author’s note: this is a rewrite of something that I wrote about 5 years ago (also called September, amazingly enough!). Every single time I hear this song, I think about how I always wanted to rewrite this story, and I finally did it. Gentle concrit is always appreciated, please bear in mind that I have been out of fandom since about the time I wrote the first September, so I may be a little bit rusty. ~3500 words, angsty as hell, obvious Simon/Kaylee with a tiny bit of implied Inara/Simon comforty type stuff. anyway, onward.

Laura lays on the foot of the bed Mimics a noose with the telephone cord Doctor’s on the phone and she hangs up and says “I ain’t ever gonna see the winter again” And I don’t know how, but she smiles ~Ryan Adams, September

There hadn’t been any cases like this in a long, long time. The core planets had long ago developed a vaccine, and many of the outer planets had managed to get their hands on it in some form, and as far as Simon was concerned, cancer was something that was reserved for history lessons and for backwater rebels who refused to submit to the Alliance’s promises of a better world. And then Kaylee got sick.

He suspected the worst almost automatically. By the time they landed on Ariel, about a week after she first started complaining, she was tired and pale, sleeping often and barely eating. The little bruises that usually peppered her arms and legs--the reminders that in some ways, she was still a little girl who loved to run around and play a little bit rough--had grown and spread and seemed to come out of nowhere, purple and angry, staring Simon in the face every time he looked at her, little flags of warning on her beautiful, smooth skin.

He didn’t do anything at first. There wasn’t much he could do, out there in the black, but treat the symptoms. He gave her an antipyretic and cool baths when her fever spiked and an appetite stimulant so she would eat, and waved the hospital (a risk, after the last time they were on Ariel, but a risk he was willing to take if it meant that they could do anything to save Kaylee’s life).

“Cancer.” The doctor sounded unimpressed, skeptical, staring at Simon with his eyebrows raised, his glasses pushed down his nose. “Are you sure?” Simon fixed his own cold stare on the man. He was in the infirmary, Kaylee was sleeping behind him, fighting off a particularly persistent fever, and they were about two days from landing on Ariel. “Her symptoms suggest so, yes. I haven’t done any blood analysis as we don’t have the resources available on the ship, but I can prepare a sample for you which I will deliver when I arrive on Ariel in two days time.” He tried to keep the emotion out of his voice, tried to sound like Doctor Tam and not Kaylee’s Simon, but he had to swallow a lump down several times even to get that sentence out. The doctor, on the other hand, seemed unrepentant, but nodded. “Bring her in right away,” he said. “Don’t waste any time. She might have a chance.”

By the time they finally landed, Kaylee was in a worse condition than she had been since Simon had first noticed symptoms, and he was fearing the worst. Her breathing was shallow, she hadn’t eaten since the day he had waved the doctor, and she was sleeping more than she was awake. Simon feared the worst. The treatments available were experimental, at best, and most of the people on the outer planets who did end up sick died before they could make it to a treatment facility that could provide them with treatment. Kaylee, he hoped, would be one of the lucky ones.

The doctor that greeted them when they walked inside (Kaylee cradled carefully in Simon’s arms, the rest of the crew behind them) was the same doctor that Simon had spoken to on the wave. He got Kaylee settled in a room and took the notes and blood samples that Simon had prepared. Once all the formality was out of the way, Simon sat in the chair next to Kaylee’s bed, held her small, pale hand, and waited.

Simon wasn’t expecting good news. He wasn’t even expecting sort of good news. He was expecting the doctor to come and tell him to take her back to the ship to die, so the news that the doctor gave him was the first thing Simon had smiled about in days. “She has Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia,” he informed Simon, looking over Kaylee’s chart and then at her small sleeping form in the bed. “The good news is that we can treat her, but the bad news is that there’s not much chance that it will be successful. If we don’t see any improvement by the end of the first round, it’s your decision.” But Kaylee was strong. Kaylee was a fighter, and Kaylee would get through this. Simon had no doubts. “Okay,” he said.

The following day, a Monday, was the first time Kaylee woke up in three days. Once she was awake, sitting up and aware of her surroundings, Simon held her hand and explained the treatment. “They’re going to put a needle in your hand like this one,” he tapped her IV fluids, “and it’s going to have medication in it that will hopefully make you better, but it first might make you feel very sick, and you’re most likely going to lose your hair.” He stroked her hair, her beautiful, bouncy, curly hair almost regretfully. Kaylee swallowed hard, her lower lip wiggling, and Simon willed her not to cry. “No, don’t cry, darling. It’s going to be okay.” He crawled into the bed with her and held her close, hoping he sounded convinced enough for her to believe him. “Am I going to die?” she asked, voice small. Simon shook his head no, firmly, kissing the side of her head. “No, no,” he assured her. “Of course not.” To his surprise, her beautiful face broke into a grin. “Okay,” she agreed easily. “I believe ya, Simon.”

They docked the ship in Ariel. The job could wait, and after a bit of attitude adjustment from Jayne, Badger was quick to agree. Mal Reynolds treated his crew like family, but Kaylee really was Mal’s family, as much a mei-mei as any one his mother could have given birth to, and though he didn’t get scared very often, he was scared for Kaylee. There was no amount of shiny gold in the Verse that could draw him away from her, not when she needed them. Even in these early days, when nobody was allowed into her room (“we could spray you in decontaminating showers for hours and her immune system is too weak,” they told them, leaving them all to stand huddled outside of the pane of glass that separated them, even River), nobody had it in them to leave her, even for a minute.

After four days, they were finally allowed in, one at a time, in big biohazard suits with gloves. Once everyone else had gone in to say hello and give her a hug, Simon settled himself by her bedside.

She looked worse than she had when he’d brought her there--much smaller, and although the nurses had done their best to make her look pretty by tying what was left of it back with a ribbon, was thinner, patchy. There was a tube in her nose for nutrition. She looked like she was dying. But when Simon walked in, she opened her eyes, and her pretty face lit up in a lazy grin. “Hi Simon,” she said, reaching for his hand. Simon tried to stay brave, brushing her hair out of her face and smiling as much as he could, brushing his lips against her forehead when he was sure no one was looking. “Hi,” he said softly, squeezing her hand as much as he could, though the gloves were big and cumbersome, and he felt like he was failing at comforting her even though he was trying his best. “You know what they told me?” she asked, her eyes fluttering shut, drawing in a breath that sounded like it was painful. “What’s that?” Simon asked, smoothing a stray piece of hair back from her face. “Don’t exhaust yourself, darling, maybe it’s best if you rest.” But Kaylee shook her head, and though it was a struggle, she said, “They said I ain’t ever gonna see the winter again, Simon.” Simon’s breath caught, and he was about to say something, but words were escaping him, unable to do anything but struggle for breath. When he finally managed to look down at her, he didn’t quite understand how, but she was smiling.

He wanted to bring her home to die. Back to Serenity. If she was going to die anyway, he wanted her to be comfortable and safe, in the place where she felt most secure. He couldn’t save her, but he could make her happy, and that was the next best thing. The doctors resisted at first. There was a possible treatment, they said, that might prolong it for a year or two. It wasn’t a cure, they said, but it was something. “I ain’t afraid to die,” she told him, and nothing about her voice betrayed to him that she was lying. “I just want to go home.”

When the doctor finally agreed to let her go home, Simon stayed up all night scrubbing the engine room til every bolt gleamed. The doctors preferred for her to stay in the infirmary, where it was more sterile, closer to medical equipment. But he dragged the things he would need--her antibiotics, a ventilator, various pain medications--on a rolling tray and settled it there. He procured a cot on the floor next to her hammock. If he was bringing her home to die, he wasn’t going to make her feel frightened and alien by banishing her to the infirmary, where she’d already had so many scary memories. He was bringing her back to the ship she loved, to her home, so she could fall asleep one night in her hammock with her girl and never wake up again.

The day Simon brought Kaylee home, it was silent in the ship. The day before, River and Inara had procured balloons and streamers and tried to make it look as welcoming as possible, but there was an air of solemnity as Simon wheeled her up the ramp into the loading bay. Kaylee, true to her Kaylee form, was all smiles. She had slept most of the way back from the hospital--that was all she was ever doing these days, sleeping--but had woken up long enough for Simon to dress her in the dress and big, floppy hat he’d bought her (an exorbitant amount of money, but the tears sparkling in her eyes had been absolutely worth it) and was now awake and smiling at everyone, lifting the hand without a needle in it to wave at everybody. “Hey,” she said, her voice very small, “why does everybody look so sad? I’m home now.”

Her last week was peaceful. Once Simon had deemed her stable enough, they charted a course to her home planet of Zephyr and headed out into the black. For the most part, they were alone in the engine room, Kaylee nestled in her hammock sleeping fitfully and Simon sitting next to her, watching her progress. “You should rest.” Inara’s form appeared in the doorway, looking concerned, and startled Simon out of dozing. “I’m awake,” he replied, glancing over at Kaylee. “She’s fine,” Inara assured him, pursing her lips and then smiling. The poor boy had barely slept since he got back on the ship, and probably long before that. “We’ve taken care of your sister, she had her smoother and is down for the night, why don’t you go back to your bunk and sleep for awhile?” Simon looked over at Kaylee, her chest rising and falling slowly, breathing raspy, but soundly asleep for once. “I don’t want--” Inara took his hand. “She’ll wait for you.”

Simon woke up the next morning to River peering at him, her face inches from his. “Time to go,” she sing-songed, and Simon sat up, bleary eyed. “What time is it?” “Time to go,” she echoed. “Come on, before it’s too late.”

Kaylee died sometime that morning. She opened her eyes when Simon entered the infirmary and somehow managed a tiny smile. He didn’t know how she could be so gorram shiny all the time. She was dying, for Buddha’s sake, and probably imminently, but she somehow managed to smile for him. He climbed up into the hammock with her and wrapped his body around her frail, worn out one. “Told you,” River said, and then kissed Kaylee on the cheek and disappeared. Kaylee turned her body towards his, burrowing in, her hands in the fabric of his shirt. “I love you,” she said, and then took in a deep, deep breath. “Simon, I love you.” Simon looked down at her, smoothed his hand over the small of her back, over the little knobs of her spine. “I love you too,” he said, and then felt her relax, felt the last breath go out of her body, and then there was a sort of stillness that Simon had never felt before, a sort of thread unravelling inside of his chest and creating a hole, small but noticeable, that nothing, not even a thousand years’ time, could ever undo.

Most of Kaylee’s family was gone now--all her brothers had taken off for core planets, and her papa had died “oh, not so long after she took off with you,” her mother had said, and all that was left was her mother and her tiny old grandmother, who braided River’s hair and told Simon he looked just like her husband when he was young. “Kaylee was always the healthiest of them all,” her mother was telling them over dinner that night, a woman so affected by so many heartbreaks that all she knew how to do was feed them and tell stories. “She never got sick, not even a little cold. Seems kind of funny that she would be the one to go.” Kind of funny indeed, Simon thought, and quietly excused himself back to the ship.

The local mortician had taken the body away to prepare for her burial the next morning, and all that remained was worldly possessions--the hammock, the string of fairy lights, and Simon’s rumpled makeshift bed and tray of instruments, reminders that it was his own fault. “I could have saved you,” he told the empty chambers, bending down to pick up her hat and straightening it out, leaving it on the pillow as though she might come back for it tomorrow. “I should have known.”

He couldn’t stay there. Not without Kaylee. Mal would have to replace her eventually, and Simon couldn’t stomach that. He couldn’t stomach the emptiness already, the replacement would never fill the void, they would only make it worse, and Simon wasn’t sure he knew how to take that.

When he entered the house again, Mal was the only other one awake, the others having retired to fill the many bedrooms long ago, except River, who was dozing cross-legged by the fire with Kaylee’s grandmother, and Mal, sitting at the table with a capture in his hands. “Sir?” Simon said, his hand on Mal’s shoulder, rather nervously. “May I have a word?” “Brightest light in the verse,” Mal muttered, staring down at the capture before setting it to the side. “What’s troubling you, doctor?” “If--I think my sister and I would prefer to get off again when we land on Ariel for the job, if you don’t mind. There’s a facility in the area that might be able to help--” “Doctor.” Mal looked up at Simon, met his eyes. Simon stared right back. “Yes sir.” “Ignorin’ it ain’t gonna make Kaylee any less dead, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna make you any less sad. Right now, you need a family, doctor, and we’re the only family you got, dong ma?” Simon looked over at River, asleep by the fire. Thought of Inara, who had taken care of Kaylee the night before she died so he could sleep. Of Jayne, who quietly protected Kaylee, in his way. And of course of the captain, who loved every one of his crew members, even Simon, as much as his own children. “Yes, sir,” he replied. “Goodnight, sir. Don’t stay up too late.” For a moment, Mal’s eyes twinkled with something that might have eventually been a smile. “Sleep well, doctor.”

Kaylee’s funeral was quiet. All of the family and friends who were still on Zephyr, plus the crew, gathered in the small churchyard. After requisite prayers and song, Simon stepped forward. He hadn’t thought much about what he was going to say, but once he was standing there, the words spilled out easily. “Kaylee...there was nobody in the verse that Kaylee didn’t touch. She was someone incredibly special to everyone she met, and she had this way of getting into your heart and staying there like nobody I’ve ever met. I’m not sure what I believe happens after you die, but I think that if Kaylee taught me anything, it was just that her time here, with us, was up, and I hope that somewhere she’s brightening up someone else’s life with her smile.” He paused, cleared his throat, and then stepped back again. River, who had been seemingly very interested in the dirt nearby, grabbed his hand and held on tight. Mal patted him on the shoulder. Simon swallowed hard and tried to force a smile.

He did not cry. He didn’t cry when Kaylee’s body was lowered into the ground, didn’t cry when they covered it up, didn’t even cry when they placed her headstone, the capture springing to life almost instantly, one of her bright smiles, a little wave. I’m okay, it seemed to say, so Simon didn’t cry.

No, he held it in until they were on the ship again, until he was sure he was alone, and then he pulled out a bottle that he had been saving for this specific occasion, and he drank, and he cried. “That won’t do anybody any good.” Inara extracted the bottle from his hands and sat down on the cot next to him. “Simon, you were right. She’s off making someone else’s life brighter.” Simon couldn’t focus. Inara was swimming in front of him and the whole room was woozily spinning. He hiccoughed, leaned back. “I want her,” he mumbled. Another hiccough. A wave of nausea. Inara handed him a trash can and he proceeded to vomit into it, crying miserably all the while. “I want--” “I know.” Inara’s hands were cool, soothing, on his forehead. She leaned him back, settled him into the blankets, offered him the drink of water that she must have brought and set on his nightstand. He sipped it gingerly. “I’m sorry,” he cried, burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry.” And just as he had the night Kaylee died, she held him tightly and let him cry.

He woke the next day because he could hear her voice. “Simon! Simon!” she was saying. “Look over here!” He opened his eyes, rubbing them, reorienting himself. Inara was gone, and in her place, a capture, the source of the voice. Simon picked it up. His head felt like it was wrapped in cotton and his mouth was dry and unpleasant, but he ignored all that, pressing play on the capture, starting it over. “Simon! Simon! Look over here!” Kaylee’s voice, off screen, and then her beautiful smiling face suddenly filled the frame. “Hi, Simon,” she said, a little shyly, looking down, and Simon’s breath caught. “I guess...I guess I hear I ain’t gonna be around much longer.” Suddenly Simon realised that this was in the hospital, and that these were probably her last recorded words. He sat up and started paying attention. “And I don’t like to think of that too much, because I sure am gonna miss you and Nara and Jayne and Cap’n and even little River. But I love you, I love you more than anybody especially, and I just wanted to tell you...” she coughed, and he could hear her starting to get sleepy. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m always gonna be watching ya, and if you start to forget the sound of my voice, just use this. We’ll be together again someday.” She blew him a kiss. “I love you, Simon,” she added again, sleepily, and then the capture went dead.

Simon stared at it for a good long while, then played it back to himself again, staring at the still of her when it ended the second time, and maybe, just the tiniest bit, he felt the hole tighten a little bit. There was something about Kaylee that would never quite go, and Simon needed to hang onto that. There would be more mechanics, he knew, but nobody would ever try to replace his Kaylee, and maybe she was right. If he played his cards right, maybe they would see each other again someday. Maybe. If there was a god.

Simon Tam fell asleep dreaming about heaven.