CHAPTER 14

The trip to Persephone took forever, what with the way they needed to conserve fuel. Serenity had nearly fallen out of the air, but less than five hours later, they were back on the move again, fueled up, and with a fresh course laid in. Wash reached into his boot and pulled out the note Zoë had written him a world and a lifetime away. “I’ll hold you close to me,” it promised. Where was she now?

He stared vacantly into the Black, searching for pieces of himself. In his mind’s eye, he had been chewed up and torn apart. His heart was missing, most of his torso, and his left arm. He wasn’t sure he’d survive. He wasn’t sure his marriage would survive either. Zoë always seemed to be puttering about the ship up to something. She never spoke to him anymore. It tore him up inside to see her face every day, to be so close, but to feel a million miles away. It seemed as though she were a stranger to him and his true wife was dead. He couldn’t handle it. He’d stopped going back to their bunk. He ate and slept on the bridge and she never visited. She only ever came up when following Mal and even then, she never stayed long. Wash didn’t mind. Every time he saw her, cold and stoic as she was, it was as though he were watching her die all over again. The light of life—the glow that had first made him suspect her pregnant—had gone out.

Mal wandered into the cockpit and took a moment to look into the sky. It was as empty as Wash felt, but he saw in Mal’s eyes that love for the black and for the freedom it represented.

“You’re up late,” Wash commented, checking the time.

“Thought I might give you a break.”

“I’m fine.”

“Go see to your wife.”

“She’s fine too. Just ask her,” he grumbled, bitterly. “Do the job.”

“That is what she says,” Mal acknowledged. “But I know for a fact that neither of you are fine and I got a whole crew full of folk can’t do their jobs because they’re so busy watching you two. They’re all worried sick because you two are too stubborn to worry about each other. Pretty soon, the w