Life on this boat. A Firefly story. #fanfic

Back at Odinshelm

They slept another night at the cabin and packed everything up to go after breakfast.
As they were leaving Lou saw Wash and Zoe exchange some looks and nudges.
"You wanna stay here a few days?" She asked.
"I wouldn't mind..." Wash said.
"We can come back here tho," Zoe said.
Lou grinned.
"Mal, do you mind giving your pilot and second in command a few days off?" She asked.
Mal shrugged.
"We're on ground for a few days. Don't see a hold up," he said.
"Tell you what. If you come home with us you can have a couple of horses and some decent food in your packing up. There is a better cabin by one of my other sets. You could ride there if you want," Lou suggested.
Wash looked at the lake then at his wife, who looked unsure.
"Right. I'll come and get you in a few days," Lou smiled and pointed just inside the door of the cabin.
"The communicator is there. You reach my house by dalling 2 on that one. Giles is on 1," she said.
"Let's go," Mal said and got on the mule.
Wash lifted his and Zoe's bags off and Lou jumped up and sat at the back of the mule with River in front and Jayne next to her.
As they sped off she waved to Wash and Zoe as they ran down towards the lake.

A few hours later they arrived dusty and tired. They unloaded the mule and stored the boxes in Lou's basement. They had agreed to wait a few days to open them in case Duggar's gang were still on the prowl.
Lou's daughters came running to her when she went over to Giles' house later.
"We have had so much fun," Brooke jumped up and down.
"Adelia made cookies. And uncle Ross has fixed our garden so we can have the chickens there and he's dug over the veg patch. And uncle Giles said we can go riding later," Saphire said with an enthusiastic smile. She had regained a lot of her happiness since coming home.
"Ooohhh... and uncle Giles says I can have a pony, " Brooke said.
"Does he now...? We have only got five horses and a donkey allready," Lou smiled.
"Nope. We have six horses," Saphire said.
"Six?" Lou asked.
"Starlight had a foal yesterday," Saphire grinned.
"And I missed it?" Lou shook her head in mock disappointment.
"Yep. I rubbed it with hay," Saphire smiled
"And I helped it stand up," Brooke said.
Lou gave both her girls an affectionate hug.
"So... did you find anything?" Saphire asked.
"Yes we did. And now I need to find Simon," Lou replied.
"He's in the shed with Kaylee. He's there aaalll the time," Saphire said rolling her eyes.
Lou rubbed her daughter's cheek.
"Well... I have a job for him," Lou smiled.
She walked over to the shed to find that Kaylee had dug out and fixed another old hovercraft and that some conversation was interrupted by her arrival. Kaylee was looking at Simon with a stricken facial expression and Simon was looking embarassed.
"Good. Lou take him out of here! I've had enough" Kaylee snapped when Lou asked to borrow Simon for a moment.
"Put your foot in your mouth again, huh?" Lou asked.
"Yeah. Don't know why I always manage to mess it up," he mumbled.
"One day, Simon... One day you will stand there and you have no other choice but to be honest about your feelings," Lou smiled.
"Hypocrite," he muttered under his breath with a sly grin.
"Bless you," Lou grinned back, pretending to mistake his dig for a sneeze.
For some reason Lou liked Simon. He was so painfully awkward around everybody, but his wonderfully dry humor usually had her laughing even when nobody else did.
She took him over to her house and showed him the bones in the box.
"Detective work for you," she said.
Simon picked up the syringe.
"Mal reckons that's some kinda alliance, happy suicide drug," Lou said.
"I am familliar with the drug. Just never actually seen it," Simon said examining the writing on the metal tube.
"She was with Danny when he ran from Duggar. We figured she was reaver-infected. I just want to know what else you can work out," Lou explained.
"I'll see what I can do," Simon said and hauled the box onto Serenity where he had his equipment. River followed him and received a smile.
"Hey sis. Wanna help?" He said receiving a big smile back.
Lou turned and went into her house where she washed and changed into clean clothes before taking the tray if honeycomb into what she called her honey room. It was a smallish kitchen and workshop with its own entrance and a door into the kitchen, but still separate from the house both to keep the equipment clean and to keep the sticky honey away from the rest of the house. Another room attached to the honey room was the larder where she stored all the honey products she made. She opened the door to let the fresh air in and went to collect the tray of honeyframes from her broken hives. They had not been stored correctly so the honey would be hard to extract, but she wanted to see what she could get out of it.
"Need help with that?" Jayne asked.
Lou looked at him and for once his strength might come useful.
"Sure. You can operate the sling," she said digging out her old manual honey extractor. She had an electric one, but as these frames were broken they would fit better into the old manual one.
She slotted four frames into the machine after removing the topwax and carried it out on the porch where the warm sunshine might help soften the honey.
"Sit down, grab the handle and start turning," she said pointing to a crank on the side. Jayne reluctantly did what she asked.
Half an hour later, he was sweating and puffing, but Lou had three jars of honey and some comb she could use for candles.
Lou smiled as she lifted the machine back into the room to get it cleaned out. She came back out to see him sprawled in a deckchair, trying to shake the cramps from his arms.
"What are you laughing at?" He asked.
"Don't know... I just kinda like seeing you all sweaty," she grinned.
"You do, do ya..?" He said lifting an eyebrow.
"You have no idea," Lou laughed and went in to wash out the sling and cut the comb from the frame for later use. Again she shook her head at her own flirting. An adult woman should not be behaving like a teenager, but around Jayne it was as if she couldn't help herself. Something about him made her insides go to mush. She was fighting a loosing battle trying to resist him. Soon he'd be gone and Lou was damned if she was going to let him take her heart with him.
She looked over at the door where he was stood leaning on the doorframe with an ureadable expression on his face.

He was about to say something when Simon came running.
"You wanna see this," he said.
Lou washed her hands free of sticky comb before brushing past Jayne and following Simon. She spotted one daughter getting muddy in the recently dug up vegetable patch as she dug holes and placed tomatoplants and the other one hanging on the horses paddock with Willow staring at the new and wobbly looking foal.
Simon led Lou and Jayne into Serenity. As they entered Lou fought a feeling of regret. This was no longer home, but somehow it was so familiar. She stopped briefly inside the cargo hold feeling all her memories flood over her. Her children deserved to grow up on dirt, regardless of what she wanted.
"C'mon Lou. It's only bones. Not like you ain't touched them yourself," Jayne said laying an arm around her shoulder.
"I know. I just realized I'm not going anywhere in this boat anymore," she said feeling her breath come in tiny shivers.
"You could tho," he said.
"No. I can't," she mumbled and gave Jayne a quick squeeze before she started walking towards the med bay.
She found Simon pressing buttons on a computer while Mal stood staring at the bones with disgust. River was sat on top of a counter grinning at Lou.
"You're not shouting anymore," River smiled.
Lou nodded back while Jayne looked confused.
"So here is what we know," Simon started pointing at the bones laid out on the counter. "It is definatelly a woman. From her teeth, pelvic bone and femur we can assume she was between 18 and 22 years old. She might be as old as 26 because her teeth indicate a very poor diet and lack of useful nutrients in the crucial pre-pubertal age."
Mal looked at the bones.
"That would match up with the war," Mal said .
"Roughly, yes. I am guessing food shortages," Simon agreed.
"So she was a young adult," Mal stated.
"Yes. I have also run her tooth enamel through the spectrometer and it looks like, from her dental development that she lived on Shadow untill her early teens," Simon said.
"Shadow? How do you know?" Mal asked looking surprised.
"Well... teeth store minerals from the water you drink and the minerals in her teeth match the profile of Shadow. Your teeth will probably show a similar if not identical ratio of components," Simon explained.
Mal scratched his head.
Lou saw Jayne carefully rub a finger over his teeth.
"In childhood she broke a leg, an arm and several ribs, indicating a fall. If I am right about Shadow, I would guess she fell from a horse," Simon continued.
"Meaning she grew up on a farm," Mal replied.
"This is pure guesswork," Simon specified.
They all nodded in agreement.
Simon took the scull and jawbone leaving a slightly disturbing headless human form on the counter. He laid the head in a machine looking more like a microwave oven than anything else and pressed a button.
"This will scan her scull and give us an indication of her facial features," Simon explained.
Up on a screen a face emerged and Lou heard Mal draw a quick breath as the picture of a young woman became visible.
"Juliet," Mal said under his breath.