Mal turned away from the screen as soon as the connection with Inara was broken, meaning to get back to whatever it was – what was it? – that he’d been doing before he’d been told of her wave.

As he turned he found himself almost blinded by the low rays of the autumn sun, shining through the store’s window and straight into the cortex booth. He stepped back into it, stood on the line between shadow and sunlight.

What was it, what precise thing was it that created that moment when a butterfly first broke through the cocoon that encased it, and emerged, fully-formed, into the next stage of its existence?

Was it as painful, and as sweet, for the butterfly as it was for him, Mal, right now? Looking down at his hands, he wondered if they had always been this way, so solid and so glowing with light. The light of that sun, up there, the one that cast its forgiving rays over Warminger, over the planet, over the Verse; the entire Verse. It was the sun, the sun that had broken the cocoon of misery that had shrouded him; and the sun was Inara. Her love. Her love; and, yes, the Verse’s love. The hands that he still held in front of him seemed to blur, as his eyes filled helplessly with tears.

He recognized this feeling; he had known it in the past, many years ago. He’d realized, then, sitting in his neighborhood church on Shadow, listening to the Gospel and the words of the preacher, that there were many there who had not shared his faith. He’d seen his faith as unusual, and the understanding that anchored it, which he’d kept to himself, lest he was seen as strange or self-exulting: what God was, what Christ was, what he was, and the other members of the congregation, all the people on Shadow, everything on Shadow, and beyond, out into the furthest reaches of the Verse.

Into the black. He’d thought he’d understood the black, that it was the opposite of the good, the life that awaited him if he remained faithful. But – and he laughed a quick joyful laugh of new understanding – he saw it now, only now, what the black was, the one out there, beyond the planet’s atmosphere, and the one that he had borne within, almost at the cost of his humanity. And it had been necessary, all the suffering, the suffering that he would never have been able to imagine he could have experienced and endured, it had been necessary for him to come to a full understanding of what he had thought he’d known before, that had seemed so important once and which suddenly he was willing to find important again.

He closed his eyes and trembled with his tears as God, love, the sun, humanity – all returned to him, deepened and renewed. How ridiculous, pointless and insignificant it had been of him, to try to extinguish them because – why? because the war had destroyed the certainties that had sustained him hitherto: that God and his Verse, in recognition of his faith, would bestow upon him an adulthood sufficient to compensate him for the childhood and adolescence that he’d had to endure. He smiled to himself: only now could he admit the nature of his former transactional relationship with God. Whereas he knew now that the perception of a separation between them – between himself and God - that had made this relationship possible to formulate was wrong.

He had known, somehow – how? – when he had first laid eyes on her, that she would lead him to this point, if he could only hold on to her, follow her, learn from her. Everything that had happened between them, it had all been as it had had to be. What a – and he took a deep, shuddering breath – what an inexpressibly wonderful woman she was. And – unthinkable, but irresistible – was this what she did? What she had done for him, was this what her work was all about?

She loved her clients. He understood that, now, too. Or, she brought love to them; offered it to them, if they were able to take it. Not her love, but love itself, the one that he’d been so certain of before he’d left Shadow. That he’d denigrated it, this gift of hers – of course, that had been bound to happen. He had been so far, so deep into the black by then, as far as it was possible to go without having lost every final particle of humanity, that he’d had almost nothing left with which to respond. But he had. He had responded.

And if it hadn’t been for her presence on Serenity, at the heart of the half-death he had fallen into, would he have been able to respond to River? – to feel her need and permit himself to be guided by it?

And what of Zoe? Would any of it have been possible – Inara, River, Miranda – if she hadn’t been there, holding him just short of the abyss?

He slight smile played around his lips again, as he fully grasped, with an understanding that made his chest swell with emotion, the enormity of these three women in saving his life.

Compensation. They were compensation indeed.

______________________________________________________________

Strangely, then, as he headed from the store in the direction the Anzu, his mind turned towards Saffron. What part did she play in his decision to journey to Southdown Abbey? He had already considered going, before Zoe had given him the note with her name on it. But he had to admit to some sort of compulsion to find out what had persuaded Book to commit it to paper. Was this compulsion of the same type as the instinct that had held him to Zoe, Inara and River? He could hardly believe it was so, considering what Saffron had inflicted on him, with Inara. He was certain that it was her likely connection to Betta Korski that sustained his interest in Saffron. But – and he remembered how Zoe had reproached him for turning their work into a mission to save River – it was impossible to deny that he felt an unnerving sense of recognition of what she had gone through and what she had become.

Did he want to save her? Had Book been trying to do just that?

Inara had not made him responsible for the losses that came out of Miranda; how could he have thought that she had? She had questioned only his want of care, of himself, of the crew, of her. He stopped suddenly, realizing how fast he had been walking. The image he held of her was still so clear, so powerful. ‘You know where to find me. I know where to find you.’ She meant to find him, to be found; and he would find her.

He started walking again. More slowly. Carefully, as though she was there by his side.