Though they would each likely have taken offence at the suggestion, and found the other to bear the larger part of the blame, neither of them was able to share the secrets of their respective inner worlds, which largely remained a mystery to themselves. They were coming to rely on their bodies to communicate things that their minds found impossible to contemplate or their mouths to formulate.

Chiefly, that they might have a future together.

Hadn’t it always been that way? River interpreted it as the parts of them that could together create new life calling to each other in little pre-existence voices. They had from the first felt it as a pressing readiness for union that overcame all their objections to each other. In truth, they were both more at ease in their bodies than their minds. And what did their bodies care if life together meant abandoning the ones they separately led? Good! – then get together, be together, stay together, now! What did their bodies care that there were limits to this way of communicating? There was only him, her. Now.

So after their conversation on Dryden they avoided each other, fearful of approaching yet still confident that there would be a coming together – during the night, without much talking being done.

Mal wasn’t sleeping when Inara descended halfway down his bunk ladder.

“Will you come to the shuttle?” she asked.

He followed wordlessly, so glad she had come.

They were making love – him sitting, her on his lap – when she stopped moving, pulled back and looked at him.

She asked him: “Are we talking about it now?”

And almost instantly he knew what she meant.

“She wanted us never to be able to do this,” Inara continued. “To never get over it. But we are. We will.”

A long pause and she stood up. Pulled on a short slip, took out a folded bed cover, shook it out and spread it on the floor, positioned a long mirror against the wall. “I’ve been thinking about this, since we left Dryden. Trust me.”

She led him to the cover, pushed him down, sideways to the mirror. “Kneel,” she said. She put a foot between his knees and pushed them apart. It was something Saffron had done. Turning her back to him she knelt down too and backed up against him, as Saffron had told her to do.

“Don’t know if I got the guts for this,” he whispered into her hair.

“You have,” she said. “I have.”

“Ain’t no doubt about that,” he said, smiling in spite of the situation. “Got guts enough for both of us.”

She leant forward, positioned his cock and pushed back down on him. It didn’t matter how it felt.

“Look in the mirror,” she said. “Tell me what you see.”

He looked. Her rocking backwards and forwards, the slip pushed up around her waist, his hands spread over her hips. “Us,” he said.

She straightened. Wrapped his arms around her.

“There is no-one else,” she said.

“Was worried the whole time that I was hurting you,” he whispered again.

“I’d wanted that, you, inside me, for a long time.”

“From damn near the minute I set eyes on you. Wanted you.”

She opened her eyes, looked at their reflection in the mirror. “You’re beautiful,” she said.

He smiled. “Said the swan to the sparrow.”

She was rising and falling on the whole length of his cock, now that she was slippery wet enough. Neither of them had thought that it would be a night for declarations: they both felt that he had never been so deep, nor she so yielding, because of it. For a while their eyes were closed as she sat back on him and slowly ground.

“I don’t want to stop,” she said.

“Right with you there,” Mal replied.

“But I want to say something to you.”

“Can’t you do that? I can do that: talk and fuck at the same time.”

Inara laughed. “You don’t say ‘fuck’!”

“’s that kind of night. Anything can happen. Like ” – somehow, with some ungraceful shifting and heaving, he manoeuvred her beneath him – “that thing you was going to say to me. ‘bout me – me” – his voice lowered, “about me loving you.”

She stared at him. “No, it was about me loving you.”

Mal stared back. “Inara.”

She closed her eyes with the beauty of the moment and blood came into her face with the effort of holding back sudden tears. He nudged each eye with his nose. “Don’t cry.” He kissed her. “I love you.”

At this a ragged sob escaped Inara’s lips, try as she might to clamp them together, and she started to cry.

He stroked her face and continued to tell her how he felt about her between deep sighs. “And I ain’t saying none of this to try and get past something that Saffron put in our way. Though, the thing with the mirror – reckon we should carry on with that.”

He succeeded in making her laugh – a strange, convulsive, mucousy sound. “I have to say, things have gone better than I expected!”

“Should of known you’d know what to do.”

“I didn’t. I don’t. I don’t.” And the details of her current predicament, forgotten since deciding to go to Mal’s bunk, returned. “We still haven’t talked about what happened. Or the other things that happened because of it.”

That. Nandi.

Mal sat up, rubbed his brow. “Not sure which one I’d less like to talk about.”

“Everything I said at the time – it wasn’t true. I couldn’t bear that you slept with her.”

Mal was amazed by her admission, and encouraged to attempt some sort of explanation of his own actions. “After what happened – with Saffron, we said we were going to forget it. Just forget it. And things settled straight back into the normal run of things between us as I remember. And the normal run of things was where there was pretty much nothing between us. Nothing much besides bickering and hurting. And longing. That was me. And never hoping. Just too much to get past. Saffron just put a feathered cap on it all.”

“I thought – afterwards, when I saw you coming out of her room – I thought, that was you, putting it behind you.”

“Trying to. Did you – say you were leaving to get at me, for that?”

It was all coming out, almost in a rush. “There was an element of that. I was so close to falling” – she lowered her eyes and her voice, “I was in love with you.”

Mal leaned towards her and kissed her in acknowledgement of her words. “You thought you were dying” he stated, following events through in his mind. “Simon knew.”

“No-one else knew,” she said hurriedly. “And it wasn’t that I wanted to keep it from you. I didn’t want to burden you.”

“Don’t know why you felt you couldn’t confide in me, steady, dependable guy that I am.”

They knew they’d have to return to all of what they were touching upon, but they couldn’t stay on any one subject, so eager were they for answers.

“No, steady – not,” said Inara. “Do you know how horrific it was seeing you coming back from Niska’s? I thought then – this is not the Core, life is hard out here; but it doesn’t have to be this bad.”

“’Nara – why’d you leave your House?” The mystery that, of all the mysteries about her, had perplexed him the most.

Suddenly Inara felt exhausted: the conversation on Dryden, vigorous, early-hours sex, Saffron, life on the Rim, Miranda and its consequences, her illness … She reached out to Mal. “Come to bed. I’ll tell you what I can before I fall asleep.”

Concerned, Mal straightened the sheets and covers, lay Inara down on plumped-up pillows and climbed in beside her.

“It took a few years, but the atmosphere in the House was becoming more and more politicised. When politics had never had any place in our life – not in our lifetime nor at any time before that. This was during the war. You know I supported unification. I thought it would enable the Border and Rim worlds to have more of a share of the Core’s wealth. I didn’t understand why there was resistance. I was very sophisticated in some ways but incredibly naïve in others. This is – difficult to talk about. Painful.”

“Don’t talk anymore,” said Mal. “Tell me tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

She told him she loved him again. Then he watched her until he saw that she was sleeping.