Mourning
by Tracy (lunarknightz)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: BIG DAMN MOVIE. TIS POST SERENITY FIC. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Summary: It falls to Simon and Jayne to carry a great load, when no one else is able.
Disclaimer: Serenity belongs to Joss. I'm playing. That's it.
They were silent as they did their task. The task was gruesome at best, but it had to be done. Still healing, still limping from their own injuries, Simon and Jane gently removed the Reaver harpoon from Wash's body, in order to move their friend from the chair where he had passed.
Simon tried to approach the task from a medical angle, tried to think critically and objectively. This wasn't the first time he'd applied gentle pressure to close the eyes of someone who had died; it wasn't the first time he'd done this for a corpse since he'd been onboard Serenity. But try as he might, Simon couldn't be objective, couldn't be just a doctor declaring someone dead. Wash had been his friend, and a good friend at that.
He nodded slightly and reached under Wash's armpits as Jayne lifted the feet. Together they moved him into a waiting crate, lined with soft cloths that they'd taken from Inara's trunk.
Tears filled Simon's eyes, blinding him as they gently closed the lid. Simon had lost patients before- more patients than he cared to recall. He could still recall the names and faces of those who died under his care. But all of those people, not one of them had been close to him. Not one of them had been a friend.
When Simon looked up, he saw tears trailing down Jayne's face as well. He'd never seen the mercenary cry before.
Jayne had approached him the previous night after dinner, as Kaylee and Inara tended to the dishes. They'd all been sleeping in the mess hall since they returned to Serenity. It had been relatively untouched in all the madness, and in the mess hall it was easy to imagine that their entire madcap adventure had never happened. Plus, if the truth was told, not one of the crew wanted to let anyone else out of their sight for too long.
"It's gotta be done.." Jayne drawled in a gravelly voice. "Before we can take to the sky again. Normally, I'd ask Mal, but he still looks like he's been beaten up to both sides of next Tuesday. And I figured with your skills and learnin…" His voice grew even softer. "'Sides, it just wouldn't be right to ask it of Zoe."
Simon had agreed, and they'd snuck out after dinner, as the rest of the crew had drifted off to sleep.
"We'd best be moving this to the storage hold." Jayne said with a snort, the snort the result of trying to force back a sob.
Simon fought back tears of his own. "On three?"
One of Simon's professors in law school had told his students:
"You can tell how great of a life a man has lived by the way those who are left behind mourn him."
Judging by the crew of Serenity, Simon thought, Hoban Washburne had been one hell of a man.