Title: Replacement: Lover the First

Series: As yet unnamed 22 Lovers project

Author: Kari (meinterrupted AT livejournal DOT com)

Rating: Adult. Sex, but nothing explicit

Word count: 817

Spoilers/Timeline: Post-movie. Major spoilers.

Disclaimer: Not mine, don’t sue.

Summary: 'Twenty minutes later, she's dragged him to the alley behind the bar, kissing him fiercely.'

Author's Note: Written for 22_lovers. The first in a series of (appx.) 22 stories about Zoë and her lovers. Unbeta'd, because I'm impatient.

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It's been two months since Miranda, and every day Zoë still feels like she wants to die. She keeps going, for Mal, for Kaylee, even for Wash, but never for herself. At night, alone in her bed (our bed, our bed, always our bed) she sleeps fitfully, dreaming, or lying awake, staring at the ceiling. But never crying. She still can't let herself cry.

Her dreams come in two categories. The first are those about Miranda. In her dreams, sometimes she saves him. Some nights, she pushes him out of the way, taking the spear herself. (I was supposed to go first, it was supposed to be me, baby, I'm so sorry.) Other nights, she drags him to her, sparing them both from the spear. They would run to the last stand, and no one died. But most nights, she watches helplessly as he's impaled, and runs with Mal to save the others.

The other dreams are more disturbing. Some nights she dreams of his touch, his caresses, his kisses. She dreams of laughing at his jokes, rolling her eyes at that silly moustache, grinning at his obsession with dinosaurs. She remembers their first kiss, his surprise when she had kissed him after a particularly dangerous mission. ("Don't read into this, Washburn." "Wouldn't dream of it." "You're reading." "Okay, I admit it. But just a little.") Those are the mornings she wakes up screaming, shaking from lack of touch, lack of Wash. Seeing him alive in her dreams is more painful th