PART 1: HE NAMED HER

Mal looked through the Infirmary window, shell-shocked. Simon tore about in a whirlwind, using every machine, drug, and verbal incantation he knew to bring her back. She, one of the few people in the ‘verse who would give everything to save his life… she who had given everything. His body felt cold and hollow, a lump in his chest storing grief for later, a bitter taste in his mouth. He hadn’t felt so alone since God left him to die in Serenity Valley.

The tiny baby squirmed in his shaking, calloused hands, crying for her mother. Yellow with jaundice, two months premature, but there was no choice. Come into this world, or die. And so she was here, her face scrunched as she wailed for nourishment. Mal shuddered and held the baby close to calm her.

“Take care of her,” her mother had requested, knowing she was dying. “I trust you.”

His hands shook all the harder, and he feared he would drop the little baby. She screamed in his ear as he rocked and cooed. How misplaced her mother’s trust had been. He wanted to run. To find other relatives who could raise the baby, give her a proper home. But her mother’s dying request echoed in his ears.

Mal’s heart stopped as Simon slowed his work, checked his watch, and noted time of death. Through the window, he motioned Mal to come in, but Mal’s legs were like jelly and he dare not move for fear of falling. Of dropping the little child. A child meant to be a sign of hope and a reminder of happier times. Now she was the last memorial of that happy union. A baby that would never taste her mother’s milk or know her father’s laugh. An orphan.

The child of Zoë and Wash, whose father never knew she was conceived; whose mother hadn’t known her long enough to give her a name. And when Simon asked, he could only think of one. He named her Zoë.

*~*

PART 2: HE SLEPT

Mal lay face down on the double bed, sobbing. Throat raw, mouth parched, body exhausted from too many days with no sleep. Baby Zoë lay on the bed next to him, swaddled j