All comments and disclaimers in full in Ch 1 (Simon), it's the usual fare: not mine. Comment or send feedback, wily_one24@yahoo.com.au

This is the last of them, obviously. I hope I did the crew justice.

***

"That's the way it's always been. It all comes down to creating time. We don't always have to make it right. We'll all drive by in our hybrid lives. Chances are... chances are... We'll make it back." - Sheryl Crow.

***

She missed the feel of leather bound around her neck, the air that caressed the skin there felt like loss all over again, like a tease of memory that made her ache, she was tired of missing him.

Zoe sat on the bed, the empty bed, and stared at the walls of their bunk, their empty bunk. Now hers and hers alone. Her lonely sanctuary. An escape from the watchful eyes of those around her.

They meant well and she knew it, understood it and was grateful that she had so many people in her life that cared so much, but it was tiring, overwhelming sometimes, to play her part in it.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen loss and bloodshed before, hell, she and Mal had lived it during the war, had cut their adult teeth on it. She knew and understood the platitudes of these situations, a hero’s death, fighting for a cause, had spoken them before and would no doubt speak them again. She even realized they were right.

Anger and denial were never part of her feelings over Wash’s death, it was more of a numb acceptance. It had happened and she had to move on. The truth was that Wash knew the risks of the job, his life had been in danger everyday since he’d stepped foot on Serenity and he’d signed on the proverbial dotted line. A good majority of their arguments had revolved around the very theme of mortal danger that they were both in.

In some deep part of her thoughts she was barely ready to acknowledge, let alone examine, Zoe knew she had been selfish. Selfish in that she had always assumed she would be the one to go first, that she wouldn’t be the one left behind to clean up the mess and deal with the hard fact of grieving.

Her penance to this cause was to go on breathing, to get up everyday and try to eat, to watch everyone on the ship learn to live again, to slowly say goodbye to a part of herself she never wanted to. Some days were easier than others and Zoe found herself hungry for the sound of living again, for the thrum of life that didn’t stop beating.

There was one thing she would not do and that was to give in, because he had always loved her strength, had marveled in it just as she had loved the purity of him, the delight he brought to her world. So she stayed strong, because that was how he’d liked her best.

Strong and upright, she refused to bend and her hands deftly worked at the string of leather, smoothing it, warming it with her fingers until it was supple and yielding in her grasp. There wasn’t much to spare aboard Serenity, but she was working on getting a new stone, a new symbol. She knew the others would chip in if she asked them and probably even if she didn’t.

The wedding band she’d had wrapped around her neck for too short a time had stayed back on his grave, a place she knew she’d rarely visit, because she didn’t need a rock to remember her husband.

The bond she wanted to wind around her neck this time went deeper than the words husband and wife, it ran all the way through their blood, wound them together in ways that were so beautiful she didn’t have the words to describe it.

It moved her, moved inside a place she’d thought so empty. This was why she had to move on and stay strong.

Zoe missed the feel of leather bound around her neck, the air that caressed the skin there felt like loss all over again, like a tease of memory that made her ache, she was tired of missing him.

***

End of Series.