Note: This is in a series of fics I'm doing inspired by Alfred Tennyson's poem "In Memorium." The titles and some lines in each chapter are direct allusions to the poem. Continuity is as continuity does. I do not own Firefly or Serenity.
Draw Him Home
Deep in the black, a Firefly sails home from the edges of space, not that home is anywhere particular, and for at least one of the crew, it might be gone.
They have one last stop to make first and who's flying this thing anyway? It should have been her husband, but he's gone now, lost in that final battle on Miranda.
Zoe blinks in the almost darkness and prays the ship will arrive to his final resting place quickly and maybe she won't have to think about it anymore. Maybe when Serenity no longer carries his remains, she can reach to the empty space next to her in her bed and pretend that Wash is just far away. Probably not.
She dreams of the nights they were planetside, and he would hold her as they looked up at the stars because the stars always looked different when they weren't flying through them. But is she dreaming really? Does it count as dreaming when you can't sleep?
All the tiny lights of the ship glare at her, blinding her. All she wants right now is to be swallowed by darkness, to join her husband there.
Zoe goes to the deck where Mal is steering the ship. He tells her to go to sleep, but she tells him she can't and sits in the other chair. She gazes at the stillness out the window. Sleep. What a wonderful thing it would be, to sleep as the heavens, before the prow, to sleep as her husband sleeps now. But it is not time to sleep, not for her. It will be a long time before she sees her husband again, she knows.
And with this thought, her eyelids fall at last.
