Wash had known Carolina was going to take the loss of Epsilon hard but before he could track down his wayward teammate, she'd up and disappeared. Kimball had been beside herself, the Reds and Blues hadn't known what to do or say as they all struggled with their new onboard passengers.

But life had to go on.

And this wasn't the first time Carolina had disappeared into thin air so Wash had simply carried on with the day to day, back-breaking work that was trying to help an entire planet right itself and economy after years of civil war.

If he worked himself down to the bone every day then he didn't have time to linger over unhappy thoughts about the final loss of Epsilon or the lack of all communication from Carolina.

Eventually, she just appeared out of nowhere and when Wash heard through the rumormill that she'd put in an appearance after over a month's absence, he debated giving Carolina some more space before finally deciding that a month was probably enough damned space.

It took him some time but he finally managed to track her down to the mess hall where she was seated alone at a table just sort of picking at her food in a dispirited manner.

"Heard you got back." It was hard to gauge his mood with that carefully bland tone of voice filtering through the helmets speaker system.