There were noises coming from all sides, helping to build the hysteria that seemed to be settling in. His body had absorbed a good amount of shock from the blow and it was all he could do to stay conscious as he lay in the sand, feeling it squish and squirm beneath his body as he moved with the ebb and flow of the pain. Distantly he could hear gunshots and almost from an infinite distance the sound of screaming, the throb in his skull making it hard to distinguish the words, rocks, he heard, and fire.

Suddenly there was a voice very close to his ear and warm breathing.

"Mal, what are you doing?" Wash was leaning over him, hands on his knees, wearing a bright orange Hawaiian shirt tucked into the waistband of his flight suit. The brilliance of the color pained the eyes.

"Bleeding I believe."

"That doesn't seem like a very good plan to me."

"Well none of mine really are."

Wash knelt down and took Mal's hand, "put this here," he commanded, pressing their hands into the circle of blood slowly widening across Mal's stomach. "How's that for a plan."

"Better." Mal grunted.

"Ok, time to get up now."

There was more gunfire and Mal could distantly hear someone calling his name. "Wash .. ." he started, clutching feebly at his pilots arm, afraid for all he was worth that this would be it, this would be his last chance.

"No time to talk, its time for you to take care of Zoë, while I can't."

"Wash . . .I'm sorry."

"No Mal, not yet, its time for some action." The pilot placed Mal's weapon in his hand, even as the captain had some sensation of himself un-holstering it.

"Wash . . ." he tried again but his pilot persisted, getting to his feet and staring down at Mal from what seemed a great height.

"No Mal! Get up!"

"So sorry."

"Get up!" He held out his hand, face stony and hard to read. Had Mal ever seen him wear that expression in life? For a moment Mal was certain that this wasn't real, none of it, he was loosing blood, going insane, seeing things, all of them or only one. If he accepted that hand, he would never have the support he needed to make it to his feet. However, he had never doubted Wash's hands before.

"Come on Mal, time to live again."

Mal clasped the pilots hand and lurched to his feet, gun blazing, even as a brilliant flash of light and sound lit the desert landscape.

Zoë glanced frantically in the direction of her captain; they were a long ways off now, the enemy had pushed them back until they had gained the crate, Zoë could only hope Mal was alive, her duty falling now to River and herself.

"The Rocks need fire to make them come alive!" River told her, staring with her big brown eyes into Zoë's. A gunshot hit the sand not a foot away and Zoë shielded her charge as the burning crystals showered them like rain. When hadRiver started to make sense? If Zoë'sgut was leading her in the right direction, then action must be taken. She looked over the rise in the sand at their antagonists. They were dragging the goods back towards the captain, firing shots over their shoulders as they went, not wholly certain of the threat that loomed behind them. Zoë motioned River forwards and the two of them crept slowly back the way they had come.

"If I hit them right, they'll light?"

"Sand burns, rocks burn brighter." River intoned and Zoë took that as a yes.

She could see Malcolm now, writhing where they had left him, he made no move to stand. She watched him, anxiously, and it was then, in the last dieing light of the sun, she saw the words on his lips.

"Wash . . ." In a moment of darkness, Zoë seemed to loose all of her bearings. Nothing made sense, there was no up, nor down, and all she could see was the name on her captain's lips.

Wash.

Was he standing there now? If he was Zoë couldn't see him. Did that mean Mal was dieing? For the longest time she had believed only she could see him, because she was the only one still looking for him. Still believing he would come around that corner, walk through that door, sleep in that position and say those words. She had ignored him for months;had stared straight ahead when she knew he was there. She had been so afraid to face him because she knew that if she did . . . did Mal see him too? Did he have the same fears as she did? The same guilt? Was it possible to say his name without the word fading away just as his warmth?

Suddenly Mal was rising to his feet, reaching forwards and grasping at theair he lurched up with his gun ready just as the enemy pointed his.

If Mal had not fired in that instant, the bullet would have pierced Zoë's heart. She knew it, she saw it, but it didn't seem real. Mal's bullet hit the crony in the back, he was knocked forward by the force of it, his gun jarred, and the bullet from his gun lodged itself in Zoë's arm, throwing her backwards and sending her into the sand.

It was River that recovered Zoë's gun and fired repeatedly at the crate, one bullet scratching against its surface working like a flint and tinder and within moments, blowing the whole thing apart.

Simon made a disgruntled clicking noise with his tongue as he worked. Sewing up Mal's stomach wound with the patient diligence only a surgeon could posses. Zoë sat on the adjacent table nursing a bullet wound to her arm, circling in and out of consciousness with a mixture of blood loss and bad sleeping habits. River had been the only one to make it out of the battle relatively unscathed, lucky for Mal, if things had gone any more south Simon would have personally put the bullet to his head, and Mal didn't need that kind of aggravation.

"My insides rearranged Doctor?" he asked when Simon seemed to be most distracted, looking from Zoë to his stitching. Simon nodded only, refusing to speak to his captain after the danger River had been subjected to once again. When the stitches were finished with, Mal tried once more.

"I gonna live?"

"Unfortunately." Simon allowed grudgingly.

"Well, thanks for not killing me then."

Simon seemed to soften at some far away memory and he smiled a little. "I have to do my part, keeping this ship together. What with the memories she holds." Mal was a little taken aback by this show of affection towards the ship and he raised an eyebrow, but by then Simon had already turned to Zoë, who was miraculously still conscious and making her usual brave show of it.

"So what exactly happened out there once I was down?" Mal asked her, trying to be as distracting as he could while Simon did his work.

"Turns out those rocks were made of some kind of explosive, those bun tyen-shung duh ee-dway-ro brought you down and forced River and I back all the way past the sand dunes until they got the crate. I was calling for you but you weren't moving and I feared the worst," she paused and exhaled as Simon retrieved the bullet. Once it was out, she shook her head a little and continued, "Anyways, River kept sayin, rocks need fire, rocks need fire, until she made me oblige, and she and I managed to light that fei-oo. Well it lit all right and blew those bastards off the sand. Kaylee took a wave while we were gone, turns out the alliance were looking for a terrorist organization making their base here, and looking to attain some explosives. Best I figure, we got conned sir."

"That explains a lot." Mal breathed, leaning his head back and looking up at the ceiling placidly. He heard Zoë swear softly as Simon patched her up, but not long after she appeared in his line of sight with another one of her stony expressions.

"Goodnight Captain." She said softly, "Saved my life today." She squeezed his hand before disappearing again. He could hear her talking to Simon about sleeping pills and needing a good amount of rest, surprising enough, she didn't argue about it with him. After that, there was silence, the swish and click of the door, and then Simon appeared above him where Zoë had been.

"I'm going to put you out to ensure you rest." He told him, insighting a groan from his patient.

"Come on Doc, I can sleep on my own accord."

Simon shook his head and retrieved some medication, he injected it without too much protest into Mal's neck and the captain began to drift off once more.

"You think my first officer's okay?" he asked groggily before the medicine could take hold.

"She's torn up plenty," Simon's voice began to fade quickly beyond Mal's consciousness.

Zoë was Serenity and she had a hole in her cockpit. A large gaping hole through her chest and into her frail beating heart. Mal tried to patch it up best he knew how, with nails and wood, tape and plastic, metal and fire. He tried all he knew but the hole would never close up and he was left with that dark feeling in his stomach. Zoë stared at him with her large square glass eyes, and said nothing. Her pulse fading until it could barely be felt through the pounding of the engine. Serenity wouldn't fly the same these days, she refused to respond to his whims, wouldn't be controlled by another pilot. She grieved, she had not forgotten. She missed with a passion that burned like the light of the firefly, she missed the way her husband would hold her and caress her and make her beautiful. Missed how she felt when she flew with him, missed the feel of him in her chair. Mal sat different than he had, too rough, too hard where he had been soft. It was as though she would put up with Mal, or anyone else, only as long as she needed to, waiting for him to come back to her, and yet certain he never would. She had been with him longer than the others, had a chance to absorb his absence, get used to the hole in her.

Mal was standing in her cockpit. Broken dinosaurs scattered across the floor, not belonging. They represented something far too innocent to belong in this world any longer. Mal picked one up and held it long and tenderly.

"I don't understand why you keep them there anyway." Wash again, as he had been during the battle, softer, but the same. Wash and yet not Wash, pieces of him different where Mal remembered him wrong. He seemed to sense Mal's thoughts and he smiled.

"My hair is red, I swear it."

"Blonde."

"Red."

"Reddish blonde."

The pilot shrugged, defeated and collapsed in his chair, Zoë coming alive beneath him. Her body curving to fit his, her dark arms wrapping themselves around him and quivering at his touch. Every part of her sang as Wash took the wheel, caressing the control panel with his left hand as he guided the ship with his right, her movements fluid and beautiful. He smiled up at Mal with that innocent goofy smile, and the knot twisted in the captains gut, more painful than the knife.

"Mal," Wash's face had turned soft again, sad and knowledgeable. Two things that more often than not coincide. "What are you waiting for?"

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Inara is waiting for you." Wash intoned, as though he was giving Mal a very valuable piece of information that had never crossed his mind. Well it never really had.

"What do you mean?"

"She's waiting for you Mal."

"hmm?"

Wash rolled his eyes and caressed his ship wife once more. "You need to learn how to let it go Mal, let it go so that you have more room inside where she can make her home."

"I aint got nothing left to give anybody." Mal choked.

"You've got more than you think, and that's just enough." The pilot began to hum softly to himself and Mal wondered if he hummed that song during lovemaking. It was simple enough, with a pulsing motion similar to the waves of the sea.

"Space got waves too you know." Wash offered quietly and Mal sunk into the co-pilots chair, listening. "The same kind of waves you get while you're at sea. At least, its how I imagine them to be, never was in a boat back on my home planet, never got a chance, boats kinda became obsolete what with the fancy technology popping up. But I imagine they feel like this." he shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair, "So calm, so steady, and then without warning, without pause, a shift, its slight, its small, but you can feel it once you know what your looking for. Calm, calm, and then, there! feel it? A lurch, a breaking of the rhythm. But before you can really put your thumb on it its calm and peaceful again."

"I can feel it." Mal allowed, his eyes fixed on his pilot as he rocked with the emotion of the ship. Suddenly Wash returned his attention to his captain and he smiled again.

"Let it go Mal, all of it. If I had known the day you hired me where this boat would take me, I still would have jumped onto your roster. I met my wife here Mal, not to mention had some of the best sex in the verse."

Mal laughed, "Best in the verse?"

"Have you ever been with a warrior woman?"

Things were quiet for a moment before Mal decided that since this was a dream anyways he might as well get his thoughts in the open.

"It's just that, you and Kaylee, you two didn't sign on to get shot at, or tortured, or any of that. Jayne or even Zoë I would understand, but you were no ones responsibility but mine."

"Like those men in your platoon?" Wash asked quietly and Mal closed his eyes.

"Every last one of them."

"We follow you Mal, because we trust you, but don't ever think we follow you blind. Every one of us knows exactly what we're getting ourselves into, that goes for every man who joined the army as well, me, Book, even Kaylee. We all know that this is a dangerous 'verse. Zoë and I, we would never blame you. So why blame yourself?"

Mal closed his eyes again and leaned back, experiencing for himself the slow ebb of the tide as it came in and out, moving the ship back and forth with that strange calm rhythm.

"Wash?"

"Yes Mal. This is the time to say it."

Mal was going to say that he was sorry, that he had never meant for any of this to happen, that he should have forced Wash to get off the boat when he married Zoë, should have let them build a life together, that he should have done something, anything. But for the first time in a long time he was granted by some miracle an inner calm. Whether it was Serenity herself, or Wash that leant it to him, he was able to see from an outside point of view. Just for a split second, but just long enough.

"Wash." he managed, "Goodbye."

On her way to her bunk, Zoë passed the engine room where Kaylee could still be heard tinkering. When the engineer heard Zoë in the hall, her tinkering stopped and her friendly round face appeared in the doorway. She smiled and rushed in for an embrace, careful of Zoë's arm.

"Thank God you're alright! And the Cap'n?"

"He'll survive." Zoë told her, patting Kaylee gently with her good hand.

"I was afraid to sleep until I knew, 'Nara's waiting in the kitchen I think."

"Well you can sleep now."

"You too I hope, get some rest." Kaylee clucked like a mother hen and Zoë nearly laughed with the absurdity of it. When had Kaylee begun to mother them all?

"I will." Zoë told her softly, but Kaylee pushed the subject further.

"Simon said he gave you something to help. . ."

"Doctor patient confidentiality." Came a singsong voice from around the corner, and River appeared. "Simon shouldn't be telling you anything," She scolded, "even if you make him want to talk. He already has a castle."

As quickly as she came, she left again, round the corner in the direction of her quarters. Kaylee blushed and turned back to Zoë.

"He did though?"

Zoë couldn't help but keep the smile from her lips, she remembered too fondly how insecure she had been during the time Wash and she had danced around each other in that strange courtship dance.

"He did. I'm off to take advantage of it right now." Zoë sounded strangely soft to her own ears, blood loss, she deemed it, but Kaylee always made her feel tender, especially while she was acting like a lovesick school girl. Had Zoë ever acted like that? Perhaps not on the surface much, but she could remember a time when she had felt that way. Something about seeing it in Kaylee now, she could treasure, even if she hadn't been in the mood to notice lately. Now that she was entrenched in those memories, it felt good.

Taking her leave of Kaylee (who mysteriously disappeared in the opposite direction of her bunk), Zoë next came upon Inara and Jayne in the kitchen, sitting across from each other and talking detachedly. The companion got to her feet immediately, wringing her hands in front of her and searching Zoë's mask of calm.

"Everyone's fine Inara," Zoë told her softly, "Cap'ns sleepin now." Inara nodded and smoothed her dress distractedly over her legs

"I . . . I think I'll go and sit with him. So he doesn't wake up alone."

Zoë would have told her that she didn't need to, Mal would be just as happy in whichever room he woke up as long as he was on his ship. However, she reminded herself how anxious she had been whenever Wash had had the misfortune to be injured. She would have gone to his side as well, and stayed there until the end of time if she had the chance.

"Go ahead Inara. I'm sure he'll be glad of it when he wakes."

When she was gone, Zoë looked down at Jayne grudgingly, slouched in his chair and staring at his hands.

"And what are you waiting for?" She asked him coldly. The burly man got to his feet, looking at her, but away from her.

"My job to make sure you people still breathin." He barked gruffly. "We get paid today?"

"That we did Jayne."

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded to himself as though that had been his purpose all along. He glanced up and met her eyes for only a second before slouching off towards his bunk.

Sighing and rubbing her arm tenderly, Zoë followed him down the hall and put a hand on the hatch leading down to their quarters. It was cold, cold and lonely already.

The emptiness of their quarters set the dull ache to pounding again. All distractions withdrawn like a curtain from a stage left Zoë shivering lonely in the darkness. She leaned back against the ladder and surveyed the room, taking in their wedding picture hanging close to the mirror next to the closet. The open closet, his loud colored shirts stark against the brown of her clothing. She left them there so that when she dressed in the morning, she could still detect the smell of him on everything she owned. He was looking across at her in the picture, staring at her with wide blue eyes, staring at her as though she was all there was in the world, staring at her like he sometimes did the stars as he soared. Her name was on his lips, and the words, I do.

Carefully and tentatively, she undressed herself, pulling on one of his shirts gingerly over her wounded arm. It smelled like him, the feel of it softer than anything she owned. She poured herself a glass of water from the sink in the corner and dutifully swallowed the pills she had been given. She slipped into bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking about what a day of enlightenment she had survived. She had never known exactly how much the entire crew cared, and how much they meant to each other. Each one faced with the new reality that any of them could be killed at any time.

His arm slipped beneath the small of her back, he had been waiting for her just as she knew he would be. Gently he kissed her neck and inhaled deeply of her curls.

"Baby," he whispered, "why won't you talk to me?"

Zoë closed her eyes. She knew she was imagining things, knew this wasn't real, but she could smell him, feel him, hear his voice whispering in her ear. Perhaps if she laid there and said nothing, this would continue forever. Suddenly he pulled away, letting her go and sitting up in the bed, looking down at her with such affection it made her hurt. She could vaguely feel the sleeping pill beginning to take effect and she fought it stubbornly. The real reason she hadn't slept, afraid that if she did she would miss a single second of that gaze. Wash made to stand and Zoë reached out for him wildly.

"Don't leave!" she gasped with pain at the sudden movement in her arm, but it didn't stop her, wouldn't. He returned to her side, clasping her hand and kissing it fondly.

"You have to do it sometime Zoë." He told her softly, she could hear the pain in his voice, could hear the struggle within herself reflected in his words.

"Not ready yet husband." She whispered and he kissed her again, on each eyelid.

"You never will be, just got to do it. I know you can baby, you're so strong."

"What happens if I do?" She clutched his hand to her as though he would disappear like a curl of smoke from Inara's incense. Burn away if he only passed too close to a star. "When I wake up tomorrow, will you be gone?"

"Yes and no." he allowed gently, stroking her hair and pushing it from her face. "You won't see me, but I'll be around. I'm a leaf on the wind, I'm everywhere and nowhere."

"Don't soar away just yet." Zoë insisted, pulling him to her and putting his face in her hands. "Not without me."

"Don't worry love; we'll fly again soon enough. You and I, on the same breeze that brought us together, my dearest lamby toes."

"Wash, don't make me say it."

Her husband was suddenly very serious, "You have to Zoë," he begged, "Do it for yourself, you have to live again."

"Just kiss me, kiss me one more time baby."

He obliged without argument, kissing her long and warm and tender. Zoë could feel herself slipping and she clutched at him feebly, her stoic mask crumbling, every part of her screaming for him to stay. However, she knew her time was running out, she had to say it now if she was going to wake up in the morning. Indeed, all of this, since that moment the stake had pierced his flesh; things had been like walking through a dream. A terrible, dark world from where laughter had been abolished and the sun had shone only on the parts of her she allowed to be exposed. It was time to sleep, and time to wake. Clutching her husband to her, she whispered the words into his embrace. Feeling the texture of his hair, the feel of his skin, the touch of his fingers on the trembling wires of her body. Her world burst with the music of their love as he played her, touched her and brought forth the beauty she had not known she possessed. Like a dream, he was gone.

He had become a breeze. A cool draft icing the warmth of her even as her mind drifted into the world in which he still roamed. She knew that when she woke in the morning, it would be for the first time. The ship would keep flying, no matter how begrudgingly; Serenity would go from planet to planet, star to star. Her crew would go on as well, the blood in her veins, the beating heart within her breast. They would eat meals and laugh at the same table he had laughed at, sit in the same chair he had sat in, they would learn and they would grow. Some would learn how to love again, some sooner than would others.

Kaylee would learn to be responsive to Simon's words more than his touch. Jayne would learn that people respected him and cared for him no matter his tough guy persona. River would learn that a person's castle was wherever their love lay. Inara, that fear shouldn't stop you from living your life. Simon that the world is full of pleasantries as well as pains, and Mal, that there is always room to love, and to forgive.

Zoë would wake with the knowledge that she had had the chance to say goodbye to the man she loved, and though a concept foreign to her, a chance to grieve.

As she drifted into slumber, she allowed herself this one chance to weep, and the tears came quick and cleansing as she lay. Zoë closed her eyes.

The End everybody, thank you so much for reading, please take the time to review, whether its constructive or not, just so I know what you thought of it. Thank you again sooo much, writing this has really helped me get closure after Wash's untimely death, and I hope reading it has done the same for you. Thanks for all the lovely reviews; I didn't set out to make anyone cry! lol, ok maybe I did . . . a little. I hope I didn't disappoint as far as the plot goes, I wanted to tie it up fairly quickly since I hadn't really planned on giving it that much time anyway, the main point was always saying goodbye. So . . . Goodbye!

The dead don't die, they look on and help

D.H. Lawrence

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