Mal thinks she's all his.

River's never told him different, but she knows the truth. Not hard to see. All of them, every one, would kill for her. Die for her. For the same reason a wild animal will kill or die for their den and their cubs.

Mine.

All you need to see it are eyes. And feet.

Feet take you up the stairs into the cockpit, where a man in a loud shirt and louder hair grins over his shoulder. Eyes tell you how Wash touches those controls, sweet and gentle. He only ever touches Zoe like that.

Come on, baby, you're right there with me. I know you can do it, darlin', I know it because you have. Mocking, to the Reavers--here's something you can't do. Because they don't have what's his. The buttons and switches, the joystick, the screens and readouts, aren't any different, in his heart, than his wife's skin and mouth, her breasts, her belly, her hips, her sex. He's the only one who touches them.

Mine.

Zoe’s place was by her cap’n’s side. Now it’s by her husband’s too. Serenity’s the place where both are possible. She’ll do anything to protect this meeting place, this neutral ground. And the people in it.

There's people on the inside of Serenity, and there’s people on the outside, and it ain't necessarily a matter of spatial location which is which. She doesn’t care nothin’ for the people on the outside, and it takes a good long while for anyone to become the people on the inside.

But when they do . . .

Mine.

Jayne, all guns and muscle and simple thoughts. No complexity in him.

River got it first time from him, shouldering his gun to glare down the sight at the net that Saffron had led them into, that he and Vera got them out of. Ain’t gettin’ us this time, bitch. Ain’t getting this ship, these people. Not if me ‘n’ Vera have anything to say about it.

He and Zoe are a lot more alike than either of them really want to admit. Took a while for herself and Simon to become his, in that simple mind, but now they are.

Mine.

K