Disclaimer: Firefly and all related elements, characters and indicia © Mutant Enemy Productions and 20th Century Fox Television, 2003. All Rights Reserved. All characters and situations—save those created by the authors for use solely on this website—are copyright Mutant Enemy Productions and 20th Century Fox Television.

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Author's Note: This story contains mature themes, including sexual violence. Proceed with caution.

Lex Talionis
by Tara O'Shea

Part II

Lord, please look after Your child who is suffering now. She's a sweet, kind girl, full of light and hope in a 'verse with precious little of both. This child of Yours is a gift. Since meeting her, I've never seen her be anything but kind and gracious, sharing what little she has freely and without pause. She's a good soul—a credit to You in nearly every way.

Lord, I know that Your ways are ineffable—mysterious and unknowable. But I can't believe that this child's hurt would be any part of any plan for us You might have. Please, help us find the strength and will to get through this dark time—especially the captain. He may have turned his back on You, but I know that whether he wants any part of You or not, that You are still his God.

Help him find his way in this wilderness.

Help us all.

Amen.

The engine room was quiet.

Kaylee had left her toolbox out and open, a wrench sitting on its side across the open lid, to hand in case she'd needed it. The engine spun lazily, steady as a heartbeat, keeping them all alive as she went.

Mal sat down heavily on the edge of a raised bulkhead, and pulled the cortex link out of the pocket of his shirt. He plugged the datachip into the slot and hit playback, knuckles white where they gripped the hard plastic reader. His jaw ached from Simon's punch. He welcomed the pain, in a way.

Mal's stomach twisted, threatened. He clamped down hard on it—even though his throat burned as the message played again, volume turned down low so no one could hear it. He didn't need to hear it—he almost had it memorised, even though he'd only viewed it once thus far. The reader still bore the marks from where he'd flung it across the cargo bay, and it had hit a storage container hard before clattering to the deck. He was lucky it still functioned at all. Kaylee would have tore into him, if he'd broken it... And probably fixed it in the time it took for him to walk from one end of the bay to another.

He didn't see the face on the cortex screen. All he could see, whether his eyes were opened or closed, was Kaylee's still form on the examination table.

He'd seen worse—much worse. In the war, and after. This was different. The boy had been right. This was all his fault.

"You're just the moon, reflecting the light back. But the sun is cold, and you've gone dark."

Mal looked up to see River. The girl was standing just inside the hatchway, leaning against the door.

"I suppose I have at that," he said as she came the rest of the way in and sat down, cross-legged on the floor in front of him. Her red cotton blouse had been Zoe's once—he remembered when she'd bought it, so many years ago. The pattern was faded now, from washing. She was barefoot—she always seemed to find reasons to kick off her shoes, and the soles of her feet were almost black with grime from Serenity's hallways. He wondered if Simon had given her a talking to about that yet. "Your brother know you're up and about?"

"Simon can't see me. He looks, but all he sees is her."

"Well... I can see how that would—"

"He won't stop," she said, cutting him off. "He won't stop until you're alone."

He knew without asking that she wasn't referring to Simon anymore.

"You know, it ain't nice to go peeking inside folks' heads without them knowing."

She shrugged. "Cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion. Customs curtsy to great kings."

"More poetry? Aren't you just the fancy one, now."

"More at stake than they know."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"They love her. They love you. If you don't tell them, you cut your own hair."

"Okay, now you've lost me, with the whole barbering segue there."

She got up on her knees, and leaned forward, brushing his hair lightly with the tips of her fingers. "He knows how to hurt you by not hurting you. He knows, can't take that away. Can't take it back. Too late. The bird has already escaped from that cage. But you need to stand tall, stand together. They can't stand unless you tell them."

She withdrew her hand, let it fall to her side. The movement carried a strange kind of grace to it. Mal just looked at her, feeling slightly disconnected, unnerved yet somehow made stronger by the girl's clear gaze.

"Gorram geniuses, always being right," he muttered, and she smiled.

"That's my ship."

He was a pretty one—blond hair brushed back from his forehead. He had the arms of his jump-suit tied loosely around his waist, and she was real curious about the tattoos that criss-crossed his muscled chest. He'd shown up the day before, looking for spare parts, and they'd fallen to talking while her daddy had looked to see what they had could jury-rig a firefly secondary grav boot. He said his name was Bester, and they were stopping over on Zephyr on their way to Paquin. She'd run into him again that morning at one of the fresh fruit stalls in the market and trailed along after him back to the docks.

But pretty as he was, Kaylee couldn't tear her eyes away from the aught-three firefly sitting down there at the dock. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. Sitting there, shining in the hot summer sun, it just fair took her breath away. There was no wind, and she could hear cicadas down by the river, their song carrying in the still air.

Her cargo bay doors were open in an attempt to keep airflow while the engine wasn't moving. It wouldn't do much good—not in this heat. Kaylee had braided her hair to keep it off her neck and tugged on a short little sundress that morning, foregoing her usual canvas coverall because it was just too damned hot to bother. Not on a Sunday, anyway. The docks had been half-dead all summer, and her daddy and the boys had spent almost more time fishing on the river to put food on the table, than being hired out on retrofitting jobs.

"She's so... mêilì." Kaylee sighed. "She use a trace compression block?"

"Uh... yeah. I think so."

"Oh, I have been itching to get my hands on one of those so bad!"

For her eighteenth birthday, Kaylee had gotten a brand new toolbox, full of her very own tools. She'd grown up using her daddy's and her brothers' gear. Her mamma had fussed, saying that weren't no fitting present for a gal coming of age and all, but Kaylee had just beamed with pride.

Ephram had always talked about Sam taking over the shop when he got ready to retire, but of late, he'd been dropping hints that maybe Kaylee would make a better accounting than Sam. She knew near every junkyard and scrap shop in Riverside, and chatted on the cortex with others far away as New Melbourne and Cheyenne, all the way on the other side of the planet. Packages streamed into the shop, as she spent her mad money on shiny new gadgets and parts, instead of ribbons and clothes like her sisters had before her. Not that Kaylee didn't love a bit of frippery now and again—but faced with a new dress, or a barely used secondary grav boot, there just weren't no choice as far as she was concerned.

But as much as her daddy's confidence in her made her shine, the truth was, she imagined a life bigger than staying on in Riverside, mending ships and watching them all sail away. In her heart of hearts, she wanted to sign on as a maintenance tech and see those stars close up. Not to one of them big Alliance cruisers—when their shop had gotten conscripted to over-haul an Alliance cruiser last summer, she'd seen first hand what a giant cock-up their engineering was. Their cooling drive system drove her to distraction—not to mention, you get four, six of them twitchy Gurtlser engines crammed up under each drive, and you'd be hard pressed to keep from asphyxiating the entire crew one of them bypass systems failed. She couldn't see no sense in it. Alliance had all the best that credits could buy, yet under all that shine weren't nothing but junk. But the engineers in charge hadn't much cared to hear what a seventeen year old "prairie harpy" had to say. In the end, they hadn't even gotten paid a fair wage, and Alliance credits didn't go nearly as far as platinum on Zephyr. Left a bad taste in her mouth, the whole thing, and her daddy had vowed then and there never to work for the Alliance if he could get by on his own.

No, what Kaylee loved were those old transport ships—some of them two, three decades or more past their supposed expiration date. She loved getting up inside them, seeing the marks each engineer had left on 'em, tweaking this, smoothing that. Made each of them unique, and even thought she'd never been up in a one of them, she'd learned half a dozen ways around just about every problem a spacer could face, just by working on the ships that came through Riverside each year, hauling cargo and passengers from one end of the 'verse to the other. Some were better than others, of course. She'd laughed when her daddy had made a point of showing her how the 80-10 was just an 80-04 with shiny new plating—the guts were all the same, made in the same factories, using the same parts as they always had. Folks snapped up whatever shiny new model come out and never seemed to pay no mind to what was under the hood half the time. It was a life-lesson, Ephram had said, and one she took to heart. It weren't the package that mattered, so much as the heart of a thing.

"I could show it to you..."

"Really?" she squealed, and Bester grinned.

"Hell, yeah. Always nice to meet a girl knows her engines, you know?"

"Won't your captain—won't he get mad?"

He shrugged. "Nah, he's shiny."

Her heart was beating wildly in her chest, and her eyes caressed the clean lines of the little freighter. It was just so... perfect. Oh, sure, she wasn't quite in the prime of her life. She had some scorch marks along her sides, and Kaylee could see where she'd been patched up a few times. But that just gave her character. Ship like that, it was a dream. She was suddenly fiercely jealous. Tomorrow, that little firefly would lift off, and Kaylee Frye would just go right back to her same old life, no surprises. No real challenges.

But for today... She could at least crawl around inside her, see all her guts and bits and pieces, and pretend.

"Shiny," she smiled as she took his arm and they started towards the firefly.

"Hello, Mister Reynolds. I trust by now you have received my package? I hope it wasn't too damaged in transport. You know my boys—they can get, how you say? A bit rowdy at times. Full of high spirits, my boys.

"I know, now—I went about it all wrong the last time. So, this? This is to fix. To make clear.

"I can find you, Mister Reynolds, any place you hide. I can reach any one of your people, any time I desire. I will start with your women and break them. Then I will have your men killed one by one. And you will be left alone. To suffer.

"This one? She is just the beginning."

Mal switched off the reader and took in the shocked and angry faces of his crew as they sat around the kitchen table. "I wanted you all to know what the deal was—what we're up against. Who did this. Y'all have that right, and I'm sorry I kept it from you this long."

"Where—how—" Wash asked, glancing back and forth between his wife and the captain.

"Came over the cortex when they—when we found her. Secure transmission. Untraceable."

"I wish you'd killed that méiyôu mûqin de xiao gôu when you had the chance." Inara had her arms wrapped around herself, and her dark eyes seemed pools of black, absorbing all the light.

"Well, I didn't exactly get the chance—he was a little too busy killing me at the time," Mal reminded her, but couldn't even conjure up a grim smile to try and soften the words.

River sat next to Simon and held one of his hands in both of her own. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he kept glancing back at the hatchway. Mal knew he didn't want to be here—he wanted to be down in the infirmary. It was in every line of his body. Mal could sympathise. He'd called everybody up here for this little town meeting and had to pry the preacher and the doc away from Kaylee's side.

Mal took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "You all can walk away from this."

"None of us are going anywhere, sir," Zoe said, her voice steady and even, and her words were met with nods and affirmatives from all assembled. Mal was actually a little surprised to see Jayne as angry as Zoe.

"Gorram bastards mess up one of our own, I say we show 'em how we treat húndàn who beat up little girls ain't got no quarrel with them. That's what I say."

"Jayne—This ain't the same as last time. Niska's powerful, and dangerous."

"Well so am I."

"You had surprise on your side, going up against Niska on the skyplex." Mal hated playing devil's advocate, but someone had to. "This is different. He wants to pick us off, one by one."

"So what, we ruttin' let him? That's gôu pì. I ain't sitting around, waiting for that psycho to try and kill me in my gorram sleep."

"Don't see as how we have a lot of choice in the matter."

"So, what? We rabbit?" Jayne snarled, disdain dripping from each syllable.

Book stepped away from the wall, almost deadly calm as he locked eyes with Mal. "We run—he'll just keep coming."

"I'm all aware of that, Preacher."

"How'd he even find us to begin with?" Wash asked. He was almost shaking—Mal could see it. The two of them had barely escaped from Niska's clutches the last time, and he didn't need to ask Zoe to know that Wash still had nightmares about the tortures they'd endured on the Skyplex. "We've made a point of staying out of his way—"

"Only one who knew we'd be on Greenleaf was Badger, sir," Zoe said, her husband's hand still clutched in hers. "You think he sold us out?"

"I wouldn't put it past him. How 'bout we pay him a little call? After all, we did leave him high and dry on Greenleaf. Man's got to be wonderin' about his cargo. Deserves to get an answer, don't you think?"

He might not have been be ready to go up against Niska just yet—but if Badger had sicced Niska's dogs on them, well... he had no qualms about letting the fence know that business or not, he'd take some of his anguish out on the limey little bastard's hide.

Wash jumped up from the table, his chair scraping across the floor. "I'll lay in a course for Persephone."

"Then what?" Simon asked, his eyes boring into Mal's.

"Then I'm of a mind to go hunting."

"Captain Malcolm Reynolds."

"Ephram Frye."

"Please to meet you, sir."

The two men sized each other up about as subtly as two bucks about to lock horns. Mal stood at the end of Serenity's ramp, hands in his pockets, as his new mechanic and her folks stood still on the dirt side in the shadow of the hull. The girl was beaming, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, but her daddy was regarding Mal with the kind of gaze a man usually aimed at a fella asking for a daughter's hand in marriage—not offering her a job.

Made Mal feel all sorts of uncomfortable, and for the first time he wished he'd had the presence of mind to ask Bester where exactly he'd met his prairie harpy and how the hell old she was. In the dim light of the engine room, he'd had her pegged for Bester's own age—someone south of twenty-five, but still north of eighteen. But in the plain light of day, and a pair of cut-off coveralls with—was that a fuzzy little teddy bear? A gorram bear sewn over one knee, he suddenly wondered if this little gal was old enough to sleep over at a girlfriend's house—let alone go off-world with a strange crew she'd just met that afternoon.

"Kaywinnet tells me you're offering her a job," the man said calmly, his voice carrying the same lilt as the girl's had. The same accent Mal had grown up with on Shadow, which wasn't all that far from Zephyr, if the space between stars could be considered not far at all.

"Yes, sir. Serenity—that's my ship. Well, she could use a good mechanic, and from what little I seen, your girl is about the best mechanic I could find, even if I looked a hundred years. And that ain't me putting a shine on the truth, sir. Not one bit."

"What kind of work you do?"

"We haul cargo—passengers, too, when we can. I got a standard short-range shuttle I'm looking to rent out to bring in a bit of extra. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that work can be a bit scarce—but we work steady as a ship like ours can work. Got a job waiting for us on Paquin, matter of fact—we're two days late, thanks to my daì ruò mù ji mechanic."

"Thought it was the secondary grav boot, when it weren't nothin' but the g-line gettin' tacked 'cause the reg couple was bad," girl said conspiratorially to her father, who nodded sagely.

"Now I don't know what that all means," Mal admitted with a smile. He'd seen her do it and still wasn't sure what she'd done. Even Bester had still seemed shell-shocked as he'd wandered off, duffel slung over his shoulder before the girl and her folks had shown up. "All I do know is that your daughter was kind enough to get us up and flying when no one else could. And that means she's just the sort I can count on to keep her in the sky. Job's hers, if she wants it."

"These fireflies are quite a favourite of smugglers, or so I hear," the girl's mother spoke up, and Mal saw that her green eyes held a shrewdness that he recognised. "What with all the little hideys."

Mal decided that honesty was the best policy. Girl had to know what she was signing onto, after all. "Truth be told, not all the work we get is legal. But I swear to you sir, ma'am—that legal or not, it's honest work. I won't run drugs or slaves, you have my word on that. I got no love for the Alliance—me and my first mate were both browncoats, fought in the war. But war is long behind us now, and all I want is to do an honest day's work, get paid, and keep my ship in the sky and my crew's bellies full. Mechanic's cut is ten percent, straight off the top, of any job."

"Bà bà—" the girl whispered, tugging on her father's arm as she shifted the bag on her shoulder. "It's a good job, better'n anything we've had—"

"Now Kaylee-bird, you just hush," her mother said, eyes still on Mal. Despite the freckles and frizzy ginger hair so different from the woman of his memory—it could have been his own mamma staring back at him in that gingham dress, crows feet around her eyes the only sign that age had touched her at all.

"It's her decision, and I expect she made it the second you asked her," Ephram finally said as he reached out to shake Mal's hand. "I just told her I had to meet you first, see what kind of man you are."

His handshake was firm—almost a little too firm, and he didn't let go of Mal's hand right off.

"This is my baby girl, Cap'n Reynolds. You look after her proper. Dong ma?"

"You've got my word, sir. I'll take good care of her." Mal hid a wince as best he could as Ephram's grip tightened briefly before her released his hand.

Mal stood beneath the stairs, in front of one of the infirmary windows, watching Simon with Kaylee. The doctor hadn't noticed him. Mal figured that was good. He'd gotten punched once already today.

He kept staring at the bandage on Kaylee's broken fingers. Picturing how cross she'd be once she woke up, not being able to hold a wrench properly. She's probably start bossing Book and Jayne around in her engine room. Mechanic-ing by remote. That would be a thing to see. A thing to see indeed.

Mal kept pretending that once she opened her eyes, everything would go back to normal.

"It isn't your fault," Inara said quietly from behind him.

He'd known she was there—heard her soft tread, smelled the sandalwood and lemon oil scent that clung to her gown from the incense she burned in her shuttle. Breathed deep the perfume of lily of the valley she used in her hair, so he didn't flinch when she spoke. They always seemed to find one another, when they needed to. To talk things out. Yell and scream. Sit and joke. He could count on two hands the number of times it had happened in the last year—but it always did happen. Sure as summer rain.

"The hell it isn't," Mal said as they started up the stairs. He was leading her back towards her shuttle, and he knew she knew it. "Simon blames me. I'm surprised you don't."

Her fingers plucked at his elbow, forcing him to stop halfway across the catwalk to her door. "I know you—you had to leave that medicine in Paradiso. You couldn't not, not after you saw the plight of those settlers—"

"Don't have a thing to do with Paradiso," Mal said simply. "It has everything to do with going into business with Niska and his like in the first place."

Her lips parted in surprise at his admission, and she followed as he walked her back to her door.

"I knew what he was—knew what he was capable of. I was the one who put us in this situation, dealing with the likes of him. It's my fault Kaylee was—it's my fault."

"While there are many things in the universe that I could blame you for—and do—I can't blame you for the fact that Niska is an evil bastard. You paid him—you paid him five times over. This is about an old man struggling to hang onto the bloody shreds of his reputation—he did this. Not you."

Don't make it any less my fault, Mal wanted to say, but didn't.

He sat down heavily on the end of her bed, staring at the shuttle floor rather than meeting her eyes. Her forgiveness was worse, in a way, than if she had blamed him. The way she looked at him, like she wanted to comfort him—made everything a thousand times worse.

"I made a choice, taking smuggling jobs—putting this crew in the line of fire. It has always been all about me. I'd rather be on the wrong side of law just to stick it to the gorram Alliance—and I've treated it like a game. But it ain't no game. Wash almost paid the price with his life—and you think I woulda learned my lesson after dying my own self. I had no right to make that choice for Kaylee. No right at all, and now... Girl trusted me, Inara. Trusted me to keep her safe, and I put her in harm's way."

"Mal, Kaylee knew. She knew when she signed on this 'boat'—if I know anything about you, it's that you made sure she knew your business before you ever took her on. But she chose to be here—on Serenity. She chose to follow you of her own free will."

"She didn't choose to be beaten and raped, Inara," he said, trying to shake her. Rattle what was left of her composure.

It was the first time he'd actually said the words. "Sexually assaulted," Simon had said—as if that somehow made it less... horrific. Less a brutal act of cowardice and hatred than it was. But rape was an ugly word for an ugly thing. And he wanted to lash out—at the men who'd done this, at Niska, at himself for letting it happen in the first place.

Inara was just the closest available target.

"No," she said softly—mask still in place. "No woman does. And it's horrific, there is no denying that. But it happens. It happens every day. Every hour."

"How can you be so gorram cold—"

"Because I'm a woman," she said simply, cutting him off. "It's a fear that almost all of us are born with, and the 'verse is full of bastards who will take advantage of that."

Her resolve crumbled, tears finally springing to her eyes. "I'm not cold, Mal. God, I wish I could be. Then maybe this wouldn't hurt so much."

Mal pulled her into an embrace, resting his chin on top of her head as she cried herself out. His head swam, enveloped by the rich scent of lily of the valley as her shoulders shook beneath his hands.

"Why did it have to be Kaylee?" she said, voice cracked with strain. "Why couldn't it have been... God, I wish I'd—"

"Don't. Don't say it. It ain't ever gonna be you, or River, or Kaylee. Not ever again. Not any of us."

He whispered lies—reassurances, nonsense—into her hair, his own eyes burning as her tears scalded his neck. Finally just holding her.

After a few minutes, she pulled back and drew in deep and shuddering breaths. Her carefully applied makeup was gone, and he'd forgotten how young she was, underneath all that paint. How vulnerable. For a split second, he had a horrifying vision of finding her crumpled against the side of Serenity's hull, and his hands shook as he dropped them to his sides.

If she noticed, she didn't let it show. She wiped at her cheeks with the heels of her hands, and sniffled.

"I—I'm sorry."

"Why? For being human? For being Kaylee's friend, and hurting? Ain't nothing to be apologising about."

He let his hand rest for a moment longer than it should on her bare shoulder, let himself fall into those dark eyes just a touch more than was wise, before he broke contact.

"Inara, I want you to take Simon, River, and Kaylee while she's on the mend in your shuttle until—until this whole thing is sorted out one way or another."

"There's a Companion Guild House on Bernadette, only a day out from Persephone," she said, mask slipping back into place, even without the paint. "It's small, and I know the house mistress there—I trust her. Simon and River would be safe there. And the house has medical facilities with equipment Simon doesn't have access to here, and there are staff trained to treat... There are people who can help Kaylee."

"Contact her," he said as he started towards the door.

"What about you?" she called after him.

"I'm gonna find Niska and put him down like the dog that he is. I promise you."

Mal didn't even climb down the rungs of the ladder to his bunk, just slid on the sides of his boots. They'd had a good day. Picked up a cache of foodstuffs and medical supplies from a derelict freighter, and Capshaw was being uncommonly generous in regards to their cut of the take. Zoe and Wash were making noise about taking a proper honeymoon, Jayne was making noise about getting a new knife since he'd lost his last one when the guy it had been stuck in fell off that damn cliff on Whitefall, and Mal had gotten word that morning from a surveyor and his wife on Boros interested in renting the spare shuttle. Best of all, Serenity was humming along, in better shape than she'd ever been—certainly since he'd picked her up for a song from the scrap yard on Persephone.

All in all, one of his best days ever, come to think of it.

He sat down on the end of his bed to unlace his boots, whistling a little tune—perhaps a touch off-key, but it didn't much matter to Mal if he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, so long as he could shoot straight. He had the first boot off and was going for the second when suddenly there were hands on his shoulders.

There was a squawk of surprise as he spun, drawing his weapon and pinning his attacker to the bed in one smooth motion. Took a second for him to register that the barrel was pressed to the temple of his brand new mechanic, who was huddled beneath the bedclothes, eyes wide.

"Kaylee, what the hell—"

That was about as far as he got, as she just sorta arched her back and lifted her head a little and kissed him full on the mouth.

It was enthusiastic, and not without skill, Mal noted with the part of his brain that wasn't concentrating on how to extricate himself from this situation without her daddy coming after him with a shotgun, but not what he was either expecting or wanting.

"Whoa! Hey!" He let go of both her wrists, which had been pinned over her head, and the gun, which slipped between the mattress and the wall and sat up. He held up his hands as if in surrender. "That is about enough of that!"

Her shoulders were bare, and he saw her clothes were folded neatly atop her shoes next to the bed. Her long light brown hair spilled over her shoulders as she clutched the coverlet up to her neck.

"I don't know what notion you got floating around up there in that head of yours, but I didn't hire you for a roll in the hay. I hired you to keep this ship in the air."

"Oh I know that!" She laughed, and grinned at him. "I didn't mean—I know you're a good man, Captain. It's what I like so much about you. You're good, and kind, and handsome—"

"You'll turn my head with talk like that."

"Well y'are!" She grinned, and then flushed. "And, well, I like you."

"And I like you too."

"I mean, I like you like you."

"Oh."

He quickly went over the last few weeks in his mind and tried to figure out if he'd been giving his pretty little mechanic any reason to believe he was a lecherous hump who chased after girls near half his age. What he discovered is that while he was pretty damn sure he'd been a proper gentleman, she had been awful shy around him—coy even—the last few days.

"And I thought, maybe, with us all liking each other, we might have some fun is all." She shrugged, and Mal glanced away as the blanket started to slip, showing a bit too much pale white shoulder.

Well, son of a bitch. It had been a few decades since he'd been in the pulling gals' pigtails-mode of courtship, but he imagined that it hadn't been near so long for Kaylee Frye. And thinking back on how he met her in the first place, stood to reason that the girl was used to a certain level of companionship.

"No offence, but I like models with a few more years on 'em."

She got puffed up with all sorts of righteous indignation at that, just like he knew she would. "I'm eighteen!"

"And I haven't been eighteen for a good long while now. Now," he bent down and picked up her clothes and tossed them to her, quickly glancing away as she let the coverlet drop so she could catch the bundle, "as flattering as this little crush is—and don't get me wrong, it's flattering as hell and if I weren't who I am then there wouldn't be a whole lot of talking going on right now so much as shucking of clothes and some stuff that would be improper to speak on in front of a lady—this ain't right. This is just all sorts of not right, is what it is. Dong ma?"

"Now, you want to tell me what this little attempt at seduction is really all about?" he asked once she'd gotten the shirt on over her head, and was doing all sorts of things under the blanket regarding her pants.

She glanced away, biting her bottom lip.

Mal decided to take another tack. "How long since we left Zephyr?"

"'Bout a month."

"And this is the longest you ever been away from home, isn't it?"

"Maybe," she mumbled, looked flushed and every inch her age.

"And you know it may be months and months fore we get back there?"

She nodded, and looked positively miserable. Mal kicked himself for not noticing it sooner. But the first few weeks, she'd been so busy overhauling the engine, and seemed happy as a pig in shit to be up to her eye-teeth in parts and electrical systems and the like. She'd seemed to have adjusted to living on board like it was all some grand adventure. But he was guessing now that things had settled into more of a routine, and some of the shiny had worn off, that she was starting to pine for familiar sights, voices, and the like.

He'd never thought of himself as having a fondness for strays, but the ship had felt a lot more... a lot more like a home since he'd picked up the little mechanic. Looked it, too—she'd taken to stencilling flowers on the bare yellow walls of the mess and, with the leftover paint, had made a ridiculous sign she'd posted on the door to her bunk. And that was just fine by him. But as homey as Serenity had become, nothing could take the place of the home you came from.

"Little Kaylee, there ain't nothing wrong with being homesick," he said, giving her a brief one-armed hug. "Hell, I ain't been home since—well, I ain't been home for a real long time, and that don't mean I don't wake up in the middle of the night every once in a while, missing home and my mamma something fierce."

"You do not," she groused, tucking her hair behind her ears.

"Do too—cross my heart and hope Jayne dies."

She giggled despite herself.

"You got a big family, don't you," he asked, knowing before she nodded that it must be true. He'd only ever met her folks, but she had the feel of the baby of a great big brood.

"Two sisters and three brothers, my folks, my mom's folks, and a whole mess of aunts and uncles and cousins on both sides all spittin' distance from one another pretty much. Oh, and nieces and nephews 'course."

"Of course." Mal couldn't help but grin. His guess was, they started young on Zephyr. "Sounds like Sunday dinners at the Frye house were somethin'."

"Mamma had Grams to help her out—and most times Pop and the boys would catch a mess of fish down at the river, and everybody would bring somethin', so no one ever went hungry." She smiled at the memory, and her eyes were suddenly bright with unshed tears. He imagined that after a few weeks of moulded protein in every colour of the rainbow, and drinking recycled water and breathing recycled air, those Sunday dinners might be taking on a particularly rosy hue right about now.

"How 'bout you?" she asked, covering her sudden attack of being eighteen as best she could with the good humour he was coming to associate with her.

"Only child."

Her eyes were wide, as if the concept was completely alien.

"What about cousins?"

"Not a one. You are looking at the last of the Reynolds line."

"But you'll get married and have kids—"

He laughed. He couldn't help it. The idea of him settled down someplace with a biddable little wife—or in his case, some Amazon with a sawed off shotgun—and a passel of rugrats was just too much for him for a moment. He recovered quick, not wanting to hurt Kaylee's feelings. "Don't know about that. Maybe. Hell, I suppose anything can happen. Sure."

"Family's important."

"Sure is," he agreed. "It's where you come from."

"More'n that. You do for family, that's what my daddy always says. It's about having folks what do for you, and folks you look after."

"I expect that's true. I always kinda wanted a little sister, truth be told."

"Yeah?" she asked, her nose crinkling as she smiled.

"Yeah. So, 'mèimei,' how's about you get yourself off to your own bed now, dong ma?" He gave her a stern look, which only made her giggle.

"Hao de, Cap'n." She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek and then scampered up the ladder.

If they ever ran out of fuel cells, Mal was pretty sure they could just plug Kaylee in to power Serenity. He'd never seen a body to quick to shake off sorrow and return to her natural state of shining.

Mal sat there, chuckling to himself as he bent down to get his other boot off.

Badger choked as Mal's boot pressed harder on his throat.

"—on't—-cking know—cho—"

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

Badger drew in a tortured breath as Reynolds lifted his foot and released the pressure on his windpipe. Big Teddy was on his back next to the door, Reynolds's mercenary had his gun trained on him and looked itching to plug somebody full of holes. Carl sat at his desk in the adjacent room, cradling his elbow and whimpering in pain from the gunshot wound that had sent his revolver spinning across the floor. Badger eyed it carefully—trying to gauge the distance and see if he could make a grab for it.

"I don't know a thing about it, you rutting psycho!" he spat between wheezing gasps as he scuttled backwards across the floor until his back hit the wooden desk.

He glared at Reynolds, who just stood there in the centre of the room, arms crossed. "You come into my place of business, guns blazing—"

"Yeah, about that," Mal cut him off. "I would have thought you'd have been happy to see us, since we missed the meet this morning. You know, all worried as to why your boys didn't find us at the docks. That is, if they even bothered to show up."

Badger froze, all his hasty attempts at righteous indignation fleeing as a cold sweat broke out across his brow. He stared deep into the barrel of Zoe's shotgun, which seemed to loom impossibly large in front of him.

"One of my crew got snatched on Greenleaf," Mal continued, deceptively calm. "My mechanic. Last time you saw her, she was in a pink fluffy dress, bow in her hair. Cute as a gorram bug. Niska's men tore her up pretty bad, and as you are the only person who knew we were gonna be on Greenleaf..."

"Now, let's be reasonable here—" Badger held up both hands in a gesture of placation and bit back a gasp as Reynolds grabbed him by the lapels of his suit jacket and hauled him roughly to his feet.

"I think I'm being plenty reasonable. And I'm thinking might be reasonable to let Jayne here cut off your family jewels and feed them to you."

The mercenary smiled as he pulled out his knife, and Badger licked his lips and tried to wriggle free of Reynolds's grasp.

"I didn't have no choice! Niska's a powerful man! It ain't good business to make an enemy like that—"

"But making an enemy of me is wise, is that it?" Cold blue eyes very close to his made Badger swallow nervously. "Don't seem too wise at the moment, now does it?"

"Man's reputation suffered—once word got 'round you and your crew'd tore up his Skyplex. It ain't exactly a secret that you and your crew do jobs for me—they came looking, what was I supposed to do?"

"So, zôugôu that you are, you sold us out."

"I'm a businessman, Captain. Hard to do business when you've got your throat slit."

"Yes. I 'spect it would be," Jayne said, eyeing the edge of his blade.

"I got to think of myself first, you see?" Badger said quickly.

"I see. I see clear as day. So, in the interests of you continuing to do business, hows about you tell us where we might find Niska and his boys?"