(no subject)
Wash’s father always smoked cigarettes. His wife, Louanne, would always flip her towel at him when she caught Hoban (good, family name) standing in front of the house smoking as she went to hang up the laundry.
“Those things’ll kill you,” she’d say tartly.
“I’m gonna die anyway, Louannie dear,” he’d tell her. “Figure I may’s well smoke while I can.”
“’S enough smoke ‘round here, way I see it,” Louanne would grumble, but she always let him. Sometimes Wash would sit on his daddy’s knee, and listen to Hoban the Elder tell stories about things-sometimes wars, sometimes bloody, sometimes dirty. Hoban figured that Wash would learn about those things eventually, and it may as well be sooner than later.
“Never smoke, Wash,” he’d say, pointing at his son with the cigarette. “Louannie’s right, the planet’s got enough smog as is.”
Hoban died of lung cancer, to nobody’s real surprise. They knew it was coming for months, as soon as Hoban’s breathing started to sound like Little Louanne’s rattles, but when the time came Hoban wanted to see his grandchildren one last time. Veronica wouldn’t do it-said she couldn’t-so Wash did, holding Little Louanne and his nephew Hoban close to his chest when he took them into the dark beige room.
“Little Lou,” Hoban the Third said, holding the baby girl to him. “And Hoban-Hoban the Fifth.” The fifth Hoban was older than Little Louanne, a toddler who could stand on his own, spit out words sometimes if he was feeling active.
“Kay?” Hoban the Fifth asked his grandfather concernedly.
Hoban the Third smiled. “Everythin’s gonna be okay, Hoban.” He patted the young boy’s hand awkwardly. “Hoban,” he said, looking for Wash.
Wash stepped forward. “Which?” he asked, smiling weakly.
Hoban the Third smiled wider. “The only Hoban who’d ask me that question,” he answered. “Here-take my little Louannie, will you?” Wash took her, and held her close. “Get off the planet, son,” rasped his father. “For god’s sake, see some real stars in your life.”
Wash smiled to keep from crying. “I will, Dad.”
“Good,” said Hoban the Third. “Good.”
He died, then, and they buried him next to his Louannie dear. Wash applied for flight school the day after the funeral, and finally saw real stars.
~*~
Zoë’s dad worked hard in the mines, so her mom wouldn’t have to. Marcus worked hard enough, in fact, that he convinced the foreman to let Isabelle work in the administrative offices instead, so Zoë and Adam didn’t have to mine either.
Adam did anyway, especially when Marcus was diagnosed with Bowden’s, to pick up the slack in the household. All the way out on Whittier Moon, Pescaline-D was hard to get by without ridiculously large sums of money-which, unfortunately, the Alleyne family lacked. Zoë heard from the doctor that some other mining planets got Bowden’s, too, but she wasn’t really listening at that point.
Marcus kept working when he could, mostly to try to convince Isabelle and Adam he was okay. Isabelle and Adam were both fragile that way-the wrong information, the wrong bit of news, and they’d crumble like ash. Not Zoë. Marcus told Zoë up front exactly what the Bowden’s would do to him, and she cared for him so her mother and brother wouldn’t have to know.
Zoë always got along well with her father-he told her what she needed to know, even if he was only telling the rest of the family what they needed to hear.
She cared for him until his last day, when she went to take him his soup and he was relaxed for the first time in years, staring as if at the face of God himself.
She just put the soup down, and went out to get the minister-Adam was in the mines, and Isabelle was at the administrative offices. It was a plain funeral, with lots of black clothes and weeping people.
Zoë didn’t work in the mines, even then. She kept house, making food for her mother and brother, if only to remind them to eat. Mourning was wasteful, and Zoë was never wasteful.
Three weeks later, a man in a brown leather coat came to Whittier, preaching about freedom and the overbearing hand of the Alliance. A few times Zoë had to wonder wryly if ‘free’ air would smell any different than the dirt-caked air Whitter had, but it was a cause, and not an ignoble one.
“I’m going with the Browncoat,” she said that evening over supper. “I’m signing up.”
Isabelle just looked at her, eyes empty, and went back to her soup. “Try not to die,” she replied.
“We’ll still be here when you change your mind,” Adam said, a little nastily. Zoë didn’t mind-if he thought she’d ever change her mind about something this important, he clearly didn’t know her half as well as he thought he did-she didn’t feel guilty about getting a brown coat and going off to fight.
~*~
Nothing came easier to Wash than flying. He loved every minute of the Academy, even though he spent most of it in a stupor-flying was like breathing, like living, just as natural and essential.
The first time his instructor let him take full control, he nearly cried with happiness; within two months he had fulfilled all his required hours for graduation and knew all the techs’ names by heart.
Then they started studying maneuvers. Different maneuvers for different boats, though some of them had similar components; barn swallows could be attempted by the older model Trans-U’s, Fireflies, or just about any Keegan; Marietta Myers could be done with anything except older model Trans-U’s, Fireflies, or Keegans; Crazy Ivan’s were completely unique to the Firefly.
Wash saw a picture of a Firefly, once. A really old model, not even a trace of extenders and the blueprints he appropriated through a well-connected friend told him that the grav boot was clunky and unnecessary-but extenders could be put on, and grav boots could be taken out.
Wash saw the Firefly, and he knew: he’d fly in one if it killed him.
~*~
“War’s nearly done now,” Syeda said, hoisting her pack full of rations onto a shoulder. “Hera’s the last stop, they’re sayin’.”
“Chances are, they’re lyin’,” Reynolds replied evenly. He kept cleaning his gun, without breaking stride; Zoë wondered how he could do that, clean his gun in any circumstances.
“Say what you will,” Syeda said with a shrug and a grin. “I’m gonna hope.” She saluted to the Sergeant before sauntering off, calling over her shoulder, “See you when we’re free!”
“She right, sir?” Zoë asked him. She was trying to hope, trying to believe Syeda, but she wasn’t sure she had the energy.
“’Course she’s right,” Reynolds said hollowly. “We’re gonna go to Hera, beat back the Alliance oppressors, get our rightful and hard-earned freedom and everything’s gonna be lilacs and roses.”
Zoë didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Thanks for the lie, sir.” She said it with surprising sincerity-with everything she and the Sergeant had gone through, if he said something, it was almost law. “You hear where we’ll be stationed yet, Sergeant?”
“Some valley,” Reynolds said, snapping his rifle shut again, fully cleaned and armed. “Serenity, or somesuch.”
Zoë smiled faintly, more a twitch of her lips than anything real. “Sounds nice, sir.”
~*~
Wash had two best friends from flight school: Nyann Tanaka, nephew of the famous general, and the only person who ever did better than Wash in his entire school career, who told Wash and Nyann just to call him Leslie and leave it at that. It would be unfair to say that flying was Leslie’s second profession-in technical terms, it was his fifteenth; in realistic terms, there was no room in Leslie’s life for anything other than hacking anything he could, especially flight simulators.
When the three of them graduated, they got as drunk as they could before Leslie hacked the lock on a bazaar and they went through, stealing cheap, meaningless trinkets-to put on their consoles, once they started flying. That was their excuse, anyway. Nyann stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a small toy stall, and immediately grabbed two toys.
“These are for Wash,” he said solemnly, handing them to his friend. They were dinosaurs-a triceratops and a raptor.
Wash took them, trying drunkenly not to smile and doing an admirable job given the circumstances. “I’ll treasure them always.”
Wash managed to find a pair of fuzzy twelve-sided dice for Nyann to hang over his console, and Leslie got a bottle of instant tanner from a boutique stall, for which Wash and Nyann both took credit.
“To counteract the screen-pale,” Nyann said, grinning widely.
“Yeah,” Wash agreed. “You’ll need it.”
“Like you two won’t,” Leslie replied, pocketing the bottle anyway. “You’ll only see stars, most of the time, piloting.”
The next day Nyann broke the news-he’d signed up to pilot for the Alliance, and he’d be leaving within two days.
Leslie changed his name again, calling himself Blue Lord (after the blue giant star, apparently) and Wash signed on to the Lysander, an old, clunky ship that he considered to be his project. He’d team up with the mechanic almost every day to work on improvements, and the first thing to update was the comm. system.
Nyann waved every other day or so-only for a few minutes, and he couldn’t say much about where he was or what he was doing, but Wash enjoyed those few minutes. Leslie-no matter what he changed his name to, Wash would only think of him as Leslie-did favors for him sometimes, and Wash did favors for Leslie, too, when he could. They chatted and swapped stories (Leslie was thinking about changing his name to something more imposing, and Nyann was pursuing a fellow pilot named Elisa), until a week went by when Nyann didn’t wave.
So Wash waved Leslie (Mr. Universe now), who hacked the Alliance systems and accessed Nyann’s file, where it gave his posting as Hera and his status as unknown.
By then word was getting around about Hera, and about a specific valley in Hera, and about how over half the people in Serenity Valley were dead and both sides were leaving their people to die while they negotiated a peace.
Two weeks later, Leslie hacked it again; his status had changed to Missing, Presumed Dead and Unrecoverable, and his posting had been updated to specify Serenity Valley. Leslie also added that word on the waves was that MPDU meant that they had died after the fighting had ended, and were left to rot.
Wash knew the captain of the Lysander was very actively in favor of unification; he figured he’d nip the inevitable problem in the bud and resigned that day.
~*~
Something about him bothered her.
There was no other way Zoë could put it; maybe it was the moustache, or the shirt, but something about the new pilot bristled her. She understood that he was a great pilot and all, and agreed with the Sergeant-the Captain, now, the Captain-that hiring him was absolutely the right thing to do, with a list of recommendations that long, but that didn’t mean she had to like him.
She was cleaning her guns on the kitchen table, across from Mal, who was doing the same, when Wash entered. Bester was cooking something up-something suspiciously herbal, from the smell-and Wash stopped next to him.
“What’re you making?” Wash asked, looking curious and a bit disturbed.
“Tea,” Bester said. “Want some?”
Zoë looked up in time to see Bester waft some of the tea towards Wash, who sneezed violently.
“Uh, that’s okay, I’m flying tonight.” Wash gave the tea a look that was half disturbed, half suspicious. “By the way, have you fixed the thruster-problem?”
Bester looked up, looking vaguely panicked. “Not yet, no, not really.”
Zoë raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem?” she asked coolly.
“Nah,” Wash said, shrugging. “Just that the left thruster takes about a second and a half longer to respond than the right thruster, which means I have to compensate. No big deal.”
Zoë tried not to narrow her eyes. The pilots they’d auditioned before Wash had all…well, at least looked twice at her, and the guys’ eyes had lingered over the upper hem of her vest at least a little. But Wash didn’t seem to notice her at all, which was somewhat unsettling, truth be told.
Wash put down his Oaty bar for a moment, frowning. “You feel that?” he asked vaguely, before grabbing and emptying Bester’s tea cup and putting it down carefully on the counter. Zoë raised her eyebrows and watched him scrutinize the cup, which rattled slightly.
“Ta ma de,” he said, shoving the mug back at Bester. “It’s the gorramn grav boot-”
Wash left suddenly, muttering something about compensating, thrusters, and weeds from Earth-That-Was. Zoë watched him go.
Well, at least she knew what bothered her about him-he didn’t seem to realize she existed.
~*~
Wash had been flying on Reynolds’ boat for about a month now, and even though the mechanic didn’t know his stuff anymore than Wash knew how to hero, he was managing nicely. He spent every waking hour trying to get another couple miles out of the boat just to make it planetside, sure, but that was part of the Firefly’s charm. He didn’t even swear that much.
“Bester, give me some goddamn flow unless you’re trying to kill us all-I said flow, you stupid son of a whore-”
Except for days like today.
Serenity was jerking, shaking unnaturally, and Boros was approaching far quicker than Wash would have liked, as he made completely clear to Bester through the comm. system.
“What the hell is going on down there?”
“’S the secondary grav boot, ‘m working on it!”
Wash growled at Bester’s answer and shut off the comm. “Guess I’m on my own,” he muttered, flipping some switches and getting ready for the roughest landing since he and Nyann had been drunk enough to let Leslie (also drunk) fly them across town.
The dinosaurs rattled on the console. Wash grinned.
Screw Bester; this is what he lived for.
~*~
From what Zoë could tell, the new mechanic, Kaylee, actually knew her stuff. The ship shook less during atmo, and she and Wash spent almost every waking moment together, looking over blueprints at the table in the mess and pointing things out to each other.
Zoë pretended that she didn’t see until one day she couldn’t help herself and went to the engine room when she knew the captain was in his quarters and Wash was piloting.
“Hey, Zoë,” Kaylee chirped. Zoë didn’t have the heart to make Kaylee call her Alleyne, like she’d made Bester do, but just crossed her arms and gave the younger girl her most military gaze.
“I want to know what your intentions are with the pilot,” she said.
Kaylee dropped the reg couple she was cleaning. “Sh muh?”
“Your intentions,” Zoë repeated slowly, “with the pilot.”
“You mean Wash?” Kaylee asked incredulously, before bursting into laughter. “I-no, God, no, I would never-with Wash?”
Zoë felt a coldness warm a bit within her. “’Cause the captain was very specific to the matter of shipboard romances.”
“Hell, Wash ain’t looked twice at me since I got here,” Kaylee said happily. “He’s just glad I ain’t Bester!”
“Good,” said Zoë after a minute. “I’d keep it that way.”
~*~
Wash was sitting at the console, trying to remember what he was sure he’d forgotten, when Zoë entered the bridge.
“Hey, there,” Wash said, fiddling with the thrusters, just because he was bored. He didn’t call Zoë ‘Zoë’-she could kill him so very easily, after all-and didn’t call her much else, either. He tended to not call her anything. It made things simpler.
“You ain’t looked twice at me since you came on board,” Zoë said flatly. “Every other pilot we interviewed stared at me like I was the first woman they seen, but you didn’t.”
Wash stared at her, motionless, before smiling cautiously. “Uh. Is-I mean, I’ve seen women before, and-is this a good or a bad thing, here?”
Zoë shifted her weight from one leg to the other, and crossed her arms over her chest. “You like menfolk, then?”
Wash stared for another long moment, before pointing his thumb at the console. “I just-I had the consoles to work on and Bester wasn’t doing a very good job-I like women, I do, but I like not crashing more and-I’m sorry, what was the question?”
Zoë crossed and perched herself on the copilot’s seat, without actually sitting in it, just leaning on it. She continued gazing at him, levelly.
After a moment, he grinned bashfully. “Ah. I see where this is going. Well.” He took a deep breath, then let it out, and shrugged. “Do you want to go get drinks the next time we’re planetside?”
Zoë stood slowly, drawing herself to her full height. “You’re paying.”
Wash just grinned, and nodded.
~*~
Mal looked like he’d taken a bite of a lemon through the whole wedding, while Kaylee wore a nice flowered dress and looked like the only thing that would make her happier was kids.
Wash wasn’t about to test his luck.
There were vows exchanged-to love, honor, protect, etc.-and then there was some kissing, and afterwards Kaylee showed them how she’d painted flowers in the kitchen to honor their union (or something with cuter words that amounted to the same thing, anyway) and Mal’s scowl deepened.
The next day Wash cornered Mal on the bridge and told him in the clearest words he knew that his marriage to Zoë was something that would only simplify things, since the other option was for him to stay in Zoë’s bunk every night anyway and the only way to keep them apart would be to fire Wash, who didn’t plan to leave without a letter of recommendation that said something other than ‘apparently he’s good for a screw, just ask my first mate’.
Mal stared at him for a long moment that had Wash nearly taking back his words-he could do without a letter of recommendation, after all-before the captain finally grabbed Wash’s shoulders and said, quite clearly, “If you hurt her, you will die.”
Wash smiled feebly. “Sounds like a deal, Captain.”
~*~
In many ways, the funeral was like the wedding; a quiet affair, with only the crew to mourn the best damn pilot in the ‘verse.
Mal didn’t have to go back on his word, at least. Wash hurt Zoë; Wash died. It was probably fair, in the cosmic scheme of things.
They visit the grave every three months; every six months was too long between, and every month was too much trouble for the schedule in the post-Parliamentary world, where crime was a lot more popular. Mal still sometimes goes onto the bridge and sees Zoë sitting in Wash’s old chair, curled up in the blanket Wash stowed there and staring at the stars that Wash loved so much.
The dinosaurs didn’t stay-not all of them, anyway. One by one, they migrated; the triceratops reappeared in Zoë’s too-empty quarters; the palm tree moved to the dining room, where it continually shifts from the table to the other table to the counter and so on; and the stegosaurus switched to the other console, where River sometimes still talks to it, telling it how much it’s missed.
Zoë does the maintenance on the holograms for the graves herself; she says it’s a one-woman job, just like replacing the glass on the bridge was.
On the one-year anniversary, they go back to the gravesites and light candles. They stay there until dawn, sitting and remembering and yeah, crying.
Then they go back to the ship and keep flying. It seems like the best way to honor a fallen pilot.
“Those things’ll kill you,” she’d say tartly.
“I’m gonna die anyway, Louannie dear,” he’d tell her. “Figure I may’s well smoke while I can.”
“’S enough smoke ‘round here, way I see it,” Louanne would grumble, but she always let him. Sometimes Wash would sit on his daddy’s knee, and listen to Hoban the Elder tell stories about things-sometimes wars, sometimes bloody, sometimes dirty. Hoban figured that Wash would learn about those things eventually, and it may as well be sooner than later.
“Never smoke, Wash,” he’d say, pointing at his son with the cigarette. “Louannie’s right, the planet’s got enough smog as is.”
Hoban died of lung cancer, to nobody’s real surprise. They knew it was coming for months, as soon as Hoban’s breathing started to sound like Little Louanne’s rattles, but when the time came Hoban wanted to see his grandchildren one last time. Veronica wouldn’t do it-said she couldn’t-so Wash did, holding Little Louanne and his nephew Hoban close to his chest when he took them into the dark beige room.
“Little Lou,” Hoban the Third said, holding the baby girl to him. “And Hoban-Hoban the Fifth.” The fifth Hoban was older than Little Louanne, a toddler who could stand on his own, spit out words sometimes if he was feeling active.
“Kay?” Hoban the Fifth asked his grandfather concernedly.
Hoban the Third smiled. “Everythin’s gonna be okay, Hoban.” He patted the young boy’s hand awkwardly. “Hoban,” he said, looking for Wash.
Wash stepped forward. “Which?” he asked, smiling weakly.
Hoban the Third smiled wider. “The only Hoban who’d ask me that question,” he answered. “Here-take my little Louannie, will you?” Wash took her, and held her close. “Get off the planet, son,” rasped his father. “For god’s sake, see some real stars in your life.”
Wash smiled to keep from crying. “I will, Dad.”
“Good,” said Hoban the Third. “Good.”
He died, then, and they buried him next to his Louannie dear. Wash applied for flight school the day after the funeral, and finally saw real stars.
~*~
Zoë’s dad worked hard in the mines, so her mom wouldn’t have to. Marcus worked hard enough, in fact, that he convinced the foreman to let Isabelle work in the administrative offices instead, so Zoë and Adam didn’t have to mine either.
Adam did anyway, especially when Marcus was diagnosed with Bowden’s, to pick up the slack in the household. All the way out on Whittier Moon, Pescaline-D was hard to get by without ridiculously large sums of money-which, unfortunately, the Alleyne family lacked. Zoë heard from the doctor that some other mining planets got Bowden’s, too, but she wasn’t really listening at that point.
Marcus kept working when he could, mostly to try to convince Isabelle and Adam he was okay. Isabelle and Adam were both fragile that way-the wrong information, the wrong bit of news, and they’d crumble like ash. Not Zoë. Marcus told Zoë up front exactly what the Bowden’s would do to him, and she cared for him so her mother and brother wouldn’t have to know.
Zoë always got along well with her father-he told her what she needed to know, even if he was only telling the rest of the family what they needed to hear.
She cared for him until his last day, when she went to take him his soup and he was relaxed for the first time in years, staring as if at the face of God himself.
She just put the soup down, and went out to get the minister-Adam was in the mines, and Isabelle was at the administrative offices. It was a plain funeral, with lots of black clothes and weeping people.
Zoë didn’t work in the mines, even then. She kept house, making food for her mother and brother, if only to remind them to eat. Mourning was wasteful, and Zoë was never wasteful.
Three weeks later, a man in a brown leather coat came to Whittier, preaching about freedom and the overbearing hand of the Alliance. A few times Zoë had to wonder wryly if ‘free’ air would smell any different than the dirt-caked air Whitter had, but it was a cause, and not an ignoble one.
“I’m going with the Browncoat,” she said that evening over supper. “I’m signing up.”
Isabelle just looked at her, eyes empty, and went back to her soup. “Try not to die,” she replied.
“We’ll still be here when you change your mind,” Adam said, a little nastily. Zoë didn’t mind-if he thought she’d ever change her mind about something this important, he clearly didn’t know her half as well as he thought he did-she didn’t feel guilty about getting a brown coat and going off to fight.
~*~
Nothing came easier to Wash than flying. He loved every minute of the Academy, even though he spent most of it in a stupor-flying was like breathing, like living, just as natural and essential.
The first time his instructor let him take full control, he nearly cried with happiness; within two months he had fulfilled all his required hours for graduation and knew all the techs’ names by heart.
Then they started studying maneuvers. Different maneuvers for different boats, though some of them had similar components; barn swallows could be attempted by the older model Trans-U’s, Fireflies, or just about any Keegan; Marietta Myers could be done with anything except older model Trans-U’s, Fireflies, or Keegans; Crazy Ivan’s were completely unique to the Firefly.
Wash saw a picture of a Firefly, once. A really old model, not even a trace of extenders and the blueprints he appropriated through a well-connected friend told him that the grav boot was clunky and unnecessary-but extenders could be put on, and grav boots could be taken out.
Wash saw the Firefly, and he knew: he’d fly in one if it killed him.
~*~
“War’s nearly done now,” Syeda said, hoisting her pack full of rations onto a shoulder. “Hera’s the last stop, they’re sayin’.”
“Chances are, they’re lyin’,” Reynolds replied evenly. He kept cleaning his gun, without breaking stride; Zoë wondered how he could do that, clean his gun in any circumstances.
“Say what you will,” Syeda said with a shrug and a grin. “I’m gonna hope.” She saluted to the Sergeant before sauntering off, calling over her shoulder, “See you when we’re free!”
“She right, sir?” Zoë asked him. She was trying to hope, trying to believe Syeda, but she wasn’t sure she had the energy.
“’Course she’s right,” Reynolds said hollowly. “We’re gonna go to Hera, beat back the Alliance oppressors, get our rightful and hard-earned freedom and everything’s gonna be lilacs and roses.”
Zoë didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Thanks for the lie, sir.” She said it with surprising sincerity-with everything she and the Sergeant had gone through, if he said something, it was almost law. “You hear where we’ll be stationed yet, Sergeant?”
“Some valley,” Reynolds said, snapping his rifle shut again, fully cleaned and armed. “Serenity, or somesuch.”
Zoë smiled faintly, more a twitch of her lips than anything real. “Sounds nice, sir.”
~*~
Wash had two best friends from flight school: Nyann Tanaka, nephew of the famous general, and the only person who ever did better than Wash in his entire school career, who told Wash and Nyann just to call him Leslie and leave it at that. It would be unfair to say that flying was Leslie’s second profession-in technical terms, it was his fifteenth; in realistic terms, there was no room in Leslie’s life for anything other than hacking anything he could, especially flight simulators.
When the three of them graduated, they got as drunk as they could before Leslie hacked the lock on a bazaar and they went through, stealing cheap, meaningless trinkets-to put on their consoles, once they started flying. That was their excuse, anyway. Nyann stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a small toy stall, and immediately grabbed two toys.
“These are for Wash,” he said solemnly, handing them to his friend. They were dinosaurs-a triceratops and a raptor.
Wash took them, trying drunkenly not to smile and doing an admirable job given the circumstances. “I’ll treasure them always.”
Wash managed to find a pair of fuzzy twelve-sided dice for Nyann to hang over his console, and Leslie got a bottle of instant tanner from a boutique stall, for which Wash and Nyann both took credit.
“To counteract the screen-pale,” Nyann said, grinning widely.
“Yeah,” Wash agreed. “You’ll need it.”
“Like you two won’t,” Leslie replied, pocketing the bottle anyway. “You’ll only see stars, most of the time, piloting.”
The next day Nyann broke the news-he’d signed up to pilot for the Alliance, and he’d be leaving within two days.
Leslie changed his name again, calling himself Blue Lord (after the blue giant star, apparently) and Wash signed on to the Lysander, an old, clunky ship that he considered to be his project. He’d team up with the mechanic almost every day to work on improvements, and the first thing to update was the comm. system.
Nyann waved every other day or so-only for a few minutes, and he couldn’t say much about where he was or what he was doing, but Wash enjoyed those few minutes. Leslie-no matter what he changed his name to, Wash would only think of him as Leslie-did favors for him sometimes, and Wash did favors for Leslie, too, when he could. They chatted and swapped stories (Leslie was thinking about changing his name to something more imposing, and Nyann was pursuing a fellow pilot named Elisa), until a week went by when Nyann didn’t wave.
So Wash waved Leslie (Mr. Universe now), who hacked the Alliance systems and accessed Nyann’s file, where it gave his posting as Hera and his status as unknown.
By then word was getting around about Hera, and about a specific valley in Hera, and about how over half the people in Serenity Valley were dead and both sides were leaving their people to die while they negotiated a peace.
Two weeks later, Leslie hacked it again; his status had changed to Missing, Presumed Dead and Unrecoverable, and his posting had been updated to specify Serenity Valley. Leslie also added that word on the waves was that MPDU meant that they had died after the fighting had ended, and were left to rot.
Wash knew the captain of the Lysander was very actively in favor of unification; he figured he’d nip the inevitable problem in the bud and resigned that day.
~*~
Something about him bothered her.
There was no other way Zoë could put it; maybe it was the moustache, or the shirt, but something about the new pilot bristled her. She understood that he was a great pilot and all, and agreed with the Sergeant-the Captain, now, the Captain-that hiring him was absolutely the right thing to do, with a list of recommendations that long, but that didn’t mean she had to like him.
She was cleaning her guns on the kitchen table, across from Mal, who was doing the same, when Wash entered. Bester was cooking something up-something suspiciously herbal, from the smell-and Wash stopped next to him.
“What’re you making?” Wash asked, looking curious and a bit disturbed.
“Tea,” Bester said. “Want some?”
Zoë looked up in time to see Bester waft some of the tea towards Wash, who sneezed violently.
“Uh, that’s okay, I’m flying tonight.” Wash gave the tea a look that was half disturbed, half suspicious. “By the way, have you fixed the thruster-problem?”
Bester looked up, looking vaguely panicked. “Not yet, no, not really.”
Zoë raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem?” she asked coolly.
“Nah,” Wash said, shrugging. “Just that the left thruster takes about a second and a half longer to respond than the right thruster, which means I have to compensate. No big deal.”
Zoë tried not to narrow her eyes. The pilots they’d auditioned before Wash had all…well, at least looked twice at her, and the guys’ eyes had lingered over the upper hem of her vest at least a little. But Wash didn’t seem to notice her at all, which was somewhat unsettling, truth be told.
Wash put down his Oaty bar for a moment, frowning. “You feel that?” he asked vaguely, before grabbing and emptying Bester’s tea cup and putting it down carefully on the counter. Zoë raised her eyebrows and watched him scrutinize the cup, which rattled slightly.
“Ta ma de,” he said, shoving the mug back at Bester. “It’s the gorramn grav boot-”
Wash left suddenly, muttering something about compensating, thrusters, and weeds from Earth-That-Was. Zoë watched him go.
Well, at least she knew what bothered her about him-he didn’t seem to realize she existed.
~*~
Wash had been flying on Reynolds’ boat for about a month now, and even though the mechanic didn’t know his stuff anymore than Wash knew how to hero, he was managing nicely. He spent every waking hour trying to get another couple miles out of the boat just to make it planetside, sure, but that was part of the Firefly’s charm. He didn’t even swear that much.
“Bester, give me some goddamn flow unless you’re trying to kill us all-I said flow, you stupid son of a whore-”
Except for days like today.
Serenity was jerking, shaking unnaturally, and Boros was approaching far quicker than Wash would have liked, as he made completely clear to Bester through the comm. system.
“What the hell is going on down there?”
“’S the secondary grav boot, ‘m working on it!”
Wash growled at Bester’s answer and shut off the comm. “Guess I’m on my own,” he muttered, flipping some switches and getting ready for the roughest landing since he and Nyann had been drunk enough to let Leslie (also drunk) fly them across town.
The dinosaurs rattled on the console. Wash grinned.
Screw Bester; this is what he lived for.
~*~
From what Zoë could tell, the new mechanic, Kaylee, actually knew her stuff. The ship shook less during atmo, and she and Wash spent almost every waking moment together, looking over blueprints at the table in the mess and pointing things out to each other.
Zoë pretended that she didn’t see until one day she couldn’t help herself and went to the engine room when she knew the captain was in his quarters and Wash was piloting.
“Hey, Zoë,” Kaylee chirped. Zoë didn’t have the heart to make Kaylee call her Alleyne, like she’d made Bester do, but just crossed her arms and gave the younger girl her most military gaze.
“I want to know what your intentions are with the pilot,” she said.
Kaylee dropped the reg couple she was cleaning. “Sh muh?”
“Your intentions,” Zoë repeated slowly, “with the pilot.”
“You mean Wash?” Kaylee asked incredulously, before bursting into laughter. “I-no, God, no, I would never-with Wash?”
Zoë felt a coldness warm a bit within her. “’Cause the captain was very specific to the matter of shipboard romances.”
“Hell, Wash ain’t looked twice at me since I got here,” Kaylee said happily. “He’s just glad I ain’t Bester!”
“Good,” said Zoë after a minute. “I’d keep it that way.”
~*~
Wash was sitting at the console, trying to remember what he was sure he’d forgotten, when Zoë entered the bridge.
“Hey, there,” Wash said, fiddling with the thrusters, just because he was bored. He didn’t call Zoë ‘Zoë’-she could kill him so very easily, after all-and didn’t call her much else, either. He tended to not call her anything. It made things simpler.
“You ain’t looked twice at me since you came on board,” Zoë said flatly. “Every other pilot we interviewed stared at me like I was the first woman they seen, but you didn’t.”
Wash stared at her, motionless, before smiling cautiously. “Uh. Is-I mean, I’ve seen women before, and-is this a good or a bad thing, here?”
Zoë shifted her weight from one leg to the other, and crossed her arms over her chest. “You like menfolk, then?”
Wash stared for another long moment, before pointing his thumb at the console. “I just-I had the consoles to work on and Bester wasn’t doing a very good job-I like women, I do, but I like not crashing more and-I’m sorry, what was the question?”
Zoë crossed and perched herself on the copilot’s seat, without actually sitting in it, just leaning on it. She continued gazing at him, levelly.
After a moment, he grinned bashfully. “Ah. I see where this is going. Well.” He took a deep breath, then let it out, and shrugged. “Do you want to go get drinks the next time we’re planetside?”
Zoë stood slowly, drawing herself to her full height. “You’re paying.”
Wash just grinned, and nodded.
~*~
Mal looked like he’d taken a bite of a lemon through the whole wedding, while Kaylee wore a nice flowered dress and looked like the only thing that would make her happier was kids.
Wash wasn’t about to test his luck.
There were vows exchanged-to love, honor, protect, etc.-and then there was some kissing, and afterwards Kaylee showed them how she’d painted flowers in the kitchen to honor their union (or something with cuter words that amounted to the same thing, anyway) and Mal’s scowl deepened.
The next day Wash cornered Mal on the bridge and told him in the clearest words he knew that his marriage to Zoë was something that would only simplify things, since the other option was for him to stay in Zoë’s bunk every night anyway and the only way to keep them apart would be to fire Wash, who didn’t plan to leave without a letter of recommendation that said something other than ‘apparently he’s good for a screw, just ask my first mate’.
Mal stared at him for a long moment that had Wash nearly taking back his words-he could do without a letter of recommendation, after all-before the captain finally grabbed Wash’s shoulders and said, quite clearly, “If you hurt her, you will die.”
Wash smiled feebly. “Sounds like a deal, Captain.”
~*~
In many ways, the funeral was like the wedding; a quiet affair, with only the crew to mourn the best damn pilot in the ‘verse.
Mal didn’t have to go back on his word, at least. Wash hurt Zoë; Wash died. It was probably fair, in the cosmic scheme of things.
They visit the grave every three months; every six months was too long between, and every month was too much trouble for the schedule in the post-Parliamentary world, where crime was a lot more popular. Mal still sometimes goes onto the bridge and sees Zoë sitting in Wash’s old chair, curled up in the blanket Wash stowed there and staring at the stars that Wash loved so much.
The dinosaurs didn’t stay-not all of them, anyway. One by one, they migrated; the triceratops reappeared in Zoë’s too-empty quarters; the palm tree moved to the dining room, where it continually shifts from the table to the other table to the counter and so on; and the stegosaurus switched to the other console, where River sometimes still talks to it, telling it how much it’s missed.
Zoë does the maintenance on the holograms for the graves herself; she says it’s a one-woman job, just like replacing the glass on the bridge was.
On the one-year anniversary, they go back to the gravesites and light candles. They stay there until dawn, sitting and remembering and yeah, crying.
Then they go back to the ship and keep flying. It seems like the best way to honor a fallen pilot.