"You can't avoid me forever, you know."

Zoe drew herself up short and turned to look back at Wash. She had walked right past without seeing him standing in the shadows of an alcove in the galley. "Ain't avoiding you," she pointedly stated.

Wash stepped forward and shook his head. "You've hardly spoken to me at all since I got here," he countered softly. He wasn't angry, just confused and a little more than hurt.

There was a silence as Zoe studied him, taking in his familiar features: the way he'd trimmed and styled his hair to look like how it used to, the way his eyes let her in, the faint curve of lips that looked like the ones she remembered kissing. Then she let the changes register, too: the haunted look in his familiar eyes and the circles beneath them, deep and sallow, the way his favorite Hawaiian shirt now hung shapelessly on his too-thin frame. His skin seemed waxy and ashen, and beyond that, he had a sour aura like he'd sat out in the sun too long or hadn't seen it near enough. "Ain't got nothin' to say," she finally replied.

Wash shook his head. "I don't believe that. There's so much I want to say to you, to tell you and be told by you. How have you been? What've you been doing since I've been gone? How did you cope? Did you buy anything new? Tell me anything, Zoe. Tell me when you last cut your toenails or took out the garbage." His voice was pleading. "It doesn't have to be your deepest darkest secrets. I know Mal told you not to talk to me about that stuff. I don't care about that stuff. I care about you."

Zoe stepped backwards until her backside brushed against one of the chairs at the table. She wasn't frightened of him, but she had no desire to draw into him, either. "Wish it were that easy," she replied at last. "Wish I could just pretend."

"Why can't you?" Wash pleaded. "I'm willing to be patient. God knows I've waited long enough already, but I have to know you'll at least try."

She shook her head. "Can't make promises," she answered coolly. "Ain't going to be liable for breakin' them."

Wash's hands clenched and unclenched into fists. "I just need something, Zo," he quietly whispered. "Anything."

Her gaze on him was unwavering and firm. After a moment she said, "Then I recommend you find something to live for that ain't me." She slid to the side, away from him and the chair. "Otherwise you'll only be disappointed."

He let her go because there was nothing he could say to that. He didn't want to be back where he was, but he knew he couldn't press her into changing. She had become this way over the past year, and it would probably take her another year to get out of it, if she did at all. He thought he could wait.

It wasn't easy, though. When he'd first met her, he'd been single and anxious, but he hadn't acquired the knowledge of having had her. He hadn't just spent a year in prison dreaming on her then, wishing he'd be freed just so he could be reunited with her. When he had first come aboard Serenity so many years ago, Zoe had been an almost intangible dream to him. Now he knew everything he was missing, and his want for it was that much more acute. He needed her now in ways he had never needed her back then.

If she'd been with another man, at least he could have accepted her actions as being torn out of loyalty. He would have been hurt, perhaps even more so than he was now, but he would have been able to understand. What stung now was the fact that nothing stood between them except some invisible barrier she had erected. The fact that he could have her and yet she wouldn't let him made his stomach clench and roll.

He quickly pulled out the chair she'd been leaning against and sat down in it before his legs gave way underneath him. He bowed his head and rested it on his folded-up arms on the table.

That's where Simon found him fifteen minutes later.

"Wash," he began, approaching quickly, his voice concerned, "you were supposed to come down to the infirmary half an hour ago for your check-up."

Deadened eyes looked up at Simon as Wash lifted his head. "Sorry, lost track of time."

Simon drew to a halt beside his chair. "Are you feeling all right?" he asked after glancing around the table, noting that there was no food or paperwork or anything else present to be occupying his attention. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing." Wash answered easily. He had sat long enough staring and feeling sorry for himself. He could shut himself down emotionally if necessary to function. He could be cold and hard just like Zoe, if that was what he had to do to survive now. "We can do the check-up now, if you want." He pushed the chair back and dragged himself to his feet.

Nodding slowly, Simon took a step back. His eyes flickered to the engine room for a moment, as though perhaps he had had something else in mind at first, and then he shook his head. "All right. It shouldn't take too long."
--

"Have you been sleeping well?" Simon asked after he had run his scans and set them to process. Wash sat uncomfortably on the examination table while Simon wrote with his pen on his data pad.

"Not really," he replied in a soft voice. "It's not that I don't want to, it just seems I don't." He rubbed his arm slightly where it stung from where Simon had drawn blood.

"I could give you a smoother to help you sleep at night," Simon said easily. "Come see me before you sleep, and I'll administer something, if you'd like." He looked up from his writing. "Do you dream?"

Wash sighed and let his eyes drift around the infirmary. He was tired of all the questions already. He was broken, and Simon wanted to fix him, but he found he really didn't care about himself anymore. "Sometimes. The usual type."

Simon jotted something down and then turned to check on the status of the tests he had run. They hadn't finished processing, so he turned back to Wash. "Well, outside of your legs being weakened, is there anything else I ought to be specifically aware of?"

Wash shrugged. "I told you my eyes sometimes blur," he replied without much conviction. "And I don't remember how I died or any of the events surrounding that time period." He raised a hand and flexed it out in front of him, watching his skin as it stretched taut over bone. "I forgot my mother's name, too."

Simon's eyebrow arched up at that. "But you remembered it?"

"No," Wash replied and rested his hand back in his lap. "I looked it up on the Cortex."

Curious at this, Simon nodded and wrote some more things down. "I guess there is some minor brain malignance. It's not uncommon to forget things like this after trauma or injury, though. It's rarer for it to last this long, but you've not been in very good conditions for recovery." He set his data pad down and pressed a few buttons on the computer that was running his tests.

It blinked a few times and then let out a soft chirping noise. "Well," he said, scanning over the test readouts, "nothing seems to have changed overnight, which isn't a bad thing." He turned back to Wash. "I want you to make sure you eat three meals a day, all right? You need to regain your mass, even if you're not hungry. It's very important, as you're much too underweight right now."

Wash nodded only half listening.

"As for your muscles, I'm going to have to start you on physical therapy." He pressed his lips together thoughtfully. "The only way to get your legs to withstand your weight again is if you rebuild the lost muscles in them. Ideally, I'd have all sorts of specialized medical equipment that could assist you with this, but this isn't the ideal world. We have to make due with what we do have."

Wash let his head turn so he was actually looking at Simon this time. "Which is what?" he asked plainly. "Do I get to start lifting cans of protein?"

Smiling at that, Simon shook his head. "Fortunately, no. We've actually got a fairly complete weight set down in the cargo bay. I've written up a regime that I think will prove beneficial to you. I'd like you to run through it twice a day for three days and see how that works for you." He took his data pad, inserted it into a slot at the bottom of the monitor, and then pressed a few buttons. "It'll be difficult at first because many of your muscles have completely worn down, but they should rebuild quickly."

Within a few seconds, the monitor hummed and then spat out a paper readout. Simon took it and handed it to Wash. "You might be able to handle more weight in the beginning, but I don't recommend you overexert yourself. It's better to do fifty sets of ten pounds than ten sets of fifty pounds."

The paper was still warm from as Wash studied it. The figures seemed large and the amounts lengthy, but at least it would give him something to do instead of depreciating in depression and boredom by himself. "Fine, great," he muttered.

Simon pulled the data pad out of the computer and scanned over it again. "I'd like to keep running tests on you. I'm not entirely sure all your ailments are due to muscle atrophy. If there is a single faulty connection in your reconstructed nervous system, it could be affecting how you walk. We'll try this physical therapy regime, but if that doesn't clear up the weakness with your legs, it might be a miswired conduit in your spinal column, which could require extensive tests to determine where, as well as potential surgery to correct."

"That's great, Simon," Wash said quickly. "You do that. It's all gibberish to me though, you know? Just tell me if anything changes." He got to his feet and looked the doctor over. "If there's nothing else then, I'll go get started on this." He waved the piece of paper with the physical therapy instructions on it.

Simon shrugged. "Don't overexert yourself," he answered softly. "Take it easy."

Wash stared at him for several long seconds and let Simon know in that moment that it would be impossible for him to 'take it easy.' He didn't say anything, though; he just stepped out of the infirmary and carefully navigated himself around the passenger lounge until he was at the stairwell heading down into the cargo bay.
--

It was cold and quiet in the cargo bay, and Wash found that he rather liked it. It had none of the sterile whiteness that reminded him of his prison cell, and its openness gave him a sense of freedom, however false it was. The silence wasn't even an issue because beneath the quiet was also the low thrum of Serenity around him. She had changed, too, while he had been gone. She had been hurt and rebuilt and changed.

Unlike the others, though, she was still trustworthy and familiar. Her changes were all superficial and easy to understand and accept. She hadn't changed so much; he knew if he ever got to sit behind her controls again, he'd discover how much she had missed him and how much she had remained the same.

His fingers traced the railing on the stairwell as he descended into the depths of the ship. The metal was warm under his fingers, heated by the lights overhead. The rest of the cargo bay was cold, and he found the contrast familiar and comforting for reasons he couldn't even explain.

He had never taken much comfort here before—his quiet, personal time had always been spent on the bridge. He had seen the cargo bay solely as a place for cargo storage and occasional recreation. It had been Jayne's territory and Book's. He had utilized it as necessary, but he had never understood why anyone would want to come here to think or be alone.

Now he understood why. He was beneath the ship, under the rest of the vessel for the most part. He was at the furthest point he could get from anyone else on the boat without actually disembarking. The walls hummed here in a way that they didn't hum on the rest of the ship, and the openness was important to keep claustrophobia away.

He wasn't comfortable here, but he found that being in the belly of Serenity did have some calming effects on him. At least he was able to appreciate the location in a way he had never done before. He hadn't visited the cockpit since he had returned, but the thought of returning to it seemed to fill him with a sense of irrational dread. He desperately wanted to fly the ship, and yet he feared to enter the cabin.

He pushed down the fear and the questions that fear raised in him as he stepped off the stairwell and started toward the weight set. It lay cold and dormant beneath one of the catwalks, and Wash realized slowly that he'd never used it, or if he had, those memories had been forgotten.

The weights were set for Jayne, and it took almost as much effort to remove the current set-up and replace them with lighter amounts as it did to perform the first repetition. Simon's therapy plan had him doing squats and lunges to rebuild strength in his thighs and calves, as well as a few rounds of curls and lifts for his arms. It had seemed easy at first, but very quickly Wash's weaknesses became apparent.

He was to do two rounds of fifty of each set. It seemed like a doable amount on paper, but after his legs had done fifty squats, he thought he'd truly collapse from fatigue. The thought alone that he had to follow that up with a hundred lunges and another set of squats about did him in. He set the dumbbells down on the bulkhead and sat heavily on the bench press to catch his breath for five minutes.

He pressed on after that, struggling through his arm sets while sitting. When he finished fifty of each, he felt like he was made of gelatin. Standing again, he was surprised to find his legs still supported him. He wanted to stop and throw the towel in, but he pressed on. He bottled his anger and fears and tried to press them to goad him on. He got another set of lunges in but on number thirty-four of his last set of squats, his legs trembled beneath him and buckled.

He fell hard onto the steel floor grating. His arm twisted lightly where he fell due to the weights he was holding. For a long time he just lay there, gasping to catch his breath and struggling not to hate himself entirely for his weakness.

Eventually he let go of the weights and let them sit where they were on the floor. He rolled over onto his back, feeling too weak to even sit up. He stared up at the ceiling and lights overhead and wondered what he thought he was doing there. He was too weak to lift two ten-pound weights for more than fifteen minutes. He ought to be in a hospital, not out in deep space with people who didn't want him around.

He'd been effectively replaced by River and was no longer needed to fly. Zoe had gotten over his death and closed herself off; she didn't need him anymore. Mal had darkened and become even less trusting, and Wash found he wasn't really blaming him anymore. The universe was a dark place. Simon spoke to him, but his tone was always clinical and he remained solely impressed by the implants in his body; it made Wash feel like a piece of meat; a specimen to be studied.

Jayne hadn't said more than ten words to him since he'd shown up again, and Wash was hardly surprised about that. Kaylee seemed to be the only person he had any sort of hope to talk to, and yet her pained expression when she looked at him made him not want to burden her with his problems. The universe hadn't darkened Kaylee yet, and Wash didn't want to be the one to sully her.

He raised his hands from the floor and rested them lightly over his chest. Beneath his shirt he felt the welt of his scar and lightly dug his fingernails into it through the fabric.

He had been a fool to come back here or to think that things would be the same. He had known time had passed and it was likely people would have changed, but he never dreamed that he would have come home to find himself so unwelcomed.

Tightly closing his eyes, he squeezed out the fear and the hopelessness and the engulfing panic that threatened to consume him. He fought it and pushed it down, trying to bottle it up again. He wanted to be stronger than this and to overcome it. Despite the fact that he couldn't get Zoe to tell him even one personal detail about her life, he wanted to believe he could salvage their relationship. Despite the fact that he couldn't get through one twenty-minute workout of physical therapy sets without collapsing, he wanted to keep trying until he could.

He wanted to survive just as fiercely as he wanted to give up.

Those conflicting issues met and converged in his head while he slept, battling uneasily over and over in his psyche and leaving him unsettled and empty when they departed. He awoke cold, the dull feel of a weight pressing against his side. His head ached from where he'd hit it on the floor grates when he'd fallen and from the nightmarish visions he'd had while dreaming.

His eyes opened slowly and, for a time, were out of focus. He blinked furiously up into the lights and shadows above him and resolved the shape overhead. It turned out to be a mildly concerned-looking Jayne peering down at him and nudging him with the toe of his boot.

"Hell, thought you died again, little man," he grunted gruffly and offered a hand down to help Wash back up to his feet.
--

Wash woke with a start the following morning. His eyes flew open as he stared up at the ceiling of his bunk. The ship had just broke atmosphere, and the familiar hum of Serenity in space had shifted to the trembling of being airborne. The change made his stomach roll, largely because he wasn't in control of her descent. He started to sit up and then groaned loudly and collapsed back on to his bed.

The physical therapy set last night had wiped him out, and his entire body screamed in protest at moving. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to channel the pain elsewhere so it wasn't consuming him. After about ten minutes of this, he was able to sit up. One hand thickly clutched at the side of his bed and the other went to his head, which was pounding. He felt like he had a hangover.

Looking around his empty quarters he half wondered if he did. The events of last night were hazy after the work out. Deciding not to dwell on them, he pushed off the bed and went to relieve himself. Splashing cold water in his face did much to revive him, though he didn't pause to reflect on his gaunt features in the mirror. He just dressed slowly and sat to pull on his boots.

By the time he'd made it up the ladder and into the galley, the ship had landed. He could see sunshine streaming in from the cabin, but he turned his back to it and the pilot, River, and instead slipped down the stairs into the kitchen instead. Kaylee sat in one of the lounge chairs nursing a cup of coffee and reading a well-worn magazine.

In times of old, he could have gotten down the stairs silently, but today he clamored and made more noise than he wanted to on his descent. Kaylee looked up at him and grinned brightly when she saw him. "Hey, Wash!"

Wash ignored her for a bit as he walked over to the coffee pot and poured himself a mug. Once he had done so and taken a sip, he nodded. "Hey," he muttered.

She folded her magazine up and tossed it on the small table in the lounge before getting up and crossing to him. "Y'all right? Look a bit bed-raggled."

"Just woke up," Wash explained and shifted his weight to stretch out the muscles in his back. "Worked out last night, too. Real sore."

Kaylee nodded understandingly. She approached him and ran a hand through his hair, trying to straighten it a little. "Y'got bed head," she explained cheerfully.

Wash tried on a smile but found it didn't fit and let it drop. He pressed past Kaylee, limped over to the table, and pulled out a chair. He sank heavily into it but looked back over to Kaylee after he had. "Well, that's because I just got out of bed."

Kaylee leaned against the counter, still holding her mug, and nodded. "Can I get y'something t'eat? Ain't got much, but you ought t'have something."

"Sure," Wash murmured and turned back to look at the table in front of him. He rested his coffee mug on the surface. "Surprise me."

"Okay!" Kaylee cheerfully called. She set down her mug and went around the counter so she had access to the stove.

Wash listened to her bustling for a little and tried to find the familiarity he'd felt in the galley yesterday, but it remained elusive. There was a sizzling noise on a pan and then the smell of grease assaulted his nose. He ignored it as best he could and took a drink from his black coffee. "Where is everyone?" he questioned after a bit.

"Oh, Cap'n's had a job t'run, y'know. He and Zoe and Jayne went down to drop off some merchandise we picked up from Badger while on Persephone." She paused a moment to concentrate on her cooking and then added, "they ought t'be back before too long. Weren't supposed t'be a hard job."

Wash shook his head, trying to clear the hurt that they went to run a job without even bothering to inform him of it. "When has that ever been the case?"

Kaylee smiled to herself and resumed cooking. "Well, we'll just have to keep hoping that one of these days it'll go according to plan. It has happened before."

She trailed off slightly as River appeared in the doorway from the cabin. She looked carefully at the two people present in the galley. Wash met her gaze and then looked back down at his coffee. He was aware, nonetheless, that she turned her stare from Wash to Kaylee and that she gave Kaylee the same sort of disapproving glare she'd given him.

River tilted her head a little and then seemed to decide against entering the room more fully. She stepped back out into the crew quarters without saying anything and disappeared down the corridor that led to her room.

"What's with her?" Wash asked once she'd left.

Kaylee looked up, and there was a hint of darkness in her eyes that quickly faded. "Oh, she don't trust me much no more. Probably don't trust you none yet, neither."

Before Wash could ask what had happened between the two girls to make River so untrusting, he was greeted by Kaylee bringing over a plate of food and a fork. She set the plate down in front of him and slipped into the chair beside him. "We sure do need some of your old humor on this boat," she stated and rested her hand in her hair, leaning against her arm on the table.

Wash looked down at the food with a dour expression and picked up the fork lethargically. The thought of eating it revolted him but he wasn't going to resist, not with Kaylee sitting right beside him. "Afraid I'm not too funny these days, Kaylee," he mused softly before taking a bite of the scrambled egg protein.

"Seems like the whole 'verse ain't so funny anymore, Wash," Kaylee forlornly stated. "Wonder when that happened." She absently reached out to play with one of the spice shakers on the table.

"When did it?" Wash questioned curiously. He took another drink from his coffee. "Things were dark when I left, but they weren't like this."

Kaylee sighed. "Well, you'n'Book dyin' didn't help none. Then the whole thing with Miranda and River and all . . . none of that set well with the Cap'n." She glanced at him through a curtain of chestnut hair. "Funny the way a cap'n's attitude'll set the mood for the whole crew, but it's true. Cap'n' ain't happy, then the rest of us can be, neither. It's like galactic law."

"You're happy though, Kaylee. You're always happy."

The silence that statement was met with caused Wash to look up and over to Kaylee in concern. She was staring hard at the spice shaker in her hands. Her lips were moving a little like she was going over phrases in her head, but she said nothing. Finally she whispered, "Yeah. I'm always happy. That's me: happy Kaylee."

"What happened with Miranda and River?" he quietly asked, keeping his voice low.

Kaylee turned to look at him, her eyes a little vacant. "You really don't remember nothing, do you?" she questioned.

Wash shook his head and wondered if she'd actually tell him. "I've tried so hard, but I just can't."

Kaylee averted her eyes, fixing them back on the shaker. "Cap'n warned us not to tell you," she explained softly. "He ain't sure you're . . . y'know, you. Thinks maybe you're tryin' t'get information about all that from us." The shaker twisted beneath her fingertips. "Fact of the matter is, though, I don't remember all too much, neither. Not stuff that'd make the Alliance want t'bring y'back from the dead t'get it, leastways."

Wash shifted in his seat a little, turning towards her so they were facing each other. It gave them a little makeshift private space in the middle of the kitchen. With their voices lowered, they'd at least be minimally protected from anyone else who happened by and looked in on their conversation. "I need to know this, Kaylee," he whispered. "It's like months of my life have just been stolen from me."

She bit her lip when she looked up at him, studying his face carefully. Her voice was the ghost of a whisper when she spoke. "I barely know, Wash. We followed this plan," her voice dropped even more, "River told us about." She looked about the galley hesitantly and then continued. "Found this dead planet, Miranda.

"It was all empty but used to be all shiny, like a resort world. Dunno why River needed to show it to us, but she did, and then we had to go tell other peoples we'd found it." Kaylee wrung her hands a little and pushed the shaker away from her. Remembering and retelling this story was obviously unsettling to her, although Wash couldn't pinpoint why exactly that was. "So, we fly off, and we get chased; people don't want us telling secrets, or whatever. You crashed Serenity."

Wash's eyes widened at this. He'd heard as much from Simon and Mal the previous day, but to have it corroborated didn't sit well with him. "Must've been some chase," he breathed softly.

"Yeah," Kaylee whispered. "We spun out of control'n'everything. When it was all over and we were running away, I realized you weren't with us." She stared hard at the wood grain of the table. "Zoe was real hard; said you weren't coming."

One hand of his rose to his chest lightly, pressing against the wound there. "Guess shrapnel that big would've prevented that."

"Yeah," Kaylee trailed off. "Hasn't been the same since."

Silence stretched out between them for a while as Wash contemplated this and Kaylee relived the memories. "How did Book die, then?" he questioned softly.

"Alliance got him," Kaylee quietly answered. "They got a lot of people when they was lookin' for us. Cap'n tried t'not let it bother him, said it was their fault'n'not his that people were dead, but it weighed on him real heavy. It all weighs on him heavy."

Wash fidgeted and stared down at his food. "Almost glad I don't remember now."

Kaylee pressed her lips together and then shook her head. "Just don't seem right, somehow. All that work we did tryin' t'get the word out 'bout Miranda, and for what? Lost you'n'Book, and it didn't seem t'change the 'verse much."

The silence returned, hanging heavily between them. There seemed to be some missing element that neither of them knew to complete the puzzle. Wash was at a loss for what to say. He reached under the table, found Kaylee's knee, and squeezed it weakly, trying to be comforting. "Some good had to have come from it," he began.

Kaylee looked to him intensely and then shook her head. "If so, I don't know 'bout it."

She shifted her knee out of his reach and scooted her chair back. "You ain't the only one broken on this boat, Wash. Not sure how th'rest can hope t'fix you if they can't even fix themselves." She wrung her hands a bit more and got to her feet.

"Wait," Wash began, piecing things together slowly. He pushed his chair back, standing, too. "Are you talking about Simon now?" Kaylee waved her hand a little, and Wash was suddenly aware that she was on the verge of tears. Kaylee crying terrified him, and he floundered, trying to back pedal away from the strange turn the conversation had taken. "That is, well, people need time—"

"It don't matter now, does it?" she asked rhetorically, cutting off his weak attempts at turning the conversation. "None of it matters any more."

"It does matter," Wash began helplessly. He wanted to reach out and comfort her, but her words rang out at him—how could he hope to fix her when he couldn't even fix himself? He didn't even know what was wrong with her. Furthermore, how could she pretend to try to help him when she was so broken that she wasn't even letting other people see that she was? "Kaylee—" he began but the sound of voices and footsteps approaching from below decks silenced him.

Kaylee sniffled pathetically and then stepped away from the table. "I've got," she began and waved towards the engine room. "The carburetor needs calibratin'n'I gotta make sure the shocks're aligned…" She trailed off, staring vacantly at Wash. They were both wearing masks and playing roles now. She didn't need to come up with a litany of excuses to run away from him.

Wash didn't say anything. He just looked back at her and ached at the sorrowful feelings her vacant expression filled him with. She turned away, lips pressed together, and reasserted her thoughts. A smile as sunny and cheerful as any he'd ever seen her wear before graced her lips, and her eyebrows went up, bright and curious. "Don't want t'be seen slackin' on the job none!" she gaily stated. She turned and vanished into the engine room just as Mal, Jayne and Zoe appeared from the stairwell behind him.

Wash turned slowly to take in the three newcomers. They looked healthy and uninjured, which was a relief to some degree. They had been in the middle of a conversation about the job, but they trailed off when it was noticed that Wash was standing right there.

Mal recovered first, coming down the steps two at a time. "Good t'see you finally decided t'join the land of the wakeful," he commented as he stepped behind the counter to look around for any leftovers of what Kaylee had just made.

Jayne sniffed the air, and his eyes quickly narrowed on Wash's mostly uneaten plate of protein eggs. "Y'gonna finish that?" he questioned without looking at him.

Wash moved away from the table, distancing himself quickly from Jayne.

Behind him was the engine room with a Kaylee he didn't know. To his right was Mal, Jayne was to his left, and before him stood Zoe—he felt impossibly trapped. He fought over where to go and what to do, finally deciding escape to the cargo bay would be the best option. It meant pushing past Zoe to get free, but he could manage that.

Screwing up his nerve, he stalked forward two steps before his legs buckled and gave out beneath him. He crashed face first into the galley floor.