EVERYDAY HERO

With gratitude to Archer and LJC for providing very quick and insightful advice and proof reading.

Spoilers for Out of Gas, War Stories, and Objects in Space. This takes place immediately after my prior story Big Damn Heroes. A conversation on the nature of courage between Wash and Kaylee.

Wash was looking for Kaylee. She had been avoiding everybody on the ship for a couple of days, not taking meals with the crew, and generally staying out of sight. Mal had been looking for her too. He’d been particularly unsubtle about it, roving through the ship and calling out her name. She hadn’t wanted to be found and she hadn’t been. But Wash planned to be more crafty about the whole searching thing.

Serenity wasn’t that big, and the Captain had looked in all of the places that Kaylee could be. That meant she wasn’t staying in one place. She was on the move, and the best place for her to move to would be where the captain had just looked. She would count on him not coming back to that spot for a bit, at least. So Wash was on his way to Shuttle 2. Mal had just poked his head in there and looked, before he came up to the bridge. Wash had kept him talking on the bridge for long enough for Kaylee to get to the shuttle from wherever she had been, so now Wash had a middling fair chance of catching her there.

He opened the hatch and went in, pulling it closed behind him. Sure enough, there she was, on her back, waist deep under the console with the cover plate off, her tools scattered about as if she was working. But he didn’t think she was working, not really. It just came natural to Kaylee to do her thinking with her hands in the guts of some machine, like he did his at the helm, staring at the stars.

“Hey, Kaylee, something wrong with the shuttle?” he said cheerily

‘Oh, yeah, brilliant line Wash, that’ll get her to open right up to you.’

“Nah, Wash, not to say wrong. Just tryin’ to tune her up and find what causes that rattle. I been tryin’ to find that