Author's note: I apologize if this chapter sucks. It's wanted to be horribly cheesy from the outset, and I've re-written it about a dozen times. This was the least cringe-worthy draft, but I've gotten so buried in the thing that I've lost the ability to tell if it works or not. And to top it all off, my beta is MIA. So, with bated breath, I'm just going to post it. Maybe I'll edit and re-post if I can figure out how to make it better, or if my readers have any suggestions ;) Enjoy...or not!

~~~~~~

“Thanks – for the understanding,” said Mal quietly after a few minutes.

The nurse looked at him silently for a long moment. Finally she walked over and sat down on a stool by the bed. Aside from the low humming of equipment, the room was very quiet. Mal couldn’t decide if that was peaceful or unsettling, but he was enjoying her quiet companionship.

Noticing his eyes drifting shut, he forced them open again and yawned, cursing the drugs in his system. The nurse looked deeply tired too. “Long shift?” he asked, trying to keep himself awake.

She nodded, yawning herself. “Always,” she said tiredly. “Pretty sure the cosmos has a rule against sleeping.”

“Get yourself locked up in here,” suggested Mal. “Get plenty of sleep then, let me tell ya.’”

“I might as well,” said Kelli. “Seems like I spend every waking minute here, might as well just crash out in one of the cells and spare the trouble of going home.” She raised her eyes and studied him quietly. “Life isn’t much fun for you, is it?”

Her words made Mal think. He hated being a prisoner more than he reckoned he’d ever be able to conjure up words to express, and the only things seemed memorable were hurts and losses. Why, then, were the images her words called up happy ones? Lying in the sun with Wash joking about margaritas, playing elaborate games with the other prisoners until they were all out of breath, eating brownies …..”

“You’re smiling,” the nurse said, surprised.

“I – yeah, I guess I am,” said Mal. He was silent for a moment, trying to read the odd expression on the nurse’s face before changing the subject. “How is it you trusted me? Earlier, with the guards. What made you think I wouldn’t hit you or the like?”

She drew a deep breath, playing back scenes in her mind and gauging just how honest she wanted to be. She finally spoke again. “Not sure I want to tell you the truth on that score.”

He studied her before giving an inward smile. “I’ll play nice.”

She sighed. “The night after they brought you in here – I was working a double shift and after rounds I came in here and sat. All the surgery and the being professional was over for the moment and I – I looked at you and started crying.”

She eyed him cautiously, watching his reaction. “Then you woke up, not enough to remember what was happening, and the first I know of it is you, all drowsy, asking, ‘You all right, miss?’”

She thought he was unconscious, or close enough to it, and she came into the room to be unobserved, to have a few minutes to simply deal with the horror she’d been forcing to the back of her mind. Don’t over-empathize with your patients. Keep emotional distance, she repeated to herself. She looked over and there was this shattered man, not even able to get his eyes uncrossed and in God only knows how much pain, trying to figure out if she was okay.

Kelli met Mal’s eyes hesitantly. “That did it, I couldn’t have stopped crying if the world depended on it. And then – you figured out who you were and remembered what had happened –“ she stopped, blinking hard against tears. And yes, that is why I trust a killer who spent nearly every waking moment telling me to go to hell in the most creative ways possible.

Mal smiled. “You all right, miss?” he asked softly, with a hint of mischief in his eyes.

Kelli’s let out an odd cross between a laugh and a sniff. “That’s not fair, you bastard,” she whispered.

“Well, I am that,” said Mal. “Should I tell you to procreate with livestock some more?”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “Please don’t.”

“You cried for me,” said Mal softly, thoughtfully. She nodded, looking away. She looked back when Mal reached out and covered his hand with hers. “That was kind.”

She gulped and stood abruptly, walking to the other side of the room and organizing. Tools in the autoclave. Gloves in boxes, lined up neatly on the counter. Not crying in front of a patient. Again. Syringes in the microwave. What?? She yanked them out as the metal arced with a pop, giving up and walking back to the stool.

Mal was watching, half touched, half amused. He was taking a rather insane delight in not being the only person in this room trying frantically to hold it together, and he smiled sleepily at her when she sat down near him again. “So – room tidy enough for you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “’Cause if not, I got a scanner here needs putting in the refrigerator.”

The nurse groaned and covered her face with her hand. “You saw me nuke the syringes.”

“Let’s just leave it at I’d take it as a kindness if you didn’t inject me with anything at the moment. Because, you know, I’m completely up to date on my ketchup shots, and –“

She peeked up over the top of her hand with a playful glare. “I get the point, mister. One little, tiny mistake and all of a sudden I’m incompetent.” She changed the subject. “How are you feeling, now?”

“I’m sleepy,” admitted Mal with a groggy smile. The drugs they’d given him had relaxed him and done away with the pain, and now that he wasn’t all tensed up on account of someone wielding sharp objects around his head, he found himself wanting to close his eyes and snooze. The bed was feeling far too comfortable for his liking at the moment, and a pretty nurse was holding his hand, stroking the back of it with her thumb.

“Good,” she said softly. “Don’t fight it. I gave you enough sedative to knock out a dozen men, and you’re actually feeling it now that you don’t have all that adrenaline in your system.”

He didn’t take her advice, instead trying to keep his sleepy eyes propped open. He was enjoying this, the comfort and the company of an inexplicably caring person. He didn’t want to go to sleep and wake up to a throbbing head and an empty room, back in the colder reality of a prison where people ordered him around and handcuffed him and hit him.

Kelli saw him struggling to keep his eyelids in line and smiled. He opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped him. “Shhh,” she whispered. “Just relax. You’re completely safe. You’ll be fine when you wake up.”

He looked at her in silent protest. When it came to waking up here all he could remember was rediscovering that he was living his worst fears. I don’t want to, his gaze said silently.

She read the look easily. “You’re not going to wake up in a nightmare, I promise.” Mal let his eyes close somewhat unwillingly, the drugs in his system no longer giving him any choice in the matter. His last conscious sensation was the remaining tension draining from his body as the nurse lightly stroked his arm.

~~~~~~

“How is he?” asked Dr. Morgan softly, careful not to wake the sleeping Mal.

“Good,” she replied, her voice low. “I asked Eric to take over rounds for me.” Dr. Morgan raised his eyebrows, grinning.

She glared at him. “He’s afraid to wake up, I wanted to be here when he comes to.”

Dr. Morgan patted her affectionately on the shoulder. “You’re the consummate professional.” Dodging another glare, he said, “Seriously, though, good job. Nice to see him looking relaxed, like a real human being, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

~~~~~

When Mal woke up, Kelli was there, putting a hand on his arm as his eyes darted around, disoriented. “You’re okay,” she said firmly.

Mal took a deep breath and relaxed, looking around. His gaze caught Dr. Morgan standing quietly to the side. The doctor walked up and sat on a stool beside the bed, addressing him with calm authority. “She’s right. Any time you feel like your legs’ll work for you, you’re good to go.”

“Thank you,” said Mal. There was more to it than just the words, and he hesitated, fumbling with his pride before deciding to continue. “You’re good people. I – truly do appreciate the kindness.”

Dr. Morgan gazed back at Mal for a long minute, thoughtfully considering his reply. “That surprises you, doesn’t it?” he said with no accusation in his tone.

“Yes,” said Mal simply.

Dr. Morgan considered again. “It doesn’t come as any surprise to any of us that you’re a good man. We came to care about you a great deal, maybe even more so because you expected such horrible things of us.”

Mal blinked, taken aback. It was so much more straightforward to see these people as the enemy than to confront intelligence and kindness. “You – can I ask something?” Dr. Morgan nodded. “Was it ever a question – was I ever not going to recover?”

Dr. Morgan looked at him gravely, deliberating on whether he should answer. Finally he said, “I’m afraid you might take my answer as propaganda of a sort.”

“Wouldn’t ‘ve asked if I weren’t willing to hear the answer,” said Mal, his face lacking its usual hostility.

Dr. Morgan nodded. “When you were brought in here, Lee asked if it was possible for you to make a full recovery. I – told him, in theory, if we spent a great deal of time and money bringing in equipment and surgical experts that we simply don’t have available to us here. We’re well equipped, but we’re not a city hospital. You could easily have been crippled.”

He looked keenly at Mal. “When he told us to stabilize you and wake you up in his office – your life was on the line. I think he needed to know if you were worth saving. When he sent you back here, he told us to do anything and everything, without limit, to fix you, and we did.”

He stood, tapping a screen at Mal’s side. Two bone scans appeared. One showed an intact wrist joint with a subtle mottled pattern, the other was only a similarly shaped object, broken into unthinkable shapes and pieces.

“This is what we had to work with, all over your body,” he said soberly. “When they dislocated your shoulders, the pressure jerked every broken bone and joint apart into that appalling mess. That’s not even taking into account the soft tissue and nerve damage.”

He pointed at the intact scan. “This is what we finished with. Accomplishing that didn’t just take days of work, it took very careful work. If we didn’t care about the man on the table, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered so much that everything was perfect.”

Mal shuddered. Looking at the images, imagining them belonging to him, made his skin crawl. “Why – did you care?” he asked.

“To start with?” he asked gravely. “Before we learned you were alive, we treated the people you saved. One was a kid sobbing so hard we could barely keep an oxygen mask on him because he watched the man who saved his life beaten to death. So, principle. Righting a wrong – so much as such a thing was possible. Later, we got to know you a bit. Quite possibly the worst patient we ever had, but we got fond of you, after a fashion.”

The doctor smiled wryly at Mal, who looked away, after a minute responding with a somewhat shaky, “Thank you.” He looked back. “Sometimes I thought all those operations were just to hurt me, ya’ know. At the time.”

Kelli gripped his hand. “I know,” she said thickly. “Every thing we put you through, I know. It hurt, seeing how scared you were.”

Dr. Morgan rubbed Kelli’s shoulder affectionately, and Mal smiled at the caring rapport between the two of them. Dr. Morgan looked back at Mal, catching the tail end of that smile. “Oh, we know all right,” he said gravely. “My ears are still ringing from some of the things you called us.”

Mal’s smile deepened into a grin. “Did I give ya’ a complex?” he asked playfully.

“Nah,” said Dr. Morgan with a smile.

“Speak for yourself,” retorted Kelli. There was a brief knock on the door, and Mal tensed and sat up as Lee walked in. Lee nodded at him, exchanging greetings with Kelli and Dr. Morgan before addressing Mal. “How are you feeling, son?” he asked.

“Uh – nervous?” said Mal. He was only partly joking.

“Don’t be,” said Lee. “I know what happened, and why.” He looked at the doctor. “I’ll walk him back.” Mal, Kelli, and Dr. Morgan all looked at him uneasily, and Lee chuckled. “With all we’ve been through, you still don’t trust me with your patients?”

Dr. Morgan gave him a sheepish look. “It’s just instinct, sir. Sorry.”

Lee chuckled momentarily before a shadow crossed his face and the smile vanished into something far more serious. “Come on, son.” He waved Mal to his feet and the two men walked out of the hospital, wandering in silence for a spell.

Finally Mal broke the silence. “Seems your cover-up’s busted.”

“I suppose,” replied Lee soberly. He stopped and faced Mal, a very grave sort of sadness darkening his eyes. “It was true, what you said in my office about justice, and you not seeing much of it.”

After a long pause where Mal failed to contradict him, Lee said, “I thought I protected you. Apparently I didn’t do it well enough.”

“Things happen,” said Mal.

Lee nodded. “Yes, they do,” he said softly, looking away. “This particular – thing – won’t come back to haunt you, I can promise that much. So, what’d your friends at that table hear about our little secret?”

Mal tensed, instantly ill at ease. It was an interrogator’s trick, slipping questions casually into a conversation. Lee recognized his mistake instantly, and looked Mal directly in the eyes. “It was an honest question. I’ve never interrogated you, but if I had you’d know I don’t play stupid tricks or mind games, and I’d know you weren’t dumb enough to fall for that.”

Mal looked back at him evenly, wordlessly. The message was clear: Mal was willing to extend a tenuous trust to the enemy only if he was entirely certain it wasn’t misplaced. A single misstep, a misstep like the one Lee had just made, and it would vanish in a second.

Lee felt a flash of anger at that unyielding look. “Sergeant Reynolds, I’ve put my career in your hands in part because you were honest and up-front with me. I trust you. Do not make the mistake of being less than honest with me now, or I will assume the worst. That would be incredibly unpleasant for you and your friends, if you’re even alive to suffer.”

Mal took a deep breath, his expression grim. “I don’t take kindly to being threatened, sir. Occasions me to wonder how desperate the man making the threats is, and why.”

The two men stared each other down for what seemed like an eternity, Mal meeting Lee’s angry eyes with fierce determination. The tension was electric and gut-wrenching for both men. Mal stood utterly at the mercy of a man who’d kept him alive thus far only because it was the honorable thing to do. Lee was facing an enemy prisoner holding the ammunition to bring down his entire career, even send him to jail for his farce of a cover-up. Finally they both broke eye contact as if by mutual agreement, both drawing breath for the first time since the confrontation began.

“You’re right,” Lee said soberly. “And I was wrong to threaten you. How much did they hear?” The message in his gaze was clear. It was a mistake. I will not use this to harm you.

He’d just seen a glimpse of the inner steel that had kept Malcolm Reynolds alive and sane. Hope it’s enough to carry him through what’s ahead, he thought, his stomach twisting. Mal wasn’t wrong about being desperate, and Lee wondered just how far those decidedly angry eyes saw into his mind and his soul during that stare. It made him squirm inside with guilt. He can’t know. There’s no way he knows.

The message in Mal’s eyes was equally clear. Violate my trust once, and I’ll die before I speak another word to you. “Enough to do the math,” he said.

Lee nodded. “They’re loyal to you, I imagine? You- don’t have to answer that, I’ll put it differently. Can you convince them to keep their mouths shut about this?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Mal.

“Very well, then,” said Lee. “I’ll take care of my end of this mess. And –“ he halted for a moment, a flicker of hesitation. “It would be easy, and I’ve come very close. But killing you came off the table as an option a long time ago.” It was a gesture of trust, relinquishing the most powerful weapon he had. Weapons are a liability when neither side will survive the battle.

Mal’s eyes softened, recognizing the statement for what it was.

~~~~~

Mal walked quietly into the housing unit, not wanting to awaken anyone who might be sleeping. He needn’t have bothered; four very awake pairs of eyes met his in concern. Four. “Wash?” he asked. “Where’s Wash?”

“We don’t know,” said Zeke quietly. “Was kind of hoping you would.”

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