It don’t seem lonesome when there’s two of you. Even on this boat, when he’s waiting to fly and I’m with the engine, he’s up there and I’m down here, and we both know it. Seems that silence can be company sometimes.

Don’t mind being left on the boat; I’m no good in a fight. He had to be ready to fly us out of harm. Happens he’s needed to more than once. But sometimes there’s the worrying going on and I know that he’s up there, worrying too, and waiting for Zoë and the Captain. We know Jayne will always come through. She talks to us, Serenity. Talks to us in the way that she don’t to the others. Captain loves her, more than anything, but she don’t talk to her Captain quite the same.

Now he isn’t there, just a com signal away. They all take River out with them; she’s good in a fight, and she and the Captain fly the boat. Serenity talks to River, but together they whisper secrets the rest of us can’t join in. Mostly I wait, and I talk to the engines. I fix the parts, and I stop the creaks, and I keep us flying.

I got Simon now, and I don’t mind he goes with River to watch out for her. I’m safe on the boat. Don’t need no one to watch out for me.

Ain’t shiny much these days. Don’t rightly make sense. I got Simon, and Inara’s back, but the boat don’t feel quite so homely. Meals is quieter and there’s not so much of the funny. Laughing’s never felt wrong before. Smiling neither.

Worse for Zoë, of course. And for the Captain. When I’m with the engine out in the black, I can forget. But when the others are out thieving and the engine don’t need to be fixed, when I’m waiting, and sometimes there’s worrying going on, seems pretty hard that there isn’t someone sitting upstairs.

Sometimes there’s company in silence. Sometimes there’s just so many lonesome feelings. Never felt lost on Serenity before.

I miss Wash.