Conclusion

(Please read the notes at the end of the story. Thank you.)

******

What I always remember most about afterwards is the quiet.

Zoe held Mal's hand a few moments longer, then stood up, giving orders. Stunned by grief, we couldn't move at first, or speak.

River crouched down beside me, holding my shoulders. "Let me help, Simon," she said softly.

I'd come to believe more and more that being on Serenity is what saved my sister from a descent into total madness. They had changed her, I knew that, into something beyond human, and at times she still said and did odd, eerie things. But sometimes she seemed stronger and saner than anyone else on the ship. She was that way now, taking charge of me as sorrow threatened to overwhelm my professionalism.

I looked at her gratefully and nodded. Together, we wrapped Mal's body in a blanket. Jayne and Book brought the stretcher, then carried him to the infirmary.

Wash met Zoe at the bottom of the stairs. They embraced quickly, and Wash kissed her. Without a word, they hurried up to the bridge.

Inara and Kaylee still clung to each other, both near to collapse. I asked River to take them up to the kitchen, to make some strong tea for them, for everyone. Inara, her beautiful face marred by tears, rallied for a moment and stopped by my side.

"Simon..." She caught me by the arm. "You–"

"No." I had to stop her. I knew what she was going to say, and I didn't want to hear it. Yes, I'd done all that I could; no one could have done more.

But it wasn't enough.

Inara sighed. Tenderly, she kissed my cheek, then followed River and Kaylee.

Alone, I looked around the silent, empty bay. The realization came slowly that no one else had been injured, not even grazed by a bullet. I should have been relieved, glad–but instead a coldness grew inside me, because it made it all the more wrong, so terribly unfair.

Alone, I cleaned the captain's blood from the floor.

A while later, it was still quiet. I had finished my final duty to Mal, aided by Book. Not quite last rites, but rituals are for the living. I don't think the captain would have minded–much.

So he lay shrouded in the infirmary. I had dimmed the lights, and now we all sat in the commons, drinking tea. Book had fixed up plates of sweet biscuits and dried fruit, and we managed to eat. Another ritual, holding a vigil for a fallen hero. No one said much, as we tried not to think about what we should do next.

In the corner, Zoe and Wash were having a subdued conversation. She left for a few minutes, and returned holding a worn leather pouch. While the others watched curiously, she presented it to me.

I put my hand on it, but didn't take it. "What's this?"

"Papers. Documents–mostly legal." She saw my non-comprehending stare and gave a sigh. "The title to Serenity. He wanted you to have it, Simon. The ship–" her voice broke a little–"is yours."

I gaped at her, shocked beyond words.

As the realization hit her afresh, Kaylee turned pale. "Oh, God. He-he's really gone." She started crying again.

Jayne shot to his feet. "What the guai--his?! Mal musta been crazy to–"

"Shut your mouth!" Inara spat at him. He turned to her angrily, but Book stepped between them and forced Jayne back down into a chair.

"Not the time for a ruckus, son," the Shepherd said wearily, and Jayne subsided reluctantly, giving me a poisonous glare.

Zoe pressed the pouch more firmly into my hand. "It's true. We–talked about it some time ago." She glanced at Wash, who nodded in sad confirmation. "He trusted you, Simon. You're smart, and brave. You can think fast and you're not afraid to take chances. Mal knew–he knew someday someone else would have to take charge. He wanted it to be you."

"No, Zoe–" I was still stunned, horrified by what she was saying. "I-I can't. It should be yours–"

"No!" She let go of the pouch, and stepped back, hands raised in denial. "I never wanted it, Simon. Mal knew that, too. He–" Her voice broke again, her composure faltering as grief took hold.

Wash was at her side in an instant. "Hang on, babe," he said, taking her into his arms. He looked around fiercely at the others, then at me. "Mal knew what he was doing."

Zoe pulled herself together. "Consider it his last order," she said, all steel again. "Simon Tam is now captain of Serenity."

I felt sick inside. Cold, sick, and more alone than I had been earlier in the cargo bay.

Inara wouldn't look at me. Kaylee was valiantly trying to choke back her tears.

Book, watching me impassively, appeared the least surprised by this turn of events. He hadn't moved from away from Jayne, who still wore an expression of seething resentment.

Someone took my hand. My sister, always believing in me. "Don't be afraid, ge-ge," she whispered encouragingly, and some of the coldness melted away.

Zoe and Wash stood patiently before me. I saw in her eyes that she knew what Mal had done. My debt to him was double any of the others'. Now I had to pay up, or else his death would have been for nothing.

Slowly, I stood up. Everyone went still. I took a breath, looking around, glancing just for a moment at the closed doors of the infirmary. Damn you, Malcolm Reynolds, I thought.

And I heard him, laughing.

How could I ever be the leader he had been--or the kind he must have believed I could be? The only thing I could do was try.

Looking straight at Jayne, I said, "If anyone wants to leave, I won't stop them. Anyone wants to try something, I promise it will end badly."

No one moved. They were all looking at him. I swear, the big hundan blushed.

"Hell," he finally said, leaning back in the chair truculently. "I ain't that stupid."

I turned away, my hands clenched so no one could see them shaking. "Zoe, Wash...join me on the bridge. We have things to...discuss."

I shot a quick look back at Book, and he nodded. He'd keep an eye on everyone–on Jayne–for me.

Zoe was already on the move. Wash put his hand on my shoulder for a second, smiling with grim determination. "Don't worry. It's gonna work out fine." He followed his wife, and I walked on alone.

I would never inherit my family's wealth or good name. Instead, my legacy was a ship and a crew. God help me.

***

My best help, it turned out, would always come from Zoe. She's the perfect second-in-command. On that dreadful day, she helped me make my first, most painful decision.

Wash had already put us on course for a fueling station where we'd be relatively safe. We'd have to come up with plans for after that . But for now, I had one terrible concern.

Sitting in the pilot's chair, at Wash's insistence, I struggled to put it into words. "Zoe–what do we do about...Mal?" I gestured, with a still-trembling hand, out the cockpit window. "Do we--send him out there? Into the black?"

Wash shuddered. "I dunno–I mean, that's the old spacer's tradition, but it always struck me as kinda creepy."

"No," Zoe agreed. "Mal loved the sky, but that ain't the place for him to rest. I know where he needs to be." She eyed me intently. "It'll be risky, though."

"What won't be, from now on?" I replied.

We hit the station and refueled quickly. Then we flew on, with me getting a crash course in creative navigation as Wash brought us carefully into what had always been forbidden territory for this boat, where a once-beautiful planet had been ravaged by war. We went into silent running around a nearby moonlet, waiting for the right time to carry out our mission.

Under cover of night, Zoe and I took a shuttle down to Hera. She located a point some miles west of the Alliance-sponsored soldiers' cemetery. By a lonely hill, where green-growing things were slowly reclaiming the burned-out land, we buried Malcolm Reynolds in the Valley of Serenity, the place he'd never truly left.

***

The decisions that followed in the months afterwards were a bit easier, although complicated in their own way.

It had already been getting harder to elude the Alliance with two fugitives on board; how Mal managed it for nearly two years still seemed miraculous. Now it was apparent that Serenity's hard-won reputation for getting a job done was becoming more of a liability than an asset. Too many people didn't like the way we did business, especially when we did it with some degree of honesty.

We planned, connived, and took advantage of Inara's standing and influence to get new papers forged. On them, the ship had a new name–Shadow. Serenity's Shadow in our hearts; the shade of our former life hanging over us. I became Captain Peter King--a bit of a joke on Book's part.

"Simon Peter was a reluctant heir to authority, too, you know," he said the night we all agreed to the change.

That was the first of many changes. We spent several months far out on the Rim, letting rumors fly and die about the fate of the Firefly Serenity, her captain and her crew. Wash and Kaylee worked like demons, altering the ship's exterior, hiding or fixing some of her more distinguishing features. We even had registration numbers on the bow, to go with our new identity. Slowly, we made the rounds of outbound worlds, building up a far different clientele, avoiding former customers and favored stopping places.

Somehow along the way, I found the role of commander becoming easier, but never truly comfortable.

Inara came to me one day, about eight months after Mal's death. It wasn't entirely a surprise.

"I can't stay anymore, Simon," she said, her eyes wary, her voice weary. "I just–"

I took her hand in mine. "I know." We all knew–her sole reason for staying on Serenity was long gone. She'd only stayed this long to help us get re-established. We were finally seeing a clear path ahead, so her work was done.

"Take the shuttle," I told her.

She gasped. "Oh no–Simon, I couldn't..."

"You've paid for it a thousand times over," I insisted. I didn't say, "It's what Mal would have done." She understood–I think they all did–that I based most of my tougher command decisions on that premise.

She thanked me. She kissed me. And we both cried a little.

We took the ship in close to the inner Border, so she'd have an easier trip back towards the Core. She was going to her old friend Nandi, to help run the business. I was glad--she'd have a good, safe life there.

Kaylee missed her terribly. She didn't speak to me for days, for letting Inara go. But she couldn't stay mad for long. Our friendship, and a relationship we'd been steadily developing, had deepened significantly after our loss. Perhaps we weren't as strongly bonded as Zoe and Wash, but we loved each other.

She was glad I was captain, though she still cried at night for Mal. The loss had hit her harder, psychologically, than the rest of us. Her spirit turned a little fragile, even as River grew stronger and more capable.

My little sister–she became quite the criminal mastermind. Mal would have been tickled.

Jayne was never really a problem–or rather, no more of a pain in the ass than he usually was. He hated calling me "Captain," sticking to "Doc." It didn't bother me, nor did the knowledge imparted to me by Zoe a few weeks after I'd taken over. It was something I'd had suspicions about for a long time, anyway. But once we started making profits in our new life, I didn't worry about possible betrayal. At least, not all the time.

We lost him on Persephone, almost a year after Inara left, in the riots when we rescued Tyler. The troubles there erupted without warning, the one time we'd risked going back to a planet where we were well-known. Jayne went down fighting, giving the rest of us the chance to escape.

I wonder if it meant anything to him, at the end, that he had a hero's death. The notion weighed heavily on us, for certain, and it grieved us more that we couldn't even retrieve his body. I think some of Kaylee's tears in the dark were for him, too.

It took Tyler some time to integrate into our family, but he worked hard at it. His sense of humor was nearly as twisted as Wash's, and he took his role as enforcer very seriously. Soon enough, we all got along.

Everything to its purpose, as Book would say.

My "legacy" included one other thing. I inherited the captain's cabin.

At first, I thought it was awful–ghoulish, almost. But Zoe said it was right and proper, and the last thing I wanted to do in those early days was cross her. I let everyone take something as a remembrance, because that was right and proper, too, and with our limited resources, practical. The rest, we stowed away respectfully.

I took Mal's gun–mostly as a symbolic gesture of the passing of command; and kept some of the pictures and such that furnished the bunk. Then there was the tiny object I found hidden in the bottom of a dusty chest, wrapped in a rank patch torn from an Independent uniform.

If Zoe knows I wear the silver cross around my neck, she's never let on. Kaylee has seen it, but doesn't question it. She probably thinks I got it from Book. I've never told her it was Mal's. That's for the best.

I kept it to remind me that a man has to have faith in something, especially if he can't have faith in himself.

******

Zoe lowers the hatch, and we look out on the world that has no name. In the distance, a couple of wagons approach, led by one solitary motorized mule. They stop a ways away, and two men slowly walk towards us.

"Play it cool," I say softly. "I don't want to have to do any doctoring today."

It's my standard warning, but Tyler grins anyway. He's got a grin almost as scary as Jayne's.

The first man–lean, a bit ragged, but clear-eyed and straight-backed, comes closer. "Captain Peter King?"

I let one hand rest on my belt, as if I'm doing it without thinking. "Yup."

He looks in turn at Zoe, her shotgun currently pointed down; at Tyler, who's still grinning evilly; and at Book, standing up by the hatch, half in Shadow's shadow. "We're not looking for any trouble," he says, taking a step or two backwards.

"Not looking for any our own selves," I say. "Just here to conduct some business." We've got the goods stacked right by the hatch entrance. "You show me your coin, then send your men up to collect, and we'll just see that everything goes smooth."

Blowing out a gusty breath, he hands me a sack of money. He signals, and the other settlers come forward, walking by us with some discomfort. They load and tote in wary silence, and it does go smooth.

But I don't stand or breathe any easier until their vehicles are all weighted down and they look ready to depart. Even then, I'm still wary.

The leader watches as I pour the coins out into my hand. "It's all there, as agreed upon," he says, sounding almost angry.

I smile. "Yeah, it's all here." I have a very nice smile, Kaylee says. Not at all menacing, like Mal's. The menace is all in my eyes, is what Zoe says.

The man's looking at the smile, not my eyes. He relaxes a bit and dares to extend a hand. I accept, and shake it firmly. "Pleasure doing business with you, sir. You know how to reach us if there's further need of our services."

"Yes, yes," he replies, trying on a smile of his own. "We'll keep that in mind." He even manages a little wave in Tyler's direction, taking more to that eerie-ass grin than Zoe's fierce silence.

He rejoins his party, and they turn about, seemingly unconcerned that none of us moves a muscle as they go. In fact, we don't move till they and their dust are out of sight.

I hear Wash's voice crackle faintly from the comm. "All's clear, Cap. We're shiny."

Another gift from Inara enabled us to buy some better quality, long-range sensors a while back. They come in very handy. I don't refuse her generosity any more, as I did the first time she contrived to send us something. A very angry wave reached us sometime after that, so I gave in, unwilling to add to the burden she bears.

Tyler lets out a whoop and fires off a shot, just for the hell of it. Zoe rolls her eyes and walks past him haughtily. "Sorry, Boss," he says, when he sees my look. But he's grinning again, and I shrug it off as we head back into the ship.

Book's up at the weapons locker, making things secure. Kaylee and River are coming down the stairs from the foredeck. I toss our haul playfully to River, and she makes a graceful leap down the last step to catch it. Kaylee runs into my arms. Now I can do her some good, with it all over and done.

"Crime's nice now and then, baobei," I whisper in her ear, "but sometimes there's nothing like an honest day's work."

We share a kiss. She looks over my shoulder, her face bright. "Get a move on, Preacher–I thought you were cooking tonight!"

"I'm coming," he calls. "You just give an old man a break."

Kaylee gives me another kiss, then joins Book, taking his arm fondly as they walk up the stairs together. Zoe's looking down from the upper catwalk, and she nods, smiling. We're smooth.

Tyler shuts the hatch. "We good, Boss?"

"We're good."

He hits the comm button. "Boss says go, Wash. Take ‘er up." He goes to store his weapons.

River's waiting for me. We head up to join the others. "I told you everything would be all right," she scolds, jingling the bag of coins in her hand.

"Yes, mei-mei. I really should listen to you more often."

She laughs, punching my arm lightly.

Wash fires up the jets. I pause in mid-step, waiting for the familiar, comforting sensation of Serenity's Shadow hitting the sky. I don't move till I feel the slight jolt that means we've broken atmo.

A little bit of weight falls away from my soul. We had a good day.

We're still flying.

******

Concerning Inara's departure: I didn't know the actual circumstances of "Heart of Gold" at the time I wrote this story. So let's just extend the alternate universe coverage and say Nandi survived, moved on and prospered.

And a request: If you recommend this story to a friend, on a list, message board, or whatever--please, don't reveal the finer details! Thank you.