Title: "Firefly - Drabble/Ficlet 01"
Author: Hecate
Fandom: Firefly
Rating: R
Pairing, Character: Zoe/Wash
Summary: for the candle flickers, the flame is never gone
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money made.
Note: Unbetaed.

The story ends with a woman's voice breaking over a few simply words Baby? No, no. and monsters closing in on a broken spaceship. It ends with blood and bending metal, screams and bullets, and a dress that hadn't been worn since their wedding. It ends in death. All stories do.

But before that there were smiles and fights and fingers dancing over skin, learning every mark and curve. Before that were Zoe and Wash and after he died it's all she can think of.

She walks through Serenity following her memories, seeing Wash in the cockpit before the image rearranges itself and she realizes she had been reaching out for Mal or River. She sees him with Kaylee when she´s in the engine room, Kaylee working and Wash watching her with a smile and she almost speaks to him. She doesn´t because he isn´t really there and because Serenity doesn´t need two crazy women on board. River is enough trouble and insanity to fill Serenity to the brink.

She sees him at the edge of her vision when they eat, the chair beside her empty, vacant. But sometimes she swears she can feel Wash´s body beside her, warm and alive, sometimes she hears him, talking about their course, the food. Sometimes he´s there.

It´s worse in their room, his smell, his clothes, and it makes the memory realer and when she sleeps he passes from ghost to reality and his arms are wrapped around her tightly. It´s enough to make her want to stay in bed forever and it´s enough to make her work longer so she doesn´t have to return.

Mal is awkward around her, Kaylee cries, Inara offers sanctuary. Simon is silent and reassuring, Jayne hovers around her sometimes, looking as if he wants to say something but doesn´t know what.

Wash is the shadow standing beside all of them, forever quiet and unreachable.