Mechanics

She does manage to talk to him about what happens if River gets sick -- and that she probably won't. He manages to tell Kaylee (with a lot of unnecessary technical talk) that she had a lot of immunizations at the Academy, and that if she hadn't had symptoms by the time they left Serenity, River's probably okay.

Simon never did get immunized, beyond that first childhood round. And viruses shift.

Kaylee nods, and turns over the cool cloth on his forehead, and tells him to sleep.

***

There's an armchair in the living room -- low-backed, with rounded edges and overstuffed cushions. Kaylee has made an executive decision to drag it in the bedroom and position it close to Simon.

Currently she's dozing in it, feet tucked under her. This was not intentional. She's just spent a lot of time awake in the past couple of days.

Jordie's over for dinner. And it's fun. And he helps, which is best of all; it offsets any strangeness there might be with the whole entertaining people thing. Jordie rides over protests and sets the table; he even dries dishes. And after dinner they all settle into the living room with wine and start to tell stories. Kaylee finds herself telling a few from Three Hills, even, which surprises her, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't a little proud of herself for it.

That's why when they hear the hiss on the windows, it takes a second for her to pull herself out of it, and say, "Is that -- snow?" She extricates herself from the sofa and goes to the window. "Whatever it is, it's frozen -- and there's a lot of it."

Kaylee's got a project, as of a few days ago. It's a project pretty far out toward the edge of town, and she's got to switch from omnibus to magrail to omnibus to a different omnibus to get there.

She's waiting for the rail, and eating a bar of chocolate as she walks; she wanders over to a trash can to throw away the wrapper. The station is pretty quiet in the early afternoon, and the uniformed officer nearby the trash can looks pretty bored.

It's a pretty station, though, all arched ceilings and mosaics and columns. Shame that somebody's left their coffee cup right by the trash can -- it does kind of ruin the picture. Kaylee stoops, picks it up, throws it away, and dusts off her hands. Like doing her civic duty, almost -- keeping Capital City tidy.

"Miss."

Kaylee turns around to face the uniformed officer, who's pleasant enough -- not frowning or anything remotely like it.

He says, "You're bound by law to stand down. If you'll come with me."





Her heart doesn't literally stop.

Kaylee does try not to leave the marketing for days she has an appointment. This time she's even done it a day in advance, rather than leave it for the day after.

A potted plant came with her. She's currently out on the balcony moving it into a bigger pot. The other pot is more garishly painted.

The plant is very small, with only a few leaves.

"I guess you just think there's something you could've done," Kaylee says faintly. She's looking out at the square of thin winter sunlight on the wood floor in Diana's office. There's a cat sleeping in it; Kaylee'd brightened when Diana had apologized, asked if she was allergic, said that there were movers at her apartment and the cat needed to not be there. Kaylee said she didn't mind at all. She doesn't mind the wistful feeling about how it'd be nice to have something small and quiet and furry around, either. "With the girls like you. Once we got one out -- my husband was working at the clinic when she came in about seven months along and they wasn't going to let her keep it. And turned out she was my sister-in-law, only I didn't know it, and neither did she -- my brother, my middle brother, he left a long time ago and he don't care nothin' for our family, specially now that he's got his own. And it didn't end well, when we got her out. There's more future for her in Vidalia, that's certain, but that don't mean much. And... she's not mine to worry about, never was. Don't stop me, though."

"Do you think there's anything you could have done for her?" Diana is seated in her square, boxy, overstuffed chair, long silver hair loose, expression (as always) thoughtful.

Kaylee shakes her head. "And that's the problem, ain't it -- I mean, Ruth ain't even the worst one, far as that goes. There was -- out on the, the borders -- "

She's thought about how to start talking about this, once she realized she'd need to. She's tried to put all the details into place -- how to translate them into something believable, that won't blow any cover as far as Milliways is concerned, that won't get her institutionalized for thinking she killed herself.

"It was self-defense," Kaylee says, looking straight at Diana, and Diana doesn't look away. "And I keep telling myself that, and it don't help."

***

She does cry. Most of the story comes out, but she does cry through some of it.

"You're upset because you took a life very much like your own," Diana says. "You feel that life has value?"

Kaylee nods, sniffles, dabs under her eyes with a tissue.

"Do you think she thought life had value?"

A sigh. "Only -- " She sounds stuffed up. "For what it could get her. Like. I think... I think killin' made her happy." Bewildered. "And I don't -- I don't understand how that could be."

"She'd been mistreated by this... Eddie, you said. The one who was like her."

Kaylee nods.

"Sometimes cruelty turns people -- real, wonderful people -- into shells of themselves. Have you ever seen that happen?"

Kaylee nods.

"Do you think that could have anything to do with how this girl lived?"

Very small, Kaylee says, "He kept her in a hole and it didn't look like he fed her."

It's Diana's turn to nod. For a moment there's just quiet. Then: "Kaylee, do you think you might be displacing some of your feelings about your life, and how you want it to be, on this girl?"

"Maybe." The word is painstaking.

"You talk about your own life, and how scared you are when someone takes control of it out of your hands by moving here, by invading your safe spaces, by your losses. And you couldn't make things better for this girl, and it's very clear that it's eating at you."

A faint smile, and Kaylee wipes under her eyes again.

"Do you really know anything about her?"

"No," Kaylee whispers. "And that's the problem."

***

"And she's... she needs somebody to talk to. That's clear as day. And they're worlds away, just... whenever they show up things start happening again."

"And if you say no?"

"It didn't work last time." Darkly. "I mean -- that's how I got where I was when I killed that girl. Doin' favors for these folks. But -- but Rose needs help, or she wouldn't've come to me. I know that."

Diana nods. "Can you put up some very clear boundaries? Do you think you'll be able to assert that? Because you're right -- it's good to help people who need it. But only if you feel capable of doing this without doing yourself any injury."

"Advice about your love life won't cost me nothin'." Kaylee presses the heel of her hand against her eye. "I don't know, I -- it's a little less like I'm gonna jump off the ledge now. Can I keep you updated? I know we're almost done."

Diana's regard is grave. "For now. Sure."

"Simon's gonna catch it," Kaylee says, settling back in her chair with her coffee, watching the musicians across the street in the park set up.

It's nice, right now. It's good.

The only light in the room comes from a few tealights on the dresser. The light dances over the walls, making soft shadows. The room is warm and quiet.

Simon and Kaylee are in bed.

She's curled on her side, propped on her elbow, head resting in her hand. Her other hand reaches out to brush through his tousled hair; her smile is content, and just a little lascivious. Maybe.

The second appointment rolls around at ungodly o'clock in the morning. Diana offers her tea -- herbal, fragrant, non-caffeinated -- and asks whether she'd like to talk, or pick up the pastels again.

Kaylee likes being able to draw things. Mostly she takes on abstract patterns. They're the kinds of things that could be sunrises or sunsets, with the colors bleeding into each other. She rubs them with her fingertips, with the side of her thumb. Diana watches her work while working on her own picture -- something that slowly begins to take the picture of a bird.

And, slowly, Kaylee starts to talk -- about her family, about why she's here, about where she lives. Her hands move as she talks, coloring, blurring, coloring more, adding layers and shading in red and orange and dark blue. She talks about Simon, about why it's important for her to be able to stick this out, about how he gets a little standoffish like he doesn't know what to do for her, about how they've had the conversations where it's always felt like people try to protect her and how she doesn't want to have people solve her problems for her, Simon included, and about how she can appreciate what he's doing for her at the same time as she feels like she doesn't have any support at all and she's drowning, and even if this wasn't going on he's still in school and she shouldn't bother him with it and it's just one more way she's failed him and how she needs to be a good wife but she's never succeeded yet and probably never will, and how it's utterly beyond her why Simon still bothers with her.

All the while she keeps drawing, and she doesn't cry.

Diana asks if she had to take a pill. Kaylee shakes her head -- says there hasn't been a need for her to, says she's stayed home, and it's not as bad if she doesn't leave.

Kaylee gets homework: write down what the criteria are for being a good wife, and where they come from -- Simon and where he comes from, or her, or somewhere else entirely.

And another appointment in five days.

The first question Kaylee gets asked is how do you feel about being here?

She has to think about it, and finally answers, Ashamed. I reckon.

There's a tremor in her voice.

***

Earlier:

She paces around the flat, arms folded tight as she can get them. Her chest is tight -- like something's sitting there, like she can't get her breath. Maybe I'm dying, she thinks. Simon's going to get home and find me dead on the floor. Can I do that to him? Really? I should -- I'm sick. I feel like I'm dying. I'm sick.

The last gets said out loud.

Kaylee raises her hand to her neck, finds her pulse, looks at the timepiece, counts. It's high. This isn't right, she tells herself, again out loud, and sits on -- falls down on -- the sofa.

She tries to work it out. It's not this bad all the time. It gets worse when I'm upset. I don't know why I'm upset. Nothing happened to make this happen. Did it? And I know what this feels like, and I want to -- I can't do this any more, I don't know -- When her thoughts dissolve into pure panic, she starts to cry, and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. She tries to catch her breath. She tries to think.

The logic is like this: if she calls Simon, she loses. They both lose. He needs to be able to feel like he can be in his classes and not worry about her. She needs to be independent enough to handle this on her own. She needs him to leave her to handle this -- to believe that she's capable of taking care of herself. That she's not a failure, not a waste of time, a waste of space and resources.

It's not this bad all the time, she says aloud. She tries to breathe evenly.

If she goes back to Serenity, to Milliways, she loses. It's not the world Simon comes from, it's hers. And that's not the point of this whole thing with Osiris. Not really. The point is for her to prove that she can do what he did: leave without a second thought, and without looking back.

Kaylee can't do it on her own any more. She can't manage it. Whatever this is -- it's won. And she doesn't know who to go to, now that she's given up.

Sitting on the couch in the thin winter light, Kaylee stares at the wall.

The answer comes to her then, easy and clear, like a whisper in the room that's otherwise silent:

Peter.

After a moment she eases herself up, shakily, and goes to the Cortex. Ten minutes later, she's out the door.

***

At the hospice center they don't look at her like she's dirt on the bottom of their shoe.

A woman holds her hand while she explains haltingly how her friend like them helped her, and how she knows she's probably not in the right place, but if they could point her where she needs to go --

The woman even walks with her down the block to the office they recommend, and when Kaylee looks back later she figures that there had to have been some strings pulled, because (as she finds out later) not everybody gets to see the head doctor the same day they realize they need one.

Peter, she thinks when she looks back later, would approve. Kaylee figures he would have done the same thing for her that they did. She was in the wrong place. They help people die; Kaylee's not dead yet. Far from it.

Over her cup of tea out on the balcony, in the cold, under the leaden sky, Kaylee thinks about him (and it doesn't matter that he doesn't remember who she is any more, not really), and she's near overwhelmed by gratitude.

***

When Kaylee says she feels ashamed, the counselor (a thoughtful-seeming woman named Diana with long, iron-gray hair that hangs loose almost to her waist) nods, and doesn't act like she thinks any less of Kaylee for it.

"That's actually pretty normal," Diana tells her. "Here's a thought. Sometimes talking formally like this isn't the best way to go about things. How long has it been since you've drawn anything?"

Kaylee looks blank.

There are laugh lines around Diana's eyes; they crease now. "We'll get out the oil pastels. It's a good day for them, I think."

And Kaylee -- eyes puffy, nose stuffed, hair a mess (because that's what happens when you walk out of the house half-crazed and all desperation) -- cracks a smile.

**

Simon, she thinks when she gets home that afternoon and makes that cup of tea to take out to the balcony, doesn't need to know about this. Not yet. If it goes anywhere -- if it helps -- then maybe.

There's a vial of pills in her handbag: anti-anxiety medication. A little scrap of digital paper with the pills serves as a reminder that her next appointment is at 0815 two days from now.

For now this can be her secret.

It's a little late, and there's one last place that Kaylee will look for Mal before she gives up and assumes he's in with Inara.

Her boots clang dully on the stairs up to the bridge.