Her head tells her it can't be, that she must be wrong, but her heart knows his movements like she knows her own, and there is no mistaking that the man being led to the gallows is Mal.

The noose is around his neck, head covered in a black sack before her client manages to stay the executioner's hand.

It takes nearly four hours of arguing and negotiations and an agreement to pay reparation for Mal's crimes before the death sentence is finally lifted and he is reluctantly released into her custody. An hour more before she gets him to her apartments and wires the credits to her client's account. It's a lot, she has barely enough to cover it, but the money isn't important.

It is a shock to see him. He looks thin, leaner than she remembers. And there is a slump to his shoulders that wasn't there before, a look of defeat about him that, despite everything, she's never seen on him.

He wanders around her room, fingering small objects on her tables, but there are none of the sardonic comments that used to accompany such perusals.

He doesn't speak at all.

She watches him quietly, feeling the old attraction and awkwardness spring to life between them as if it's been no longer than the span of a heartbeat since they last saw each other and not years. But it has been years, and they are neither of them the same two people they were.

"Mal—" she starts softly, the word suffused with so many emotions – exasperation, affection, confusion, sorrow, longing – but he interrupts her before she can complete whatever thought it was she was trying to express, and his words have her sinking to her chair in shock and disbelief.

"Kaylee's dead," he says, voice flat. He doesn't turn to face her or meet her eyes, just stands there, one hand holding a tiny jade horse from her small menagerie, head bowed.

She closes her eyes, feeling the words like a physical blow, and she is suddenly exhausted under the weight of it - for a moment she thinks she might pass out, the way her throat has closed up and her ears ring and how the blackness threatens to pull her under and drown her.

She draws in a shaky breath and when she looks at him again, her eyelashes glitter with moisture.

"What happened?" she asks sadly and he sets the horse down with a grimace, hunching his shoulders as though he's preparing to receive a blow, and she knows what he's going to say before the words even pass his lips – she hasn't forgotten the way he thinks – but something in his voice makes her believe it really might be true this time.

"Was my fault," he says.

"Mal—" she says again, refuting his claim as her tears spill over her lashes.

He gives a harsh, self-deprecating laugh and lifts his head to look at her, eyes stinging, knowing her and her desire to comfort just as well as she knows him and his penchant for taking on the guilt for everything that goes wrong in the verse.

"It wasn't like Wash," he whispers and she can hear the tears in his voice. "No causes, no doin' the right thing. Was just me, sendin' her in where she didn't belong."

Inara doesn't remember standing or how she's suddenly cradling his head between her hands; all she knows is she cannot leave him to this grief alone. She cannot leave herself to it alone.

He catches her arms and she's not sure it isn't to push her away, but then he surrenders, his forehead coming to rest against hers and he's holding on so tight she's afraid he might break apart if she lets go.

"'m sorry I didn't wave you. Kaylee was the only one… knew how to find you," he says, his voice breaking as the tears finally come and it's terrible. It's so terrible, the aching sobs that tear from his throat and it hurts like nothing she's ever felt before.

But there's more.

He tells her in choked and broken words about the anger from Jayne, the reproach from Zoe, the outright accusations from Simon, and that in the end, they either left him or he drove them away.

Simon packed his things right after Kaylee's funeral and took River with him, leaving them with an empty cockpit and an empty infirmary; an empty ship full of loss.

At their next stop, Jayne just never came back.

He can't get through telling what happened between him and Zoë, and Inara hushes him finally as they sink to the floor, unable to hear more, not sure she ever wants to know what could have finally driven the other woman away.

The sun is low on the horizon by the time either of them speaks again, the blinds in the windows casting long, thin shadows across the floor to where they now sit. The way they fall across him reminds her of prison bars, cold and bleak, and something in her rebels against the image, twisting her stomach.

"Mal," she says softly, urging him to wake with a gentle nudge of her shoulder. He startles, his head coming up fast, eyes darting about without recognition until he suddenly remembers where he is. She sees the moment when everything comes back to him and he averts his gaze in shame.

"Come on," she says gently, wriggling free enough to stand against the protests of her stiffened back and knees. "You need to sleep."

He rises and follows her silently, hesitating on the threshold of her bedroom as she turns down the covers.

"Forget about it for once, Mal. Please," she implores, wishing for what might as well be the millionth time that he could get past what it is she does.

He steps into the room guiltily and lets her sit him on the bed and she helps him off with his boots, moving on to his shirt without any protest or expectation from him. She almost wishes for one of his snide comments, something that would make everything right again even though she knows it's impossible.

When she gets in beside him he spoons up behind her, arms snaking around her in honest need of the contact, clinging to her like a drowning man to a life preserver; she wonders how true that might be, if she's all he has left.

She feels the rise and fall of his chest against her back, the heat of his breath on her neck and she listens to him breathe, afraid that if she lets herself sleep, he might disappear. She wraps her arms around his and holds him back just as tightly.

“Why did you give yourself up?” she whispers into the half light and the movement of his chest pauses almost imperceptibly but he makes a questioning sound in his throat so she continues. “At the precinct, they told me… You turned yourself in. Even knowing what the penalty would be—”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, squeezing her gently to stave off her questions. She feels her throat constrict as her suspicion is confirmed, but she doesn’t say another word.

In the night she dreams of the press of his lips to her temple and soft, reverent fingers caressing her hair; the benediction of his tears.

In the morning she wakes in her bed, smelling Mal all around her.

Alone.