Disclaimer: The people belong to Joss Whedon. The music belongs to Fred Small. I merely borrowed them to get this plot to stop nagging me to be written.

A/N: This is my first Firefly fic, and a songfic to boot. I don’t usually like songfics, but I happened to be listening to Fred Small and thinking about Firefly, and got smacked upside the head by a plot idea. The song in question is I Will Stand Fast, from the album of the same name.

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It was either very late or very early; Simon couldn’t tell which. For once it hadn’t been River screaming that woke him, but a thin thread of music that wafted down from somewhere forward, probably the galley. That was usually where anyone who couldn’t sleep went, for tea or peace and quiet or whatever need had kept them awake. But usually, there was no music involved.

Ever since Jubal Early had appeared in the middle of Serenity’s night, Simon had been wary of anything unusual waking him up. He had taken to keeping one of the kitchen knives within reach when he slept, just in case. Picking up the knife, he opened his door just enough to see that River’s door was shut, and then slid his own aside and stepped out into the corridor to follow the music.

Kaylee had gotten the old music player as a freebie with a load of gently-used circuit boards and miscellaneous other parts the last time she had gone scrap-hunting. The player was a tiny little thing, like the one Tracey had recorded his message on. Kaylee’s hadn’t been working when she got it, but she had spliced and soldered and otherwise jury-rigged it back together, and Inara had let her use her shuttle cortex link to download music into it. Kaylee had chosen a random stream, everything from current Core favorites to music that had been old when Earth-that-was, still was. The player was Kaylee’s secret, a treat she allowed herself when she had worked hard all day to get something done and had done it, or when she had had a bad day and wanted to pamper herself a little. Tonight, she was ce