Title: Lesser for the Loss Author: Sullen Siren (adena (at) direcway (dot) com) Summary: Wash and Zoe call it quits. Spoilers: None specific, though allusions to a few throwaway lines in Heart of Gold Rating: PG-13 Disclaimer: Mutant Enemy, Joss, Fox, etc. Not me. Never me. Notes: Written for musesfool's "Two Line Challenge". Song lines were Pearl Jam's Nothingman. "Caught a bolt of lightnin'/Cursed the day he let it go."

He'd had her, and he'd lost her. It wasn't a new story, and the part of his mind that wasn't wasted in regret cursed the lack of originality. He was an original – it was what she'd loved in him. Now she was gone, and he was a cliché, and he wondered how much of what she'd seen in him was only there when she was looking.

Serenity seemed a lot smaller when you had to work to keep your paths from crossing between your bunks. He slept in the empty shuttle, but his things were still in the bunk where she was, and she'd not told him to move them. He'd kept hope because of that. Because her clothes and his were still intertwined in the too-full laundry bag; because she kept the sheets on the bed after he'd left. Because she just left, silently, when he came in to get something, and didn't tell him to go.

He'd gone planet-side this morning. He'd bought her cherries because he knew she loved them, and he loved the way they stained her mouth red, and how she tasted with the juice still on her lips. His things were laid out neatly on the bed of the cold shuttle. There was no note; she didn't stay to speak to him. Ghosts on a ship, drifting within feet of one another but never touching.

The controls of the ship had been soothing, familiar, and predictable before, when his toothbrush was still on the shelf beside hers. Now he looked past them to the empty black of space and realized how alone they were. He hadn't been, before. He wondered if this was how the others always felt.

The voice behind him, dreamy and sharp all at once, didn't startle him. He didn't jump in surprise, didn't panic, and didn't laugh. He hadn't done any of that since the day she'd looked at him with a look he'd never thought he'd see her give him, and told him to leave. "She misses you. Out in the black. The lights. Like lightning. Need grounding. Ground her out so she doesn't burn. Misses that."

He strove to keep his voice light, normal. Emotion upset River, they'd learned that early. It sent the short-circuits in her brain into some kind of frenzy, and she became strange and frantic and saw things that no one was ever meant to see. "I'd rather we not discuss my personal life right now. What about you? How are you getting along with everyone? Have any interesting conversations with dead metal ships lately?"

"She's not dead. She's just not alive like everyone else. Chips and circuits and moving parts. Not very different, really. We're her insides. Her guts. Her heart, her voice, her touch, her strength, her spirit."

"Very poetic. Why don't you go and write that down? We'll put it up on the cortex once we're in range of Demeter."

"You let her go." Her voice was blunt and matter of fact.

His own voice rose in response, despite his attempts to control it. "I didn't! She was . . . it wasn't fair. It was unreasonable. She wanted me to be something I'm not. She wanted to do what wasn't-"

"2.5 children. White picket fences. Tradition. Safety. All that fills up your mind is like paintings. No substance. Wait for perfection that won't come. The truth is cold-metal ships with living hearts. Truth is blood, and death, and running, and everything too bright and hard and black and white all turned to gray. Couldn't accept that. You weren't there. Not hard. Didn't see. You didn't go to Serenity and never leave."

He laughed because it was better than crying, and he didn't cry in front of mentally unstable little girls. "She wants a family when all it is going to be is another thing to worry about."

"For her it's another thing to love."

"Same thing."

River frowned, looking younger. "You're not suited for intellectual discussions of paradigm shifts in relationships."

His tone was more bitter than light. "I'm most abjectly sorry."

"You shouldn't say things you don't mean." She told him sternly.

"I meant it."

"Didn't." She insisted. "Don't mean what you say. Always your problem. Bend and take and sway until you break, and then it's a fight, and a problem, and her voice sounds like nails over porcelain when she tells you that this wasn't what she want-"

"Stop! River, go!" He'd never lost his temper with her. Others had. Mal with his quick temper and easy surliness, Jayne with his cursing, bumbling fury. They'd all snapped at her. Wash never had, and he saw the look on her face when he did, and cursed himself for putting it there. "I'm sorry, mei mei . . ."

"Don't. Not sorry. Daddies chastise little girls gone astray. Roving hands in ships with humming lights. Daddy would be so angry. . ." She murmured distantly, mad again, and her hands ran up and down her arms in a strangely sensuous gesture that set his skin to crawling, and his mind to wandering where he didn't want it to. And then she was back, eyes lucid and aware and too-sharp. "She'll come back."

He sighed tiredly, pressing fingers into the sides of his nose and feeling older than he had any right to. "Hard not to run across one another in a ship this size, River."

"You let her go." River repeated. "Strength. Bones of Serenity. Thinks she needs you – but she doesn't. Too strong. Doesn't know. She's happier with you though. And she'll come back for that. And leave again, and come back again. Like a dance. You should wear slippers and tulle."

She would come back. Coming from anyone else he would consider it nonsense. From River . . . "How do I make her stay if she doesn't need me?"

She made a small noise of frustration, and suddenly she was just a teenage girl frustrated by adult idiocy. "How should I know?" She flounced back down the stairs and out of sight, and he could hear her singing Kaylee's favorite song as she drifted away.

As always, the step was too light to be caught. "She ain't wrong, you know. Can't stay away. Wish I could."

She was beautiful in the doorway, holding one of shirts as if she'd needed a reason to seek him out. Tall and lithe and entirely more than he'd ever deserved to have, she was his. Or she was. He wanted to have that again. She didn't need him – but she wanted him. He needed her. He'd fix this. "Zoe . . . I'm sorry. I was wrong. We can have a baby."

She looked at him with the expression he'd never been able to read, but Mal always could. "Do you want one?"

She always knew when he lied. "No."

"Then we won't have one until you do." The same expression; unreachable, unfeeling maybe, though he doubted it. She seemed serene to any who didn't know her.

"And you'll stay? With me? Anyway."

"Can't make no promises, Wash. I love you. But if it gets to be that I'm wanting that more than I'm lovin' you – I'll move on."

"I'll learn, Zoe, I'll get over it. I'll want it, ài rén"

She studied him, and he didn't move to embrace her. She wasn't ready yet. "For someone who can be so brave, you're a nuòfu sometimes." She turned and left, taking his shirt with him, and he sagged in his chair, caught somewhere between relief and dread.