A/N: Just something I typed up in a few minutes. Not my first Firefly fic, but the only one that I have had the nerve to publish. It turned out a lot more macabre than I expected.
Disclaimer: I do not own Firefly, nor will I ever. Probably for the best, if this fic is anything to go by.
If there was one thing Malcolm Reynolds was sure about, it was this: they were going to die. And not in the, 'oh, everyone dies, it's just how life goes,' type of way. Oh no, that would be too easy. It was more of in the, 'maybe Wash and Book got off easy,' type of way.
For the first few weeks after Miranda, everything was as it would be expected to. Not good, not even close, but they were still flying, and that's all that mattered in the end.
But, in the end, Miranda didn't do anything. No social reform, no, 'you can't stop the signal!' no nothing. Nothing changed, nothing got better. It all stayed the same. Actually, that was a lie; it didn't stay the same, it got worse.
They had no one to rendezvous with. Comms that used to beep at least once a day, now stood silent, still. Planets that used to welcome them and their goods now tried to blast them out of the sky. Their pictures were everywhere, their tragic story all over the signal.
'Look what happens when you try and change something,' the Alliance flaunted to the cortex viewers, 'look how you will always fail. Run down, nowhere to go, and with the entirety of the core and the outer planets after you. You're all going to die up there, in the black, where you should have in the first place.'
And they were. Going to die, that was. Out of gas, no one who wanted to help them out in the black, and they were floating. Just, waiting. Still and silent, everyone ready for the inevitable.
Malcolm Reynolds had failed as a captain. However, that being said, he would not fail his crew. Not his family. And so he gathered everyone in the kitchen, cold and creaking as the last of their foodstuffs were gathered meagerly on the table— wanting more.
Looking around at the faces was the most difficult thing he had ever had to do. Murmuring a few words of prayer to a God he didn't really believe in, he made it easy for them.
River, oddly enough, was the one that put up the least amount of fight, as if she knew it was for the best. Jayne put up the most. But soon enough he was done, and he turned it on himself.
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," he murmured, voice muffled as he pulled.