There's five of them leaving SERENITY this balmy late afternoon: Mal, Book, Zoe, Wash and Jayne. Rolling off the ship into a factory town called New Austin, they make for the central market. It's just edging to dusk, warm with a hint of breeze and they can hear music in the direction they're headed. Banjos and fiddle, calling them onward.

Jayne keeps back a pace behind the others. He's cheerful enough--lobbing back the conversation when it curves his way--but hanging to the edge and rear of the group. Easy enough to play the fifth wheel when you are one.

From back here he can see all sorts of interesting things anyway. Potential threats from behind, if any come looking to trouble them. In front, the way Zoe's sticking protectively close to her man is embarrassing. If Jayne needed anyone--man, woman, dog, bear, lucky frosted charm--to watch over him that way, he'd purely die of shame. Wash doesn't seem to notice, though. He's the mood-swing man of late, and right now he's ratched way over to being too calm, too steady. Jayne figures their fanciful doctor's been giving the pilot drugs again to ease his nerves. Half the time Wash is as skittery as a lizard. Pissy even. Then he hits the infirmary and it's like this, vague smile, faraway eyes...

Doesn't matter. Wash took some knocks but he's a big boy, he'll get over it.

From back here, Jayne can also watch Mal's sashaying gait as he strides along the broken pavement of the alley that leads from the spaceport.

Though maybe that's not such a good place to look right now. Jayne flashes on their job in Triumph, where they dressed up as settlers to lure the local banditos into raiding them. Before they'd properly begun the job, he'd been changing into costume: the Triumph settlers' scratchy homespun pants. Fussing with buttons and puzzling where exactly to hide his gun, he'd looked up and seen Mal wearing nothing but his skivvies.

"What the hell you doing?"

"Putting the dress on," Mal replied, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Jayne still hadn't known exactly why Zoe was never the one got to wear the skirt. Maybe she didn't know any more about girl clothes than the captain, but at least she had the parts to fill the top out. Presumably it wouldn't make her act dippy, neither. Dressing like a chick always made Mal... frivolous, that was the word Wash used.

"Frock's big enough to cover your pants, Mal," he'd said. "Just put it on over your clothes."

"Nah, then it wouldn't hang right." When he bent over to pick up the dress, Mal had his butt pointed right at Jayne, just for a second, not long enough for him to even think of turning away. With a fluff the homespun fell down in a curtain, covering Mal to his ankles, blowing air softly over Jayne's face. Mal spun once, sweeping out the skirt in a bell before he put on the bonnet and curtseyed. "How do I look?"

"Flat-chested and ornery," Jayne said. What he really thought was the captain looked not at all like a woman... and yet there was something almost pretty in the face he was making. Jayne was nearly sure he couldn't look pretty if he tried for a thousand years.

The captain had looked down at his chest. "Maybe I should ask them for a bra after all. I could stuff--"

"Let's just go, willya?" Jayne had said, and for a mercy Mal had hiked his skirts and followed, walking like a girl.

They've gotten Wash off SERENITY twice now. The first time, on Triumph, Zoe never let go of his hand. He'd been starting to fray, finally--the cool detachment that scares her so much was burning off him like ice melting, and underneath were hints of the man she's been looking for ever since Niska grabbed him. Wash held her and they'd watched the dance, saw Jayne getting drunk, witnessed Mal getting married even if none of them had known it. Sitting there together had been sweet, almost precisely what it should have been--and under their shared skin Zoe could feel Wash aboil with things they hadn't been saying. What exactly happened to him on Niska's skyplex. How it was more or less her fault.

The closest they've come so far to talking has been her listening in on the anti-hijack system while he babbles to himself on the bridge. Random comments about flying and going crazy. Real encouraging stuff.

And waiting for a battle, even this kind, is the worst.

She'd picked an argument with him the day after Triumph, not by design but because she was well-hacked over the stowaway. Wash roused himself to snap back at her a little before retreating into stonewalling. It was enough to piss her off and she'd gone to bed thinking: tomorrow. But then the ship had been hijacked, Wash got kicked in the head and when she and Mal came back from rescuing their stolen shuttle from Saffron's clutches, she had found her husband frozen over again, cool as a pond in winter. He was stone asleep in their bed, first time in four days he'd been able to lie still. Hair newly washed, temple cut an angry red line and his face at rest. Almost smiling.

She'd wanted to cry, to throw him against the bulkhead and yell "Wake up!" To shatter the renewed barrier she could feel even with him asleep.

But it's a matter of timing, this process: she loves him, she'll play along.

Today as they walk around Beaumond she's got his hand again but there's no strength in his grip. Zoe could let go, walk away and it feels like he wouldn't twitch an eyebrow.

Mal and the Shepherd are chattering about horses as they step out into the market and she feels a pang of homesickness--it resembles one from the now bombed-out township where she was born. The stalls are set in a horseshoe and the band is in the middle, serving up a toe-tapping lilt that colors every voice in the medium-sized crowd, making the people seem happy, relaxed, untroubled. Maybe they are, even.

Surrounding the temporary stalls are more permanent outlets: bars, a barber's shop. The force fields that serve as their windows are tinted a uniform shade, sort of a smoky brown. Could mean there's a city ordinance about the color, could mean there's only one generator for the whole market. The part of Zoe's mind that has habituated to thieving considers the possibilities, scans for hardware. There maybe--that blue metal box on the roof of the cigar store...

"So, where we headed?" Mal looks to her first. Zoe flicks her gaze around to assess the group will and is startled--not pleasantly--to see Jayne's pants are bulging at the crotch. His face is set in a peculiar expression.

"Think they got any fights we could watch?" he asks automatically. "Dogs, maybe?"

"Too early in the day," Mal says, the rote response.

Zoe snaps her eyes to the Shepherd, finding no guidance there. As for Wash--she looks reluctantly--he's rubbing his thumb over the cut on his head and shrugging, an agreeable smile on his face that communicates, once again, a decided lack of preference. For anything.

Well, I'm not about to make a decision if you all can't, Zoe thinks. A rock fetches up against her toe and she kicks it, so hard that when it hits the bandstand with a sharp report four people in the crowd let their hands drift, momentarily, toward their weapons.

The music is twangy, sharp, almost irritating, but the air on Beaumond is clean and the people are calm, the way folk get in a place that's fairly safe. Mal's people surround him like a little cloud, dithering over how to fritter their shore leave.

He left Kaylee aboard the boat, ostensibly to fix up the last of Saffron's sabotage, actually to keep Simon company. She seemed pleased with the assignment, as he'd reckoned she would be. Hopefully with her and the doctor socializing, Wash won't get an opportunity to slip back to the ship and play doctor with the...

Never mind that, he tells himself. Just be glad Kaylee likes the boy enough to play involuntary chaperone.

Inara has flown off to New Dunsmuir in her shuttle. She's barely spoken to Mal these last few days. Embarrassed about having kissed Saffron? Whatever the cause, it's nice to get away from her. When someone's not talking to you on a ship the size of SERENITY, you feel it. Everybody feels it.

Mal spares a quick pang for River, more or less permanently trapped aboard ship, and then eyes the rest of his crew. Still no opinions.

"Well, since we're feeling directionless, let's do the loop." With that he sets out for the hoop of stores and market stalls. The others follow, but they've only gone three paces before the sound of churchbells ring through the market, clashing with the music.

"Perhaps we should all go to services," Book says, voice ironic.

"You go on," he says and the preacher vanishes into the crowd, moving more like a hired killer than a man of the cloth.

"I think maybe I'll, um... do that too." Mal turns to look back at Jayne and the mercenary is already loping away, not in the direction of the churchbells at all.

"What's with him?"

"Don't ask, sir," Zoe advises.

"Shiny. Let's us three see what this town has to offer." He steps up to the first store and finds himself facing a display window packed with poorly-tanned animal pelts. A hundred glass eyes stare at him. Just beyond the piles of fur, a woman is smearing animal brains on the raw skin of her next victim.

Mal passes that one by quickly, fighting hard to close up the sudden yawning trapdoor in his mind, the one that's meant to stay firmly locked atop of his memories of war.

Wash comes from city folk, and these frontier markets always strike him as being interchangeable: the same range of services and goods prevails no matter where you go. Fresh foods, dried foods, canned foods. Bottled water and emergency rations. Work clothes, boots, guns. Fancy clothes that aren't, really, a couple mystery-meat-on-a-stick stalls, a lemonade (or reasonable facsimile) stand and three or four venues for the local craftspeople. These offer pottery if the planet's clay is good, baskets if it has swamp grass and reeds, and polished baubles if all they have is rocks. Plus sculptures and magnets made from recycled garbage and industrial byproducts. Furniture, cooking pots, handmade table linens and embroidered pillows, retrofitted gadgets... he checks each product off an interior list. What has he missed? Squinting, he seeks the electronic book vendor. Yes, there it is, a shabby, impermanent-looking stall. Not a lot of readers here in the factory district. Over there is a bar, and another bar, and over on the edge of things--can you guess?--a super extra seedy bar.

Last he spots the obligatory catch-all junk store, a dump with price tags. Desperately hopeful bits of garbage gathered together in hopes of finding a new home.

Mal and Zoe are on either side of him, flanking Wash like bodyguards. It made sense when the Cap'n was talking to Book; now if the trouble twins want to converse he's standing between them like a wall. He could be irritated by this if he chose, this sense that the rightful configuration is them together in their little war-survivor bubble, with Wash the combat innocent off to the side. Instead he just lets it slide off.

In fact, though, the two of them aren't talking. They're glancing in windows, strolling peaceably enough. Aimless, quiet. Not quite the usual dynamic and Wash wonders idly where all of Mal's usual patter has stowed itself.

That's when he spots the dinosaur. Five inches high, plastic, green and covered in spikes. Triceratops, he thinks. It's in the junk store window, and Wash finds himself heading straight for it even though he can see the blue-green sticker that is supposed to mean it's the real deal. Earthstuff. The tag on it is going to call for far more cash than he could ever pay. It's likely not even for sale... the owner probably uses it as a lure for custom.

"Babe?"

Just as he suspected. No tag. Wash bangs his knuckles lightly against the force field and feels the hum of energy.

"Wash," Zoe says, and this time he looks at her.

"Never mind, it's nothing."

"At least go in and ask."

"We can't afford it."

"You won't know if you don't go find out what it costs," Mal says. Backing her up, what a surprise.

What can he do? Wash lets go of Zoe's hand, tentative as if he's setting an egg on an uneven countertop.

"We'll wait here," she says, as if it's nothing. Not offering to come in with him, which might be humiliating. Not saying nothing either. The right amount of what he needs, or just clueless? On impulse, Wash kisses her cheek. His wife blinks, startled, and then looks away. He feels a low twinge of sorrow, guilt that recent events have been so hard on her.

Then he goes into the store.

There's a smell--dust going bad on porcelain and in the weave of cotton--hateful, sour and old. A shelf of aging teapots teeters near the door. Another scam. Trap a kid into knocking it over and you've made yourself a tidy sum on pottery you'd never move otherwise. Wash hasn't seen the owner yet and he already dislikes her on principle. A locked case full of watches, some of them also tagged with the sticker that says they're Earthstuff, contains a few obvious fakes. Illegal, that. Someone should call the Feds. Ha ha ha.

A small thread of hope: maybe the dino's a fake too. Wash doesn't care if it's an antique or not, he just likes collecting the things.

Now that he's inside, he finds the store layout is narrow and surprisingly deep. Past the clutch of furniture in front, the shelves run floor to ceiling and they're absolutely crammed. Nothing he wants, nothing he has room for in the tiny quarters he shares with his wife, but Wash pauses once or twice on his quest through the narrow aisles to find the shopkeeper. He eyes a camera here, a drooping bonsai there.

In the back he finally finds a hard-faced and indifferent teenager, who tells him in one breath that no, they're not selling the six-hundred year old triceratops. It's a phrase she's clearly repeated a thousand times. She's a nail-biter, and the tips of her fingers are wet with saliva.

It's too soon to leave, though. Zoe will think he bolted. Wash goes through the motions--asks if they have any other figures, insinuates he doesn't believe it's real--but the girl's not the owner. Even if he could sway her, she doesn't have the code for the interior window fields that protect the alleged antique. She tires of the game before he does, announces they're closing, points with one slick finger to the exit. Wash meanders back the way he came. It's starting to get dark. The sun goes down suddenly on Beaumond, like it does on some of these little moons--and as he reaches the door he sees the brightest of the stars starting to shine up high in the sky.

"No dice," he announces as he steps out of the store. Then realization hits him like a concrete wall.

Mal and Zoe are gone. He's all alone out here.

All these dumbass planets and their merchant quarters are the same, but Jayne doesn't see that as a bad thing. Past the nice tidy market is where you find the more questionable places of business, and it takes him all of five seconds to find a shooting range once he's ditched the others.

He goes in, picks a weapon--something with a one-handed reload sequence--and steps into a shambling VR booth. He makes sure it locks and isn't wired for surveillance. That would be a rare thing out here, but he's careful anyway, takes a good look. Nope, not even a peephole in the walls.

"Startup," he says. The first target pops up: big guy, holding a little settler girl hostage. He's blurry, a little out of focus. Jayne pops him almost without thinking and unzips his pants. Pop pop, two more baddies, the target range an afterthought as he releases his dick from the confinement of his trousers. He wouldn't bother to shoot at all, but sometimes the operators notice a zero score and come to make sure he hasn't passed out or something.

Besides, it's not like it's difficult. Damn sight easier than jerking off while driving a forklift.

He wraps his fingers down around the base of his dick, still firing the pistol as cheesy villain types emerge from the low-rent holographic walls and try to run him down. Hard slow squeeze of both dick and trigger and then he starts pulling, more or less in time with the popping of the weapon. For fun he lets one of the holos get within a foot of him before he sprays it to the back of the booth. Notices for the first time he's supposed to be in a dark alley and laughs.

"Ooooh, scary."

Mal, swirling his skirts... the image fills his mind and the sense of urgency deepens. Mal peeping out from under his bonnet as he holds his gun on the would-be wagonjackers. Imagine it's Vera he's holding. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

A beep as the gun runs out of ammo. Jayne hits the reload sequence by rapping the butt of the thing against his forehead, never once breaking stroke with the other hand.

It's a scream that draws the two of them off the so-called veranda of Wash's junk store, a piercing cry for help that the locals, as one, look determined to ignore. Mal and Zoe move so fast they nearly bump into each other, cutting around behind the store and into the alley. They can hear indistinct fighting-sounds a little further into the industrial zone that backs this market.

"I promised Inara we could stay here two weeks," he says in a low voice as they sprint toward whatever it is.

"Nobody's going to get killed, sir." Rash promise for Zoe to make, maybe, especially when she's feeling so tempestuous. They don't even know what they're getting into. Except they are closer now, they can see...

Mal slows down to quiet his footsteps and take a look, but his first mate speeds up, murder in her face despite her peaceable words. She's closing on a quartet of violent heavies who are batting around a slender and bloodied someone, a someone with bristling golden hair. Off to the side of the fray, a young woman lies in a heap. Their screamer?

Don't let her be dead, Mal pleads to the God he doesn't believe in. There's a limit on how much trouble he can afford to stir up here.

If Zoe has concerns about stealth or restraint, she doesn't let them slow her down. With a blood-curdling yell she leaps squarely between the two closest thugs, nailing one in the temple with the butt of her shotgun. Twist and then she hoofs the next guy in the balls. He goes down, but not all the way--must have padded himself before heading out for a pleasant evening of terrorizing...

...kids. Their blond victim, now on his hands and knees, is fourteen at most.

They tell you not to hit a man with a closed fist, but at times it's a moral imperative. Angry now, Mal clocks the ball-padder as he's coming up for air. Two down. Number three--clearly the competition of the evening--gets a handful of Zoe's hair. He swings her against a wall and she loses her grip on her gun.

Your funeral, friend, Mal thinks, focusing on the last remaining thug. This one has backed up half a step, putting in some distance, assessing the new threat. He's smarter than the average wandering tough and Mal starts thinking this isn't some random mugging or rape attempt gone wrong. It's premeditated--the girl and the blond boy are deliberately chosen targets.

Not that it matters. What matters is this: the man is going for a knife.

Mal stills his mind, stepping between the boy and his assailant. He puts one hand out, aware of the blade but watching the other man's eyes. When the guy moves in, it's with a sharp jab to the gut. He's fast; Mal manages the disarm but it's close. His palm gets a scratch from the blade... but that just means he can allow himself to feel pleasure when he feels the knife-wielder's wrist snapping.

By now the ringleader has realized the error of his hair-grabbing ways. He's staggering, his fist still wound against Zoe's scalp as she uppercuts him sharply, repeatedly. Her fists are a blur--her expression is fierce. His face turning to jelly with every blow, the man finally does the smart thing and keels over.

Holding his busted wrist, Knife-wielder takes to his heels. The others lay where they are, all the fight beaten out of them.

Mal helps the boy to his feet, hoping he's coherent enough to tell them the score.

This isn't good. Wash scans the so-called street twice, trying not to panic. No sign of his wife anywhere and night's falling. Fallen. He's alone among strangers, and he was only in the store for three rutting minutes and she fucking promised. Where'd they go this time, dammit?

Everything out here seems different. The band has stopped playing, the crowd has thinned. The voices of the remaining people in the square seem more sober than they were half an hour earlier. Conspiratorial, even. Edging into menace. The rumble of machinery in the factories is louder too, an ongoing growl.

Okay. No need to act all tetched, as Mal might say. Wash pulls his fraying calm around him like a blanket and turns in the direction of the spaceport. He tries to come up with a mantra: he'd been on a space station when Niska had him grabbed. Not a nice solid planet like this one. There's no reason to be reminded of what happened, no reason to freak out. It's all different, he's safe, all different, he's...

Space station, yeah, and he'd started out in the market. Wash had gone out to find a nice untraceable cortex from which to send an e-mail back to his homeworld. One of the infrequent "hey, I'm fine" messages he fires off now and then so his surviving family will know he's still out here, still okay. He had been thinking he might even tell them he'd got married, though when he found the cortex and put down his dime he'd decided against it. Again.

Alone among strangers.

Coming out of the cortex cafe, Federation ID in hand, he'd been stopped by two guys wearing uniforms that Wash took for station security.

"This you?" one of them had asked, plucking the card away. Wash normally would have given them the false data carried by all SERENITY crew members, but he'd needed his real numbers to send the wave home. Nothing to do about it now, he'd thought, and nodded.

They'd exchanged a look through their visors. Turned him around, pushed him against a wall, and frisked him.

"Hey hey hey!" Wash had said. "What'd I do?"

No response. They'd cuffed him and led him off, not once responding to his repeated demands for an explanation, not even bothering to tell him to shut up. Letting him be as conspicuous as he liked, which should have been a clue that they wanted the grab to be seen. And except for protesting, Wash hadn't given them a hard time. This arrest had to be a mistake. For a change, nobody on SERENITY had been up to anything illegal.

But they weren't taking him to the brig, it turned out...

Wash stops dead at the edge of the Beaumond market. He is not going to think about this now. He's going to go home, see how Kaylee's making out with the flight controls, maybe sneak in a little visit with his doctor. That's one hundred percent of what's happening here, nothing more. He forces his mind onto pleasanter paths, makes it play through memories of the night that just passed. Simon beneath him, wide-eyed and panting, face flushed with pleasure as Wash held him down and fucked him long and slow.

It helps. He feels his chest loosen, feels the muscles in his legs relax as he starts, once more, toward the spaceport.

Unfortunately, the market vendors have other plans. The people who own the portable stalls are busy securing their square for the night, and the road Wash took with the others to get here is already locked off, fenced with a metal barricade and secured with heavy chains.

He'll have to go the long way 'round.

"You have completed level four," a female voice announces.

"No shit," Jayne says. He's sitting on the floor of the booth now, pants off altogether, legs splayed. The scenery around him changes to a big gothic church, and as Jayne works his hand up and down the length of his dick he continues to shoot blurred-out holographic bad guys while trying not to bust up the stained glass windows.

He's dug out the bonnet--Mal's bonnet--that he filched from Triumph, and has laid it across one of his thighs, letting his knuckles bounce off the fabric as the clenched fist makes its way updown, updown.

Pop. Pop. Mal in his thin cotton shorts, bending over to take up the dress and Jayne remembers seeing his balls shifting through the white fabric, seeing the shadow between the tight round cheeks of his ass. Two seconds later, straightening up in the dress and acting all flirty and girlish. Then sitting beside him on the wagon, the edge of the bonnet brushing Jayne's face once or twice. Speaking in a whisper so anyone listening to them wouldn't hear two male voices.

Jayne lets his head roll back against the booth wall, slowing his stroke even though he's on the edge of coming. He switches his concentration to the game. He's in no hurry here: he wants to drag this out.

Pop. The guy behind the pulpit. Pop. With one bullet--two heavily armed babes in choirgirl robes. Pop--someone coming up from under one of the pews and managing to dodge the kill shot. Jayne has to put three bullets into that guy.

Cooling down a little. He fingers the edges of the bonnet and thinks about Mal's leg, pressing against his through the skirt, the warmth of their bodies together through the crappy fabric of his borrowed local clothes.

After a time a voice startles him by crooning, "You have completed level five."

The young woman and the kid both work at a garment factory, it turns out, kind of place that has existed since time immemorial for the sole purpose of working girls to death while making a tidy profit. The women are trying to unionize the place and are well on the way to getting intimidated out of it. To Mal the story sounds exhaustingly ancient--first had come threats, then random 'accidents' started to befall the organizers. Now someone's slipped the workers an offer to "protect" their budding movement. Mal and Zoe have the bitter experience the seamstresses lack, and someone needs to tell them that the person offering to take their hard-earned nest egg will trace back, one way or the other, to the bosses.

As will the four thugs who intercepted the pair on their way to the money drop.

What's to be done is obvious: They split up: Zoe insists on being the one to head off with the girl to make the alleged drop. Mal takes the kid back to the factory for medical attention. He'll give the workers a rousing pep talk on dodging the union-buster's top ten strategies, while Zoe will take the collector, if he exists, off at the knees. She'll do it without killing him or otherwise getting SERENITY banned from yet another world. Mal was very specific on that point. Used his sergeant voice and everything.

"Here," wheezes the kid. He's barely walking, and he holds his ribs as he stumbles to the edge of the alley and points. The factory is two stories tall, a cube welded together out of sheet-metal scraps. He starts toward it but Mal holds him back, pointing out the talent keeping an eye on things. Two more guys, in other words, are lurking in the shadows near the entrance.

Mal whispers. "Is there another way in?"

The kid slumps against a concrete pillar. "Dormitory fire escape," he replies, lips moving almost soundlessly. "That way."

Mal nods, helping him to his feet again.

Wash hadn't known much about the space station's layout, so it took some time before he realized the two supposed security officers weren't taking him anywhere that was likely to be a brig. He'd been ignoring their route through the station, wrapped up as he was in trying to figure how much trouble he was in. What he should say when the questions started. What those questions might be about.

The most likely thing to draw cop attention was the presence of Simon and River on board SERENITY. If Wash had been scooped up as part of a Fed investigation into the two fugitives, he could safely assume they'd pinched the others too. Which meant say nothing and leave all the talking to Mal.

Finally he saw they were heading for the docking bays. Alarms went off: Wash stopped, tried to back up, even shouted for help. His kidnappers had just tightened their grip on his arms and dragged him along. Struggling finally, but neither of them seemed to find his weight or his resistance much of a strain. Neither seemed to care if a sprinkling of witnesses saw them loading him onto their ship, either. They stuffed him in their small craft with every appearance of pleasure and filed themselves a flightplan while station control ignored Wash's yelled pleas to please-please-god deny the retrofitted war-surplus fighter its launch authorization.

"You are cleared for launch" station control had said, sounding amused.

Struggling to his feet behind the conn, still yelling, Wash then saw the course the pilot was keying in. He recognized the numbers. That was the point when he really started to feel a chill of fear. The unknown had never been something that got to Wash, not really, but he'd memorized those particular coordinates. He'd filed them, in fact, under places to go when you want to die painfully. Niska's skyplex.

The visored helmets came off at last, and he recognized one of the men from the night of the train job. A man Mal could have killed, and hadn't.

Stupid Mal.

"Guys, come on..." Wash had begun, as the other fellow began flicking his way through the pre-launch check. "We don't have to do this. Why don't you drop me on the station and go your merry way? Hell, hit me a few times if you think you have to. We'll call it even, okay? You do not want to turn this into a feud with my crew."

No response. The guy not flying the ship giggled a little...

"Dammit. Cut that out!" He has to speak the words aloud to break up the memory, and a passing couple turns to stare at him. Wash is in the middle of New Austin now, half-lost and wandering in what is clearly a bad part of town. SERENITY has to be just over that way, maybe ten blocks to the north, but Beaumonders clearly have issues with labor riots or something. Every time he sees a path to the port, it's cut off by another blockade. He's getting further away, not closer, to safety. The night is passing; he feels like he's been out here for hours.

Okay. Take a breath. Orient yourself. Don't think about giggling man and the way he shoved you down onto the deck, petting your arms and hair for Chrissakes before hauling out a bodybag, also war-surplus, and wrestling your head inside. Don't think about the smell in there that meant the thing had been used, at least once, for its intended purpose. Don't think about the darkness as he tugged it down around you and you heard its outer shell inflating with the gases that made the bag a solid tube... as everything got dark...

Stop. He has to stop this. He's on a planet, not a station. Far from Skyplex. Well out of Niska's sphere of influence. Nobody's after him. It's all good. Just ask for directions to the spaceport already.

"Hey, I was wondering..." he says, stopping a pedestrian at random. Bad choice--she's stick thin, homicidal looking and screams in his face, grinding down Wash's nerves further as she shoves him violently away. Her buddy, a man who's just as tattered, smiles apologetically as Wash stumbles backwards. Then the buddy takes off after her.

"Oh good," Wash says aloud to nobody in particular. "Look, my hands are shaking."

The garment worker's name is Raven. She is petite, fair and rather sweet of voice, which tells Zoe that Beaumond is probably not well stocked with Earth birds. She's got a mild concussion and plenty of what they call spirit, and claims she doesn't mind when they swing past the junk store on the way to where they're going.

Unfortunately, nobody's there. The market has shut down in the half hour since Zoe and Mal first heard Raven's screams and went running to help her. The windows are dark and the roadways are barricaded.

Wash probably headed back to the ship, safe in his bubble of indifference. Sure, Zoe thinks, except that the last time he was out of my sight...

Don't go there.

She hangs back a second longer, looking at the plastic dinosaur and feeling trapped between worrisome obligations, before the girl plucks at her sleeve. Raven says in her high, musical voice. "Are you okay?"

"Suddenly in a hurry is all," Zoe replies.

"Well, it's not far," the girl says, and breaks into a near-trot. Zoe follows. Maybe there won't be anyone there. Whoever was scamming the workers should have assumed their four boys could take away the seamstress' hard-earned savings easily, leaving no need to cover the arranged pickup. It would be sloppy to work without the backup, certainly, but sloppy is nothing Zoe hasn't seen before.

They aren't sloppy. She sends Raven ahead and two bandits, armed this time, materialize out of the shadows. On Zoe's signal the girl falls to the ground and Zoe knocks the first of them out with a rigorously non-lethal chop. Then she ends up in a wrestling match over the other guy's gun. It lasts long enough that she finds herself resenting Jayne's going AWOL. If he'd hung around she could have left this to him, could have gone about figuring where her husband has taken himself off to.

She does come out of it with the gun, eventually, though her nose is bleeding by the end of the tussle.

"No speeches, okay?" She brings down her boot on the union-buster's hand and bears down until things are about to snap. "You leave the factory workers alone, me and mine leave you alone. Pass the message on up the line. Understand?"

A strangled moan. She's expecting a nod but instead he spits, redly, on her boots. "You and yours are gonna regret this," he grates out. "We'll find out who you are, find out who your people are. Got a puppy? Got a kid? Girlfriend mebbe? I'll take a razor to 'er rutting eyes--"

That's as far as he gets before she breaks his jaw. The whole world becomes a bright stage of fury Zoe's in its white-hot spotlight, center stage. She takes the man apart, piece by piece, kneecaps and elbows and dislocated back, broken toes and ribs and she's nearly forgotten her orders until she hears Raven sobbing, softly. Sobbing for fear of her, of Zoe.

She stops, shaking with it, and lets herself see how broken he is. Can't bring herself to care. Finally loots the man quickly, handing his ID and weapon over to the weeping seamstress.

"You can make it back to your place, can't you?"

Raven's response is a terrified head-shake.

Zoe takes a long breath, trying to ease the violent hammering of her heart. "Then I'll take you back. But we're gonna make another stop along the way. All right?"

"Whatever you say, ma'am," Raven replies in a tiny voice.

"Final bonus round," the simulator announces.

Jayne resets the pistol again and lays down a line of fire across the virtual grid. Supposedly he's in an opera house. Targets are coming up thick and fast now--decoys too. The hostiles are the same size as their hostages, the shots trickier. Lighting grids and velvet seats make for interesting cover as the imaginary baddies launch yet another wave of bodies at him.

He's plugging them all; he's barely paying attention.

He's got the bonnet over his dick now, the rough fabric tugging down on the sensitive head of it when he squeezes himself on the downstroke, loosening the pressure as he comes back up. He's all kinds of deep into this thing about him and Mal and Mal's dress. About riding around in the decoy wagon but the bandits not taking them on at the first ford in the stream. About their having to continue on and pull up in that town. Timber, he thinks it was called. About having to stash the gear for a night and maybe get a room with Mal so people think they're really married. You know, in case the bandits are watching.

It's just about as hot as his thing about getting stuck with Kaylee in the lifepod. It's hotter than his thing about being trapped down a really tight mineshaft with Inara.

And of course the room they get has only one bed, and Mal maybe gets stuck in the dress and needs a little help untangling...

Now Jayne's finally letting himself come, imagining what it'd be like to pull that dress over Mal's head, maybe running his hand up over Mal's shoulderblade and then watching the fine brown hair spray out from his collar just before his head emerges and they're standing right next to each other, hand on the shoulderblade, hand moving down toward that ass in its cotton... yeah, yeah, yeah, that...

Groaning, Jayne spurts into the bonnet, neat as you please. When his hips stop bucking and his vision clears he sees one last virtual gunman racing toward him.

He empties the imaginary clip into it, just for the hell.

"Simulation over," the booth announces. "Perfect score."

"You got that right," Jayne mutters and he drops the gun on the floor, reaching for his pants as the system resets.

Dormitory, the kid had said. They'd snuck around to slip in a side door, shiny as all git out. Unfortunately, it was--and Mal shouldn't have been surprised--a dormitory full of scared, angry women.

One of them clubs him as he comes through the door; a second throws the lights. Blinded as he lies there, head throbbing, Mal hears the kid crying out weakly--from underneath him, because that's how they fell--that they shouldn't hurt him, he's a friend. As his eyes adjust he sees there are twenty women there, all between the ages of sixteen and maybe thirty-five, all wearing variations of night clothes ranging from convent-thick floor-length nighties to skimpy things worthy of a Companion. Most of them are clutching makeshift weapons: scissors, bedposts, bottles, and they're ready to tear him apart. One older woman in a red kimono rushes in to pull the kid from Mal's grasp, crying out in rage over his injuries. Another--the one nearest the door--brandishes the tin jug she hit him with. He can see a Mal-shaped dent in its structure.

"Where's Raven?" one of them demands, and Mal stares at her uncomprehendingly. "Did you do this to Kyle?"

"Raven... ? No, I ain't the one hurt the boy."

'Kyle' speaks up, confirming this. After a time, the weapons come down. As it dawns on the workers that Mal actually saved the kid and their friend, a few of them soften up considerably. He could get laid tonight if he wanted. Take off a bit of the edge on his so-called plow and maybe next time a Saffron comes along...

No. Stupid rationalization. That circumstance isn't ever going to arise again. And long time or no, Mal's not the kind of guy to take advantage of a situation. If he was, he'd already have earned his ticket to that special hell of Book's.

Because, really, Malcolm Reynolds is never short of a situation.

Somehow Wash pulls it together enough to ask someone else how to get to the spaceport. The directions seem plausible enough. It's all he can do not to run down the streets looking for the ship.

There's no fighting off the memories now as he strides through the darkened back alleys of Beaumond's industrial heartland. The failed struggle to keep them from sealing him in the coffin-tube. Throwing up because of the corpse stench and the stale air. Thrashing and yelling, still face down, still handcuffed, when he felt the body-bag being lifted like a duffel.

"Got anything to declare?" A muffled voice came through the material of the bag.

"Get me the hell out of here!" He'd yelled for all he was worth, but to no avail. The customs officers were as deaf as flight control out of the space station had been. They were paid to be.

"Anything to declare, Eli?"

"Just a little embroidery project," the giggler had said while Wash was gasping for breath between bellows. For some reason the words had thrown a further scare into him. Someone patted the body bag so it rang like a drum and for the first time in his remarkably trauma-free life, a little piece of him broke loose and started gibbering on its own. No, no, no, it said. The larger portion of Wash noted that it wasn't a very original fragment of his personality.

"Go ahead," Customs said then. "Don't dump him in D-section when you're done this time, will you?"

"Aw, he's marked return to sender," his captor said.

No, no, no. Jesus fuck.

"And keep an eye out for his friends--hang 'em up here as long as you can. They won't be long."

There'd been bulkheads closing, an elevator, a sense of going up. They dumped him out of the body-bag and hung him, upside-down, in the room off Niska's office that Zoe had told him about. Niska's dead... nephew? ... was still there, a little worse for wear. They stripped Wash and sluiced off the puke with cold water. Left him hanging for what was almost a peaceful hour--if you ignored the discomfort, chill, mounting terror and proximity to a rotting corpse--while they waited for the boss to arrive. When he finally did, they strapped him onto a gurney and took him down to a place Niska called the Experiment room.

Wash turns a last blind corner and finds himself about a hundred meters from the spaceport. He can see SERENITY now, but there's one last chain link fence, topped with barbed wire, in the way. And he's finished now, he's used up. He slides down to sit on the pavement. He can see the boat, he's not letting it out of his sight. If he sits here until dawn someone will come and unlock the barricade, right? Right?

As he clings to the barrier, shivering in the cool night air, his hours in the Experiment Room enfold him like a fire blanket. Strapped down, bright lights, medical smells. The giggling had begun in earnest there, and Wash could do nothing but feel pain and howl blindly against it until they took his voice away.

Curled up against the fence, not making a sound, he listens as the fragment of him screams still, banshee-wailing the night away.

Mal's heart-to-heart with the seamstresses doesn't take long. He's given the speech before: watch out for X, Y, and Z, don't fall for this, that or the other thing. Buy yourself some damned weapons and learn how to fight. Above all, girls, and excuse the clich--solidarity. Understand that these guys will kill the troublemakers if they think there's just a few isolated rabble-rousers to put down.

The women lap it up, taking each scrap of data and weaving it into their plans while the kimono-wearer treats the kid's wounds.

Suddenly, a low murmur of warning from the woman standing guard. "Dorm inspection!"

Mal raises his eyebrows in a question as the women efficiently slide the sleeping Kyle into what is clearly their only available hiding spot.

Kimono explains. "They can fire us if they find you here. For licentiousness. After you're branded a whore, that's the only work you can find."

"Raven's gone still, they'll fire her for sneaking out..." someone else says, alarmed.

The woman who hit Mal takes charge. "It's Ridley coming up... he don't know us one from the other. So move Lily into Raven's bunk. She's new, but he'll recognize her face. He won't be expecting to know the body in the new girl's spot."

"Yeah, but we're short one."

"And we need a way to make Captain Reynolds disappear..." Kimono adds.

All eyes are on Mal suddenly.

"Got a wig and a nightie?" he asks, his fatigue melting away into something near-on cheerful. "I wear a large."

After the shooting gallery Jayne tosses the bonnet, finds himself a bar, and buys a drink. Asks about dogfights but, as usual, doesn't seem inclined to stir himself to go and check out the blood sports. He's feeling pretty guldurned right with the world, especially since the whiskey here in New Austin is flavored an awful lot like whiskey.

The nights on this rock are nine hours short and everyone's drinking fast, but Jayne's in no mood to get really drunk. He nurses a couple drinks, checks his weapon as a matter of course, and around dawn starts to amble back toward the ship. It's a long meander: all the alleys are fenced off at nighttime. Nice, sensible planet. Means that anyone approaching the port at night can only go one of two ways, means the ship's safer from vandals and riots than it would be were the area left wide-open. A Firefly always draws more than its share of would-be thieves on these fringe worlds, people who appreciate tough, solid craftsmanship and a decently powerful engine.

There's a candidate now, probably, that shadow slumped against the chain-link fence down that blind alley. Hell, the guy's practically mooning over the boat as he cases it.

Jayne almost walks on. Let the guy look: if he comes for the ship, it'll give them someone new to kill tomorrow. But then he thinks of Saffron, pretty lips-of-death Saffron. Ounce of prevention and all that. Plus the Captain's been real firm about their having to behave for a couple weeks while Inara does business in New Dunsmuir.

So he steps out into the alley, ready to draw and says, in his most unfriendly voice: "Hey. You-all better not be thinking..."

And shuts up, because it's Wash. Wash looking rickety and bug-eyed and nervy, trying to pull himself together and making a hash of it. So much for the calm he'd had on him earlier: this is the vulnerable Wash that makes Jayne want to get out the ol' chain of command and start swinging. Lord on toast, is he trying to get hisself grabbed again? Sitting out here like some kind of moon-brain...

But Jayne's feeling magnanimous, though, afterglowy. Instead of asking the pilot just what the hell game he figures he's playing at now, Jayne just walks into the light where Wash can see him real clear. "Hey."

No comment. Wash stares at him like he's a ghost or a bad joke.

Finally Jayne has to say "Boat's this way. You coming?"

Nodding like it hurts, Wash crosses the space between them, following as Jayne turns onto the spaceport trail.

"Ain't like you to get lost, Wash."

"Didn't expect them to turn the industrial quarter into a maze for rats," Wash replies. His voice is steady but a little breathless, and Jayne feels an urge to reach for him, squeeze his shoulder or something. Wash must sense it, too, because his hand comes up defensively, ready to knock the other man away.

It turns out the girls are supposed to be dressing by now for day shift, so Mal squeezes into not a nightgown but a floor-length skirt and light blue blouse, the only thing the seamstresses have that's wide enough for his shoulders. The women put him in a longish red wig and are coaching him on the dorm inspection drill when the back entrance opens and Zoe slips in with the tiny woman they rescued earlier. Soft exclamations of relief from the workers are followed by cries of consternation: suddenly they're not down a woman, they've got two extra. And the bosses are coming up the stairs.

It's a problem Mal and Zoe solve by bidding them a quick farewell and slipping back out of the factory.

They go a couple blocks, fleeing swiftly, until she stops. "You want to change back into your clothes now, sir?"

"Left 'em in the dorm," he says.

She gives him one of those looks, like he's trying to pull something over on her and failing. Mal gives her a face full of 'What?' in reply.

Shrugging, his first mate continues into the brightening morning.

"How'd it go with the drop, Zoe?"

Some morning shift worker whistles at them. Shouts "Hey, Red," and Mal does a pirouette just for fun.

"Don't lure them over here, sir," Zoe says, voice a little dull. The lines in her hands are edged with blood. "Drop went fine. Got a little rough with one of the hostiles."

"Will he walk again?"

"Depends on their hospital. I figure we'll have another go-round with whoever's at the top of the heap at the factory. Maybe next week? They'll need some time for damage control."

"That'd be nice timing, just around when we're gonna pull out anyway. So what's in the satchel?"

"Peace offering. We ditched Wash, remember?"

Oh. His heart sinks. "So we did. Zoe..."

"I'm dealing with it, sir."

Mal thinks of seeing Simon and Wash fucking on the bridge of SERENITY, clamps his teeth shut over the knowledge, and hopes she knows what she's doing.

Warm morning air is whisking up through the skirt, sliding up between his legs and over his stomach in a way he finds, as always, irresistibly erotic. Every man and woman in the bustle of dawn is looking ever so faintly delicious, and his cock is having some decidedly unladylike reactions to the whole skipping around town in a dress phenomenon. Not quite as bad as sitting on the wagon for hours in a frilly floral bonnet with nothing but Jayne and his thoughts to keep him company, but then it has only been a few minutes.

Though this is pretty brazen, really, swinging through a waking town, wishing good-morning to the occasional passer-by, having men tip their hats to him. He tingles, his whole body awakened.

Too bad they'll probably see the workers again before this is over, Mal thinks. If they were peeling out of the colony at a dead run like they so often do, he wouldn't have to give the frock back.

"It'll end," he tells Zoe, hewing his thoughts--with an effort--back to Wash. It's something he had to say often after the battle of Serenity, when it should have been over but wasn't, when they were waiting waiting waiting for the medics to come. "One way or the other, it'll end."

Which is maybe less optimistic than she wants, but it's all he can think of at the moment.

"One way or the other," she echoes at last. "But not today. Right now I just want to get back to the ship and collapse."

Another whistle. Despite Zoe's warning, Mal throws a little extra bounce in his step and wishes he wasn't wearing his boots.

The trouble twins show up just as Jayne has found them an unobstructed path to the ship. The Captain has caught himself another excuse to dress like a girl, this time done up with a skirt and a red wig. It's not the worst look for Mal and Wash tries hard to muster a droll remark. Surprise, surprise, though: he doesn't have one in him.

Jayne gets one look and turns a strange shade of plum. He strides ahead of the pack before they can even form up.

"Fun night?" Wash asks. He's set to catch up with Jayne but Zoe catches his hand, braking him. Mal's the one who ends up hurrying after the mercenary.

"Hey, sailor," the Captain calls cheerfully, and Jayne all but breaks into a run.

Leaving Wash and Zoe alone. She's all but beaming at him, looking as if she's relieved. As if she thought he might have disappeared again. And if he had, who'd have been to blame?

"I'm sorry we got separated, baby."

"Separated?" He lets the word out with measured bitterness. She's been fighting: her knuckles are red and her curls are askew. There's a hint of blood on her upper lip and a bruise on her temple. Signs of pulled hair, which probably means someone is dead or in a coma. Yep, she's been having a fine old time.

"There was a situation, Wash."

He yanks free of her grip. "There's always a situation."

"Baby, it's late." Trying to reason with him now? "We're tired..."

"You and Mal are tired. Because of the situation. Nobody said I was tired. What's this one going to cost us, Zoe?"

Her head snaps back a little and he sees her assessing him. Like he's some kind of fucking problem, and she's figuring out whether to solve him now or later. Wash lets himself feel the anger fully, for the first time, flashing again on the long upside-down hang next to a chopped up corpse, when he thought he was waiting for something like that himself. A simple, quick and bloody death.

And that's when he sees the satchel in her hand, hanging forgotten in a loose grip, an would-be anonymous hunk of burlap with a green spiky tale poking through.

Zoe raises the bag slowly, letting the wrap fall away to reveal the stolen triceratops with its blue and green earth tag.

Inside the ship, Kaylee and Simon have been playing board games, at first in disjointed fashion with River sometimes participating. Later--after she went to bed--really trying to beat each other. In all honesty, it's a better time than she'd have had out in town. Simon's just so nice, and when Kaylee's off the ship she can't stop herself from looking wistfully at pretty ladies while she's scrounging for engine parts.

Plus when the ship's all but powered down she can listen to its deepest sleepy rumbles, getting a sense of what's right with SERENITY's systems, forming educated guesses over what might go wrong next.

They're having so much fun they play the short night through. At dawn when nobody has come back yet, the two of them stumble off to the galley for breakfast. They're almost there when Simon's gaze is drawn outward, through a portal that looks out over the spaceport. His face goes all kinds of confused and Kaylee crowds in to have a look of her own.

This close, she can smell Simon's body, just a touch ripe from the long hours of wakefulness. It's almost enough to distract her from the scene on the tarmac.

Almost. Because near the ship, Jayne and a broad-shouldered girl are playing something like a game of tag, a redheaded stranger in a long skirt chasing the mercenary in laps around the transport vessel as Jayne, looking uncharacteristically spooked, backpedals and yells. Further away, near the entrance to the fenced off port, are Zoe and Wash.

"Oh, that looks bad," she mutters. They're slapping a lumpy green something back and forth between them, violent jerks of their arms communicating stress and fury. It hurts just to watch them. Looking at Wash has hurt a lot lately.

"It might be just what they need," Simon says, and his voice is so soft and sad that Kaylee blinks at him, surprised.

Now the mysterious red-head touches SERENITY and Kaylee feels the ship's lock opening. She straightens up quick, almost bonking heads with the doctor.

"Kaylee?"

"We'd better go see what's up. Captain's not going to want any more strangers on his ship after what just happened with Saff... oh. Oh. Never mind."

The doctor frowns absently. "Never mind?"

"Know what? I think I'm going to go to bed," Kaylee says, and flees. She manages to stuff down a giggle as she runs for her quarters. Jayne's unbearable to be around after Mal's had a dress on. It threatens his masculinity or something. Kaylee likes Jayne fine, most of the time, but she's had a nice evening with Simon and there's a limit to what a girl can put up with.

And when the Captain's playing the feminine flirty game, it makes him confusingly attractive.

So she runs back to her quarters, clutching the memories of a happy evening with Simon like a beloved book held against her chest, leaving the doctor to his tired sexy smell and his window onto the drama outside.

Mid-way through chasing Jayne, Mal hears the first raised voices between his pilot and first mate, enough malice in their tones that it stops both men in their tracks. SERENITY is opening for them, and they stop playing around and head inside together. Fleeing, basically.

As the bulkheads seal and the sound of the argument falls away, Mal tilts his head one last time. Bats his lashes playfully at Jayne before turning his back. He's headed for his quarters with definite plans to masturbate, to forget Zoe and Wash (and Simon, always Simon now when he thinks of Wash) in the rush of soft air flowing up through his skirts.

And out in the New Austin morning Book finds himself uncomfortably caught on the edge of the spaceport, unable to return to the ship without passing the arguing couple. He decides he might as well head back to the church again, walking away swiftly, astounded by how well the sound carries and wishing he couldn't make out their words quite so clearly.

Head half-bowed, Book prays for them both.

Inside, Simon presses his nose against the portal, wanting not to watch but unable to tear his gaze away from Wash's pained and angry face.

Inside elsewhere, River presses her face against a solid bulkhead, wanting to watch, hearing not a word and understanding everything.

Meanwhile, back in the hold, Jayne is mesmerized by the Captain's butt as it wriggles back and forth in the frilly blue skirt. They're jogging up the metal staircase into the body of the ship, Mal in front, and he is almost--but not really--horrified to see his hand drifting forward and up, drawn as if by strings toward the curve of flesh under the fabric.

Just a little pinch, Jayne thinks.

--end--