Mal was wandering in something of a trance; it was a state he found himself lapsing into on occasion ever since his sentencing. A way of blurring the eyes of the mind and going elsewhere, of finding a more tolerable sort of hideout while the time passed. He saw himself from the outside, pacing mindlessly. It was a sad sight, not one he wanted to linger on.

“Mal.” There was sadness in that voice too. Mal looked over, reluctant to come back to the solid reality where you talked to folk. Where an inexplicably unguarded man in uniform stood with his head down, clinging to a gate like it was his only support in a gale.

“Long time no see,” said Mal.

Khiloh couldn’t answer, just stood there. He couldn’t hold Mal’s gaze. Hadn’t spoken to him once since that night in the cell, still couldn’t. Mal studied the guard thoughtfully. If a crippled version of himself had come to rely desperately on a friendly face among the enemy, the man he was now didn’t care whether the faces were friendly. It seemed more important to speak truth.

“Run out of ways to justify your part in this?” Mal asked. Khiloh’s head sunk a little lower. “Fantasy gone now? Or you still think you can make it all better with a few nice words?”

“No!” snapped Khiloh, anger finally driving him to face Mal. “You lost your war, well, try losing everything you believe in or hope for.”

Anger flashed through him like a fire through grass. “I have.” The sheer depth of fury in those words made Khiloh step back in genuine fear, the metal gate seeming no barrier at all. “You wanna tell me about loss? I’m real interested.”

The fury faded and Mal blinked, taken aback by the power of it. Wasn’t like him to lose control like that, get taken over by a rage so strong it made the blood rush to his head so’s he could hear it and his eyes blur….he shook his head and took a deep breath.

Khiloh went pale. “I’m sorry.” He walked away, and Mal let him leave. Halfway down the corridor, he spun and marched back, grabbed the gate, and looked directly in Mal’s eyes. “About everything. What the hell do I do when ‘I’m sorry’ is so rutting meaningless it –”

“You be honest,” said Mal. “You’re a hired gun. Work for an Alliance that locks up innocent for political gain, tortures them even. You know it’s wrong, you’re the instrument of all manner of hurt, and somehow you do it all the same. Kept your best friend in a cage for six years. What exactly does that make you?”

Khiloh sank against the fence, holding himself upright in the corner between it and the gate. Mal’s unexpected attack hit at the core of the guilt haunting him, and it was all he could do to speak. If it weren’t for the anger – “You were infantry. Serenity Valley. If I’m sick and evil – I’m guessing you sent friends to their deaths. What’s that make you?”

Mal shrugged. “A man fighting a war? It’s what people do in wars, you know.” The accusation didn’t sting. Whatever lurking feelings he had on that subject were buried where nobody Alliance was going to get at ‘em.

“And keeping people in cages is what prison guards do, you know?” snapped Khiloh. “Under your command, Wash’d be dead.” He stopped and drew a deep breath. There was no anger when he addressed Mal again. “I didn’t start out caring about Wash. I didn’t choose to get assigned to a prison. I didn’t ask to come across you dying in a cell. Things just – happen. But – it hurts. We were supposed to be the good guys.”

He struggled with the words. “I wanted to be a good guy. Very, very much.”

Mal didn’t smile, but the softness that flickered across his eyes served the purpose. “You are. You chose the wrong side. People do that.” He paused. “We’re a long way from civilized, all of us. Alliance just tried to put a glossier face on it than most. Goes a long way toward hiding the dirt.”

Khiloh took a deep breath. “When I came here, I’d never harmed another person. Now, I – well – I have.” He stopped to steady his voice, his expression deeply sad. “I can’t deal with being on the side of the people who did this to you.”

“This ain’t a place for things noble and kind,” said Mal. “It’s a place for good men to be stripped of what it is they are.” The guard looked at him with something like desperation. It was a difficulty to go five words without feeling moved to reassure him.

“Took me a bit to figure something out,” said Mal. “We’re all just folk. Guards, prisoners, doesn’t matter so much. People did this to me. Not Alliance, not prison guards. Just people.”

“How come I think you don’t believe that?” asked Khiloh. He shifted uncomfortably and stuffed his hands in his coat. “How come you think it’s creepy that I care about you, ’cause I’m on the other side? Do you think it’s creepy that Wash cares? Do you think it’s creepy that Gray came out here in the freezing cold and cried for an hour after you got back? Or is it all shiny, ’cause they’re on your side?”

Mal sighed. “Taken me a spell to comprehend,” he said. “Not even certain I got it now. But – it’s a broken concept. You take away freedom and dignity, break human beings to your will, and then you care. Post the golden rule in the break room, sprinkle about shiny fairy dust, an’ make it okay. It’s not okay, it’s - it’s psychotic.”

“So – I shouldn’t care?” challenged Khiloh, his defensiveness hiding the hurt that lurked so close to the surface. “So every guy who sticks his neck out and gets laughed at ’cause he sees you as something more than a prisoner is psychotic?”

“No,” said Mal. “But to conjure you can make it right by caring is.” He heard footsteps and looked up.

Another officer was approaching them, and Khiloh forced himself upright. “Taking you to the hospital,” he said, taking on a crisp formality. “Step back from the gate and raise your hands.”

The cover officer gave him an irritated look. “Prisoner doesn’t need to know that, he goes where we take ‘im.”

“Prisoner likes to be called by his name,” said Mal.

Khiloh bristled too and slid the gate open forcefully. The fence shook, the gate slamming back with an unpleasant clatter. Mal stepped out and put his hands on the fence without being ordered while Khiloh performed a cursory pat search. None of the guards liked doing it, and in consequence the “search” tended to amount to a check to see if anyone happened to be lugging a crowbar or a rifle about with them.

“Hey! You skipped right over my contraband strawberry-lime fizzy grenades,” protested Mal. “And you call yourselves a prison….”

Khiloh rolled his eyes and dismissed him with a wave. They fell into step together until the annoying voice interrupted. “What, you just conveniently forgot to handcuff him?”

Khiloh spun. “What, you just conveniently forget to read your orders? He’s injured. Doctor’s orders, no handcuffs.” He looked back to Mal, trying to contain his anger. “Let’s go.”

They barely got ten feet. “Sergeant! Put your hands behind your head and lace your fingers together. Just because some doctor doesn’t want to let us do our job, doesn’t mean I’m letting you be a danger to us.”

Mal beat Khiloh to the punch. “Prisoner would never hurt a nice shiny citizen such as yourself. You’re so – cuddly.” He glanced at Khiloh. “Don’t you think he seems cuddly?”

Khiloh shifted uneasily. Mal had his hands planted on his hips, blatantly ignoring the guard’s order.

“I’m – not cuddly!” snapped the guard. “And if you don’t obey my order, you’re going to spend the night handcuffed very tightly to that fence, doctor’s orders or no.”

“No, he’s not,” said Khiloh, his voice taking on a hardness Mal had only heard once before. “But I’d be glad to tell the med staff you said that. I’m contact. I’m running this transport. You don’t give orders to my prisoner unless I’m attacked, dong ma? And for the record, this guy isn’t going to touch me, so shut up and do your job. Quietly.”

The officer’s face was beet red. “Fine. Turn your back on an uncuffed prisoner to lecture me. Just don’t expect me to give a crap when he takes you down.”

“Yep. Definitely cuddly,” said Mal. “In touch with his inner teddy bear.” He grinned at the sheer rage on the guard’s face.

Khiloh gave Mal a cautionary glare and marched towards the hospital, the furious guard stalking behind. Mal studied everything they passed. He’d never considered escape. It looked to be impossible, not to mention pointless. Pointless until they told a body he was here for ten years. They passed through five locked gates opened by guards with proximity cards. At one, a guard scanned his wristband and transmitted something, and after he was approved the gate opened remotely.

They emerged into a broad courtyard with low, sleek buildings set at artistic angles amid grass and trees. The high stone wall surrounding the entire complex seemed almost artistic. The high tower of the admin building containing Lee’s office jutted up from the rest like an off-kilter centerpiece of concrete and glass. The hospital sat to the other side of the courtyard, sleek perfection marred by a tangle of chain-link fences and barbed wire surrounding the hospital housing units extending from the rear.

He remembered this view; standing in the gravel yard of a housing unit, surrounded by metal and looking out on grass that wasn’t meant for humans to actually walk on or enjoy. He collapsed on the way back inside, got helped up, petted and chided by nurses telling him he wasn’t supposed to be walking on his own. He didn’t answer, didn’t say a word. Just lay there unmoving while they scanned and poked at him, finally opining with masterful self-importance how fortunate it was he hadn’t re-injured himself. Never once occurred to them he’d have broken his own legs just to be outside for those blessed minutes.

Mal looked away, focused on the cobbled path. Was this courtyard close to the outskirts of the prison? Probably, given this was where they kept the bigwigs and their trees. He tried forcing himself to accept that this moment, walking unshackled beside a friend through green grass, was quite possibly the most freedom he was going to experience for the forseeable future. He couldn’t do it. Hope? Denial? Some stubborn remmenant of faith? Definately not faith. Leave it up to God, the almighty’d probably find a smaller cell for him.

Mal’s involuntary twinge of unease was invisible behind his carelessly casual expression as they walked in and faced a white-uniformed man at the desk. Pleasant-looking sort. Potted plants by the desk. Dear rutting Buddha, he was starting to hate potted plants.

“Sergeant Reynolds……” muttered the man at the desk. “Ah. Yes. We did ask for you.” He looked at Khiloh. “We’ve got an emergency, your guy got bumped. Room A, down the hall. Stick him in there and guard the door, it doesn’t lock.”

“Does it have potted plants?” asked Mal. “My delicate sensibilities demand foliage.”

Khiloh rolled his eyes and led the way down the hall. Room A was a stark affair; it actually looked like it belonged at a prison hospital and not a mutant hotel like much of the other décor. He walked in thinking he’d almost rather be shut in a solitary cell again. Khiloh didn’t shut the door; he stood there and dismissed the surly cover officer.

“See you later, teddy bear,” said Mal with a cheerful wave. The guard didn’t break stride, but answered with a furious kick at a garbage can, sending it clattering loudly against the opposite wall.

Mal flashed a grin at Khiloh. “That felt good.”

Khiloh drew a sharp breath, entered and closed the door, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. He seemed genuinely shaken by the violent tension of the past minutes. “Teddy bear? Have you gone rutting insane?”

“Hey, it’s boring here,” said Mal. “A guy needs to have some fun.” He looked around the tiny room. Blank, white walls and three flimsy plastic chairs. No decoration whatsoever, save for an unnerving drain in the floor. “Cozy,” he said, sitting. “Do you suppose they use that for – something?”

Khiloh sat, gripping the chair arms and looking around. He gulped. “Lonely in here.” He did look lonely, almost scared.

“You don’t have ta’ stay inside,” said Mal. “Fair certain they thought you’d just watch the door.”

Khiloh shook his head. After a moment he spoke. “Can – you do me a favor? After Wash leaves – don’t yell at me too much for a bit?”

“You mean, after I get left behind to spend my ten years in prison, I should try an’ watch your feelings?” asked Mal. “Do you want me to hug you? We could cuddle.”

Khiloh looked like he’d been slapped. Mal cut him off before he could apologize yet again. “You want to make us your friends, fine. Just get your head around the point that what happens in here comprises our entire lives. You feel sorry for us because you get to go home at night to your family, but you forget that.”

“Do a lot of thinking in that housing unit?” Khiloh asked, his voice rough. “So do I, pacing up and down that strip of gravel for years. That corridor is a cell all of its own, you know. You have any idea how lonely it is?”

He stood and paced the tiny room frantically, his fists clenched. To the door, to the back wall, back to the chair. “Praying someone’ll have the heart to speak to you? You guys got your friends, well I got a gun, some fences, and an eight-hour shift to get through pretty gorram alone.”

He sat, breathing heavily and squeezing his eyes shut, trying to regain control. “It’s awful. It’s cold and ugly. So when one of you is willing to see past my job and forgive how much their life sucks and spends those few minutes that get me through each gorram day, I don’t think it’s creepy I care about that guy, okay?”

“That’s what your rutting Sergeant’s supposed to be there for,” said Mal. “What the gorram hell else does he have to do in this place, ’sides chaining up random prisoners and grooming his eyebrow?” Rutting idiots. Loneliest duty in a trench was keeping watch at night, freezing your pi gu off while the others slept. Sitting on watch, one tended to think. Night on a battlefield could be a thing of beauty or horror, depending on a man’s thoughts. More than once he woke to see the kid shivering in the cold with tears running across his face, and got up just to sit with him in silence. Didn’t have to speak, just had to be there. Ignore a man at a time like that, he gives up or goes batty.

“I wish,” said Khiloh. There was a true wistfulness there that wasn’t lost on Mal, a desperation not far below the surface. Military taught a man to look to a leader, to rely on the folk you’re in with. If that man was a sensitive, naïve kid, and you threw him into a prison and proceeded to ignore ‘im –

“Shouldn’t ought to be alone,” said Mal. He meant the words as comfort, but they wound up hitting him in the gut. Alone. He glanced down.

Khiloh was watching him, sad. “No,” said the guard, his voice cracking.

They both fell silent. They sat like that for several minutes, fighting loneliness. It was an evening for warm lights glowing from windows and families lounging in front of a fire, not cold white walls and concrete. There was nothing soft here, no cracks in the sterile perfection that somehow forgot that human beings were themselves imperfect. It made Mal miss the dirt and the smells and the traditions of his army. The tents that leaked, the cots with wobbly legs, the exhaustion at the end of a march. Those were honest, human.

“I’ve known him since I was nineteen,” said Khiloh. “Lived this together.”

“We’ll miss him, the both of us,” said Mal. “But there’s nothing equal to the joy in that building about now. Not gonna mourn it.”

“He kept me sane,” said Khiloh, his tears not hidden, or even wiped aside.

“You did the same for him,” said Mal, wishing he didn’t have to grieve in a cold room with no place to run to. Folk who’d never been in war tended to think of soldiers as cold, tough, unshakable. That wasn’t the truth of it. There were more tears shed in a war – man just learned to do it when he could hide his face, learned to cry when he was cleaning a weapon, digging a trench, sitting on watch. After a while, the things that could make a man cry changed, and he lost the urge to do it much. But that wasn’t toughness, it was numbness. Maybe that was the matter with this kid. He didn’t go numb. Should have happened years ago.

Khiloh gulped and looked away. Too much honesty for one day, for one lonely man about to lose his only anchor. He didn’t seem to care how vulnerable he was, or that Mal could grab his gun in a blink. Maybe he just was just sure Mal wouldn’t try.

“You know what?” said Mal softly. Khiloh looked up with a certain amount of hesitation. “You are one lousy prison guard.”

Khiloh laughed weakly, an involuntary smile. “Thought we figured that out a long time ago.”

“The true depth of your awfulness is starting to sink in now,” said Mal dryly. “You really and truly are terrible at this.”

“Well, you make a shitty prisoner, mister snarky inner-teddy-bear-guy,” retorted Khiloh, his eyes clearing.

“Now that, I conjure I can be proud of,” said Mal. His next words were spoken gently. “You shouldn’t trust me so much.”

A knock on the door. They looked up, and an exhausted-looking nurse smiled. Kelli. “Hi. Sorry about the wait.”

“Really threw a wrench into my busy schedule,” said Mal. She chuckled weakly, the tired sound of someone who appreciated a joke but lacked the energy to laugh. When she put her hand around his arm and led him down the hall, he didn’t resent it. The familiarity of that touch seemed wearily companionable, and Mal couldn’t help smiling inside.