AN: Simon and Kaylee experience the first sign of trouble with the twins.

*** Hush little baby ***

Serenity, named after Serenity Valley, where the final battle of the Unification War took place. Not many people understood why he named his ship after it, and he didn't need them to. The war might have been lost, but there were still the daily battle of survival to be had. A battle that, due to the Alliance's interferance, grew harder with every passing day, though it didn't take his spirit away.

The name had in time come to hold a different meaning to it as well. The people he had first hired as crew had grown on him like a family, annoying and bickering, though loving and loyal, or in Jayne's case somewhat loyal, to the end. Even though he would never ever admitt it, even the preacher's lectures and the mercenary's mischief was sweet music in his ears. It was part of this feeling of being home.

These past two night, however, he had concidered renaming his ship. Serenity was now at its least serene, with the sound of two wailing infants piercing the silence for the fifth time just this night. How long had the silence lasted this time... half an hour? It was unbearable.

Though half of him was astounded the sheer force in a baby's lunge, the other half, the half that hadn't had a decent shut-eye in days and days, wanted to tell them to shut the brats up. Had Kaylee known he had called her kids that, she would have smacked him up-side-down. Most of the time he would have done the same to whatever poor creature daring to say it, but he felt that this occation called the need for it.

He pulled the pillow over his head, hoping he could by some miracle block it out. No such luck...

-

Kaylee's eyes snapped open immediatly as she heard the very recognizable sound of one of her babies cry. Her head was aching and her eyelids heavy and she feared that one of these days she would get so tired that she would drop one of them, when picking them up. She leaned over to the bowl of cold