Not a lot scared Zoë. She’d gone through fistfights, firefights, barfights and knockdown, drag-out fights with Wash and she’d survived it all relatively unscathed. She felt she could survive just about anything and she felt that she could keep just about anyone alive, so long as they were with her. These weren’t conscious thoughts, naturally. She didn’t sit in the common area for hours at a time and wonder at her ability to not-die, but it was part of her psyche and identity, which is why the blood scared her so much.

She didn’t tell Wash for two reasons. One, if the blood was nothing, she didn’t want to worry him and two, she didn’t want to entertain the possibility that the blood was something serious, and worth worrying him over. Instead she hurried to the Infirmary, as casually as her racing heart would let her, with a mind to demand an emergency appointment with the local doctor. Unfortunately, when she reached the infirmary, the door was opened, the lights were on but the room itself was totally empty.

"Looking for Simon?" Inara asked.

Zoë started, she hadn’t noticed the companion, who was curled up in the common area, reading a small book. She looked comfortable but oddly out of place.

"Ah, yeah," Zoë said, trying to make her voice sound less anxious. "Know where he is?"

"He should be up in my shuttle with Kaylee," Inara said nodding towards the cargo bay without looking up from her book. "She found an old flick on the cortex she wanted to show him. River might be up there too."

"Thanks," Zoë said, forcing herself to smile at the companion, who was so engrossed in her small volume that she didn’t notice one way or the other.

The firstmate forced herself not to run through the cargo bay and bound up the stairs. She walked across the catwalk with quick but relatively steady strides and forced herself to smile as she poked her head into the doorway of the companion’s shuttle. It was dark, with the exception of the muted light streaming in from the cargo bay and the dim white light radiating from the