Title: Haunted

Summary: Sometimes being haunted is preferable to being left alone. Pre The Big Damn Movie Post Objects in Space.

Pairing: Mal/Inara

 

 

He’d never believed in ghosts, always thought they were stories told to frighten, scare and make fools of people ignorant enough to believe in them. She’d been gone six months and he was the one being made a fool of.  Sometimes at night when he couldn’t sleep he’d creep through Serenity to her shuttle. The ornate fabrics and soft furniture might be gone, but it was still her shuttle. One night after too much whiskey and introspection he was laying on his back in the middle of the shuttle when he’d determined what made it hers after all it was just an empty shuttle. It was the damn ghosts she’d left behind. The ones that smelled like her incense and whispered past him with her laugh.

 

It was the ghosts that taunted him with her gorrom whiskey smoke voice and made him wonder why he’d never told her the way his heart speeds up when she’s close, or that no mission ever made him feel fever and breathless the way her touch did.

 

Not that he thought she’d ever return the feeling. A woman like Inara needed a man who knew how to buy a fancy dress, drink tea and behave in front of aristocratic society. He wouldn’t have a clue how to behave in her world as he’d proven during that shindig he’d barged in on. No, ‘Nara could never return his feelings. It just wasn’t done.

 

 

“Captain?” Zoe addressed him, pulling him out of his thoughts.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Have you decided who you’re going to rent that empty shuttle to, Sir?” Zoe asked. He’d been talking to people, taking applications on every core planet they’d visited.

 

“Haven’t liked the look of any of them,” Mal answered. None of them had that particular light in their eyes, that love for Serenity…none of them were Inara.

 

“Right, Sir. Should I withdraw the ad?” Zoe prodded.

 

“No,” Mal said as he got up from his seat. “I’ll find some one eventually. I’m going to go check on the shuttle, make sure it’s clean.”

 

“Yes, Sir.” Zoey watched him walk out of the kitchen with a smirk on her face.

 

He cleaned the shuttle every week even though he never let anyone step inside. Ghosts were a fickle thing, harassing you when you didn’t want them around and gone when you wanted them around. He was afraid bringing someone else in here would upset that balance because while the ghosts drove him crazy haunting him with her scent, her laugh, her voice, they were all he had left.