Saint Jayne

By belasera

Saint Jayne performs his first miracle. Zoe and Jayne attempting to function, post BDM.

PG

Thanks to WildHeavenFarm, whose morose and lovely fic “Handling Things” put a seed of thought into my brain. The terrifying result…..

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The body was…difficult. Closing the door of the bridge to be alone with her husband was simple, as familiar as his hand in the dark, but turning to face him…it was harder to face him there than any enemy line, any barrage of fire, any yawning stretch of bloody wait. She knew when she pushed her palm against his cold cheek just once, when she pried that filthy thing out of his chest and felt no gush of blood, but stillness…she knew he was dead. The knowing, like gravity, kept her rooted to the ground when she should have gone spinning, kept her from keening out, from burying her own heart in his still chest. He was gone, nothing could bring him back and she needed to conserve what she had left. Energy, sanity, humanity, whatever it was left inside her wasn’t much and she couldn’t pour it out on him when she needed it so bad her own self. She stayed quiet.

She buried her husband in quiet, repaired the mirror wound in Serenity’s hull in quiet, slept in an empty passenger dorm in quiet. Until they flew again, until they left him behind, and then she went home. She knew he was dead, she’d touched his death to know for sure and thought it was the worst.

It wasn’t.

The worst was waiting for her patiently in their bunk, when she dropped into it and knew in one great rush that not only was her husband dead, but that he’d been alive. On their rumpled bed was the frayed t-shirt he’d slept his last night in, she couldn’t even look past it to anything else, his every possession here in this room that was now her possession. She didn’t want them, his things he’d left. Didn’t want them to be hers, couldn’t look at them at all.

She left it, didn’t touch it but left it there, crawled into bed, into sheets that were still theirs, were