Mal didn’t want him to leave. Funny that.

Jayne argued with him ‘bout everythin’. Thought he could run the ship better, fought with Simon and River, was mean, selfish, and annoyin’ to have around.

But the captain depended on him too. The man was the best tracker around, could use any weapon ever made, fight like a demon.

Mal trusted him a bit more now since Miranda and the battle with the Reavers. Jayne had done his share of fighting, Mal knew that because the others told him ; how Jayne had pulled Zoë out of the firing line, for that alone Mal owed him. With Zoë out for the count, it was Jayne who was watchin’ his back when out on a job and Jayne who was doin’ most of the scut work round the ship.

Of course helpin’ round the ship was probably just so he could get his mind off all that had happened, after all that was why Mal was working so hard too. Working hard was also a way of avoidin’ what was occurring around them.

The tension between Kaylee and Simon was reaching epic proportions.

Mal had hoped that now Simon had actually made a move that the pair would be happy, but it wasn’t to be. Kaylee’s smile was dying, Simon was uncomfortable and things took a turn for the worse. Inara tried talking to them; he tried talking then yelling at them. But they were both pretending that nothing was wrong, Kaylee trying to smile, Simon getting more and more stiff and polite. Their work was sufferin’ too, Kaylee’s especially. The care she took of Serenity was still good, but nowhere near the work she had lavished on the ship before. Dinner time was a punishment sitting with the two of them, the tension was so thick. Jayne just stayed away from the table which made their numbers even smaller, because if he wasn’t there, most of the time River didn’t make an appearance either.

That was disturbin’; the ships’ two resident killers seemed to have come to some sort of understandin’. Though they still argued most of the time he never needed to prevent actual bloodshed. In fact the pair of them appeared to be keepin