DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to Joss Whedon, not me. More's the pity.

Sometimes when a thing gets broke, it can't be fixed. That's what Kaylee said about the catalyzer that time. Got more in common with my boat than I could ever've guessed.

War did it for me. Well, not so much the war, more the surrender. Still sticks in my craw, remembering how we had to lay down arms and give ourselves up to men half our worth. Something inside me got broke that day, an's been broke ever since.

Buying Serenity didn't fix me, but sure bandaged up my wounds a bit. Stopped my strength from just bleedin' right out of me. She let me keep goin'. Keep fightin' in my own way.

It was takin' on civilians that started it. Shepherd Book an' his God. Dr Simon Tam and his moon-brained genius sister. Never saw such a delicate, helpless thing as her in that trunk. Still makes me shiver to think of it.

Funny how it turned out. River savin' us all from that bounty hunter. Turned out to have a hell of a lot of steel in her. When I came to from that blow to the head and heard her whisper her orders, for a while there I thought it was my own self talking. But then, she's been more than broken too.

Took a while, but eventually things on board got back to normal. Found myself mighty thankful not to have lost no-one. 'Specially Kaylee. Knowin' that she was safe and sound and unsullied by that wang da ban. Gotta say, that whole episode changed me. Think I sunk about as low as it's possible to go when I thought our haven had been violated and I hadn't been able to do a gorram thing about it.

Then I heard Kaylee laugh again - that open, cheery laugh of hers. And I realized she don't just fix my ship. She's fixin' me too. Her an' all these fragile people around me. My crew.