I

She is leaving.

The crew have mostly kept their distance since she announced it. Her explanation was clearly unsatisfactory. They had stared at her in disbelief and it had been Jayne -- /JAYNE/ -- who had asked her what the real story was. Kaylee has not spoken to her since. Book tried to get her to talk about it, and she had politely shut him down. Zoë looks at her with angry disgust in her eyes, and River merely smiles and says that they will keep the shuttle warm until Inara returns.

She is leaving.

Her shuttle is all packed up -- the walls, once draped in luscious fabrics, are bare. The scent of incense, even, seems to have faded as the trappings of her presence were slowly stripped away. Her boxes sit in the centre of the floor, between the sofa and the bed. Even the bed, once swathed in drapes, dripping with pillows, is almost Spartan now, stripped down to the strictly utilitarian parts: mattress, sheets, comforter and pillow.

She is terrified of leaving these people, leaving her home, but she's more afraid of what will happen if she stays. Terrified of these people becoming even more necessary -- terrified of losing a single one of them. She is horrifically close to being in a position that no Companion should allow herself to be put in -- horrifically close to giving it all up and settling down much as one could on a ship like Serenity. She caught herself thinking about what purpose she could have on the ship if she were not the Ambassador, what she could do to get by if she were not a Companion.

She is leaving because she must. Because change is inevitable, and if she were to stay, she is not sure what would change, but only that the change would be irrevocable. She could get lost in Mal's eyes, be swept up in the whirlwind of his strength and heart and never look back. She could and would be by his side until the day some hwoon dahn's lucky shot found its mark and stole him from her. Mal will never live safely, will never back down when he feels he is right, and Inara knows only too well that that is the recipe for a short life and a brutal death.

She is leaving because if she walks away now, she may recover from the losses, from the pain.

If she stayed and one day had to hold him as his eyes fell shut and his heart stopped beating, she would never recover.

II

She is leaving. Again.

Her things are all packed, and the room stands now as an anonymous shrine to sensuality and glamour. It could be any room in any House on any of the Allied planets. All that made it Inara's is packed up in the crates. She looks over the boxes and a small smile plays on her lips.

She is leaving.

*

Some of the others, the ones who had coaxed tales of Serenity and her crew from Inara, were anything but surprised. There had been an unofficial pool going on, practically. How long would she last at the House if her pirate captain came for her, if he'd needed her? The general conclusion had been 'not long'. The general conclusion was not wrong.

She is leaving. It was settled the moment that a scruffy Browncoat strode into the lobby in his scuffed boots and demanded to see Inara. Not Miss Serra, not Companion Serra -- his use of her titles might have mitigated the offence of not making an appointment -- but just Inara. His speech was uncultured, his manner abrasive. He had called out her name when the guards tried to escort him from the premises, and Inara -- who had been with a client -- had emerged from her room. She'd frozen upon seeing him, a look on her face that none had seen before.

"Mal," she had whispered.

Her voice seemed to echo around the high-ceilinged room even more than his yell had.

Inara is leaving, the House Mistress thought, smiling ruefully. A woman who can look at a man the way she is looking at this man has no business being a Companion.

*

The moment she ushers Mal into a spare room and closes the door behind him, Inara knows that she is leaving here; leaving the life she thought she had wanted for the man she knows she does.

She is leaving the House, leaving the Guild, leaving whom she once was.

She knows, once again, that she is at a crossroads, that change is inevitable. She knows that she has chosen Serenity and chosen Mal even though she hisses that he should not be here, that he should have waved first, that she is with a client right now. She knows that she will go with him, and that nothing will ever be the same.

Mal looks around once, unimpressed at the opulence around him, and his attention returns to her, his eyes intent and dark as the night sky. He came back for her, he tells her, sacrificing pride for honesty, defying her to silence him again.

He's there, and he's looking at her, and she knows that she can't walk away from this unchanged. This is a point of no return: she can either be brave for once in her life -- stand and face herself, face him -- or she can keep running and always regret it.

"I came back for you, 'Nara," he said, and kissed her. "Come home."

*

She is leaving, but she doesn't think of it as leaving. She thinks of it as going home.