Zoe came onto the bridge, her step light and a smile playing around her lips. She started to say “Hello, husband” – not because there was any need for a greeting, really; just because she liked saying it. After all, it was something she’d never believed she would say. Husband. Such a strange word, to be tripping so lightly from her lips. Her lips. Zoe Alleyne, of all the unlikely people, had married. A pilot, no less. A man who barely knew which end of the gun was the dangerous end, and that mostly because he’d stared down the barrel of a few, not because he’d handled many. Such a strange choice, for her. But the ghost of a smile on her face offered a possible reason for it. Wash was the one who’d put it there. Sometimes the whole thing still amazed her.

She stopped, the words on the tip of her tongue, her smile vanishing when she saw him. Wash slouched in the pilot’s chair, frowning at the console. The slouch wasn’t so unusual, but the frown was, as was the fact that he didn’t seem to notice her approach.

“Wash?” she said, walking slowly toward him. She laid a hand on the back of his neck, and he looked up at her and smiled. Not his usual cheerful smile, but a wan and troubled one.

“Hey,” he said, and went back to frowning at the console.

“Something wrong?” Zoe asked, stepping around to lean against the console, so that she could face him.

Wash nodded, still frowning. “Did I ever tell you about my Uncle Jack?” he said.

“No.”

“He paid my way through flight school,” Wash said. “My folks never could have afforded that. Even if they had wanted me to go.”

Zoe knew about flight school, of course; Wash talked about it plenty. But he talked about his family only seldom. Funny anecdotes, mostly; the sort of silly growing-up stories any family spawned. The sort of stories Zoe hoped their children would one day create a steady supply of. When Zoe tried to talk to Wash about what his parents might be doing now, she met only a stone wall. All Wash wo