Disclaimer : They're still not mine, they're still Joss'.

*sigh*

Comments: 1) Sanguine: hopeful. Plus, point of interest, it also means bloody.

2) Italics are thoughts and memories, I tried not to be confusing.

Feedback: Oh, pretty please? With strawberries and engine grease? wily_one24@yahoo.com.au

***

Kaywinnit Lee Frye. They call her Kaylee.

Six tables and chairs sat spaced evenly into three rows. They sat with their backs straight and faces forward, hands laid flat in front of them. The screen at the front of the room flashed with images that burned into their brains. The only muscles they moved were the ones attached to their ocular cavities.

She has brown hair.

Small white dots taped wires to the sides of their heads, their scalps, the pulses in their necks. The wires quivered all the way to the left of the room, to the computers that monitored the electrical impulses of their brains. The spikes rose and fell with the timing of the screen.

And freckles on her cheeks.

Far beneath them, alone and unnoticed, he allowed himself the smile they couldn't, let his brainwaves spike in a pleasure that was denied them. He stretched his hands, let the bones and tendons creak into movement. Blood and expectation pumped sluggish through his veins. A warmth he hadn't felt in eighteen months.

She makes River smile.

***

Simon walked into the kitchen to see them sitting around the table. Nobody was speaking much, but then nobody really had since the night before. It was almost as if Serenity and the people within her were in a stunned form of grieving. The only person who didn't want to be in the company of others was River. She had holed herself up in her room and didn't want to leave. Everyone else stayed in close proximity to each other.

"She wants to go back." He felt numb. "Wants to make a trade, herself for Kaylee."

They took this information in silently. Zoe took Wash's hand and they shared a look as he bent his head