Bells Are Ringing (For me and my Mal)

She must have been some kind of pretty but, in all truth, that wasn’t what Mal remembered about her anymore.

She must have been some kind of pretty ‘cause when she’d started to talk her way onto his boat he let her. And it wasn’t even a bad idea she’d tried to make him believe, at the start.

And that should have been his first warning signal, their mutual agreement to deceive, their unspoken accord to ignore certain, less convenient details that might otherwise have kept them apart. That should have been his first warning, but it wasn’t.

And the girl could cook, weren’t no arguing that, knew her grub on the hoof and in the ground, knew where to shoot it and where to shop it. And for a while … Oh didn’t they eat! Brought a little bit of planetside back into the black after every stop, and that was different, and not at all bad. Mal sure enough kept them alive more than once, but she kept them living. For a bit of time, anyway.

Still, he should have known, should have seen the caution in Zoë’s eyes even if he was ignoring the one in his heart … head … heart.

All those late nights he started loitering about the mess, just listening to the engine, the ship, and now the galley sounds mixing and mingling one into the other and warming him like her coffee.

No, he’d never heard anything ‘til it was too late.

Perhaps he’d been too long out the war, living too high on the hog. He’d promised Zoë, way back when, they could get a cook if things went well, and things had gone pretty well, so, they’d gotten themselves a cook, when one presented herself.

Then, there she was, being held at gunpoint and he’d frozen, unable to make the choice, thinkin’ there was a choice, and he couldn’t make it. Making Zoë do it for him.

“What’s it to be, Mal?” and he didn’t know. She’d squirmed and Zoë’d shot, the right shot, right through her soft arm and into that double-crossing bastard’s heart. Then Mal had blown his brains out.

Later, at the med center, he’d told her they’d come back for her, had to finish the job but they’d come back and pick her up soon’s she’d mended. And she’d smiled, and nodded, but there it was again, their agreeing to deceive.

No, he hadn’t heard the alarm bells then, not like he was hearing them now.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You want me. You want me on your ship,” Inara said with such assurance.

And “Do I?” he’d answered, already knowing the truth of it.

Oh, yeah. Loud and clear.









The bits of dialog are taken from the shooting script for the episode "Out Of Gas" written by Tim Minear.