Wash continued looking puzzled.

“What story?”

“The one you started telling before you left my ship,” Mal said sitting down.

Wash thought Mal was enjoying watching him squirm, but he couldn’t tell if he was being at all serious with him. With Mal sometimes it was hard to tell seeing as he never changed the inflection of his voice.

“Now?”

“Good a time as any,” Mal responded, indicating for Zoë to sit too, “although you might want to fill Zoë in some. She missed the first part.”

“You’re serious?” Wash questioned, getting a bit red in the face.

“I am,” Mal said and Wash knew it was true. “If you want to stay aboard this ship it’s time to come clean. No more secrets here. I’ll promise you that what you say stays here but I am going to know. Now.”

“Okay,” Wash nodded and took a seat at the only available spot, his one chair. “You both know about my father, so there’s no point going back over that…”

“How about you start with the part where they made you a cadet.”

Wash could tell by Zoë’s face that this was news to her. Not so much her face as her eyes. She never let her face give away too much, but her eyes subtly betrayed her.

That had been a surprise. He’d been positive by now Mal would have said something to her, but he suppose he had waited to hear Wash out. That had been damn fair of him.

“Alright,” Wash said looking down a bit. “When you turn fifteen on any of the core planets you have to submit to a bunch of tests. They’re supposed to determine what you’re good at, how you’d best serve the Alliance.”

Wash cleared his throat.

“So I took all my tests, bunch of written stuff and some physicals, and at the end of it they say I should be a pilot. I didn’t argue because, well because you couldn’t.”

He paused and they both stared at him. He knew what they were waiting for.

“That and I wanted to fly.”

“What type of pilot they make you?”

‘Damn it Mal,’ Wash thought as he rubbed his head.

“Fighter pilot,” he continued, “They wanted to make me a f