Author's Note: We now head further into that "consider it AU, if you prefer" territory we entered in chapter 9. Comments and suggestions still very welcome, even if – perhaps especially if – you disagree with my interpretation of the characters. Mouseover titles added for those who want to see the Chinese translations and notes to Shakespeare references.

Shakespeare References: Hamlet Act II Scene 2; Macbeth Act V Scene 5

"Gotta say, Kaylee, this ain't how I pictured you spending the evening." Mal's voice was low, coming through gritted teeth, his eyes focused on Callum. It didn't sit well with him, being disobeyed. Through this whole ordeal, he hadn't had much of a plan, but such as there was included Kaylee not being with them now.

They were all on their knees, hands tied behind their backs. One of Callum's men stood behind them with a shotgun aimed at their heads, while the other two were gathered with Callum around a panel in the door to the high-security ward, looking mighty displeased. Something about the lock being busted.

"I meant to go back to the ship, Captain, honest," Kaylee protested in a hushed tone. "But then I thought on how you'd never leave me stuck like that. And how maybe you might, y'know, need a mechanic or, uh, or a look-out, or a wheel man, or…or somethin' and…" Her voice trailed off. She turned her head just enough to see Mal press his lips together and look even grimmer than before. "And anyway, I don't want no stranger flying Serenity," she declared firmly, indicating that, from her perspective, this reason alone justified all obstinacy.

But Mal didn't look much placated. Loyalty was a fine thing, and it pleased him to know weren't no cowards on his crew, but gorramit! Things weren't so shiny before she showed up. Didn't help that he couldn't figure out what Callum's end game was gonna be. The lunatic had said something about "assembling the whole cast for the final act."

At least Zoe wasn't dead, Mal was sure. With the bond they had, he'd have felt a hole in the 'verse if Zoe had left it.

The door consultations ended with one of Callum's men heading out of sight down the stairs. Callum hobbled over to his prisoners.

Only three men now, one of them crippled. Could they...? No, Mal talked himself down. Too risky. The fellow behind was too far back. One of them would be killed for sure before he was overpowered.

"Your pilot has managed somehow to lock the door from the inside, which I must admit is quite ingenious, although not very far-sighted in terms of food, water and air. I could just leave him in there, I suppose, kind of like you left me in that pit. But I'd rather not. I don't share your callous nature, Sergeant Reynolds. Besides, your crew's surprisingly mischievous. Better to have everyone in one place. So I've sent for the key to the manual override."

Callum stepped in front of Kaylee, and Mal heard the catch in her breath. "We could ask the ingénue mechanic to help, but I suspect she wouldn't give a very effective performance."

He continued to regard Kaylee for a bit, but it seemed to Mal that he wasn't really seeing her. At last he said mildly, "You must think I'm a monster." Kaylee sneaked a glance sideways towards Mal, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. Eyes wide with apprehension, Kaylee repeated his headshake for Callum's benefit, only more emphatically.

"It's all right." Callum laughed deeply, as if she'd just told a wholesome joke. "You needn't lie. But I'll tell you a secret." He leaned towards her, smiling conspiratorily. "'I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southernly I know a hawk from a handsaw.'" Kaylee's eyes narrowed slightly in puzzlement, so Callum added, "Or think of me as 'a walking shadow, a poor player / who struts and frets his hour upon the stage /and then is heard no more.'" She looked blankly at him. Jayne scowled his contempt for 'book lernin'. Mal squared his jaw, face inscutable.

Callum sighed wistfully. "Art, music, literature, poetry – not much of it manages to get through out there on the Rim, I suppose. A shame, really. I've always found literature to be a great comfort in times of stress. I'll bet you like animals, don't you?" he continued in a fatherly tone. Kaylee maintained a rigid, uncertain stare. "You remind me of a lad in my unit, a conscript about your age. Vissarion. Very bright, but hardly had any formal schooling. He wanted to breed horses when he got out. Sergeant Reynolds and Corporal Alleyne murdered him."

Gotta stop this somehow. Draw his attention. "Let 'em go, Callum," Mal yelled. "They ain't part of this."

"Well, they weren't," Callum reproved, still looking meditatively at Kaylee. "But your crew's caused me some trouble today, and it's hard to overlook that."

Callum hitched past Mal to size up Jayne, who seemed no less menacing for being bound. "Truth is, I'm not sure what to do with them. But answer me this," Callum wheeled to face Mal. "You'd do it again, wouldn't you?" Mal continued to look stony.

"Answer me, you go tsao de piece of scum!" Callum bellowed, his face suddenly contorted in rage. He swung wide and struck Mal hard across the jaw with his crutch. "You owe me that. You owe me – owe my men – a lot of things, but at least that."

Mal spat blood to one side and glared back defiantly. "Under the same circumstances, you know I would. But we ain't in a war now, Callum. This ain't a battlefield and they ain't soldiers. So go ahead. Prove you're the better man. Show them the mercy you didn't get from me."

"Oh, Sergeant," Callum was suddenly preternaturally calm again when his man handed him the key. He shook his head, seemingly in regret, as he fitted it in the lock and pulled the manual release lever, "Why are you making this so easy?"

Zoe sighed inwardly. Wash wasn't a soldier. He didn't understand. "Those Alliance troops didn't have a chance anyway, dong ma?" she tried again to explain. "It was a mercy, ending it quick for them, sparing them from scourge and starvation. Like I said, we started with 400 Independents and lost over 250 before that week was over. That's near three outta four."

Wash continued to stare at the door panel, his hands fiddling ineffectually with wires and nubs. "I'm not saying I'm proud of what I did," she continued with resignation. "But I'm not ashamed, either. We were just trying to stay alive ourselves. Lots more terrible things than that happened in that valley and elsewhere besides during the war."

She stopped and a heavy silence fell. Well, Zoe thought, she'd spoken plain enough. Ain't no more to say. Either he'd see her point or not. Hmm, still won't look her way. If she put her hand on his shoulder, touched him again, would that help maybe? No, no call for such foolishness, she scolded herself. You're in the right, so gotta hold like marble. Plus, added a tiny voice she pretended not to hear, what if he shook her off?

You hold! How often had Mal given her that command? Mostly out of habit, she supposed. Weren't necessary, really. He knew she'd hold, kinda took it for granted she was strong enough, whatever the challenge. And she always did, and she always was. But were his orders always right? She'd thought so, until today. Thought Mal was just making the tough but necessary decisions. That's why she always obeyed. And it had stood her in good stead so far. She was still breathing, after all.

But hearing that story her own self as she told it to Wash, reflecting on it, perhaps Mal thought his orders were correct because she always followed them. Might behoove her to re-consider that approach, be more critical in her appraisals. Something else to ponder on if they lived through this.

That order in Serenity Valley, that was the right call, she was sure. But still, it was more than disturbing, how she'd forgotten Callum's face, even factoring in all the purposeful forgetting she'd managed since the war's end. And told baldly like that, to a sensitive man like Wash (she couldn't in good conscience call him 'weak' anymore), having no context, it must sound pretty horrific. Small wonder he wasn't taking it well.

Wash was journeying in a world he didn't understand, an earth-bound world of violence and ruin. Trying to make sense of it, first he did the math. She said three out of four Independents died? So of Callum's dozen, odds are maybe three other Alliance men would still be strutting the 'verse if not for Zoe and Mal. Was that what pushed Callum to madness, trying to figure out which of his men would have been among those lucky three?

Wash couldn't even imagine the strength a person would need to survive under those conditions. Zoe had that strength. Mal had it, too. Callum, obviously. But Hoban Washburne? Probably not so much. That was a humbling thought.

He circled back to Zoe. Yeah, he'd nicknamed her Our Lady of the Mare's Leg, joked about her being a lethal beauty, with 'contract killer' allure and so forth. But actual real people had died at her hand. He could see, even out of the corner of his eye, that she believed everything she'd told him, honestly thought Mal was justified, thought she was liberating those poor devils from that pit. But who knows how many she'd sent on to whatever comes next before the war was over, without a thought to mercy.

And not just during the war. Something he'd managed to avoid thinking about before was now inescapable. Those guns Zoe and Mal and Jayne toted around weren't for show. Deadly force was a tool of their trade. And, as much as he hoped he was wrong about this, the truth was they probably did kill people sometimes, even when it wasn't strictly necessary.

So what did it say about him, that he worked alongside them for all these months, took the money (on those rare occasions when he actually got paid), and never acknowledged the blood on it, the stories that, though untold (because he never asked), went with those on-the-job wounds? He just wanted to fly Serenity. The sky, the Black – that was his world. But no, he couldn't pretend any more that all the rest had nothing to do with him.

Did it make him a bad person, a selfish bastard, that he still wanted this woman to love him?

Because he did want her to love him. Staring at the panel, Wash watched her on the edge of his vision, waiting for him to react, wearing his ear-splitting shirt, which somehow heightened her femininity even more than her own form-fitting clothes. A woman strong enough to endure that brutal war? To return from the brink of death with a joke on her pillowed lips? To be honest with him about what happened? Plus the smarts, plus the physique. Definitely the physique! He knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with this glorious woman. He wanted it, maybe, yes, maybe even as much as he wanted to fly.

Wash knew something else -- that Mal, no matter how drunk or desperate, would never, ever have told him that story. And he knew why, too, and it made him furious.

Zoe saw his facial muscles tighten. Saw shoulders tensing and head shaking from side to side in fundamental disagreement. So that's how it's gonna go, huh? Now he'll call you a murderer. The coldest, bloodiest, blackest-hearted bitch in the 'verse. Say he'd never do such a thing in your place. Well, who the fuck is he that you should need to justify yourself! And if he expects some sort of apology….! She braced for the venting of his naïve fury, his shallow, self-righteous indignation.

So Zoe was completely taken aback when Wash turned and spat out bitterly, "How could he do that to you?"

He? "You mean Callum?"

"Mal. Ordering you to kill those men. Cowardly tzang huo! Should have done his own dirty work!"

This brought her hackles up. She stared Fluffy implements at him. "Mal ain't no coward. Saved my life more times than I can count. He gave me that order because he was in command. And he was right."

Yeah, no one did intimidating better than Her Fierceness, but it infuriated Wash, this...this deference to Mal, and he pressed on. "He gave you that order because he wanted revenge. Because the Browncoats had lost and he knew it. For you it was a kindness, and...and maybe you thought it was your duty. But he was just being cruel and vindictive. And petty. To men who were defenseless. And he had you..." Wash drew a deep breath and plowed forward in the face of her rising ire. "Well, he didn't do right by you, either."

They locked eyes for a few seconds, dueling. Zoe noted the man had more backbone than she'd thought. Some part of her was impressed, approving, even, while the rest of her rallied for the offensive.

But as she looked at him, Zoe was surprised to discover she didn't want to fight. Maybe because she still felt pretty weak. Maybe because it displeased her for some reason, seeing that face turned to her in anger. Maybe because she didn't entirely discount what he was saying.

She decided it wasn't necessary at that moment to know why in order to stand down the troops. Her expression softened and she said with exquisite sadness, "It's not easy, Wash, being in command. 'Specially when lives are at stake and there are no good choices." She slumped against the wall and shook her head. "Don't mean to disappoint, but I'm just not up to arguing right now. Shame we got nothin' to eat. Would help put me in a more combative mood."

That melancholy smile. He'd seen it dozens of times, and never been able to do anything about it. But now he reached for her. Because, Wash decided, this was the part of the story where the hero comforted the heroine. And he knew that for her to initiate contact would have meant leaping years of careful detachment, whereas for him it was just the merest hop back to 10 minutes ago.

And Corporal Alleyne was dismissed. The marble became clay, and Zoe fell into his strong embrace just as Wash had fallen into their first kiss - without reservation. Remembering how his overzealousness had taxed her weakened body earlier, Wash was holding her delicately this time. But she pressed in closer, molding herself to leave no air between them.

And Zoe thought, Hold on while you can, girl. Once we get out of this and everyone is okay, he'll probably leave. Sign on to one of those respectable ships, for the safer, better paying job with the decent folk that he should have taken in the first place.

And Wash thought, Tien shiao duh, this feels so right.

"Wash?" she said from over his shoulder.

"Yeah, Zoe?" Wash was rubbing her back, fascinated anew by the crisscrossing scars.

"I know this changes things. You do what you got to as regards yourself, leave the ship or whatever seems right to you. But promise me you won't tell Kaylee. She worships Mal. Thinks he's all shiny. It'd break his heart if she knew. And it's not right, her hearing about this, unless it's me or the captain doing the telling."

Mal! Mother-humping hypocrite. If he really thought what he did was necessary, Kaylee knowing wouldn't matter. But Zoe was right, it was their story to tell, even though he knew Mal never would. He didn't have Zoe's courage.

"I won't tell, I promise. Because I want my shirt back. And because I love you."

The air became strangely thick. Wash pulled away, aghast. "I said that last part out loud, didn't I?"

But before Zoe could reply, or even react, they heard a faint click, and the heavy doors began to swing inward.

End Chapter 9.