AN1: Fast upload of chapters (and two at a time!) I know, but I want this up before the BDM. Reviews are still really nice though, so please tell me what you liked/didn't like. Thanks so much for the reviews on chapter one! (Which is here by the way.

Part Two

Mal jerked awake. Simon was shaking his arm, none too gently. ‘Captain!’

‘What the...? Doc, I was trying to sleep!’

‘It’s four pm.’

‘Don’t make much difference in the black now, does it?’

Simon made a noise which could have been amusement but seemed more like annoyance. ‘Of course. Regardless of that, I need you to wake up a moment.’

‘You wanna look at my eyes?’ Mal muttered blearily, still not quite awake.

‘Not right now,’ Simon answered awkwardly. ‘We... and by we I mean Jayne, Zoë and I... have found a job. Another hospital. We’ve got buyers for the medicine, plans to get in and out...’

‘Do I need to come with you?’

‘What?’

‘Since our last hospital job ended with a bounty hunter sneaking on board my boat looking for little sis, I gotta figure the reason we’re pulling another is cause you need something for me we ain’t got. Am I getting warm?’

‘I need to liberate a particular type of mender,’ Simon admitted. ‘But you don’t need to come with us, it’s fairly portable.’

‘Like the one you used for my ear?’

‘Like that, yes. More complicated, unfortunately. Hence the need for the hospital. But it should help establish how long your recuperation is likely to be.’

‘So we don’t need it to fix me up?’

‘I...’

‘You don’t know.’

‘No, I don’t. I’m sorry, Captain, but the eye is so delicate and...’

Mal interrupted Simon before he gave himself a panic attack. ‘No one’s accusing you of anything, doc. If you say you need the machine, you need the machine. Now, do I have any say in this plan, or has Zoë launched some kind of coup?’

‘No coup, sir,’ Zoë answered from the doorway.

‘Consider it delegation,’ Wash observed from somewhere near his wife.

Mal jerked. ‘How many people are in this room!’

‘Including you?’ Wash said. ‘Five.’

‘Me, Simon, Zoë, you... who else?’ Mal asked.

‘Me,’ a quiet voice answered from the side of the room.

‘You’ve been pretty quiet there, mei mei,’ he said to River. ‘No words of wisdom on your brother’s job?’

‘The melody is seldom the problem. The repeating counter-melody is what causes the problem. Especially when it returns.’ She looked around at the effect this had on them. ‘Be careful on the way back.’

‘See that, right there?’ Mal said. ‘That’s why no one believes that you’re as crazy as you talk.’

She laughed. ‘One of us will get a shock.’

That was eerie. Moving on. ‘So, what’s the plan?’

‘Kaylee...’

‘Doc, no good dangerous plan ever began with Kaylee. I thought Zoë’n Jayne were doing this.’

‘And me,’ Simon reminded him.

‘Well that’s a given, though don’t make the mistake of thinkin I’m thrilled about that part either. Why’re you bringing Kaylee into it?’

‘Because our plan depends on someone looking like they know how to take a machine apart.’

‘And then...?’

‘Captain, I’m not sure we have time to...’

‘Doctor, which one of us is in charge of this boat? I’d thank you to carefully consider our titles before you answer.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Simon sighed. ‘I’ll be brief: we’ve procured credentials of sorts which should get us into the hospital. The security staff and reception will let us in because we have the right passes, and we’ll be bringing a pretty girl with a toolbox. There is no reason for them to suspect us. I find the machine and let Kaylee tweak with it for an hour or so while Jayne and I take some drugs. Kaylee explains that the machine is broken and needs outside maintenance. We leave with the drugs and the mender. Deliver the drugs to our buyer, take the payment, and then I get to see how much damage you did to your eyes.’

‘Seems a lot of that plan’s dependant on hospital folk buying Kaylee as one of their mechanics,’ Mal said.

‘People always believe Kaylee. The same way they’re always scared of Jayne.’

‘Bet your gorram ass they are,’ Jayne added in satisfaction.

Mal successfully fought off the urge to yell at someone for not telling him that Jayne had entered. ‘So why is Jayne going on this little adventure? He doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in core folk.’

‘No, but he’ll match their picture of an engineer. We need someone who looks like they have lots of muscle and not much brain.’

‘Hey!’

‘I said “looks like”,’ Simon said innocently. ‘And we’re talking about the core, remember? You don’t care what we pansy-ass pretty-boys think of your attributes.’ There was a certain relish in the way Simon repeated that last phrase that made Mal think Simon had just scored a point in the Simon-Jayne battle of wits. Wits being present on at least one side of the battle anyway.

Now, however, was not the time. ‘So what are Zoë and Wash doing?’

‘I’m flying getaway shuttle, naturally,’ Wash answered.

‘And Zoë is providing cover fire,’ Simon finished.

‘Cover fire for what?’ Mal exclaimed. ‘So far as I hear, there shouldn’t be a need for firing of any kind.’

‘No, there shouldn’t. But I’ve been on this ship long enough to know that it’s going to end with bullets no matter how well we plan. So that’s it. Book and River are staying on the ship, but Book will be up front talking to us, so that’s just you and River here.’

‘Wait just one minute...’

‘I’m sorry, Captain, we really have to go. We’ll all be fine.’ Mal might not have heard them all coming in, but the sound of the empty room was all too clear. Damn boy had been a hairs-breadth from patronising him! And then had the gall to just up and leave! He had a good mind to... sit here like a peaceful invalid until his crew came back to rescue him. He was never good at patience.

Simon burst into the room only a few minutes after he had left it so calmly.

‘Back so soon, doc?’ Mal quipped.

‘How did you know it was... never mind.’ Simon stood over the cot, and Mal felt cool metal placed into his hand. Simon’s soft hand wrapped itself around Mal’s calloused one, curving both their fingers round what he had recognised instantly as a pistol.

‘Simon?’ Mal said, quietly. ‘Not that I don’t appreciate your conviction in my prowess with weaponry, but I dunno how much use I’ll be with this right now.’

Simon’s fingers clenched around Mal’s tightly as he pulled both of their arms up to point vaguely at the doorway. His voice was tense. ‘If anyone comes up here and doesn’t say they’re part of the crew, aim at the door and shoot.’

‘Doc, I’m not shooting at what I can’t see. I could hit you! Or Kaylee, or River or...’

‘I’ll tell everyone to call before they come walking past.’ Mal pulled his hands from Simon’s. ‘No, Captain, listen! If anyone else gets here, they’ll have got past my trained assassin baby sister. You’ll only get one shot. If it makes you feel better, aim for the gut rather than the head, and if it’s one of us I’ll stitch them back up.’

‘Thought everyone was going to be fine?’

‘Everyone is.’ Mal couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or disgusted that Simon had reverted to his patronising/reassuring voice.

‘You didn’t sound so sure a minute ago.’

‘I’m a worrier, Captain, what can I do?’ Simon laughed lightly, inviting Mal to share the joke at his expense. Mal couldn’t laugh though. Simon’s hands were reflexively running underneath the edges of the bandages on the captain’s eyes and down his shoulders, reassuring himself that, in this, at least, his work had went as planned.

‘It’s a good plan, doc. You’ll be fine,’ Mal found himself adopting Simon’s calming tone.

‘Thank you.’ With one last tug of the bandages, Simon was gone.

Mal sat to wait. The Shepherd checked in on the comm. occasionally, and assured him that River was fine at her post. River, too, felt the need to have one of her strange conversations with him every half-hour or so. Even with that, he was developing a whole new understanding of why Wash and Simon glared daggers at them all when they returned even half an hour late. He ran through the plan in his head. He had been right, it was a good plan. A similar one to Ariel, but without the chance of River being spotted, so probably about a tenth as dangerous. And his crew had all had a hand in it, so between them they surely would have spotted any major flaws...

He was running through the possible trouble spots for the fourth time when he heard the shouting. Mal half-heartedly raised the gun, focussing it more seriously when the Preacher didn’t call down to tell him that it was his crew coming back.

Simon screamed, ‘Don’t shoot!’ a half-second before he came pelting into the infirmary.

‘Doc, you were about this close to...’ he trailed off when the machines he was connected to all started beeping at once. ‘Is that...?’

‘I disconnected them. I need to get you to the other side of the room.’

Mal tried to roll himself off the cot without aggravating any of his wounds. ‘What happened?’

Simon pulled him carefully but unceremoniously off the bed and hauled him to the makeshift cot at the side of the room. ‘No time for this right now. Zoë’s been shot.’

Part 3

Zoë’s been shot. Those words echoed strangely around Mal’s head, as if something was wrong about them he couldn’t quite pin down. Perhaps it was the knowledge that, despite all his dark thoughts, Zoë had got herself hurt around people that weren’t him. After years of believing that he was her bad-luck charm, it was no wonder his world felt sideways.

Alternately of couse, it could be the way that he was sidelined in the bustle of a busy infirmary, with no way of knowing how badly his second in command was hurt, and the only answer he seemed about to receive was ‘Not right now, Captain.’ You wouldn’t think it was possible to say Captain politely and dismissively, but Simon Tam was a genius after all.

Wash was protesting loudly about something, and Mal suspected that all his captainy authority wasn’t going to get him listened to this time. Or, to be more accurate, he wasn’t able to throw Wash against the wall right now.

Simon’s voice raised above Wash’s. ‘Wash, if you don’t get us in the air right now, it isn’t going to matter what I do for Zoë. And everyone needs to leave while I operate anyway. Unless someone has a strong desire to further delay me getting this bullet out of her chest?’

The room emptied, but he could hear the whispers outside the room – urgent and panicked.

Inside there was just Simon’s soft footfalls as he prepared himself for surgery.

There was a soft cough at the door. ‘You need a nurse.’

‘River,’ Simon responded gratefully. ‘Can you hold these for me?’

For a long while Mal did nothing but wonder how the Tam siblings could do something as complicated as surgery with barely a word spoken between them. Finally, Simon sighed in satisfaction, ‘There we go.’

‘Good strong roots,’ River agreed, or at least it appeared to be agreement. ‘Shoots will come back clean and sturdy.’

‘Yes,’ Simon answered happily. Was it possible that both the Tam’s were insane? River’s particular brand of insanity would make anyone else seem perfectly sane. And there was the way that... Or maybe he was overreacting and Simon had just gotten better at making her tangents seem like sense.

Simon’s voice went echoey, and Mal hoped for his own sake that the doctor was using the comm., else it seemed at least two of his senses were broke, not one.

‘Wash?’ Simon called. Well that was one problem down. ‘If we’re flying okay, your wife is out of surgery.’

‘She’s gonna be okay?’

‘She’s fine. The bullet missed everything important. Miraculously so, in fact, I’ve never seen a bullet to the chest miss like that.’

‘Can I see her?’ Wash asked.

‘Of course. That was nice flying, by the way, I hardly felt a thing.’

Wash sounded surprised at the praise. ‘It was nothing, doc. Thanks, though. I’m gonna put her on auto and come down in a few minutes, okay?’

‘Okay.’ Simon answered. He walked over to Mal’s side. ‘Your turn.’

‘Simon...’

Simon halted. ‘I’m sorry about before. I was just in such a hurry to get Zoë on the table. I should have taken the time to explain, but she was bleeding out too fast. She’s fine though. Or she will be. It was lucky.’

‘Guess you were right about the bullets flying,’ Mal observed.

‘This is one of the times I’d rather be wrong,’ Simon said. ‘The hospital part went fine, actually, did we say? It was the buyers that were... they’d rather have something for nothing I suppose.’

‘Buyers get like that,’ Mal said in a non-committal tone.

‘I know probably should have spotted that, but...’

Mal interrupted him. ‘You did fine, doc. Sometimes the buyer’s a snake, you just gotta factor that in. Which you did, by bringing in Zoë. And then talked that husband of hers down from crashing us all into some moon. Then finished it off by stitching her back up after she got hit.’ Mal was surprised to note to himself that this was at least as much about reassuring Simon as it was shutting off the doctor’s ramblings. ‘Did as well as I do most days. That was not, by the way, an invitation to contemplate stealing my ship. But you did good. What did I tell you? Any day we’re still flying’s shiny, okay?’

‘Right...’ Simon said. ‘Anyway, Captain, I’m sorry, I think you were going to say something before?’

‘I was gonna ask if you were sure you wanted to play with your new toy right now.’

‘My new... the mender?’

‘That’s the one,’ Mal said.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s been a long day, people were shooting at you, Wash was yelling, people were shooting at you, Jayne probably did something Jayne-like at some point during the heist, people were shooting at you...’

‘I’m fine, Captain.’

‘You sure? Wouldn’t want you slipping and accidentally mending my eyelids together.’

‘How many times do... I was a trauma surgeon, Captain, my hands don’t shake.’

‘They teach you to hold them steady in doctoring-school?’

Simon laughed. ‘They train us to hold them steady. I know Kaylee thinks I’m ... a robot did she say? But it’s useful.’

‘No coffee jitters?’

‘No jitters when the people you care about are under the knife.’ Again the little laugh, ‘It’s almost as if Professor Tagami was preparing me for life on this ship. No shakes, even when your Captain is half burnt up, or missing an ear, or bleeding to death all over you.’

‘That’s a mighty useful skill, doc.’

‘It is.’ Simon rested the back of his hand against Mal’s lower arm. ‘See?’ Mal felt the gentle brush of knuckles against his own warm skin. And true enough, Simon’s hand was perfectly steady.

‘That’s mighty reassuring.’

‘I’m glad,’ Mal suspected Simon was teasing him. ‘Now, I need to put you under.’

‘Need? Couldn’t just give me the pain pills?’

‘Sorry, Captain, I need to examine your retina without you trying to move it. I won’t keep you under general anaesthetic any longer than necessary.’

Mal sighed and waved an arm as close to Simon’s direction as he dared.

Simon grabbed the flapping arm and Mal felt the sharp jab before he was pulled under.

‘Captain, how are you feeling?’ Mal thought for a second that he shouldn’t have spoken. Simon’s voice had went doctory again, and he wondered what was wrong with him to have provoked that. But he focussed, and picked up the smile under the words all over again.

‘Still can’t see...’ Mal said

‘Captain, I explained that it...’

‘Would be a while, I know. So what did your doohickey tell you?’

And now he knew Simon was happy because he kept quiet about the mangling of medical English. ‘I did a first pass with the mender, and the prognosis seems good.’

‘First pass?’

‘It’s going to take a longer course of treatment than simply reattaching an ear.’

‘Simply? Tell you what doc, next time we’ll cut of your ear and see how simple it is.’

‘All I meant,’ Simon said, ‘was that reattaching an ear is comparatively much simpler than mending all the different tissues in the eye. As I told you, the bandages will be on for at least three weeks.’

‘On the plus point, sir,’ Wash noted from his wife’s bedside. ‘You’ll have lots of time to work on your pirate impression. You seem to have one too many patches but...’ Wash ducked as a pillow was sent, surprisingly accurately, at his head. ‘It’s sad when pain drives a man to bitterness. Attacking his loved ones...’ Wash trailed off mournfully.

‘Come on, husband,’ Zoë said. ‘Think it’s time we left the Captain alone.’

‘Hey!’ Simon protested from behind a yawn.

‘Somehow, doctor, I suspect you won’t be much company,’ Zoë said. ‘There’s something about a heist, a fire fight and two rounds of surgery that just seem to take it out of you.’

‘Young men today,’ Wash tutted. ‘No stamina. Now me’n Zoë...’

‘Bed,’ she ordered.

When he was relatively sure the two had left, Mal asked, ‘Should she be moving?’

‘Your surgery took quite a while, Captain. So, no, she shouldn’t, but it won’t kill her. I’m going to lie down though, if you don’t mind. Do you need anything?’

‘Uh...if you wouldn’t mind...’ Mal started in embarrassment.

Simon pattered across the room to the abandoned projectile and returned to Mal’s side. ‘Pillow. Lift your head.’ He placed the pillow carefully under Mal’s shoulders.

As Simon took his hands away, Mal caught one. He pressed his palm against it. ‘Huh. It’s shaking now.’

Simon drew the hand away quickly. ‘I must have been wrong then, the tiredness did catch up with me.’

‘Guess that must be it.’