River shook her head as she looked around the shuttle. So far she’d packed her bag five times, and every time she came back she’d found it empty, her dresses put away, her guns back on the wall. He didn’t want her to go, she understood that. She didn’t want to leave either, didn’t want to tear her soul in two by tearing his, but she wanted more for him to live. To still be around the ‘verse, swearing and shooting, even whoring if his mind took him that way. But to survive.

Undoing the zip on the soft holdall, she picked up her red raggedy jumper, old now but still loved, one of the first things Simon had ever bought for her after he got her out of the Academy. She hugged it tightly, breathing in the scent that now filled it, of the last time she’d worn it, and Jayne had …

She sighed. No. Memories for later. She pushed it into the bag, with the pictures that tried to fill her mind. Taking out an armful of dresses, she began to fold them carefully, wrapping her hairbrush up in one and … she stopped, overwhelmed by a certainty that made her knees want to give way, and she staggered back, dropping what she held to the floor.

“Jayne,” she whispered, both vocally and mentally, but there was no response. Too much static. And too soon. She hadn’t left yet.

---

They approached Xeno’s, recognisable from the steam coming from the pipes all around the edge of the roof where the geothermal activity that had been tapped was vented to the atmosphere. Although they’d have known it from the smell.

“It doesn’t improve,” Zoe said, waving her hand in front of her face.

“Rotten gorram eggs,” Jayne muttered.

“That’s terraforming for you,” Mal agreed, his own nose trying to pinch up and hide. “Free heat for as long as you want it, long as you don’t mind it stinking.”

”I'm just glad it ain't summer.” Jayne shrugged deeper into his coat. “Can’t hardly walk into the place then.”

Mal could hear the music playing from inside. “Doesn’t stop folks. Only place this side of the quadrant to pick u