A/N: Thanks as usual to my fantastic beta Neroli. She really helped me nail the Inara part and just improve this ficlet overall! I'm not too good at keeping my thoughts short, so anything under 1000 words is always extra tough. Hope you enjoy.

Naah, was much better to simply keep Vera shined and his muscles strong. Then when he got into a bit of trouble, he didn't have to fantasize about how to get out of it.

Hard to admit it even to himself, but he fantasized sometimes. Not often, mostly just a means to make it through the bad times. No sense in wasting energy on it usually, but sometimes you had to escape through the dreams so's to survive the reality you were stuck in. Did it during the camps, did it when he was on Niska's Skyplex waiting for ….well waiting for it to be over.

Didn't fantasize about rescue that time. Had some nice ones where he dreamed that they'd switched places, but that didn't distract near enough. Nah, he'd gone for the best one. After dying the second time, he figured it wasn't like he was gonna get a lot of chances to daydream ever again so's might as well go whole hog.

It was a nice fantasy as fantasies go. He'd never left Shadow, never joined up with the Independents. Had minded his own business, taken over the ranch and married that purty little gal he used to torment during Sunday school. It was a right nice life right up until he realized that the girl looking up at him wasn't his childhood sweetheart. Reality came back then and he remembered why he never fantasized anymore – only made the living more bitter than before.

Fantasies were the Devil's work. A way for Him to tempt you with images of times where you were stronger, smarter, more perfect than you'd really been. Fantasies only distracted one from pursuing redemption; true deliverance only came from living in the now to make up for one's sins.

This boat had a way of constantly tempting him though. The dark one used the girl to tempt him with the fantasy of returning to his old life a hero. There was also the temptation to end her suffering, but he knew he couldn't do that and still look himself in the mirror again. She was innocent, but did it matter?

After those images played themselves through his mind, he locked himself in his room with his Bible. Such ideas were evil indeed and only a symptom of the downfall he fought against daily while amongst these honorable criminals. Some days he fantasized that he'd gotten on a different boat at Persephone.

Indulging the fantasies of others was what she did for a living, so it was only natural that she would occasionally allow herself to daydream. Ironically, her favorite left her feeling the most depressed. Imagining how he would have been if she'd met him before Serenity only left her feeling disconnected and upset. Nothing would have been different, she'd still have been a Companion and he would never have been able to accept it.

Sometimes she would wake in the middle of the night and stare at him as she fantasized what their child would look like. She wondered if it would get his eyes and guess at which facial feature would most look like him. Would the child be tall or a mixture of their heights? Whose laugh would it have? He was right though, raising a child on a spaceship would be difficult. Somehow, she could never see any tears in her dreams.

He fantasized about being the hero. He'd manage to get her to look at him with real respect for what he accomplished rather than indulgence. He'd give her a reason to be proud of him other than managing to not crash the ship. Sometimes he'd even fantasize that Mal didn't survive the war so that he wouldn't have to compete with the man's glorious past. Usually this was when he'd remember that he owed the Captain for keeping her alive during and after the war. One thing he couldn't imagine was how he could have ever lived without meeting her.

She loved to live in her fantasies. It had been amazing when the Captain had taken her to the ball in the perfect dress. She'd felt like a fairy godmother had come down and granted her wish. Captain had even turned into a pumpkin at the end by getting in that duel.

She imagined sometimes that she met Simon at that ball. Of course, he'd fallen hard for her and come to woo her. Only then, he'd still be Simon and still be repelled by the lese that he considered Serenity to be. She sighed and gazed up at her dress. At least she'd had a few hours of her fantasy being reality.

He had given up fantasizing after being on Serenity. No matter what he did, he always felt guilty. If he dreamed that his sister had never attended the school and was whole, healthy, and beautiful, it meant that he'd never met Kaylee. But to imagine a life with the mechanic meant that they'd always be on the run. Afterward, he always felt like they both knew what he'd hoped for and judged him.

No, he'd been led astray by fantasies of saving his sister and healing her. He knew that fantasies never came true.

In her dreams, she gave it to them all. The life without war, the children, the accolades, the love, all of it. She knew that each of them sacrificed for her. She wished she could make it better, wished she could be someone else. Since she couldn't, she kept their fantasies alive.