Kaylee was having a great time. Shopping! What fun! Granted, she wished she could be shopping for pretty dresses and frills like that. Inara managed to talk Mal into letting the two of them go off earlier and get a few special things for her, and Inara showed Kaylee how to make the little money Mal allowed go a lot further than first Kaylee feared. Lip gloss, perfumes, various unmentionables and other creature comforts which a lady should not have to do without in space. Kaylee had.

Then she and the boys rummaged through a couple shipyards and junk piles and even one or two bonafide part stores, picking up not only the stuff Kaylee knew they couldn't do without, but also a few things that would make the engine room a better place to live in, including improved diagnostic equiptment so Serenity could talk to her better. Kaylee also learned a few things by climbing around inside an older model Firefly with Book. She learned more about how Serenity is supposed to look compared to how she looks now, after all the rigging and creative fixes she'd had to give her over the years. And she learned about redundancies. That some of the things she'd had to pull out of Serenity over the years had been the first line of defense against breakdowns. She'd pulled them out but she never had to replace them. So in more ways than one they'd been flying on a wing and a prayer compared to the ship's original schematics. However there wasn't enough money to splurge on that right now. It was food for thought though. Maybe if she talked real nice to the mysterious gentleman, she could sweeten the deal a bit for all concerned. She hoped he had the soul of a grease monkey.

It had been a long but productive day of shopping on Beatrice. Now the crew was back on board Serenity and heading for New Prospero. Downstairs the rest of the gang were using some cleaning supplies Mal had purchased, and were giving the ship a good once over with mops and sponges and the like. Jayne said all they was doin' was movin' the dirt around, but they were giving it their best shot. Kaylee was hard at work replacing and installing all the equiptment they'd purchased for Serenity's engine and other inner workings. Wash was alongside her offering an extra pair of hands, mostly to avoid the downstairs cleaning detail. Little did he know that Kaylee had cleaning detail in mind for her engine room after they installed everything. He didn't seem to mind though. When she handed the rag and spritzer to him he took it in stride. He seemed preoccupied, and she then realized she'd been doing most of the talking all afternoon, since they got back.

"I been talking my fool head off," she laughed. "Sorry."

"No it's okay I didn't mind. The day's been an exciting one. You got to shop. I get that." Wash went over to the engine and she noticed that the first thing it looked like he was about to spritz was the catalyzer on the port compression coil. She stayed his hand. Spritz went up in the air in front of them. "Hey! What's the big idea!"

"Not that."

"What?"

"I clean that. You clean around that."

"Kaylee? It's easily the dirtiest thing on the.. izzat blood?"

"It's the captain's blood. Remember awhile back when the catalyzer blew? That's the catalyzer."

"I know what it is," sounded to Kaylee like he was feigning intelligence.

"That's what the Captain replaced when we were in the shuttles."

"So that's his blood?"

"Yeah.. and I don't have the heart to.."

"Okay. Gotcha. We clean around that."

"Right."

They continued cleaning for awhile. Made some nice progress. It was painfully quiet and Kaylee had this nagging feeling there was some burr up Wash's side. He was usually just more jovial than this. After about five or ten minutes she just couldn't take it anymore.

"Okay what?"

"What?"

"What."

"What what?"

"What's wrong with you? You're actin' like Atlas shrugged and the Earth That Was fell on top o you."

"Oh it's nothin'."

"Nuthin my butt."

"Well.. It's just.. Oh it's silly."

"Try me. I like silly."

"You'll think I been around River too much."

Kaylee stopped in mid scrub. "You been gettin'm too, haven't ya?"

Wash stopped and looked back. Their eyes met.

"I thought it was just me. Just that one time when I'd had that bout of insomnia? Went crazy with the sleep deprivation and mild concussions multiple--"

"Yeah I remember. Crazy day that was all hell breakin' loose. Niska and Early teaming up to get us, and Badger.."

"Yeah. Why'd Mal take this job, even?"

"Money."

"Why didn't we just shoot Badger when we--"

"You're changing the subject, Wash."

"I know I know! I just don't like to think about it. The dream I mean."

"I didn't mind mine. Dreams are all kindsa things. They shouldn't be seen as bad though. Even when they are."

"Yeah but.."

"You can't stop thinking about it."

"Yeah."

"And the ramifications. The talk about temporal distortions and paradoxes and how we are not who we are. Gave me the willies."

"Don't know if I remember that part."

"It'll come back to ya. Does me. Or maybe we didn't have the same one, sounds like."

"Of course not how could we dream the same dream?"

"You went to the light, in a smoking jacket?"

Wash went back to scrubbing, and tried to wear his poker face.

"Well hey. If it means something it means something and if not..." She put down her rag and walked over to him. All smiles. "Was I in it? You were in mine."

"We're gonna compare notes now are we?" Wash sounded like it was the last thing he wanted to do.

"Yeah we must! So..? Tell me everthin'."

Wash looked back at the door, hoped no one was eavesdropping. He went down to a forced whisper. "Well. First off, I think I saw this guy we're about to go pick up..!"

TO BE CONTINUED