Mal thinks she's all his.

River's never told him different, but she knows the truth. Not hard to see. All of them, every one, would kill for her. Die for her. For the same reason a wild animal will kill or die for their den and their cubs.

Mine.

All you need to see it are eyes. And feet.

Feet take you up the stairs into the cockpit, where a man in a loud shirt and louder hair grins over his shoulder. Eyes tell you how Wash touches those controls, sweet and gentle. He only ever touches Zoe like that.

Come on, baby, you're right there with me. I know you can do it, darlin', I know it because you have. Mocking, to the Reavers--here's something you can't do. Because they don't have what's his. The buttons and switches, the joystick, the screens and readouts, aren't any different, in his heart, than his wife's skin and mouth, her breasts, her belly, her hips, her sex. He's the only one who touches them.

Mine.

Zoe’s place was by her cap’n’s side. Now it’s by her husband’s too. Serenity’s the place where both are possible. She’ll do anything to protect this meeting place, this neutral ground. And the people in it.

There's people on the inside of Serenity, and there’s people on the outside, and it ain't necessarily a matter of spatial location which is which. She doesn’t care nothin’ for the people on the outside, and it takes a good long while for anyone to become the people on the inside.

But when they do . . .

Mine.

Jayne, all guns and muscle and simple thoughts. No complexity in him.

River got it first time from him, shouldering his gun to glare down the sight at the net that Saffron had led them into, that he and Vera got them out of. Ain’t gettin’ us this time, bitch. Ain’t getting this ship, these people. Not if me ‘n’ Vera have anything to say about it.

He and Zoe are a lot more alike than either of them really want to admit. Took a while for herself and Simon to become his, in that simple mind, but now they are.

Mine.

Kaylee, now--oh, Kaylee loves so quickly and easily, and so deeply. Should be impossible. But she loves everything, and everybody, and (don't tell Simon) she loves Serenity most of all. Kaylee, and her beautiful knock-together jury-rigged engine, they’re the womb of this ship, all soft curves and deep warm red. But everything is backwards, because it's the mother in the womb, surrounded by the darling child.

Serenity is Kaylee's girl, her good girl, who’ll do anything she asks. Because Serenity knows Kaylee’ll take care of her, always. Even when there’s no money for parts, and the ones they have are groaning under the strain, Kaylee’s there with oil and nimble fingers, soothing and coaxing like a momma with a teething baby. Come on, honey, come on, my sweet lamb, you know I love you.

Mine.

Out of the engine room, down. Simon's infirmary, his little kingdom. His, all his. Nobody's allowed in except by his leave, and then he gets to order them around like scuttling nurses. This, that, the other thing, that drawer, not that one, you flaming idiot. Doctors are like that. They think they have the right. Could be they do, in their domain. Counters gleaming, vinyl shiny, instruments laid out just so, exactly the way Simon likes it.

He considers the bodies his too. Not in a sexual way, not even Kaylee when she's in the blue-white gleam of the infirmary. Lacerations, puncture wounds, contusions, nausea, fractured bones, paranoid schizophrenia, his, all his, to find and fix.

Mine.

Inara's shuttle. Everyone goes to Inara's shuttle. She doesn't like them barging in, but if you knock properly, she'll never shut you out. River's slept on that bed herself, and when she screamed in the grip of nightmares, it was Inara's arms that came around her. She opens those arms to anyone who wants comfort, and some that don't, but they end up taking it anyway. Their hearts are hers.

Inara doesn’t care for right and wrong--hard, cold words, those. What’s wrong is what hurts, and what’s right is what doesn’t. Like Simon, except it's feelings she fixes, cuddling and soothing spiritual bumps and bruises away.

She didn't like Book when he came aboard because she thought he was going to try to usurp that.

Mine.

Book’s jurisdiction overlaps with Inara’s more than he’d like to admit. Preacher and Companion, natural colleagues in spite of what the world thinks.

Book thinks about right and wrong all the time, and maybe not enough about what hurts and what doesn’t. But it’s not hearts he’s trying to mend, it’s souls. Souls, like gardens, need weeding sometimes. Except sometimes he don’t know what are the weeds and what are the strong, healthful vegetables, and how maybe what’s one on the surface can be another underneath.

He’s learning. Slowly. He swung black to white so quickly, he has to ease his way into gray. He’s learning to understand before his judgements.

And those souls--reluctant, tarnished, broken, simple, pure, sweet--they belong to him. He guards them for his God, but sometimes River wonders if he’d give them up when asked.

Mine.

River wanders ghost-soft through the ship, through Wash's cockpit, Simon's kingdom, Inara's haven, Kaylee's womb.

Mal’s ship.

She looks at them, and she looks at Serenity, and she smiles.

Early tried to rape Serenity, just like he threatened to do to Kaylee. Got inside her, unwilling invasion. But River wouldn’t let him take what he came for, and now his bloated shell floats somewhere in space. Because nobody touches Serenity.

Mine.

FINIS