Colonel Malcolm Reynolds stood at the entrance to his tent and stroked the scar on his cheek. Below him, spread out row upon row in the early morning light, was the camp of the Independents, the men beginning to wake up and start work, and the scent of cooking wafted towards him, and the smell made his stomach rumble. In the distance he could see movement among the Alliance soldiers, their camp smaller, but going about pretty much the same duties.

He’d been woken by the dawn, birdsong filling the air as he’d never remembered it here, and he’d been unable to get back to sleep, despite the woman at his side. Too many thoughts running through his brain, of the men he’d lost, and those he’d managed to keep going through the hell that this had become.

It was fitting, somehow, that the war finally ended here. Serenity Valley. The actual fighting had been over some five months, but the agreement, the armistice that would finally bring peace, was going to be signed here. Today. At the site of the war’s turning point.

Ten years ago they were on the edge, when things could go either way. Ten years ago he was a mere Sergeant, waiting for air support. And ten years ago Command finally pulled its finger out of its ass and rained fire on those arrogant cods of the Alliance.

He breathed deeply of the clean air. The war had turned then. Men saw there was a possibility of winning, and their numbers had swelled. Whole planets who’d been sitting on the fence had come down on the side of the Browncoats, and the revolution gained momentum. And when the Companion Guild Houses were razed to the ground by Federal troops, claiming they were harbouring Independent traitors, even some of the Core planets began to take notice. Then Ariel fell, and there was a feeling of inevitability about it.

Mal glanced back at the woman in his bed, her dark hair spread in waves across the pillow, her back to him, smooth and unsullied now by the marks of the flogging she’d once endured. She’d been on a transport, one of the f