All comments and disclaimers in full in Ch 1 (Simon), it's the usual fare: not mine. Comment or send feedback, wily_one24@yahoo.com.au

***

"That's the way it's always been.

It all comes down to creating time.

We don't always have to make it right.

We'll all drive by in our hybrid lives.

Chances are... chances are...

We'll make it back."

- Sheryl Crow.

***

He’d been doin’ some thinking and no one knows more’n he does how dangerous a pastime that is for him, but things had changed and even he can feel it, so he sat and sharpened the blade and suspected that she knew, even in her slowly healing but still batshit crazy mind, that he’s sharpening it for her, hell, they probably all knew, but ain’t no one gonna say anything if they know what’s good for ‘em.

Jayne held no false and fancy ideas about who he was. He don’t hold many things close, man like him can’t afford to, it’s a hand-to-mouth, hand-to-gun, or hand-to-grave-digging-shovel ‘verse out there. He does what he needs to get by, it’s something he keeps telling himself over and over again, just what’s strictly needed.

Don’t mean nothin’ that he stood up in the fight against those reavers, that he helped bring the almighty Alliance down a peg or two. He was only doin’ it, ‘cause Serenity is the finest gig he’s ever had and only a fool would risk losin’ it. They get regular pay, well, regular enough that he can eat decent most of the times, they get treated more’n fair and he has fun sometimes along the way. There ain’t nothin’ more a man needs.

He’s fair on sure it started way back with Kaylee, when she got shot and he couldn’t take his eyes off the operation, and only got worse when he, River and the doc were nabbed by those fed he’d tipped off in Ariel and he couldn’t get the girl’s face outta his head, mouth all stretched in terror like that. It weren’t right.

A man like Jayne gets shot at and faces death near on every day, that’s his choice, he chooses the life and he got no right to complain about it. But that kid neve