Gunshot wounds and scars were nothing to Mal Reynolds. Years of being involved in wars had shown him countless people who'd been injured or killed, himself included. Except he'd never died, even though the times he'd gotten hurt were too numerous to count.

But this latest addition to his collection of scars felt different, and he didn't like the way it made him feel. There was nothing in the verse that could explain how an injury in a dream could still be there when he woke up. The ridiculousness of the whole thing nagged at Mal, to the point that he couldn't sleep for thinking about it.

So that was why he was awake well past midnight, walking along the same hall where he'd been shot. There was nothing left there to suggest that anything had happened; no blood stains on the floor or the walls, and definitely no sign of a battlefield or Tracey, who he knew to be dead. Except he'd definitely been there in that dream, so what did that mean? Was he a ghost?

Mal laughed sardonically. Ghosts didn't exist. But still, there was no explanation for what happened, and that, above everything else, made Mal very unhappy and very frustrated.

He kept walking, back and forth, down that long stretch of a hallway, ignoring the exhaustion that was beginning to creep up on him. Even though there was nothing to see, Mal was determined to keep walking until he either found out what was going on, or until he collapsed from sheer stubbornness and the need to do something besides sit around and ask pointless questions.

First it was the nightmares. The memories pushing back fifteen years to the last day he'd seen his father alive, the day the Drej had come out of nowhere and obliterated Earth and turned the thousands that had managed to escape into refugees. Without a home, they had become shunned by the other races, viewed with disdain. Ignored at best, openly attacked at worst.

His time on the ship had somehow allowed him to forget all that. Maybe it was being around so many other humans--the first time in fifteen years that Cale had been part of a 'majority.' Or perhaps it was that, now, everyone was in the same boat as he was, the boat he'd been in since he was four years old. Their homes were gone. Destroyed by a mysterious alien race. Whatever the reason, Cale had allowed himself to begin to forget the home he never had, to forget Earth, to forget the Titan, and to forget his father.

That was, until, the dreams.

They'd first come when he was asleep, jarring him awake with their vividness. There were several times that Cale been convinced they were real, only to wake up and be surprised that he wasn't a four year-old kid anymore. He was a nineteen year-old young man.


He wandered the streets of the city, meandering his way aimlessly until by pure chance he happened upon the statuary. He didn't recognize any of the stone sculptures. Most of them were supposed to be from Earth. That's what he'd been told by others in the crew. Who knew if it was true. Cale didn't. He'd been just a kid when the planet was blown to pieces. He didn't know squat about humanity or its history. Just that it was dying and would likely be extinct in another few hundred years. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Especially not him, no matter how much Akima and Korso tried to tell him differently. Earth was gone. There was no getting it back.


If only the nightmares had just stayed nightmares. Sleep was easy enough to avoid. Short cat-naps here and there allowed him to get a little rest, keep from hallucinating, without slipping into the dreamworld where his past seemed poised, waiting for him. But they hadn't just stayed nightmares. Now, the nightmares seemed to be alive. His past had walked alongside him. No. Not walked alongside him. It had tried to kill him. His past, the responsibility that had been dumped on him, was back and wasn't going to let him go. Even his father was a part of it. The man who had abandoned him, left it to him to finish what Sam had started. It was his fault the survival of their species had been dumped on Cale's shoulders.

And the Drej. If it weren't for those bastards, Earth would still exist. His dad wouldn't have left him. And everyone wouldn't be looking to Cale to save them.


"Aaaaaaargh!!!" Cale shouted snatching up what appeared to be a stone arm, broken from one of the statues--likely during one of the many battles the crew had fought in the city--and started swinging. He decapitated Venus di Milo. Another blow sent David's leg hurtling across the room. "Leave me alone!" he raged, striking the statues at random. "You're all DEAD!!! It's too late. It's all over. What the hell do you want me to do?!? Huh? What the hell do you want from me?!?"

Cissie had been trying to keep busy. She had been trying to avoid sleeping, to avoid seeing the funeral all of again. It had to be the worst day of her life. So she was busying herself around the med bay. Cleaning the floors, folding blankets, and other random things. She even sorted all the medical supplies alphabetically. When that had been done, she did it by type. Then back again.

She was actually busying herself with scrubbing a spot on the floor now. Her hair tied back in a knot as she focused just on this.