She looked down at the gun in her hand. They said that, if it looked like you were done for anyways, was far better puttin’ an end to yourself than lettin’ the Reavers have you. The stories she’d heard, things she’d seen, she believed it. Still, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to actually do it, if it came to that.

She looked out the window and thought of River out there. Somehow, as wildly improbable as it seemed to think about in any rational way, Kaylee just had this feeling… that they’d be okay. That, some how, some way, River actually would protect them both. One woman though, even River with everything Kaylee had seen her do before, against a horde of Reavers she didn’t know how many strong… Any way she looked at it, no one in their right mind’d give River more than a snowball’s chance in the hot place a’gettin’ out of it in one piece. Anyone’d ever seen a Reaver in person’d be like to think so. Savage didn’ even cover it. There was somethin’ just so… far, from anything human, about’m. ’Hollows’ River’d called them, and, you’d have t’admit, the name fit. Still though, Kaylee had the crazy thought that River would win somehow, and she was trying to just… hold onto that.

”I had any sense in my head, I would’a dragged’er out’a here anyway I could. Take our chances runnin’.” She muttered to herself a little ruefully, sitting down on the bed, head in her hands, her frustration getting the better of her.

”They’re here now.” Kaylee heard River’s voice through the comm.

Kaylee was on her feet and over to the comm station in a flash. ”River? River, you still there?” She sent back urgently. But there was no reply, just silence. She let loose a string of Chinese obscenities and kicked the wall, hurting her toes a little. Luckily, she’d been wearing boots.

She was almost regrettin’ that she’d got the comms workin’ again. Any message they sent wouldn’ carry into space much past a low stationary orbit, the state their transmitter was in, but it meant that one of them could call back to the ship when they were out if they had a comm unit with’m. Right now, that wasn’t exactly a comfort… wasn’t ’xactly not either, it was just…