"I warn you, I'm no dancin' man."

He took her hand as the sky cleared, took it and spun her as Wash looked on, raised a glass. Zoe smiled with great tolerance, and right then, right there, he couldn't help thinking that maybe things were on the right compass. They were a small family on a small ship, about to fall into that longest and most difficult war there was in these parts: survival. They might just do okay.

Jayne’s used to dead bodies, but he ain’t used to them falling out of the sky and then waking up.

When Mal leans into his office and asks Eames what he did to his back, he can't exactly say, "the new graphics intern," so he says, "Oh, just stress, love."

Taking on a job commissioned by an orangutan may seem to veer from Mal's (admittedly abysmal) usual standards, but when it comes down to it, gold is gold, right?

The tags shimmered and blurred and she raised her head, tilted it back, let her eyes drink her tears back up before they spilled. It was a trick hard in the learning but one you never forgot.

The man could be anyone, just another poor bastard with perpetual bad luck, but we'll call him Malcolm Reynolds.

This is the story of the third thing that happens, and what came after.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is... Well. Three times would mean something.

On the ninth jump, something else goes wrong. They jump into empty space, and the rest of the SAR team is gone.

It should have been River.

River is always there when Mal turns the corner. Staring up, staring out. Even when there's no glass to see through.