moragmacpherson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moragmacpherson) wrote2009-01-20 02:18 am
moragmacpherson) wrote2009-01-20 02:18 am
Fic: The Lost Age (6/??) (Buffy/DrWho/Firefly)
Title: The Lost Age (6/??)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moragmacpherson
Rating: PG-15
Timeline: This story takes place during that sixty year block that I glossed over between chapters three and four of "Another Side of the Sky". Buffy's thirty here. In the Firefly universe, it's at the beginning of the movie.
Disclaimer: If it's a character or a place, I don't own it. Some dialogue is recycled from the film.
Archive: Here, TtH. If you'd like it, let me know.
Betas: Depending on the chapter: MissJulie and/or Mishka,
Summary: Buffy, Jack, and the Doctor accidentally land in a system where aliens fear to tread.
“No, no, don’t touch that!” The Doctor was not going to pick up his mallet in anger, Buffy would kill him, but why wasn’t Jack-
“But you’re just using it as a vent coil, right?” Kaylee’s head peeked out from under the console. “So wouldn’t it be better if you routed it through here first?” The popping sound of someone else uncoupling wires in the TARDIS scratched the chalkboard of the Doctor’s soul. The ship hummed approvingly at first as Kaylee’s adjustment took, but then all the lights went out. “Oops.”
“Yes, if that didn’t just circulate back to the Zyton crystals.” The Doctor got down under the console with her. “Let’s just- oh, wait.”
“Oh what?” Kaylee’s voice was breathless.
“You may have been onto something, I just have to-“ he pulled out the sonic screwdriver, moved a few other parts about, then plugged everything back together. The lights came back on, and the TARDIS resumed her happy thrumming. “There we go. Good catch, particularly given that you’re used to fusion drives. Actually, maybe because you are.”
Kaylee blushed. “Aww, weren’t nothing. And I did it wrong, just gave you a good idea. What sort of rig is this, anyway? I’ve never seen the likes of it before.”
The Doctor slid away. “Oh, mostly my own work. Started out quite a bit different, but I’ve been rebuilding her practically as long as we’ve been together.”
Kaylee smirked. “Yeah, I can see that from the wiring. I’ve got an extra roll of ‘lectrical tape on Serenity I can loan you.”
“So what does this button do?” Oh, thank Rassilon, Wash was just pointing and not pressing.
“Fires up the helmic regulator.” The Doctor stood back up. Please, let that be enough.
“And what’s a helmic regulator do?”
“Regulates the helm.” The Doctor’s brought a bunch of inquisitive engineers, pilots, and thieves from the Lost Age onboard a TARDIS. He could feel Romana glaring at him from atoms scattered across space and time.
Wash grinned. “Fair enough. You fly this all alone? Doesn’t look configured for just one, at least three from the looks of it.”
“Buffy helps sometimes, but I have to run around a bit.”
Wash nodded. “You’ve made it look all jury rigged and mechanical, but I suspect it’s more than just a little more complicated than my Firefly.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Hey check this out, these freaks have got a hand in a jar.” Jayne hoisted the canister up. “Nice trophy. Used to know a guy what collected ears. Did that Buffy girl cut this one off some thug?”
The Doctor blinked. “No.” She had been telling him to find a proper place to stow it for years now though. Oh, he was going to hear about this for weeks.
“So whose is it?”
Oh, hells, he’d already messed this up well enough, he deserved this. “Mine.”
Jaynes eyes widened as he counted the Doctor’s current number of appendages. “Huh.”
“Could you three let this poor man get around to his job? That girl seemed to think it was important.” Zoë’s firm tone finally brought a few moments of sanity back to the console room, and the Doctor flashed her a brilliant smile. She returned only a warning nod to get on with things, so he did.
“So, Jack, these are the nav charts that Wash gave us from their ship. They’re industry standard, right?”
“That’s correct. I’ve been flying almost twenty years now, they’re the same as any charts I know of in the system.”
Jack frowned at the numbers on the monitor. “The grav-forces, they’re off. Not much, just a couple decimals, but more than the shipping traffic can account for.”
“Exactly. But if we plot this...” The Doctor pressed a few buttons, and the system balanced out.
Jack turned to Serenity’s crew. “Why would your official charts hide a planet?”
Zoë moved to the monitor, while Wash tried to push in. “Well I’ll be damned.”
The Doctor pulled off his glasses. “River called it Miranda. Said that there were monsters there.”
Stroking a finger along the monitor, Wash had a thought. “Could you do a wider view of the system?” The Doctor zoomed the image out a bit. Wash sighed. “Well, there’s your monsters.”
Jack watched Wash grab his wife’s hand tightly. “What’s there, other than just black space?”
Kaylee shook her head. “It’s Reaver territory. Out past the Rim, past any semblance of what’s civilized.” She leaned into Jack, shaking just a bit. “Past any part of what’s human.”
Jayne hung back, arms crossed. “I ain’t having no business in Reaver territory.”
The Doctor pulled on his ear. “And what exactly is a Reaver?”
“Nothing I suspect you want any truck with,” replied Zoë. “Menfolk gone wild at the edge of space. Could be womenfolk, too; who knows, under all them mutilations and rags? Slaughter, rape, cannibalism: they indulge in all three, and they never, ever give up on a target they’ve found.”
“‘The edge of space,’” muttered the Doctor.
Jack pointed, keeping his other hand on Kaylee’s wrist. “This Miranda looks pretty close to the edge of the system to me. Could explain why it’s in that girl’s brain and not in these nav charts.” He waited a several silent moments, but the Doctor just rocked back and forth, pursing his lips. Jack bit back a scowl. “Why don’t we go in and check it out?”
The ensuing shouting was still at full bore when Mal and Buffy returned. Mal’s shout of “Quiet!” silenced the din.
“What’s the deal, Doctor?” Buffy stood beside him, and he discretely slipped a finger into one of her belt loops, Jack noticed.
“That’s a question that I imagine a number of us would like to have answered,” said Mal. “I mean, who are you folks? Not one of you’s given me a straight response to that question but some unreassuring evasions and I’m mighty unsettled entrusting vulnerable young girls to your like.” He nodded, and Zoë pulled out her sidearm, pointing it at the Doctor while Mal drew his on Buffy. “Now, there’s going to be some answers, then I imagine there might be some planning, or like as not, we’ll be walking out of here with River.”
The Doctor stepped closer to Buffy. “Put the guns away,” he whispered.
“No sir, not until you tell the Captain what he wants.” Kaylee looked appalled, but Zoë’s voice was firm. Jayne had taken a pistol out as well, and was holding it on Jack.
Jack sighed. “Fine. You want to know who we are?” He took three strides forward, bringing Jayne’s pistol to his chest. Jayne didn’t even mean to pull the trigger. Blood exploded out of Jack’s torso, spraying backwards, covering Jayne’s face. Wash froze, Kaylee shrieked, and Mal and Zoë dropped their sights, shocked by Jack’s apparent suicide.
The Doctor lifted his hands off of Buffy’s ears, glaring at Jack’s body. “Shooting guns in the TARDIS? What’s next?”
Buffy shook her head. “He gets to clean it up. I’m not doing it.” Wash looked at her like she was from another galaxy. Which, actually, she was. “Well, I’m not. He knows how much blood there is from a point blank chest wound.”
Jack coughed, making all of Serenity’s crew jump, and Mal and Zoë finally dropped their guns. “Damn that stings. Hate head shots, though, the headache lasts days.” Buffy gave him a hand. “Shoot, forgot to bring a change of shirt.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “I’ll find you one down in the wardrobe.”
Jayne stared at Jack. “There a change of pants down there too?”
The Doctor scowled at him. “Was that display really necessary?”
“I’m dreaming. Definitely dreaming. The steak should have tipped me off,” muttered Wash, who had a teary Kaylee attached to his side.
“So you...” Mal couldn’t find the words.
“I can’t die.” Jack stripped his soiled shirt off, dropping it to the ground to start cleaning up the blood. “Well, not permanently. The Doctor’s a Time Lord, if you shoot him, he’ll just grow a new face. And Buffy’s a Slayer from another dimension. She can die, but only if she doesn’t kill you first.”
“Did you really have to give all that information to a bunch of Lost Age criminals?” complained the Doctor.
“Oh, c’mon Doctor. You know as well as I do this isn’t some random group of Lost Age criminals. That’s River Tam in your Zero Room.” Buffy froze. She hadn’t realized that Jack and the Doctor knew so much about her new sister Slayer.
Mal’s eyes narrowed again. “What’s that matter?”
“Leading mind of your age, mother of the movement that-“
“That’s quite enough Jack!” They glared at each other for several long moments, when a chirping sound came in from Serenity.
Wash finally came back into action. “That’s a wave, I’ll get it.” He scurried out, followed by Kaylee and Jayne. A minute or so later, Wash came on the com. “Mal, it’s Inara.” Finally, Buffy, Jack, and the Doctor were left alone.
Buffy handed the bottle of cleaner from under the console over to the Doctor. “I’m-” she stopped to take a breath. “I’m going to get Jack a new shirt. You two, sort it out, okay?”
The Doctor watched her go, then handed the spray bottle to Jack. Jack got on his knees and started scrubbing. “So what’s going on Doctor? We’re in the Lost Age with River Tam, who, as it turns out, is a Slayer. Normally by now we’d already be on Miranda, running away from Reavers or whatever caused them. Instead, you’re hovering over Buffy like a hen with one egg.” Jack looked up at him. “What gives?”
The Doctor wished he could look away. “She died again.”
Jack nodded, having had his suspicions. “Were either of you planning on telling me?”
“She doesn’t like to talk about it.” He looked back at the hallway. “She acts like it didn’t even happen half the time.”
“Well, presumably you fixed it.”
“She was electrocuted on a Sontaran ship. Caught up to her a few minutes after it happened.” He sniffed. “She smelled like Christmas roast and burnt hair. There was a cloning chamber there, I hooked her body in, the Slayer healing took over, and she was whole again in about three hours.” The Doctor swallowed. “When I took her out, there was a few minutes, before- before...” Jack stands and lets the Doctor lean on him. “She wasn’t her, she wasn’t there, inside, and then she was.”
Jack understood that those were among the longest minutes in the Doctor’s whole life. “That’s my girl.”
The Doctor nodded weakly, pulling away and back together. “That was in the Rallifrax galaxy, would have been about two years ago in a linear timeline.”
“Ah.”
“‘One Slayer dies, another is called.’” Buffy handed Jack a soft cotton shirt, and he pulled her into a hug. “Hey, hey, it’s fine, look, see all my parts.” She held her arms up while Jack put the shirt on.
“All of ‘em?” he asked with a wink.
“Hey!” snapped the Doctor, and for a moment, the world was normal again. The moment passed, and the Doctor took a strand of Buffy’s hair between his fingers. “Figured it out, did you?”
Buffy sighed. “Wasn’t that hard, once I had the dates straight. But moving to things I actually want to talk about: you two know this girl, from those journals or whatever?”
Jack finished buttoning his shirt. “Let me tell you all about River Tam.”
Next
Author:
moragmacpherson Rating: PG-15
Timeline: This story takes place during that sixty year block that I glossed over between chapters three and four of "Another Side of the Sky". Buffy's thirty here. In the Firefly universe, it's at the beginning of the movie.
Disclaimer: If it's a character or a place, I don't own it. Some dialogue is recycled from the film.
Archive: Here, TtH. If you'd like it, let me know.
Betas: Depending on the chapter: MissJulie and/or Mishka,
Summary: Buffy, Jack, and the Doctor accidentally land in a system where aliens fear to tread.
“No, no, don’t touch that!” The Doctor was not going to pick up his mallet in anger, Buffy would kill him, but why wasn’t Jack-
“But you’re just using it as a vent coil, right?” Kaylee’s head peeked out from under the console. “So wouldn’t it be better if you routed it through here first?” The popping sound of someone else uncoupling wires in the TARDIS scratched the chalkboard of the Doctor’s soul. The ship hummed approvingly at first as Kaylee’s adjustment took, but then all the lights went out. “Oops.”
“Yes, if that didn’t just circulate back to the Zyton crystals.” The Doctor got down under the console with her. “Let’s just- oh, wait.”
“Oh what?” Kaylee’s voice was breathless.
“You may have been onto something, I just have to-“ he pulled out the sonic screwdriver, moved a few other parts about, then plugged everything back together. The lights came back on, and the TARDIS resumed her happy thrumming. “There we go. Good catch, particularly given that you’re used to fusion drives. Actually, maybe because you are.”
Kaylee blushed. “Aww, weren’t nothing. And I did it wrong, just gave you a good idea. What sort of rig is this, anyway? I’ve never seen the likes of it before.”
The Doctor slid away. “Oh, mostly my own work. Started out quite a bit different, but I’ve been rebuilding her practically as long as we’ve been together.”
Kaylee smirked. “Yeah, I can see that from the wiring. I’ve got an extra roll of ‘lectrical tape on Serenity I can loan you.”
“So what does this button do?” Oh, thank Rassilon, Wash was just pointing and not pressing.
“Fires up the helmic regulator.” The Doctor stood back up. Please, let that be enough.
“And what’s a helmic regulator do?”
“Regulates the helm.” The Doctor’s brought a bunch of inquisitive engineers, pilots, and thieves from the Lost Age onboard a TARDIS. He could feel Romana glaring at him from atoms scattered across space and time.
Wash grinned. “Fair enough. You fly this all alone? Doesn’t look configured for just one, at least three from the looks of it.”
“Buffy helps sometimes, but I have to run around a bit.”
Wash nodded. “You’ve made it look all jury rigged and mechanical, but I suspect it’s more than just a little more complicated than my Firefly.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Hey check this out, these freaks have got a hand in a jar.” Jayne hoisted the canister up. “Nice trophy. Used to know a guy what collected ears. Did that Buffy girl cut this one off some thug?”
The Doctor blinked. “No.” She had been telling him to find a proper place to stow it for years now though. Oh, he was going to hear about this for weeks.
“So whose is it?”
Oh, hells, he’d already messed this up well enough, he deserved this. “Mine.”
Jaynes eyes widened as he counted the Doctor’s current number of appendages. “Huh.”
“Could you three let this poor man get around to his job? That girl seemed to think it was important.” Zoë’s firm tone finally brought a few moments of sanity back to the console room, and the Doctor flashed her a brilliant smile. She returned only a warning nod to get on with things, so he did.
“So, Jack, these are the nav charts that Wash gave us from their ship. They’re industry standard, right?”
“That’s correct. I’ve been flying almost twenty years now, they’re the same as any charts I know of in the system.”
Jack frowned at the numbers on the monitor. “The grav-forces, they’re off. Not much, just a couple decimals, but more than the shipping traffic can account for.”
“Exactly. But if we plot this...” The Doctor pressed a few buttons, and the system balanced out.
Jack turned to Serenity’s crew. “Why would your official charts hide a planet?”
Zoë moved to the monitor, while Wash tried to push in. “Well I’ll be damned.”
The Doctor pulled off his glasses. “River called it Miranda. Said that there were monsters there.”
Stroking a finger along the monitor, Wash had a thought. “Could you do a wider view of the system?” The Doctor zoomed the image out a bit. Wash sighed. “Well, there’s your monsters.”
Jack watched Wash grab his wife’s hand tightly. “What’s there, other than just black space?”
Kaylee shook her head. “It’s Reaver territory. Out past the Rim, past any semblance of what’s civilized.” She leaned into Jack, shaking just a bit. “Past any part of what’s human.”
Jayne hung back, arms crossed. “I ain’t having no business in Reaver territory.”
The Doctor pulled on his ear. “And what exactly is a Reaver?”
“Nothing I suspect you want any truck with,” replied Zoë. “Menfolk gone wild at the edge of space. Could be womenfolk, too; who knows, under all them mutilations and rags? Slaughter, rape, cannibalism: they indulge in all three, and they never, ever give up on a target they’ve found.”
“‘The edge of space,’” muttered the Doctor.
Jack pointed, keeping his other hand on Kaylee’s wrist. “This Miranda looks pretty close to the edge of the system to me. Could explain why it’s in that girl’s brain and not in these nav charts.” He waited a several silent moments, but the Doctor just rocked back and forth, pursing his lips. Jack bit back a scowl. “Why don’t we go in and check it out?”
The ensuing shouting was still at full bore when Mal and Buffy returned. Mal’s shout of “Quiet!” silenced the din.
“What’s the deal, Doctor?” Buffy stood beside him, and he discretely slipped a finger into one of her belt loops, Jack noticed.
“That’s a question that I imagine a number of us would like to have answered,” said Mal. “I mean, who are you folks? Not one of you’s given me a straight response to that question but some unreassuring evasions and I’m mighty unsettled entrusting vulnerable young girls to your like.” He nodded, and Zoë pulled out her sidearm, pointing it at the Doctor while Mal drew his on Buffy. “Now, there’s going to be some answers, then I imagine there might be some planning, or like as not, we’ll be walking out of here with River.”
The Doctor stepped closer to Buffy. “Put the guns away,” he whispered.
“No sir, not until you tell the Captain what he wants.” Kaylee looked appalled, but Zoë’s voice was firm. Jayne had taken a pistol out as well, and was holding it on Jack.
Jack sighed. “Fine. You want to know who we are?” He took three strides forward, bringing Jayne’s pistol to his chest. Jayne didn’t even mean to pull the trigger. Blood exploded out of Jack’s torso, spraying backwards, covering Jayne’s face. Wash froze, Kaylee shrieked, and Mal and Zoë dropped their sights, shocked by Jack’s apparent suicide.
The Doctor lifted his hands off of Buffy’s ears, glaring at Jack’s body. “Shooting guns in the TARDIS? What’s next?”
Buffy shook her head. “He gets to clean it up. I’m not doing it.” Wash looked at her like she was from another galaxy. Which, actually, she was. “Well, I’m not. He knows how much blood there is from a point blank chest wound.”
Jack coughed, making all of Serenity’s crew jump, and Mal and Zoë finally dropped their guns. “Damn that stings. Hate head shots, though, the headache lasts days.” Buffy gave him a hand. “Shoot, forgot to bring a change of shirt.”
Buffy rolled her eyes. “I’ll find you one down in the wardrobe.”
Jayne stared at Jack. “There a change of pants down there too?”
The Doctor scowled at him. “Was that display really necessary?”
“I’m dreaming. Definitely dreaming. The steak should have tipped me off,” muttered Wash, who had a teary Kaylee attached to his side.
“So you...” Mal couldn’t find the words.
“I can’t die.” Jack stripped his soiled shirt off, dropping it to the ground to start cleaning up the blood. “Well, not permanently. The Doctor’s a Time Lord, if you shoot him, he’ll just grow a new face. And Buffy’s a Slayer from another dimension. She can die, but only if she doesn’t kill you first.”
“Did you really have to give all that information to a bunch of Lost Age criminals?” complained the Doctor.
“Oh, c’mon Doctor. You know as well as I do this isn’t some random group of Lost Age criminals. That’s River Tam in your Zero Room.” Buffy froze. She hadn’t realized that Jack and the Doctor knew so much about her new sister Slayer.
Mal’s eyes narrowed again. “What’s that matter?”
“Leading mind of your age, mother of the movement that-“
“That’s quite enough Jack!” They glared at each other for several long moments, when a chirping sound came in from Serenity.
Wash finally came back into action. “That’s a wave, I’ll get it.” He scurried out, followed by Kaylee and Jayne. A minute or so later, Wash came on the com. “Mal, it’s Inara.” Finally, Buffy, Jack, and the Doctor were left alone.
Buffy handed the bottle of cleaner from under the console over to the Doctor. “I’m-” she stopped to take a breath. “I’m going to get Jack a new shirt. You two, sort it out, okay?”
The Doctor watched her go, then handed the spray bottle to Jack. Jack got on his knees and started scrubbing. “So what’s going on Doctor? We’re in the Lost Age with River Tam, who, as it turns out, is a Slayer. Normally by now we’d already be on Miranda, running away from Reavers or whatever caused them. Instead, you’re hovering over Buffy like a hen with one egg.” Jack looked up at him. “What gives?”
The Doctor wished he could look away. “She died again.”
Jack nodded, having had his suspicions. “Were either of you planning on telling me?”
“She doesn’t like to talk about it.” He looked back at the hallway. “She acts like it didn’t even happen half the time.”
“Well, presumably you fixed it.”
“She was electrocuted on a Sontaran ship. Caught up to her a few minutes after it happened.” He sniffed. “She smelled like Christmas roast and burnt hair. There was a cloning chamber there, I hooked her body in, the Slayer healing took over, and she was whole again in about three hours.” The Doctor swallowed. “When I took her out, there was a few minutes, before- before...” Jack stands and lets the Doctor lean on him. “She wasn’t her, she wasn’t there, inside, and then she was.”
Jack understood that those were among the longest minutes in the Doctor’s whole life. “That’s my girl.”
The Doctor nodded weakly, pulling away and back together. “That was in the Rallifrax galaxy, would have been about two years ago in a linear timeline.”
“Ah.”
“‘One Slayer dies, another is called.’” Buffy handed Jack a soft cotton shirt, and he pulled her into a hug. “Hey, hey, it’s fine, look, see all my parts.” She held her arms up while Jack put the shirt on.
“All of ‘em?” he asked with a wink.
“Hey!” snapped the Doctor, and for a moment, the world was normal again. The moment passed, and the Doctor took a strand of Buffy’s hair between his fingers. “Figured it out, did you?”
Buffy sighed. “Wasn’t that hard, once I had the dates straight. But moving to things I actually want to talk about: you two know this girl, from those journals or whatever?”
Jack finished buttoning his shirt. “Let me tell you all about River Tam.”
Next