"You're comin' with us," a cheerful voice declared.

"Excuse me?" another voice asked.

Logan looked down from the ship he'd been running a very professional eye over to the owner of that first, cheerful voice, and simply raised an eyebrow at the girl he found there, with her worn but still-shining Chinese style jacket, and her hair up in a pair of messy buns that almost made it look like she had mouse ears there, or something.

"You like ships. You don't seem to be lookin' at the destinations, what you're interested in are the ships," the girl persisted, a smile on her face. "An' mine's the nicest," she declared proudly.

Logan smirked at the girl. Even with the barbecued dog stand not ten feet away, he could smell the engine oil under this girl's fingernails. Oh yes, that was a mechanic, proud of the ship she lived in and constantly was working on.

"Don't look like much," commented the second voice Logan had heard. An old-looking man, well, maybe not too old. His hair was grey but there weren't too many wrinkles on his face.

Not like Logan was in any place to make comment on that sort of thing.

"Oh, she'll fool ya," the girl countered with quiet confidence. "You ever sailed in a firefly?"

"Long before you were crawling," the old-looking man said plainly.

Logan snorted to himself at that. He was getting into ships like this before the old man was a twinkle in his mother's eye, all while looking young enough that he could be calling this guy 'dad'.

"Not an aught-three though," the old-looking man continued. "Didn't have the extenders, tended to shake."

The girl pushed herself out of her fold-out chair, colourful if tattered paper parasol lowered to one side, and stepped up to the old man.

"So, uh, how come you don't care where you're goin'?" the girl asked, apparently innocently curious.

It was more than that though, and Logan privately congratulated the girl. He could smell the careful suspicion on her as clearly as the engine oil.

"Because how you get there is the worthier part," the man answered.

"Are you a missionary?" she asked, still smiling, and this time it was shy curiosity that masked her careful probing, rather than just innocence.

"I guess," he said, and set down the bag he was carrying in one hand, then released his hold on the handle of the rest of his luggage that he'd been towing along with the other. "I'm a Shepherd, from the Southdown Abbey. Book," the man said, and held out a hand for the girl. "I'm called Book."

The girl accepted his hand to shake.

"Been out of the world for a while, like to walk it for a spell," Shepherd Book continued. "Maybe bring the Word to them as need it told."

"Well, I'm Kaylee," the girl said once they'd finished shaking hands. "This here's Serenity," she continued with a gesture to the ship behind her. "An' she's the smoothest ride from here to Boros for them as can pay," the girl finished.

And then seemed to realise that this particular and no doubt important detail was one that hadn't been broached between herself and the man she'd been pitching to.

"Can you?" she asked, suddenly nervous, and a hand reached up to fiddle with a loose bit of her hair at the back of her neck. "Pay?"

"Well, I've got a little cash," the Shepherd agreed as he moved to his luggage. He picked up a small box and turned back to Kaylee. "And, uh..." he offered, and opened the box for her inspection.

The scent of fresh strawberries wafted out and tantalised Logan's ol' factory senses.

"I'll give you a hundred platinum for the contents of that little box," Logan offered, stepping up.

Both Shepherd Book and Kaylee blinked at the sudden intrusion to their conversation.

Logan smirked. "And I'd like to buy passage too," he added to Kaylee. "Heard your pitch, and I'm sold."

"If you don't mind me asking," Shepherd Book offered hesitantly, "but... a hundred platinum for this little box of strawberries?"

Logan chuckled. "I don't look the type to go for 'em, I know," he conceded with a smirk. "But my girl and me, we have good memories of that little fruit, and it's been a long time."

Shepherd Book chuckled. "Well, I suppose if I sell you the strawberries for a hundred platinum, I'll definitely be able to afford passage, won't I?" he asked, turning to Kaylee with a smile.

"Definitely," the girl agreed, though she kept her eyes on the box of strawberries, a longing look in her eyes.

Logan approved. This girl wasn't any rail-thin waif. She was a proper, hard-working sort of girl, and one who clearly liked her food. "Go on an' have one girl," he said. "I'll still pay the hundred for the rest," he told Book, and pulled out his wallet on the spot.

"Don't mind if I do!" Kaylee chirped as she watched the money be passed from one man to the other. A look of utter bliss crossed the girl's features as she bit into the strawberry she'd chosen.

Both men chuckled fondly at the sight. It really didn't take much for the cheerful young lady to grow on a person.

"When's your departure time?" Logan asked once he'd seen her throat constrict with the act of swallowing.

"Two-and-a-half hours," Kaylee answered. "Mr...?"

Logan shook his head. "I'm no mister," he corrected the girl. "I'm Logan, an' I gotta grab a couple of things from the room I'm stayin' in before take off, not least of which is my girl, so if you'll both excuse me?" he requested, as politely as he ever got, and nodded to them as he excused himself, the box of strawberries in his left hand while the right hung from a pocket by his thumb.

~oOo~

"Marie," Logan called gently, a smile on his lips as he brushed his nose lightly through the red-brown locks that spread out across the pillow. "Time to wake up, sweetheart."

"Mm," was the moaned response, and a body full of tight muscles accentuated by (to Logan's mind) perfect curves stretched languorously their cheap motel room. They'd made use of the wide bed of the cheap room earlier in the day, but the woman had rolled herself into the boxed-in bed that they had custom-built for their own use a long time ago. "You found us a ship?" the woman asked as she blinked open green eyes.

Logan smirked back. "I did," he confirmed.

"So you woke me up to tell me what?" she asked with a raised brow. "Coulda just as easily put the lid on and I'da popped out once we were on board."

Logan shook his head. "I gotcha these," he told her with a smile, and slipped the box of strawberries into her hands.

Rogue's eyes went wide when she peeked into the little box, and then abruptly shifted up to meet Logan's own merrily dancing eyes. A bright, beaming smile crawled its way up Rogue's face, and tears started to gather in her eyes.

"I can't remember the last time we had real strawberries," she whispered.

Logan shook his head gently. "Don't try," he advised. "Just relish that we've got 'em now."

Rogue nodded in acceptance of this. It was old advice between them. If Logan wasn't the one giving it, then Rogue was.

Occasionally one or other of them would get caught up in memories. Sometimes those memories were of the years around the time when they'd first met, sometimes it would be any of the other hundreds of years in between. Years that had seen the theories of Charles Xavier proven false, years that had seen the fears of Magneto come to fruition, years that had seen the race of man forget about the mutants they had so effectively exterminated.

All but two.

Two that couldn't be killed.

Some would have argued that Sabertooth, Victor Creed, would have been a third who would survive. A third who couldn't be killed. But he could be. Some would have argued that Deadpool, Wade Wilson, would have been a fourth who would have survived, what with all the government expenses that went into making sure he'd survive anything. Not even they could survived having their entire heads blown off. Especially when they'd just been shot full of the weaponised 'cure'.

Only Logan, with his adamantium skeleton, and Rogue with more mutations collected under her skin than she rightly knew what to do with, had managed to survive.

And they'd done it by faking their deaths.

Logan had been shot full of the weaponised 'cure' for the X-gene, and he had then been riddled with artillery fire. But his mutation over-rode the 'cure'. His body recognised it as a toxin, and his mutation had summarily destroyed it. Just like it did every other toxin. He'd been down for a while, bleeding all over the ground, there was no denying that, but as the soldiers had marched away – satisfied he was dead – he'd been slowly healing right back up.

Because of his adamantium skeleton, they couldn't blow his head off like they'd done to Victor and Wade. As long as he was somewhat whole, Logan could and would always rise again.

Marie, lacking the adamantium skeleton, but also – so far as the government knew – not in possession of the same healing mutation as Logan, had suffered only a shot from a sniper to her heart while she'd been in the middle of fixing breakfast.

The government didn't know everything.

Rogue had been in possession of the same healing mutation as both Victor and Logan since the now long-forgotten Liberty Island Incident. Well, long-forgotten to all but the two of them. Logan and Rogue were the only ones still alive who even knew it had happened. The Liberty Island Incident had been summarily wiped from the annals of history by a man called Fury who'd owed Logan a big fat favour. He was dead now too.

A serum to keep someone from ageing, to keep them in their prime... humans weren't meant for immortality. Give the average man two and a half hundred years, he'll be more than likely willing to put a bullet through his own skull just out of sheer boredom, even if the human race does mean that there are amazing new advancements every other month. Nick Fury had lasted exactly two hundred and fifty three years, eight months, ten days, and five minutes before he just got sick of it all. Particularly the paperwork. For some reason, even with all the advancements, that never went away.

Rogue and Logan, they didn't have that option. So they stuck together, and they made the best of it, even when the 'cure' for the X-gene had started becoming part of the standard inoculations for infants – a baby had been born purple with pink eyes and pointed ears, to a senator. He'd pushed through a bill to make that inoculation perinatal at the latest.

"Ship's leaving in about two hours," Logan said softly.

Marie nodded and hauled herself off the bed. "We packed?" she checked.

"We ever unpack?" Logan countered, though he was also genuinely asking. Hotels blurred together within the space of a normal lifetime. They'd both lived through enough that the wars blurred together.

Rogue cocked her head as she thought about it. "Toothbrushes," she answered.

"Right," Logan agreed, and went to fetch their bathroom stuff.

~oOo~

Logan returned to Serenity with a duffle over one shoulder and pulling a long box on a hand-cart behind him.

"Is... is that a coffin?" an unfamiliar voice demanded as Logan pulled it up the ramp.

"It surely looks like it Cap," agreed the slightly more familiar voice of Kaylee. "Though a bit wider than most."

Logan paused and looked over.

"Mal, this is Logan," Kaylee presented, now a trifle nervous. "Logan, this is our captain."

Logan nodded. "Pleased to meetcha," he said neutrally.

The captain, Mal, returned the nod. "Pleasure," he agreed. "Why are ya bringin' a coffin on my boat?"

Logan smirked a tiny bit. "It's got sound-proof lining," he answered plainly.

Mal blinked at that. "Not a coffin then..." he surmised.

Logan chuckled. "Got that right, Bub," he agreed, and continued into the cargo bay as an ATV with a loaded trailer rolled its way up the ramp.

"Please be careful with that!" a very cultured voice called after it.

"This all you could get us?" Mal asked.

"Shi," Kaylee answered, though she was looking curiously at the box Logan had brought. She remembered he'd said something about fetching his girl, after all.

"Then I'm closin' it up," the captain declared. "I saw the ambassador dock just as we were comin' back."

Logan dropped his duffle to the ground and watched the air-lock doors close with one eye as he let the other take in his fellow passengers. The Shepherd, of course, some kid who looked soft and smelled of lilies and disinfectant, and a mousy man who had dropped his bags everywhere and then proceeded to trip over them. Once the airlock doors were shut, Logan popped the lid on the long box he'd brought on board.

Marie calmly sat up, swung her legs over one side, and hopped out of the box onto the floor of the cargo bay before she shook her hair out.

"Woah! What the hell?!" Mal exclaimed, drawing everyone's attention.

"Don't you worry none," Marie advised as she picked up the duffle and dumped it into the box she'd just climbed out of. "We can pay -"

"Have paid," Logan corrected.

"- for my passage too," Marie finished with a conceding nod to her man.

"I want to know why you came aboard in a box, lady!" Mal requested, tense.

"I came aboard in a box because some poser thought he'd shot me in a mortal-type way," Rogue explained.

"And frankly it's easier to leave a town where someone thinks they've killed ya in a box than it is to just walk out," Logan added. "It's happened enough times that the deception is part of our standard fare."

"You not bein' dead gonna bring any trouble to me an' mine?" Mal demanded quickly.

Rogue shook her head. "Naw. The poser shot me 'cause I told his buddy I wouldn't put out," she said with a sneer. "Lot a witnesses though, so I been keepin' out a sight. It's just easier, bein' dead until people forget you should be. Causes less panic."

Mal nodded slowly. "Right..." he allowed, though he wasn't sure he believed it. "Well, lady and gents, let me show y'all where the passenger dorms are, the dining area, an' then there's some words need to be said."

There were accepting nods all round, and they left their baggage in the cargo bay for now.

~oOo~

"As you can see, this here is the dining area," Mal presented as he leant against one of the cheerfully painted walls – probably the mechanic's doing, that flower stencil that went around the room. "You're all welcome to help yourselves to whatever we've got at any time, and what we've got is fairly standard fare," he explained. "Protein in all the colours of the rainbow."

"I hate that shit," Logan grumbled.

"Hush, Mutton-chops," Marie whispered back with a slight smile. Not that she liked it any better, mind. Still, manners and such. Most people these days didn't get real food. Everything these days was dehydrated, freeze-dried, powdered, or that gummy protein stuff. All of which was, generally speaking, about as flavoursome as a sheet of cardboard.

"We do have sit-down meals, next one bein' at about eighteen-hundred," Mal continued.

"And Shepherd Book has offered to help me cook it," Kaylee added with a smile and a gesture to the man.

Shepherd Book smiled back at her.

"You got more than just those rubies I bought off you earlier?" Logan asked the man hopefully.

"Rubies?" asked a dark-skinned woman, confused.

Marie smiled. "Strawberries," she explained. "And they were delicious," she added, directing her smile to the Shepherd. "I don't know where you got 'em, but thank ya kindly for partin' with 'em."

"I had a garden at the Southdown Abbey," Book answered with a smile. "Brought as much as I could, but it won't keep."

"Thank Christ for the generosity of his servants," Logan near groaned with relief.

Which caused Marie to giggle at him. "An' their green thumbs," she added, and gave another grateful nod of her own to the grey-haired man.

"Mighty grateful all round I think," Mal agreed after a moment – a moment which included a brief Look in Kaylee's direction. Still, his taste-buds desire for real food won out over his personal distaste for anything resembling religiosity or piety.

Besides which, they'd already hit the Black, and the man was paying for his passage.

"But back to what I was sayin'. You're all welcome in the dining area at any time, but other'n that, I'm gonna have to ask you to stay in the passenger dorms while we're flyin'. The bridge, the engine room, the cargo bay," he listed shortly. "They're all off-limits without an escort."

"Some of my personal effects are in the cargo bay," said the boy with spotless white shirt and the silk vest.

"I figure you all got luggage you're gonna need to get into," Mal agreed neutrally. "Soon as we're done here we'll be happy to fetch 'em with you," he offered as he pushed himself off the wall he'd been leaning against. "Now I have to tell you all one other thing and I apologise in advance for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, we've been ordered by the Alliance to drop some medical supplies off on Whitefall."

"We got on 'cause of the ship, Bub," Logan said with an easy shake of his head. "Not the destination."

"It ain't no inconvenience Hun," Marie assured with a smile. "Me an' Logan, we can always find some work to do wherever we end up," she said. "Even if it's Whitefall," she added with a despairingly amused shake of her head as her smile bent a little ruefully.

"What's wrong with Whitefall?" asked the mousy man who'd been tripping over his own gear earlier.

"Nothin' wrong with it as such," Mal assured the boy. "It's a bit backwater an' isolated is all. It's the fourth moon on Athens, a little out of our way, but we should have you on Boros no more than a day off schedule."

"May I ask, what medical supplies?" enquired the richly dressed boy.

"You can," Mal allowed, his tone flat. "But I didn't when I was told to take 'em, so you won't get an answer from me."

"It's probably not enough, whatever it is," the dark-skinned woman joined in, also pushing herself off the wall she'd been leaning against. "An' likely only plasma an' insulin, which are things they ain't got enough of on the border moons, even if they ain't always what's needed most."

"Alliance says 'jump'," Mal added with a displeased expression.

"You mean, when the Alliance says 'suck it'," Logan corrected.

Mal snorted in amusement as he nodded.

"All right," the boy said softly.

"Zoe, you wanna take 'em to the cargo bay?" Mal requested of the dark-skinned woman.

So, that was her name.

"Yes Sir," she answered, and gestured for the passengers to follow her.

"Anything you want, just ask," Mal said as they slowly filed out. "We're uh, we're here to serve."

Rogue and Logan bit down on smiles as they held back, so that they were just about the last ones to go down; Kaylee brought up the rear with them. They were fairly sure no one on this ship was about to shoot or stab them in the back. All the same, a few centuries of not giving their backs to people when they could help it... and letting go of that habit would likely see them being stabbed or shot a lot faster, so it was better to keep it up. Earlier that day had actually been somewhat on purpose, so it didn't count. Even if it didn't really kill them though, it was still a real and literal pain to have to deal with those sorts of 'accidents'.