Title: Pirate Children

Rating: PG (a little bit of Firefly swearing)

Setting: approximately 15 years post-BDM, AU

Pairings: mostly M/I, references to Z/W, S/K, Jayne/Vera

Summary: "After dinner, Serra is yawning and circles are forming under Abram’s deep brown eyes. Inara suggests they ready for bed, and Mal offers to supervise."

Author's Note: Thank you for the amazing response! It's given me the confidence to keep writing. I hope you enjoy this part: it includes your first glimpses of the other children on Serenity.

***

After dinner, Serra is yawning and circles are forming under Abram’s deep brown eyes. Inara suggests they ready for bed, and Mal offers to supervise.

“Whoa!” Serra exclaims as she and her father enter the bathroom. “That’s one big tub.”

Umm Hafi has already drawn a hot bath in the giant claw foot tub, and Serra excitedly strips off the dark blue sari cut down from one of her mother’s old silk gowns. She throws it at her father and begins to undo her black braids as she hops into the water. Midway through her second braid, she says conversationally:

“I don’t think Mama’s mama likes me very much.”

Mal, who’s carefully folded Serra’s nicest dress as neatly as he can, looks up at that, searching his daughter’s face for tears. He finds none. Her face is as nonchalant as her voice. She grins at him and ducks her head under the water. When she comes up, she swims over to the side of the tub closest to the low table with all sorts of soaps on it.

“She don’t know you yet, Mei-Mei. She’ll like ya fine when she do. You’re more’n a mite likable, dong ma?”

Serra shrugs and begins to sniff the different soaps, her expressive face betraying how she feels about each scent.

“She likes Abe ‘nough,” she continues. Her speech always becomes less refined around him, as if she can relax a little.

Mal must admit that every thing she’s said so far is what he took from dinner as well. What little conversation Mrs. Serra involved herself in was mostly with Abram. It makes sense, thou