A week to go and everyone was getting anxious. Hank was wandering around the corridors of Serenity at all hours of the night until Zoe asked Simon for a hypo for him. Jayne was working out even more than he usually did, Bethany often at his side, telling him pirate tales as they lifted weights together, while Kaylee spent a lot of time in her engine room, coaxing her baby along to get them to Lazarus without incident. Even Simon continually went through his supplies, making sure he had everything he could possibly need. Of the two births they’d had onboard, neither had exactly gone to plan. Bethany had been an emergency Caesarean while he wasn’t even there, and Ethan was technically born in the shuttle after it crashed. This time he wanted no margin for error.

Mal, of course, was getting in everyone’s way.

“You sure you got all you need?” he was asking Simon every day.

“I’m sure,” the young doctor would respond, then go and count the suture kits once more.

“She gonna hold together ‘til we get there?” he said to Kaylee.

“Course she will, Cap’n. Smooth as you like,” she always replied with a smile, before crawling back under the housing with a determined look on her face and a wrench in her hand.

“You know what you’re gonna have to do?” he asked Jayne.

“Carried women in that state before, ain’t I?” the big man would say, adding an extra plate to each end of the barbell. Bethany nodded and did the same.

“Hank –”

“You leave me alone or I’ll shoot you.”

Mal put his hands up and backed off the bridge.

The only people not running around like chickens about to be plucked were River and Freya. And Zoe, who lay back on the cushions, her hands as far around the mound at her waist as they could go, looking serene.

“I don’t think they’re going to make Lazarus,” Freya said as they sat in the maternity suite, hearing Simon muttering under his breath in the infirmary, punctuated by the occasional thud reverberating from the engine room as Kaylee hit something with her wrench.

“They