."
"I – I can't. I'm…"
River reached out and took Inara's hand in hers. She pressed the woman's hand to her own heart, to feel the beating, to feel the life in her. The quivering stopped.
"Zoe had Wash and then she lost him. He is sad. She is sad. But she is healing. She still has what they had together, to hold on to, inside of her, in here."
Inara sat there in silence, now perfectly still, letting River's words wash over her. Each one sinking in to its full meaning.
"If you lose what you never had – it won't heal, for either of you." River insisted. "Tell him you love him."
The teen's suddenly stared curiously into space, as if plucking words out of the air.
"It is all for the greater good. You will see. One day we will all be dead."
River stood, her face resolved.
"You should live while you can, before someone takes it away, before someone takes him away."
Then she left the room, Inara still staring in a shock.
"Captain." River said, as she approached him on the cargo hold gangway heading for the infirmary. She said it not so much as a greeting, but as if acknowledging his existence, stating it as an undeniable fact.
"River." Mal returned cautiously. "Shouldn't you be on the bridge – working on our little problem."
"I just have to tell my brother something."
"Now you're sure you can do this, if I give you enough time."
She looked at Mal as if he had said something childish.
"All languages are imperfect. You have to talk to machines like a machine. Then you have to tell them what to say. They don't understand us. People are not that different. You have to talk to them how they'll understand."
"Ok?"
Then River grabbed the captain in a huge bear hug and held him for an awkwardly long moment. She held him as she never had before, like a child hugging a parent that was leaving on a long trip, perhaps not to return. He could feel the warmth face of her against his chest, the tears that soaked through his shirt. There was a genuineness to her hug, an adolescent idealism that squeezed at his hardened exterior and his ripened cynicism. Mal just stood there, staring down at the child, wondering what the hell was going on in his ship.
Just as suddenly she let him go.
"Inara needs to see you." She stated flatly. "Oh – and you're wondering why the Alliance captain is hunting us. It doesn't make sense to you. But that minister couldn't have died at Landsdown. His dead atoms were all running from the big cruiser at the third moon yesterday, with us. That's why they were sad and all red. They weren't fuzzy anymore."
Then she turned a drifted toward the stairway leading to the lower deck and the infirmary.
"What?" Mal said confused.
"Inara needs to see you." She repeated as she floated down the stair.
He stood shaking the word around in his head again, hoping they would fall into a meaningful thought. This time they did. They had indeed witnessed the assassination of the Minister, but only River had known it. It was the atoms she was incoherently rambling about. The innocent flood of red glowing ions cascading over the Nav-shield on their arrival. They were all that remained of the Minister and his ship, but it wasn't at Landsdown. It was at the third moon, four and a half clicks away. It was within range of the Alliance Cruisers ion cannons and their G8 fighters. Assassinated by Captain Loe. Mal had no doubt what River was telling him was true, once he'd made sense of it, and suddenly it made sense to him.
The Alliance Captain had killed the Minister he was supposed to be protecting and gone through great trouble to ensure there was nothing left of it to trace the kill back to the Vanguard. No debris, no signals, not witnesses. That was why Serenity was attacked.
What had Badger said – 'been where you shouldn't have been, seen what you shouldn't have seen, falling down on the wrong side of both sides.' Both sides of what was starting to get more clear.
Captain Loe didn't know that the crew of Serenity hadn't seen a thing. They needed to control the facts, leave no trace, no one to tell the story. So assassins were sent instead of the police. They ask fewer questions. Badger's words were ringing true.
But someone else's words were still hanging in Mal's ears. 'Inara needs to see you.'
River hadn't said 'wants'. She'd said 'needs'.
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