Author’s Note: I would like to make it clear to all concerned that I don’t usually write short fiction. In fact, until this February my only other effort at a short story in any fandom or original setting turned into a 75,000 word novella, and I have frequently expressed the opinion that it would take me over five years to learn the (IMO exceptionally difficult) craft of writing short stories, which is about as long as it took me to learn how to write full-length novels. However... I have now discovered the ‘verse... and this has been a good thing in more than the obvious respect, as I now have finished two completely unrelated shortfics that are not going to turn into longfics , and have another one more than halfway there. At least writing the things is a step in the right direction – afterwards I can start focusing on how to write them well . That’s for later on, though. So here you have a somewhat unpolished example of the art. Almost a ‘rough diamond’, in fact, though I hesitate to self-publicise.

I wrote this in mid-March but my ISP disconnected my dial-up without prior warning and it’s taken me this long to convert to broadband. Nobody ever go with Virgin again, they’re a pain in the pigu . I missed fireflyfans.net...

This is sort of a songfic. Except that it isn’t. Well... the situation is, as Mal or Inara would put it, complicated . It’s a shortfic that managed to be inspired by a song, despite the fact that the fic is almost pure action and the song is an archetypal ballad so the two actually have about as little in common as possible. The lyrics are reproduced at the end of the story.

Rating: PG-13 for violence, some of it graphic.

Pairings: none. Specifically, this is not Mal/River.

Spoilers: some for the BDM, as this is set afterwards.

Disclaimer: the characters are Joss Whedon’s and the copyright to Firefly and Serenity belongs to Fox, Mutant Enemy, Universal and probably som