Author's Note: Something that I wrote ages ago for a friend and I'm just getting around to posting here.
Zoe watched the new pilo--Wash, his name was Wash, push around his food on his plate with his fork in one hand and gesturing wildly with the other, telling the Captain something that Zoe had missed, but the--Wash was grinning wildly and the Captain had that rare confused yet happy look on his face, and Zoe found herself wanting to laugh despite not knowing why.
Wash was a good man. It had taken her a while to see that, a few missions at least, and seeing him joke around with Kaylee, who had won her over quickly.
And he talked to her. Not too many men talked to her since the war was over, not unless they were making comments that made her reach for her gun. Whenver she wandered by the bridge, after a moment or so he would start talking. At first it may have been out of nervousness, but somehow it didn't seem that way.
First he would tell her what he was doing to fly the ship, in an easy, comfortable way that may have been just to reassure her that he knew how to fly the bird.
After a few weeks he began to tell her how he had learned to fly, where he had gone to school, what he had done before. And he began encouraging her to tell him about her past life, and to her surprise she began to do so, without any of the clamping down of her mouth, unless the captain came in.
The whole time he was joking. It seemed incredible that a person could exist that could have that much easy humor in him, and she began to wonder if she might have been like that if it weren't for the war. And she knew she wouldn't but that didn't change the fact that he was the closest person at hand who acted like the war had never happened, in a verse that she never knew.
She had done enough of exploring in the other one. Enough of flat out war. Still willing to fight, still willing to go on this junket Mal had bought, but willing to take a step into exploring another sort of life.