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Malcolm Reynolds was finally dying, and it was such a relief.
Pity about the location he’d chosen. It was a cheesy-skeezy hole of a joint, with dirty sheets on the bed and towels that had only lived in legend. But Mal was horizontal, which, if given a choice, was a preferred way to die – much better than vertical. Dying standing up was a great and glorious thing when you were young, but a bit undignified for an old man.
He’d had a long run, looking death in the face more often than he would have liked. But he kept living, kept standing up, kept running. At least it was old age that was getting him now, and not the sharp pain of a bullet or knife.
He wasn’t dead yet though, so he supposed there was still time for all that.
Right on cue, there was a hammering at the door. He ignored it – even if he had wanted to answer, even if he still had the curiosity to want to know who was there, he knew he would not rise from this bed again. If someone wanted to have their last chance to shoot him, they’d have to open the door their own damn self.
“Mr. Reynolds?”
“Gǔndàn!”
“Mr. Reynolds, you have a visitor.”
“Tell them to gǔndàn for me.”
Then the door opened, and Mal knew for sure that he was dying, because the shade of pink that glided into the room did not exist in the world. It used to, but not any more. He’d never believed in angels – some devils, he supposed – but if he had, he’d never thought they’d be wearing pink.
“Figures my kind of angel wouldn’t have wings,” he muttered.
“He ain’t been making much kind of sense of late, ma’am,” the landlord said.
“He never did,” the angel said.
His brain must have been foggy, preoccupied with all the dying he was supposed to be getting on with, but a word emerged from the fog, a word that had only lived in his brain and not his mouth for years.
“Inara?”
“Yes, you old fool,” the pink angel said. “I keep telling you, stop trying to die alone.”
Then the room was full of strong and uncomfortably good-looking men, and they were shifting Mal from his disgusting bed onto a substantially cleaner litter, and carrying him out of the inn with only a few bumps along the way. Mal closed his eyes with the absurdity of it. Next thing he knew he was on a shuttle that smelled of Inara’s incense. The incense took a pink shape again, and held his hand as the shuttle took off.
After a long time and a couple of prize winning coughing fits, Inara said, “You must be sick. It’s not like you to not ask questions.”
“What should I ask?”
“Don’t you want to know where you’re going?”
“Thought I was already goin’ someplace.”
Inara looked at him and smiled. “Not yet, shăgua.”
Everything was all a jumble for while after that, but eventually he was in a good bed with a good pillow, and some tubes going every which way in and out of his body. It didn’t hurt nearly as much to breathe – actually, it still hurt, but he just didn’t care about it nearly as much.
And Inara was always there, her small cool hand in his.
“Won’t work, you know,” he said at one point – middle of the day or middle of the night, he wasn’t sure. “I’m still shuffling off, Inara. Can’t push it off too long.”
“I know,” she said, and it was soft and sad and sweet. “I can’t give you more time – just comfort.”
“And company,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’m grateful.”
“I’m glad I could give this to you.”
“We never had enough of it, did we?”
“Of what?”
“Time.”
She sighed, and his eyes cleared enough to see that while her hair was still thick with curls, it was all white and not the raven black of his memories and dreams, and her hand was soft in his, but the knuckles were swollen and bent. She lifted his hand and kissed it, and he let her, and even smiled.
“We spent so long being stubborn, didn’t we?” she said.
“You were stubborn,” he coughed. “I’m a gentle little lamb.”
“I have evidence to the contrary.”
“Sure you do.”
She climbed up onto the bed with him, and he opened his arms to her. Finally, finally, they lay in each other’s arms, and they fit together as if they had been doing it all their lives.
When his hand fell away from her shoulder, Inara knew he was gone. She tried to sit up, but his other hand was still tangled in her hair. She gently eased it away.
“So,” she said, “are you going to leave me alone at last?”
There was no reply, and she wept.
One of her students entered quietly, just as Inara was wiping her eyes. “May I help you, Lǎoshī?” she murmured.
“Yes,” Inara said. “We must prepare his body for burial. But from now on, I’ll ask you to not call me mistress, but guǎfù.”
“Guǎfù?”
Inara smiled at the body, still and silent at last.
“Widow.”
End