Wash sat in the pilot’s chair, the one place where thinking had always come easily. That part of who she was hadn’t changed, unlike most of the rest of her. Still, a lot had changed since the untimely death of the man she used to be in that very same chair, and her unusual resurrection in the pleasingly-shaped and quite female body of Linda Rachel Wehr, the woman who replaced him as Serenity’s pilot.

Of course, she wasn’t actually on flight duty at the moment. After she had pushed herself so hard keeping the ship in the air during a rescue attempt a few hours back, she wound up fainting at the controls. The ship’s Doctor had forbidden her to fly for 24 hours, or anything else particularly strenuous. Keeping her out of the cockpit for a day wasn’t really a problem, though. When Serenity was out in the Black, between the planets and moons that made up the system, she could usually find her way without help.

So Wash wasn’t really flying, just curled up in the chair, her chair, staring out at the stars. And thinking. About Jayne.

‘I told him I loved him,’ she thought, still a little amazed at both her declaration and the fact that she actually DID love him. ‘And I kissed him and he touched me and ... sometime soon I’m going to climb into bed with him and I can’t believe I’m looking forward to that, too. I mean, Jayne? I thought the Verse was strange with the geese juggling and all, but seriously ... me ... and Jayne?’

She smiled just a little, thinking about the conversation she wasn’t supposed to have heard between Simon and Jayne.

“Oh, come on, Doc,” the mercenary said, doing his best to keep his voice down with Linda in the next room. “It ain’t like I’m gonna be chasin’ her around the ship or nothin’. We’re gonna be in my bunk ... or her bunk ... or somewhere else ... oh, hell, I don’t know, but I ain’t gonna hurt her. I’d never hurt her. You know that!”

Simon looked at Jayne, and he could see how being this close to actually being wi