umm....I don't own anyone, never have, never will. this is set AFTER the BIg Damn Movie, so dont read if you don't know who you won't be seein Jayne and Kaylee are together in this one, so if that bothers ya...too bad ;-P

Hope you enjoy

The Best Laid Plans Chapter one

The plan had been perfect. Should’ve gone smooth. So of course, he’d ended up hurt. But this wasn’t the usual “plan gone south” injury. This one had a potential for seriousness that was matched only by it’s promise of strange happenings…stranger than what had already occurred. The doc was doing his job, assessing and calling out what he needed to his moon-eyed assassin of a sister turned temporary nurse, trusting her to know what he was talking about even though she hadn’t had any “formal” medical training. Zoe was standing stoically by the Infirmary entrance, arms crossed, waiting for the doc to give her the facts, hoping he could at least partially explain the…situation, after he got to seeing what was keeping the captain from jumping up off the infirmary bed and cursing their laziness and penchant for hanging about and worrying over nothing when there are perfectly good somethings to be getting done. Kaylee, sweet Kaylee, was wide-eyed, teary, but hopeful (as always), standing somewhat close to Zoe, but leaning back on the lug of a mercenary she’d recently become quite attached to. Pulling strength from the steady heartbeat she knew thrummed under the chest she has been sleeping for the past 2 weeks or so. Jayne, whose face may have well been made out of stone for all the concern he showed for his incapacitated captain, showed his worry by letting his hand seek out the comfort of a certain perky (well, not at the moment) mechanic’s smaller, smoother, but somewhat shakier hand, and gave it a squeeze whenever the machines the doc had switched on, and hooked the captain up to, gave a beep that sounded irregular to the merc’s ears. Inara was the only crewmember not hovering about the infirmary. She was planet-side, sexing her client, and had no idea of the…situation going on aboard the ship she called home. Strangely enough, even with no knowledge of the…situation that the captain was in at the moment, her thoughts kept straying from her client’s satisfaction, and onto the look the captain had given her when she’d answered “I don’t know” to his query into her readiness to return to life on her planet…life without him, and his blue eyes, and his taunting smirks, and his rare but wonderful full-on smiles, and the way his eyes lost their brightness and darkened his features sometimes, when he thought about the past, or when someone on his crew got hurt, or when he stubbed his toe carrying cargo onto the ship, or…or maybe she should pay attention to her client, not that he’d noticed her wandering mind, he’d been too engrossed in the grand finale of his exhausting (for him) excursion. Inara gave him her most winning smile, her eyes tracking left to the hourglass, alerting her to the fact that they had almost 45 minutes left in their time together. 45 minutes left playing a part to a stranger that couldn’t keep her focused enough to stop wondering what a certain smirking space cowboy was up to at this very moment. On board Serenity, the infirmary was, for the most part, quiet. Everyone was staring at the bed that had once been occupied by their seemingly injured captain. Now though, everyone just…stared. You see, the bed, which at one point in time not too long ago, had been the recovery area for an injured space captain with a tendency to smuggle geisha dolls, and fugitives, was now the, chosen slumber spot for a boy of about 12 with a tendency to snore softly, and drool. Since the “captain” was in no shape to make any sense of, or bring about the clarity he usually brought to a somewhat unfathomable situation, River decided she would be the one to step up and deliver the line that had so many times put the minds of the crew at ease when faced with unnerving odds. “Huh.”