A/N: Joss "The Bastard" Whedon is boss. This is a rewrite of a previous drabble that got eaten when the old laptop crashed, hopefully for the better. The fic itself is inspired by Alan Tudyk's reading of Wash's sexy, sexy, sexy eulogy, which can be found on YouTube and is very much worth checking out.
It was interesting, sometimes, what a mere color might signify.
The brown of her uniform jacket, for instance, chosen for its ability to blend in with any background - for no matter what planet you landed on, there was bound to be dirt on dirtside - had become an emblem of rebellion, of standing up and shouting out against what was wrong with the Alliance, only to fall back into the mud it had come from, stained red in a few places from the blood, just as those red standard-issue scarves had become stained brown with mud. She'd taken more than a little of both.
She still wore brown most of the time, for much the same reasons the Independents had picked it: it was easy to find, cheap to clean, didn't catch the eye on missions, and it didn't show stains. She often added greens and blacks to her wardrobe for much the same reason. Zoë didn't have to show off to get attention. She didn't particularly need it.
There was one who caught her attention, though, caught it in a way that not even her Sarge had managed. Where Zoe blended in and went to work, only revealing what was necessary to keep those she needed to in line, he had stood out. He did it not to be insubordinate, though it took her some time to learn this, or because he was truly convinced of his own superiority, but because it was simply part of his nature. Wash was as loud and bright and colorful as the Hawaiian shirts he favored. He could be as silly as them, too, but that didn't mean he wasn't prepared to face the rougher side of the Black.
After a long enough time spent in the Black and brown, Zoe decided she wouldn't mind a little more color in her life.
She'd preferred the red of the eastern tradition, but Washburne brides wore white. There was family history to maintain. In the end, they'd compromised: a white dress with red strings running through the pattern, signifying the love and life in bloom beneath the cool soldier's exterior.
When the time came, she couldn't bring herself to wear black. She'd tried. She hadn't at Tracey's, or at any of the last five, ten, - gorramit, who knew how many funerals she'd attended in soldier's uniform, how many had gone unmourned while she went on in that brown coat and bulletproof vest, because she had to, there was no time to grieve – how many had she caused in it?
There was time now. And black was too normal. So she turned to the eastern tradition once more: white it would have to be. And there wasn't much money for slinky dresses; there was only one white outfit in the back of her closet that she hadn't sold, given away, or used for bandages. There were red lines running through the pattern, signifying the love and life continuing on inside the soldier, whether she was ready to face it or not.
There was time, but she kept it short. She'd have to keep moving. There was family history to maintain, in red and white, brown and black, greens and pinks and every imaginable shade in between.