Disclaimer: Firefly and all related elements, characters and indicia © Mutant Enemy Productions and 20th Century Fox Television, 2003. All Rights Reserved. All characters and situations—save those created by the authors for use solely on this website—are copyright Mutant Enemy Productions and 20th Century Fox Television.

Please do not archive or distribute without author's permission.

Author's Note: Written for the ff_friday challenge #20

Treasure
by Tara O'Shea

Wash knew about the box under the bed, but no one else did.

She suspected that Mal had an inkling. He'd seen her carry it around, shoved in the bottom of her pack, for almost seven years now. But he'd never, not once, asked her about it. That was how they were, the two of them. They'd once sat side by side in a trench for three days, never speaking a word to one another. Some men would've wanted to fill up those silences. Would have found them uncomfortable. Silence made their teeth itch. But not so, Mal.

Wash had asked her about the box the day they'd finally given up the pretence of separate quarters, and moved their stuff in together. They'd sat on the bed, thighs touching, and she'd opened it up and he'd peered inside.

It was like a child's idea of treasure. A hair ribbon, grey at one end from falling in a puddle. A faded photograph of a woman laughing, her face blurred from movement. A stack of letters, folded and wrapped in wax paper, bound with twine. She knew he'd wanted to ask about them. He was fairly vibrating with curiosity. But there would be time enough for that later. He reached into the box, and drew out a charm on a thin gold chain which caught the light. It was an opal in a gold setting. She kept it in the box because the stone was too fragile for the kind of life she led, and she'd almost forgotten it was there, at the bottom of the box, chain a tangled mess.

With patient and clever fingers, he