Expectations were interesting things.

Troublesome too.

True they could shape a man, or woman for the better or the worse.

For certain they had shaped the verse.

The thing with expectations is they changed the way you viewed things.

Affected it a lot more than most folk were willing to give credit.

It made expectations dangerous.

Kept you from seeing things as they really were.

That could get you killed.

In general he tried not to have any.

And the few he allowed himself to have, he made sure they were reasonable ones.

See if you had too many expectations.

And if they were unrealistic ones, it hurt when they failed you.

He’d had a lot when he was younger.

And losing each and every one of them had hurt him.

Some of those wounds were still healing…some never would.

When he’d gone blithely off to war, he’d expected to live.

There were times he doubted that he did, survived yes. Existed, yes.

But living?

He’d expected to win.

Look how that had turned out.

He’d expected to keep his people safe.

And each bullet that had taken someone he was responsible for had taken a part of him.

He kicked himself for that one.

He knew how it hurt.

Knew how impossible an expectation it was to meet.

And still he kept it.

He’d thought the less people he was responsible for would make it easier to keep.

And it did.

But it made failing hurt more.

He’d expected that he’d have a home to go to after they won the war.

Expected that his Ma would be there for him when he came back, same as she always was.

That was one of the wounds that he figured would never heal.

He’d expected to win at Serenity Valley.

He’d expected backup.

He’d thought that he’d never recover from that failed expectation.

But he was.

Slowly for certain.

In starts and stops, the wound was closing over.

It wasn’t healed and wouldn’t be for many years to come, but it was healing.

He’d expected God to be there for him always.

He’d expected to hate God forever for deserting them, for deserting HIM back in that Valley.

He wasn’t ready to pray.

Wasn’t even ready to say out loud that he believed.

Not that he’d stopped believing….

But he didn’t hate God anymore.

He didn’t blame Him anymore.

And he’d begun to see that if anyone had done the deserting it had been one Malcolm Reynolds.

Not God.

Book had tried to teach him that.

But he hadn’t been ready.

Book had persisted anyway, he’d known, expected Mal to be ready one day.

As a lad he’d expected that he’d love and serve God forever.

Strange the ways expectations shaped a man.

And the verse.