A/N: I am soooooooooo sorry that this took so long. Life's been a total bitch, lots of crap happened, and I was sort of hiding in a hole for a while… but hey, I'm back on the horse… I hope. The second half was written a month after the first, so if it sucks, it's probably because I'm rusty. It is noticeably lighter, and I hope you don't mind that this is not as actiony as it could be… I had other things to cover.

worldShifter, who was my 300th reviewer for Half and Half won a little prize… and it's in here. I offered to include any object of his/her (oops, should have asked about this) choosing in this chapter, but instead was asked to use an OC… so Josie is his/hers… I hope I didn't totally misrepresent her, I didn't have a lot to go by, so 'hope I did OK.

I probably don't deserve reviews anymore, but I could really use them at the moment, so if you can bring yourself to drop me a line, I would really appreciate it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Firefly/Serenity or any of its characters.

She'd slept even less over the past few weeks than she usually did. Reading or cleaning her weapons would not calm her the way it had always done in the past, so she often found herself wandering the slightly swaying catwalks above the cargo bay… round and round, like some caged animal, gone demented in its captivity and repeating the same motions over and over again, as if being stuck in a loop of a mere few minutes could remove her from time altogether.

Sometimes she'd run into River, the other ghost haunting the hallways and metal paths of Serenity at night. Sometimes they would talk; sometimes they would pass each other in almost reverent silence, as if their own little cocoon of privacy would be kept intact if only they did not speak.

Zoë knew that this was only an illusion; River did not always make sense to her, but she knew that she was an open book to River… somewhere over the course of the past two years this had stopped bothering her, and had simply become an inevitable fact, and as such did not warrant any opinion whether good or bad.

"It's like light shining from her centre." The girl told her one night, and Zoë had no idea what she was talking about, thinking that she felt anything but bright and shiny.

"She will understand in time." With that, River had walked away, frilly dress swishing backwards and forwards over her cut off britches and army boots.

Another time, when Zoë was just about ready to return to her quarters and give sleep another try, River had practically appeared out of nowhere next to her on the catwalk, had leaned forward and folded her arms on the metal railing, just as Zoë had done, and had stared down at the crates and equipment, her eyes unfocused.

"She knows… she just will not admit it to herself yet." And an odd little knot in Zoë's stomach had made her feel uncomfortable and somehow caught.

"And she misses him, and thinks she ought not to … because he's just a stranger, and because he's strange… but it doesn't matter to her as much as she thinks it should."

She contemplated feigning ignorance to that one, then sighed and noted:

"It ain't that simple, River. It matters less in some ways, but more in others, dong ma? I don't know anythin' about him, and I still can't shake the feelin' that there was somethin' just not quite right… and I never should'a…"

She had to laugh suddenly, remembering who she was talking to, and the sheer absurdity of having this conversation in the first place; but before she could apologise to River for talking about inappropriate stuff… not that it mattered, if it was in her head, River could read it… the younger woman gave a small exasperated sigh and leaned towards her:
"Just like the others, she sees her like she was the day she came out of the crate, and sometimes she sees her the way she was when those doors slid open, but she never just sees her.

No need to feel guilty or ashamed for the things in her head… the girl has seen other things in other heads… it makes no difference.

He's broken and she was fixing him, but now that he's gone, they are going to take away all the blue. If he knew all the things he's left, and if he understood just what she is to him…"

Here she sighed again, and Zoë, even though she wasn't too sure she actually knew what it was that River was babbling on about, felt like she was on the verge of tears.

Gorramn lack of sleep is making me soft and weepy, that's just shiny.

She started getting sick first thing in the morning a few days later. Some of Rivers cryptic comments suddenly started to slip into place. A bitter chuckle escaped her, shaking her head, still leaning over her privy, she sat back on her heels and brought her hands to her face.

Eight months! Eight humpin' months Wash and her had been trying to get pregnant, and then some creepefying and not-quite-right man-whore had fucked her on the kitchen table late at night with the entire crew asleep just feet away, and now here she was…

---

They'd landed a pretty big job on Harvest, enough credits involved in the whole deal to make sure Serenity stayed in the air, and they all stayed fed for at least three months. So, Zoë was kind of grateful that she had the chance to distract herself, take her mind off any decision she might have to make.

Mal was having one of his rants about "this time we'll show 'em", his thumbs looped into his belt, his expression more excitement than determination, as he listed off all the reasons as to why the Polaris had nothing on his little lady to Jayne who was moving crates around and looked less than impressed that Mal was just standing there talking at him, and Kaylee, who was flat on her back under the mule.

"I believe the operative word here is 'teamwork', Sir." Zoë informed him helpfully; trying her best to nip any overly competitive notions Mal might have in the butt.

"Oh, teamwork is all fine an' dandy, but you can't tell me ya ain't keen on showing them what's what after that there little stunt Josie pulled last time we were all partnery on a job."

"It was a joke, Sire, an' we did get the cashy money and she returned the ship… nothin' hurt but your pride."

Jayne gave a rather loud snort of mirth while shoving one of the crates towards the wall, clearly a little too fond of the memory of Mal trussed up like a Christmas turkey and strapped to the mule. When he earned himself a dirty look and two raised eyebrows, he curbed the satisfied grin a little… not significantly, though.

To make things worse, Kaylee muttered from below the mule:

"Good times, good times."

The doc, who'd been making his way towards them from the infirmary, whipping his hands on some disinfectant cloth, simply gave Zoë a questioning look.

"'Job's too big for just one ship an' crew, we had to call in some old friends."

"If'n friends is what ya wanna call 'em." There was a distinct note of amused petulance in the captain's tone of voice, and Zoë couldn't help but smile at that odd mix.

Simon still looked puzzled, so Zoë deemed it best to give him the full story.

"'Old army buddy of ours is in much the same business as us… we've done jobs with her crew before… mostly works out well."

Mal snorted and muttered: "Mostly."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but am I mistaken in thinking that most encounters with former war acquaintances of yours have an unfortunate tendency of ending badly?"

Well, the doc sure had a point there.

---

'Turned out, this time was different. Not only did the whole job go off without a hitch, but Josie didn't even try anything. Not that any of her other stunts had really been as bad as Mal insisted; for a man who had no problem overlooking multiple attempts on his live by one crazy old harpy by the name of Patience, he sure was touchy when it came to Josie.

They'd got some prime intel about this mule trek across fifty miles of desert on Harvest; Alliance taxes from the outer settlements, no big crafts involved, since the magnetic disturbances of a charged subterranean rock formation threw off any nav systems more sophisticated than a compass. This meant that every three months, there was a heavily guarded convoy of mules, transporting a quarter's worth of monetary blood and sweat, making its way across the middle of nowhere, ready to be alleviated of their heavy burden by anyone feng leh enough to risk facing about 20 Alliance soldiers and any number of armed drivers.

Mal conjured they were just that brand of crazy.

'Only problem was that they had all of four crew who were vaguely useful in a tight spot, and that did not sound too promising where 30 plus gun toting folk were concerned.

So, getting Josie and her crew in on the action had been the best they'd come up with, what with her being sneaky and all, and with an extra two mules and seven crew, all of whom were decidedly on the rough and burly side, and who ended up eying River as if she were the best joke Mal had ever pulled on them… they'd stopped laughing a few minutes into the job.

The whole thing had been embarrassingly easy, really. They'd waited for the cashy money to be double checked and registered as dues received – no point in upsetting the poor folk of New Hope and Eternity by making them pay their taxes twice, and all – and had kept at a safe distance for the first 18 miles. Now with the trek having been robbed on a few previous occasion, anyone would expect them to be prepared: turned out they were just jumpy, so splitting them up and grabbing the goods was far less complicated than they'd thought. Of course, Mal got shot, as did two of Josie's boys, Tank and Jimmy, but no major harm done, and before anyone could so much as say the word 'backup', they'd gone to ground, and with no ships involved and no trails to track, well, the whole thing had been as easy as breaking a toothless horse.

Things only started to get complicated when they'd made it back to base and the celebrations kicked off.

The crews had barely had a chance to mingle before the job, and while what was generally referred to as the old crew of Serenity was well acquainted with the boys and girls of the Solaris, Zoë noticed a few odd looks and scowls being thrown around the large campfire they'd set up.

Some of them were entirely expected:

Josie Finch was nothing if not a force of nature: tall, slender, and with hair the colour of autumn leaves, she was somewhat hard to ignore; couple this with her generally forward disposition and a certain crudeness to her turn of phrase, her fondness of simply plonking herself into any man's lap, just for the laugh – currently Mal – and you had a somewhat constipated looking Inara.

Much like Zoë, Josie was all rough edges on first encounter; unlike Zoë though, her real disposition was positively sweet. She'd never sexed Mal to the best of her knowledge, and didn't seem to have much of an intention to do so now, even though to the untrained eye it probably appeared otherwise.

She had, however, been sexing Jayne before; Zoë still shuddered at the memory of the rather audible evidence they'd been treated to a few years ago.

This sort of brought her to the unexpected scowls and odd looks.

While draped across Mal's lap, Josie still managed to shamelessly flirt with Jayne, clearly intent on picking up where they'd left off back then, but that's sort of where the predictable ended.

Rather than the cocky grin she would have expected, the merc sported a somewhat sheepish expression, fidgeted with his knife, and seemed to be cursing profusely under his breath. Zoë sat only a few feet away from him and caught something that sounded suspiciously like:

… gorramn man, ain't ya?... sick hun dan… real woman, not some feng leh…"

Zoë had been part of the group taking the cashy money, while Jayne had been with the ones keeping the larger contingent occupied, she had no way of knowing just how hard the thump he must have gotten to his had had been, but talking crazy the way he was, she reckoned it must have been pretty bad.

Shaking her head and once again contemplating the large bowl of beer in her hand and that for a woman who had as yet not made a decision either which way, the fact that she hadn't taken a single sip of her drink seemed sort of telling.

Looking back up, she caught sight of River, standing just within reach of the flickering light of the large fire, hips rolled to one side, arms crossed in front of her chest, and one mightily infuriated expression on her face. Tracing the path of a glare that looked as if she were trying to kill the receiver with her brain, Zoë found her eyes back on Josie once again.

Now what the gorramn hell was that about?

She hadn't seen the two even speak to each other. Figuring that it might be better to check with River, just in case Josie had decided to play them after all, she made her way over to the younger woman.

"'Somethin' you feel like sharin'?" She figured River would fill in the gaps in her question and know what she was talking about.

"Fire hair is trying to poach… but nothing of monetary value… not trying to take from anyone but the girl; she should not worry, she has more important things to consider." With that River gave her a small smile, then threw a final death-glare at the redhead in Mal's lap, and vanished into the dark night beyond the glow of the flickering flames.

Well, that were all sorts o' peculiar.

Before she'd even made it back to her seat on one of the large logs they'd managed to drag towards the fire, a heavy arm landed on her shoulder and the distinctly beer scented words "'llo there purdy lady" where huffed onto her cheek. Somehow she managed to suppress the automatic reaction of punching the drunk in the face before even looking in his direction; in hindsight she was glad of that decision. Leaning heavily on her shoulder, clearly more intent on keeping himself upright rather than groping her, was one of Josie's new guys… Terry, or Toby, or something else that sounded like a scruffy little dog… and his glazed eyes and complete inability to focus on her, told her that hitting a man in his state was clearly not the noble thing to do, particularly seeing as his hand hadn't gone anywhere but her shoulder yet. His other arm was bandaged, and Zoë remembered that one of the mules had taken a bit of a dive at one point and had deposited two of the men not so gently on the ground; she was sure there had been smoothers involved, and wondered if Simon's usual warning against alcohol had registered at all with this one. The evidence suggested otherwise. The poor hun dun wasn't gonna see straight tomorrow morning for all the pain shooting around in his brain pan… not to mention the fact that he wouldn't remember why he was in so much pain in the first place.

And just like that, some crazy ass plan formed in Zoë's head.

She was pretty sure no one had paid any attention to her… or the fact that she'd been sitting there staring at the same bowl of beer all night, as far as they were concerned, it was just as likely for her to be blind drunk as it was likely for her to be sober.

Don' much like all that pretendin' go se, but there ain't no way I'm havin' this baby with everyone wondering who the daddy is... and then conjurin' the right answer.

So, she took a final look around the fire: Inara was still glaring at Mal while fending off at least three of Josie's boys, Kaylee and Simon were preoccupied in the usual fashion, with her being drunk and handsy, and him attempting to keep everything 'appropriate'… also better known a 'fighting her off', with the usual success: none. River was nowhere to be found, Jayne now had Josie in his lap, but seemed none too happy about that, and Mal was comparing bandages with Tank and Jimmy.

Shiny.

Zoë let her knees go wobbly and bent forward a little while wrapping her arm around dog boy, she then dragged him further towards the fire, just so the two of them were clearly visible, and gave a short drunken laugh before stumbling back towards the dark. She heard Mal call after her, but made sure to hurry away before he could even contemplate following them.

She found a small shelter, probably put there for the tiny number of sheep wandering around out here, and shoved T… what's-his-face on a rather dirty pile of straw, he grunted, muttered something and then promptly began to snore.

Thank the rutten 'verse.

With a sigh of relief – she had contemplated punching him out if necessary – Zoë sat down beside the sleeping stranger, pulled her knees up and simply waited.

She tried to formulate a plan of what exactly she was going to do with a little one… no way in hell was she leaving Serenity… but didn't get much further than the downright frightening prospect of kiddy-proofing the cargo bay… never mind kiddy-proofing Jayne.

She wasn't too worried about how to deal with her kid, she'd been the second oldest of six, all of them boys except for her, and when her ma had died giving birth to Jonah when Zoë was twelve, and her pa had followed the year after, there wasn't anyone there to look after the little ones but her. So she knew her way around infants, just like she knew her way around just how hard life could be.

The crew worried her… more than they should, they were family after all… but there was some odd sense of shame to how she'd come by the child now growing inside of her. After all, Adain had sort of been River's; and hadn't Inara made it clear that she'd never insult Zoë's pride by suggesting someone as 'un-manly' as him for her? What did that say about her? Wasn't there something wrong with a full-grown woman who…?

Her head was spinning at this point, and she decided to focus on more tangible things, like the problem of how to explain the fact that she was almost a month and a half along to Simon; it wasn't unheard of for healthy babies to be born a month early, but the doc would know… then she remembered that he'd delivered all of one baby in his life, and wondered if he'd be upset if she asked to be taken to a specialist for her check ups, they docked on Persephone often enough to find someone there, and their infirmary was equipped to deal with gunshot wounds and cuts, not pregnancies.

River would know… scrap that, River already knew.

Dog boy gave a loud snort, and Zoë figured that enough time had passed to account for some drunk sexing. Just to make things authentic she messed up her hair, re-buttoned her shirt with one button off, and dumped the bowl of beer, which she had somehow managed to bring along, on her britches.

Stumbling back into the large circle of friends still celebrating, she could not help the overwhelming sense of guilt as Mal immediately jumped up to hold her steady:

"Zo, where've ya been?" She noticed him taking in the state of her clothes and her messy hair, and saw a concerned frown form on his features.

She couldn't answer his question and settled for fake slurring:

"I'm'a hed'n back'a da ship, Sirrr."

""Don't seem in fine walkin' form ta me, there, Zoë." He still looked worried.

"I'll take 'er."

Zoë had to fight the urge to snap her head up and stare in shock. Being drunk as a lord, she certainly wouldn't stare at Jayne as if he had just grown a second head for offering to take her back to the ship. She did, however, manage a quick glance back towards Josie, left abandoned on her log, looking like someone just stole her puppy.

What the rutten hell is up with Jayne?

Before she had more time to think about that whole problem, he'd slung one arm around her and was dragging her towards Serenity. She heard a very quiet:

"'Must be out of my ruttin' mind, gone as crazy as her" but they both remained quiet for the rest of the short walk.

When the ramp to the cargo bay lowered, Zoë saw River, arms once again crossed in front of her, looking at them as if she'd been expecting them… which, presumably, she had.

Jayne cursed under his breath again, and then shoved Zoë towards the younger woman, who expertly caught her and simply beamed at him. He just gave an angry grunt and announced:

"I'll be in my bunk."

As soon as he'd disappeared from view, Zoë straightened and gave River a baffled look:

"What the gorramn hell is wrong with him?"

River just smiled.

Giving a small snort of exasperation, Zoë took a few steps towards her quarters when she felt River's hand on her arm, she was still smiling, but this was different, smaller, less bright, more gentle:

"Vaginal exams make Simon uncomfortable… unless they are performed in a non-professional capacity."

It took Zoë a moment to catch up with that one:

"So,… he'll want me to go to another doctor?" Zoë ventured.

River nodded, gave her another smile, and then wandered off towards her own bunk.