In all of mankind’s history, there have always been certain jobs for which few people volunteer. Jobs like this one -- vile, loathsome or upsetting, but vital to the maintenance of a civilized society. In times of war, this detail was sometimes called “Graves Registration.” Simon had called it “handling things.” That had been his offer to the Captain, just within Zoe’s earshot, to go back to Serenity and “handle things on the bridge“. The situation on the bridge was, of course, not a thing but a person. Or an erstwhile person, at the very least. Simon volunteered to police the body of their pilot and the first-mate’s husband, the man they knew as “Wash”.

As a doctor-in-training, his first patients had been cadavers, so he took no distress from handling and examining the dead. None of those cadavers had been known to him personally, though. None of them had sat across from him at the dinner table or bantered over a game of cards. That seemed to make a world a difference, though Simon dutifully suppressed any unseemly percolation of feelings.

It seemed almost disrespectful to fire up the clatterous saws-all in the echoing close confines of Serenity’s flight deck, but it was unavoidable. The pilot was pinned to his seat by the enormous spear of debris that had killed him. Even with the impalement cut, it was still difficult for Simon and a squeamish but reticent Jayne Cobb to negotiate the body from the chair to lay it on the rough wool blanket on the floor. The body. Simon knew that what was in his hands was only organic matter waiting to rot, but it was still Wash. No, it wasn’t, not anymore he reminded himself as he began to coax out the huge spike of wood that had transmuted a funny, warm human being into a cold, still corpse.

Simon shone his work light into the capacious wound. “It was quick,” he said in his sure doctor’s voice. Jayne, standing at the foot of the body like a preacher at a fresh grave, only nodded. That was the question everyone asked when they got Simon alone and Wash was on their mind. “The beam severed his spinal cord - he probably didn’t even feel it.”

“Don’t help much,” Jayne said with dour resignation.

“No, I don’t suppose it does.”

“Really wish the preacher was here.”

Another friend to mourn, now that there was time.

Jayne took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You know any words?”

It took Simon a moment to understand. “Oh, um…” He cleared his throat and looked at the still face and the blue eyes. In his mind, as clear as if it were real, he heard Wash. “You should think about asking the captain to drop you somewhere else. Whitefall ain't exactly civilization in the strictest sense.”

“You don't have to worry about me.”

“Zoe's out on a deal, I always worry. So it's not out of my way.”

“Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace.” Simon closed Wash’s eyes gently with his fingertips and whispered, “Goodbye…my friend.”