Disclaimer: all belong to Joss.

Author's Note: I felt the need to put a Disclaimer because I hadn't updated this in a while. And I apologize - I really do! - for making you all wait so long, and thanks for all the great ideas! My muse just caught her eye on Psych and wouldn't let me get back to Firefly for a while. But I'm already working a few chapters ahead on this one, so you have more to come. Don't worry, I'll post at least another two chapters before I let this one rot again. (I want to try not to let it rot at all, you understand.)

Mal

"Mal! Kaylee!"

Wash stood suddenly in my bunk, where I still held Kaylee. He grinned at us.

"Wash?" Kaylee asked in my manly voice, furrowing my brows over my eyes as he came over to hug us.

I noticed something didn't look right with his face. The way he was holding it...

"Nope," he replied to Kaylee, waving at us before leaving the room.

"Weird girl," I muttered to myself, walking towards the ladder.

"What?" Kaylee asked.

I turned around. "River," I motioned with my thumb. "I don't think I'll ever wrap my mind around that brain of hers." Then I paused to think. I was, at that moment, physically wrapping my mind around that brain of hers...

"That was Wash," she said, looking down at me. A lot down.

"No, it was..." Why did I think it was River? Was it something he said? I shook my head. "Thing this big calls for a crew meeting. Throw a shirt on and get to the dining hall." As I headed up the stairs, I saw Kaylee out of the corner of my eye, blushing as she realized she indeed was not wearing a shirt. That blush did not look good on my face.

I saw Zoe sitting out in the hall, watching me. I blinked, and she turned into Kaylee. I stopped and turned to her, focusing my eyes - it was, indeed, Kaylee. She raised an eyebrow at me, looking strange without a smile across her face.

"Meeting. Dining hall," I told her, motioning with my thumb before proceeding, shaking my head. I walked, head in my hand, the rest of the way to the mess.

"Morning," a gruff voice greeted. I turned to see Inara making- no, Jayne, making tea. I tilted my head at her. It looked like Jayne, but...

I shook my head again, something that seemed to be happening frequently. "Morning, 'Nara." I sat down at the table, holding my head in my hands.

"What did you call me?" Jayne's voice asked, surprised.

"I called you Inara," I sighed.

"Why?" she asked. "Any normal person would call me Jayne."

"Do I look like any normal person to you?" I asked, a hint of laughter in my voice. "Even in my normal state, I ain't barely a person by your standards."

Jayne's voice sounded weird when it was breathless. "Mal?"

This was the point in which Kaylee decided to enter.

"And here I am," I said.

Seeing my face again reminded me of this situation. How weird it is, how unexpected, scary, strange - a ton of emotions suddenly hurled themselves at me all at the same time. And I couldn't handle it.

Why couldn't I handle it?

Trying to hide my face from Kaylee and Inara, I jumped up from the table and jogged from the room, the metal walls of my ship zipping past. I didn't stop running until I was in a passenger dorm, where I sat on the bed.

I suddenly broke into hysterics. Tears were drowning my face. I was so scared, so worried.

Why was I gorram crying? I'm a Captain! I've learned to ignore things such as pain and fear, for the better of the crew. So why couldn't I now? Why was everything so hard to ignore?

I saw a pillow through my blurry tears, and promptly punched it with River's scrawny arm.

I heard a clanging from the nearby infirmary. I wanted to check it out. But... I didn't want any of my crew seeing me like this. I couldn't understand. I needed to calm down before I -

My mind was suddenly filled with an image of Jayne hurtling a pan across the med bay.

I blinked. I know I didn't make that up. It was like a vid that I just watched, replaying it in my head, but I hadn't seen a vid about Jayne throwing things. I was so confused that I didn't even notice when my tears subsided.

"River?" I heard my manly voice call, but not in its usual annoyed tone. I was suddenly scared - deeply afraid, of Kaylee seeing me like this. I looked around frantically for something to hide behind. I remembered that I was River's size and, unable to stop myself, crawled under the bed.

"Mal?" Kaylee called again, softer, entering the room. I held my breath, tears still sliding silently down my face. When would I get comfortable enough to face the others? Why wouldn't the tears just stop?

I closed my eyes and focused on calming down, shrouded in the dark. I lengthened and deepened my breaths until I was nearly meditating. I could still feel the tears slipping down River's cheeks. It wasn't enough.

I tried to ignore my fear. I put real conscious thought into it. I even thought up reasons not to be afraid - "it's all gonna work out anyhow." But it only pressed harder. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I had to feel fear, had to, couldn't ignore it, but I didn't necessarily have to act on it.

The urge was so strong...

The fear pushed tears against my closed eyelids, it grasped my heart and squeezed, it pounded against my ribcage - but somehow, I managed to swallow, take a deep breath, and stop the tears. The fear was still there (Oh, God, it was still there) but I managed somehow to keep it from my face.

Kaylee had gone by then. I took a breath and a tear almost leaked out, but I stopped it somehow. I slowly rose from my position under the bed, took two deep, shaky breaths, and headed to the med bay, the closest room that I could think of off the top of my head that had an active comms unit.