DISCLAIMER: Firefly and its characters and its 'verse all belong to Joss Whedon.
Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned.
That's how it's supposed to go, right? I pray, You answer? I confess, You forgive, we're good?
Shepherd was always on me to talk to You. With him gone, seems the least I could do is this. I don't know why I have to do the talking, though – You haven't talked to me in a long while now. The last sound I heard from You was You slamming the door on me at Serenity Valley.
I'm not asking for Your forgiveness. I don't need Your forgiveness. I don't need to be good with You, because You're not good with me. I don't need to come back to You, because I didn't leave You – You left me!
"Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong." First Corinthians, sixteen thirteen. Your Word, and right there it says stand firm in the faith – well, I stood firm! I had faith in what I believed in, I had faith in what I fought for, I had faith when they said they were coming. What did they do? They left us there! Where were You?
I served. I fought. Zoe fought. We all fought, because we believed! Good people fought, who trusted in You, and what did they get? Chopped to pieces. That was Your answer to our prayers. To let the Alliance win. Your answer was to leave me standing next to a boy who died not holding his rifle, but holding Your Word.
You want a confession? I confess to every sin I ever did. I confess to being a bastard, an unrepentant sinner, because that's still better than being Alliance.
I confess to making the hard choices that no one else wants to make. I don't see Wash making choices that get people killed. I don't see Jayne trying to figure out what choice has the least death in it. Even Zoe doesn't truly have what it takes to live with calling the shots.
No, they all look to their captain to make the hard calls. And I do.
I'm sure everything I've done, You consider wrong. Shepherd used to say so – right reasons don't mean it ain't wrong. You probably think it's wrong working for the likes of Badger and Mingo and Fanty. I don't take to it much, either; but You made this 'verse, not me. I just live in it.
I didn't start this to make confession, or get forgiveness. Save Your forgiveness for somebody who wants it. Keep Your salvation for people like the Shepherd. He deserves it a sight more than me – he actually can forgive people like he says You do.
The Alliance is targeting us now because of this whole Miranda deal. So I've got just one prayer, one thing I ask of You –
When I go down, don't let me take my crew down with me.
That's all. Grant me that, and it's all shiny.