17 he had counted 17. She had 17 scars on her body. He figured that some she got when she was a child. He pictured her with pig-tails. She got the one on her knee when she fell trying to run with the older boys. She was a tomboy. The one on her elbow she got when she fell off her horse, when one of the older boys dared her to jump a fence that was too high. He knew that she got some of them during the war. The one of her lower back, he could still feel the fragment that was lodge there. The long, smooth line on her belly, she got cut by someone’s knife who tried to gut her. He didn’t have pleasant thoughts of those scars. He hated those scars because they where the ones she shared with him. They had their history, stories, and a life before him. They shared blood together. She had some that she received during their life together. He hated these even more. The one on the left side of her chest, a bullet had hit her. Two more inches it would have been her heart. The one on her left thigh had put her in a bad mood, because she couldn’t walk for a week. He hated when she was in her moods. He hated these scars because they almost took her away from him. 18 she now had 18 scars on her body. She had new one. A bullet gazed the side of her arm- “Wash you ok?” Zoë looked into her husband’s eyes. She could tell he hadn’t been sleeping. “Yeah, Baby I’m fine.” He stares right back into her eyes. 18 she now had 18, one more than she had the day before. She had one more because of him. Maybe if he hadn’t been so jealous, if he trusted her- “Mal’s my right hand; I can live without my right hand. It may be hard at first, have to get use to it, but I can live. You’re my heart. Can’t live without my heart. It wasn’t a choice.” She touched her husband’s face. Wash pulled her closer to him. He wanted to feel her heart beating next to him. It hurt like hell; he had gotten some scars of his own today. But he fights through the pain, just to have her close to him. “Next time, I’m staying on the ship.”