***WARNING: HUGE SPOILERS FOR SERENITY, THE MOVIE.***

Kaylee was waiting. Simon had been badly injured, she knew, and she knew he wasn't yet up to the things she'd been planning ever since the moment he'd confessed his feelings to her before the Reavers had driven them back into the corridor. But it was still hard, the waiting. And every day she waited, she was sure he was going further back to the place he'd been before: so focussed on his sister and what he'd lost that there was no room for her. Yeah, he smiled at her when she brought him his moulded protein for dinner, but he'd always done that. His eyes made no hint of the things he'd said. Maybe he'd just said them, them regretted them. As he'd pulled back on Canton. Well, she had to get this pile of go se back into a working ship. She couldn't suppress a smile at the thought of any of the Serenity crew hearing that little thought – considering they all knew their sweet little Kaylee would turn all violent with a wrench if anyone had ever said such a thing about her beloved ship. But she was getting mighty sick of waiting.

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Simon was tired. He couldn't look Zoe in the eye. He hadn't paid for his selfishness in protecting River: other people had. Wash, and Book. He'd taken away the one thing that made Zoe smile. He'd been so blind. But he still couldn't see how he could have done anything else different: River was his sister. And he missed Kaylee, with a pain that was physical. She came and said hello to him, but the pain in her eyes was obvious. And it got worse as he withdrew a little more every day. He could barely look at Zoe when she came into the infirmary a couple of weeks after the crash that had taken her husband's life. But she, as always, was not to be ignored. "Simon, you didn't kill Wash. Reavers did. Not that they could've helped it, poor critters. If I blame anyone, it's Alliance. The same ones that screwed your sister over, they did it to Wash: you didn't make neither the Reavers nor your sister crazy. I hope that they's that thought of Miranda are pissing in their pants right now, with the fear that what might happen, that the Independents ain't dead and gone, but maybe now joined by right-thinking people that didn't know anything wuz wrong before, but they's the only ones I blame. Not you. You just tried to protect what's yourn. As I did. We just weren't strong enough." Her face, which had been stone cold since Wash's death, softened. "And don't think that he's gone. Not all of him, anyways." Simon's eyes widened, but she forestalled any speech from the doctor. "Don't tell anyone else yet, it's not rightly the time. But when you're better, I'm gonna need some of your doctorin' skills, like the ones you used back at Nandi's place. Just to make sure." She left the infirmary without saying more, graceful and straight-backed, as she always had been. Simon was flabbergasted. Zoe, the fearsome warrior woman that Wash had so loved but rightly feared, pregnant? He could never have thought of her as being that vulnerable: but it seemed even now, she was as strong and resolute as she had always been. All torn up, maybe, but still flying true.

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It was 1 am in the ship's morning when he knocked on the open door, but briefly, and didn't wait for an answer as he walked purposefully into the engine room. Kayleen's startled face looked at him from underneath Serenity's still ragged looking engine. "Simon? Y'OK? Didja need more painkillers? I'm sure there's still some in the hold somewheres…" "No, not painkillers." He was looking at her with an unsettlingly intense look. She tensed: she sensed that there was something important he wanted to say, and considering the way her luck was going, she wasn't going to like it. "Have I ever told you you are especially pretty when covered in engine grease?" Kaylee could only gape as he moved towards her. She hadn't expected that. The space between them sparked with electricity. "Ah yes, I'm sure I did tell you that, in that wonderful Mudder establishment on Canton. But the problem there was that I wasn't really in any condition to explore that theme. Properly, I mean. And as you know, I'm a proper person. I like to finish things I start, make sure's everything left in order." "No, we www-wouldn't want to get disorderly, now, www-would we?" Kaylee stammered, but she was getting a little less bewildered and a little more hopeful. This didn't seem to be the start of the "You're a really nice person, but…" speech that she'd been half-expecting. A half-smile was on his face. But the intensity in his eyes grew and as he drew his finger down the side of her cheek and to her lips, she shuddered. "Oh, I think I've been on Serenity long enough so as not to mind a bit of disorderly, as long as we clean up afterwards. We wouldn't want the captain to start worrying 'bout space monkeys again, would we?"