Zoe didn't cry.
She'd lost, buried, waked too many to cry. She'd sent waves to too many mothers and wives and families, shattering their world, to cry.
She stood in the low, dark house, in the claustrophobic living room, before the mother-in-law she'd never met, and she didn't cry. "He died in his chair," she said.
The mother--his mother--had crumpled onto a battered sofa and was rocking back and forth, keening in her throat.
"He was flying. Just landed us with twenty percent backup. Only he coulda landed us under those conditions." If this had been during the war, she would have told the mother that her son would get a medal, and would have set about making it so. But there weren't no medals for outlaws. Just the ones they gave themselves.
"My son--my sonnnnnnnnnnnnn--" The final consonant stretched out into that horrible keening again.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Washburn."
Ravaged eyes--I got my eyes from my momma, my hair from my daddy--looked up at her, so swollen Zoe could barely see the whites. But she saw the rage. "You bitch!"
She could've stepped aside, or defended herself. Wash had also inherited his fighting ability from his momma. But she let the woman take her down, nails raking, raw voice screeching, arms flailing. Mal and Jayne wrenched them apart in about three seconds flat, of course. But Wash's momma had sharp nails and a powerful grief to vent on anyone that would take it, most of all a strange, stoic daughter-in-law.
A flying elbow caught Jayne in a sensitive place. His eyes damn near rolled back in his head, but his grip remained firm, not letting her get at Zoe again
Her struggles slowed, but words came back "You took him in there, you bitch, didn't you? He would've followed you anywhere, you whore, you siren--you took him in there, you took him to his death--"
Zoe managed to sit up. Her lip was gonna puff for sure, and there were three or four long, burning scratches down the side of her face from the woman's nails. She touched them and her fingertips came away red. "I won't deny it."
A warm droplet slid down her cheek, but it was blood from the deepest scratch, not a tear.
"Well, fuck that," Mal said. "I will."
"Sir," Zoe said, getting to her feet.
Mal didn't pay her any mind. "Mrs. Washburn, you gonna tear anyone up, jump on me, 'cause I'm the one gave the order to fly. He was followin' orders, he--"
"Sir."
He shut up. Wash's momma wasn't listening anyhow. She was in a huddle on the floor, rocking back and forth. "What have I got?" she moaned. "What have I got now? My boy--my son--my only son--"
A woman got up from the couch, the first movement she'd made all this time, and crouched down. "Momma," she said. "Momma, don't carry on so. Momma?" She looked up, into Zoe's eyes. "I think you should go."
"I'm sorry," Zoe said.
"I believe you are," Wash's sister said, under the noise of her mother's racking sobs. "But the fact of the matter is, if my brother hadn't married you, he'd still be alive. I think you should go, and not come back again."
That horrible keening followed them out of the house, interlaced with words. "She didn't even cry. The damn woman didn't even--"
The door shut with a wheezing thud, and silence reigned in the little group. Finally, Kaylee slipped up beside Zoe and said, "Hell of a way to meet the folks, huh?"
"Kaylee," Inara murmured, and when Kaylee looked over, shook her head.
Simon was trotting alongside Zoe, trying to peer at the scratches. "Zoe--could you just--I want to--"
Figuring it was best to let him do his job, she stopped on a corner. Simon dabbed disinfectant on her face, then rummaged in his bag. "I, um, left the gel on the ship--we should go back. If I don't put it on that within an hour, it might scar--"
"Leave it," Zoe said.
"But--"
Mal said, "Doc, her face gonna fall off if she don't get that gel on?"
"No, but--"
"Then leave it," he commanded. "Zoe."
She turned, her hands linked behind her back, her spine straight. Parade rest. "Sir."
"Weren't your fault. Don't you listen to that she-devil, nor her daughter." He swallowed. "Weren't your fault."
"Weren't yours neither, sir," she said. "You gave us the choice to go, on Haven. He stayed. He knew what he was doing." He'd died in his chair, she thought. It was as good a death as he could've wished. Although, as he would've said his own self, death wouldn't exactly be what he would've wished.
If she had tears in her, they should by rights have come with that thought. So it followed that she didn't.
River looked at her, hard, until Zoe had no choice but to say, "Yes, honey."
"You should pick up some supplies," River said, with that new self-possession she'd had ever since--well, since. "We're running low."
"Rivvvvverrrrrrrrrr," Simon moaned, going red. "Zoe, I'm sorry--"
"She's right," Zoe said. "We are. I'll do that. You got a list, sir?"
"I--uh--" Mal looked flummoxed by this intrusion of everyday concerns. "No. Not on me, no."
"Protein," River said, as if she could see the pantry before her. Probably could. "Four blocks. Rice. Three pounds. Tea. Soup packets. Dehydrated soy milk." She paused. "And--anything else you think you should buy."
Zoe looked up from her notepad. River was looking at her as if expecting a reaction to the last item. "All right. Sounds good," she said.
"Here," Mal said, fumbling a bag from his pocket. "That oughta cover it."
Zoe took it, knowing that Mal had probably meant to give it to Wash's mother to cover--whatever. Woman wouldn't've taken it, she thought. Blood money.
Better used on supplies.
"I'll be back before dark," she told Mal.
Mal nodded. "We'll get ourselves going when you do."
Inara touched her, gently, on the arm. "Would you like some company?" she said.
Zoe looked at her. She and the Companion had never had a terrible lot to do with each other, but she appreciated the thought. "I'd take it as a kindness if you wouldn't," she said.
Any other woman would have been hurt--indeed, Kaylee was looking wounded--but Inara just nodded and went along with the others towards the port.
Zoe walked.
She kept trying to find him in this place. She looked around the narrow streets, the low buildings, up at the eternal clouds hanging low and sulky, and she couldn't find him. She knew he'd been born here. He'd told her himself, even shown her holos. She recognized the places, but she couldn't put him here.
Just like he hadn't been in that house with the smothering, grasping woman he'd always felt a little guilty about leaving behind. That couldn't be Wash's childhood home, that pinched, cramped place. There'd been holos of him all over--and none of the three older sisters--but she still thought it must be wrong.
Her husband wasn't here.
She waited for the sinkhole of pain to open up in her gut, and only felt empty. Numb. She was numb all over, through and through. Oh, she felt her sore lip and the faint sting of the disinfectant in the scratches, and her elbow where she'd bashed it on the floor. But they were like things that had happened to another body. What if she'd spent too long being strong? What if she'd buried too many friends, and now that the dearest one was gone, she couldn't stop being strong long enough to break?
Terror nibbled at the edges of the numbness, but even that couldn't penetrate.
She walked until the lowering dusk reminded her that she had to get back. Not that they were running, any much more than they usually were. She'd just told Mal she'd be back before dark, and she wanted to keep to her deadline, to keep this witless, aimless wandering to a limit so she wouldn't do it forever.
She turned her feet toward the port, and stopped at a supply store. Someone else coulda done this, she thought, carefully stacking blocks of protein and bags of rice into the crate. Was close enough. Why River had made a point of asking her--
Didn't matter. She was grateful for this chore. Maybe the girl knew Zoe wanted to be doing something. Anything.
Protein. Rice. Tea. Soup. Milk.
And--anything else you think you should buy.
Nothing else.
She took the crate to the counter. The man behind it had a big moon face, with a forehead so high it stretched clear back to his neck, and was inclined to be chattersome. She answered his questions in a monotone, thinking that Wash would've talked with the fella for hours.
"That it, ma'am?"
She looked around, checking the store for one last thing. Then she paused, staring at a rack just left of the counter. "Those," she said. "What're those?"
The clerk leaned over and plucked up a bag. "These? Ma'am, these is real live Cuchulainn PBC's, made right outside'a town. Cain't get 'em anywhere else in the 'verse."
She had. Once.
"Now, you ain't tasted a peanut butter cup until you tasted one of our'n--"
"I'll take it," she said.
The moon face split into a grin. "How many bags?"
All of them, she thought. Then, for some reason, she remembered Wash's mother, screaming on the floor, wallowing almost joyously in her grief. "Just the one'll be fine."
Zoe put the supplies away while they took off. It wasn't as gentle or smooth as Wash's takeoffs had always been, but it probably would be soon. River learned quick.
She closed the pantry door and picked up the bag of peanut butter cups, staring down at the silver-foil-wrapped disks through the plastic.
She still remembered the taste of the first one he'd ever given her. The last one from his birthday package. It had been the act of a little boy on the playground, the open, guileless generosity coupled with just a little bit of teasing. A few weeks later, she'd returned the favor by shelling out more money than she could afford on a bag that had accidentally made its way to the rim planets. Without hesitation, he'd shared that too.
They had started over candy.
Nobody knew that. It was their secret. They ate the ones from his birthday package every year, together in their quarters, making inventive use of peanut butter and chocolate.
Never again.
She hugged it gently to her chest, as gently as the baby she'd never have now. Her courses had come, the stains of red on her underwear killing that final wisp of hope as dead as Wash.
She made her way like an old woman to the cockpit, her boots silent on the stairs. But River said, without turning, "Did you find what you were looking for?"
Zoe stood just outside the door, listening to the faint crinkle of plastic as her chest moved in and out with her breathing. "Didn't know I was lookin' for it."
"Folk don't," River said. "Until they find it." She did turn then, the co-pilot's chair squeaking gently. "Or they lose it."
Zoe looked her in the eye. "I knew what I had when I had it."
River tilted her head. "You're lucky then." She got up and stepped through the cockpit with that butterfly grace. On the threshold, she stopped and tilted her head up to look at Zoe. "I don't sit in his chair," she said. Then she moved on.
Zoe listened to her, padding down the corridor and into the kitchen, before crossing the threshold herself. She hadn't been in here since she'd helped to carry her husband's body out. Weak of her, she supposed. Or maybe too strong.
She went to the pilot's chair and stood looking down at it.
It was still partially his. The back'd had to be replaced, since there was a huge hole in it from the spike that had rammed through his body first. They'd also tossed the worn, nappy cover, as it had been stained near black with his blood. The seat was still his, and the armrests, molded to his body from the hours he'd spent there.
She remembered cuddling in this chair, cuddling and more. Mighty comfy on the knees, that seat had been.
She swiveled it around. It creaked. She sat, swiveling again until she faced the control panel. Looking right down at it like this, she saw a flash of green. She put her hand down in between two panels and came up with a plastic palm tree.
She had the dinosaurs, and their scenery, packed away in their--her--quarters, with the most treasured of them still sitting on a shelf, as if he might come back and stage mock battles again. Mal must have missed this one.
One bright green frond was speckled liberally with tiny black dots.
She set it in her lap, let out her breath and settled back into the chair, back, back, back, until it wrapped around her like his arms. It was a big chair. Made, so Wash said, to accommodate pilots whose asses had spread wide as an airlock from sitting around. She'd pinched his still-narrow ass, and he'd growled and nipped at her ear. Then Mal had ordered them to gorram quit it, Kaylee had giggled, and the shepherd had given them his holiest look, as if he had no idea what all the fuss was about.
Yeah, right.
She looked up.
The 'verse was open before her, stars like diamond dust falling away into emptiness. There was so much--there was so very much, out there in the nothing. He'd loved that contradiction, just gorram loved it. And the stars--look at 'em, Zoe. Look. Amazing.
She looked down at the bag she still held. It was still closed, all that candy sealed inside like a body in a coffin. She took hold of the top and tore it open. The rich smell of chocolate poured up to surround her. She breathed it in like oxygen.
Slipping her hand into the bag, she took out a peanut butter cup and peeled the silver foil away, letting it drop to the floor. Then she pried the wax paper cup off the chocolate, letting that fall as well, and put it in her mouth.
The lush taste filled her mouth, burning away the numbness. She didn't chew, just let it melt and slide down her throat. When it was gone, she carefully licked her lips free of the last traces of chocolate, peanut butter, and the salt tears that had poured down her face.
She sat in a creaking pilot's chair, with a bag of chocolate candy and a bloodstained plastic palm tree in her lap, looking out at eternity, and at long last she found him again.
FINIS