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I think I get too distracted watching that scene. Everyone is acting all cold even mal. Yet he doesn't put on his big brown coat. Drives me nuts.

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Working on the assumption that she is dying then I'd expect Inara to start crying at that line. I mean it should already be an emotional time. Then he'd say a line like that which should hit her right to the core. Still she keeps her calm. I don't know if she's that good at keeping her emotions in check.

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I'm going to insert my Bold Opinion here and say that Mal would severely disagree with his own statement if he knew Inara was dying. Somehow, I don't see him calmly espousing the inevitability of a lonely death in the face of someone he cares greatly about and feels protective of. Same with, say, Kaylee.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
She doesn't cry when they're facing down the Reavers, so I think despite the Heart of Gold scene people always hold against her, she's made of stronger stuff than people give her credit for. She doesn't want to die, but she doesn't strike me as particularly afraid to. If she's accepted she's going to die anyway, she might be sad about it sometimes, but she may not have any tears left for it.

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Originally posted by fearthebunnyman:
I sort of got the impression that it was Inara's intention to die alone - that's why she was always pulling back from intimacy with Mal, leaving the ship, etc. Maybe even part of the reason she left the Core? So if anything, I would imagine when Mal said that to her, she knew exactly what he meant, b/c she thought that way too (for herself anyway, maybe she wouldn't want it for others).

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Originally posted by LAUREN779:
But to answer the question, I had always thought Mal meant exactly what he said-because in a way, it is true. Dying is a singular process. Even if they were all together on the ship-or in the shuttle, each one of them would have died alone.

I think even if Mal knew Inara was dying, and, hypothetically, had been with her in her "final" stages, I still think he would have held onto the belief that in a way, she died alone.

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At the end of the episode he's very afraid of waking up and finding them all gone. That suggests that what Mal intellectually agrees with and what he emotionally agrees with are two different things.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
But there's the moment of crossing over and there's the facing the moments of anticipation alone. Death itself is really a short moment compared to the process of dying.

Somehow I don't see Mal just letting Inara leave (without an argument, anyway) if she told him "Everybody dies alone" as a reason.


I'm very certain that this line would have made a comeback if she series had continued. Dying alone may be a concept Mal has internalized for himself, out of necessity, but letting someone else die alone, someone he really cares for, is still something else. At that point in the series, he's still somewhat in denial. At the end of the episode he's very afraid of waking up and finding them all gone. That suggests that what Mal intellectually agrees with and what he emotionally agrees with are two different things.

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Originally posted by fearthebunnyman:
I sort of got the impression that it was Inara's intention to die alone - that's why she was always pulling back from intimacy with Mal, leaving the ship, etc. Maybe even part of the reason she left the Core? So if anything, I would imagine when Mal said that to her, she knew exactly what he meant, b/c she thought that way too (for herself anyway, maybe she wouldn't want it for others).

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I think she's pulling away because she doesn't want anyone to get close enough to her to find out that she's dying. Then it's real. Then she has to face it and talk about it and it would be all the more difficult to wall off her emotions.

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Originally posted by PLATONIST:
Oh, goody, a discussion;)

Somewhere I read or heard, I’m too lazy to find it now, Joss said that Mal and Inara were mirror images of each other, beyond the love thingy or maybe in spite of it, so it would make sense that what Mal says to her and about her, is not only a reflection of his own personal philosophy, which is fairly nihilistic, but, also, a reflection of her personal experience. Mal has seen a lot of death and Inara is, huh…dying, and it is a singular process, she can’t argue with that.

I never got the impression Inara has a fear of dying, though, more likely she's come to terms with it more than most because she is dying and she's been living with it for a while. She doesn’t want to die, like she says, but who does? And she’s wise and old enough to know, that you can’t run from death, not even out to the stars, it’s inevitable, she can’t control it, just as she can’t control Mal staying behind to die alone in OoG.

The reason she rents and then leaves, IMHO, Inara is intrigued with what Serenity and its Captain can offer in terms of mobility, in seeing the verse before she dies, like she says, and then things become complicated, the crew starts to care for her and her for them, especially Mal, and she can’t burden them with her secret because she recognizes Mal’s situation, which is, him just getting to the point where he can live on Serenity happily, unburdened by the pain of the past. She doesn’t want to add to that, what she doesn’t know is the effect of him not knowing why she really leaves, has on him, and the importance her being on Serenity had for him, a chance for a more hopeful future. Why did you leave?

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Originally posted by Zeek:
She doesn't want to die at all.

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Originally posted by GWEK:
Apparently, Joss did mention it somewhere. Morena Bacarrin confirmed it at a convention, only after someone said that Joss had already spilled the beans.

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