He wasn’t too happy with Jayne’s conclusions.

How could he be?

He was surprised that Jayne was considering going into a dangerous situation with him as backup.

Concerned….scared out of his mind actually.

He hadn’t noticed the curtains though.

Once they were pointed out to him, he wondered how he could have missed something so obvious. But he hadn’t noticed them.

What he had noticed was how quiet it was.

That had made him nervous.

Living people weren’t that quiet.

And since leaving Osiris he’d learned to notice when something was too quiet.

Dead quiet.

He gripped his gun, palms sweating, causing the distinct metallic smell to rise.

He hated the gun.

Hated using it.

Hated wearing it.

Hated Mal for making them all practice with them.

Hated Miranda for making him realize that in this life he led, he couldn’t get by without it.

When he first started practicing it had felt like an alien thing in his hand.

It was a distasteful sensation.

But the more they practiced, the more comfortable he became with it.

He had felt for a long time like his hands and his eyes had betrayed him.

Like somehow in his sleep someone had grafted new ones onto him.

His hands were surgeon’s hands.

Healer’s hands.

It wasn’t right that the same hand that could heal could also kill.

But they could.

Because they had too.

Still, as he sat beside Jayne as he calmly drove the rest of the way to the house with his gun resting in his lap ready just in case, he hated it.

She had left the basement.

Not because she wanted to. But because she recognized that she would have to eventually.

Besides there was a ship.

A cargo ship.

They hadn’t listed a need for passengers, but in her experience most folk that lived out here, on the rim would consider just about anything if enough credits were involved.

And she had a lot of credits.

So too did her parents, and theirs was in the safe in her father’s office.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to live.

Actua