This fic contains HUGE SERENITY MOVIE SPOILERS . Do not read if you do not want to know.

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Author: Rawles {rawles [dot]marie [at]gmail [dot]com}

Type: Borderline Gen

Genre: Drama

Characters: All seven make appearances. God, that feels horrible to type.

Summary: Kaylee felt indescribably guilty.

Author’s Notes: I was supposed to be writing intelligent thoughts about all the many ways I loved and adored Serenity , this came out of my fingertips instead. I wanted to write Simon/Kaylee fluff...but, uhm, it didn't quite work out that way. If there are any inconsistencies regarding the final parts of the movie and the order in which things take place it can be blamed on the fact that I have only seen the movie once and I was sobbing uncontrollably for the last thirty-five minutes or so.

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Afterwards, Serenity was quiet.

Not utter silence, not literally. It had started that way, though. As Serenity sat there, dark and battered, and they tromped back onto her she looked so bad, so wrecked, that the man with the tractor ship asked Mal, incredulously, if he was sure he didn't want "that heap" towed to the nearest scrap belt instead of the docking station. The Captain had just looked at him murderously for a moment, and the man did not speak again.

That sort of silence, of a dead machine, didn't stay, and the sound of the engine turning was one of the first noises that chased it away. Kaylee worked for almost sixteen hours straight to restore main power. It was a labor of love, but also of necessity. Hard to live in a place with no power, and no one wanted to stay anywhere that was not Serenity. So, Kaylee toiled and everyone else who was able wandered about the corridors, took stock of damages, and tried to pick up the little pieces of their lives that had been tossed about in the crash and put them back where they belonged. The first time that the repairs necessitated Kaylee go into the