Keeping On: Part 3 - Let The Sunshine In

Disclaimer: Firefly, Serenity, and all related characters are copyright 2002-2005 Mutant Enemy, Inc., Universal Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. This is a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended.

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Two days later…

Kaylee hummed and sang softly as she tinkered around with the navigation panel in the co-pilot’s station. It’d been acting awfully fussy lately and Kaylee didn’t like it when her girl got fussy…usually meant that something much bigger was soon to go wrong. After finally convincing Mal that she needed time on-planet to fix it, she was taking advantage of the break Mal and Zoe were giving her. Kaylee had a few hours to sort out what was making Serenity fuss the way she was.

It used to be that Wash could have helped her. Wash, as much as he joked around, knew his ships. He could look at wiring and tell right away what the problem was and the best three ways to fix it. In terms of engines and their workings he wasn’t much help…but electrical stuff? He was a genius.

Kaylee could recall the times when she and Wash both would have been on rollers, underneath the stations fixing the wiring or stripping it to replace it. Kaylee could also recall the times when she and Wash would be looking over floor plans of a building or security system schematics, trying to find the weakness, trying to find the one spot that would let the crew in so that crime could be done. The whole time they would talk and tell stories and jokes and bond in a way that the rest of the crew probably didn’t even notice. It was kind of a novelty, being able to talk with someone who didn’t usually need things explained in “Captain-Dummy-Talk.”

Wash had been like Kaylee’s older brother. He had looked out for her and cheered her up when she was down. Wash had been the one who made her feel the most welcome when she first joined, and had talked her through her homesickness when she had her first few-week trip in the Black