Note: I tend to edit quite a bit after posting, so comments are particularly welcome! Had to overcome some significant writer's block on this chapter, and I haven't done much proofreading, so it's kind of rough. _________________________________________

Aside from the unending boredom, recurring nightmares, and constant soreness, Mal wasn't doing half badly. He'd been moved out of the main hospital into the "recovery ward," which near as he could tell was a prisoner's housing unit; only difference was, you got nurses instead of guards, and they poked needles into you and muttered reassuring words instead of ordering you about.

It also had a problem with an idiot infestation. He wasn't keen on telling a living soul what had happened, so his fellow prisoners did what people do when they have no clue; they decided they knew all about it. A couple of the more popular rumors involved his falling from a shuttle during an ill-advised escape attempt or inciting a riot because he thought he was receiving telepathic signals from the Browncoats. He rather liked the latter, and derived some small entertainment from rubbing his forehead at random intervals before exclaiming "The Browncoats are coming!" Nobody ever got the joke, but they sure as hell left him alone.

Mal looked up as a sharply uniformed guard entered the ward and called his name. His initial guess that the officer had come to transfer him back to general housing lost credibility as three more stony-faced guards lined up behind him, refusing to meet Mal's eyes. "What's the occasion, sir?" Mal asked innocently.

"We'd like you to come with us, sir," Mal recognized the deeply reserved look on the man’s face as the expression of one who knows very bad news about you. He’d worn that expression on the battlefield many a time himself, facing soldiers who were dying in front of his eyes. "They're going to kill me after all," he thought miserably.

Mal's mind raced as he walked through the maze of fences and hallways, his head spinning almost as though the rest of reality were taking place on a slightly different dimension. He'd never thought he'd feared death. Goodness knows he'd faced it enough times, and even wished for it more than a few times of late. But he was pretty sure what he was experiencing now was fear, not an emotional fear but a physical one; the innate drive to stay alive throwing every cell of his body into frantic activity.

It was one thing, he thought, to walk into battle or to throw oneself into harm's way when circumstances dictated it. To challenge death on your own terms. But the thought of knowing it was coming and being forced to simply wait for the end was a far more sickening prospect. "Don't tell me," he thought desperately. "Just put a gun to my head when I'm not looking. I don't want to see this coming."

Mal was ushered into a large, white-painted cell, the entire front wall of which was open, blocked only by thin vertical bars that reminded him of jail cells from times past. Lee was sitting on the single bunk within it. Mal scanned his surroundings, taking in the high, narrow window that allowed natural light to stream in, the dual surveillance cameras, and the small table and chair to one side. It wasn't an unpleasant room, and it certainly didn't resemble any sort of an execution chamber. Mal looked at Lee as the guards withdrew, locking the door on the two men behind them. "What is this place?" he asked.

Lee hadn't stood when Mal entered. "Have a seat, son," he said, motioning Mal over to join him. Mal sat, acutely uncomfortable and growing rapidly more so as he saw the grim, slightly unfocused expression on Lee's face.

Lee looked at Mal, not quite meeting his gaze as he said "I've spent the last two hours rehearsing this - there's just no good way to say......" He closed his eyes. "Your mother's dead, Mal."

Mal didn't react visibly; not so much invisibly either. There were too many conflicting emotions and heartbreaks and fears in his head for his brain to be able to find room for another right off. "How?" he asked, the only thing he could think of to say.

"War, Mal," replied Lee.

"I could've guessed as much," snapped Mal. "You got anything a little less blindingly obvious for me?"

Lee sighed. "Hearing the story isn't going to be any sort of therapy, son." When Mal failed to reply, staring at him coldly, Lee asked "Do you know what happened on Shadow?"

"Nothing since I left. The - day I joined, bomb'd hit the bunkhouse at our ranch. Guys I - guys who raised me, played.....dead. Bodies." Mal shook his head as though to clear the images from it. "They hadn't done anything 'cept be a target. I signed on that day and left planet for the battlefront on Hera the next. Only word I got since then was the Alliance was bombing the hell out of the place."

Lee nodded. "Got plenty worse than that. Shadow was one of the most.......difficult planets to deal with. People fought smart, stayed spread out, attacked by surprise with no orders, no organization. Not much military to speak of, just a world of people intent on going their own way and willing to back that up with their very ample stock of weapons. No way to occupy the place."

A hint of a proud smile of recognition twitched Mal's lips, vanishing quickly as Lee continued. "Shadow was making us into something worse than a laughing-stock, it was sending the message that we didn't even have to be defeated, and we could just be ignored. Certain men decided that Shadow needed to become a symbol of the stupidity of defying the Alliance."

"We broadwaved a signal ordering every citizen of Shadow to evacuate on one of our transport ships for their own safety, and they were given a week to comply. Few took us up on the offer of safe passage, a fact which is even less surprising when you take into account our EMPs taking out half the planet's communications before we sent the signal. We have records of every passenger on those ships. Your mother wasn't one of them."

Mal still wasn't quite buying the finality of this, but a quiet, lethal sense of foreboding was growing within him. "And those who stayed?" he asked.

"Some were killed in the intense bombing runs over the next few days. Then, strictly by chance if you're gullible enough to believe the official reports, the terraforming equipment across the planet was hit. With no way to maintain the terraforming, the atmosphere just began to burn off. Air turned unbreathable, superheated. Even the oceans just boiled away." Lee looked directly at Mal for the first time. "Shadow's a black rock, Mal. There was no chance of survival."

Still outwardly calm, Mal felt physically ill. This was evil even beyond what he had believed the Alliance capable of. Lee saw Mal's face pale as he asked "How many got off on their own ships?"

Lee shook his head, aware of the hope he was shattering. "All non-government vessels attempting to leave the planet were shot down."

Mal stood and walked rapidly across the cell, grabbing the bars blocking the open front wall. He clung to them as though they were a life raft, pressing his forehead painfully against one. He found himself gasping for breath, struggling desperately to maintain some semblance of composure as his already shattered world dissolved into a blur of horror and grief.

Mal whirled around and staggered back across the cell, his vision a hazy blur and his legs shaking. He threw his whole body into a poorly aimed punch at Lee's face, unaware of the sound of weapons charging, unaware of Lee's growled order to the guards outside to stand down. He was on top of Lee, slamming his fists into the officer's body with a force significantly lower than he intended.

Lee reached one arm up and placed his hand firmly on Mal's shoulder, waiting quietly until his reaction got through. Mal stopped his attack, pulling away and sitting back down heavily beside Lee.

"How," asked Mal, "could anyone who called himself even halfway fucking human stand by and allow that!"

"Even decent people can justify horrible deeds in the name of war, Mal. You know that," replied Lee almost reproachfully.

Lee addressed Mal with a certain amount of fondness as he wiped a trickle of blood from his nose. "It was one of our biggest mistakes, you know. Whoever decided to make an example of Shadow neglected to consider that the single greatest uniting force is hatred of a common enemy. Planets and people who didn't really care enough to fight or wouldn't have cooperated if you paid 'em joined the battle with a vengeance. It was because of Shadow that the Unification war exploded into a conflict our forces were fortunate to win."

"That supposed to be a comfort to me?" Mal asked bitterly.

"No," Lee replied. "I wouldn't presume to comfort you. I just pray that something does." He stood, resting his hand briefly on Mal's shoulder once more before he walked out.

"What is this place?" asked Mal again. Lee glanced back as he replied "Suicide watch."

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The young officers assigned to guard Mal and keep him alive didn't know his story, didn't realize the depth of his grief went beyond the loss of a family member and extended to the loss of every feeling and belief in his world. The prisoner they knew as Sergeant Reynolds never tried to kill himself; he simply ceased to exist, as much as a living human can. He stopped eating, drinking, moving. One of the guards, a young and idealistic private named Quordras, spent hours speaking to him from outside the cell, always hoping for the response he never received.

It might have relieved the pressure somewhat to run as he had his first night in the housing unit, to scream and cry, but Mal was trapped in a small white box between two surveillance cameras. He had nowhere to go but inwards, a path that led only to anguish.

This was trouble he couldn't see clear of, no matter how he tried. Nothing he could do would change the fact that the war was lost; nothing could reclaim the lives of the men who had died in vain under his command because he had driven them on, encouraged them, and told them to hold on just a little while longer. There was no easing the sting of betrayal or the sorrow of finding that God did not answer prayers, no matter how heartfelt, how desperate. In the back of his mind he had been clinging to one hope, and now even that was gone. It was one thing to fight for your home and your family, even another to lose a war; but losing his entire world was something nothing could have prepared him for.