Chapter Four: In which life goes on.
.
Despite Mal's fears to the contrary, things did begin to settle back into a routine, and no one made any declarations about leaving the boat. Things weren't exactly easy, but not everything fell apart as the captain half expected it to. True, meals around the table were quieter than they had been since those very first days back doing repairs on Serenity after the funeral for their friends, and in a lot of ways, the new loss made all of the old ones fresh all over again. The palpable aura of sadness once again hanging over the ship didn't seem to be dissipating at all, but it did seem to be making those who were left pull together even tighter. It wouldn't be right to say things got back to normal, but the crew did finally manage to move on yet again. While Inara's absence made some difference in the planets they could set down on, it didn't make a whole lot of difference in terms of the actual jobs they pulled. It was true enough that she'd been gradually helping out more here and there on planning and such, but it had still been a gradual thing she was easing into and so it took very little for them to go back to doing without her help.
Finding jobs they were willing to do that anyone was actually willing to offer them after so many of their usual associates had been summarily executed remained a concern for a while. Still, with each job that they did manage to finagle, they were doing a little to assure another potential employer or two that there was no undue risk in working with Malcolm Reynolds' crew now. The fact they were slowly moving back into having steady work did help to relieve a lot of the stress that the crew as a whole was still feeling. It didn't make them less sad, but it did help their outlook some.
For the ship's captain personally, things weren't so easily measured by improvement. It had taken a long time in denial, a separation, an Operative, an armada of reavers, along with the near-destruction of Serenity and the deaths of two of her crew to bring Mal and Inara together. The dire circumstances had fundamentally reshaped their previously incompatible views of the verse into new ones that were a great deal more similar than either of them would have been able to imagine before. That was part of the problem. They'd both admitted that they had felt feelings long before Inara had decided to leave the ship after the debacle at the Heart of Gold, but even beyond an uncertainty about exactly how far their feelings were reciprocated, each of them had possessed an awareness that the situation was a little more complicated than just feelings. For them to have been able to work through all of the baggage and the worst of the disagreements and still end with him here, alone again ... To Mal, it just felt like he'd been a fool to think his life could ever be anything but the punchline to some great cosmic joke.
As bad as he felt, Mal had never been the kind of man to give up or intentionally put himself in the way of undue harm such as he didn't think he'd be able to get back out of, so he tried not to give himself much time to dwell in his own heartache. It was a fair piece of irony that he had projected far more of a black mood upon everyone around him when Inara had only left the ship for a while than he did now when she could never come back. A great deal of the difference now was that he had less belief that the remnants of the crew would be willing and able to pull through in spite of his attitude. He felt the responsibility for them now more keenly than ever, so he made more of an effort.
He started spending a lot of time with River and Kaylee. It wasn't a conscious decision on his part, but rather theirs, as they both individually and together sought out his company. Kaylee, it was obvious, felt she needed a friend who wasn't Simon. As happy as those two lovebirds were together, the doctor still hadn't learned how to avoid sticking his foot in it a great deal of the time. Simon was less egregious about it and Kaylee forgave him for it more easily, but it was still a major issue between them. It was also obvious that she specifically chose Mal over Zoe or River because – even if he refused to speak a word about it – she wanted to spend time with someone who missed the woman who had been her best friend at least as much as she did.
As to River, he didn't really know why the girl shadowed him so. He didn't find it disconcerting, exactly, but it was definitely weird and made him a mite uncomfortable. He liked the girl well enough, and she was shaping up to be a decent member of the crew. It'd make sense for her to see him as a bit of a father figure, he supposed. He didn't know exactly how much the kids parents must have known about what was happening to the girl, but he was certain sure that even the doctor deserved folks that would do more than stick their heads in the sand. It'd got him thinking a bit to back when that crazy **expletive** notwife of his had come on board and he and Inara had gotten to talking about children. All this time later he knew now why she'd snapped so harsh at him for nattering on about it. She'd plain admitted one quiet night that it was right around then when she first started to get a glimmer of just how serious her feelings had gotten for him, because she'd been shocked cold at how jealous she felt at the idea of anybody else having his kids. It wasn't too many breaths later that she had also felt compelled to confess that she couldn't have anyone's kids – it wouldn't do for the Guild to have to deal with those kinds of complications, so the very last thing every Companion did before getting their license was to undergo a sterilization procedure. It wasn't impossible to reverse, just incredibly expensive because of the medications and equipment needed.
Somewhere between the two conclusions, he'd reconciled himself to the idea of playing that role for the girl, so he didn't object to her seeking out his company whenever she wasn't busy with the jobs they'd given her aboard the ship. It did bug him more'n a bit that she was so prone to being touchy-feely all the time. He, himself, had never been that kind, but it was a matter that he'd been indulging little Kaylee in ever since she came on board. It made sense then, to extend that acceptance on to River who took the other girl's tendency towards the occasional spontaneous hug or kiss on the cheek as a suggestion. Nearly any time he didn't find himself at the helm or alone in his quarters, there was River. River wanting to hold his hand, River throwing her arms around his neck or his middle and hanging there, River brushing by or touching him or planting a kiss on his cheek whenever they were moving about in the same space.
He felt a bit guilty about it, but it really kinda bothered him. The girl was definitely a very tactile person, if the way she'd always spent her time running her fingers over the ship and walking about with bare feet was any indication. To hear the crew tell it, she'd also prodded Badger about when the little man had come callin' while he was off getting himself all stabbed. Still, other than that, she had previously seemed to shy away from people. Maybe it'd been the cutting up her brain that had left her that way and the little River who had existed before the Academy had always been more like this and was just reemerging now. The thought of actually asking Simon did cross his mind, but a conversation with the doc was rocky on the best of days, and he had to figure that if he spoke some kind of implication that River's behavior was strange that the boy would go into overprotective mode and accuse him of being the one with a problem. So he said nothing and did nothing and hoped it was a phase the girl'd grow out of.
It took more than a few months, but eventually Kaylee's desire to fix anything mechanical that happened to be broken outweighed her heartache and desire to avoid the shuttle and its reminders of her friend. Not that she could make herself stay in there doing repairs for very long at a time, especially when she first started working on it, but the more she got involved in actually doing the repairs, the less she thought of anything but the machine itself and what was wrong with it.
That was especially easy for her to focus on, because the more time she spent up to the elbows in the inner workings of the vehicle, the less sense the crash made. It was a bit of a puzzle, and to Kaylee, who always knew just what was going on with any given piece of machinery, that was something new and mystifying. Perhaps if the one doing the repair work had been someone other than the eternal optimist, the underlying cause might have come to light that much sooner.
As it was, Kaylee knew that no one had been in the shuttle other than the crew in a very long time. So all she could figure when she was going through and repairing the systems was that what she was seeing didn't make any sense at all that she could figure. There was plenty of damage, but she knew ships and all the parts on 'em, as well as all the normal ways that they might wear, give, or completely fail. She knew, instinctively, all the tiniest signs of malfunction.
However, no matter how determined she was to always see the very best in people, she wasn't stupid. The systems had malfunctioned in a very specific way, in a very specific order so that they would begin to malfunction an exact duration after takeoff. Further, secondary complications had occurred such that as soon as anyone attempted to change the shuttle's course towards landing, the whole pilot's console would overload at once, explosively. There was no natural way she could think of for either malfunction alone, and the happening of both of them together only made things that much clearer.
Eventually, she had to admit to herself that the only explanation that made sense was a deliberate sabotage – even though that didn't make any sense of the people involved in any way she could understand. She even tried to think back to any time that the shuttle could have possibly been entered when they were all busy somewhere else, but it just didn't add up. After the business over Miranda, all of them had been very careful about security – both in terms of not wandering off on strange planets alone and in not leaving the ship open without a guard on hand. Inara had followed the same precautions with her shuttle. Although the Operative had told them it was over and called the hunt off and even taken the extra step of purging all their records, none of them were entirely trusting that the Alliance might not change their minds. In amongst the things they considered a real possibility were attempts to place devices for either tracking or sabotage on the ship.
Inara wouldn't have been incautious enough to leave the shuttle open and unattended, and they were constantly checking over the systems of the ship and the shuttle for any kind of devices that might have been planted there. Kaylee had done such a check immediately before their last excursion together proceeding the crash. As much as she desperately hoped that it might have been an outsider that somehow got access, Kaylee just didn't see how it could have been possible. Which left only someone on the crew, and that was a terrible thought. Even moreso when she knew that there were only two of them left on Serenity who knew near enough about the mechanical and electrical systems of the craft's inner workings to know what to sabotage, and she knew that she hadn't done it.
She knew. Couldn't be allowed, muck up the plan, further measures necessary. The girl's gē ge would have to understand.