Simon had brought Freya round from her faint, waving a broken capsule under her nose, but it was as if she’d left part of herself behind in the darkness of unconsciousness. There was something missing from her as she walked out of the sheriff’s office, carrying Mal’s browncoat, the others following as they headed back to the Firefly.

“What do we do now?” Simon whispered to Zoe.

“I … I don’t know,” the dark woman admitted. “It’s not like we can have a funeral, but … I don’t know.”

“I can’t believe Mal’s dead.”

Zoe looked at him. “There were times when we neither of us thought to be coming home, to Serenity or anywhere else,” she said softly. “When we thought it was gonna be our last sight of the sun, or the moon, or the shell-filled darkness of a battlefield. But we always came for each other. Were there, to save each other.” She shook her head. “Only this time I wasn’t.”

“Do you think there’s any chance he might have survived?”

For a long moment she allowed herself the possibility of hope, then she saw again in her mind’s eye the river, the huge lumps of debris crashing into the rocks. “Don’t see how, Simon. Not with the way that water was running. But without a body …”

“Then maybe -”

“No. No, there ain’t.” She glanced towards the woman walking in front of them. “Most I think we can look forward to is news of his body being found, and if that river goes into the sea, that ain’t likely either.”

“It’s my fault,” Jayne said, his arm wrapped around River’s shoulders as she stumbled along, lost inside his coat that he’d insisted she put on. “Told me to get the cash back to the boat.”

“Why’d he do that?” Hank asked.

“In case Barrick tried to get a refund, I guess.”

“You think it was him?”

“Nah. He ain’t one to do that. Too afraid of his own shadow.”

“But if someone thought Mal had cash on him …”

“We don’t know it was because of that,” Zoe put in quickly.

“Yeah, but if I’d been with him -”

“No-one’s blaming you.”

“Hell, Zoe, I am! If’n I’d stayed, w