"Mirror, Mirror"

“Dicey!!”

As the name echoed across the dockyard, time suddenly stood still...

Mal froze, confused for a moment. Reflexively, he looked around, searching the varied groups of people milling about. Across the dockyard, a gleam of dark red caught his eye. Sunlight glinted off unusual dark red hair, on a woman with her back to him. A group of people was converging on her and her current companions, from his direction.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe for a moment. Those around him were forgotten. She was maybe a few hundred feet away, her hair spilling down her back, over the brown coat – nearly identical to the one he owned himself. A tall blonde man in a flat-brimmed black hat and longish black coat stood to one side of her, a lopsided smile on his face as he turned to see another group approaching. On her other side, a young man with spiky blonde hair stood with his arm around a smaller girl with long dark hair. The girl wore a skirt, and leaned close to the spiky haired man. Guns adorned the two men’s hips, and the red haired woman’s hip as well, visible as she began to turn. The group approaching her from his directions called again, and she turned her attention from whatever had captured it previously to face them.

Had his heart stopped? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt it beat.

Even from here he could see the blue of her eyes, stormy blue grey, and the white of the wide smile she greeted them with. She reached up to brush a lock of that dark red hair back behind her ear, tilting her head slightly as she did.

It simply wasn’t possible. He’d seen her die. It. Wasn’t. Possible. Right beside that lock of hair, he’d seen the dark spot, the horrible dark smear as she fell, trying to turn to look at him. She couldn’t be standing there, looking so perfectly unmarred and... alive .

She moved forward, reaching out to poke a tall young man on the shoulder, smiling and teasing. When she impacted his shoulder, he could see the way the fabric of his