Kaylee had gotten up off the bed too, so as to keep River in sight still. ”It’ll take us a long time…” Kaylee offered, even though she agreed and was in fact glad that River would think of that. It was another comforting thing, after having seen River do… what she’d done, to save them.

”I know. I still want to, though.” River replied, carrying the body she’d picked up down off of the hatch and setting it away from the ship, then coming back to retrieve another.

Kaylee turned and went to start dragging bodies over closer to the hatch. ”See if you can make a path through, then I can help more, okay?”

”Okay.” River agreed, meeting Kaylee’s eyes again.

”And… don’t worry, we’ll give’m proper burials River, I promise.” Kaylee offered.

River smiled a little falteringly before she knelt down and picked another body up in her arms. ”His name was… Jeffery Thomas Eagan. He had two sons, but his wife left him, because she didn’t want to be a mother anymore…” River said as she picked him up and carried him off.

Kaylee swallowed and felt like she might cry. This was all just so wrong. Someone like River, she had no business doin’ things like this. ’Course, Kaylee considered, neither of them did, really. Nor most anyone else, she imagined. Even the Reavers maybe, whatever had happened to make them like they were.

The universe, she reckoned, if it were alive somehow like some people thought, named God or whatever else, really must not believe much in fairness. Unless you counted it as fair to let people pay for sins what they had no part in whatsoever.

———-

The clean-up effort lasted well on past sunset. They were working by just the lights from inside the shuttle now, carrying the bodies out, then cleaning up inside enough so that at least the place wouldn’t stink unbearably come morning.

By the end of it, they were both, fair to say, just running on fumes. It just had to be done though, no two ways about it.

River had fallen silent at some point, and Kaylee hadn’t felt the need to break the silence. They just sort of worked at what they were doing together without either of them having to tell the other anything besides maybe a look or a gesture here or there. It was plain and obvious what had to be done after all, not lot’a guess work involved.