When Mal first saw Serenity, sitting across the used ship lot from him, dust blown into patterns on her hull and up against her landing gear, he knew it was meant to be. Love at first sight. The answer to his dreams. All of these, and more.

What he had yet to figure out was why.

She was dirty, broken, needed money he didn’t really have spent on her just so she’d fly again, and yet he knew she was his.

The man in the suit had tried to sell him some yellow monstrosity, going on about how it would last him the rest of his life, but it just didn’t speak to him. Then he turned, saw the Firefly, and that was it. The salesman had looked at him as if he was crazy, and maybe he was, but there was no going back now.

He’d negotiated a deal where his ship … his ship … could stay in the corner while he worked on it, even made an arrangement so he could have pick of the spare parts lying around. It took almost every penny, and Zoe hadn’t exactly been enthralled by his new purchase, at least not at first.

It didn’t matter. He had a place to be now, king of his very own castle, captain of his boat. So what if the Alliance were still out there, he’d just get a little further. And if the nightmares were quieter on board, that was good too. Dreaming of his friends lined up on the dirt, their sightless eyes staring at him accusingly, blood and other bodily fluids making it hard to walk, until he came upon himself, flayed open, bone white among the glistening flesh … waking to find his face wet with tears he’d never shed before, his hands wrapped around the blankets in an unbreakable grip.

Every hour in the Black made them easier to bear, and if taking on a pilot and a mechanic who actually knew what they were doing filled the emptiness inside him a little, then he was glad.

And if, in the middle of the night cycle, when the doctor and his sister were asleep in the passenger quarters, when the Companion was resting behind her closed door and his mercenary was doing whatever it was he did for ho