Laundry
Kaylee licked a drop of tomato -- tomato flavored, anyhow -- sauce off the back of her hand as she made her way downstairs and past the passenger dorms to the small storage room which served as Serenity's laundry. Simon was stuck doing dishes again, so now was the perfect time to check on the load she had going in the washer.
The lower deck was quiet; most everyone was still sat at the table upstairs, talking after their meal. Kaylee began to hum to herself, and swung round the doorway.
She was already three steps inside before she noticed Zoe.
The first mate was sat on a crate which had been stored in a corner of the room long ago, then left there because it was such a convenient place to put a washbasket, or to sit on waiting for the washing machine to stop, as it seemed Zoe was doing now.
Except she wasn't watching the machine, and she didn't have any air of impatience about her. She was just sitting there, next to the wooden box she always used as a washbasket, and had taken a sheet half out of it and was clutching it with both hands, looking down at it.
"Zoe," Kaylee said apologetically. "Sorry, I didn't know you wanted the machine."
Zoe looked up. For an instant she seemed a million miles away, and then she focussed on Kaylee and gave her a quick smile. "That's okay."
Kaylee hesitated, feeling like she should say something else, but nothing seemed to come to mind so she turned to the washer. It wasn't spinning. She pulled her own washbasket off the top and started to unload it. "You didn't have to wait for me to come back, I don't mind if you take my things out..." she said.
There was no answer from Zoe, so Kaylee turned back to face her.
Zoe was silent a moment longer, gazing at Kaylee almost unseeingly. Then she blinked and shrugged slightly with one shoulder. "The sheets still smell of him," she said with a rueful smile. Kaylee saw her fingers dig a little tighter into the sheets' fabric and felt her throat constrict.
She swallowed. "Zoe..." she said, but trailed off almost as soon as she'd opened her mouth. How did you comfort someone like Zoe?
"Don't matter if I wash 'em or not, they ain't gonna smell of him much longer. Least this way they get clean." Zoe's eyes roamed slowly from her clutching hands to the basket, as if trying to see those small traces of Wash which she was about to erase.
Kaylee paused for a moment before perching on top of the washing machine so that she was sat opposite Zoe. "Well, I don't reckon Wash would want you sleepin' on dirty sheets," she said.
Zoe nodded her head once, looking off into the distance. "I always thought it would be me who went first," she said, not moving her eyes off whatever invisible remnant of him she was looking at. "Never really crossed my mind it'd be him. Knew it was possible... but I always worried more about what he would do without me, not what it might be like for me without him. Kinda stupid of me, really." She twitched her eyebrows and gave another small shrug.
"Zoe..." Again Kaylee trailed off, hesitating briefly before jumping back down to the floor and moving instead to sit next to Zoe on the crate, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You'll be okay. He ain't gone as long as we remember him, and we ain't gonna forget just on account of you washin' the sheets. In fact..." She paused here, not sure it was the right thing to say, but ploughed ahead anyway, "I reckon the more things we wash, the more we'll remember, because everythin' will be... Washed."
There was the smallest hint of a tear in her eye, but the corners of Zoe's mouth twitched upwards, and a sound which was almost a laugh came from her throat. Kaylee suddenly realized that she hadn't heard her laugh once since Wash had died.
Zoe stood, picking up her washbasket and putting it in front of the washer. She pulled the sheet she had been holding out and put it aside while she loaded the other items into the machine. Then she held it up to her face, took one last, deep breath of its scent, and piled it in with the rest of her laundry.
The sheets were washed.
Zoe smiled.
The End