Bridge Detour
Warm brown skin glowed blue in the sparking lights. Little flares jumping from a welding torch held in powerful strong hands neatly protected in leather gloves. Round goggles obscured her eyes, but her full lips were set in firm concentration for the task at hand. Although, if you could see through the extra dark welding goggles, and past the cold, hard stare, you would see rage, anger, and sadness. But you'd have to get past the cold, and no one was allowed there, not even Zoe herself. Not yet.
Some people think that welding is an art. To the outside observer, the relatively smooth beading of the metal under the torch was worthy of a master welder. Zoe could give a gorram about artful welding, or smoothly beaded metal. The concentration it takes to make it perfect though, that was the key. The more you have to occupy your mind with things other than what haunts you, your every waking thought and your dreams, the better. Welding was as good as anything else. Hold the torch. Hold the flux. Combine both with two larger pieces of metal. If you take to long in any one spot, you blow a hole through your work and you have to scrap everything and hope you haven't ruined the hull of the ship in the process.
The end of the line, molten metal glowing like a dieing star fading out of the deep black of space. She released the trigger on the torch and set it on a nearby crate, then pulled off the goggles revealing large, beautiful brown eyes. Now that the task at hand was finished, there was a moment to dwell, to feel more of what she'd felt when they'd buried her husband. Plenty of time for things like that later, once they'd gotten some distance between them and the Alliance.
She stood up, brushed the soot off her clothes and set about the next thing that needed to get done. Repairs were, for the most part finished, or at least well enough underway that they could get underway. One last inspection, get clearance from the proper channels and then report to the captain.
The captain was always there. Her brother in arms, her friend, and someone she had an unshakably deep respect for… If she could turn back time, and was set once again with a choice between Mal and Wash. It wasn't a choice; she didn't even have to think about it, she just knew she would. God help Mal if such a thing did exist.
Zoe stood in the hall next to the hatch into her quarters, gazing toward the stairs that led to where Wash should be. Her feet pulled her forward, closer to the bridge. This had been happening on regular occasions; she'd find that one could get to just about anywhere on the ship if one first detoured though the bridge. Somewhere deep in her subconscious she knew he wasn't there, yet in that same place she hoped that he was there, hiding just out of sight.
One step at a time she stood in the doorway, her eyes looking right through the hole in the pilots chair.