There were a few clouds in the sky, but for the most part, the sun laid down an impressive warmth. It was really an awe inspiring landscape; dark blue mountains in the distance, frosted white, golden wind-blown grass on the plains, sparse with short spindly trees. Across the captain’s bare skin, he felt a shiver of a breeze.

“Well, now,” he said aloud sitting on an uncomfortable stump, “I didn’t expect to be visiting these particulars again.”

Again meaning the time when the captain’s ‘wife’ had left him high and dry, not to mention bare, after she had successfully manipulated him once again.

Her name, at the time, was Saffron, an innocent enough girl that had apparently married the captain in a moment of drunkenness and bliss. Normal enough, except the proposal, engagement, and ceremony took place in the same night. Mal hadn’t been looking for a wife and the whole thing was rather amusing for the crew and awkward for its captain. There was bible reciting and poetry to be had before Saffron could be revealed for her true character.

Character being that she tried to kill them.

Granted, this wasn’t much different from the rest of the people that Mal and his crew had had the misfortune to meet, but it was certainly unexpected.

Saffron had appeared to be little more than a blushing bride, blissfully ignorant of the ‘verse around her. Mal thought she needed protecting.

‘Course that was before she drugged him, assaulted Wash, waylaid Inara, and expertly sent the ship en route to be scrapped and its crew murdered.

And that was the first time they ran into her.

She made an impression.

That impression lasted until the captain managed to run into her again. She had found herself a new husband, a war buddy of Mal’s. Her name had been Bridget, then. Cost Mal’s war buddy his most prized commodity.

His beard.

She wasn’t too happy to see Reynolds, tried to kill him again before she realized it would have done her no good. But she wormed her way back into good graces with a proposal for the crew. A he