Zoe didn't like Wash at first; mainly because he reminded her of things she wanted to forget. Things from before the war, before she found out what life was really like. It was brutal, it was cold, and things very rarely worked out right.

Zoe had been an optimist, once. She'd been happy and she'd held to a belief that everything was going to turn out just fine, given enough time. Truth be told, she hadn't been that different from Wash. Except without the plastic dinosaurs and goofy jokes. She'd never been that perky.

Then Zoe Alleyne went to war. She saw things no one should ever have to see and did things no one should ever have to do. She learned hard lessons about the nature of life and the nature of people. She gave up everything for the cause and her cause lost that war. Reality made her sharp, cunning, and cold. Rather like life itself. Zoe became a realist.

Sometimes she wanted the old Zoe back, the young girl who always had a smile, whatever the occasion. But then she thought about her life now and reflected that the old Zoe would probably last about half a minute. So she buried that thought and banded her army issue shoelaces around her throat to remind herself that optimists couldn't survive out here. That foolishness had no place in the black.

But then, the Captain had hired that pilot with the silly laugh and the gorram stupid mustache. Hoban Washburne was something else altogether, and Zoe didn't like him. He was an optimist, and optimism didn't belong out here. The man was a fool, and a fool in the black is soon a dead fool. She didn't want Mal laying his hopes on a walking dead man, even if said dead man was a crack pilot.

But Wash didn't die. The man just kept on being alive, and he kept on saving their lives with his fancy flying. Zoe didn't quite get it. Wash was an optimist, but he wasn't stupid. He knew the dangers out here, he knew his way around the 'verse well enough, and yet he could always hope for the best. It was a balance that Zoe had yet to find.

She wanted to find it. She wanted it very much. Zoe wanted to be happy again, she just didn't know how.

Wash wasn't quite sure what to make of Zoe Alleyne. She was a warrior woman through and through: tough, determined, and sharp as a tack. Wash thought a lot of her, even if she didn't give him the time of day. Stupidly enough, he even started nursing a tiny crush on her too.

He wasn't sure why he liked her (aside from the fact that she could and often did save his life by just being awesome). They were so different! He loved to laugh and to make people laugh. He preferred the fun side of life: he played like a kid when he wasn't working (and sometimes when he was) and he told jokes just to see the others smile.

Zoe never did smile much, though. She was just... dark. And he did not mean that literally, though that was true too. She never seemed able to look on the sunny side of things. She was always serious and frequently ignored him because she had important work to do, being first mate and all. Zoe never seemed happy at all, actually.

For some reason, that really bothered Wash in a way that nothing had ever bothered him before. So he decided to make her happy, even if it killed him. Some days he thought it might.

At first, his task seemed impossible. He tried everything he could think of to make her like him or even crack a smile once. Nothing worked. He cooked for her, bought her things when they went planet-side, invited her to play dinosaurs with him. He even shaved his mustache. She turned down everything with a disapproving look. Wash frowned: this was going to be harder than he thought. But he wasn't going to give up, no sir. Hoban Washburne was anything but a quitter, especially when the prize was someone as lovely as Zoe.

"Why don't you give him a break?"

"Who, sir?"

"Wash. He's doing his best trying to impress you or some such, the least you could do is smile at the man."

"I've told you before, I don't like him."

"You don't have to like him. Just give him a break, huh, Zo?"

"Of course, sir."

Zoe was only humoring him at first. She forced herself to smile at Wash whenever he did something to please her. Mal was right; he was trying hard. But she couldn't allow herself to like him. It felt too much like lowering her standards. He was still silly, still just a child at heart and she couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't going to last long out here, even though he'd been onboard for eight months now.

The first time she really smiled at him had been half out of adrenaline and half out of admiration. He'd just flown them through a firefight with speed and precision, escaping without even a glancing blow to Serenity. He wasn't even scared: he was too focused on flying to even care what he was dodging. When they were through, he turned in his chair to grin fiercely at Mal and Zoe. Flying high on adrenaline, they were all grinning like fools. But her fool's grin was for Wash.

That, she supposed, was when she realized she was starting to fall for that idiot. Much as she didn't want to admit it, the way he paid attention to her did make her happy. Zoe liked to think that she could take care of herself, but once in a while it was nice to have someone to look after her. Even if he was goofy.

It was a slow process, but Wash began to change her. He was drawing her out of a darkness she hadn't even realized she was lost in; burning through the night like a star and leading her home. She started looking at things the way he would look at them, looking at the bright side. She began to realize that being a realist didn't mean everything was always going to turn out badly. The first time she actually laughed at one of his jokes, she thought his grin would split his face in half. Hoban Washburne was a fool and he made her happy. If that made her a fool, well, maybe fools did have a place in the black after all.

One night, after the rest of the crew was in bed, Wash sat in the cockpit alone playing with his dinosaurs. He'd just added a T-Rex to his collection and was introducing him to the rest of the pack. He pranced the plastic stegasaurus across the console to meet the rest of the dinosaurs, who were grouped on top of the comm board.

"Greetings, brothers," he said in the high voice he always reserved for the stegasaurus. "I have someone to introduce: a newcomer! Now we must decide if he is worthy to join our... band of brothers!" He made the stegasaurus flail dramatically on 'band of brothers'. He mimed laughter for the entire group.

A footfall on the stairs made him jump and turn. Zoe came up into the cockpit and stood over his recreation of the Jurassic period. Wash smiled up at her winningly. "Uh, hiya Zoe. I was, um... you know, it gets kind of boring up here at night, and-"

Without a word, the first mate pulled up a chair and picked up the T-Rex. "Band of brothers," she intoned for the T-Rex. "Keep talking and maybe I won't eat you all for a midnight snack!"

Wash bit his lip, determined not to laugh at her. This was a major development and he didn't want to scare her away now. The two of them played with the dinosaurs for hours, making up wilder and wilder scenarios that finally ended when Mal told them to shut up and go to sleep. Zoe laughed and laughed and Wash couldn't believe it. Maybe his persistence was paying off, maybe it was just because it was late at night, but Zoe finally looked happy.

She told him to get off to bed, she'd take over the watch. On his way out the door, he asked her. "Zoe, what- Why did you come play with me? Not that it wasn't fun, it was, it was the best fun I've had in a while, but..." He trailed off into a shrug.

Zoe just stared at him. "Man I love likes something, I'm going to do my best to figure out why."

Wash was struck speechless for a minute. He stood there, gaping like a dying fish. She...what? After a minute he realized that she was glaring, clearly expecting an answer. "Oh, yeah, right, I love you too. I've always loved you, ever since I came on board, you're just so-"

"Wash?"

"Yeah?"

"Go to bed."

"Right."

Zoe didn't realize exactly how much Wash meant to her until he wasn't there anymore. He got kidnapped on a job and went missing for three days. Zoe didn't fret; she never fretted. But she was concerned for his safety. Gorram fool, what if he got himself killed out there?

She missed him more than she thought possible. She missed his smiles and his jokes and the little things he did just so she would smile at him. Zoe couldn't imagine life without him. She swore at herself for being so stupid, but there it was. She'd always looked down on weak folk who depended on a regular hit of flash or M or any other drug to get them through the day. Now it seemed she was one of those folk: only her drug was named Washburne.

When she and Mal rescued him, she held on to him tighter than was strictly necessary all the way home. It was as if she wanted to be sure he wouldn't disappear again. Back on the ship, as she was patching him up in the infirmary, she gripped his hand tight and murmured, "Never do that again." Don't leave me alone.

"Hao," he agreed, gasping as she dabbed antiseptic over a scratch on his arm. "Never again."

"Zoe, gorram it all, I told you to give him a break, not marry him!"

On their wedding day, Zoe did something she never thought she would do. She unwound the shoelaces from her neck. She went to where Wash was fidgeting nervously and placed them in his hand. He looked curiously from the laces to her suddenly bare neck. He reached up and hesitantly brushed his fingers over the skin of her throat. He'd never seen her without the necklace before.

"I wear those," she said softly, "because of the war. To remind myself that life isn't fun and games. It's brutal and cold and short. Folk do all manner of wrong things and you can't expect the best of them, no matter what." Wash listened with wide eyes, fingering the laces in his hand.

"When you came on board, I thought you were a fool. Sometimes I still do," she added with a chuckle. "You were so happy and I thought, why be happy if you're just going to get knocked back down again? There's no place for fools in the black and I felt sure you were going to be dead inside a month.

"But you didn't die." She raised her head and looked him in the eye. "You proved yourself to be smart as well as happy. I didn't get how you could be like that. Stupid as I thought it was, I wanted to be like that and I didn't know how.

"Then, for some reason only you understand, you started going after me like a crazy man. Sometimes I thought you'd do anything to impress me."

"I wasn't trying to impress you," Wash told her softly. "I was trying to make you happy."

"You did," she assured him. "You taught me to be happier than I ever thought I'd be again. You showed me that life doesn't have to be dark all the time. Folk do awful things to each other, but that's no call to be sour about it all the time. That's what makes us different from everyone else: being able to look on the bright side."

She covered the hand that held the laces with her own. "These remind me that life is hard. Now that I've got you, it's not anymore." She squeezed his hand. "I want you to have them."

Wash did his dying fish impression and it made Zoe smile. She was doing that a lot these days. Wash's eyes were wet, but he sniffed and acted like nothing was wrong. "Zoe, I..." Clearly he didn't know what to say. Instead, he lifted the laces and knotted them carefully around her neck. "Now," he whispered, resting his forehead on hers, "let them remind you of me."