“We are not alone!” intoned Baker, the self-proclaimed bringer of the truth about the aliens that the Alliance was hiding. It was the same show as last time and the time before that. But people were more interested and more willing to believe now, ever since Miranda Mal was walking through the bazaar on the station. There were the smells of hundreds of different foods that were on sale at a hundred different stalls all around him. There were the shouts of a hundred different salesmen and market barterers were all around him. Mal wasn’t playing attention to any of them. Inara was with him, walking silently by his side. He couldn’t think of anything to say to her. She had stayed on Serenity after Miranda and Mal was grateful for that, but there was an unspoken……Mal couldn’t think of the word…….something was there, and it made conversation between the two difficult. He had lost, forever, two men who he had trusted, and there hadn’t been many of those, even during the war. They didn’t need more loss, not now.

Sheppard Book had taught him to believe again. Not necessarily about God, but just to believe in what was good and right. A direction to live his life buy that Mal had lost, he supposed. Wash had been his pilot. Had got him out of more than a few tight spots. But he had been Zoe’s husband. Mal hadn’t cared for Wash to start with or considered him strong or good enough for Zoe, but he had come to see that he was the one to keep Zoe human. Mal had taken that from her. Not directly, but he had been to take them to Mr. Universe’s planet and the Reavers. Zoe was a soldier, and knew that it was part of the job, but she was a widow also. Mal knew that there little you could say to widow’s of the men you had under your command.

“Malcolm! Well I better tell you now that you don’t have any bodies to collect, thank shén!” Amnon Duul, the postman, cried out to Mal, and chuckled. Mal smiled. The man’s cheeriness to Mal, even after the incident with Alliance Officer Womack and Tracey, was a relief from

“Annon! Good to