I own nothing.

----

River was talking to Badger, with Jayne standing next to her. Or rather, it was Pistol who spoke, with Saint standing beside her. Inara was starting to be able to tell the difference by sight alone. River was constantly moving, even if it was just around in circles, even if it was just her eyes. Pistol could stand still for hours. Similarly, Jayne was always putting his foot in his mouth, whether he noticed it or not, whereas Saint only spoke when it profited them both. Inara thought that they looked like a painting of Lancelot and Guinevere that she'd seen as a child. Jayne - or rather, Saint - was the knight errant, falling slowly in love with the woman he could never have, hardly realizing it, perhaps in this case never realizing it; after all, Jayne was hardly a young man anymore, and he tended to think awfully slowly. Pistol was the beautiful, untouchable Queen, promised to Arthur (and who, she wondered, would Arthur be?) but willing to spend her time with his first knight until he returned home. It was all rather tragic, she thought to herself, as she walked by Mal on her way to her shuttle.

Mal found it all manner of unnatural, truth be told, but he knew that when Jayne shut up and River stood still, generally, there was money to be had. (Recently, they had gone on a series of jobs and brought nothing back but secret smiles. Mal seriously hoped that they weren't doing what he thought that implied, but if they were, he was thankful they were keeping it off his boat.) Thing was, many of their jobs as Pistol and Saint were more profitable than his own smuggling jobs. He sometimes wondered if he shouldn't just trade careers. 'Course, he'd have to find another Reader to tell him which jobs were the right ones, and if River was any indication of what Readers were like, another one on board would be more trouble than it was worth. He'd stick to smuggling, he decided as Kaylee drove the mule back on board.

Kaylee paid no attention to River and Jayne's conversation wit