Simon was healing. By the time he awoke, Kaylee was well enough to move about, but still drowsy and disoriented from the poison and its side-effect-ridden antidote. A white light glared in Simon's eyes. His first thought upon returning to this world was make it go away. He tried to pull the string himself and missed. Twice. Kaylee’s hand caught his and curled his fingers around the wayward chain, together dimming the room. She grinned.

“How many dopies does it take to turn off a light?”

“Mhmrm?” he replied.

“You’ll be wantin’ some water. I’m rather outta it myself, but lessee what we can do…”

She missed the plastic cup with the first stream, but instead of giving up she shifted the pitcher and dribbled water all over the bedside tray until she found the right angle. Water was very heavy and mischievous for one recently recovering from a serious load of narcotics.

She lifted the cup to his lips and, with the same method she’d applied to the pitcher, found his mouth by pouring water over his chin and half a cheek first. He gagged but managed to get it down his prickly throat.

“I’m in a hospital,” he whispered hoarsely.

“It’s all okay, your record’s clean now,” she explained, scooting onto the side of the bed and chasing a few stray strands of hair from his face. “River’s safe too, and just bustin’ to see you. Zoe’s patched and Cap’n – Mal’s next door.” Her voice shook, a different quake than the drug-induced waver. “They stuck a lot of tubes in him.”

“Let me see him, I could help – ai!” He had tried to move, bending where muscles and membranes were still knitting together. It was as if an iron ball had swung into his belly and bruised every part of him above the waist and below the collar bone.

“The nurses said you weren’t to move about ‘til they checked on you – I was to notify ‘em when you came to.” Kaylee didn’t move. Her hand was around his; they folded together naturally.

Suddenly all the frustration of being a helpless patient crashed down on him.

He was waking up in the wrong order. He needed to see his chart, he craned but he couldn’t read the label on the drip bag, and every twitch and wiggle was echoed by a stab of hurt in his gut. The skin under his bandage was hot and it itched and he couldn’t get to it.

It was enough to make him howl. He was a trained doctor – he should contribute something, he should be fixing people, fixing Kaylee, fixing Mal and Zoe, fixing River and Wash, and instead he didn’t know the time of day or what had been punctured by the bullet through his abdomen or which painkiller was making his head swim so that the only stable figure in sight was the woman beside him.

“Don’t worry ‘bout the Cap’n,” she continued, her hand trembling. “Place is crawlin’ with useful folk. Why, just today they was sewing together some parts o’ him they’d missed, not wantin’ to poke around inside earlier ‘til they’d got him all stable. So it means he’s stable. Right, Simon? All them tubes and such.”

Her voice was burbling on the edge of broken.

“It sounds like he’ll do very well,” he told her smoothly.

Kaylee’s face melted into a watery grimace, nearly a smile. She slowly hoisted herself onto the bed next to him, careful not to jolt anything.

“Zoe an’ Jayne are waitin’ to hear when we can go in and see Cap’n again. We take shifts, two of us between you two and the third ‘un sleepin’ or watchin’ River, dependin’ on the time of day. Only Jayne’s waitin’ with the Cap’n while Zoe talks to the nurses and River’s followed her and so I’m supposed to be sleepin’ but I wanted to – I wanted to be with you. I didn’t want no one leavin’ you alone.”

He squeezed her hand, and his free arm drifted clumsily to her waist. She nosed into his shoulder, and his neck felt warm and wet where she hadn’t spilt water.

Out of order. His brain still wasn’t working properly – he felt like he had the time he’d stayed up all night with a fever studying for exams, only to remember there was one last report he had to write – panic and the unsettling certainty that he wouldn’t be able to make everything right. The worse suspicion that his world depended on it being right.

What came first? His mind searched for the familiar reference point. It rushed back to him – River always came first. First when waking, last before sleeping.

“My sister, was she –” he began.

“She’s been hangin’ on Zoe’s arm like they’re attached.” Just like Wash used to, Kaylee omitted. “She ain’t hurt and she’s been – a big help, actually. Getting’ food and takin’ care of us when we forget, like – like you do.”

Simon couldn’t prevent a proud quirk of the lips.

“An’ Zoe won’t admit it, but I think – I think River bein’ always there helps. She shouldn’t be – no one oughtta be alone, not after – I always thought Wash would be such a nice old guy,” Kaylee finally blurted. “Y’know, I always thought he’d be the oldest o’ any of us. The grand pappy to a big brood an’ still playin’ with his toys. I used to imagine him like that. Cheered me up somethin’ mighty, thinkin’ of Wash as an old man.”

There was a tense silence. A dry sob wracked the bodies on the bed. It was hard to tell from whom it had come.

It was too mixed about.

“Mal’s going to be an old man,” Simon started, unsure as to where this train of thought would take him – only hoping desperately that it would help. “He’s going to have a lot of children first. And…and Zoe’s going to take charge while he’s watching them come into this world. River will fly the ship for us, she’ll know how. And – I’ll deliver the kids. I’ll be there. We’ll all be there to watch Mal be a father.”

“What about Inara?” snuffled Kaylee, cheering slowly with the game.

“I think it would be impossible for her not to be there,” said Simon, and realized that on several levels it could one day be true. It was a miracle, but he could almost taste the fantasy world of happy.

“And Jayne?” Kaylee asked, the ghost of a smirk in her voice.

“I think Jayne’s going to have a big surprise when he finds out that cheating death means getting old.”

The vulnerable thread of innocence snapped with as much artlessness as it had been spun.

“Does getting old have to hurt more than growing up?” Kaylee asked tentatively.

“No. It just – hurts differently. Like…spring turning into summer,” started Simon.

“And summer turning into fall,” finished Kaylee. When her tears were gone, Kaylee was overtaken by exhaustion – she usually was after a good cry. It was the hollow, vibrating kind that led her to sleep quickly and with a strange feeling of wholeness, reality. Without concern or apology, she let herself drift away, cradled against Simon.

It didn’t occur to him that, in the order of things, their first night together should have come after a youthful passion and before this old quiet grace. Instead, he felt her in his arms, and with the abandon of a dizzy invalid slid into sleep as well. She was warm and she fit him. Their bodies were as interlocking gears; movement in one produced harmonious response in the other. Simon’s last thought before dreaming was that, now that they had seen the end together, they could spend the rest of their lives orchestrating the perfect beginning.