Disclaimer- I don't own Firefly, please don't sue me for borrowing the names of anything. ************************************************* I'll Never Forget

I’ll never forget the day the day the Lord brought her into our lives. That tiny sunshiny baby, such a little morsel of a being that I just had to hold her in my arms and protect. She was our sixth and final child, and Heaven knows I spoiled her to no end. She frightened us half to death that day though. She wasn’t supposed to arrive for another couple of weeks. So when her mamma went into labour, needles to say I panicked. I rushed around, rounding up all the kids to usher along to Doctor Baker’s office. Until my wife, who had remained absolutely calm, reminded me that she was going to have a home birth. So I waved the midwife and got LeAnna settled in our upstairs bedroom. The midwife arrived and made me wait outside. Pretty near wore a hole in the carpet on the landing, I paced so much. Thirteen hours- LeAnna’s longest labour. Bryan Jr and Lissa looked after their younger siblings, whilst worrying about their mamma and the new baby. It was about 3:00 in the morning when I heard the LeAnna’s screaming and the midwife’s coaxing replaced with the crying of a little pair of lungs. The midwife came out a moment later with a bright smile. In her arms was our little bundle of joy, all wrapped up in a pink blanket. I held onto that baby like there was no tomorrow. My sweet little Kaylee.

I’ll never forget the day she fixed her first mechanised device. At 4 years old she was so inquisitive. Always poking about the shed for something to play with. One day she found an old broken cuckoo clock- or ‘birdie clock’ as she called it. She spent hours out there with that clock. Around nap time LeAnna got concerned, and went out looking for her baby. She found Kaylee sleeping on the dirty floor in the shed, with that gorramn birdie clock next to her. And it was ticking away like it hadn’t for ten years. She was so proud. When she showed me, the first words out of her mouth were- “All growed up now!” Lissa called her little sister a prodigy, Junior called it luck. But I knew what it was. Pure Natural Talent.

I’ll never forget the first time I caught her with a boy. She was barely 13, far too young to be interested in boys. But she was. Billy Taylor was a little over 14, and was what could be called a ‘chick magnet’. He had every girl in Olive just lining up to go out with him. But it seemed that my Kaylee caught his eye, because from the moment she started high school, he was interested in her. And from what I could tell, she didn’t mind. Anyway, I was just on my way out to the shed when I heard giggling from the far side of the house. Of course, I oblivious to Kaylee’s interests, I half expected to find my baby playing with Lissa’s dolls or some such. But no, instead I found my youngest daughter and Billy Taylor- kissing each other. It seemed a pretty innocent kiss- nothing terribly indecent going on. But I still went off my rocker. Yelled madly at Billy to get the hell away from my daughter before picking him by the collar and throwing him onto the street. Kaylee got her fair share of punishment too. I was sorry later for whupping her so hard, so I apologised, and gave her long lecture about decency and self respect. You know what she said to me: “I’m growing up Daddy. Ain’t nothing you can do to stop that.”

I’ll never forget the day my baby went away. I knew she’d been off with some boy. She almost was. Whenever it wasn’t the workshop, it was always the docks- looking at some cool ships, and meeting some interesting people. This time it was some dim-witted boy who called himself a mechanic, come off some broken down ship. Becker or something, his name was. Anyway, she’d been out a few hours when she came bounding home in her pretty floral dress, chattering a mile a minute about some job on a ship. Of course, she wasn’t going to go until I’d met the Captain of this boat, so I got the whole family together (three of our children already had kids of their own) and we all marched down to the Glendale docks, arriving at the cargo bay doors of a ship named Serenity. A right sight we must have been for anyone watching. The Captain was there waiting. I could tell he was trying not to laugh. But the smile faded as I told him-very straightforwardly- that he wasn’t taking away my youngest daughter without my getting to know him better. He respected that, and told me much about himself and his operation. Once I was satisfied that he wasn’t dangerous, or likely to get my little Kaylee hurt, I let her go. It was a very emotional farewell. She hugged goodbye to her brothers, sisters, her cousins (the ones that came), her nieces and her nephews, then she cried into her mamma’s shoulder for a while, before she turned to me. She flung her arms around my shoulders and held on tight. I didn’t want to let her go. Then she whispered in my ear- “I’m all grown up Daddy. Ain’t nothing you could do to stop that.” Then she turned away and boarded the ship. Captain Reynolds waited a moment longer and in that second we reached an understanding. “Bring her home safely. Promise me.”

I’ll never forget the day he brought her home to me. It was late one afternoon. There was a knock at the door and I went to answer it. When I saw Captain Reynolds standing at the door I called for my wife. But the look on Reynolds face was enough to let me know that something wasn’t right. We invited him indoors and he sat down to a cup of tea. “Mr and Mrs Frye. I’m so sorry to tell you this, but um……” “Spit it out son” “Kaylee’s dead” I went numb. I remember catching my wife as she fell to the ground in shock. I remember waving the whole family to tell them to come around immediately. I remember Reynolds telling me some wild tale about fugitives and Feds and gunshot wounds. I even remember kicking Reynolds out of my home. But I didn’t actually accept that my little girl was gone until they delivered her body to our home for a proper burial. Only as I looked down at my daughters smiling face did I realise that she wasn’t going to come running through that door- pigtails flying and telling me all about how she fixed the Chambers 8010. She was gone. Not coming back.

I’ll never forget how she used to tell us how it would all be okay. I’ll never forget how she used to fix everything without breaking a sweat. I’ll never forget how she told us that it was nobody’s fault. But most of all I’ll never forget the words she said to me that day- “I’m all grown up Daddy. Ain’t nothing you could do to stop that.” The End.