Disclaimer: It's fanfic, a labour of love, I don't earn or want anything from it. Everything is, as always, owned by Joss, Fox, Universal and lots of other people richer than me. Rating: G, I guess. Comments: 1) This is a series of vignettes, one from each of the crew, examing their lives now as compared to before. I started with Simon because... well... just 'cause. Deal with it.

2) The 'situation' Simon describes is based on little more than rumours and will be made clearer with the other characters as I write them (even if it's pretty clear already what I'm hinting at).

Feedback: I lied. I do want something from writing feedback. Comments from you. Yes that's right: comment me, comment me good. Or, even better, send me an email: wily_one24@yahoo.com.au

***

"That's the way it's always been. It all comes down to creating time. We don't always have to make it right. We'll all drive by in our hybrid lives. Chances are... chances are... We'll make it back." - Sheryl Crow.

***

He stared at the white, clinical walls with a mixture of longing, regret and something he could only define as overwhelming relief. With the situation as it stood now, Mal had made a decision that had surprised everyone. Everyone, perhaps, except Simon. If Mal hadn't come to the decision himself, Simon most likely would have insisted on it.

So Simon sat on the medical gurney and let the doctor prod and poke his healing abdomen, his long healed thigh wound, attach the necessary machines and listen to his heart and blood pressure, let her take blood from his arm.

They'd headed straight for Kerry, a little orange planet far away from anything resembling a core world or Alliance territory. Rumor had it they were running a med clinic. All of them could get checked out and properly screened for free and without any identification or paperwork changing hands. Mal had sneeringly called it charity work, in a tone that suggested what the rich, core doctors could do with their charity, but hadn't actually said anything, because they really did serve a purpose.

He'd been wrong, the doctors didn't think of it as charity work at all, but Simon hadn't seen any reason to tell Mal, or the others, that the border planet runs that were mandatory for all new interns were known as FWOT runs. Fucking Waste Of Time. It was a joke among them all. Riding in brand new, Alliance grade space ships out to some godforsaken planet where the locals didn't have the rudimentary knowledge on how to make a bar of soap, let alone use it.

Nobody had been under any false beliefs about leaving their little stopover planet, having given strict orders for the people to keep their wounds clean, or get medicine for the two year old who could barely breathe, or even, god forbid, wash their hands a little more. Nobody was under any pretense that their completely obvious orders would be followed. Before they'd even break atmo, they knew they'd been forgotten and dismissed.

The doctor poked the red, inflamed area of his wound again and sucked air through her teeth in disapproval.

"This is what you get all the way out here." She turned to another, younger doctor behind her. Simon guessed he was very brand new in the medical field. He looked nervous. "The weaving is barely adequate, this is going to leave horrific scarring."

Simon didn't say anything. He knew Zoe wasn't a trained doctor, but she was more than capable of removing bullets and stitching up holes in him that had a tendency to make him pass out. He knew this doctor was thinking about fine, delicate pull throughs of fine, delicate weaves, done in a practiced manner. With shining, hygienic tools, handed to her by someone with shining, hygienic hands.

The doctor sighed.

"Did this hack of a doctor even give you some form of anti inflammatory or antibiotic for this?" She paused and dumbed it down for him. "Any tablets of any kind?"

Simon just shook his head helplessly. He knew it wouldn't matter, wouldn't matter because this woman had no idea what it was like, nor would she care. It didn't matter to her that, out here, sometimes the only money these people had was swallowed up by a desperate need to eat, not put aside for medicines that were only a 'precaution'. It didn't matter to her that these people thought more in terms of what would keep them alive than what would keep them pretty. It didn't matter to her that there was a desperateness out here that she would likely never know.

Simon knew it didn't matter to her, because it hadn't mattered to him, either. He'd been there, he'd curled his lip in distaste at the dirty, unwashed bodies that had come through the clinic, had groaned in frustration at the repeated sight of wounds improperly healed, at the constant reminder that things would be so much easier if these people just read a book once in their lives and learned proper hygiene procedures and took the right medication and followed the right treatment schedules.

That was, of course, before he'd become one of the great unlearned, before he'd ridden on a space ship that was now more home to him than anywhere he'd ever really known. Before the sight of fresh produce was enough to make his salivary glands go into overdrive, before the thought of staying and keeping alive had become more important than what clothes to wear to the Stinton party on a Saturday night.

Before he'd learned to value the ability to make a person smile when they most needed it just as highly as years in tertiary education, to value speed and accuracy as much as technical knowledge, loyalty as much as breeding, the choice of creating a family over those that were thrown together.

Simon stared at the white, clinical walls with a mixture of longing, regret and something he could only define as overwhelming relief.

*** End.