Eight months had passed since her parents had been murdered.

Some times it seemed as though it had been mere days.

And sometimes it seemed to have been years.

The pain of their loss had faded, she missed them still, but the hurt was nearly gone.

The anger still burned.

And the guilt.

She didn’t think that those two feelings would ever go away.

But their being gone was no longer agony.

She still had nightmares about what had been done to them.

And she still needed to only close her eyes to see their broken bodies again.

She sometimes felt like she was betraying them, with how easily she had gotten on with her life.

She knew they wouldn’t think so; that they would be happy that she was happy.

And she was happy.

Happier than she’d ever been.

It bothered her that her parents had to die for her to be the happiest she’d ever been in her life.

What a sad commentary on the life she’d lived for twenty five years, that she was happier now, even with the grief she felt for the deaths of her family than she’d ever been before.

Her parents had loved her.

She did not doubt that.

But her father had been a tinker. He’d spent days at a time in his basement lab, fiddling with this and that. She had spent little time with him until she was ten or so, old enough to be trusted to listen.

And her mother a doctor on a rim world. She’d constantly been out and about dealing with emergencies and day to day details. She was often gone for days on end because she was the only doctor for six days ride.

She’d gone through a series of babysitters, local girls and a few local boys until she was six. But from then on she’d been on her own.

The only sitter she really recalled had been Hazel. She’d watched her several times when she’d been about four, and it had been Hazel who’d introduced her to plants. The second time Hazel came to watch her, she’d brought seeds and some old child sized gardening equipment. She’d never lost interest.

She’d begun tinkering with the genetics of her beloved garden when she was thirteen.

By the time she was sixteen she had her own lab, which she rarely left.

She’d never realized that she was missing anything.

But now, now she knew what she was missing.

Friends.

She had a lab in the guest room across the hall from hers.

The room above that one held plants.

The common room had larger specimens liberally throughout; there were a few in the cockpit (the ones River liked the best).

Some in Zoe’s room (mostly the orchids…and two miniature roses)

Two strawberry plants in Kaylee and Simon’s bunk.

Herb plants in the kitchen.

Vines growing on the trellises Jayne had built against the wall in the cargo bay, complaining the whole time about the waste of material, space and the general stupidity of having plants in space...

And a jasmine vine in Mal and Inara’s shuttle, that she’d cultivated just for Inara when she found out how much she missed them.

She had her lab, she had her plants and she had friends.

She no longer missed meals, because Kaylee, or River or Zoe or Inara would come looking for her if she didn’t show up on time.

She could talk to any of them about anything.

Mal joked with her and treated her like an annoying younger sister. Complaining about the plants “taking over his boat” and then in the same breath admonishing her to make sure his half of the garden didn’t die. At meal times he’d want to know if she was cutting into his profit margin by letting the crew eat all the fresh produce. And the way he went on about the two strawberry plants she’d given Kaylee!

Even Jayne had thawed around her.

He still didn’t much care for her having the guns (which Mal had made him give back).

But he respected her, after she had tied with him in every shooting competition they’d had.

She had a family and a home here.

There was a lot of laughter on this ship. And no little bickering.

She found in the course of her experiments that the plants which had started off as wild did the best.

Like they were more determined to take root and survive than the garden variety tame plants.

And strawberries had grown in plentiful abandon on Huar. The plants she had now were descended from some wild ones she had found out in the back pasture.

She had been pleased with the crop, there were so many strawberries and that meant jams and jellies which always sold well.

She had been shocked…and no little angry when she had found every single strawberry gone when she went to check on them one morning.

Easily three bushels just plain gone!

She stormed through the ship looking for them, and had found Kaylee curled in a ball of abject misery in her hammock, strawberry juice liberally smeared across her hands and face.

She hadn’t the heart to be mad then, but oh how she had laughed once Kaylee was feeling better!

Then there was the tea rose incident.

Zoe loved roses, they were her favorites, so for her birthday she had decided to grow a rose bush for her.

Zoe didn’t care about the type of rose, but Mother had always been partial to the tea roses, they had the best scent, as such she had had a cutting in cryro and she set out to revive it for Zoe.

She had grown it in secret and then left it in the center of the table the day of the celebration.

How everyone had laughed when Mal had started sneezing, his eyes running and his nose bright red.

Simon had quickly administered an anti-histamine, but not before Kaylee had gotten several good captures.

But the best was the cake incident. It had been River’s birthday, and Kaylee had been too ill to make the cake, so Inara had volunteered to.

She had even gotten real ingredients so that it was a real cake, not protein shaped, and flavored to look and taste like cake.

It had been beautiful, a true work of art. Three levels, covered in frosting and roses made of frosting, almost too lovely to eat.

Jayne had been the first to start eating his cake, and in typical Jayne fashion he had put half of his slice in his mouth at once.

Immediately he began choking, Simon rushed to remove the obstruction, only to find that it was the taste causing the reaction.

It seems that Inara in her haste had used salt in the frosting and the cake rather than sugar.

The memory of Jayne’s expression was enough to start her giggling again, Inara looked up from the sauce she was stirring at the first smothered giggle.

She raised one elegant eyebrow, silently inviting an explanation, and her choked,

“Jayne…face…cake” was enough to set her off too.

Looking at the beautiful woman who was giggling uncontrollably beside her, she realized that this was home.