Chapter 1 and 2: http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=14567

Chapter 3: http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=14577

Chapter 4: http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=14593

Chapter 5: http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=14621

Chapter 6: http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=14721

Chapter 7: tp://http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=14810

*****

Chapter 8

Kaylee rolled off of Simon Tam and stared at the ceiling, her eyes looking straight on through like into the Black. Her breath slowly returned to normal and she began to think clearly again.

Kaylee thought to herself about love, about whether or not she was in love with Simon. “If this ain’t what love is” she told herself, “then I don’t want it.”

She touched Simon’s soft, well educated chest with what little of her hand wasn’t calloused, the back, and she kissed him where he felt roughest, his face.

She felt relaxed while they were lying next to each other, a tangle of limbs. She liked to think that they were like a well fabricated set of machines when they were like this, that you couldn’t find where one ended and the other began.

She remembered the big word that Simon had taught her to describe the feeling after the first time that they’d done this, euphoric.

Kaylee had always thought that she’d loved machines, and this was like that. When Kaylee was working with Serenity it was like they were one thing, and when she was with Simon it was the same. She wondered, sometimes, if Simon felt the same way about fixing people, but she never worked up the strength to ask. Instead she just let herself slip into sleep.

*****

Zoe cried a little bit while she tried to sleep. The bed was too big for her and she felt like she was drowning in it. To stay away from it she slept on the floor, like back when she was a soldier, back before Wash.

She had known hundreds of men who died, at least that’s what it felt like. She had been sad when they died, but it had only been a small weight on her shoulder