Disclaimer: Still not mine, still not making money.

Author's Note: Thanks to all those who reviewed, read and favourited!

People were idiots.

Zoe learned this lesson in a monumental way as a spacer brat when she was six and watched as a drunk woman spaced herself, convinced that the airlock was the way to the shuttle where she had left her purse and refusing to listen to the sober child.

She learned it again when she turned sixteen and left the ship to stay dirtside and enlist in the military just to get away and rebel. It wasn't the most logical or the most successful rebellion. The military took an angry, resentful and uncontrollable teenager with problems with authority and changed her, molded her into someone that Zoe liked. Someone who knew where she would be and how to protect herself. Someone who didn't need to let people close.

She saw idiots in the military too, of all sorts of shapes and sizes. Like Mal. Even after all these years together, Zoe couldn't help but look at him and think idiot. She hated him at first. Some volunteer with big ideals and little training being put over her head. In the beginning she cataloged his mistakes and his "cowboy" maneuvers that put himself in danger.

Despite herself she came to respect him, though, when his idiocy and ideals didn't waver in the bloody end that she had seen in so many other volunteers. Unlike some military men, he didn't leave a man behind. It was in Serenity Valley, when he commanded that they hold even after they had been ordered to surrender that she knew she'd follow the Sarge anywhere.

But that didn't make him any less of an idiot.

She couldn't believe it when he first showed her Serenity. While she knew his plan to buy a ship and trusted him to make a good buy, he had shown up with...this. Every bone in her body was finding every flaw, like a good spacer brat. In time, however, she had fallen in love with the ship.

And Wash.

Zoe found Wash completely disconcerting at first. She didn't know why she didn't like him, but she just didn't. Something about him got under her skin and she came thisclose to threatening to leave unless Mal found a new pilot. Even after Wash saved their lives with some quick flying she wanted him off.

He grated on her. He got into her peripheral vision and she was always aware of his presence, the moment he walked into a room. It drove her a little mad. She had built herself up, reconstructed herself as a stoic. This...man dissolved so much of that and she was sixteen again.

The first time he made her laugh she realised with a mental curse that she had fallen for him. Love wasn't supposed to be part of the equation, but the next time she felt that frustration and anger that she kissed him senseless on the bridge, and then swore that unless he shaved his gorram mustache she would never kiss him again.

It had taken Mal three months to figure out they were together. He had protested and fought it and whined but on this she wouldn't give in to her superior officer. She informed him that when they sat down on Persephone he could either come to her wedding or find himself a new pilot and a new first mate.

He came to the wedding. He also swore that he would catch the next onboard romance before it got that far.

Zoe could understand his lack of action on Simon and Kaylee's romance. Simon put his foot in it so often that it took Miranda for him to admit anything. By Miranda they were too much of a family to make anyone leave or take away any happiness.

But now? Now Mal was just being stupid.

At first she thought it was more of the same - that he didn't want to bust up their family by making a big deal about it, but then he asked where Jayne was and she realised that he was missing every sign that was written in characters a foot high around the ship.

As she strolled through the junkyard, picking up pieces of this and that, she thought over the crew. Simon may have been to the most prestigious MedAcad in Osiris, but he was an idiot with women. His difficulties talking to Kaylee without putting his foot in his mouth, even now, were prime examples of that. He also saw River as his baby sister, still fourteen and still broken. He couldn't see her as she was now. He had excuses. Little ones, but they made sense.

Kaylee...Kaylee had no excuse at all. She spent free time in those cheap romances that were all smoldering passion and knights on white horses. She couldn't even see what was happening on her ship. Sure, it didn't have any of the usual cliches of damsels in distress, but you'd think she'd pick up something.

Inara...Zoe was shocked that Inara didn't see it. Weren't Companions trained in these things? Body language, moods, things not said? Sure, she had left the Guild and House Madrassa after Miranda, but certainly those things were as ingrained into her as waking up at 0500 and cutting into apples were for Zoe. She was beginning to think Mal's idiocy was contagious and she was somehow immune.

River...well, with everything that had been done to her brain and her ability to feel everyone else's emotions, Zoe wouldn't be surprised if she couldn't tell the difference between her feelings and everyone else's feelings. She felt a little stab of guilt at the thought, at the chance that she might have hurt the littlest crew-member. she knew she had only done what she could to save her, but still...

Jayne...Jayne she couldn't blame at all. It was like looking in a mirror. She had never thought of Jayne that way until now but it was true. He hid behind the tough guy, the big bad merc who only cared about money - but he went into Niska's fortress with them, despite thinking it was suicide. He went into Reaver space with them. And he was definitely always aware of River. He had been the first one to see her fall at Lilac, and waded into the fray at Maidenhead. She was just waiting for him to figure it out, if he already hadn't.

She headed back to the quiet, almost empty ship and headed for the infirmary. She pulled out one of the emergency tool kits and went to work on her pieces with the same intensity that she did everything else.

Later, after they were in atmo, she heard a sound of shock from the infirmary and looked up innocently from where she was taking her turn "guarding" the cargo, and a second later, Jayne's voice came over the comm. "We have chair fairies!"

It was official.

People are idiots.