Mal hadn’t been hungry. Since Miranda his appetite had wavered between meagre to thin, especially once he was well enough to have a say in it, but the last couple of days it had been non-existent.

“I can put a tray aside for you,” Kaylee offered when she came to tell him dinner was ready.

“Don’t waste good food,” he advised, letting himself smile for her. “Honestly. If I get peckish I can find something. I ain’t that far gone yet.”

“I know that, cap’n. Just looking out for you like you look out for us.”

“Then you’d best be getting back to the others before Jayne eats it all.”

“You know he don’t do that the same no more.”

“Then before it gets cold. Go on. Simon’ll be wondering where you are.”

She laughed and turned back towards the kitchen, her sunny nature still bubbling but muted beneath the sadness. It had taken a lot for her to step onto the bridge, and her eyes had kept flicking to the pilot’s chair.

He knew how she felt. It had been hard for him to take Serenity out of atmo the first time, even knowing the chair itself had been replaced. It still wasn’t his place, not his job, although maybe as captain it was more than anyone else now.

And Kaylee shouldn't be worrying, not over him. He’d tried to eat, to be sociable, and most days he managed it. Only this wasn’t one of them. He was actually going to that evening, then he’d looked into the warm kitchen and seen the empty seat. It had ripped open the barely healed wound in his heart and he could hardly breathe. Then he’d heard the hatch to Zoe’s bunk start to open, and he’d run for the bridge to hide.

He might be captain, but he was a poor showing of a man. Mal sighed, taking a deep breath of recycled air that had a flavour to it, something Kaylee must have brought in with her, a scent that reminded him of Zoe.

How she could bear it, he didn’t know. In the weeks since they’d fixed Serenity he’d half expected her to turn around and tell him she was leaving, even though there was a part of him that knew she would