I'm sure that all of you who are familiar with Pablo Neruda's oeuvre will instantly recognize the yurt scene from his autobiography, ahem. _____________________________________

Mal stood, in his mind, at the threshold of the open door that led to knowledge and experience of death. A door that once opened could never be closed again. In there, in that empty yet chaotic space that led to both heaven and hell, was his ability to end his own existence. It lurked there, breathing and prowling like a mythical beast. He was afraid of it and not afraid. What did he care about death? And yet, he was alive, and being alive came with a necessary sense of wanting his existence to continue.

It was not the war that had brought him to it; it was something in himself. He knew that, hated it, didn’t understand it. Connected it vaguely to a memory of his mother’s bitterness, his father’s rage. Didn’t want to waste any time thinking about that kind of shit.

He shifted his hands on Serenity’s controls. She was flying smoothly; River was piloting, feeling her way with the ship through the black. He trusted them both; they would bring them safely to Cornelius.

But – Zoe wasn’t there. Zoe wasn’t there. He had said goodbye to her on Pity and she wouldn’t be there when he got back. She had pushed a piece of paper into his hand before she had turned to go – a note, she had said, in Book’s handwriting, something about Saffron. Mal had it now, underneath his hand and against the worn padding on the controls. It was important; he’d look at it later, when his mind came back into focus, when he’d torn himself away from the threshold of the open door that led to death…

“It would scare the others, but it doesn’t scare me,” said River, very clearly, as though she had been following his thoughts like a text. “Stay there, or come away. It doesn’t matter either way. I’ll stay with you, even if you go inside.”

Mal’s throat was unbearably tight. Tearing his eyes away from the wordless understanding of the black, he dared a glance at River. She, too, was filled with the emotion of the connection between them.

“It is not inexcusable that you didn’t give me up,” she said.

Her words felt like an absolution.

____________________________________________

Cornelius was cold. The ground was hard, covered in sparse, pale green grass. Around them were low hills covered in the same wan vegetation; and in the distance, grey mountains under an almost-white sky.

When the ramp lowered, Mal saw that the settlers were already gathered. Striding towards them with the first crate, he took in at a glance the quality of these people: the tough, self-selected vanguard with no time for anything but the expansion of their world. There were no children. No running water. No power.

And barely any buildings: only a tin-roofed cube of breeze-blocks without doors standing next to a circular tent with a peaked roof. When he was invited into the tent for tea, Mal realized that it was the settlers’ main and only dwelling. They had barely engaged with any of the crew of Serenity; the woman who appeared to be their leader – if only morally so – had spoken so far only to give him her name and the barest of instructions about where things should be left.

It was not unfriendliness, Mal saw, when he was sitting inside the tent holding a glass of hot tea: it was simply that Serenity and her crew were outside of the settlers’ focus.

The woman, Tara, explained to Mal how the bicarium would be used to power the settlement; how Cornelius was not intended as a farming colony, but for mining; how Pity, Cornelius and its sister settlements would be self-sufficient, and free. The color in Tara’s cheeks, doll-like circles of wind-harried pink in a face of soft china white, intensified; Mal could see that her passion almost hurt her when she talked about the future.

“Looks like winter’s coming,” Mal observed. Tara nodded. “I’d guess it snows pretty hard hereabouts.” Tara nodded, smiled. “You people going to have time to get your houses up?”

As Tara indicated the interior of the tent with her hands, the long plait of shining black hair that had been resting on her shoulder swung down. “This is our house,” she said. “It’s a yurt. People – not just my people – have used them as their homes, and everything else, for centuries, millennia even. And in places far colder than this. And they’re mobile; we can dismantle the frame and the covering in no time, set up again anywhere where we’re working. You can appreciate that, I’m sure.”

It was Mal’s turn to smile. “Sure can.”

At no particular signal, then, it seemed to Mal, Tara’s face, which had relaxed, became suffused once again with intensity.

“It is quite a thing,” she said, leaning towards him, “to find a ship like yours which would do a job like this, out in the Rim here, and not take off with the bicarium.”

“Not sure if that’s a compliment, but I’m going to take it like one.”

“We know all about you, though!” Tara continued, fervently. “We know you’re the ship that went to Miranda.”

Mal said nothing.

“Tell me about it,” Tara said.

Still Mal said nothing; then, suddenly, he almost recoiled as Tara leant so close to him that they were only inches from touching.

“Tell me about it!” she repeated. “I want to understand it! How could there be a world out there, right on the edge? It must have had a high degree of technology to sustain a population of that size. And what was it for? What were those people doing there? Just answer my questions; just facts. I won’t make you remember anything else.”

Amazed by Tara’s desperate curiosity, and therefore almost convinced by her promise, Mal found himself agreeing to answer her questions.

_________________________________________

River was delighted by the yurt, particularly the idea that at night everybody slept on the floor at the same time.

“I’m glad Dogger didn’t come now,” she said to Simon and Kaylee, who were lying on Kaylee’s bunk. “I really wanted him to, but he won’t ever leave Pity. He told me that, you know, in a psychic way. But he would have freaked if he’d had to sleep with all these people.”

Simon and Kaylee turned to each other and laughed. “Freaked?” said Simon. “Freaked? Since when did you talk like a – teenager?”

“It’s how Dogger talks, in his head. He’s a teenager. I’m learning from him. I want to.”

“No he doesn’t!” said Simon in the scornful tones of an older brother.

River ignored him. “And I want to sleep in the yurt tonight.” She pulled her chin down and opened her eyes wide when she said ‘yurt’.

“Don’t say it like that. They might hear you. They’ll think you’re mocking them. And you can’t sleep there.”

“Why not?” Kaylee and River retorted, both at the same time but for quite different reasons. Kaylee pulled Simon’s arm. “It would be fun for River.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. She might keep everyone awake.”

“But not so much fun,” Kaylee continued, by no means discouraged.

“The Captain is sleeping there,” River said. Though Mal had expressed no such intention, River was certain that he would accede to any request from her.

“Oh?

“I’ll sleep right next to him. And he’ll look after me. Just like he always does.”

___________________________________________

River, having obediently submitted to Simon’s nightly regime of injections, slept soundly beside Mal in the yurt. All around him in the dark there were sleeping bodies; somebody was snoring intermittently, making Mal question for a moment the wisdom of giving in to River’s entreaties.

Later, he was in that state where he yet had an awareness of falling asleep when, with a slight jolt, he felt a hand on his leg, high up on his thigh. He didn’t move. Another hand, on his chest. A face, leaning towards him, placing a kiss on his cheek.

It was pitch black inside the tent. Mal reached up with his hands, felt soft long hair for just a moment before the person who had kissed him pulled back again. He imagined Tara’s hair unplaited while the woman climbed on him with grace and agility, quickly pushed her hands under his shirt and over his chest. Drew them down again, undid his pants, bent to place another kiss, shifted upwards and pushed herself backwards on to his undiscriminating cock. Lying over him so that he could hear her almost-suppressed murmurs of pleasure, she raised herself forwards along the length of his cock and sank back again until he came, then climbed off him, fumbled for a moment under her skirt, kissed him again, and crept away.

Had she come too? Mal wasn’t sure. Thought was lost to him; there was only sensation, the pitch darkness around him now charged with it – the lingering smell of the woman who had just coupled with him, the throbbing in his body, the raw almost overwhelming power of sex without history or future, the pure desire that had brought the woman to him, over the other sleeping bodies, almost innocent in its purity, almost like – like, oh God, like love. The love he knew. The love that he shared with –

Inara.

Mal turned on to his side, unaware of anything except the need to win the struggle against a sob that rose from his chest to his throat. In pieces, painfully, the hard shell of cruelty and indifference that he had clothed himself in since his first conversation with Zoe about Miranda, came away. Moments flashed into his mind: making love with her, the things he had said to her. Her hands, touching him, like the woman just now – needing, and in her need, giving. Opening him up, bringing something out in him that had to be brought out in order for him to live.

Inara knew all about that. That was what she did. From deep within, he saw her: good, beautiful, kind, giving, loving woman.

He ached with this realization of what she was.