“You look very well.... rested,” Wash said, noticing Kaylee and Simon coming back aboard Serenity. A dirty look from Zoe had changed what he was about to say.

“Looks like she sexed you six ways from Sunday, Doc,” Jayne said with a grin, stacking supplies in the cargo bay.

Simon ignored Jayne and just grinned at Wash and Zoe. “Good to see you. I hope River was okay while we were away.”

“It wasn’t any trouble,” Wash assured him. Everyone missed Jayne’s snort. “She’s absolutely adorable. Makes us think of having a child of our own.”

Simon eyed Wash warily. “What’s she done?”

“Nothing! Nothing a little washing can’t handle, anyway.” He smiled at Simon and Kaylee. “She took her watercolors to my dinosaurs and turned them blue.”

“Aw... she missed us!” Kaylee said, squeezing Simon’s arm. “I’ll go off and find ‘er.”

Simon watched her race up the steps and into the ship. He turned back to Wash and Zoe with a tired smile. “Thanks so much. There weren’t any episodes, were there?”

“Not at all,” Wash assured him. “Nothing we couldn’t take care of. And Zoe got real good at dispensing that medication for her.”

“She’s family,” Zoe said, cutting off Simon when he was about to thank her. “No need for thanks, just doing what needs to be done.”

He grinned at them both. “Okay then. It’s good to be back.”

They watched him climb up the stairs after Kaylee and head toward the kitchen.

Wash sighed. “Well, lamby-toes. We handled it all right.”

“It’s all right to have kids in space,” Zoe said, putting her arms around her husband. His shirt was surprisingly docile, given his collection.

“I must say, you’re probably right. I guess... we can think about giving their kid a playmate. It might be awful lonely for a little one to be playing alone.”

Zoe gave Wash a kiss. “You always surprise me, husband.”

“I live for those days,” Wash said with a grin. “Well, those and when you wear a slinky dress. I like the slinky dress days. Those are most excellent days to have.”

“I still have the green one.”

Wash flashed her a hopeful grin. “Think I can see it again?”

“If you play your cards right, you get to take it off.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “I’m very good at cards.”

Zoe grinned at him. “I know.” She hit the button that closed off the cargo bay. “Now git this boat off the ground and into the sky. You’ll get a reward later.”

Laughing, Wash headed up to the cockpit.

River was drawing on her sketch pad when Kaylee stopped in for a visit. She didn’t look up at her new sister, didn’t stop the comforting back-and-forth of the dark blue pencil. She had cried away her tears long ago, and Kaylee didn’t need to see new ones when she was so happy.

“Whatcha drawin’?”

“Flowers,” River said absently. “They’re all blue.”

“Is it your favorite color?”

“No. Blue isn’t any good. Too many connotations.”

Kaylee sat down next to River and pulled some of the strands out of the way. “Now we’re really sisters, not just sayin’. I never had sisters.”

“I don’t have any,” River replied. “They didn’t want to try again.”

“Aw. We’ll be good sisters to each other.”

But I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to lose everything to you. He’s not mine anymore, it isn’t the same. But it wasn’t any fair to Kaylee, who only wanted to help, who was her friend and couldn’t imagine hurting her.

“Yes,” River said, looking up at Kaylee. “I’ll try.”

She did try. She was a good sister during dinner, keeping her meandering thoughts to herself. It took effort, but she even was able to track one of the jokes and laugh along with it. Her brother was so happy, laughing without screens over his eyes. It broke her heart to see it; he should have been happy with her, too.

She heard their voices in the middle of the night through the walls, laughing. They couldn’t help it. They were just so happy, and it was infectious. Zoe and Wash were infected. Mal was protected, but his heart was left behind. It was too high a price to pay. Book had God and it kept him insulated from this kind of thing, but he was happy also. Jayne was Jayne. There was no changing things.

River creeps out of her room. The nightgown she is wearing fits for a change, and is flowing down her legs. White shell, with tiny pink flowers on them. Not blue. She had insisted on not blue, though some of the things they had gotten her were blue. She tried telling herself it was just a color, it didn’t mean anything. But sometimes she forgot, and would be startled when she saw blue on herself. If it was the same shade, she would stop, look at her feet and hope when she looked up she would still be on Serenity. At least darker blues weren’t the same color, not exactly, and it didn’t give her as much pause. She used to like blue.

River sat on the steps to the empty cargo bay. “Sleep, little River,” she whispered into the dark. “I will always be here when you wake.”

But there was no one to hear, no one to remember. The wash of memories came over her, a deluge, a flood. Some of them were not her own and some of them were. Some of them even made sense.

River closed her eyes and began to cry. Her heart was spiraling out of control, her thoughts stilled by the water of the flood. Pain, just there, locking her in, keeping her from joining the other soft thoughts flitting through the walls.

“It can’t be that bad,” Shepherd Book said, coming down the stairs. River didn’t bother to hide her tears.

“I can’t stop,” River sobbed. “I still hear everything, I still feel everything. No contradictions can tie me up for long.”

Book held out his hand. “Here. We’ll talk. Tell me what you need to say. There’s more ways to bond with someone than marriage, more ways to not feel alone.”

“How do I stop bleeding through the floor? How do I stop being special? I want to learn to fly again, to feel my wings unfurl.”

Book lifted her up to her feet. “Let’s go to the kitchen. Green tea and honey and stories. They’ll help you settle down for the night.”

She sniffled, feeling like a small child. Book was more comforting then her own father had been, though it made her guilty to think so. “Can I have cookies?”

“I’ll see if we have some,” Book said with a smile.

“I like chocolate chips,” River said with a small voice. It felt as though she were seven again.

“I’ve always liked coconut cookies myself,” Book said gently, turning on the kitchen light. He set the kettle on the stove after filling it with water. River was sitting on a chair, her feet up on the seat and her nightgown pulled down over her legs. “Was it a nightmare?”

River shook her head. “I hear them laughing. I know it’s not at me, but they’re so happy and I’m not, and I don’t know how to be. It’s not the same.”

Book’s mouth twisted sadly. “No, it’s not. But then, things haven’t been normal for you in a long time.” River shook her head, hair flying all about. “Tell me what it was like for you, before the Academy came along.”

And then she was talking. Playing at soldiers with Simon. Rigging his drop box to send messages at inappropriate times so he could get a brand new one. Using his used drop box to write up her own dreams and sorrows. Dancing in a ballet recital as a child, wishing she could be a professional dancer; her parents would not allow it. She absorbed ideas quickly, reading all of her brother’s texts in her spare time. There were no other children near them, and their company was kept with each other alone. She could play at distance, but her brother was her constant company; when he went off to medical school, she did what she could to get the attention of a school nearby. Instead of the school, she found the Academy and its web of secrets.

“You’re here with him now, River,” Book said gently over tea. “You’re sharing things with him now. You’re here as his family, his only family. You will be the one to help keep focus when Kaylee can’t talk to him. The two of you are special in different ways, and take different roles in his life. Simon has room for you both, more than enough love for you.”

“How? You can’t measure, can’t quantify and hold.”

Book smiled at River’s frown. “How big is the universe? What’s the weight of every star combined? How deep does the black go?”

“Nonsense. Irrelevant. Unable to compute.”

“So is love.” He watched River look at him with childlike innocence. “You can’t measure love, can’t pin it in place, can’t tell it to behave. Love just is. It exists, it holds you, it comforts you. But it can’t be seen or understood in mathematical terms. It isn’t science. It’s faith.”

“Your book,” River said, straightening in her chair. “The book I broke. It talked of love.”

“That it does. Love is mentioned a lot because love is faith. You have to have faith in the person you love, faith that the right thing will happen.”

“I don’t have much,” River sighed.

“It takes time to build. You started with none, but I think you came a long way.”

River looked at Book with her head tilted to the side. “You’ve been missed, preacher man.”

“So have you.”

Smiling, River sipped her tea.

Mal watched River dance in the cargo bay. One of Kaylee’s music collections was playing, and River was dancing along with it. She hadn’t really acted up since the wedding, and he was glad of it. At least she was playing at something not violent. Mal nodded at Book as he made his way over. “Wash says it’s another three hours before we touch down on Haven.”

Book smiled. “Ah. It will be nice getting back to the Abbey.”

“You sure a planetary life is what you want? It was mighty comfortable with you on board.”

“It was nice to be here for a spell and see how everyone was doing. But my place is with other people, to bring comfort where I can. I’m not much for sailing for long periods of time. I need a sky over my head and a ground beneath my feet.”

“Well, you know how to find us when you want a break.”

“Of course.” Book nodded at River. “She should be a bit better now. It’s hard for her. No one to really see her for what she is.”

“And what’s that?”

“Not a child, for starters.” Book smiled at Mal’s start of surprise. “She needs to do something around the ship. Give her something to do, something she can take pride in. It will help her immensely to know she’s doing something good in her life.”

“Well, other than dancing or drawing or cracking up, what’s she good at?”

“Ask her,” Book suggested, picking up his Bible. “She’s quite a talented young lady.”

Mal frowned at that, but nodded. “All right, then. We’ll see what we can do.”

He mulled over the conversation for a few days after taking leave of Haven. He hadn’t noticed River doing anything special. Sometimes she sketched, sometimes she played games with Kaylee, sometimes she wandered about aimlessly with a faraway look on her face. When asked how she was at that time, she would finally focus on something. “Thinking. Cataloguing. Weighing and measuring, coming to conclusions.”

“And what would they be?” Mal had asked.

“Unformed still, cannot dispense inaccurate information.”

Huh. She seemed awfully childish to Mal. Then again, he hadn’t been a child in a good long time himself. He waited until she seemed more put together. “When’s your birthday?”

“I turn nineteen in nine months and twenty-three days,” River replied. She was balancing on one of the cargo boxes on the tips of her toes.

“So you’re already an adult in the eyes of the law.”

“Affirmative.”

“Then you shouldn’t be slacking off and letting the rest of my crew do your work.” Mal nearly smiled at River’s frown, but managed not to. “So what do you know how to do?”

“I was a pilot once. In dreams.”

“I already got a pilot. Choose again.”

River’s face scrunched up tight as she thought. Then she brightened. “I can cook very well.”

“Well then. You got cook’s duty. Try it out tonight for dinner.”

Mal shook his head as River somersaulted off of the crate with joy. He headed back up toward the bridge. They were pretty close to Persephone. There had to be someone there who could use a Firefly for their job.

Life settled in comfortably. Kaylee and Simon shared a bunk now, though any part of the ship was fair game for them. His old bunk in the guest quarters were cleared out, and it really looked as though there had never been anyone living there. He had his pictures pinned up in Kaylee’s bunk now, and she did put away some of her decorations that even she admitted were tacky. They got a bigger bed and gave it an energetic workout most nights. Kaylee would check on the engine every day, and they continued with the French lessons. Kaylee gave up remembering most things, but it was something fun to do together. Simon didn’t do well with children’s games, but Kaylee spent time with River after lunch to play. The girl actually did cook very well, and so it fell to her to cook every night. She even took on dishwashing duty, which went over real well.

When Kaylee hit the fifth month of her pregnancy, she had to admit that her life was good. It was settled and even. Her family felt safe and whole.

Looking back on it later, that of course meant that the other shoe was about to drop.

The ship was a bombed-out shell, with scorch marks along its sides where it was hit. Nothing could decay out in the vacuum of space, so it was impossible to tell how long the husk had been floating in space. It was just past the usual travel lanes of the Rim Worlds, but nowhere near Reaver territory. Very little debris lay near the ship as it drifted along in space. Something may have happened, but the husk wasn’t telling.

“We suit up and go to salvage,” Mal had told Zoe and Wash. Wash had sighed and eyed his dinosaurs. The watercolors had washed off easily enough, and River at one point had gotten him another dinosaur when she was planetside.

Wash caught Zoe’s hand as she left the cockpit. “Xiâoxin,” he murmured softly.

“Of course,” she replied just as softly. She squeezed his fingers tight, then took off after Mal. She and Jayne would accompany the captain into the ship. Salvage jobs were easy, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t turn tricky at any point in time. Step wrong, and something gave way. The salvage ship could spin on a too-wrong axis and hurl you out the door before you could anchor properly. It wasn’t really a salvage job, and there were other scavengers or Reavers lying in wait for them. There were a hundred different could-bes, and it was hard to be sure which it was going to be before you touched down.

Once in the suits, the three of them went over to the other ship. Serenity hung there next to the wreck, thrusters on nil to keep it in place. Zoe landed hard on the other ship, bumping into Mal on the way in. He heard her grunt and saw her step down hard. “Okay there, Zoe?”

“Méi guänxi.” She waved him off. “Let’s get to looking.”

It had apparently been picked clean a long time ago. Jayne had suggested cutting up some parts of the ship for scrap metal, which would always go over well in a junkyard. They didn’t have a good enough torch on hand, and even the ship’s tools were missing.

“They got a weapons locker?” he asked suddenly. Mal and Zoe swung their gazes to him. “Maybe something we can use on another job.”

“Go check the bridge,” Mal said with a sigh. “Might as well see. At least we won’t have to buy too much ammo at the next stop.”

“‘Xactly,” Jayne muttered. “Think there might be anything in the galley.”

“Ain’t nothing in the hold. Might as well keep it from being a total waste.”

Jayne moved toward the bridge to look for a hidden weapons locker. Mal and Zoe headed to where the galley would be. “You think it was Reavers?” Zoe asked him.

“Well, no bodies to tell for certain. If it’s so, they’re a mighty long way from home.”

“Could be they’ve exhausted their previous food supply, sir.”

Mal shot her an annoyed look. “That’s something I don’t even want to begin to contemplate. You just look over that way, I’ll be over this way.”

Nothing, nothing and more nothing.

And then a bang from the cockpit.

Mal and Zoe stopped looking for something to appear in the wreckage and ran toward the cockpit. There was a slight hissing sound coming from over the suit’s transmitter; Mal sincerely hoped it wasn’t Jayne’s air supply. Breathing wasn’t a good idea in the open black.

“Ni meí shì bà?” Zoe called out.

A groan. Mal and Zoe hurried, pushing past the wafting debris coming from the cockpit. “Is everything okay?” Kaylee called out over the intercom. “We heard a bang.”

“Checking it out, Kaylee. Put Doc on alert, just in case.”

“Will do, Cap’n,” Kaylee sang out, some tension in her voice. When she clicked off, the airwaves seemed very silent.

Jayne was lying on the floor, sprawled. His helmet was cracked, and it was the source of a steady leak of air. So was the hole in his side, though he was doing his best to keep the edges of the suit and his ribs together.

“We’ll get you out of here,” Mal said, rushing forward.

“Rigged,” Jayne panted. “Didn’t see it ‘till I triggered it. Ain’t fair to blow a cache like that. It looked like some nice pieces.”

“Let’s just go. It was a bust.”

Zoe looked up through the cockpit windows as the intercom began to spark with static. “Sir?”

Mal looked up. “Now what?”

“We’d best get moving.”

Mal followed her gaze and paled. He looked down at Jayne. “Well now, good thing you can take some pain, ‘cause we’ve got to go.”

“Captain...” Wash’s voice began over the intercom.

“We know, we’re coming back.”

Jayne looked from one tense face to another. “Oh come on, it ain’t... it can’t...”

“We’re goin’. Now.”

“Go se,” Jayne muttered as they left the cockpit for the gash in the side of the ship. It hurt with every step, but he swallowed it down. “Ain’t fair.”

“Nope. That it ain’t. Get a move on,” Mal said. He and Zoe both shouldered Jayne and began at a rapid pace. At the edge of the gash, he pushed Jayne across the way toward the open airlock. He and Zoe jumped across, then hit the button to close it up. “I suggest you hoof it!” Mal bellowed over the intercom.

“Got it,” Wash replied.

Mal stood in the airlock for a while after Simon and Zoe brought Jayne to the infirmary. They had cut it pretty close. The Reaver ship hadn’t come any closer, but it had been an awful lot closer than he’d have liked it.

He saw Kaylee in the engine room later, her belly beginning to get big. Her eyes were round as saucers and shiny with fear. “Hey there, Mrs. Tam.” She smiled weakly and sagged down to the floor to sit. “It’s all right. Didn’t come close.” Mal tried grinning at Kaylee. “Had to give the hubby some work to do. Couldn’t have him getting bored now.”

“Nope, can’t have that, Cap’n.” Kaylee favored him with a watery smile. “Good thing the engine’s all shined up to specs.”

“Good thing.” Mal turned to leave, but noticed Kaylee’s forlorn look. “What is it?”

“What if they got us?” Kaylee whispered.

“We got ourselves a heck of a pilot. We’d’ve gotten out somehow.”

She patted her belly. “I get so scared now. You ever think sometimes it’s too hard out here?”

Yes. No. Always. Never.

Instead of speaking up, Mal walked over to Kaylee and sat down next to her. “I think we got a good thing going here. Ain’t nobody telling us what to do or how to do it. We got our sky and our boat, we got our lives to live as we please. It’s a fine thing to have.”

Kaylee nodded. “I’m just worryin’ over nothing, I guess.”

“Not nothing,” Mal answered quietly. “It’s got dangers, that’s for sure. Same as planets got some dangers. But we know these, we can handle these. We’ll be okay. And you’re a mother now, Kaylee. You got two to worry for.”

Three, she wanted to say. Four if you count River, too, and I should. Kaylee rested her head on Mal’s shoulder. “Just tired a little, I think.”

“You nap. Then River’ll fix up something for you.”

Kaylee smiled. “I’ll be all right. I will.”

“We’ll get through it,” Mal said, standing up. “And if not, I’ll order you to. I’m the Captain, and this is my boat. You got to make it work if I say so.”

As expected, Kaylee grinned. “If you say so, Cap’n.”

“That’s right.” He smiled. “She’s a good boat. And she’ll miss you if you go.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t leave her for the world. I just... it’s worrisome sometimes.”

“It can be.”

“Thanks, Cap’n.”

Mal nodded, and left the engine room. She’d likely get better comforting from that fancy husband of hers, but at least that should tide her over.

As for himself, he had a bottle of whiskey in his bunk to erase the fear still caught in his mouth.

There were days Kaylee forgot the baby wasn’t Simon’s. He would read to her and the baby, kiss her stomach and rub her feet when they got sore. He rubbed her back and held her close at night so she would be comfortable enough to sleep. He and River would toss name ideas at her, usually bad ones to make her laugh. River kept giving them girl names, and Simon refused to check what sex the baby would be. He would go through his computer and pick out names that sounded awful with the last name Tam.

And sometimes she would pass by her reflection in a mirror and think you liar.

The baby would kick, and it sent River into a tizzy of laughter and wonder. She said she liked baby thoughts, that they were fuzzy and hazy and not so sharp. River would pat Kaylee’s belly and talk to her little niece whenever she could. “I am River, and I am here, little girl. Your g? m? will protect you.”

Simon merely smiled and would kiss Kaylee on the cheek. “I’m a lucky man,” he said in a husky whisper. If River was elsewhere, that whispering voice would say a whole lot of what-else that sent shivers down Kaylee’s spine. And if River was there, Simon merely promised Kaylee with his eyes how he would show her his appreciation later.

As Kaylee approached her eighth month, Simon would’ve said he was the luckiest man alive.

It changed the night he woke from Kaylee screaming in the bed beside him.