FicWad

-I-I-I-

Mal stopped in the corridor, one hand against the bulkhead. "You think I did wrong?" he asked the woman he knew was following him, just like she always did.

"No," Zoë answered quietly. "I think things'll glide a deal smoother for us without River and Simon on board. But how long do you think they'll last? Let alone with having to take care of a child like Harry?"

The captain was glad he was facing away from her; that way, she couldn't see the flinch her words caused, because the answer was 'about as long as spit on the sun.' "Doc made his call," he said, and it sounded like an excuse even to him. "They's as babes in a basket when we took 'em in. We sheltered 'em plenty. Man has to cut loose, learn to stand on his own." Not that the Doc would be able to, the way he clung to his Core ways even out here on the Rim.

They were walking again by now, and it wasn't until they'd reached the entrance to Mal's quarters that Zoë got to what was obviously on her mind. "Like that man back in town?"

Mal froze, the man's despairing face as he was pushed from the side of the mule and caught by the Reavers flashing through his mind. "I had to shoot him. What the Reavers woulda done to him before they killed him..." And that would've been a long time in coming, indeed. Being eaten alive took longer to kill someone than you'd think possible.

"I know. That was a piece'a mercy. But before that, him begging us to bring him along."

He had to look away. "We couldn't take the weight. Would slowed us down." And then none of them would be here.

Brown eyes looked at him, carefully blanked of all expression. "You know that for certain."

"Mule won't run with five. I shoulda dumped the girl? Or you? Or Jayne?" Mal had to stop and reconsider that last one. "Well, Jayne..." If the mercenary wasn't so damn useful, Mal would've put a bullet into him long ago just on account that Jayne's loyalty went to whoever held the pocketbook and supplied him with his beloved violence. He was the viper at the breast that would turn when offered a larger rat.

Zoë didn't smile; not that he'd really expected her to, but after so many years of reading her subtle expressions, he could tell she wasn't at all amused. "Coulda tossed the payload."

Mal hadn't wanted to think about that, hadn't wanted contemplate the fact he'd found cash to be more important than a stranger's life. "And go to Fanty and Mingo with air in our mitts, tell 'em, 'Here's your share'? They'd set the dogs on us in the space of a twitch, and there we are back in mortal peril. We get a job, we gotta make good."

All of which was true, and very logical, but saying it still made him feel like /go se/.

"Sir, I don't disagree on any particular point, it's just..." Uncharacteristically, Zoë hesitated. "In the time of war, we woulda never left a man stranded."

His chest aching with the memories her words brought up, Mal pushed open the door to his quarters and stepped inside. "Maybe that's why we lost," was his reply, before the door slid shut, ending the conversation.

-I-I-I-

"I do not get it. How's a guy get so wrong?"

Kaylee blinked and looked over at the last person she would have expected to utter those words. Jayne was dragging the corpse of the Reaver over to the airlock, looking absolutely disgusted even though she knew it wasn't the first body he'd ever had to move.

"Ain't logical," the big man continued as she pushed the button to open the inner door. "Cuttin' on his own face, rapin' and murdering- I mean, I'll kill a man in a fair fight. Or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight. Or if he bothers me. Or if there's a woman. Or I'm getting' paid." By now Kaylee was rolling her eyes, and he saw her expression and grinned.

"Mostly only when I'm getting' paid," he admitted. "But these Reavers- last ten years, they just show up like the bogeymen from stories. Eating people alive? Where does that get fun?"

Kaylee had to shrug. "Shepherd Book said they was men that reached the edge of space, saw a vast nothingness, and just went bibbledy over it."

"Well, I been to the edge."

It was all she could do to suppress a comment that would've done the Cap'n proud for pure snarkiness. "That explains so much," maybe, or "His point made exactly."

But she prided herself on being a nice girl, and so she kept her mouth shut and depressurized the crawlspace.

"Just looked like more space," Jayne added after a moment.

"I don't know. People get awful lonely in the black. Like to get addlepated ourselves, we stay on this boat much longer. Captain'll drive us all off, one by one."

The mercenary snorted. "You're just in a whinge 'cause that prissy doc is finally disembarking. Me, I say good riddance." He ignored the way Kaylee turned and glared at him. "He never belonged here, his sister's no saner than one of them Reavers, and the Doc's pet is good for nothin' but looking cute and nearly blowin' people up!"

Kaylee mimicked his snort. "Woulda thought that'd put him right dear in your heart. And River's a dear heart and a boon to this crew. You just don't like her 'cause she can read your mind and everything you think is mean!"

The man just shrugged. "Well, there is that."

"They could have a place here, all three of them. They did have a place. Now they're leaving us, just like Shepherd Book." She looked up at one of the shuttles, dark and dusty with disuse. "Just like Inara..."

-I-I-I-

"Don't talk to the barkers," Kaylee instructed Simon a few hours later, standing with him on Serenity's ramp. "Only to the captains. You look the captain in the eye, know who you're dealing with."

River only listened to their conversation with a little tiny bit of her attention. The rest was spent on the seemingly endless task of straightening her little feather's hair, endless because whenever she put a lock of the dark strands in one place, another one would fall into disorder. She continued at her self-appointed task, though, her enormous intellect struggling with the problem. Surely there was some mathematical formula to explain the sheer messiness?

Harry bore her attentions with his customary stoic patience, though to one who knew him as closely as the psychic did, he was enjoying them. He leaned into her touch ever so slightly.

"I wish there was-" Simon began wistfully, then faltered. River scowled, her face safely turned away so they wouldn't see. Stupid brother. He paid so much attention to the little things he forgot how to deal with the important ones...

Like telling the girl he loved her already! But no, he had to be so dense all the time...

Captain Reynolds passed by the two in studied ignorance, but paused by her and Harry. He looked at the boy for a long moment, then reached out to him. River pouted as he ruined all of her hard work with a good tousling.

"You'll take care of him?" he asked, still not looking at her directly.

River nodded, even though he couldn't see. "I'll take care of him, until he takes care of us," she answered.

"Good luck," he muttered diffidently. Harry gave him a wan smile, his eyes focused somewhere over the captain's shoulder.

"You shouldn't oughtta be so clean," Kaylee babbled on as he moved away to the pilot and his wife waiting at the bottom of the ramp. "It's a dead giveaway you don't belong, you always gotta be tidy."

River frowned as she wrestled with a particularly stubborn bit of hair, trying to fix the damage. The mechanic was practically pouring out her feelings on the ground there in front of his feet, and all Simon was doing was standing there. He ought to be sweeping her off her feet for a good-bye kiss, like in all those romance flicks she'd watched with Kaylee and Inara.

Stupid, stupid brother...

Kaylee had yet to wind down. "Don't pay anybody in advance. And don't ride in anything with a Capissen-38 engine, they fall right out of the sky."

"Kaylee." River waited breathlessly for Simon to continue. Maybe his wandering IQ points had finally come back to him...

But no- despite the longing in his voice, he didn't stop the girl when she went to rejoin the rest of her crewmates. He came over to them instead, ignoring the disgusted look River sent his way.

"River, do you want to stay with them?" he asked quietly. He sounded more like he wanted to convince himself this was the right past, than to hear her opinion.

River pulled Harry closer to herself. "It's not safe," she muttered into the top of his head.

Simon sighed. "No, I fear it's not safe anymore."

The teenager rolled her eyes, letting the boy loose and taking him by the hand instead. "For them," she added, but if Simon heard her, he showed no sign of it.

-I-I-I-

The bar was about as crowded as Mal had expected; the Maidenhead's beer wasn't that great, but those who operated just on, and sometimes over, the edge of the law loved the place. They left their weapons in the gun check, a pistol each from Mal, Zoë, and Jayne, though it had taken a great deal of arguing and orders to make the last bring only one.

Mal was fair glad Kaylee made it a point not to carry a weapon. The way she was glaring at him and ranting over the doctor's departure, he wasn't so sure she wouldn't have shot him with it.

"You know how much I pined on Simon. And him fair sweet on me, I well believe, but he's so worried about being found out..."

"Captain didn't make them fugitives," Zoë interjected. Mal was glad, because he didn't want to have to justify himself yet again right now, not when the cons of sending the trio off were starting to yell in his ear just as loudly as the pros.

Kaylee pouted. "But he coulda made 'em family, 'steada driving them off. 'Steada keeping Simon from seein' I was there, when I carried such a torch and we coulda... Goin' on a year now I ain't had nothing twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries."

Mal choked. "Oh, God, I ain't supposed to know that!"

"I could stand to hear a little more," Jayne volunteered, raising his hand with a grin. Zoë sent him a glare, but Kaylee didn't react.

"If you had a care for anybody's heart, you woulda-"

That was /enough/! Mal turned on her, his eyes flashing with anger. "You knew he was gonna leave! We never been but but a way station to those two." It felt wrong, somehow, to include Harry in that. The kid hadn't had a say in what happened to him since the Alliance had gotten its greedy mitts on him. "And how do you know what he feels? He's got River an' Harry to worry on, but he still coulda shown you- If I truly wanted someone bad enough, wouldn't be a thing in the 'verse could stop me from going to her."

The girl's face was serious, now, as she looked him in the eye. "Tell that to Inara."

She left, then, while Mal was still reeling. "Domestic troubles?" a smooth voice asked from behind.

When the captain turned, he found Fanty and Mingo standing there. "'Cause we don't wanna interrupt," Mingo added to his twin brother's comment.

Fanty nodded. "A man should keep his house in order."

Mal looked between them, being careful not to show his dismay at being snuck up on. "Mingo. Fanty," he acknowledged.

Mingo pointed at his brother. "He's Mingo."

The captain smirked. Did they really think they were fooling anyone? "He's Fanty. You're Mingo."

"Gah!" Mingo scowled at him. "How is it you always know?"

"Fanty's prettier." Not really, but a magician never revealed his secrets. "Feel to do some business?"

"Bit crowded, innit? As you see, we come unencumbered by thugs," Mingo pointed out, casting a leery eye over his crewmates.

Mal snorted. "Which means at least four of the guys already in here are yours. All's one. I'll just keep Jayne with me."

Zoe frowned. "Sir, are you sure you don't-"

"Go." Being good for when trouble came 'round was the entire reason he kept the man around and still on this side of breathing. And at least with him nearby Mal could keep an eye on him. "Get yourselves a nice romantic meal."

Wash grinned, circling wife's waist with an arm. "Those are two of my favorite words!" Zoë gave him a look. "Honey? 'Meal'?"

They wandered off, hand in hand, and Fanty tossed a few coins to a dancer, who snapped out her fans. Studying her for a few seconds, Mal realized the positions of her fans were carefully calculated to block their table from view of the Alliance's ubiquitous cameras.

Underneath the table, Mal carefully slid over the duffel containing the twins' share of the results of the heist. It hit Fanty's foot, but the man didn't even blink. "Quite a crew you've got."

"Yeah," Mal agreed warily. "They're a fine bunch of reubens."

"How you keep them on that crap boat is a subject of much musing 'tween me and Fanty."

"We go on and on," the other one added.

Warning bells were slowly starting to register in Mal's mind. "So I'm noticing. Is there a problem I don't know of? You got twenty-five percent of a sweet take kissing your foot, how come we're not dispersing?"

Fanty smiled a shark's smile. "Our end is forty, precious."

Jayne reached for his absent gun, his face darkening. "My muscular buttocks it's forty!"

If the situation hadn't been so suddenly tense, Mal would have winced at that. What a lovely mental picture...

"It is as of now," Mingo said. "Find anyone around going cheaper."

Fanty nodded. "Find anyone around going near a sorry lot like you in the first instance."

That was when Jayne nudged Mal, his attention taken by something near the entrance. The captain followed his gaze to see a slender figure slipping inside.

River?

...Oh, just effin' wonderful...