The only sounds in the room were Kaylee’s ragged sobs as he got up to close the hatch while River lead her tenderly over to the bunk. The two girls curled up in a tight ball on his bunk, River with her back against the bulkhead.

He sat down and gently removed her boots before pulling the blanket from beneath their legs and up over them. With great care he gathered up her hair so he wouldn’t lay on it, placing a light kiss on the nape of her neck as he settled onto the bed behind her, adding his arms and legs to the tangle of limbs.

Solemn eyes met his over the head cradled between them; he knew that she was asking if adding her to their arrangement was fine. He gave her a smile and snuggled them both closer. Perhaps the three of them would be enough to fill the void.

An odd image came to him as they lay entangled, earth, sun and water.

“We three are the desolate.” But they had what they needed to flourish, in time.

It flowed through them, across each one and back again, like waves taunting the shore. Sorrow and loss that never really had possession. But there was comfort, understanding, acceptance, and empathy. Even so close together in body and disheartened spirit, they were each lonely for one other. It bound them together in stands of silk and blood and bone.

Jayne reached one great arm across the two girls, who seemed smaller by the moment as they clung to each other. River whispered soft words like butterfly shadows into Kaylee’s skin as her sobs became simpers became silence. River slid her arm along Jayne’s, to form a shelter over their novitiate. Her eyes met Jayne’s and her voice floated into him from somewhere else. “Your half and my half will not be the whole, but needs must and love wants.” She must have spoken out loud, because Kaylee looked up at her then. “Will you have us, who aren’t him and die for wanting?”

“If you’ll have me.” Her voice was as thin as the edge of a knife as she took River’s face in her hands and poured herself into the soft lips she found