He knows it.

Knows that his world shifted the day she effortlessly bargined him down on the price of the shuttle. The day she showed up just like the Devil says penance, as his Ma used to say.

Knows that somehow, she has shifted things inside him – things he long thought immutable and unmovable as stone. Things that should have died long ago.

Doesn’t want to actually believe it, because the last time he dared believe that hard, he got left behind in the valley of despair that all the history books would call ‘Serenity.’

Belief is dangerous. Blinds you with its beauty and promise. Not unlike her silks and perfumes in that regard.

Burns hard and bright until nothing is left of a man but a black husk that blows away on the wind.

But in his gut, he knows it. What she has done to him. And Malcolm Reynolds may not believe in much these days, but he believes in his gut. His god may have lied to him, but his gut never has.

He wants to tell her the words for how he feels. Say them out loud. Give them form and meaning, make them real. But it has been an eternity since he could say those words, let alone feel them. The words catch at the back of his throat, frozen with rust from disuse, and he can feel himself choking on them.

He thinks, sometimes, she’s waiting to hear those words. Looks at him as if she’d give him everything if only he could pull them out past his tongue. The way she sometimes smiles at him when she makes him tea, or let him hold her after they’d viewed the message from Miranda. And in the way she’d wanted to know why he’d not asked her to stay.

Other days, he swears she already knows. Can read him as pretty as River is able to. God seems to have cursed him with overly-perceptive women in his life, so it would seem. He just attracts them that way, he supposes.

And so he wants the words out there between him and her, as much as he is afraid of that exact same thing. Wants the words to fill up the awkward silences between the two of them. Take away the sting of earlier, more hurtful words they had flung at each other with abandon and carelessness.

One fine day, when he can make himself stop listening to the voices that tell him he’s a fool for it, he will march himself to her door and give her those words, even if they are covered in rust.

Just like the Devil says penance.