Kaylee was crying; this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. This isn’t how the story goes, this isn’t how it all ends.

But her thoughts spun out of control and things were now someplace complicated. It was wrong, it wasn’t right, she couldn’t be pregnant with something other than Simon’s baby. But he was testing hormone levels against his books, and yes, she had been pregnant ever since they had gotten her off of that rock of a hellhole planet. They had played with her hormones and triggered her body to accept a pregnancy for the head of the factory, but they were already dead so there was no way for her to go back kill them all dead again.

All she seemed to be able to do was cry. When the drop was made, Mal had gone about looking for a new engine casing. He had spent part of his share on it, two new shiny pieces. Kaylee hadn’t even been able to look at them without crying. It wasn’t right, her mind screamed. It wasn’t fair, it shouldn’t have happened!

Simon kept staying nearby, though she couldn’t understand it. Why would he still care? Why would he still want her? Someone else had messed with her, someone else tainted what should’ve been good for him.

He stroked her hair as she lay in her hammock, face wet with fresh tears. “It doesn’t change anything,” he tried to say. Gorram lie, that was. Everything was different now, everything was changed. She was going to be fat and lumpy and it wasn’t even his.

Oh god, that was the worst of it, too. It wasn’t even Simon’s. If it was Simon’s baby, she wouldn’t be crying so hard. That would’ve made the getting fat and unable to work so well be okay. It would’ve been a baby Tam with some Frye mixed in, and her Papa Frye would love it and everyone would be happy. But it was some pisspot’s baby, someone she didn’t know, someone who took advantage of her kindness to try and make a breeder out of her. It made her want to cry and scream and cry some more.

“It’s ours, Kaylee,” Simon whispered in her ear. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t change anything between us. I still love you, and you still love me. This can be our baby, ours alone.” He stopped making sense at that point. Kaylee just couldn’t listen anymore. The tears kept falling from her eyes, her cheeks were still wet. Simon kissed her on the temple. “I’ll be back later, bei bao,” he murmured softly.

Time passed, spinning out away from her. Kaylee stopped keeping track. Beeps and boops, nausea and sickness, heart sickness and pain.

“Will you make me an auntie?” River whispered, creeping into the engine room. On a tiny ship like this, there were no secrets. Her bare feet made no noise over the metal floors. Kaylee wondered if her feet were cold, but couldn’t bring herself to speak. “You hurt him today, your tears rip up his heart.”

Kaylee couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Her head hurt.

“I know,” River murmured. She picked her way around the engine. “How did you know it would be like this? How did you know it would be this way?” She looked up over the spinning heart of the engine. “You didn’t, that’s what. You couldn’t know.”

But River, Kaylee wanted to say. I ain’t stupid, either.

River nodded, as though she heard Kaylee’s thoughts. Perhaps she was. Kaylee didn’t know if it was just easier that way. Her chest hurt.

“Right here,” River murmured, coming back into view. Her right hand covered her left breast, palm over her heart. “It hurts here, pain when you breathe, love you think is gone.”

Go away, River. I can’t do this.

“It shines in you,” River insisted. “You are his heart.”

Kaylee remembered River saying so before, hadn’t understood before. But it didn’t matter now, everything was ruined. Everything good and shiny had been thrown away.

“No. No, no, no. Not like that at all, nothing broken down, nothing shy and waiting.” River walked up to the hammock. “Don’t shy away, don’t lose it all, don’t let the shine be lost by the riverside.” River reached out to stroke Kaylee’s hair, ignoring the fact that Kaylee shrank back from her touch. “It’s all Simon’s now, all of you, all inside you, too. It’s all Simon’s, even the not-Simon. He’ll say so. He’ll take everything you give him because you are his heart, and he will fade without you.”

Not true, Kaylee wanted to say. He has you to take care of.

“And you,” River whispered. “And now you hurt him most of all. I can walk and stand, one day I will fly. But you curl up in the palm of his hand, and he can’t help it. He loves. And he doesn’t know what to say to make it better, he opens himself to you. He takes you inside his heart, he makes you his heart. He needs such looking after, and you help me with it.”

No I don’t, not the way he needs, Kaylee thought desperately. I’m broken.

“No, not like me. Never like me.” River pulled on a lock of Kaylee’s hair. “Come. Not broken, only pulled. Pulled out can still smile again.”

Kaylee closed her eyes tight. It was too much today, too much.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps forth this petty pace from day to day, and all my yesterdays spin back, lost to the sands of time,” River murmured, still tugging on that lock of Kaylee’s hair. “But you can build, you can build tomorrows.”

“No I can’t, River,” Kaylee murmured, voice thick with tears. “I can’t give him what ain’t his, I can’t do that to him.”

River bent down next to Kaylee’s ear. “But it is his, if he says so.”

Somewhere deep inside, Kaylee was almost afraid to hope.

Later that night, Simon crept into the engine room. “Kaylee?”

Sniffling, Kaylee struggled to sit up in her hammock. Her vision grayed out, damn it all, but now at least she knew why. Shadows moved across her face, and she wasn’t sure she would be able to keep from crying again.

“Feeling okay?” Simon tried again. Kaylee had missed dinner, had merely screamed that she wasn’t hungry and if she wanted to starve herself then all of the niao shi de dugui just had to sit back and accept it.

“No.”

Simon stood next to her hammock, hands empty and open at his sides. “Nothing’s going to be different,” he began.

“Sure it is,” Kaylee snapped. “I get big and fat and ugly. I can’t do a durned thing around the boat and it ain’t even yours!”

He reached out and touched her face gently. She flinched. “It can be.”

“It ain’t,” Kaylee insisted, tears in her eyes. “But it should be.”

Simon traced the lines of her lips with his thumb. “It’s mine if I say it is. It’s mine if I want it to be.” He looked up at her eyes, desperation lining his mouth. “I want it to be, Kaylee. I want to be with you, through thick and thin, through every hardship the ‘verse has for you. I want to be there for you, Kaylee.”

“It’s an awful lot to want,” Kaylee sobbed.

“Kaylee,” Simon murmured. She watched him swallow nervously and felt her stomach plummet down to the floor. “Kaylee,” he began again. “Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”

Stunned, Kaylee watched as he brought a ring from his pants pocket, a simple gold band with a tiny diamond in it. He held it out to her, eyes full of hope.

“But I ain’t... it’s not...” Kaylee looked up at Simon from the ring, startled. “What do I say?”

“Please say yes,” Simon said gently. “Please.”

Kaylee swallowed painfully. “I ain’t good no more, Simon.”

“The best I know,” he replied.

“I ain’t no fancy lady from the Core. Can’t be good for that.”

“Please, Kaylee. I don’t want to think of my life without you.”

She shut her eyes, feeling the hot tears seep past her lashes. “I don’t want to be no burden.”

“You couldn’t be. You’re carrying our child.”

Her eyes snapped open and flashed fire. “It ain’t yours, don’t you get it! They did something to me and now I ain’t having your baby!”

Simon stepped closer to the hammock, still hold the ring. “But you are, Kaylee. Those men have nothing to do with us. Us, Kaylee. They’ve got nothing to do with this. I love you. And this baby’s going to be part you, and it’s going to be ours, yours and mine. Nobody else’s, and no one can change that.”

“How come you ain’t mad at me?” Kaylee sobbed, leaning forward so that their foreheads touched. “How come you still love me?”

“Because I do. I don’t know.” Simon stroked her hair gently. “I want you to be my wife, Kaylee. We can do this. We can do this together.”

Kaylee sniffled. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She pulled back and watched herself hold out her left hand. She watched Simon slip the ring onto her finger. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. This was all strange and odd and it wasn’t real somehow, she was going to wake up in the morning and she would be alone in her bunk and thinking she had just woken from a nightmare.

Boy, did that ring sparkle something nice, though. Kaylee knew he would’ve been able to afford something huge and gaudy if he was still working in the Core, knew it must have hurt him to get her something so tiny.

“You’re so beautiful,” Simon murmured, holding her close. “You’ll always be beautiful to me.”

“I wish it was yours,” Kaylee whispered. “I want it to be yours.”

“Then it is,” Simon said. He stroked her hair. “It’s our baby now, our responsibility. I’ll be a good father. I’ll take such good care of the both of you.”

Kaylee threw her arms around Simon and cried. For the first time in nearly three days, they were tears of hope.

“What’re you so happy for?” Jayne groused the following week. Kaylee was humming as she set the table for dinner. “You smile too gorram much.” He hadn’t liked her tears either, truth be told, but nobody asked him and nobody thought he had a heart anyway.

“Don’t it sparkle nice?” Kaylee asked instead, flashing her ring around. After some wheedling, Simon had admitted that it wasn’t a high karat gold, but the diamond was real. He would never have settled for anything less. “That ain’t necessarily huge, but it sure does shine.”

Jayne snorted. He had been there when Simon had picked it out, had sized the ring from his memory of Kaylee’s fingers in between his. He had told the doctor he was a gorram fool, that Kaylee wouldn’t have known a real diamond from a fake. “Girls like ‘em big and shiny, doc,” Jayne had said. “She don’t need the real thing. Get that one.”

Simon had refused the ring with the larger stone. He hadn’t said it, but he had felt painfully small at not being able to afford something finer. But Kaylee deserved something real, even if it was a tiny speck. “The band could be iron, but she deserves the real thing.”

Jayne had mused that one over, then slowly nodded. “Your money, doc. Throw it away on something stupid if you want.”

Simon had merely smiled like a fool, and thanked Jayne for coming into the store with him.

“You big softie,” Kaylee giggled. “Just wait, one day one girl will make all the whores seem silly and not important.”

“Can’t pin me down long enough to get me to buy a ring,” Jayne muttered.

“You ain’t found the right one yet, then.”

Jayne shook his head. “Not everyone wants to be tied down tight.”

“I wonder if we can ask Book to do the ceremony,” Kaylee mused, setting a cup down. “Oh, I’m all excited. There’s so much to plan!”

Jayne rolled his eyes. “Keep on like that, and I’m gonna be sick.”

“Well, Simon’ll patch you right up.”

“He’s just as bad.” Kaylee giggled, and went to get more cups. “It ain’t funny!”

“Well, we fit then, don’t we? Silly, the both of us.”

“That’s for sure,” Jayne muttered. He paused for a moment, then took the cups from Kaylee. “I guess nobody’s gotta tell you nothing about if he does you wrong.”

Kaylee’s eyes widened for a moment. “Are you playing Papa for me?”

“Oh ta ma de! Don’t go making a big deal out of this!”

Her face softened into a smile. “Thanks, though, Jayne. It’s good to hear.”

Jayne nodded brusquely. “Right, then. Just so’s we got that clear. Your daddy ain’t here to do it up proper, but somebody’s got to and I don’t see the Captain doin’ it.”

“He talked to Simon already.”

“Huh. He did. Well, then, we got it all covered.”

“Seems so.”

“Huh.”

Kaylee had to suppress laughter at the sight of Jayne’s thoughtful face. Every once in a while he did something like that. He cared in spite of himself. “Thank you, Jayne. Really.”

“Someone’s gotta take care o’ you. It’s a rough game out there.”

“I’m seeing so,” Kaylee said, watching Jayne put the cups down on the table. After a moment, she paused. “You opposed to bein’ godfather to the baby?”

“What?!”

“Well, I was thinking of asking the Captain, but you seem awful concerned.”

“Ain’t nothing special. Same if Crazy got herself knocked up.” Kaylee snickered and Jayne glowered at her. “I ain’t nobody’s godfather. Not even my sister’s kids.”

Kaylee quieted. “You got a sister?”

“Yeah,” Jayne muttered. He turned back to the table and didn’t say anything else.

“She pretty?” Kaylee asked gently.

“Pretty enough,” Jayne grudgingly admitted. “Don’t know ‘bout now, though.”

“You a good big brother?”

Jayne turned around. “You got enough troubles of your own, you don’t need to go borrowing none of mine. Next time we’re planetside, I’m makin’ sure you can shoot.”

“I can shoot,” Kaylee protested.

“I’m meaning if you need to, not just if you can aim.”

Startled, Kaylee watched Jayne stalk out of the kitchen. She didn’t follow. Papa Frye had gotten into those moods before, and it was always best if they could calm themselves down. Men like that never liked womenfolk pointing out how silly they were.

Kaylee surveyed the table and smiled to herself. They could get married right here on Serenity. If they couldn’t get Shepherd Book, Captains of any ship were allowed to marry people. It would be nice to have her family involved, but they could always go visiting after. Her Papa would love Simon, Kaylee decided. He was a bit stiff and proper at first, but he warmed up real nice, just like her Papa. And Papa would be happy with anybody that took care of his little girl. Papa will hit the roof when he finds out he’s a Grandpapa, but he’ll love it. More Fryes to love.

Her smile faded slightly when she thought of Simon’s parents. They disowned him when he broke River out of the Academy. They wouldn’t even know about a wedding, wouldn’t even know there was a grandchild. They might not even care. Poor Simon. She would have to write a letter to make sure her Papa was extra special nice to him when they met.

“Do you think mà mà or bà bàn would’ve liked Kaylee?” River asked, perched on a stool in the infirmary.

“I know if they gave it a chance, they would’ve. But they wouldn’t have been able to see past the clothes or the accent.” Simon looked up at River after reconstituting a bottle of antipsychotic. “It’s okay, mei mei, it doesn’t hurt so much now.”

“You lie. It’s a knife.”

Sighing, Simon uncapped the five milliliter syringe. “Hopefully this one will work better for you. I have to see about getting pills, but they’re harder to find out here.”

River extended her arm obediently. “It makes me ache inside.”

“I’m sorry, mei mei,” Simon sighed. He swabbed the side of her arm, then injected the medication into her muscle. “But it’s working better for you, isn’t it?”

“Until the next time the dreams begin in the day.”

He capped the syringe and dumped it into the disposal unit on the wall. “You’ve gotten so much better, River. There’s such a difference in you.”

“Do you think I could ever have a baby of my own?” River whispered. “Wrong as I am, could I ever be loved like that?”

Simon cradled her in his arms. “Oh mei mei, I don’t know. I hope so.”

“I have no mind, I have no brain. Nothing can make me whole again.” River whispered. “My mind ebbs and flows, and it flows away from me.”

“No... Don’t say that. We’ll find something that works. This is working for you so far, this might be the one. Everything will be okay, mei mei, I promise.”

Don’t make promises you can’t keep, she wanted to say, but that would’ve been cruel. He wanted to do right by her; it wasn’t his fault she was broken beyond repair. River closed her eyes instead, and let him rock her gently. Let him think she would be fixed. Let him think it would be okay. Let him play hide and seek with the demons of the ‘verse.

Everyone needed their illusions.

River silently sat on the stairs down to the cargo bay, thoughts wandering in their usual odd directions. It was hard to catch hold, hard to center. Hard to leave things in an order, to find the breadcrumbs left along the way. Something listless, something found, something hidden in the dark of the ground. Over and under, over again, couldn’t put the pieces of her back together again. Poor girl, poor girl, too tired and still. Poor girl, poor girl, nowhere left to go, nowhere left to be, nothing else but stars above and black between, nothing else but the voices in the stars and the cries of lost hope.

River blinked, and her mind was wiped clear. New blank slate. Black on black on black, tick tock, giggling upstairs in the mess. Simon and Kaylee making a mess in the mess.

She tried to ignore the whispers of thoughts as well as she could, and today it seemed to be a bit easier. Plus, these whispering thoughts were all familiar, easily dismissed as irrelevant to the matter at hand. It was just difficult to concentrate her focus, difficult to form a single beam of understanding to light the darkness of contemplation. She could hear boots clang above her; the sound was irrelevant and insincere, hollow booms upon a hollow heart.

“You okay, River?” Zoe asked.

“The natives cluster like a swarm of flies. How can I govern and lead them aright? I cannot even understand what they say.”

Zoe sat down on the stairs next to River. The girl seemed to be focusing on her hands, trying to mentally gird herself with some odd bits of poetry or some such. “Is it hard on you? Them marryin’, I mean.”

“I gain a sister and become an auntie. I will be loved even so.” River’s voice sounded tiny, even to herself. “But nothing is level, nothing is safe and plumb-lined just yet. I see it, but the square is not a square and is not even.”

Zoe took one of River’s hands in hers. “It’s a hard thing, watching someone else move on in their lives and leave you behind. But it’s not the only thing in life, and it shouldn’t be something to beat you down.”

River looked up. “This girl wishes she could think in lines.”

Zoe let the statement pass. “You seem better these days.”

“New drugs haven’t soured yet. But lines are still curves, and words have a hard time to follow them back to home.”

“Simon’s doing his best.”

“Yes. This girl is pleased.”

Zoe stared out into the emptiness of the cargo bay, not sure what she could say. “He’s real happy with her, it seems like.”

“She makes us happy. She makes us whole.”

“They don’t mean to leave you out.”

“But it’s lonely here in the dark,” River whispered. “Even if they can’t see it.”

“Give it time. Everything looks better when you step back.”

“Perspective. Distance. Outdistance and outstrip.”

“He’s not going anywhere, River. You won’t be left behind. Family doesn’t do that.”

“Ours did.”

Nonplused, Zoe leaned back. “I suppose. But ours don’t.”

She cocked her head to the side, thinking. “Have we been adopted?”

“Sort of,” Zoe said, her lips twisting into a bit of a smirk.

“Acceptable,” River replied with a firm nod. “Yes, this is acceptable. Not congruent, but families often aren’t.”

“Feeling better?”

She grinned at Zoe, suddenly seeming like an ordinary teenager. “Muchly so.”

“Well then, I’ve done my good deed for the day.” Zoe got up and started heading back upstairs. “Dinner’s on in ten, just thought you should know.”

“I’ll be there.”

River looked out over the shadows of the cargo bay. “And when I lie here, broken and still...”

Something flashed at the corner of her eye, and there was the sound of footsteps. River turned, peering into the darkness, looking for the sound.

She could see a little girl with unruly brown hair and bright blue eyes running around boxes and ducking under the stairs. She was small, with a pink bow in her hair and a shirt that was torn at the sleeve. She had caught it on one of the tools in the engine room, when she had squeezed into a corner while playing hide and seek with her earlier. The girl was laughing, shrieking with laughter. “You can’t catch me!” the girl cried as she ran under the stairs. With a gasp, River shot to her feet and peered between the stairs. No girl, no ghost of a girl.

“Oh. Secret yet. I didn’t realize it.” River shook her head out a bit, feeling her hair fly out all around her. Maybe it was a good thought, maybe it was nothing more than a psychotic vision meant to torment her. Either way, a niece would be lovely.

River raced up the stairs toward dinner.