Disclaimer: Serenity and Co. are Joss Whedon's. All hail ze master.

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You sat bolt upright in your bed, literally drenched in sweat with your heart pounding and your mind racing. Glancing around, you barely recognized the surroundings you were in. You weren’t in some desert—you were still where you had been when you fell asleep. A tiny bed in a tiny apartment on big Persephone. Your roommate, Kailani, a beautician, was the best undiscovered hairdresser you could find near the Eavesdown Docks. You, currently unemployed, tried to find jobs with ships that came into the docks. Nothing fancy, just some loading of cargo and minor fixes and whatnot. It didn’t help much, but it got your half of the rent paid. But that wasn’t what you wanted. You wanted desperately to fly. Ever since the war, you’d wanted to be a pilot, but with the kind of schooling you had, you were better off being a soldier on the ground level. They put you in the 57th where you’d met Zoë, and Sergeant Reynolds. At first after the war you got a few letters from them, talking about how they’d bought a ship and named it Serenity. But after a few years, the letters slowed and, in the end, stopped. You’d been living here since three years ago when you met Kailani. After the initial shock of the dream, a wave of sleepiness rolled over you as though you were lying on a beach of consciousness just when the tide rolled in. You shook it out of your head as you got up and walked out of your little room and stumbled through the darkness into the kitchen. You deftly made some coffee and sipped it, your short, jagged black hair falling messily into your face. Tossing it to the side, you began to think about the dream. Truthfully, it wasn’t like it was anything new; this same type of nightmare had been plaguing your sleep for a few months now. Same dream, different versions. Always the same premise—someone killing you because they couldn’t take not being with you, always the shock. And always the same man. You never remembered much about him, mostly only his eyes. Blue, but with a sharp edge like a razor. His voice was the same way, harsh and wolfish, but with a certain softness underneath. Sighing, you glanced at the clock. At least it was 6am, not a long time till dawn. Sure enough, twenty minutes later the sun poured in through the few windows in the apartment, nearly blinding you in the little chair you moved to. Kailani woke up shortly after the sun did, and right after she made coffee and was still messing about in the kitchen, you got up and carried your empty coffee cup over to fill it. She quirked an eyebrow at you. “You were just waiting for me to make the coffee before you got some, weren’t you?” “Yep,” you responded, taking a sip. She grinned. “A method to the madness.” You smiled and shrugged. “Can’t help the fact you make the best coffee in the ‘verse, Kai.” She laughed, but it faded slightly when she noticed how tired you looked. “Nightmares again?” “Can’t seem to shake ‘em,” you sighed. She attempted a smile at you before going into her room. You leaned your head back onto one of the cabinets above the counter as the beeping that signaled a wave coming in and you wondered irritably what kind of idiot would be waving someone this early. “Kai, can you get that?” The beeping stopped for a few moments before Kailani came walking out of her room and grabbed her purse. “It’s for you, Enya,” she said as she walked past you. “I’m off. Gotta be at the shop by eight.” “See ya,” you said as she walked out the door, then walked over to the screen on the wall in the kitchen. Taking a moment to straighten yourself, you touched a button on the screen and blinked in surprise. “Sarge?” “Enya, hey.” The man on the screen smiled. It was him, all right—Mal Reynolds. He looked more or less the same, but something about him was different; you couldn’t quite place it. You grinned. “Hey. Been a while.” “That it has.” “What occasions the wave, then?” He paused. “Got a proposition for ya.” You quirked an eyebrow. “What kinda proposition?” Mal gave a short laugh. “One you’ll like. We need a pilot.”