Disclaimer: Inara belongs to Joss Whedon. And possibly Malcolm Reynolds. I'm only trying to make sense of them.

* * * * * *

THE GAPS BETWEEN.

The gap between us is wide. Too wide to cross in safety. Any bridge we could build would only be a flimsy affair of hope and dreams, swaying precariously above the chasm below. And falling would mean a kind of death.

* * * * * *

It annoys me when he calls me a whore.

But it doesn't reach me. The word hovers in the air between us where it loses all force. I never feel the sting he intends it to deliver.

He isn't the first – and surely won't be the last – man to call me such. It's an easy mistake to make, after all. Whores sell their bodies just as I sell mine. They have meaningless sex just as I do. The only difference, really, is that I am selling a dream of the perfect woman. At the House Madrassa I trained long and hard in all the pleasuring arts and now I can be any kind of perfect a client wants. Or any kind of bad.

Ofcourse, I can't ever let him get away with it. Nor with any of the multitude of other little insults he tosses my way on a daily basis. Not on a ship like this. Our lives are so tightly entangled, so closely bound up with each other's, that I can't ever let him cross the gap between us. So I stand my ground. Defend my position.

And keep him at bay.

* * * * * *

It amuses me when he lets his desire show. When he nearly touches me. Sometimes the light in his eyes when he looks at me is of pure awe, as though I were an angel, a goddess. Something to be worshipped on bended knee.

But I'm used to such reactions from men. I've had them all my life, even since before I was a woman. They stare, stutter and blush. Or they swagger and pose. Or they throw themselves at my feet. All because of this polished, perfect exterior. And without ever knowing me.

Anyway, he knows I'm out of his class. All I need do is hint at the enormous social gulf between us. Echo his words back to him. I'm a fine lady, a Registered Companion no less. And what is he but a petty crook?

So I am not troubled by his wanting me. It's familiar ground to me where it's easy to side-step sure-footedly. It would never make me fall..

* * * * * *

But fall I did.

I fell in the gaps between.

In the gaps between his contempt and lust. At the points where he defied my understanding of him and proved himself extraordinary. A mystery.

I fell, a little more each time, when I caught glimpses of not what he wants me to think he is nor what he believes himself to be, but of the real him.

In the gaps between his thinking of his position and servicing his own sense of pride. When he made a decision for no other reason that it was the right thing to do.

Like returning the pasquilin without a second thought for lost income or Niska's wrath.

Or letting the Shepherd pray for the souls of the Reavers' victims.

Or changing course in order to take Tracey's body back to his parents without a word of how he had betrayed their friendship.

And the falling was so gentle I hardly noticed it.

It was only the pain of the landing than made me realize how far and how deep I had plummeted.

Ofcourse, I put on my professional mask of haughty indifference and made my escape, all the time haunted by the image of a shirt being buttoned up and suspenders out of place. Such little things, but like huge boulders at the bottom of an abyss I have to dig myself out of.

* * * * * * *

“Inara, I ain't looking for anything from you. I'm just feeling kind of truthsome right now. Life is too damn short for ifs and maybes.”

Don't say anymore. Don't offer me your hand. I have to do this myself. I have let the small shoots of the regard I felt for you blossom into the rampant weed of love that chokes and obscures my path. I must hack it back, clear the ground so that I can walk in certainty again. I have to silence you before I weaken. I have dig this thing out by the roots. I have to be free. I have to stay me.

“I learned something from Nandi. Not just from what happened, but from her. The family she made, the strength of her love for them. That's what kept them together. When you live with that kind of strength, you get tied to it, you can't break away. And you never want to.”

But I have to. Your strength is overwhelming me. What will I become if I let it?

“There's something that I... that I should have done a long while ago. And I'm sorry -- for both of us -- that it took me this long.”

Because I should have seen that the falling was inevitable. That you were everything I ever dreamed of and that I would want to lose myself in you.

“I'm leaving.”

And as I walk away I hear the ground behind me fall away as the gap between us widens that little bit more.

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