Original Author's Note

in the year of our Lord 2021, I am watching Firefly for the very first time. please don't post anything that might be a spoiler.

written from a prompt I had saved: "It was just a nightmare."

The first breath tears against her throat. Her eyes open in the dark and for a minute she’s frozen, lost in time, alone.

“Zoë?” 

A hand on her arm. Zoë flinches hard, jerking out of reach, and then the voice registers. She breathes in, long and deep, and turns back toward her husband.

“Hey. You back with me?”

“Mm-hm.” Zoë settles on her side. Wash reaches out again, and this time his touch is soft, warm, comforting. Funny how that works. Zoë takes another deep breath. 

It’s quiet for a while. Wash’s hand trails up and down her arm, rubbing light circles into her skin. Light splinters through a crack in the door. It frames Wash in silhouette, reflecting off his hair—he’s kneeling by the bed, she realizes. He must have rolled out of bed when she started thrashing. 

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly.” 

 Zoë’s brain rolls back a few minutes without her say-so, trying to recall the dream; she can’t remember it, anyway. Most of the time she can’t. All she ever wakes up with is fear. Sometimes a vague ringing in her ears. 

“It was just a nightmare,” she says. Wash’s hand stills over her elbow. “Same as always. You should get back to sleep.”

Wash is still for another minute; then he clambers back onto the mattress. Zoë shifts over for him.

“You sounded scared.” He presses his lips to her shoulder. “I don’t want you to be scared.” 

He’s rarely so blunt. Then again, they’re rarely alone. 

“I’m not,” she says. The short puff of air against her shoulder tells her Wash isn’t buying it. 

“You say that,” he says, almost accusing, “but then—then I hear you waking up. And you always sound….”

The first breath is always the worst. That moment between sleeping and waking, when she can’t remember where she is, or what’s happening. Her ears ring sometimes.

And then she sees Wash. And then she feels his hands on her skin, and hears Serenity humming around her, and she comes back home. 

“You always sound scared,” Wash says.

“Mm.” Zoë closes her eyes. “With you watching my back? Never.” 

He huffs a laugh into her shoulder. Zoë smiles. Waking up is the hard part. But this—this is good. Wash snuggles closer, spooning her, pressing his nose into the crook of her neck. He wraps his arms around her, and Zoë takes his hands, clasping them to her chest. She listens to him breathe. She tries to match her breaths to his. 

Wash traces his thumb against the back of her hand. Zoë hears his heart beating a soft, steady cadence. Serenity rumbles and hisses.

They breathe together.