One minute, I'm sick of this type of fic. The next minute, I'm writing one. Well, there's nowt as queer as folk. This was done in one beta-less sitting and I am fully prepared for you all to slash it to bloody ribbons. In fact, please do. Then I can go back to writing porn, as God intended.

“The Widow Washburn.” Zoe tried to fit the label to herself, but it foreign and repugnant. As was “Mommy,” but they were both true and as keening as a knife blade in her heart. Her “life” as she’d known it was gone, shattered like the hull of their dear ship and the body of its gifted pilot. “Life” also seemed like an inappropriate moniker for her existence. A great part of her died with Wash that day, even as she ran and fought for her own survival. Every morning when she awoke and remembered, and her heart broke again. Each morning’s realization of her loss made her harder and more numb. So numb that the doctor’s diagnosis of pregnancy could not raise an expression to her face. She merely whispered a thanks for his time and retreated to the vast, empty bed in her berth.

Speaking was arduous. It sapped her of her strength and she had no desire to make the effort. That is not to say she did not talk to her captain or crewmates, but she never really spoke. Her belly announced her condition in its own time, though the crew did bicker over the cause initally. “Of course she’s pregnant,” she heard Jayne saying to Kaylee in that harsh, low voice that served as his whisper. “Her tits are as big as my head, she’s gettin’ a poochy belly, and half the time she don’t eat and half the time she can’t stop.” Leave it to their tracker and his eloquent ways.

It did not seem right, or even possible, to minimize the newcomer as an “it”. It was what it was, a baby in her belly. And Zoe could not kill the baby. She knew that from the very first, even though it would have been medically simple. It was a baby to her, even if its existence was the most tragic possible turn of events. And it belonge