A.N.: And after a many a month of writer’s block, here is one of two sequels to Defining Moments, my other posted fic! This one is the angstier version in conclusion to my other story. Three guesses as to how it is angsty…There can be no fluff without angst! Mal/Inara. Not mine, I just play with them.

A special thanks to my amazing roommate beta and everyone who reviewed last time! You keep me inspired!

Reviews are like oranges: They may not rhyme with anything, but they sure are sweet! *~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sihnon Dusk

There weren’t many things that drove Malcolm Reynolds to speechlessness.

But the sight of the last whisper of his soul being swathed in blue silks and bathed in several hundred flowers had made him forget the meaning of words.

He had watched listlessly for hours as six beautiful companions worked in tandem to create the funeral bed, never speaking as they imparted their knowledge of exquisite beauty to intricately disguise its tragic flaw.

Love.

It was a travesty of humanity, such an emotion. He knew that it was necessary, kept a certain balance that would have otherwise caused other kinds of mayhem. Love and hate. Opposites. Contradictions. But as he had stared at Inara’s cold, beautiful face that was being covered by a veil similar to the one she had worn when she had first stamped on his ego, he realized that love and hate were one in the same.

Because it was only through his experience in love had he ever experienced true hate.

He hated how she could undo him with just a look. He hated how he never meant anything he ever said to her, because he had never said anything worth hearing. He hated that she left him and took the only part of himself that he had left with her. He hated that she had taken the bullet meant for him. He hated that he loved her so fiercely. He hated that she’d never known.

But most of all, he hated that she couldn’t let him hate her.

Because nothing could have been easier. Hating her would have made this no more than another body on all the others he had failed. That voluminous chasm of his mind had already been divested.

But he didn’t hate her. The opposite. Or the same. He’d never felt emptiness as complete as the black.

“Sir.”

Mal starts as Zoe places a hand on his shoulder. He realizes that the Companions have long ago flowed effortlessly back into their sanctuary, leaving him to dwell in a canopy of darkness that reaches far beyond the deep sapphire of the delicate Sihnon dusk. Zoe grips his shoulder tighter and he realizes she had been speaking.

“It’s time to go.”

He almost wishes that he could let the pain engulf him with totality for a while longer. For a funeral ceremony, or some way that is meant to say ‘good bye, time heals all’ but truly only tends to make the pain more enduring by recognizing the deceitful lie. Some way to know that he will always have a part of her because he will always feel the righteous pain that comes with loss.

But he is not just any man and wishes are not horses.

He turns at Zoe’s last beckoning and melts from love. He swallows his grief, knowing that it will slowly suffocate him, choke him, until he is no longer even the breathing shadow of his former self. But it is not the end. He has lived without her before and he will continue to do so with the shallow knowledge that it was what she would have wanted. What she died for.

But, then again, he has never been that kind.