Title: Ghosts of the Past and Little Miracles Author: Claramata Description: Zoe’s mind often lingered on ghosts (POST SERENITY!! DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE) Response to: Challenge 95 redux Disclaimer: I don’t own them; I’m just playing for a while.

Zoe’s mind often lingered on ghosts, worse now than ever before. Wash used to be able to push back the dark shadows to the corners of her mind, the parts of her that she walled up carefully, to avoid going insane. When you’re in a fight, you get let your emotions get the best of you or you could end up dead. There was the one time though, the one time she’d let pain and anger and loss overcome her, the image of her husband, sitting in his chair on the bridge, dead, wouldn’t leave her mind as she’d walked up to the Reavers filtering through the door, she kept shooting until the ran out of ammo, and then she’d started hitting them with the otherwise useless rifle. She hadn’t cared at that point if she died, because then she’d be with Wash after all. But she’d snapped out of it when Jayne yelled for her to get back, because, after all, the mercenary alone couldn’t protect the others. She’d be injured, but she’d survived. She’d survived, but not lived. She thought that true living had been lost on her the moment he’d died. Then she started getting sick to her stomach. Zoe never got nauseous, ever. And so when she told the Doc how she was feeling, he did a test.

Pregnant. She was pregnant. Before Wash had died she would have been ecstatic, but now? Now she was scared. Scared that she couldn’t love this child the way she should. Afraid that she’d mess it up. Afraid that the baby growing inside her would remind her too much of the man she’d lost, that this child would be like a ghost of the past.

Nine months and hours of extreme pain later, she held in her arms a little boy. He was dark, like his mother, but his eyes. Little Hoban had his father’s eyes. She took one look at her son and knew that she’d be able to live again.