The courtesan was dressed impeccably, despite the informal occasion and the painful hour of the evening. Inara never let a soul see her as anything less than proud. She was wearing a gown of silk, shimmering bracelets, and golden earrings, sitting upright- not leaning back- in the examination chair.

Though he was dressed in a simple pullover shirt and comfortable trousers, the man in the room with her seemed almost as regal as she did. Not a hair on his head was out of place and there was not a trace of a whisker on his cheek. “Tidy” is how one of their shipmates referred to him.

After injecting the medication into her outstretched arm, he walked back to his supply cabinet, speaking in a firm but quiet voice. “That should take care of you,” he said. “You won’t need this stuff again for…three weeks.”

She said, “Thank you, Dr. Tam.”

He turned, smiling, “Will you ever start calling me Simon again?”

Inara smiled back, “That is…difficult for me now.”

He shook his head in mock consternation. After a second he stopped and looked at her intently. His voice became softer, but very serious. “So tell me, really, how have you been feeling lately?”

“Good. Very good, actually.” She forced herself to laugh. “If I didn’t know something was wrong with me, I would never have been able to tell it.”

“Well, I’m going to do everything I can. You know that.”

She answered, “I do know that.”

After a moment, with difficulty, he said, “Would you ever have dreamed we’d end up out here? Both of us? When I think back…”

“I try not to.” She did not like thinking about the past.

She continued, though, in a moment. “We’re doing what we have to. You especially…Simon.” He looked away as she added, “I’ll admit it, you aren’t really what one thinks of when you hear the word ‘outlaw,’ but you make a good one.”

“I’m not an outlaw,” he said, “no matter what they called me on those waves. And I’m not a hard-boiled rogue or some scheming terrorist who raids hospitals. I just had to get my sister out of that place.”

Inara said nothing. Neither of them was much on discussing the lives they had left behind- as a matter of fact no one on Serenity was, not since Wash was no longer flying with them- but it had been too long since they had been able to confide in anyone. There were things Simon could not even tell Kaylee, whom he trusted as much as anyone, and as for Inara: you could not be a successful companion if you could not keep secrets. Sometimes, though, the mood to unburden ourselves comes upon us. We may wish it did not, but it does.

Simon turned to her, leaning back against the counter, his arms crossed. “We all know my sordid reasons for being on this ship, but we’ve never had a chance to discuss why you’re out here, Inara. Sinon has some of the finest medical facilities anywhere, and they could do much more for you than I can on this small freighter. You never offered so I didn’t ask, but…”

“I had to leave,” she faltered a bit, but continued. “I hated it, but I had to. When I found out about my condition and what it could…how long I have left, I said some things, did something…”

Simon was staring at her. “I would never tell anyone, Inara.”

She told him. He listened in silence, never interrupting once. And he never told anyone.

When she finished, he could only mutter, “I had no idea.”

She nodded, and said, “Well, it’s nothing as heroic as what you did.”

“There was nothing heroic about that. I had to get River out of there. Even she doesn’t know everything they were doing to her, after all these months. With some of those experiments we may never know. But there are days, Inara…” He glanced down, ashamed to admit it, but met her eyes before he continued, “There are days I wish I hadn’t had to. There are times I really want my old life back.”

“Me, too,” she said.

At last, she began to cry, not weeping, but spare, heartfelt tears shed in front of someone else for the first time since she was a very, very young child.

After a start he moved to her, slowly, uncertain at first, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. She leaned into him and let herself go for a few moments, and then braced herself. He felt the shift in her body, and pulled back. He seemed shier. She looked more like a queen than ever, and it was she who spoke first. “The last time we hugged was when we said goodbye on Sinon.”

The unspoken now spoken, he talked rapidly, “That was one of the most amazing nights of my life. I was telling Kaylee months ago how I got drunk and ended up on some statue singing songs naked. I didn’t tell her I had contracted with a companion before my graduation, or who that companion was. But now…”

“But now…”

“I’m you’re doctor, Inara, and I’d like to think that I’m your friend. We both need as many of those as we can get.”

“That’s true. And thank you, Simon, for everything.”

They continued talking, for a while, as the evening drew on. Before they left the doctor made certain to grab the x-ray that had been next to him on the counter and put the stark picture, with the dark, ugly mass square at the center, in the incinerator.