Thanks to all who read and reviewed "Forward Motion." I had a great time writing it and loved writing this sequel to it as well. Later installments of "Pursued" will reference events in an older story of mine, "Family Dynamics." Read, enjoy and comment ... in that order!

***

Kaylee sat in a far corner of Simon’s room, the capture River had left him in her trembling hand. Simon had finally succumbed to sleep, his body unable to fight off the strong drugs the doctors had given him. Not that he hadn’t tried; Kaylee had never seen him so adamant before. She was certain that if both his legs had not been encased in casts, he would have found a way out of that hospital bed, broken bones or not.

And she was scared. She had just gotten him back, thankfully in one piece, broken though it might have been. She couldn’t risk losing him again. And she couldn’t believe that River had left. Kaylee had not known that was what her friend was planning. She would have told her not to do it, would have tried to convince her that her absence from Simon’s life would cause her brother more pain and hurt than any one of them could imagine.

It had only been three days since River’d been gone, but already Simon’d been different. He spent his few waking hours with Mal or Zoe, discussing leads the other crewmen had managed to track down, ideas of where River might go, who she might turn to for help. Kaylee always stayed in the room during these talks, sitting on Simon’s other side, her hand absentmindedly stroking his, but he barely registered her presence and that hurt her, deeply.

Pushing back more tears, Kaylee flipped on the capture, watching River’s message again. She had seen it over a dozen times in the past few days. She was looking for some hint of a clue, something that maybe Simon had glanced over in his hurt and fear that would help them. She watched River’s brown eyes, very much like her own, fill and cry big tears that ran down her cheeks. She saw the girl try to control her feelings, try to smile reassuringly at her brother through her own grief. She noticed the way River’s lips turned up ever so slightly when she called him a boob. And she did not miss the determination in her features when she told him that this was something she had to do.

The recording played to the end and Kaylee gingerly walked back across the room and placed the slim screen back onto Simon’s nightstand. He would no doubt watch it again when he awoke in the morning as he had every day since she’d gone and Kaylee didn’t want him to not find it in its usual place.

She gazed down at his sleeping form. Some of the cuts and bruises along his face were already starting to heal and that brought a warmth to her heart. Sighing heavily, she stretched out on the bed beside him and curled up into his side, not touching him as he was still too sensitive, but just being near him. Regardless of his inattention, she still loved him, and she wasn’t about to leave him alone, not now. ***

It was late when Mal was finally able to make it back to the suite he’d been sharing with Inara since they’d been planet side. Slipping into the room, he undressed quickly and slid into bed beside her, not wanting to wake her peaceful form.

Sighing heavily, he did his best to close his eyes against the weariness in his bones and get some rest. But before sleep claimed him, he felt Inara shift against his side, rolling over to lay her head on his bare chest, her arm coming around to encircle his waist.

Smiling in the dark, Mal dropped his arm down around her shoulders and pulled her close, feeling the smooth and cool silk of her nightgown. Moaning contentedly, Inara murmured, “You were out late.”

“Yup,” Mal whispered, burying his face in her hair and drinking in the sweet scent. Everything about her was utterly feminine and so completely not what he had ever experienced before, but he liked it.

“Find anything,” she asked, shifting against his side to get more comfortable.

Sighing again, Mal tried to push the frustration out of his voice. “No, not yet.”

Inara could hear it despite his best attempts to mask it. In the gray darkness, she raised her head and he could just make out her big brown eyes and the furrowed brow that told him she understood. “You will,” she whispered, placing a light kiss on his lips.

Mal returned the gesture and then some and Inara sank deeper into his embrace as his hands worked up and down her back. He wrapped his hands in her dark hair, tasting every inch of her mouth, her neck, her shoulders. She returned his fervent kisses with some of her own, trailing her warm lips down his chest and back up to his face and lips and eyes.

After a few moments of more kissing, Mal pulled her to him in a tight embrace. He wished that he could forget all this go se with River and just concentrate on Inara – this beautiful, perfect woman who for some reason loved him. He still didn’t know what he’d done to deserve her, but he was praying to every god in the ‘verse that he didn’t all of sudden do something stupid and lose her just as quickly.

She had wrapped her arms around his neck and followed his movement as he lied back down on the bed, her head again resting comfortably in the crook of his neck. Tracing small circles along his chest, she whispered, “You will find her, Mal. I know you will.”

Pulling her tighter to him, Mal pressed a kiss to her temple before again closing his eyes to sleep. “I certainly hope so, darlin,’” he whispered.

***

Simon watched River walk away from him, the distance between them expanding even as he ran to catch up with her. But her movement could not be stopped. With barely an afterthought she walked inexorably forward, never casting a second look over her shoulder even as he screamed and yelled for her.

Reaching out to her before his body refused to take another step, he cried, “River!”

Simon awoke with a start, his heart pounding and his nightclothes and sheets soaked with his sweat. For a few seconds he had no recollection of where he was and his mind raced with the knowledge that his sister was gone, vanished and he needed to get her back.

Kaylee appeared over him, her concerned face gazing down at him as she tried to soothe him. “Shh, sweetie, you’re okay,” she whispered.

“Where is she,” Simon asked his voice raspy and harsh.

Kaylee’s brow furrowed for a second, but realization soon followed her confusion. “River’s not here, sweetie. ‘Member? The captain’s looking for her though,” she hastened to add, noticing his eyes cloud with anger. Even after four weeks of River being gone, Simon forgot more often than not, especially when awaking in such a state.

“I have to find her.” Simon had no concern for his own well-being or the pain his body felt as he tried to get out of the hospital bed. “I have to find her,” he muttered again.

Kaylee was by his side, gently pushing him back to the bed. “No, Simon, you need to stay here. You’re too hurt to go after River. The cap’n can handle it.”

With a fierceness in his eyes that Kaylee had never seen before, Simon bit out, “Get out of my way.”

Kaylee instantly recoiled from him as though she’d been stung. Unable to muster a bit of remorse, Simon tried once more to get out of bed and gave up with a strangled shout as his body refused to cooperate. Sinking back against the pillows, tears of frustration fell from his eyes.

Why had River gone? Why hadn’t she waited for him to be better so they could face her demons together? Simon would never understand why his sister felt such a deep need to do everything by herself. Damn the Tams and their foolish pride.

So wrapped up in his own feelings, Simon barely registered that Kaylee was still in the room. Glancing to his side, he saw her tear-stained face and sighed heavily, wishing that he didn’t have to deal with this now. He was so tired.

Turning his head in her direction, he said, “Kaylee, come here. Please.”

She looked at him apprehensively, fear all over her face and firmly held her ground. When it was clear she would not approach him, Simon turned away from her and grumbled, “Fine. I’m tired anyways. Can you tell Mal I need to see him?”

With that, Simon again closed his eyes and was soon immersed in another drug-induced sleep. Kaylee gazed at the man lying on the bed across from her and wondered if things would ever be the same again. Barely registering her movements, Kaylee wandered out of the room and headed for Mal and Inara’s suite. She didn’t want to think about Simon’s reaction in the morning if the captain did not show.

***

“So, you’re basically telling me you’ve got nothing.” It wasn’t really a question and the look on Simon’s face conveyed he wasn’t so much confused as angry.

Taking the younger man’s bitter tone in stride, Mal said, “It ain’t from lack o’ tryin’ doc, trust me.”

Simon snorted derisively and thrust the datacard he was holding back to the captain ignoring the pain it caused to course through his arm. “Trust you, right. It worked so well for my sister and I before.”

Mal bit back his automatic retort, knowing that the kid wasn’t himself. But still … Mal would just as soon take a shot at him after seeing the way Kaylee was the night before. The girl had been through enough and the good doctor was just making it worse.

“Look, doc, I ain’t the one that told your sister to go runnin’ off after some Alliance muscle and I certainly ain’t the one that made you fugitives in the first place,” Mal told him, allowing some of his anger to seep into his tone. Simon threw him a dirty look and Mal smiled a bit more smugly before forging ahead. “I want to find your sister just as much as you do. And your less than stellar attitude ain’t helping any of us.”

“Forgive me, Mal if I can’t manage to muster a cheery disposition,” Simon ground out, his teeth clenched. “But I was just tortured to within an inch of my life and it’s had an adverse effect on my mood.”

Rising, Mal leaned over the injured man and held his gaze for a moment. “Look, doc, I know a bit about what you’re going through, what you’ve been through, so I’ve been willing to excuse some of your non-model behavior as of late.” Leaning down further, Mal was within inches of Simon’s face. To the younger man’s credit, he held the gaze. “And if you want to be mad at the ‘verse, I got no right to stop you. But taking it out on Kaylee, that’s where it ends.”

Simon’s eyes darkened for a moment and Mal knew the man was trying to piece together his actions from the past few days. It was no wonder – between the drugs his captors had fed into his system and the drugs he was now on in order to recover, the boy’s blood was less plasma and more cocktail.

“She ain’t done nothin’ to you doc, ‘cept care for you and you’d be best to remember that next time you feel like yellin’ at somebody.” Mal didn’t give the man a chance to respond as he headed out of the room. Pausing for just a second in the doorway, he turned back and smirked, “’Sides, if’n you want to yell at somebody, give me a call. I can take it.”

Turning again to go, Mal thought, And I might even deserve it.

***

“The girl is amazing, even I have to admit that.”

Martin Jin circled his desk, taking in the two blue-handed agents before him. His admission of awe did not elicit any kind of reaction, just as he’d known it wouldn’t. Truth was, he could shoot one or both of the men and there would still be no reaction. Blue-handed agents were bred, raised and trained to stifle any emotion and these two men were the best at what they did.

Unless it involved capturing, holding or killing River Tam. In that one instance, they became bumbling fools and that was something Martin was tiring of quickly. Regarding both of their expressionless faces for a moment more, Jin came to stand in front of them, leaning easily on his desk, his red-gloved hands tucked across his chest.

“So tell me, why can’t you capture her?”

Exchanging a look, Jin silently guessed which man would speak first. As Orion opened his mouth, he took slight satisfaction in knowing he was right. “It’s not a matter of being unable to capture her. We are unable to keep her.”

“Is that your assessment as well,” Jin asked, switching his icy blue gaze to the other man.

Corvus didn’t even flinch, but simply answered, “Yes, sir.”

Jin again let his gaze wander between the two and had to marvel at their ability to hide any kind of personality. To anyone else he imagined they would be quite intimidating. But considering that Jin had known both of them since their early days in test tubes, he would never find them scary.

Jin had watched Orion and Corvus grow from tiny bundles of cells into full grown fetuses. The accelerated pace of the Blue Sun program had meant that both of them had reached maturity within a year, along with the dozens of other pairs grown for the same task. The two men standing before him now were nothing special; they had the same cerebral conditioning as all the others, same training and education. The only thing that set them apart was their abysmal failure in regards to the Tam girl. And while it should have annoyed Jin, he also found it mildly amusing.

Blue-handed agents were not designed to fail. They were designed to finish, which only made their ineptitude all the more anomalous to a man like Jin. “So, what do you propose we do about that?”

As Jin asked the question, he reached behind to his desktop and hit a few buttons. In an instant screens on both sides of the room began to play back a security feed showing a very small River Tam take down these two agents in a matter of minutes, while simultaneously rescuing her nearly dead brother. Both men let their eyes flick to the images and back again. They didn’t need to watch it, they had lived it and once was enough for both of them.

“We can capture her, sir,” Orion told him, his voice more forceful than normal. “We only need more time.”

“More time,” Jin asked. “More time to capture her and lose her again? More time to torture her brother, which only angers her further? More time to get knocked unconscious by a 90 pound girl?” When neither man had an answer, Jin shook his head slowly and said, “No, I’m afraid that the one thing you don’t need is more time.”

Entering another code sequence into the same key pad, a different image, almost too fast for the human eye to comprehend, glanced over the screens. To anyone else, it was meaningless; to the blue-hands it was all that mattered.

As Jin watched them both fall to the floor, dead, he did feel a moment of regret. They had been good agents, but they had been foolhardy to believe they could capture River Tam. The girl was the Academy’s star pupil and her training hadn’t even been completed. Too many people well placed in the Parliament’s echelons had held to the belief that River Tam could be controlled, just as Corvus and Orion had. But not Jin.

Jin didn’t hold tight to too many beliefs. He knew there was no power in the ‘verse greater than the human mind and no stronger will than that of a determined man. But he wholeheartedly believed in River Tam. She was the key to their success – and it was now his turn to regain control of her.

Inviting guards into his utilitarian office to dispose of the bodies, Jin again resettled himself behind his desk, continuing his study of the creature who was River Tam. He could take her – he knew it.

***

Simon awoke slowly feeling more than groggy. He felt heavy, stifled by his inability to move. He looked slowly around his room, taking in the sights of the hospital setting, which after two and a half months had become as familiar to him as any home. He’d been here too long and that meant River had been gone from him too long as well.

Sighing heavily, he shifted his gaze to his right and saw Kaylee’s sleeping form beside him. How she could fit on the smallest sliver of the bed, he did not know, but he was still amazed. Secretly he was even more amazed that she was still there, he didn’t deserve her comfort or her care, not after the way he’d been treating her.

He had been the biggest jerk in the ‘verse to her over the past weeks. His moods had swung from angry to melancholy to furious to laconic and back again. He had broken down into hysterical fits of crying that shamed him and had thrown things halfway across the room in bouts of rage. It had been about ten days since he’d sent her from the room in tears again and subsequently had to endure another threat from Mal. But he deserved the warning of bodily harm should he cause Kaylee more pain – she had done nothing wrong and he was the idiot for causing her angst. But no reasoning in the ‘verse could excuse the way he’d treated the beautiful angel at his side.

With difficulty, Simon reached out a hand and brushed a few stray hairs off her cheek and behind her ear. With even more strain, Simon tried to shift so he could study her sleeping form more closely, but his movement woke her and she blinked quickly through her sleepiness, concern quickly clouding her features.

“You okay, sweetie,” she asked quietly, placing a light hand against his chest to still his movement.

Taking her hand in his, Simon raised it to his lips and kissed her palm and worked his way down each of her fingers, kissing the tips lightly. Kaylee, shocked beyond belief at his actions, just sat there and let him, uncertain as to what had brought about this sudden change in his behavior.

Replacing her hand against his chest, Simon saw the puzzled look on her face and reached out to cup her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Kaylee,” he whispered, drawing her face close to his. “Can you forgive me?”

His warm breath on her lips brought welcome chills to Kaylee’s spine and she nodded once, before her eyes fluttered closed and she placed her lips over his. He drew her closer, bringing his hand around and twisting it into her soft hair. Worried that she might hurt him, Kaylee let both her hands rest against his chest as she felt his mouth work over hers, his tongue tracing the edge of her lips before hers finally darted out to meet his and they deepened the kiss.

When they parted, Kaylee held his gaze and saw the love in his eyes that he had shown her many days and nights before this whole ordeal. Blinking back tears, Kaylee cradled his cheek in her hand and whispered, “You okay?”

Simon nodded and saw her tears, wishing he hadn’t been the one to cause them yet again. “I’m so sorry, Kaylee,” he repeated softly, his heart pounding in his chest at the nearness of her and the realization that he could easily have lost her in these past few days. “I was such a boob,” he said, using River’s word as it was the most appropriate.

“You was hurt, honey,” she told him, letting her eyes roam his face, her fingers gently stroking his hair. “You didn’t know half of what you was doing, I know that.”

“It’s not an excuse,” he told her firmly, realizing that tears were soon going to fall from his own eyes. “You didn’t deserve to be treated that way and I’m ashamed that I –"

“Shh, Simon, please,” she whispered, placing a gentle finger over his lips. She wiped away his tears gently with her fingers and then snuggled in closer to him, allowing her head to rest against his chest. When she felt him wince, she immediately sprang back as though she’d been shocked.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, fearful tears in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt ya.”

“It’s okay, bao bei,” he told her, raising his arm to pull her back to him. “It’d hurt more if I couldn’t hold you.”

Leaning back down on him, Kaylee gingerly laid her head against his chest and felt his body relax as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Feeling at peace for the first time in weeks, Kaylee fell asleep quickly a smile on her face bright enough to light a thousand worlds.

Simon rested his cheek against her head, rubbing his skin against the softness of her hair and breathing in her scent. How could he have been so stupid, again? He thought he’d learned his lesson when River was sick – it did no good to push Kaylee away, it only served to make them both miserable. Not for the first time, Simon wondered how he could be so unbelievably stupid when it came to girls. He knew it was Kaylee’s determination to stay with him that had kept her by his side these past few weeks and he knew now it was his turn to show the girl how much he loved her.

He just hoped that as his search for River intensified, he could manage to make Kaylee feel as loved as she did him.