Lee hadn't been kidding about those doctors and their surgeries. Funny how men who, as Lee had put it "took an oath to do no harm" enjoyed cutting holes in folk as their primary hobby. It seemed to Mal that the minute he began to think about feeling halfway human again, some little bastard in a white coat would come along, mutter about putting a pin in something or reattaching another bit he didn't even know he had, and knock him out.

Then he'd wake up, head swimming, a new and improved ache or pain nagging at him, and have to listen to the very same little bastard proudly announcing the success of his handiwork. It was typical Alliance idiocy; they spent the entire war trying to kill him. Having almost succeeded, they decided to come to his "rescue." That done, they damn near killed him, but instead of finishing the job they turned around again and decided to throw the vast resources at their disposal to repairing the damage. Mal had had a much plainer way of doing things in the war: if he decided to kill a guy, the guy got dead in a hurry and stayed that way.

The only good thing about this surgery routine was the fact that he was spending most of his time unconscious, or close enough to it. Whenever his head was clear enough to think on his future, Mal found himself in utter misery and dread. He was accustomed to a feeling of being in command of things; of himself if nothing else. Now, he was in control of precisely nothing, and what was worse those who did control his fate were unpredictable, untrustworthy. The not knowing if the next person to walk into the room was going to offer a kind word, cold analysis, or a violent death was as bad as knowing he didn't affect a bit of it.

He had taken some measure of comfort in Lee's gentle demeanor, but after that day he withdrew, finding himself unable to trust even the kindest of men. Day after day he heard he coldly casual voices of the guards discussing his death. Day after day he would close his eyes only to see the inhuman cruelty in the eyes of his torturers, and when he tried to force his thoughts away from the memory, the broken bodies of the farm hands he'd called family littering the ground of his home. And every time he slept, some sound or movement would cause him to awaken screaming in pain and terror.

There was a black hole in himself that he didn't want to look into, yet his mind kept carrying him there. He didn't want to relive the overwhelming, earth-shattering pain, or the agony of struggling helplessly for release, or the frantic, choking horror of trying to do something, anything to make the excruciating pain go away and failing completely. His hospital bed was a trap, leaving him with nothing to do but go to the unpleasant places his mind took him. The irony of the fact that he was in effect torturing himself long after it was over was not lost on him; but at the moment all the logic in the world didn't seem to be helping.

He thought to himself that if he ever did make it out alive, he would get as far away as he could from this place. Away from the Alliance, with their bleakly inhuman buildings and their hypocritical blend of idealism and careless cruelty; away from loss and grief and brutality; just away. He wanted to leave humanity far behind, to deal with the world on his own terms and maybe, one day, find the confident sense of comfort and safety he remembered once having experienced.

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Jessi Clark-White