"It's not here."

River sat facing the stars. Her body relaxed in the co-pilot seat did not betray awareness, yet her attention swept to Zoe as she stood on the stair just outside the bridge.

The gift? Zoe opened her mouth. Closed it.

"It's not happening here. You just choose to carry it with you." River turned, meeting Zoe's masked fear and hope with an aware presence so serene and wise-more disturbing by far than the crazy girl she'd come to know.

"Oh," Zoe realized she was frozen at the top stair. She hadn't been aware of it, but the scene from Wash's death was playing itself, her constant companion. She shook her head, clearing the constant nightmare from her vision.

"There's something..." Zoe faltered, not knowing how to admit she believed whatever it was she conjured that spoke with Wash's voice, kissed with Wash's lips.

River's eyes glazed slightly. She could feel a tingle on her belly, like a circle traced just below her navel. A shiver ran down Zoe's spine, face flinching at the unanticipated sensation. "Oh!" Zoe heard and said in the same breath.

"He loves you so much," River nodded, blushing, and confessed, "you two were always catching me up in your lovemaking."

"I ... we...," Zoe closed her eyes and took a breath-.Readin' entails a hell of a lot more than just knowin'. So what she and Wash shared, and maybe her current visits?. And, just now in the causeway, Mal? Zoe breathed out, " There's a revelation a body could do without."

"They both love you very much." River aimed to console Zoe, but the confirmation left the strong woman struggling to reset her tattered calm.

"I come to discuss certain...visitations. Been seein' Wash. I need ta know what's...am I crazy?"

"No, of course your not. He's here, of course - just not...," River's voice trailed off as grief moved across Zoe's face - all stoicism cast aside. "I know it sounds impossible, but the mind is powerful and time doesn't bind whatever the essence of who we are is. It's not magic or fable. Just is."

Be direct, follow your instincts. It wouldn't do to drag this out, not here on the bridge, not with pieces of herself shattering by the second. Zoe gave herself a mental shake and dove: "He wants to tell me something."

"Yes, make you aware of it, is all.."

"A gift."

"Everything you've ever wanted."

Zoe rocked back on her heels as the words, Wash's words, rang in stereo. She balled her fists, wanting to punch something. She'd had everything in Wash, just never knew she wanted it before he came along. Now he was gone she had nothing but this thin hope and her promise to Mal not to cash it all in. Mal. A faint tingle ran over her lips at the thought of his kiss. Maybe she had gone crazy. River giggled, bringing Zoe back, embarrassed.

"Sorry." River waited for Zoe to come back from herself, she could be infinitely patient with minds that wandered. "But you already know it, you just can't let yourself see it yet."

"The gift."

"Think. What did you want, Zoe? What did you truly want...down deep?"

Zoe studied River hoping the answer would come to her, the right answer, the answer River claimed she already had. But she only had one answer to give, and it wasn't the right one. She glanced to where Wash would never again sit and studied the console rimmed with sad little lost dinosaurs. And her grief boiled over to anger.

"I want my gorram husband back."

--*--

"Mal?" Jayne levered the weights up and onto the rests as Mal spotted him.

"Huh?"

"What we gonna do t'fix up Zoe?"

Mal recalled the feel of her lips on his, of her tongue meeting his. He saw Inara's face. He couldn't believe how overwhelmed he felt.

"Don't know."

He'd come down to the cargo hold to punch a bag and found Jayne working at the weights. He'd stepped in to spot, acutely aware that he was walkin' in the Shepherd's footsteps, trying yet again to step in where a man was missing and hold up his lost share. At least the Shepherd'd been gone and settled on Haven for some months, letting the crew reconcile his absence. Wash's presence floated around the ship like a ghost, the weight of him not being there crushing down on everyone. Still, Jayne was devastated by the loss of the Shepherd. They worked the weights in silence, each to his own troubled thoughts.

"D'ya think she might be needin' companionship?" Jayne dropped the bar into the holder at the head of the bench and sat forward with the effort of concentrating.

"What's that?" Mal, startled out of his own thoughts, hadn't quite heard Jayne.

"You know, Zoe was used to regular play, you think she might come 'round if she had a regular thrust, maybe not feel so lonely?"

"With Inara?" Mal was startled.

"Naw, Mal. Don't think Zoe's wired suchwise. I was thinkin' on my own self-"

Before he could finish, Jayne was in the air, flyin' over the bench, then on his feet and eye to eye with his captain.

"Now I wasn't meanin' no disrespect. Only right to look to do for our own." A knowing smile crept across Jayne's lips. "Seems I come on a touchy subject. You ain't tellin' me you thought you'd be the one ta..."

" Just leave off thinkin' 'bout doin' for Zoe that way, we'll be square, " Mal held Jayne by the shirt in a firm grasp.

"Oho, li'l man was right. You got some feelin' past friendship for Zoe. How's that gonna sit with Inara?"

Mal released his grip on Jayne and shrugged an apology. "So maybe there's somethin' there. Wash asked I look to her back when we never thought he'd be dead. Inara'd left. I made the man a promise." Mal looked up at Jayne as if he might have the answer to his dilemma.

"I don't think he'd make you honor that promise with Inara here waitin' for you to grow some balls and take her." Jayne was always crude, but the words were said kindly. "You told Zoe?"

"'Nara too. It's a predicament," Mal affirmed, shaking his head.

"I take it back, you got the balls." Jayne laughed. "What you gonna do?"

"I owe Zoe. Wash too. Gon' wait; see what she wants."

--*--

"Come in Mal."

Inara sat contemplating the field of stars visible from the shuttle's helm. She heard footsteps firm, yet tentative, approach. She turned to find pain-filled almond shaped eyes as wide and beautiful as her own searching her face.

"Sorry to disappoint." Zoe glanced around the shuttle as Inara rose and reached out a hand toward her, touched the smooth, sheer fabric covering the strong bicep, noticing how the delicate pattern perfectly suited her natural grace.

Stroking Zoe's arm with sisterly concern, Inara stated, "You're here for help."

"Not sure why. I...I went to River. She threw me back a puzzle help me. Mal..."

"...can't," Inara finished for Zoe. Inara did not want to let her feelings betray her, but just as her face was open and unpainted, just as her garments were simple and unadorned, what she felt for Mal was plain to see and she knew Zoe would know the truth.

"He came to find me to..." Zoe turned away. Inara stilled her pulse, acquiring calm from the disciplined biofeedback she had learned as a young child in companion's training. Zoe didn't deserve her anger.

"I know, he spoke with me first. He told me about Wash, what Wash wanted. He told me how he felt."

"About you?" Zoe turned back to Inara.

"No. About you," Inara sighed. Such complicated love, such a complicated man, tangling her up in his confused sense of honor.

"He never let on he felt any... I could have guessed, if I had reason, I s'pose." Tears slipped from her eyes.

Inara didn't move, didn't try to rescue her, didn't try to steal away her pain in the false hope she could make it less. "You didn't need to know. You had everything you wanted."

", if I hear ONE somebody else say them words one more time I'm likely to take Jayne down to the cargo hold and beat the out of him." Zoe's eyes held a madness crossed with anger that would have been dangerous had her voice not been so defeated by pain.

Inara rushed up and caught her in her arms, soothing the pain with tenderness. She let the heat of anger and pain seep into her arms and carried them away from Zoe. Let the room settled from the force of it.

"Why Jayne?"

"Only one on this boat due a regular ass-whuppin'." Zoe smiled through tears, then started to laugh and Inara joined her. They laughed until the collapsed onto the floor like girls had done during the training, late at night, discussing the application of some particularly provocative sexual art learned during their lessons.

"I take it giggling with the girls is something new for you." Time to draw Zoe out, see if she could help at all.

"First time for everything."

"What would you have me do for you, Zoe?"

"Help me find Wash's gift."

"Where is it?"

"I don't know, but the clue has got to be somewhere inside of me."

"Tell me...."

Inara listened as Zoe opened her heart for the third time in the same day and drew her into her world of horror, pain, loss and the constant grief of remembered passion of her lost love.

She had no embarrassment talking of her ghostly sex life in front of the companion. Inara saw to it that whatever arts she possessed made the larger woman comfortable. She twirled tendrils of Zoe's hair, patted her arm and held her the way a best friend would - if your best friend wasn't your captain, harboring feelings crossed over a decade for you. At some point, she moved to make tea, a blend that comforted and loosened tongues. Zoe spoke of the nightmares, and the visits, of how it felt so realistic, of how she both watched and participated and how it devastated her when it was done. A companionable aura settled within the shuttle.

"I just can't figure what it could be, 'Nara -- something we always wanted together. What could he leave, not knowin' he was going anywhere?"

"Maybe it's not something you wanted together. Maybe it's something neither of you knew you wanted. I don't know. Sometimes we don't know what we leave behind when we leave. When Nandi died on that desolate border moon never knowing the gift she gave me. She wasn't bound by thinking of herself as a companion and all the rules that go with it, and the rules I made for myself. She saw the man he was and took him to her bed and heart, if only for that night."

Zoe raised an eyebrow at that, indicating she hadn't known Mal had grappled with Inara's friend. Inara waved her hand to still the questions. She needed to get to the point of her confession.

"When I found out, I was heartsick. The gift? Knowing I could choose to be with Mal, that I could make the choice and have everything I ever wanted. But to do it, I would have to give up everything I thought I was. I wasn't ready, was a coward for truth, but that's another story. That doesn't change the gift or lessen it." Inara noticed a new layer of pain revealed in Zoe's face. "Zoe?"

Zoe gazed at Inara with new understanding. All this pain, all this hurt. It just created a mask that kept her from looking to the future. Now she could see it all and it was shiny bright.

"A child. I've always wanted to have children. Wash wouldn't agree to it. It was right there he told me, as we prepared to fight for Nandi and her girls, that he wasn't havin' it. We'd had that fight so many times. He wouldn't agree to it, not with how we live. And I put my big foot down. I can hear it just like we was out there in the dust all over again." A tingle rose over the skin of her belly as Zoe shared the words of their last fight on the subject. A tingle that felt like a circle drawn around a single point. Zoe told it to Inara like something out of a fairy tale.

"Well, I'm not sure now is the best time to bring a tiny little helpless person into our lives."

"That excuse is getting a little worn, honey. "

"It's not an excuse, dear. It's objective assessment. I can't help it if it stays relevant."

"I don't give a good gorram about relevant, Wash. Or objective. And I'm not so afraid of losing something that I won't try havin' it. You and I would make one beautiful baby. I want to meet that child one day. Period. "

"Everything you ever wanted - a child, Zoe? But that was over a year ago"

"You know things went downhill after that. You left the ship, then the Shepherd. Luck went south, worse'n ever. Wasn't time to force him on the issue, Inara. I thought I'd have time. I didn't speak of it again-wasn't no need. I'd made my feelings plain."

"So is that it...Wash is encouraging you to raise a child - but how could you possibly have a child now...?" Mal's face immediately rose in Inara's mind. She knew that this web of tangles would quickly choke them all if Zoe were to bare Mal's child.

The sound of boots thudding on the floor grew louder, interrupting the mood in the shuttle. River came bursting in, skidding to a stop in front of the women still huddled on the floor like girls at a sleepover. River beamed down at Zoe, the warmth casting itself over Inara. The whole shuttle glowed.

"Yes, it's everything you ever wanted. He meant your child. Thank goodness! I thought you would be throwing up all over the galley before you figured out you were pregnant!!"