The All-Important Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is Lord and Master. Firefly and Serenity are his sandpit – I'm just playing in it. I promise that I'll put everything back the way I found it when I'm finished.

Epilogue

Carried through the centuries

When he opened his eyes, it was to cold steel and unfriendly white walls, and he almost wanted to close them again.

"He's awake."

The first voice he heard after coming out of the trance was Sia's. "Am I back?" he asked, feeling more than a little out of sorts.

"Yes, you're back," Sia confirmed. She came up to him, datapad in hand. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I did when I first got here, except without the burning and the broken bones." He realised that he was still holding something tightly in his arms, and he looked down to see that somehow, he had managed to bring the photo album back with him. He released it so that Sia could begin to remove the electrodes, and counted his necklaces quickly – two instead of three. That made him smile a little – he had brought something back with him, but at the same time had left something behind.

"Well, at least we've established that an echo of a person can be made solid for a short amount of time," Sia concluded once she had removed all of the electrodes from Matthew's skin.

"D'you reckon you could work on making it longer for the next person that echoes themselves?" Matthew asked as Sarika helped him out of the chair.

"Provided that you're able to either loan me your sonic screwdriver or build me one of my own, I think I can definitely manage that," Sia replied as she handed Matthew his sonic screwdriver.

"I'll build you a new one," Matthew decided. "It shouldn't be too hard to find all the materials I need. I've got the schematic on my laptop and my tools back at Merewether." He held up his screwdriver, waving it slightly in the air. "It took me almost a year to build this one. Odds are it won't take me so damn long to build yours."

Sia nodded and smiled. "I look forward to receiving it."

"Thank you for letting me say goodbye to Celeste. I really appreciate it."

Somewhat to Matthew's surprise, Sia drew him into a tight hug. "It was my pleasure. I'm more than glad I was able to give you that opportunity – I think that somewhere deep inside, I knew you needed it."

"I did at that," Matthew agreed.

Back on the Sisyphus, Matthew hid himself away in his bunk and started to page through the photo album. He had missed out on so much of his children's lives, but he knew that now he wouldn't feel so left out. Photographs could never measure up to real life, he knew that much, but to Matthew they were the next best thing.

"Matthew?"

He looked up at the entryway of his bunk to see Sarika coming down the ladder. "Want to see a few photos of your grandmother as a little girl?" he asked, and held up the photo album. "I've got a whole book full of them now."

"I'd love to!" Sarika replied, sounding excited. "This is Grandma Liz you're talking about, right?"

"My Lizzie, yes." He shifted closer to the wall on his bed so that Sarika could lie down next to him, which she did so. The first photograph Matthew turned to was the photograph of Elizabeth at 17 years old.

"She looks like you," Sarika told him, and Matthew smiled.

In another part of the crew corridor, Sebastian was hunting through his own bunk for something his mother had given to him the day of his graduation from flight school. It had been passed down through the generations and the centuries, even surviving the Exodus from Earth-That-Was, and he knew very well that if after all this time he was the one who had managed to disappear it, his life wouldn't be worth living. He finally found it inside a clean glass jar that had, at one point, held peanut butter (at least according to the faded Blue Sun label, it had), and examined it closely for the first time.

It was the inscription on the inside of the band that caught his eye right away.

"Matthew James Donovan + Celeste Julianne Winthrop – 06/10/04 until forever," he read off to himself. A few seconds later he realised why it had caught his eye so quickly. "Oh no way," he mumbled. "No rutting way…"

The next knock at the entryway of Matthew's bunk was a lot more insistent and nearly impossible to ignore. Which is not to say that Matthew and Sarika tried to ignore it at first. Finally they both got so fed up by it that Sarika hopped up off the bed and marched over to the ladder. "Marcus, would you kuài qù hěn yuǎn de dìfāng already?" she yelled up toward the door, figuring that it was the oldest Lock brother come to annoy the hell out of her again.

"That's a first," Sebastian commented as he climbed down the ladder. "Never been mistaken for Marc before." In his hand he held something rather important to Matthew, something he had left behind with Celeste on nothing more than the barest of hopes.

His wedding band.

"What are you doing with my wedding band?" Matthew asked, trying not to sound too suspicious.

"My mother gave this to me on my graduation day," Sebastian explained. "She told me that it had been handed down through the generations, always through the second son in the family. According to her, the passing-down started all the way back in 2030."

"The year I got echoed to," Matthew realised. "You're kidding me, right?"

Sebastian shook his head. "I'm not kidding."

Matthew grinned, and he took his wedding band back. "I told Celeste I'd get it back eventually," he said happily as he returned his necklace back to its rightful place. "I told her."

"Wait, so that was you who started the chain off?"

"That was me," Matthew confirmed. "I figured I had to have family other than Sarika around here – and to be honest, it was really only a lucky guess that you'd come from my son's line. You could have come from Rhiannon's for all I knew, or from another family entirely. I'm just glad it was his."

"So it wasn't luck at all that brought you to us, then," Sarika surmised. "It was fate."

"More than that, I think." Matthew was getting up off his bed as he said this. "Back when the Donovan family was still the Donovan family, we had a saying. Donovans stick together. All four of us here on this ship, in this crew, we are all Donovans. Even despite our different last names. I think that may be some of the reason why you joined the crew, Rika – subconsciously, you knew you belonged here and nowhere else. And when I got catapulted through the centuries…something, I really don't know what, was just making sure I found my family. I guess it was so that way, if I didn't manage to find my way home, I wouldn't be so alone."

"Well, you found us," Sebastian said as he led the way up into the crew corridor. "So who wants to tell Marcus the good news?"

Once up in the crew corridor, the three of them meandered their way through to the bridge, where Marcus could be found piloting the ship back to Five Points. Matthew hung back as Sebastian and Sarika went up into the small room, leaning against the corridor wall and smiling to himself.

Sarika had been right, he decided. It had been fate that brought him to Greenleaf and to the Kitchener Docks all those weeks ago. At the same time, though, it had also been that innate connection between all members of the Donovan family playing its most important part – ensuring that he was never alone.

Donovans stick together. The old family saying had been irritating when he was a lot younger, but for the first time in his life he was thankful for it. For now he knew, more so than ever before, that family always came first – and that when all was said and done, his family would never abandon him, and that he would never abandon them.

"Matthew, get your pìgu in here!" he heard Marcus yell out, and he shook himself mentally before touching his ankh, his wedding band and his dog tag all in turn. All three of them were symbols of the family he had left behind – and he had no doubt that it wouldn't take him long to adopt a few symbols of his new family.

He climbed the short flight of stairs up into the bridge, only to find himself faced with a somewhat shocking sight – a madly-grinning Marcus Lock.

"You are zhēn de shì tiāncái, you know that right?" Marcus said as Matthew stepped into the room.

"I've been told that once or twice," Matthew said with a grin of his own. "We headed back home, then?"

"We are," Marcus confirmed. "Nearly there in fact."

Matthew nodded. "Shiny. Let me know when we're there?" he requested, and Marcus snapped off a mock salute in reply.

It wasn't until he had left the bridge that he realised he had called Five Points, and by extension Merewether, home. Calling it that was as natural to him as breathing, however – because wherever his family was, that would always be his home.

~ fin ~

Translations

kuài qù hěn yuǎn de dìfāng: go far away very fast
pìgu: ass
zhēn de shì tiāncái: an absolute genius