PART 7

Daquan was slower in regaining consciousness than Mal had expected, but given that he didn’t have a long criminal history, he was probably less accustomed to being knocked out in the course of his work. As a ship’s cook, he was used to folks buddying up to him. Mal tried to be polite. He untied the man, offered him a hard drink, apologized for Genny pistol-whipping him, and asked for his side of the story.

“I didn’t know what was going on with River,” Daquan explained. “One day she snapped. She went from being perfectly fine (in her own wild and free way) to thrashing manically. She tried to kill me a couple different ways. I knew she had meds, but she’d stopped taking them. She told me once that if something ever happened to her, I should get her to her brother, so that’s what I did.”

The stairs creaked and they all turned to see whether it was Simon or River. Jamie came down, holding Serry in his arms.

“Serry’s hungry,” he said simply.

“Jamie, please go out back with the others,” Mal said, motioning for Kaylee to take charge of the feeding the baby. They two of them went – Jamie to the back door and Kaylee to the kitchen.

“Wait!” Daquan cried, jumping to his feet and chasing them. Jayne blocked him easily and Daquan turned angrily to Mal.

“You can’t keep me from my child.”

“I’m keeping you from my children,” Mal said simply.

“You don’t want your children to watch you kill me,” he growled accusingly.

“There’s where you’re misunderstanding,” Mal said, putting a patronizing arm around Daquan’s shoulder and leading him back to the main room. “See, I don’t want my children to kill you. As much as I dislike you, I’m not paying to get blood stains out of this carpet.”

“There’s hard wood underneath,” Jayne said helpfully, making a motion of pulling up the carpet and wrapping Daquan’s body in it.

Daquan threw off Mal’s arm disgustedly. “You never were funny.”

“Were you ever good?” Mal returned.

Craning his neck, Daquan tried to get a glimpse as Kaylee too