Last minute Christmas shopping was something Mal had very little experience with. Back home on Shadow, Christmas gifts were ordered through the Cortex in early autumn and sent to the ranch. And then… after... for too many years he’d either been too sick, too angry, too poor, or too alone to mark the day at all. Mal turned his mind away from the still-painful memories and concentrated on his more recent history. He let his gaze scan the late-afternoon crowd bustling around him, packing both sides of the cheery lane of stores.

This placid world was just what Mal wanted for Christmas week. Far from the Core, with all the black armbands and debate over the appropriate observances to honor the dead and the...lost. Inescapable and oppressive newsreels. Political machinations. Hearings. Petitions. Civil unrest. All he needed was a town or two, big enough to have a store full of the decorative, useless stuff that so beguiled Kaylee. And, reliably, snow. An excuse to get everyone off the ship for a good span of hours tomorrow. Make some new memories.

Memories that his crew was all too eager to forge. Kaylee and River had made it a month-long project, scouring the ship for anything colorful or shiny that could be repurposed as an ornament for the tree. Even Jayne had contributed, returning to the ship one afternoon with a length of twine and some shiny silver foil. He’d handed it over to Kaylee gruffly, and only grumbled when she complimented him on such a good idea, but he’d looked on that evening to see the girls carefully folding foil triangles into tiny stars and stringing them along the twine.

And Zoe had insisted on getting the tree. Mal saw how she was trying for all of them, not wanting to dampen the crew’s fragile spirit. Her pain was there but so was her desire to participate, be a part of their family. After their last job, she had disappeared into the city only to return toting a large bag. She winked at Kaylee, smiled softly at River, then secreted the bag in her bunk. Couldn't be easy for her, he kne