Chapter 1: Falling Apart

Wash was beside himself and fast losing all hope. He drummed his fingers on the console while his eyes scanned the expanse of space before him. No way that his luck could be this bad – there had to be a way out! Maybe he had miscounted…

He turned again to the computer screen and called up his personal calendar. One, two, three… twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one… thirty-five, thirty-six.

“Oh, son of a gorram…”he yelled, jamming his fist against the console to instantly close the screen. In the next moment he had swept all his dinosaurs onto the floor.

He hadn’t been mistaken.

She had won. He was certain of it.

He dropped his head into his hands and tried to calm himself. Problem was that it wasn’t doing any good. For the first time he could recall, he was angry, really seriously angry… with his wife. Worse yet, he was afraid. As tired as he had become of the constant dread and fear he had felt in the last two weeks, finally having his worst fear realized was infinitely harder to deal with.

He just couldn’t even imagine how Zoe could possibly make up for what she had done. It just couldn’t be undone.

She had used him. Used him very badly, indeed…

“Well, not that badly…” a small voice in his head spoke up.

“In fact, you weren’t complaining,” another chimed in.

“Shut up!” he yelled aloud. “It wasn’t right! She shouldn’t have!”

“Uh… who you yelling at?” Kaylee asked, looking a bit spooked. She had come on up, as was her habit before turning in for the night. She always looked in on Serenity’s pilot before going off shift. The two of them were what kept the boat both fair and flying.

She had stepped onto the bridge just in time to see his display of temper, something which was never associated with the even tempered fly boy, except when…

“Oh!” she said, comprehending what it had to be. “Zoe got you all upset again, Wash?”

Wash stared at her with bloodshot eyes and it looked as though he had actually been on the verge of tears.

“Are you OK?” she asked, sudden