1. They have given up everything they have known—comfort, safety, longevity, personal attachments, eternal salvation, even certainty as to from where their next meal will come— in the name of free will and don't find that peculiar in the least. How could Malcolm Reynolds not love anyone who understands true freedom so?
2. Two hundred sixty three consecutive meals of nothing but protein
concentrate, and still they make thrice daily gatherings in the galley
an
occasion to look forward to.
3. They rescued him from Niska. To
be clear, it's not the saving his life
that won his favor (although that was a welcome perk), it's just that
even
without his guidance, they did exactly what he would have done had
anyone else
been the unlucky soul captured. If he hadn't loved them before that, he
would
have then.
4. Despite knowing all his failings and shortcomings--all
the lives lost under his command, all the black marks upon his
soul--they still
follow him because they choose to, not because they have to. Mal cannot congratulate
them upon the wisdom
of that decision, but neither can he help but love them all the more
intensely
for it.
4a. Because the one and only time they have refused to follow
where he commanded them was to leave him alone on his freezing, dying
ship. To be clear,
it's not the saving his life
that won his favor (although that was alson a welcome perk), it's just
that they did
exactly what he told them not
to when the time was right—resulting
in the saving his life and theirs too—which sort of makes all
the other details
inconsequential.
5. He has no
choice. He
and the crew are one, as he and Serenity
are one. He can't
exist as he is without
them, nor they without him—or without her.
He could not decline to love them, even
if he may not like everything about them,
any more than he could decline to love his own leg or his own
temperament. They
are now a part of him, and he of them.
Even if they fail him, or wail against him for a span, or disappoint
him, they are nonetheless, inexorably his, and he must reconcile that
and make
it good, for he has no choice. They
are
bound beyond any
law of the