My Turn
Just a Zoe-based fanfic I wrote, with very much Zoe/Wash intentions. There are Serenity spoilers involved...
Another day, another job. Malcolm Reynolds wiped the sweat from his brow as he stood under the blaring sun. Where in the hell were they? He had, along with Zoe and Jayne, been waiting for someone to come and make the pick-up on these goods for almost an hour. Only so long before a man gets a mite impatient.
Suddenly he saw three men approaching. Finally. Now they all needed was to make the exchange and he could buy Serenity some new parts. Mal glanced over at Zoe, a look of stone on her face. That look had been firmly planted for months. Wasn't sure what he expected out of her. 'Guess something resembling grief, something that said she was hurtin' inside. Zoe never showed that. Mal then looked at Jayne. Nothing to say about him; he just had a dumbass look on his face. Mal spoke to them both, "Okay, let's finish the job and get off this rock."
As the three men came within range, they pulled out their guns. Mal's eyes widened, "Tah mah duh hwoon dahn..." He pulled out his own gun and returned fire, hearing Zoe and Jayne doing the same. How did this job just go south? Mal heard Zoe mutter, "We were played from the start, S---" Before she could finish the world 'sir', a bullet struck her in the chest. Mal yelled out, "Zoe!" A shot just barely missed him and he shot back, anger fillin' him up.
----------------------------------------------------
Zoe felt an explosion of pain in her chest. She hit the ground hard, already starting to taste blood in her mouth. She heard a few more rounds go off and then Mal was running over to her. She felt his hand elevate her head. She heard him say something about it being a 'nothing wound' as Jayne ran over, screaming into his comm set about the 'damn doctor'.
Zoe looked down. There it was: a bullet had hit her right in the chest. As she blinked, visions of Wash raced through her mind. She kept seeing him on Miranda, the wooden pike impaling him in his heart. And now her heart was bleeding, too. Or maybe it had been ever since he died...and it had never stopped. As blood poured out of her wound, she started to get tired. The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was Simon rushing out of Serenity with his med-kit, Kaylee right behind him with tears in her eyes.
She should be fighting this, right? She was the warrior woman, the fighter. But something about her didn't want to fight this. The past few months had been endless and hollow. Part of her had been buried in the ground. You can't live with half of you missing. The half that cracked bad jokes, played with plastic dinosaurs, wore horrible Hawaiian shirts....she needed that half.
She felt Mal slip his hand into hers, squeezing it, as if to tell her not to give up. But they both knew it was hopeless. The wound was too deep. Both wounds were too deep. It was only a matter of time, and time had caught up with her. As she lay there on the sandy ground, she could almost feel him. Smell him. He was there right now. She whispered, "Wash..." She wanted to tell him how much she had missed him, to beg him for forgiveness for not saving him...
She heard a faint whisper, almost like the wind, that said, "It's okay, baby. Let it happen. I'll see you soon." And then her hand slipped from Mal's. Her last words were, "My turn..."