She dies at the memory of his touch.

She breaks at the thoughts that her mind places in the gaps left by reality. At the moments between sleeping and waking, she thinks they happened.

Her dreams delude her, thrill her, let her make it through the day and every moment she faces the world and her job.

The lack of understanding grips her like a vice. Throttles her, drowns her, and she rails against it. She is enthralled with the mystery, the man, the memories she does and doesn't have, and the things about him she longs to know.

The secret part of her longs for moments that do not exist. That real part of her knows that they are people of façades and fronts, stubbornness and rebellion, of misunderstandings and hurt. She knows how to analyze him, but she can't stay near him and still do her job.

She leaves, part of her dies, she goes back to the life she once was a part of. She's there and she misses the nonexistent. She's still empty, more so since she lost the serenity she'd found, the hole in her she'd filled on that ship suddenly reopened when she didn't know that it had been closed. Closed by a man she wanted but couldn't have, the mystery, the shade that fights her, and she fights back.

There are so many lost moments, things that she could've done, things her training didn't prepare her for. She can comfort any man or woman, using her mind or body, knows etiquette, defense, history, music and a thousand other things, but all of that is useless. She doesn't know herself. She knew who she was, but not what she wanted, and by the time she'd she figured out it was, it was too late.

She was taught so much, but the one truly useful thing she doesn't know. She doesn't know how to love and the means of learning scare her.

Companions do not fall in love, but maybe Inara isn't much of a Companion anymore. She's fallen in love and that is something she is unprepared for, unequipped to satisfy. The client she wants is a client she cannot have as he calls her a whore. Mal won't be her client, and she's doesn't know what to do with a man to love. And maybe that is the point of it all, that there are some things that cannot be taught.