Post-"Serenity" movie
Mentions of cannon
character death.
Characters belong to Joss Whedon, the idiots at Fox, and the angels at Universal. As in, not me.
When Wash set up his dinosaurs and his palm trees, people laughed and teased him. But he was proud of those plastic toys, and after a while, Wash with his dinosaurs and his palm trees became a normal sight and people didn't laugh or tease any more.
When Wash died, and Serenity was smashed all to hell, Zoe looked painstakingly through the wreckage and found every palm tree and every dinosaur, and put them back where they were supposed to be. Nobody said anything, because the bridge without Wash's palm trees and dinosaurs was almost as wrong as the bridge without Wash.
People came and went. Some saw the bridge, laughed at the dinosaurs and the palm trees, teased Mal and the crew. Some heard stories of the pilot with a list of recommendations as long as a man's leg, and some very few respected the crew's token to Wash.
And no matter what was said, or what was done, they never took down those palm trees, and they never threw out those dinosaurs.