He took a sip of coffee, having long since gotten used to the bitter taste. The ship was cycling on night time, and he’d been having trouble sleeping.

A pair of soft pants and his blue-gray fuzzy pullover covered everything as he sat to the worn table. Simon thought of the many dinners the crew had shared, as well as the ‘informational meetings’—meetings like the one concerning his sister only a few weeks ago.

They were a target. It was a thought that lived permanently in the back of his mind. He knew the captain had turned down more than one job because of he and River’s presence, and it was a thought that bothered him. As Mal was fond of saying, ‘no work means no food, no fuel and no hope of getting either.” And yet, he still kept both of them on.

Simon looked down at his clothes and took another sip of coffee. A year ago, he wouldn’t have been caught dead in something like what he wore right now. Now…now they were comfortable, and something he could afford. Over half of the clothes he’d come on board with were polishing something in the infirmary or the engine room now, having been stained or torn beyond repair. A year ago, he would have considered himself fallen beyond hard times to be in a position such as this.

The coffee swirled in the tin cup as Simon absently circled the container on the top of the table. Things had not gone well the day before, and Jayne’s incessant whining about his leg was only the top of it. They had been made targets of—again—and there had been more than enough patching to do as the ship hastily made course for the black.

“You know, if’n we got rid of ‘em, things’d go a hell of a lot smoother!”

“And who then would be fixin’ you up, Jayne?”

“Ah, hell—like talkin’ to a wall.”

Early had been a reminder. A startling reminder that no matter how far Simon took his sister, no matter how clever the crew got in staying on the fringes of the system and taking work that left no trails, that someone would eventually get suspicious