Disclaimer: characters and 'verse not mine, Joss's

Need

Zoë’d known it was a big mistake, her staying on the boat and Kaylee -- Kaylee, for the love of Buddha-- going instead. The captain’d had all kinds of reasons, like he needed Kaylee to outwit the water bank’s computer systems, and that he already had two guns with him, namely Jayne and River, and that Zoë had been working way too hard and needed to take a break. He’d nailed her on that last one, she admitted only to herself. But this was the first job he’d done in years where she wasn’t his number two.

And she was angry at the forced ‘break’. Didn’t he know she couldn’t take the nothingness? She had to keep moving, or she would notice how much the boat lacked, with her husband gone. She’d nodded in final acquiescence, but fumed as she went into the kitchen to make dinner. He could make her stay on the boat, but he couldn’t make her not work.

She stayed angry through the meal preparation, so when she heard the noise the four of them made coming back, the anger in Mal’s voice and the protestation in Kaylee's, she felt vindicated. She went down to the common room, and they all four eventually tumbled through the door, arguing back and forth. They brought a load of sand with them, shaking it out of their boots and hair and the bandanas they’d worn to protect their lungs.

Mal finally banged his fist against the wall and demanded silence. Inara, who'd poked her head out of her shuttle at their return, slipped into the room as Mal stood before Kaylee, River and Jayne in his most captainy stance. Zoe adopted an at-ease posture just behind him, and Simon, drawn out of the infirmary by their arrival and level of agitation, sat on the arm of Kaylee’s chair and wound his fingers in her hair. Zoë flashed on Wash doing just that when she perched on his lap up on the bridge, and couldn’t breathe for a moment. It took a blink of time, with a grit of her teeth, to bring herself back to focus on Mal’s swelling tirade.

“- and never, never pull a stunt like that again without telling me!”

Simon had left his favored spot at Kaylee’s side and rounded to hover protectively by his sister, asking her what had happened. She, however, didn’t seem to feel in need of any protection. She looked calmly at the finger hovering two inches from her nose and said,

“So I may pull a stunt like that if I tell you first?”

Jayne snorted. Kaylee giggled. Zoë didn’t feel like smiling, but it was kind of nice to see that reaction in others.

“NO!” Mal exclaimed. “What possessed you, anyway? We could’ve been in there and out a lot faster without all that jawin’ and waitin’ for the extra-tap-puttin’ we had to do.”

River curled her feet up beneath her. The gaze she focused on Mal was suddenly intense. “They needed me,” she said.

Whatever that meant. Maybe Inara knew, because her eyes narrowed on River thoughtfully.

Jayne leaned forward from his slump against the wall and raised his hand.

“This is not school, Jayne, and you are no longer a boy,” River admonished. Then, teachery; “Ask your question.”

He frowned at her, like he was debating not asking to spite her. Zoë knew Mal could see the meeting’s reins slipping away from him and he tried to grab them back.

“Not now, Jayne. We gotta lay some ground rules, here.” He was noticeably calmer, though.

“If I may, sir,” Zoë interjected, “what happened? No one looks injured.” Simon nodded agreement, as if she’d asked him. “Did you get paid?”

“Eventually,” he begrudged. “But we might’ve lost the job all together.”

“Oh, no, captain, I don’t think so,” Kaylee protested. “She had it figured pretty good.”

“Had what figured pretty good?” Zoë asked, not frustrated yet, but an end to her patience in sight.

Mal waved at Kaylee. “You think you got it down so well, you tell it.”

Kaylee put her nose in the air. “All right, I will.” She smiled. “I had the best view, after all. River was brilliant, Zoe. Captain said it was setting up to be a fairly typical job”-

“Which is why we all made sure we had the safeties off our guns,” Jayne commented. Zoë nodded while Mal scowled. No use denying obvious facts.

“Anyway, they all left me sitting on my mule – an actual mule, long ears and big teeth and everything – and met with these three bearded men outside the town. Well, first Captain got agitated ‘bout a change in personnel, the skinniest one with the scraggliest beard was a last-minute replacement, I guess.”

“Hey, things like that can blow the whole operation.” Mal obviously felt his judgment was being maligned.

“Yeah, anyway”-

“They can!”

“O-kay! Anyway, our contact was the Least Scraggly Beard, and he explained ‘till Captain felt better, and everything looked all right”-

“Which was when River decided to step in and truly disturb things.” Mal, again. With his interruptions, this story was taking twice as long as it needed to. Kaylee nodded impatiently and went on.

“River steps up, and pretty as can be, says, ‘your plan is not going to work.’"

Yeah, Zoe could see how that would disturb things. Kayle continued.

"Mal got his ‘I’m bewildered and enraged’ expression”-

“My what?”

Zoë nodded, she knew the look well.

“And opened his mouth to shut her up, but the LSB – Least Scraggly Beard, I’m meanin’- stopped him. She said”- Kaylee turned to the other girl. “What did you say again, River?”

“When the water-counters measure the fluid levels in the tanks, which occurs every 1.5 hours, discrepancies will be noted and security stepped up. I calculate from the circumferences of your taps and tubes and the estimated water pressure in tanks this size – depending on placement of the taps - that you will gather at most 64.83 liters before you are caught, tried in a kangaroo court, and summarily executed.”

There was quiet in the common room, before Simon’s “River”- which was cut off by Kaylee’s enthusiastic nodding.

“That! She said that! The Captain’s face was furious, and the scraggly-beards were all confused but angry, and Jayne backed up I guess to get out of the crossfire.”

“Hey! I was adjustin’ my strategic position!”

“Jayne!” Mal again. “Stop interrupting and let the girl talk!”

“Me? You’re the one-“

“SO”- Kaylee raised her voice to override the so-called ‘men’ - “LSB didn’t have much to say, so Middle Scraggly Beard spoke up about we shoulda told ’em way before now, or screwed ‘em and kept the money. And River, she just grins at him like he re-invented the photon reaction drive, and says ‘There is a solution.’ And of course, Captain finally got words out just to threaten, and told her there’d better be a solution or we’d be revisiting the burning-at-the-stake he was regretin’ rescuin’ her from.”

Inara had been following the story intently since the 'need' comment, and at this she glared at Mal. He smirked at her and gestured at Kaylee. “Keep going.”

“So River bends over and pulls up her skirt. Jayne 'bout got whip-lash, turnin' to see"-

“What? Jayne”- this was Simon. 'Oops', Kaylee’s face clearly said, and she hurried on.

“From underneath there she pulled out these little packages wrapped in plastic, and put them on the ground. She didn’t explain what they were, so after a minute, LSB grunted. ‘I gonna get an explanation, or do I just hafta shoot all of ya?’” Kaylee was getting into her story, doing voices and trying to imitate accents. “Tell her what you said, River.”

River’s mouth moved in exasperation, much as Zoë imagined it had originally.

“Displacement,” she said. “Taps with reverse valves, for putting in instead of taking out. Sand. It will settle to the bottom and not contaminate. For example only, they will have to find more of their own.”

Kaylee giggled. “She looked around kinda disparagin’, after that, like she thought there in all those dunes they weren’t bright enough to get hold of their own sand. Well, they still weren’t getting it, and people’s hands were getting’ close to their guns. Then Jayne of all people kinda rolled his eyes and stepped up holdin’ his own hands out and empty. And he told them what she said, only simple so they understood.”

“Which was what?” Zoe asked bemusedly. She noticed Kaylee watching her face, which did feel the most animated it had in months. Kaylee looked at Jayne. “Explain what she meant, Jayne.”

“Ain’t so difficult. She was saying, attach the reverse taps when you do the regular ones, and when you drain off water put that much sand back into the tank. It’ll settle to the bottom, the water’ll stay clean, and the, uh, water levels won’t go down. They wouldn’t. get. caught.” He shook his head at the end, like the thickest baichi* in the ‘verse could’ve worked it out.

Huh.

Zoë had seen Jayne treat people like they were idiots before – he did it to the doc all the time - but it wasn’t every day he was actually in the know when the others weren’t. For the first time since Wash left her, she felt a smile nudge at the corner of her mouth. It gained no access, of course, and the sensation was quickly gone. She wasn’t sure she approved of its presence, either. She kept her face soldier-set, as if all her nerve endings had one setting and that was numb.

But inside she wasn’t numb. She’d never been numb. She prayed nightly for numb, but all she ever got was this clawing screaming empty-but-not amputation feeling in her dark deep parts. Something had been there, something precious and unique and beloved had filled all those parts up. There was hurting like it was still there; ghost pains. But she knew that preciousness was gone because those special functions were lost.

It had been awhile since Miranda, how long she wasn’t exactly sure. The days all blurred together into one big ache in the back of her throat and behind her eyes. But they’d celebrated River’s 18th birthday, a month or two back. So it had been awhile and nothing was changing. Time, the huaidan*, wasn’t healing anything. She did her duty every day, and without that she’d have had nothing but the pain. Duty, her captain, the boat, the crew – that was it. It was paltry, compared with what she’d had. And some days hurt worse than what she imagined having nothing would feel like.

She’d drifted again, and Kaylee was talking again, explaining that they did the job, with River’s modifications, after Mal asked whether the contents, not just the levels, of the tanks weren’t ever checked. LSB said they were, but it was a periodic dip-stick process just to check purity. Sand lying on the tank’s bottoms wouldn’t interfere. River inserted that since they would now be getting free water, someone would have to get their official rations in sand, or the tanks would fill with it and that would surely be noticed. The locals seemed to think they could manage this, though Zoë didn’t track exactly how.

So here they were back on Serenity. Simon put his hand on his sister’s shoulder, smiling. “That was a good thought, River.” She smiled back up at him. Kaylee nodded. “It really was, Captain, you gotta admit.”

“I don’t gotta admit anything. She should’ve informed me ahead of time, instead of just opening up and yapping to the locals and ambushing the rest of us. Things could have gone a lot worse.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t,” Jayne said, standing away from the wall he’d been holding up. “I’m ready for my cut now, Mal.”

“First the ground rules! This can’t happen again!”

They sat through the ground rules everyone had heard before, and finally were allowed to disperse. As Zoë passed River on her way up to the bridge, she paused when River reached her hand out. The young woman leaned toward her and whispered, “Smiles are strength. They’re not wrongness. But tears might have to come first. The broken parts will work again.”

Zoë didn’t pretend she didn’t know what River meant. She met her gaze briefly before nodding, just slightly. Maybe time was changing the hurt, a little and slowly. She wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

* * * *

River stayed sitting while everyone else filtered out; it was Mal’s turn to pilot them off-world, so she didn't need to hurry anywhere. She fiddled with the hem of her skirt, waiting. It only took about five minutes. He re-entered the room, huffily. She slanted her chin up and smiled at him, raised her eyebrows. He folded his arms over the front of his t-shirt, and looked like nothing so much as the little boy she’d told him he wasn’t.

“Just want to know, what’s a kangaroo?”

Yes, silliness was about to ensue. River smiled and didn't let her eyes leave his as she began the description