Life’s Too Short- Part Eleven

Author’s Note: There’s a section here that’s Zoe thinking, so I’m warning you: happy-go-luckiers beware. Also: trouble in Paradise! Mal and Inara have a squabble! And Mal and Zoe have a very touching moment that was actually pretty hard to write ‘cause I was all weepy thinking about it.

Oh, and comments are GREATLY appreciated! Warm fuzzies all around.

* * * * Funny. Her man would have had several things to say about Jayne and River hooking up. Her man would have had several things to say about Mal and Inara, too.

Would have had.

That was what it came down to now, wasn’t it? Zoe sat on her bed, with the lights out. They’d be landing on Diogenes the next day, fueling up. Wash would have wanted to take her out, even for just an hour. His hands on her waist, walking behind her, bodies moving in unison. Her balance, her fragile equilibrium.

Lost.

She could barely call it ‘dead’. Dead was cold and humorless, everything her Baby wasn’t. Not a softer term, either. Passed on? Crossed over? Zoe could hardly stomach the words. Just gone. Forever. A hole in her heart that would never be filled.

They’d come back after the fight with the Reavers. Inara steadying Kaylee, Mal and Jayne carrying Simon. Zoe, walking alone, unable to look at the others. Unable to speak, touch, see. They’d boarded the ship, and the others had gone straight to the infirmary. Zoe had walked to the bridge, not fast, not slow. The walk that she would walk forever in her dreams. Endless, silent horror, that walk. Only one destination.

And he’d been gone. The stake that had skewered him was broken in two pieces, covered with blood, a shred of his shirt on one end. A bright, cheerful piece of cloth, like all his shirts. Zoe remembered it as seeming obscene in the gore. Other than that, there was not a trace of her husband. Not dead, not taken, not eaten. Just… just gone.

She’d lost others, many others. So many that she couldn’t remember all their names, and that seemed so wrong to her now