4. Dude, Where’s My Firefly?

It’s a dark and stormy night. Not quite raining, but sultry, sky hanging dark and heavy, sullen as a teenager. The shutters of the school are bolted, and the only sound...is the startling crack of wood, as the knife-blade finally snaps the latch.

Jayne slings a leg over the sill and peers out. It’s a short drop to the little bit of garden outside. Then there’s a wall. Then there’s a whole lot of nothing.

It’s a long way down. The convent is built on the edge of a cliff. In fact, Jayne takes one look at the trackway, and dismisses the idea of borrowing the bus. Reckons the thing is held together with rust and prayer, anyhow, and it makes him cold to think he was bumping about in the back of that with that flaky little nun driving it. Nothin’ quicker than a straight line, anyhow.

Jayne has been giggled at by girls a deal of times in his life. Mebbe a year or so back, he would have grinned and flexed his muscles and leered. ‘Cept these girls are younger than Kaylee or River, and that’s all kinds of wrong. He ain’t ever bin one for chasin’ children. Sighs. Life was much simpler when he was just a big mean bastard with a big mean gun. Now, he’s got responsibilities. Got a wife, and got a crew as needs him. Knows his place, and it’s behind Mal, watching that the man don’t get them all screwed over, being noble and decent and all that gorram foolin‘.

Hopes like hell Mal ain’t taken off without him. That gives him cold chills. Left on this planet without his wife or his guns. There’s times he can’t figure which he’d miss more. In his mind, a picture of Serenity’s kitchen. And a little woman in a too-big apron looking up from a pan with her face flushed from the heat, giving him a smile that’s all his. Din’t have to give coin for it, don’t have to share it. Just is, is all.

She wouldn’t leave without him.

Sure as he knows anything. She wouldn’t leave without him. So just mebbe the others wouldn’t, neither. He’s just gotta