It had been three days since…Sweet Jesus, had it been that long?

For those 72 hours, Mal hadn’t shaved or bathed, or even changed clothes. He just didn’t have the energy. Neither had he slept. He’d tried it once and dreamt that none of those past three days were actually real. Scared him so badly when he woke up and found it was all true, he decided that he was better off not trying again.

His foot absently nudged the small wooden cradle at the foot of the bed. Jayne had made it for Carly. When she outgrew it, Jayne had repainted it pale blue in anticipation of the new arrival, even before the doc was sure.

“Got yerself a pretty girl to spoil, so this one is gonna be a boy. I just got that feelin’.”

But there the cradle sat, empty, because Mal couldn’t bear to look upon his newborn son without remembering all the blood and tears, and the doc lookin’ all worried, and Zoe forcibly making him wait until Inara had been all cleaned up before letting him say his goodbye.

“Sir, just give the doc a minute to make her presentable.”

For the first time he could remember, he came within an inch of actually hitting Zoe – never the mind that she woulda dropped him in an instant and not batted an eyelash – even though he knew she was right. He’d seen far too much blood on people for whom he cared far too much. Seeing it on Inara would have been his undoing.

And then there had been him having to explain it to Carly. Carly, who had been so excited at the prospect of a baby brother, even though Mal suspected she was not yet old enough to understand the difference between a real baby and her beloved dolly. He’d sat on the floor of the shuttle with her, as she shoveled an entire packet of protein mash into its mouth, cajoling it to “open the cargo bay doors.” Mal was just glad that it wasn’t her kitten, Miko, she was trying to cram a spoon into.

She’d held up the dolly, protein mash smeared all over its face and in its hair, not unlike his own first attempts to feed Carly, before figuring out it was jus