Thank you for reading!

In the afterglow of some very satisfactory marital bliss, Zoe lay in Wash's arms on a blanket in a secluded grove of trees. A whole afternoon away from the ship was a rarity, a jewel to be enjoyed. She sat up, stretching, enjoying the warmth of the summery air on her bare skin.

"Do that again," Wash requested.

"What, this?" She stretched again and he sighed in pleasure.

"That," he confirmed. "My autumn flower in midsummer. What else could a person ask for?" A bug flew by, landing on his chest, and he slapped at it. "Well, other than more clothes. And a feast delivered to us, and maybe a lot of money."

"Don't want much, do you?"

Wash sat up, kissing her shoulder. "All I want is you. Everything else would be gravy. Very nice gravy."

She had a mental image of herself smothered in gravy, and she grimaced. "I'll pass on the gravy."

"Then what do you want?"

Zoe turned her head to look in him in the eye, finding that she had caught him in a rare serious moment. There was something she'd been thinking about more and more recently, but hadn't found the courage to mention it to him yet. Maybe now was the time. "I want to have a baby." She held her breath, waiting for his response.

"A baby?" He said it as though he wasn't sure what the word meant. "You mean, a real live living breathing baby, with the arms and the legs?"

"Ten fingers, ten toes," she confirmed. "Our baby, Wash."

"On Serenity."

"Don't see why not."

"Can you imagine having a crying baby in our quarters? You already feel weird about how things echo in there. And I'm sure Mal would be thrilled to have you at his side carrying a baby on your back."

Zoe narrowed her eyes. "Because I'd be the one carrying the baby around, not the pilot sitting safely in the cockpit?"

"Oh. Uh, good point. But … Zoe, it's hard enough to know you put your life in danger all the time, wondering who'd take care of me if something happened to you. If we had a baby, and I had to explain to that baby why Mommy didn't come home …" He turned away, but not before she'd seen in his blue eyes how real that fear was to him.

"Hey." Zoe caught his jaw gently in her fingers and turned his face back toward her. "Nothin's going to happen to me."

"You say that."

"I do say it."

"But you don't really know." He took a deep breath. "I just … Zoe, this is a good life. I love flying Serenity, and I love being married to you, and we have a lot of fun adventures in which we barely get away with our lives and our dignity intact, but … I can't imagine bringing a child into this life. What would she learn? Care and feeding of the gun collection from Uncle Jayne? How to jury-rig an engine when you can't afford real parts from Aunt Kaylee? I'm sure Aunt Inara could teach him some fascinating things."

"Ain't you always saying what a lady she is and how highly trained a Companion has to be?"

"Yes. And I trust Inara. But you know what I'm saying."

"No child of mine is going to live the easy life, Wash. Pampered and spoiled and useless is no way to be. I'd rather have my son, or my daughter, learning how to rebuild an engine, how to shoot a gun, even how to live the Companion life, than sit cozy in some Alliance town being fed propaganda and never knowing what it is to be free." It was as close as she had ever come to telling him about her background, and she hoped he wouldn't ask for more.

"I get that, Zoe. I really do. But there's a happy medium between spoiled and useless and living hand-to-mouth, on the run half the time, the way we do. There's having a home. Land. A place to run around in." He gestured toward the glade they sat in. "Friends their own age. Schooling."

He made it sound idyllic. The trouble was, Zoe didn't believe in idyls.

As he so often could, Wash seemed to read her thoughts. "I know, you haven't seen much of what that's like, because when we land on these planets, you only see the people living outside the law, or the ones in distress. But there are a lot of people on the colony planets who are happy, Zoe. We could be one of them someday. And then we could have a baby. We could have a houseful, if that's what you want. But not now. Not on Serenity."

"Even sayin' you're right, and it would be better to wait … How long, Wash? We're scraping by as it is, on Serenity—what you're talkin' about, that takes money, to get started. How long do you think it would take to put that kind of money together? Five years? Ten? I want our family when we're still young enough to enjoy it." She didn't mention her fear that if she left Mal on his own to go settle down, he'd go off and get himself killed, but it hovered there at the back of her mind.

"I just don't see how we could enjoy it the way things are now. I'm sorry, Zoe. I wish I did."

For a moment, she wanted to push the issue. But it was so rare that Wash pushed back on anything she asked for, anything she said she cared about, that she understood he must feel strongly about it, and she would respect that. For now. She cupped his cheek in her hand, a gesture of understanding and letting go. "We'll talk about this again, then. Another time."

She thought he would argue with her, but then he softened, taking her hand and kissing it gently. "Another time."

As she picked up her clothes and started shaking the dirt and pine needles off them, Zoe couldn't help picturing it in her mind—a little boy with freckles and his father's blue eyes, pushing her boundaries all the time and bringing untold delights to her life, just the way Wash had. Yes. They would talk about this again, because she couldn't wait to meet their child.