Disclaimer: Mal & Co. are not mine, just borrowed, all characters not present in Firefly/Serenity were created by me.

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Zoe sat in the cargo hold, going through boxes of new parts, making sure everything ordered had arrived. River sat on the steps watching her, holding a new doll she’d ‘borrowed’ from one of Inara’s boxes. The two of them never spoke and went on like this for quite some time, until Mal came down the stairs from the cockpit.

“That’s enough for today,” he said as he waited for River to move so he could continue down the stairs. “Cargo will still be here tomorrow, waiting to be all looked at and counted.”

Zoe stopped what she was doing and laid her clipboard on the closest unopened crate. Without a word she took the stairs and made her way to her bunk. She passed Simon and Kaylee on the way, the two people she’d been trying to avoid. They stopped talking as she passed, the smiles on their faces replaced with guilty looks. She didn’t know what she hated more, the fact that they were happy or the fact that they felt guilty about it when around her.

At least they were better dealt with together than apart. Simon kept questioning her whenever he saw her. ‘Was she eating?’ ‘Did she sleep at night?’ ‘Did she want to talk?’ ‘Should he speak to the captain about getting her some free time?’ He also kept offering to medicate her, which she wanted no part of. She wanted to scream at him, yell that she didn’t sleep at night; she didn’t want any of his stupid gorram medicine, it wouldn’t fix anything; and that the only thing keeping her going was the work on Serenity, why would she want that taken away? She wanted to hit him, hurt him, kill him for bringing this on her, for choosing this ship of all ships, and for unleashing River on them.

Kaylee was harder to deal with. Zoe could not bring herself to be more than annoyed with the mechanic. And Kaylee was currently being damn annoying. The girl kept touching her, which made Zoe very uncomfortable. She didn’t k