Spoilers: Out of Gas

Dislaimers: Mal, Serenity, the other ship, the crew and the concept for Firefly are not mine. Evangeline is, but if you want her, you can have her.

Author's notes: The old spiritual from the title makes its appearance at the end. Evangeline was an invention in the first "Never Met" story, "Marseillaise." This is so very indebted to Vehemently's "Cradle Elbows Wide," which I love more every time I read it, and Erla at Oak Mill Bakery, who is my model for Evangeline.

Evangeline came back to him for three nights after he lost her, came back whole, the parts of her blown away by Alliance ammo sewed back in place so carefully he almost didn't see the stitches.

She whispered and sang over him, tending his scars. She lay down beside him the way she'd done in the early days of the war, when they were both young enlisteds who believed they'd already won. Before the generals cut and run back to their safehouses, before HQ stopped transmitting, before they ran out of bullets. Before Serenity Valley.

During training camp she started sleeping in his bunk primarily to keep warm; it was midwinter on Andronicus and the ground was just cold enough to chill the mud you slept in, not enough to freeze it so you could walk without sinking up to your knees. He was startled when she slipped beneath his blanket, little blond skinny five feet of girl who'd smiled at him yesterday during the grenade assembly drill.

He found out she spoke Polish because she talked when she dreamed.

"Dead language," he teased her the next morning, and she silenced him with her mouth. They had coffee in camp then, and she tasted of it, dark and bitter. He asked that they be transferred together to their next assignment, after the war. Which they were sure would be over in a month, so superior and brave were their forces.

Now he's about to die, and he expected her to come for him, lying here trussed like cattle, in the hold of this junkheap vessel, waiting for the mercenaries to lay him out.

Maybe he shouldn't