Author’s Notes: This just came to me and I needed to get it out of my head, partially to see if I could get it to sound good enough as a stand alone, and partially to jump start my muse into wanting to finish the sequel to 'On the Edge', tentatively titled ‘Broken Wings’. I'm completely stuck on that, and so, the below will have to suffice until I can get going on that one again.

This was originally written as a 4 page short story and turned into a 26 page story with 5 parts. The below is Part 1.

Story notes: The movie doesn't happen here. And so the below scene takes place after the series end. Book and Inara have left the ship already.

Rated: R for brief description of adult activities.

Thanks to http://www.fireflyfans.net/showprofile.asp?un=mal4prez>Mal4Prez for the beta.

Part I

It was the dead of night, but Simon Tam couldn’t tell, not with the constant bombardment going on outside the city. Flashes of light so bright it looked to be midday pulsed through the cracked windows. He'd gotten used to it, along with the resounding quakes that rumbled through every time a mortar struck ground. Maybe it was his exhaustion that made him numb to the sights and sounds of warfare.

Serenity had landed three days ago on this backwater world to finish a simple job, and had managed to land right in the middle of a civil war that seemed to have engulfed the entire planet. They'd been in town when the first bombs lit up the sky, and they hadn't been able to get out of it since. All access, roadways, and airspace had been cut off, and as the town's hastily formed militia had surrounded the area, Serenity's crew had found themselves boxed in.

They'd all managed to keep themselves occupied and relatively unhurt during the battle that was expected to last only a few hours - but had now extended into a third day. Both sides refused to negotiate, had refused an impartial arbitrator, and the Alliance couldn't be bo