Title: Statistics Author: Gwenfrewi Rating: K Fandom: Firefly Spoilers: None Summary: Mal thinks about death. Length: 640 according to Word. Disclaimer: The great, almighty and powerful Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. own the universe and characters. I'm just playing with them. Author's Note: Thanks to Obsidianagirl for beta’ing this story for me. You’re the best!

Feedback: is shiny and always encouraged, both the good and the bad. Copyright (c) May 2006 Patricia Flynn

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While most everyone slept, Mal lay awake in his darkened bunk. His body ached from the fresh wounds from the latest job gone wrong.

Only now, in the darkest hours of night did Mal's demons come out to haunt him. When everyone was up and busy, he could keep ‘em at bay but now they screamed and howled their way to the forefront of his mind.

He should be dead. Far better men than himself had fought and died during the war. He hated himself for that. He lost his faith in God but it didn't stop him wondering why the son of bitch kept letting him alive.

He took reckless chances continuously in the hopes of getting himself killed but never succeeded. During the War, it had been Zoe who'd saved his ass countless times. Why he was never sure and the one time he'd brought it up, she just gave him one of her stares and he never broached the subject again.

In Niska's skyplex, he knew he had to hang on long enough to get Wash out of there and once Wash left with Zoe, it had been only too easy to let go when they put that vicious torture device on him. That's why he'd been so mad, he'd finally managed to die and that bastard Niska had to bring him back to toy with him some more.

Hell, he'd had plenty of times where he could have died, but he had to pull through to make sure that his crew lived and once they were safe, there weren't no way he could refuse medical treatment.

Grunting in frustration, Mal rose from his bed and made his way to the cockpit.

River sat curled in the co-pilot's seat gazing at the stars. Her usual haunt late at night when she couldn’t sleep. She’d had more good days than bad since Miranda.

She realized that Simon medicating her too often was part of the problem and had to appeal to Mal to get him to stop drugging her at night. Her body required less sleep then everyone else because of the shit they’d done to her brain and long periods of sleep only damaged her sanity level.

Mal gently eased his sore body into the pilot’s seat. His eyes wandered over Wash’s dinosaurs. Another man who should be alive when I should be dead. Why in the gorram hell am I still alive.

“Sheppard would say that God has a plan for everyone.”

“Is that so, lil’ albatross?” Mal queried skeptically.

“Yes. Needed you to save so many people.”

Mal’s eyes widened in shock, “Huh.” Seemed to him he’d killed more than he’d saved.

“99.9 percent chance that Simon and I would be dead by the hands of the Alliance. 97 percent chance that Zoe would have died in the war if she hadn’t met you. 94 percent chance Zoe and Wash would have never met even if she had survived. 87.6 percent that Jayne would be dead now. 72 percent chance that Reavers would have killed Inara if she had taken the shuttle that was her second choice after Serenity. 65 percent chance that Kaylee would be married to a wife beater on her home planet. 50 percent chance that Sheppard would have died before reaching Haven.”

Mal sat stunned as River rattled off her list of statistics.

“How did you surmise this?”

“Looked at the relevant data and other options people thought they had at the time they met and joined your crew. Researched said options recent history on the Cortex and surmised percentages based on laws of probability. God had and has a plan for you.”

There was something right unsettlin’ about this.

“Mal, you saved us all. Some of us may have died but in reality it was a death of their choice.”