There was more. So much more. Wash doesn't remember but a fraction of it, and everything is jumbled and in the wrong order. There was a great deal about River. There was a great deal about all of them. We'll save that for another time, and all of this was conveyed both inside his mind and outside of time, in a place adjacent to where subatomic and galactic are one and the same.

Wash's eyes open. He sits up.

"Wow. That wuz a helluva thing."

He yawns. He stretches. He winces. Every bit of him hurts. He tries to find a part of his body that's not hurting.

He shrugs. He winces. He chuckles to himself and winces again at the pain, causing him to chuckle even more.

He gets out of bed slowly. Already the remnants of his dream is fading from his memory. Like sand in the palms of one's hands, it's just slipping away, but he does remember one thing that he thinks matters.

He was a little hard on River. She means no one any harm, and he's been irrational and cruel, and a downright scaredy cat. Sure perhaps she's dangerous, but everyone on board the ship is dangerous under certain circumstances; even himself. Perhaps having spent the last several hours afraid he was losing his own sanity, has offered him a taste of perspective.

He wants to apologize even if she doesn't understand him. Not for her sake, but for his own.

And that's what makes him get out of bed, give himself a bit of a stand up sponge bath, as best as he can manage in his condition... Actually part of it he does sitting down. ..That's what encourages him to put on some fresh clothes, cover the most sore parts of his body with gauze from his wife's first aid kit under the bed, and then slowly make his way back up the ladder to the hall.

Slowly but with sober confidence, he then makes his way to the infirmary, thinking perhaps River will be there with her brother. When he gets to the infirmary, he just stands there in silence.

Wash suddenly wakes up again, and realizes getting up and out of bed and to the infirmary was jus