She was avoiding me, not spoken to me since the funeral. She was heavy, her heart dragged her down. Didn’t like me sitting where he had, doing as he’d done. Didn’t understand, didn’t want to. Felt safer inside herself, wouldn’t tell anyone, wouldn’t let herself cry. Didn’t understand I hadn’t been lying.

She stood in the door, preparing to leave before she’d arrived. “River, Captain wants you on the bridge now.”

Mal had just told her to clean out his stuff. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t forget. His face pierced her thoughts every moment of every day. I saw her pain every day but she did not see what she thought she did. He was not dead.

I told her, but she’d been avoiding me, didn’t understand.

“Stop drowning in sorrow. He doesn’t need that, not now.”

Zoë just stared at me. She didn’t want to understand. At the funeral I had tried to explain. He hadn’t been in the earth, he hadn’t been put in the earth. She didn’t have to hurt. She didn’t want to understand.

Simon had hushed me. He always thought I was being rude, but I was only telling the truth. No one understood, why would no one –"

“Just be upstairs.”

She left me and I stood for a moment feeling the emptiness of my room. She didn’t want me to go upstairs. She didn’t want me where Wash should’ve been. She’s empty and hollow and alone.

~

“So what’s our next move?”

We sat in a corner escaping the rays of a sun rising over the imperial city. I still felt shell-shocked after the past few hours.

Navigating the hospital wasn’t the only problem. I also had to cope with a near heart attack every turn as we came face to face with more doctors and more official looking official looking members of the Alliance. I suppose it's the Alliance icy attitude that stopped them from recognising me as a fraud. I wasn’t forced to speak once, that as until we came to a dead end.

“Do they not have fire escapes in this place?” I asked, my voice involuntarily high pitched.

“Yes, but they’d all be alarmed. We just need to find a bac