Archive of Our Own ^beta

"The equipment I have here is a little unsophisticated for this, but I should still be able to tell you in about an hour." Simon says as he draws the plunger back, pulling a few careful ounces of blood from her arm.

Zoe says nothing, just slips off the tourniquet and rolls down her sleeve. Doesn't bother with the tape and cotton Simon had set aside for her. Brown shirts never show bloodstains, and what's a pinpoint sized stain to anyone, anyway? "How's Kaylee?" She asks instead.

Simon gives her a baffled look for a moment, then one of his shy smiles. It's an expression that's become familiar around Serenity's dinner table in recent weeks. "She's good. We're good."

Zoe nods. "You'll let me know?"

"As soon as I can." He promises.

She nods again and leaves the infirmary. No one notices the blood spot on her sleeve.

--

At the time, it had just been a sort of whim when she'd taken the little bottle. Hundreds of drugs swiped from the stores they hit on Ariel, no one had even noticed when one of them went missing.

She had carried it in her pocket for days, at first not daring to let anyone know what she was thinking about. She wasn't ready to bring it up to Wash, and though she trusted the doctor not to repeat anything to anyone if she asked him to dose her, she wasn't some backwater bumpkin who sneaked around with something like this. Her husband would know before Simon did.

Wash found it in her coat when she'd left it on the bed. It was an accident, or so she told herself. She hadn't really left it out for him to find.

She'd walked into their quarters, intending to make some remark about their upcoming destination, but the words died in her mouth when she saw him sitting on the bed in shock, clutching the tiny bottle.

For a long time, neither of them said a thing.

"Were you ever planning on telling me you had this?"

When Wash finally spoke up, his voice sounded hollow and hoarse. The only other time Zoe had ever heard that tone in his voice was the week they'd received the news that her father-in-law had died. She flinched to hear it from him now.

"Honey—" She starts to say, but there are no words to come next and Wash mercifully cuts her off before she can try to find some.

"What, were you just gonna take this and then lie when it worked? Tell me it was an accident?"

She eyed him levelly and murmured low, "You know me better than that."

"Obviously not, or I wouldn't be magically finding this in our bed! When were you going to tell me, Zoe?!"

"When I was good and ready to!" She snaps back, anger covering her fear and embarrassment over his discovery. "I wasn't gonna sneak your back with something like this. I was gonna talk to you about it when I thought you were ready, when we were ready."

"And you didn't think that before taking it would've been a good time?"

"I haven't taken any yet. It's still sealed. I just saw an opportunity and I grabbed it. I didn't know when we'd have another chance to get our hands on something like this. We don't have the cash to just walk up to a drugstore and buy some."

"I thought we agreed that it'd be some time before we even considered the walking up! And I thought that my wife would actually discuss it with me before she did any…walking." He stood up and raked his fingers through his hair in exasperation. She can't fault him for it much. It does look pretty bad.

"I wasn't gonna take it without talking." She said quietly.

"But you swiped it without a word to me." He looked hurt and betrayed. She hated nothing so much as that look in his eyes, but there was nothing she could do about it now. The words "You're pretty much down to ritual suicide, lamby toes" echoed almost comically through her brain. She could almost weep for the timing of the memory.

Wash sighed and sat back down. Tentatively, Zoe took the spot next to him, reaching over to touch his hand.

He looked up at her with sadness in his eyes. "I know this is important to you."

She didn't flinch. Or lie. "Yeah, it is."

He bit his lip with a sigh and looked from her to the bottle and back again. "It's still not time, Zo."

"I know it's not." She murmured softly, stroking her thumb across the back of his hand. "But when it is, I want us to be prepared."
"That might be never." He reminded her gently. "I don't foresee us settling down on some little planet with a house and a dog and no outstanding warrants for our arrests any time soon."

"We'll get there." She said. "Eventually."

"Yeah." Wash said, looking back at the bottle. He traced his thumb across the label and those condemning words, Progestin inhibitor: for reversal of temporary intravenous chemical sterilization. "Maybe."

"Maybe." She echoed, taking the bottle away. "But not yet. I promise." A beat passed, and then she leaned forward to give him a gentle kiss. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too." He said, combing his fingers through her hair. "Someday, okay?"

"Okay." Zoe agreed.

--

They hadn't talked about it again until months after Shepherd Book and Inara left Serenity. Life still wasn't exactly easy, but it was quieter. And maybe…just maybe…it was time to start thinking about getting off the ship.

They never told Mal what they were thinking of. Wash wanted somewhere to go and Zoe wanted to be sure that even if they found such a place, they would actually take it. She wasn't gonna frustrate the captain with "maybes."

Wash's mother, upon being asked, had more than eagerly offered to let them come to her. There were plenty of legitimate jobs for pilots wanting to travel locally, within a three-planet radius. It wasn't exciting, but exciting was exactly what they were trying to get out of. Wash waved her back and told her "maybe."

That prospect dangling on the edge of possibility, making them publicly stoic and privately a little giddy (finally, finally, for the first time in their entire married lives, they were going to have something real! A life of their own!), Zoe had tentatively brought up the bottle.

Wash had agreed, with only one restriction, one warning that went straight to her heart and punched her in the stomach at the same time: "If we do this…if we're gonna try…we can't back out. We're gonna have to go."

For three days after, "quiet and edgy" were the words that defined them to the rest of the crew. Kaylee was curious and River remarking cryptically on uncomfortable truths in ways that went straight over everyone's heads. Simon kept quiet about what he knew. Jayne noticed nothing and Mal, in typical Mal fashion, played it close to the vest and by all accounts, if he knew anything at all, he wasn't talking.
On the fourth day, Zoe had confronted Wash about the possibility of staying for one last job, just so they'd have the start-up capital to live on until he found work. He agreed, tactfully not mentioning that he knew Zoe wanted to be able to tell the captain when he was in a good mood.

The day Simon gave Zoe the long-awaited shot, Fanti and Mingo waved about a vault job on Lilac.

Three weeks later, Wash was dead.

--

Zoe first suspected two weeks after the funerals. She was sick all the time, her body rejecting the slightest suggestion of food, and she had once nearly fainted in the engine room. She'd taken to sleeping there on Kaylee's hammock after Miranda.

She steadfastly ignored the possibility, along with the sympathetic looks Kaylee and Inara kept giving her, for a few days, not daring to think, to hope—

Then she was late. Just a little, but there it was.

She went to the infirmary and talked to Simon.

--

The last time Wash and Zoe had made love had been in the copilot console on the bridge, with everyone else sound asleep. Wash had been skittish and gun shy ever since they'd officially decided they were trying, citing too much pressure.

He'd been citing it all the way up until she pinned him to the console, practically tearing both of their clothes off.

"It's just scary," Wash murmured against her mouth between hot, haphazard kisses, "to think that what we're doing is gonna make a whole new person. That this could be the time when you and me make this little baby we're gonna be responsible for."

"You're thinking too much, husband." Zoe whispered into his throat as she yanked off his shirt.

He moaned at the feel of her teeth in his skin, his hands going tight on her waist. "Yeah, yeah, I know, it's just—ohhh—it's that now my—my guys, they have to—" His belt came out of its loops and his ass met with a cool navigation screen, breaking his concentration a little. "—they have to actually work. It's like a flight school exam, with less certainty that I'll make the cut."

"Honey," Zoe uttered as she pressed her knees into his hips and they finally joined together in what would've been perfect ecstasy with less talking, "shut up and fuck me."

Wash complied.

--

It's been a month and a half since that day, and the only person left on the entire ship who even knew anything special could've come out of it was the damn doctor. It's painful and almost unfair, and Zoe would cry about it if she was the type who let herself cry over anything. Even the captain hasn't seen her shed a tear since that terrible instant when Wash was there and in a flash, was not.

She rubs at the near-invisible stain on her sleeve and pointedly refuses to think about the way she'd felt Wash's blood on her hands just as Mal pulled her out of the way before she could join him.

Wash is gone, but she just might not be alone.

Simon finds her that way on the bridge, sharing the view and enjoying a comfortable silence with River sometime after dinner.

"Zoe?" He says tentatively, silently inviting her to take the chance to pull him aside and ask what he knows without any eavesdroppers.

Just as silently, Zoe declines, looking at him slowly, her arms folded across her waist and her spine perfectly straight, prepared for anything.

Simon looks at her with more sadness than he can ever remember looking on someone he was about to deliver test results to. He never had to give them to a friend before. "I'm sorry." He says after a long, terrible minute. "It was…" Somehow, he can't bring himself to use the word "negative."

Zoe understands, anyway. Nods her head and looks back out at space. "Thanks, Doctor." She doesn't cry.

It's just one more dead dream to accept. One more sad reality to get used to.