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Strange Bedfellows

Mal

Mal stood at the top of the outcrop, the sun and the stones to his left; they didn't have enough of a body left to do fair by Book, and they couldn't bury in bare stone, Inara's three carvings and River's… whatever that thing was called, were the best they could do. He'd had a crew of nine not so long ago, there were only six that stood here, alive: himself, Jayne, silent and still, Inara, composed to the last, Kaylee, not looking at anyone, Simon, leaning on Kaylee and a crutch River had found somewhere, and River, kneeling in the dust, tying things to her memorial. Zoe was coming, walking up the rock towards them, slow, sad and proud; a warrior woman, with flaming sticks of incense burning in her hands.

She'd lived through Serenity, she'd live through this.

She'd survive.

The price for the signal had been paid in blood; their blood, Alliance blood and an awful lot of innocent blood.

But it had had to be done. It had needed to be said. Something like that couldn't be left a secret.

And they were alive, seven of them still, they had supplies to last them easily two months, maybe three. They had hands and parts to fix the ship.

Maybe, just maybe, they'd survive.

Maybe the worst of this was over now.

Fin

Here ends Strange Bedfellows.

Thank you all for coming with me this far. If you haven't yet, do please review. If I'm asked, there are more Firefly plots in my head that I could expand on; I'd like to watch River over the next few months, and see what kind of mess Serenity's crew has dropped the Alliance in.

An author called ladlebasking has also written an exploration of this period of the canon, with very different assumptions and a rather different result. I enjoyed it.

Thanks to Gamera Obscura, my tireless beta who fixes my stupid punctuation and keeps my medic-ing in check, to a certain young lady called Kay, who introduced me to Malcom Reynolds and his peculiar band of associates, and sat with me watching Serenity for the first time, to my Grandmother, for always encouraging me to write, to my brother, for learning to plot and imagine with me, to a certain young man called William, for sitting with me in a cafe and arguing about many things to do with Firefly, including whether Simon could ever kill a patient and to God for creating the world and everything in it, and for being willing to die to save me. Solo Dei Gloria.